Picking Low Hanging Fruit
There is no doubt about it, climbing is a stressful sport. It’s so stressful in fact, we are not able to practice every day and maintain a high level of health. Unlike some ball sports where a basketball player can grab a ball and practice their craft literally every single day and see an uptick in performance, the climber needs to be patient and methodical with their schedule. This can be hard to swallow for a young or inexperienced climber who feels like they need to get better at climbing fast. Today I will outline some ideas as to how a climber can continue to make gains in their sport without getting on the wall every day.
1. Take up a movement practice- This can look like yoga or Pilates but I personally don’t do either. To me, a good movement practice includes all of the ranges of motion a human may come across in the world. Some examples include spine mobility (extension, flexion, rotation), hip and shoulder mobility (abduction, adduction, IR, ER, flexion, extension etc), foot/ankle and hand/wrist movements, the possibilities are endless. Yoga and Pilates cover most of these which is why people like them. They are about as complete a movement practice as you could want with the very important exception- they are not tailored to you and your specific movement skill deficits. It is very likely if you took up yoga on a regular basis and decided to get good at it that your movement deficits will slowly get shored up and your overall health and strength will increase. The key here for me is time. This trial and error method can take a long time before you discover what really correlates to better on-the-rock performance. I prefer to take a less time consuming approach by dialing into the specific needs of the climbers movement profile and working on the lowest hanging fruit first. By giving a climber a short but concise list of movement qualities to work on and helping them with execution and progression, a climber can get a lot out of their movement practice in a short amount of time. Especially when compared with the shot gun approach of “taking up yoga”, this approach will fast track the movement gains and get you feeling the benefit of high movement quality right away.
2. Train your fingers with short but intense efforts frequently- Hangboarding is a very obvious way to do this, and probably the most accessible. There are downsides to hanging on a hangboard as the only way to train fingers however. Fatigue is the most obvious one, as heavy or high volume climbing involves lots of overhead and shoulder dominant positions. If you are focusing on lots of climbing but feel like you still need to work your fingers to stay sharp, here are a few methods. 10 minute hangboard protocol (made popular by Emil Abrahamsson) is a great way to keep the fingers feeling sharp without making them tired. The plan is simple, choose 10 grips (some can be repeated) and load them with a majority of your weight still in your feet (on the ground) so the effort feels like 2-4 out of 10. Hold this for 20-40s then shake out for the remainder of the minute. Start a new grip at the top of the minute and repeat the process, lightly loading your fingers with lots of help from your feet. This has been reported to promote blood flow and collagen restoration (research is still not conclusive) but at the very least, anecdotally it can give the climber a strong sense of health and strength. This protocol should be used 1-2x a day spread out by 6+ hours. On a day where you climb or train heavy, skip the light finger session early, then do it 6+ hours after (or before) your workout concludes.
Another great way to keep your fingers feeling sharp without over fatiguing your arms/shoulders is to do Off The Ground (OTG) pick ups w a Tension Block. This is where you stack a bunch of weight on a lifting pin with a Tension Block attached to it. Then you do a small “deadlift style” pick up with one hand for either reps or time. This is easy to modify both the load and the Time Under Tension (TUT) to suit your goals. I use these personally throughout a training cycle to keep the fingers feeling charged up between hard training sessions without adding to the global training load on my shoulders and big pulling muscles. With this method you can do high repetitions or low repetitions, big edge or little edge, pinches or crimps. Make it what you need with very easy adjustments. And did I mention this can be done in season with the correct load scheme?! This is often a great late stage warm up before a training session if you are in the midst of a performance phase as well.
3. Train your limbs- This one is often very overlooked. The phrase “friends don’t let friends skip leg day” is a real thing… So often I look at a climber and they have very little in the ways of leg strength. If they are not as strong as they need to be in the legs, they have to find other ways to make up for this deficit and this can take its toll over the long haul. The same is true for arms I’ve noticed. They can do large amounts of pull ups or have super strong shoulders but when it comes to mastering elbow function, they have a long way to go. I recommend that a climber pepper in leg and arm work, both single and double limb movements in their warm ups as a start. If you find yourself getting stronger in these movements over a season then you know your on the right track. The off season (if you have one) is the real time to tackle this issue however. Try spending a few months while climbing is on the back burner to change your bodies physical make up. Start by doing high repetitions (~15 reps) with movements like deadlifts, lunges, biceps curls and triceps presses. Choosing high variety movements (biceps curls w DB, biceps curl w high and low anchored bands or cables, TRX biceps curls, etc) during the early phase is very helpful as you will learn more intuitively how to control your body during multi-planar movements. After the first month, start to narrow down your focus into a handful of exercises that you feel very comfortable loading heavier (8-10 reps). By the last month you should be able to feel comfortable adding more load to the heavy hitter movements (Trap bar deadlift, pistol squat, Bar biceps curl, Skull crushers) and start using a more 4-6 rep range. If you spend an off season doing this, it can create positive changes in your climbing for years to come. Keep in mind of course that you should keep climbing in the mix, just not as a focus during this time.
If you as the athlete are thinking that you have to make all the gains in all the places right now or you will be left in the dust of obscurity by your peers, this is very common feeling. It is not a very productive strategy however. Instead of trying a little of everything at once, focus on 1 or 2 of these “low hanging fruits” you want to tackle and work on them intensely, shortly and frequently for a few months. Then once the plan has run its course, it is time to dive back into active climbing mode and integrate these new movement qualities you had worked on into your climbing practice. Make sure you give yourself an adequate amount of time to let your climbing ramp up to the intensity you are looking for. If you haven’t been focusing on climbing for a few months, take a few months to get back to the top of the mountain. Your body will be glad for the long term vision as stress is a fickle thing. Take the time to slowly grow back into a strong and fluid climber and a prosperous season will likely come your way.
Ben Kneeland
CSCS, NSCA CPT
