Sarah Williams: Home Wall Training

Enter Sarah:

The best Christmas gift I ever received was a home climbing wall, built by my boyfriend back in December 2013. At that point I had been climbing for about 4 years and had just started medical school.

I loved climbing and truly enjoyed training and pushing myself as hard as I could, but I was (appropriately) scared that medical school would significantly limit my time to climb. Not only was medical school a major time commitment, but the climbing gym in my new city was a 45 minute drive from my apartment, without traffic.

Long story short I was psyched to have my new home wall as a way to train on those days when making it to the gym was just truly impossible. Over the last year and change, I’ve used my home wall more and more and have begun to develop a routine for training days on it.

Who should use a home wall?

While med school has become significantly more demanding and my free time to make it to the gym has shrunk, I’ve managed to not lose any strength in climbing.

In my opinion, home training is really geared towards people who are going through those life transitions that make climbing at the gym nearly impossible. If you have time to go to the gym–do it! But if not, don’t fear.

You don’t have to get weak and flabby just because you can’t carve out 4 hours in your schedule for a gym sesh.

If you are brand new to climbing I would not recommend this type of training. Beginners will see exponential gains just from projecting at a local gym and learning new movements.

Home walls are usually quite small, limiting the movement of the climbing, and the quality is directly proportional to your ability as a setter.

This training is ideally directed towards climbers who have been in the game for a while, already have an expansive movement vocabulary, and are used to climbing-specific training.

How long does it take?

I tend to spend anywhere from 1-2 hours climbing on my wall in one session. For comparison, I typically spend 2-3 hours climbing at a gym in one session. Why less time? The home wall usually offers fewer distractions, so I tend to be more efficient about my training. There’s also no waiting for another climber to get off your problem and there’s often no one else to talk to (for better or for worse).

Where should I build my wall?

If at all possible, build your wall in an air-conditioned/heated part of your home. In my experience the people with indoor walls make a lot more use of them than the people with outdoor walls. If you live in Texas, like I do, it’s almost a guarantee that your outdoor wall won’t be used between the months of May-September–unless you’re a complete masochist.

People do some amazing things when building their walls:

But, you don’t have to have a tricked out wall in order to get in a decent training session. My wall is more of an exercise in minimalism. One angle: 30 degrees (chosen to provide the maximal length between my floor and my ceiling fan) and only 8′ by 8′.

Nothing too fancy–but it gets the job done.

My wall is freestanding, since I rent an apartment. AND, it’s in my bedroom. Yes, I sleep partially under my wall. Before the birth of my climbing wall I had a lovely and fairly spacious bedroom.

Now I have to duck under the support arm of my wall every morning and every night. But screw it, I love climbing! When I train I have to lift my little Ikea bed and tilt it against the back wall of my room–which is basically like a warm-up for climbing.

If you do plan on keeping your wall in your house and you care at all about what your house looks like, painting it will make a world of a difference. ProTip: there’s such a thing as chalkboard paint. You could paint your wall with that stuff and then use chalk to designate “routes” instead of taping.

And now, onto the training.

Warming up:

Warming up properly is key in all arenas of climbing, not just home walls. When purchasing my holds, I only thought about what I wanted to train on, not what I wanted to warm-up on. That was a mistake. For a while I only had two real jugs, making the warm-up quite tricky.

I like to start with stretching, push-ups, pull-ups on the jugs of my rock rings, and some dead hangs on bigger holds. Then I move on to a timed warmed up series. I do one minute one on, climbing slowly on the biggest holds I have, and then one minute off the wall.

I do this until I feel warm, eventually moving on from the biggest holds to more intermediate holds and lastly, crimps. The purpose of the timing is merely so that I don’t over exert myself at the beginning.

When you’re in a gym, a warm-up route will have a definite beginning and end–on my home wall I can get carried away doing too many moves before I’m properly warm and wind up with a flash pump.

After you’re warm, enjoy doing whatever climbing you wish before you move on to training exercises. Set a route on your wall to replicate a project you’re working outdoors (if angles/holds/wall space allow).

Once you send your project, turn a couple of the holds to make them worse to grab and try again. Have friends over and make up difficult moves on existing holds.

Practice movement types that you’re weak on.

A few months ago I was falling on a difficult rose move at my gym. So I practiced rose moves on my home wall–experimenting with high and low feet, pinch holds, crimp holds, moving left, moving right, etc.

The next competition I went to had a rose move crux on a problem I was working, and I stuck it first try! If you’re at a loss for new ideas of problems to set, pull up some YouTube videos and just mimic movements of different climbs.

The beauty of the home wall is in the ability to cater the climbing to test your own weaknesses, so take advantage of it!

After a healthy dose of projecting it’s time to move on to training.

Bouldering/Power Exercises

Deadpoints: Start on low hand holds with good feet. Make a big, but not dynamic, move to a high hold with your right hand. Hold for a second and then move back down to the start hold. Repeat with your left hand.

I typically do one minute on the wall alternating right and left hand, followed by one minute of rest. Aim for holds that are challenging to move to, but you will hit about 80% of the time. You can move to the same right handed hold each time, or pick 2-3 different holds that test different abilities.

To make this harder, pick further holds or holds that are more difficult to stick (gastons, slopier slopers, fatter pinches, tinier crimps). Aim to move quickly and precisely between holds and don’t shake out at any point.

Deadpoints Video

Bumps: Start on low hand holds with good feet. Make a series of right handed bumps until you’ve reach your max extension on the wall. Bump your way back down the holds to the start hold and repeat on the left side. Do this series of movement for one minute on and then take a one minute rest. As with the deadpoint exercise, you can make this more difficult by making the holds further away, the feet worse, or the bump holds worse.

Bumps Video

Pull-ins: Start with good feet, hands a little wider than shoulder width apart on identical holds at about shoulder height. Extend your arms until they’re straight, and maintain the rest of your body in a straight line throughout the exercise. Contracting your biceps, pull your body into the wall until your chest is a few inches from the wall. Extend your arms and repeat.

Again, do one minute on and one minute of rest. This exercise is the most challenging on more overhanging walls. This exercise will give your upper body a nice burn and even work your abs, depending on the angle of the wall.

 

Pull-ins Video

Archers:  Start with good feet, hands a little wider than in the above exercise on identical holds at about shoulder height. Keeping your entire body in a straight line from head to toes, move towards your right arm, extending your left arm until it is straight. Go back to the middle and repeat on the right side. One minute on, one minute off.

This is, again, more difficult the more overhanging your wall is, but you can always make it harder by changing the holds.

 

Archers Video

Bad Hold Transitioning: I started doing this exercise to train a weakness of mine–slopers. I set up four slopers in a square (2 identical slopers on the bottom and 2 separate identical slopers on the top). The holds are set so that the move between them is far enough to be fairly difficult. I transition from matched on the bottom two, move up right, up left, down right, down left. Then move up again, leading with the left hand.

For this one I try to count how many sets I can do before failure. Each session, I try to improve on my last record. Adjust the difficult by adjusting the hold type and the distance between them.

Double Clutch: This exercise trains contact strength and moving with two hands simultaneously. Start low and move to two identical holds that are at the same height. Catch both holds with both hands at the same time. Adjust difficulty by adjusting hold type, distance or adding a second double clutch move after the first. As with the above exercise, I count sets to failure and try to improve with each session.

In a typical power training session I will do a set like this:

• Deadpoints
• 1 minute rest
• Bumps
• 1 minute rest
• Pull-ins
• 1 minute rest
• Archers
• 1 minute rest

*Repeat that entire set a number of times

• Bad Hold Transitioning to failure
• Double Clutch to failure

Lastly I end with some fingerboard exercises, pull-ups, lock-offs, and a core workout.

Endurance

Laps: An obvious but useful way to train endurance on any wall. I set a couple 45 move circuits that vary in difficulty. I try to see how many times I can do them until failure. For adjustments, vary the time allotted for rest between laps, switch out the easiest few holds for harder holds, adjust the angle of the best holds on the circuit, or limit the amount of time you allow yourself to shake out/rest on the wall.

Variation: Add quick draws and force yourself to clip during your laps. Adjust the difficulty by making the clipping holds better or worse, forcing yourself to rose clip, or clip off of the same arm several times in a row (but make sure it ultimately evens out, so that you don’t over train one arm).  I used large zip ties, looped through bolt holes, to hold my quick draws in place on my wall.

Timed circuits: Stay on the wall for a specified amount of time. Each session try to increase the amount of time. Make sure that you’re actively moving during most of the circuit, rather than resting on jugs for several minutes at a time. Also try to utilize as much of your wall as possible. To make sure that I’m moving around as much as I can, I aim to touch every single hold on my wall at least once during my circuit.

Suicides: Pick out a set route or boulder problem on your wall (or set one just for this purpose). Go up one hold and move back to the start, then up to the second hold and down-climb to the start, then up to the third hold and down-climb to the start. You get the picture. Adjust the difficulty by adding more holds, worse holds or more difficult moves.

As you can probably tell there are endless combinations of exercises to spice up your training.

The advantage of the home wall is that you can buy the holds that you need to train and set them up exactly as you want to work on your weaknesses. Any of the exercises listed above can be tailored to suit the needs of an intermediate climber or a pro.

Training on a home wall is not always as exciting as climbing in a gym with all your friends.

I’ve found a couple things that motivate me to push harder while training at home:

• Climb with a friend.

If they’re psyched on training, you can help push each other to work harder.

• Listen to your favorite pump up or music, or (even better) turn on climbing videos with great music to play in the background.

Then, when you’re it’s your time off the wall, you can watch other climbers crush. Sometimes I even put on YouTube videos of competition highlights, because the music is usually high energy AND you can hear people cheering and pretend its for you.

• Keep a record.

Write down what you do and try to beat yourself each time you climb. It’s always rewarding to see progress.

Happy training!

Sarah

About Sarah Williams:

Sarah Williams is a climber and blogger who attends medical school in her free time. Born in Fort Worth, Texas she wasn’t introduced to climbing until attending college at the University of Texas at Austin. After her first day climbing on the campus bouldering wall she was hooked. Sarah enjoys competition climbing and spends all her breaks travelling outdoors to climb in beautiful destinations. Her favorite places to climb are Hueco Tanks and the Red River Gorge.