Properly warming up for a climbing or training session is extremely important.  Your warm-up allows you to ready your body and mind to try their hardest and put forth the serious efforts required for sending your projects.  However, finding your own perfect climbing warm-up is not always simple.  When warming up, you have to balance the need of putting forth enough effort to get your body ready to try it’s hardest without trying so hard that you fatigue yourself before ever getting on your project.

To give you a better idea of how to properly warm-up, here’s an article from Climbing Magazine that outlines the goals of a climbing warm-up and gives you so specific drills/practices to help you fine tune your routine.

“Not enough warm-up and you might end up with a killer flash-pump on that onsight burn, or worse, a season-ending finger injury.”  – JP Whitehead

Climbing Warm-Up Steps:

First, the article outlines the general steps you should follow to ensure you are sufficiently warm before you get on your project or start trying your hardest in the gym.  They are:

1. Get the blood moving
2. Loosen up
3. Climbing pyramid
4. Rest

Essentially, by following this outline, you will ensure that you have primed your body to deliver the best possible performance.  By addressing each of these four stages of warming up, you will ensure both that you don’t risk injury by trying too hard too soon and that you don’t overly fatigue yourself by expending too much energy before attempting your project.

Climbing Warm-Up Exercises:

In addition to giving you the above general outline for warming up, the article also delves into the idea of replacing static stretching with a series of dynamic stretches and rotational movements.  The article describes the four exercises listed below.  Doing them will ensure you do not neglect any areas of your body and are totally warm by the time you really begin climbing near your limit.

1. Head rolls
2. Windmills
3. Side twists
4. Walking lunges

Click through below to check out the complete article and read more about this warm-up program.  Remember, while warming up may not be the most exciting part of your climbing day, it is extremely important and cannot be skipped.  Having a concrete routine like this one will help you commit to always fully warming up.

Full Article: The Perfect Climbing Warm-Up

(photo courtesy of climbing.com)

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• How To Warm Up for A Route Session
• How To Warm Up For A Bouldering Session
• Angy Eiter – Warming Up for Climbing
• Dr. Vagy Climbing Warmup Exercises