Training for Climbing: A Beginner's Guide to Building Strength on the Wall
Have you caught the climbing bug? Then you’re in for a great time! The only thing that could make it better is if you could build more strength while doing so, to climb even more! Well, what if you could? What if you could build strength on the wall to increase your climbing fitness and spend even more time climbing?
Okay, enough with the questions. Yes, you can functionally build your fitness on the wall to help you climb stronger, longer, and with more control. The key is to stay consistent — before you know it, you won’t be a beginner anymore!
1. Start with Movement, Not Muscle: Why Technique Comes First
The first step is to learn climbing technique. While it may seem like being strong is all you need to be a good climber, take a look at many of the top climbers competing in world cups or the Olympics. Many of them do not have the bulging muscles of a bodybuilder, but the sleek build of a climber.
Strength means nothing without control and body awareness. You can pull yourself up the wall until your arms give out, but what if you haven’t reached the top by then? Using your feet and your body positioning is an essential part of climbing. Climbers want to use their movement efficiently to save enough energy to complete a climb.
A few drills you can do to increase your footwork:
Silent feet: Try to climb without your feet making any noise at all. It will help you gain confidence in your foot placements.
Flagging: Do an outside/inside/back flag for every step you take on a route to get familiar with the movements.
Straight arms: Practice standing through your feet to get yourself up the wall instead of pulling yourself with your arms.
2. Use the Wall to Build Functional Climbing Strength
The best way to build functional climbing fitness as a beginner is to climb, climb, and continue climbing. Climbing itself is your best training tool as a beginner. You will develop the muscles needed to get up the wall simply by using them.
Traverse circuits to build your endurance and technique. You can learn a lot about foot placement and body movement by climbing sideways and downward, like during a traverse. These are great for helping you understand how to use your feet, while keeping your mind engaged, and building your endurance.
Find a route that's easy for you and just go up and down, up and down, up and down. Set a timer for the desired duration and see if you can reach the wall! This exercise will help you build your aerobic capacity and improve your breathing when pulling hard.
3. Learn to Engage Your Core, Not Just Your Arms
While you’ve learned not just to use your arms and to use your legs more, don’t skip practicing using your core more! Climbing is a full-body workout — your core is the link between your hands and feet. Practice developing your climbing fitness.
Practice keeping your hips close, no matter the angle of the wall you’re climbing. Keeping your hips close will help you use less energy in your arms and allow you to climb longer.
“Lock-off" strength, the ability to hold yourself in a climbing move, matters for control and reach because the slower you can move, the more likely you are to grab the next hold and grab it correctly. This isn’t to say you should climb incredibly slowly, but it is a symptom of being able to!
4. Rest, Recovery, and Progress: The Role of Smart Scheduling
Avoid overtraining. As a beginner, it’s easy to keep going back to the gym to play around, but it’s harder on your body than you may realize. Your skin will only gain calluses when you let it rest, not if it’s always raw!
2–3 climbing sessions a week are plenty to see your climbing fitness improve. Instead of trying to climb every day, focus on performing exercises that climbing doesn’t target, such as your antagonistic muscles. These include your ‘pushing’ muscles like your chest, triceps, tops of forearms — and course, even though climbing uses legs, it’s a good idea to add in some more intense days of these, too.
Rest days are training days too (recovery = progress)!
5. Make It Fun, Stay Consistent, and Track Your Progress
Celebrate the small wins you accomplish! When you’re a beginner, there are plenty of small wins to be had, so make sure to enjoy them. This could involve holding a new grip, performing a new technique-based move, or even just slightly improving your climbing fitness.
Stay motivated by setting goals (like flashing a V2 or climbing 3x per week). Setting climbing goals will help you stay consistent and encourage you to improve when you're at the gym. Another tip is to climb with others! You’ll learn faster this way, plus, it pushes you to climb better!
But Don't Forget…
Don’t lose why you started climbing in the first place: to have fun! Once you stop having fun, it starts to feel like a chore. While not every session or climb is going to leave you with a beaming smile from ear to ear, remember to appreciate the good that climbing has brought to your life. We tend to take things too seriously when we want to improve, so just remember to take a step back and focus on why you started climbing in the first place.