If you have read any of our other posts on injury prevention, we talk a lot about the importance of antagonist training (i.e. TRX/gymnastic rings) as a way to strengthen under-utilized muscles and prevent muscular imbalance. While these principles apply to the larger muscle groups such as the biceps/triceps, antagonist training is also extremely important within the forearm.  For climbing, this antagonist training takes the shape of strengthening the forearm extensor muscles.

To help you train these forearm extensor muscles more effectively, here’s an article by climbing trainer and coach Eric Hörst of Training for Climbing in which he outlines some exercises that will help you strengthen these muscles in a climbing-specific way.  While Hörst covers the use of rubber bands for extensor training, he pays special attention to the importance of training wrist stabilizers, in both a neutral and extended position, as he feels these exercises are overlooked by most climbers.

“The training “fix,” then, is to dedicate a modest amount of time to training the finger/wrist extensor muscles. No, you can’t just extend your fingers against a rubber band and call it done. You need to do some serious training in multiple ways, just as you train the finger flexors in a comprehensive manner! It’s paramount to train the wrist in both a neutral and extended position, as well as in a wide pinch grip position—this is the single most overlooked and important position to train it.” – Eric Hörst

To effectively train the wrist stabilizers, Hörst suggest using wide-grip pinch blocks to perform 10-30 second max weight holds.  You can read more about how all this works by clicking through to check out the complete article in which Hörst describes the importance of doing these exercises and how to do them properly.

Additionally, while the article pays special attention to the wrist stabilizers, the video below gives a comprehensive overview of Hörst’s ideas about how to effectively train the forearm extensor muscles.  If you are new to this topic, do yourself a favor and give this video a watch and start doing this kind of injury prevention work before it’s too late.  It’s much easier to prevent an injury than it is to rehab one.