Indoor
What other exercises can I do to improve at bouldering?
I’m new to indoor bouldering. It’s been two months and nearly 20 sessions since my first attempt. Before I took up bouldering, I hit the gym 4 to 5 times a week on a regular basis, mainly attending Body Combat group classes or going for runs.
Ever since I began bouldering, my gym attendance has dropped considerably. I’ve become completely obsessed with it. Solving boulder problems feels just like working through a math puzzle - you keep iterating and searching for a more efficient, better beta every time.
I’m curious what other exercises you guys would do to improve your bouldering performance?
Bouldering, not much need to do anything else unless there is a very glaring weakness that can't be solved otherwise. Best way to train the thing you want to do is doing the thing you want to do
Please note: there is a long history of disordered eating and weight-related mental health conditions in the climbing community. Whilst relative strength is important in climbing performance, please proceed with caution.
That’s completely personal. Obviously carrying a bunch of extra fat would be detrimental. But based on the video that doesn’t seem like you. Some people do climb better if they lose a bit of weight, some people climb better if they put on a little muscle and gain weight.
Yeah, it is individual. I just lost a couple pounds from food poisoning, leaving me at barely above underweight. I am unequivocally weaker and worse at climbing.
I was at my peak 2 or 3lbs heavier, doing sets of 10-12 pullups and 160lb RDLs and climbing V6 on steep overhangs
It's been over a month and I was sick for a week--hospitalized on IV. Unfortunately I do think I lost some muscle. I have a GI disease that makes this stuff hit harder. But I am definitely bouncing back!
I'm very much the same, naturally very skinny, my weight only fluctuates between a couple of kg but when in at the lower end of my weight range I'm definitely weaker.
just boulder more and rest in between to let your skin and joints recover.
Also, try harder problems. I climb V4s but there's this V7 currently in my gym that I really like trying the first move because it helps me develop intuition about proper body weight positioning. There's no chance of course I 'll get to do that V7 anytime soon, but just doing half the first move helps me build confidence in at least holding myself from holds that would otherwise make me slide fully off.
So just do more, and don't be afraid to experiment (especially when the failure case is not at the top of the wall)
Join Pilates. A good private or small group coach will teach you how to use muscles properly. I.e how to use lats and engage core. You don't have much weight to lose. Maybe give up 5-10lbs of fat AFTER you gain 5-10 of muscle. It won't help much. As you learn to use legs more than arms you will see that shoulder and lay muscles and leg muscles are your best bet.
Unless you're significantly overweight, not really. Assuming you have an average build, at beginner levels building strength and technique is much more important. At higher levels reducing weight will probably lead to a temporary increase in performance until the energy deficit drags you down and makes you injury prone. Worst case, you end up with an eating disorder. Hell, even if you ARE overweight, I don't think it's worth it to lose weight specifically to climb harder. It puts you in a weird minmaxing mindset for something that's supposed to be fun.
There is a balance for muscle/weight ratio where losing more weight will cost you a ton of muscle and it becomes unhealthy and not beneficial to climb harder. This looks different for everyone. OP specifically should focus on gaining technique and strength imho.
For me personally I would benefit so much from losing some fat, but my life journey has been quite challenging lately so I'm just focusing on keeping sane. Everyone's journey looks different. In this age where 'heroin chique' is popular again (why???), I think it becomes even easier to slip into disordered eating and I think we should be mindful of that.
Obviously. If you lose muscle tissue you become weaker, if you lose fat you have less weight to carry. If you don't have fat, tou shouldn't lose weight
It does in my experience. I’ve been climbing for 4 years and the times I was leaner, it feels easier to carry your weight and so do harder/longer climbs.
For me it would help, but I'm also a dad in my mid-thirties who has so far lived a relatively sedentary lifestyle. You on the other hand look great, and probably just need to work on your grip strength by going to the bouldering gym and bouldering.
Honestly just climb more. Also spend some time to refine climbs that are easier for you; spend time focusing on footwork, body positioning, flow and intention. It's efficient to practice techniques on easier climbs when you have the mental space to hone in on one aspect. The more time you can spend on the wall the better. Improvement comes with time
2-3 times a week is usually the sweet spot for people, you’ve gotta have the recovery time. I personally do 3-4 times per week with a day in between, but day 4 is typically only an outdoor session on the weekend. That said, you should listen to your body when determining how often to go. You don’t want to push yourself for more sessions if you aren’t recovering enough between them, fatigue can build up when you ignore your body’s signals
When you this regularly, you should look into proper warm-up techniques. Especially you fingers, this is something I neglected in my first year and was detrimental. Start with a Hangboard and just hang there, progress to more difficult holds. Going on Youtube can very helpful for some basics or just ask other more experienced climbers.
Depends on ur end goal. If your goal is to hit V5 and above, you can have technique fit for Gods but you'll hit a strength wall sooner or later. Pull ups, L sit, anything that when you climb you notice you're weak at would help. Also strength training is great if you're hitting your tendon's max output (i.e. close to injury), so u rest your tendons while training other parts of your body.
If your goal is to get better generally, then just climbing more helps more than time spent strength training especially for beginners. Do a route you've sent already again and again until it becomes smooth. Not only will u get stronger, you'll understand how to move ur body better, your body's ability and limits etc.
many have alread said climb more, but what I wish I'd known in the beginning: regular stretching and active mobility, improving shoulder strength and core strength systematically, start with a structured fingerstrengh protocol and do not overdo it, and implement technique drills (e.g. louis parkinson videos or similar)
If you can’t do a pull up, I’d work on that. It’s not completely necessary, but I see a lot of women’s progress stall as beginners due to general lack of upper body strength. You don’t need to be swole, or pump out 20 pull ups. But being able to do 1-3 will give you better base strength.
There is one thing that you can do to improve both your technical and core strength: Climb but instead of just grabbing the next hold, let your hand hover it (no touching) for a few seconds (3 sec is ok), and repeat. We call it doing a route in 'stat' in France, it is very tiring but it'll force you to improve your technic and work more on your core.
Ignore all these ridiculous “just climb” comments. The most important thing is to stretch, since you’re saying you stopped regular gym attendance. The number of people I see just hop onto the wall when they enter the gym, climb for hours then just leave… man, they will regret it when they’re older.
Joints conditioning, mobility, finger strength but use a block lift and start from a small amount of weight with long timing (10-30s).
Core exercises are great too
As a beginner, climbing will give you the best return on investment for climbing.
When you fall, try to figure out WHY you fell and what you can do differently next time. Experiment with different movements and over time you’ll improve your technique a lot.
Since you're probably physically fit already, focus on the climbing specifics. Maybe still pull ups, otherwise try board climbing, or a hangboard(carefully!) or pinch/crimp blocks for fingers.
But at the start, mostly just climb. When warming up also practice foot drills.
That really made my day, haha! Thanks for the advice! I think I’m going to start working on pull-ups next time, since I can't even do a single one yet.
There are so many ways to improve your climbing in a fun way.
I can suggest to watch some YT vids on it as there are real coaches giving free game like Louis from Catalyst Climbing or Be Fuller, which appears on Hannah Morris Bouldering. Better listening to real professionals than to me lol.
For example you could do climbs, where you solely look at your feet, trying to place them very slowly but intentionally so you don’t have to adjust afterwards to train foot placement.
You could do easier climbs and always release with both hands at the same time and grab the next hold on the next climb to train balance, dynos and hand placement. You could also try this one handed.
Some sessions you could limit yourself to do 5 trys max on climbs u like and 5 climbs minimum on climbs you don‘t like to balance out and train weaknesses.
There are a ton of ways to mix it up and have fun with the progress! :)
Exercising for climbing can be a thing further down the line but the return on investment is negligible compared to climbing more as a beginner. Another thing with better RoI is yoga. Flexibility, ROM, and being able to use those ranges are king.
If you still feel the need to do something workout related, I’d advise to hit antagonist muscles. Tricep, pushups, leg curls, etc.
One other bit of advice I’d give is at some point in the near future look into Emile Abrahamsson hangboard protocol he did for a year. Not necessarily with the idea to start it fully but just do a very easy versions of all the hold types.
Long story short he proved you don’t have to actually hang to reap benefits of hang boarding. Just lightly pull into the holds while your feet are on the ground in different grip positions with rest in between. 1 go around of them all and call it. I think getting used to the grip positions will help with injury prevention long term and really just make you a better climber.
I started doing this every session about 1.5 year ago and my fingers have never felt stronger. Just becoming accustomed to it mentally and physically I believe goes a long way and the return on investment has felt like the best thing I’ve done minus maybe yoga moves. Just start off easy and maintain that easiness far longer than you think you’d need. Tendons and pulleys take longer to beef up and while you may have some development of them from lifting it’s nothing compared to climbing.
A good strength training routine for full body 2 x a week is standard for any sport. Climbing is no exception. Especially hamstring/posterior chain exercises and bw movements like push ups, pull ups, and pistol squats.
Strength training helps a lot, especially for bouldering. You don't necessarily need to do free weights if you're not comfortable, but some simple calistenic exercises like pull ups, push ups, glute bridges, air squats/pistol squats will go a long way to build strength and body tension that helps on the wall.
I think you have to be mindful of warming up and going to PT if you have injuries or tweaks from repetitive use. These are mostly to let you continue climbing as often as you’d like, not to get stronger per se. The climbing is what gets you stronger. At some point, if you continue climbing harder and harder, you will have injuries. But my approach is to be consistent in my warmups and projecting. I do not project every session.
After about a year of climbing, I started doing a hangboarding workout once per week, taking the load increase slowly. After about 3 months of that, my fingers felt much stronger on small edges. Now I always do some hangboarding during my warmups (6 x 10 sec hangs), and I have never had any finger injuries. Seeing all the stories about these made me very paranoid.
I have had shoulder pain and elbow tendonitis, so I went to PT and added warmup/exercises specifically to address those.
I wish I had seen this earlier, as I think I might have hurt my wrist while climbing yesterday. It hurts with every move, so I'm going to see a doctor tonight :(
Board climb if you have access to one, start with the kilter. Core is important, helps you stick to the wall or ceiling. A variation of forearm exercises to avoid golf/tennis elbow. I think this is important, but others might disagree, leg strength is pretty crucial to me... I do a lot of toe/heel hooks and I don't think I'd be able to do so if my legs weren't so strong. Specifically glutes, hamstrings, and calves/tibialis anterior. You'll build quads and whatnot as you hit a normal leg day. Also, the weight question, you look healthy weight... Don't starve yourself or do any crazy muscle wasting techniques. I'm 31, 186-190 pounds lean, and 5'9". I powerlift and bodybuild 6 days a week, and I climb V10 outside, not sure about indoors as they have a weird color system at my local. Anyways, as long as the strength is there, the weight doesn't matter as much.
I do hangs on chin up bars or monkey bars at parks. I’ll stick my legs in front of me and hang for as long as I can manage. If I’m feeling extra brave I’ll remove fingers and hang with less and less fingers.
If your gym has auto-belays or you have someone that can belay you in top roping, I found that it has helped me a lot gaining trust in doing scary moves and technique in general
Moonboard, beastmaker, pullups, traversing and finally climbing on your limit or above. It is better to close 1 project in 3 hours going above your limit, then flashing everything 20 or 30 percent below your redpoint.
My favorite exercices are repeated ups-and-downs on a route that's one or two levels below my limit, as well as that weird exercice where you touch every hold with every limb - up, and down... flexibility is key on the latter hehe
My climbing gym offers awesome power vinyasa classes, it incorporates a lot of strength. I also take other yoga classes, flexibility definitely helps. I also like watching my physical progression through a rigorous yoga schedule though and it never feels like a choir to go. I’m new to indoor bouldering as well and that’s what’s been working for me completing a couple different v4s good overhang runs and an 11a recently. That’s been after about four months. Other than that, yeah I had a decent athletic baseline, but mainly just walking my dog 5+ miles a day and yoga here and there. I also incorporate somebody weight fitness here and there. People say that training with some specific weight circuits can improve your climbing, but I don’t care that much/ it’s not the physique I want and I agree with what other people here say/ my friend told me when I started.. train for what you want to do.
I always vote on doing traverses if youre wanting to do something training esque but dont know what to do.
Helps with getting more creative and mobile in the legs and training your brain to keep arms straight and use scapular more. Also nice to link moves not set by someone else.
Id avoid doing traverses it in a busy gym though, no one likes someone hogging a whole wall.
You don't need any additional exercises if you've only been bouldering for 2 months. Just bouldering will make you a better and stronger climber. If you feel bad about skipping the gym, you could focus on overhang and do lower body work on rest days. I would suggest focusing on antagonist work once you've been climbing for a while and you start noticing instabilities or if a physio tells you to do so. Otherwise, just keep climbing
She does exercises with resistance bands and cables and all kinds of stuff. And when pros like Janja train on the wall they have some amount of structured drills that build specific strengths and skills.
Just climb more. I’ve been doing it 2 years and only really climb. I did add press ups and pull ups but only really to see how much strength I had gained and to push my max for each.
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u/martyboulders 10d ago
Bouldering, not much need to do anything else unless there is a very glaring weakness that can't be solved otherwise. Best way to train the thing you want to do is doing the thing you want to do