training

Key Take Aways

✅ In general, if you want to improve your climbing ability, adding some climbing specific resistance training will help you more than just climbing hard

✅ Just as important, currently there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to endorse a specific resistance climbing protocol to maximize climbing performance

✅ Resistance training defined as deadhangs, weighted hangs, campus board, fingerboard, interval bouldering, isometric half crimp strength

✅ Resistance training improved climb specific tests vs climbing alone

✅ Resistance training improved:
➡️ Finger strength
➡️ Rate of Force Development
➡️ Forearm Endurance
vs climbing alone

✅ Some studies that were not included in the meta analysis were included in a systematic review. These studies showed no difference in finger strength or forearm endurance, but those results can likely be explained by the elite performance level of participants and low sample sizes

✅ Females continue to be under represented in research

✅ This study underscores the need for quality research articles as only 3 included studies were of high quality

✅ Climbing research is in its infancy, there are many unanswered questions that well designed and studies can help answer

Summary

Many climbers want to improve their climbing abilities and send harder projects

There is plenty of training information out there but is there good evidence that it’s effective? In the end, we want to make sure what we do is effective

A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis reviewed the current evidence for climb specific resistance training on climbing performance

Citation

Stien N, Riiser A, P. Shaw M, Saeterbakken A, Andersen V. Effects of climbing- and resistance-training on climbing-specific performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Biology of Sport. 2023;40(1):179-191

Link

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9806751/pdf/JBS-40-113295.pdf