Effective Gym Training Strategies (for Route Climbing)

Hopefully you are out enjoying the summer climbing season and sending hard.  However, if you are somewhere without good summer conditions and are stuck climbing indoors, hopefully you are making the most of your time and training hard for the fall/winter season.  With that in mind, here is an article from Rock and Ice by climbing trainer Eric Hörst of training4climbing.com that outlines some effective gym training strategies to help you maximize the gains you can make for the upcoming season.

“No doubt, joining a commercial climbing gym or building a home bouldering wall is the single best investment you can make toward improving your climbing. However, effective indoor training requires you do more than just climb with some friends. There are highly effective practice strategies you can leverage while climbing indoors that will translate to greater economy of movement and climbing ability when you return outdoors in the spring. Furthermore, use of these practice techniques will enhance your learning of skills, improve your climber’s mindset, and increase your sport-specific strength.” – Eric Hörst

As Eric notes, simply climbing and getting tired is not efficient training and will not produce the same results as some more structured training.  To help you train in a more thought out and efficient way, Eric describes four drills that will help you increase not only your strength and endurance, but will also help you improve some technical aspects of your climbing as well.

The four gym training drills described are

• Down climbing routes
• Speed training
• First touch
• Tracking

Click through bellow to read about these drills in greater detail.  They are definitely a great way to add some variety to your indoor training and may just help you reach the next level once you transition back to real rock.

If you are interested in taking your training even more seriously, check out our Training Programs.  There are programs from several top climbing trainers for all different types of climbers and, whether you are a route climber or a boulder, they will definitely help you train more effectively and efficiently.

Click Here: Effective Gym Training Strategies (for Route Climbing)

(photo courtesy by Eric Hörst, courtesy of rockandice.com)

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