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Eric, I’m a 38-year-old male who is a beginner climber. I needed a new hobby and my regular lifting workouts became boring. I was introduced to climbing about 2 months ago, and I love it! I have been driving 45 miles, twice per week, to the closest climbing gym, but I want to build a system wall in my garage . I am not sure what holds I need to begin with and how my training needs to begin. I was hoping you would have some advice for me to know the best place to start. –Jason (Alabama)
Hi Jason, Welcome to climbing! I’ve worked with many climbers who get into climbing late in the game (30s, 40s, 50s) and most find it a refreshing, motivating, and rewarding activity. You will improve quickly if you work to constantly improve technique, advance your mental game, build strength….and avoid injury (often happens from pushing too hard too soon).
Anyway, a home wall is a great investment. A steep (45 to 50 degree past vertical) bouldering wall is the best platform for training strength. If space is very limited, then a smaller system wall is a good idea. System walls tend to be less steep (20 to 45 past vert), so you’ll want somewhat smaller holds on a less-steep wall. On a steeper bouldering wall…you’ll want a mix of small, medium and large. NICROS has a ton of great holds—check out the EH training sets for smaller shapes to train different grip positions! Still, you’ll want to get to your nearest commercial gym at least once per week so that you can do longer boulder problems and climb for mileage on roped routes (important for developing endurance). Good luck and let me know how it goes!
Hello Eric, My training question refers to the Intermediate sample workout in Training for Climbing. On active rest days I like to swim a lot, often up to 3600 meters/week. Is swimming a high value workout for climbing assuming the swimmer uses good form and stretches for ROM…or would another conditioning be better during my pre-season cycle? Thanks for taking the time to consider the questions. –Kai (Connecticut)
Hey Kai, Wow, that is a lot of swimming! I assume you are swimming at a moderate pace, rather than killing it with hard intervals, etc? The aerobic activity is fine, as long as it’s not so long (or hard) that it creates deep fatigue that affects your climbing. My gut feeling, however, is that you would be better off reducing your swimming volume and invest more time into submaximal climbing for a more specific aerobic conditioning workout.
To become the best climber you can be, it’s climbing-specific training that is most important—frequent roped climbing, bouldering, fingerboard training, weighted pull-ups, core exercises, and stabilizer/antagonist work. The intermediate TFC program sounds perfect for you at this time. Once you break into solid 5.12s you can take things up another notch—both intensity and climbing volume—at which time you’ll certainly benefit from swimming less (perhaps just twice per week as active recovery). Good luck!
Hi Eric, First off, great work on the new website! We met briefly at the Lander Climber’s Festival. I have just begun training with a fingerboard the past two years and have replaced some gym climbing sessions with hangboard sessions. I try to do regular antagonist exercises once per week including high rep, light weight bench press, external rotators with low weight and Ys ad Ts. I have heard you mention in podcasts and on your Intro to Fingerboard Training article the importance of attaining proper scapular stabilization. I have experienced mild tendonitis in my subscapular tendon–I saw a chiropractor a few times and he mentioned I should do more external rotator exercises. My shoulders are in a better place now, but I still want to be sure to maintain healthy, well balanced shoulders. What other exercises do you recommend for strengthening scapular stabilizers? Thanks! – Andrew (Arizona)
Hello Andrew! The exercises you mention are all perfect–good job on that. External rotation is most important to train…keep with that, plus the Y and Ts which great for mid and lower Traps–critical to properly position your scapula during overhead movements. One thing: you should be doing these exercises two or three times per week; once is not enough. Anyway, I’ve written a bunch on this subject (with several great new exercise like the Scapular Pull-up) for the new edition (3rd) of my Training For Climbing book…to be released this summer. Check it out!
Hi Eric, Thank you so much for providing this great resource, I really appreciate it and hope you can help with a question regarding a shoulder issue I’m having. First off, I’m pretty certain I have no shoulder injury because it doesn’t hurt while I climb unless I do a big lock off (either shoulder) and try to bump up the other hand up, or after having bumped the other hand up, pulling again on the lock off and the bumped hand to bring the locked off hand up. Rest and avoiding moves that cause this pain hasn’t helped to allow me to be able to perform this movement pain free, so I think it is something innate with my shoulder range of motion / impingement that pre-dates climbing since I’ve never been able to do this move pain free since the beginning and didn’t have shoulder injuries before I started climbing (1 year ago).
On the campus board, I can go from 1, bump to 2, bump to 3 and then that is when the pain on the lower locked off shoulder starts to come in slightly. If I try to bump to 4 then the pain is concerning enough for me to immediately abandon the move. I’ve just been avoiding these moves since I discovered they cause pain which is frustrating since it limits routes I can climb, not because of lack of strength but just because of this issue. I’m thinking since it doesn’t appear to be an injury that there is a general diagnosis (impingement?) for this. My hope is that you will have some exercises I can try regularly to fix this. Thanks again. –Neal (California)
Hello Neil, Sorry to hear about your shoulder pain. That’s really tough to diagnose, but my instinct is that perhaps the shoulder becomes unstable in a low lock-off position…or perhaps your scapula isn’t moving into proper position for the extreme movement. I’d be curious to test tbe strength of your internal/external rotation and scapular stabilizers—I’m thinking weak middle and lower trapezius muscles might be your weak link. Anyway, doing some exercises (3 days per week) that target these muscles would be a good long-term investment, even if instability/mobility isn’t the problem. Ultimately, you may need to see a physio or doctor to sort out what’s going on—certainly do so if the condition gets any worse.
Hey Eric! Your great advice in your answers and in your books has been such a big part of helping me to become a better climber over the years, especially without much of a pool of strong climbers to learn from down here in Louisiana! My question for you this time is about coaching, particularly youth climbers, which I think is something that you probably have more experience and success with than anyone at this point. After going through several coaches only slightly committed and hardly knowledgeable enough to coach someone and teach them climber (to the point of teaching them terrible technique and workout methods that were bound to cause injury), I reluctantly volunteered to coach the kids climbing team at my gym in New Orleans. This is partly because I noticed the thrown together climbing workouts they had these kids doing with no focus on technique or form, and partly because I have come to know some of the kids and some of them show quite a lot of potential and promise. Never imagined myself to want to teach kids, but here we are haha.
So, I was wondering if you could give me some advice and guidance on coaching, particularly aimed at children aged 7-16, or even help point me in the right direction. I have read all of your articles on training youth climbers on Nicros.com and Training4Climbing.com as well as read what you wrote in Training for Climbing and have learned quite a bit that will definitely be of help in coaching them up. I was intending to break them up in three groups (6-9, 10-15, and work more one-on-one with the one teenager as he is climbing v6 already and can keep up with everyone in the gym ) based on your article “Age-appropriate strength training for youth climbers”, for most of the 3 hour workouts we have planned twice a week. However, I also want to do some group exercises that might be able to involve all of them.
Could you be so kind as to give some of your great insight into structuring a good climbing day to achieve this? Also, possibly some good training games or exercises to teach them technique but keep it fun and engaging for all of them? Lastly, as a highly motivated climber, I intend to push them and try to make them better climbers through constructive criticism, working on weaknesses, and teaching good habits, but I realize that too much might be counterproductive. Do you have any advice with keeping a good balance between pushing them hard and keeping it fun for them? Thanks in advance and thanks for all your help in the past!
–William (Louisiana)
Hello William—thanks for the kind words! I’m happy to hear you’re coaching kids—smart, prudent coaching is important, and there are many different facets of quality youth training to consider. You’ve likely already gleaned the key points from reading my previous articles, but I’ll bullet point a few of the most basic and important guidelines:
2-hour workout structure:
Finally, encourage the kids and parents to keep an open mind about doing other sports. IMO, single sport specialization is NOT a good thing prior to age 16. Kids need to develop broad motor skills, movement patterns, mental skills, etc. Playing at least one other organized sport is a very smart thing—for development and motivation—to become a solid all-around, physically and mentally healthy athlete for life.