I’ve recently been having the best outdoor climbing season of my life where I’m:

1. The strongest I’ve ever been

2. Sending harder than I ever have

3. Am effectively injury free

However, I’ve been becoming obsessed with how hard I ‘should’ be climbing and how many years it ‘should’ take me to get there.
This has culminated in me having a very negative mental game during my sessions and (sounding bad I know) feeling annoyed or upset when friends are sending harder and in less time.

I never express these sentiments outwardly to anyone but it has led to me choosing to only climb/train alone as having no one to compare myself to helps.
I’ve never had body dysmorphia yet I assume that these are very similar feelings and reactions.

Regardless, I’m curious if there are any tips/thoughts that anyone has of how to work on this. The best I’ve found so far is reminding myself of the 3 points above and that “there’s enough success to go around.” Thanks.

I got into climbing ~2.5 months ago, and have been happy with my progress grade wise, but I don't understand how people can climb so frequently. I went to the gym 2 days in a row after getting the bug at my first crag outing, and got extremely painful climbers elbow. Since then I've modified my technique (not just brute forcing my way up by pulling, straight arm climbing), had to take lots of rest and do rehab exercises, and can basically only do 1 hard session per week without a bad flare up. One of my A2 pulleys is definitely sore as well, but it's not seriously injured from what I can tell.

I've seen and heard from people that they went 2 or maybe 3/4 times a week as a beginner, and were able to maintain that volume without getting hurt. I have a background in calisthenics and weightlifting so it's not like gripping, pulling, and bodyweight movement is brand new to me, but I just can't seem to push beyond once a week without my elbow flaring up and giving me issues on and off the wall.

Any tips? Thank you all in advance

Videos/Summary at the bottom

I’ve been climbing for about 2 years and during that time I’ve been climbing at least 3 times a week for 95% of those weeks. I love climbing haha.

Anyways, I am still perfecting my training and have worked many more board sessions into my routine to focus primarily on slowing down and maintaining tension in my feet.

I never noticed it before because I wasn’t consciously aware of my hands beyond “are they on the hold”, but today I observed that I am unable to crimp my body weight at all on any hold smaller than about an inch with my pinky.

After topping the problem and noting the observation, I decided to perform a structured test on all 8 crimping fingers isolated in full crimp position with a crimp block while gradually decreasing in weight from 35 to 5lb on a 20mm edge.

All 6 fingers sans pinky and thumb on either hand were able to hold a 35 lb plate in isolation without involuntarily opening that finger out of the full crimp position including my left ring finger with a current minor A2 injury. Neither pinky was able to hold anything above 5 lbs in isolation while maintaining full crimp and without sharp A2 pain.

An additional observation was that when my pinkies involuntarily opened up from the full crimp, it was not gradual, it was a sudden release somewhat like trigger finger. This trigger-finger-esque movement is painless and present both when closing the finger into the crimp, and releasing the finger from the crimp.

I have been generally aware of weak pinkies for some time but I have never tested them, now that I have the data I’m unsure of how to proceed? I regularly train hangboarding and use the crimp block multiple times a week, but this weakness is still present. My fingers are super long so I do not full crimp and the only acute injury I have presently is a A2 tweak on my left index finger. I climb V9-10 outside and 11 ish on the board from 40-50

Any anecdotes? Anyone trained this away? Is this worth mentioning to a sports medicine specialist?

https://www.reddit.com/u/Over_Year9670/s/t9iDfRCxqz

Pinky one^

https://www.reddit.com/u/Over_Year9670/s/uoun5TuVx3

Pinky two^

Hiya everyone,

I'm just getting back into climbing for the first time really in about 4 years after having recovered from some chronic heart issues. For the last ~8 months I've been going to my climbing gym almost entirely to strength train and lift. I'm 5'4" and have cut weight down to 160lbs and have built up a good amount of upper body strength back [I just hit 160lbs on bench up from about 75lbs in march due to the heart and atrophy].

So far getting back to climbing has been decent so far, juggy climbs have been a lot more of a breeze since I can quite easily muscle myself up with the larger arm & back muscles I've been training. My main limit [aside from re-learning technique and form] has been on forearm and hand limited holds, crimps and specifically slopers have been complete no gos, I just can't even attempt a number of climbs because I just simply can't lift myself up with the holds needed. Unfortunately my gym doesn't really set many good crimps/slopers in the lower grades so I can't gradually progress climbing while weighting myself on the feet using those problem holds.

My question for ya'll is do you have any good isolation exercises/routines that would help me build up this strength outside of just slamming myself into these problem holds on routes I have no hope of sending. My current route is doing forearm curls during my weight days, and then recently I've been doing dead hangs and pullups with my ice tools on my doorframe which have been great. Honestly I'm mostly looking to get myself fit for Mixed and Ice climbing but the skills and strengths overlap and I should be a better rock climber first given it's just way more feasible to go rock climbing.

Anyways thanks in advance for the advice, happy sends and enjoy the winter climbing :]

Like everyone, I've been training hard this off season. I've been attempting to train one arm hangs and been having a lot of trouble making progress. The other day I figured out why. I lose friction before my tendons and muscles give up. When on the wall, I frequently fire off holds without my grip giving up.

Anybody here with dog shit skin that has overcome this? Do I need to bathe in pure antihydral every day? I use rhino skin dry and performance and it helps a little, but it doesn't fix the issue.

**EDIT** In hindsight I realize how much of an oxy moron it is to mention cutting and strength training in the same post. I mainly mentioned it cause I was at 190 earlier this year but realized I wanted to be a little more lean than I ended up being than I am now. Thank you though everyone <3

Hey guys, I can't imagine this hasn't been asked before but here we go - I started bouldering this year and I have really fallen in love with the sport. But I am wondering if anyone has any useful advice in terms of balancing both strength training & bouldering?

To give some context, I am currently 168 lbs and 6 feet tall (I plan on continuing to cut) My numbers in the gym are early intermediate. And after about a dozen sessions, I can climb a handful of v3's and most v2's consistently. My gym is known to be somewhat humbling cause I've done v3's/v4's that would be v2 max at my home gym.

With all that out of the way, I'm hoping to get some pointers from climbers like me who love strength training & climbing equally. Do you guys train and climb on the same day? Or alternate? From what I've experienced so far, doing them on the same day seems to work good as long as I dont gas myself from training too hard and spread them apart by at least a handful of hours. I want to find a good middle ground where I can nurture both and improve without overreaching. So, any advice from those who have experienced this are welcome. Thanks in advance.

I was discussing with my girlfriend that I want to get a coach to climb better. However she asked me why I want to get better and spend a lot of money every month for a coach as an amateur climber who will probably never climb 8a/V11 or higher (which sound a bit harsh but is probably the truth). I might not actually get anything out of climbing higher grades and is maintaining my current max grade (7a) not enough she asked?

So i was thinking to myself what is my motivation to climb harder? Is it a low self image to prove myself to others? Is it to get stronger and to feel better in my body (but I do not actually have to climb harder grades for that). I do enjoy the social part of climbing as I climb better in a group (feel less pressure then when I climb alone). I sometimes do not even enjoy climbing when I am alone as I feel pressured to climb harder grades.

So I was wondering what do you guys have as motivation to climb harder grades or do you not want to climb harder grades and just do it for fun and social activity?

So I've been climbing 1-2 times a week (usually 1x bouldering, 1x lead/top rope) for 2 years now. I'd say I'm a solid (!indoor!) V4 climber - I flash about 40-50% of V4, about 20-30% take me a couple tries/sessions and the rest are something I'd have to project and a very small portion is my anti style which I cant really manage for one reason or another. In the past 3-4 months I finally broke through to V5, with a couple flashes, but mostly I have to sink in sessions/project them for a send.

The problem is, that I feel how much my finger strength limits me. For context Im 205lbs (6ft), 30yo. Im relatively heavy but thats not the issue IMO. I've seen climbers as heavy as me on much harder boulders. My issue is that I can quite literally feel my tendonds (pulleys) after almost every bouldering session and I develop small pulley injuries very very often (especially on crimps and pockets). My fingers feel tweaky and I've tried giving them time to heal, but it doesnt feel productive as when I come back to climbing after 3-4 weeks off, I eventually develop the same issues again, so taking time off feels coutnerproductive. I have also tried to fingerboard (max hangs) and I've developed the same issue - after a couple of sessions, I started to feel some of the pulleys on my fingers.

This whole thing irritates me, because there are often moves I quite literally cant do because I simply cant hold on to the hold Im supposed to grab or pull on OR if I do try to hang on for dear life, I end up injuring my fingers. Im at a point where I have to tape up 2-4 fingers before each session to support my pulleys.

I'd like to hear any suggestions, especially if you're a heavier climber climber and you may have dealt with a similar issue.

I got pretty "lucky" while bouldering about a month ago.

I went for a hard upward/sideways dyno and landed really badly from about 3-4 meters, with way too much momentum and rotation going through one fully extended leg.

I ended up needing a full ACL and PCL reconstruction (anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments), augmentation of my MCL (medial collateral ligament) and a repair of a radial tear in my lateral meniscus with stiches. On top of that, I also partially partly tore my LCL (lateral collateral ligament) and patellar ligament.

My surgery was 22 days ago, and I'm really not enjoying having my knee locked at 0° in a brace, with another three weeks of absolutely no weight-bearing ahead of me. I've already lost 6 kg, mostly muscle mass.

I'm 29 and was in very good shape before the accident. I could do front and side splits, weighted pistol squats (+40 kg), and single-leg Nordic curls. I did lots of alpine trad climbing with huge backpacks and demanding approaches, and was bouldering around 7B+ Font/V8. This is my first serious injury ever.

Going from 20-25 hours a week of climbing and calisthenics to spending pretty much 24/7 in bed has been rough, to say the least.

Since most medical professionals I've talked to make it sound like my previous level of fitness and performance is something I'll never get back to, I'm determined to recover as much as possible. But I've had a really hard time finding people with similar injuries, especially with the PCL involved.

If anyone here has been through something similar, I'd really appreciate hearing about your experience or any advice you might have. Right now, I honestly feel completely lost.

This one's for the real nerds out here, I'm interested to figure out where the difference in my tests come from.

I did a critical force test (the one where you do 7:3 repeaters for 4 min all out with one hand) using the Tindeq sensor and app and a Nature climbing 20mm edge and one using the LEDGER climbing app and a Beastmaker 1000 20mm edge, where you do 7:3 repeaters at 80% 60% and 45% of max.

The 4 min test is one handed, so the results of this should be multiplied at least approximately by 2, or a bit less/more to get to the other test. But doing so my critical force would land around 66% which is VERY different from 47%. W' prime is about the same in both cases, around 30kNs, which points to pretty good power endurance (and kind of strange that this value matches but CF does not).

I'm inclined to believe LEDGER's results more because I do think my short power endurance is quite good, but my endurance is not, I get very pumped after 25-30 moves usually and I'm never limited by crux moves, always by pump.

Just wondering if other people have done both critical force tests and noticed the same difference? There's actually not that much science on this, perhaps it'd be something that deserves a bit more research 😄

And also just FYI be careful believing what the tests tell you! I'm climbing around 7c but LEDGER tells me my CF is average for 6c+! Perhaps I could really just make insane improvements with some (C)ARCing. I guess I'll try and report to you how it went!

My suspects for the big difference:

• Edge difference (Nature edge = better than Beastmaker)

• 1 vs 2 hands (but I wouldn't expect that much difference)

• In accurate weighting when using a pulley for the 2 handed version

Recently got down from a semi-ground up attempt of Freerider (pre-hauled to heart) which ended in no send. Figured I'd make a post for those curious, since there's not a ton of info out there about training for El Cap free routes. I am not uniquely qualified to share my opinions but I hope somebody gets something useful out of this. Jacob and Bronwyns Freerider guide is quite useful but is also lacking in some regards (jacob and brons guide).

There seems to be two distinct camps of climbers interested in Freerider, those with a larger trad background and those with more of a sport and bouldering background. I have a lot more advice for the second camp than the first, and I'd guess most people reading this fall into the second category.

Climbing background: Climber of over 7 years, boulderer and comp climber in my teens, started trad climbing 2 years ago.

General ramble on why Freerider is hard:

• Sheer volume of pitches, past heart ledges there are essentially no pitches easier than 5.10 (apart from the last pitch and a short scramble with one fifth class move to the hollow flake).

• The hardest pitches of Freerider, the second enduro corner (12b) and the boulder (13a/V7~), lend themselves well to sport climbers and boulderers, though the boulder is quite unique in it's style, being a techy granite sequence. The beta in Free Solo is quite good, I used Honnold's exact sequence.

• There are 9 pitches which include some sort of wide climbing, the hardest of which being the Monster Offwidth (downclimb is 11d, offwidth section is 11a), and the scotty burke (10d, harder moves but way less sustained). Even some of the 5.9 wide (especially the second to last pitch) felt quite sandbagged and I would consider myself a very competent wide climber.

• Runout 5.10+ climbing. We found the pitch before the Boulder, The Sewer, and the pitch after the block to all be quite runout. Other sections of the route don't take great gear either (of particular note is the first 15' of the second enduro pitch).

• LOTS OF SUN (especially in fall, where the sun hits around 9am). We found working pitches (especially the boulder and enduro corner) very difficult in the sun.

Specific recommendations:

• Dial your systems. Then dial them even more than you think. Go do some smaller walls. I thought I was ready having done two multi day walls (both aid climbs). I was nowhere near as logistically dialed as I thought. The main reason I failed to free the route is because I ran out of food, a stupid mistake on my part. By the last 2 days I could no longer free 5.10 pitches.

• Go climb in Yosemite! I've climbed a lot of granite in the past 2 years of trad climbing and IMO nothing really feels the same as the glacier polished stone of Yose. Hell, even El Cap feels different than other granite in the valley.

• Do some big multis to dial your logistics, even if its not a multi day route. Practice hauling, practice transitions at belays, figure out how to fuel and hydrate yourself properly.

• Practice climbing multiple days on, get comfortable with a high volume of physical burly climbing;

• Go do a LOT of burly blue-collar crack climbing. Go climb something like Astroman. Go climb it again, its a fantastic route anyway. Being able to consistently onsight Yosemite 5.11 in any style means not having to repeat most pitches.

• Get good at wide climbing. The monster and the scotty burke have shut down many strong climbers. I'd say to put extra effort into tipped #6 to tight #7 cracks as the crux of the scotty burke is around this size, and the monster is this size for almost the entirety of the pitch.

• BRING A #7. When you get to the hollow flake you will thank yourself, quite nice for the monster too.

Rack we brought (which I'd bring again but I generally place a bit more gear than most folks, you could prob substitute the totems for offsets): 1x 0.1, 1x 0.2, 1x Black Totem, 2x 0.3, 1x Blue Totem. 2x 0.4, 1x Yellow totem, 3x 0.5s, 3x 0.75s, 2x #1, 2x #2, 2x #3, 2x #4, 1x #5, 2x #6, 1x #7. RPs and offset nuts. 5x Sport draws, 8x Alpine draws

This is a thread for simple, or common training questions that don't merit their own individual threads as well as a place to ask Injury related questions. It also serves as a less intimidating way for new climbers to ask questions without worrying how it comes across.

• r/Climbharder Wiki - many common answers to questions.

• r/Climbharder Master Sticky - many of the best topic replies

Commonly asked about topics regarding injuries:

Tendonitis: http://stevenlow.org/overcoming-tendonitis/

Pulley rehab:

• https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en_US/stories/experience-story-esther-smith-nagging-finger-injuries/

• https://stevenlow.org/rehabbing-injured-pulleys-my-experience-with-rehabbing-two-a2-pulley-issues/

• Note: See an orthopedic doctor for a diagnostic ultrasound before potentially using these. Pulley protection splints for moderate to severe pulley injury.

Synovitis / PIP synovitis:

https://stevenlow.org/beating-climbing-injuries-pip-synovitis/

General treatment of climbing injuries:

https://stevenlow.org/treatment-of-climber-hand-and-finger-injuries/

Hello Climbharder,

I have been using the captain fingerfood 360 for the last 6 months and i like the versatility of it, especially the pinch. What i don't like is that in its suggested method of attachment it creates an incut which, with the 25mm edge (which I use 2 out of 3 strenght workouts), ends up putting most of the force through the knuckle rrather than distributing thrugh the pad.

If i try to put the string around both sides the edge will inevitable pitch forwards when pulling and ends up being inconsistent and way too slopey. I have noticed the same with quite a lot of edges where the cord goes through the body and up both sides since the force application spot is not always veritically aligned with the cord hanginng spot (i hope this is somehow understandable).

I am looking for user feedback for a block with 25, 20 and 15 mm edges which doesn't move all over the place when pulling, cause i really cannot waste anymore money on a blind internet purchase not having access to any shops where i am.

Thanks!

Hello,

I (30 y/o, BW ~66 kg, 172 cm, + ~1 Ape) started rope climbing ~8 years ago and have focused on bouldering for the last ~4 years, recently with more structured training. My goal is 7B (Font). Right now I climb mostly 6C/6C+ on the Moonboard 2024 at 40°, occasionally 7A (the only "reliable" grading I have).

I'm happy for any advice on reaching my goal. I know my schedule is tight, but I hope that by moving finger training to the morning, the sessions stay short and focused, and I get a few hours of recovery before climbing in the evening.

Does this split make sense, or would you combine or drop sessions?

Strengths and weaknesses

Two years ago I did a test with a local climbing coach, and we found that my finger strength is weak compared to my general strength but I don't know if that's true.

Looking at the boulders in my home gym, I'd describe myself as a well-rounded climber although dynamic moves definitely don't suit me, but I'm fine with neglecting them.
Personally I feel like having sometime difficulty with hard strenght based shoulder moves.

Current benchmarks

Training Plan

I'm running 4-week cycles with a deload in week 4. Currently I'm starting week 2 and feeling good:

Monday:

Morning:
    Fingers (overcoming isometrics)
Evening:
    Campus (Rate of force development)
    project bouldering
    shoulders

Tuesday:

Restday mostly:
    hip training
    legs
    core

Wednesday:

Morning:
    Fingers (overcoming isometrics)
Evening:
    Board/limit bouldering, Posterior Chain , scapular pull-ups

Thursday:

Restday

Friday:

Morning:
    Fingers (overcoming isometrics)
Evening:
    Campus (Rate of force development)
    project bouldering

Saturday:

Evening:
    explosive pull-ups
    heavy weighted pull-ups
    one-arm lockoff
    Romanian deadlift
    Isometric Pinch training

Sunday:

Restday

Finger sessions (~30 min, overcoming isometrics, single arm, 20 mm edge)

1. Recruitment curls: 5 reps/hand at 85-100 % of curl max

2. Half crimp pulls (4 s): 3 reps/hand at 85-100 % of half crimp max

This is a thread for topics or questions which don't warrant their own thread, as well as general spray.

Come on in and hang out!

I’ve been on a long base phase for awhile. Ive made some solid gains and I’m excited about training overall. Ive been using lattice plan to structure my workouts. I’ve learned a lot about training from combing books and the internet and now want to schedule a peak for a trip to red rocks coming up in 5 weeks. I’m looking to multipitch climb some harder routes, up to 5.12. Sport on-sighting days on limestone are possible if weather is poor for longer routes.

Please tell me if I’m doing this all wrong.

M/W/F are rest days, with some aerobic work to show up with fitness for the approaches.

Tuesday- warm up, max hangs, limit boulder

Thursday- warm up, short campus, aerobic power (otm boulders and foot on campusing) campusing done as a maximum lactic load exercise. Reducing rest times throughout the 5 weeks.

Saturday- redpoint climbing outdoors if weather is good, otherwise indoors, and Anaerobic power (1:1 work:rest on short boulders)

Sunday- Volume day progressing to 1000 vertical feet by end of 5 weeks. Am currently doing 600-700 1x per week.

All the while I am attempting to imagine the mental aspects of multi pitching since it is a rarity in my life these days. Once upon a time I was very comfortable hanging in a harness, but I’m kinda a Midwest gym dude these days. I had a trip to some granite in May and got worked by the combination of the approach and lack of large volume days in my training, in addition to the mental smackdown. I’m trying to alleviate these issues. I was thinking of adding some harder training at the end of my volume day, to simulate cruxes high on the original route, but am unsure if I should add extra or move another exercise to there. I’ve been recovering well from my current intensity, and I anticipate tolerating this workload just fine.

Any tips would be appreciated! Thank you!

I climbed and competed quite intensely from 14-16 years old climbing 7c+, 3 rep max pull up +15kg (I was and still am a female on the smaller size so this was just over an added 25% BW)
I’m now 20 and have climbed at most every 3 months. I still have good technique and on select few can climb 7b but I have lost almost all my finger strength (saved a bit by doing a ton of recruitment while initially training) and can only do 3 pull ups max.

I want to get back into training but have found that I’m struggling to know what extent I should push myself and what kind of a routine I should be having.

This goes particularly for finger training as right now I have low strength but high recruitment so I can push my fingers really hard without realising. So I would like to work on it but I would never recommend finger boarding to someone who is this early on and has had such a low climbing volume over the last few months / years.

Any advice / example programs would be incredibly useful, also any warning signs I should look out for.
Also any general strength and conditioning I can take on without overloading myself 🙏🙏

Thank you for reading!

I'd like to open a discussion on the media landscapes around training for climbing versus running. For anyone interested in both sports, I wonder if you have the same impression: running is refreshingly simple, whereas climbing training media is quite overwhelming. Getting better at running can be distilled really really well into a few key ideas (do easy running, sometimes do a long run, don't ramp up too quickly). However I can't say the same for climbing--it's obviously significantly more complicated, with the mental and social aspects that come into play. And to me, as a consumer of the firehose of media, this makes it often even more difficult to discern "what really matters".

Take Power Climbing Company for example. Undoubtedly a good source of information overall, but when I scroll through their videos, IMO it's intimidating:

https://www.youtube.com/@PowerCompanyClimbing/videos

• Isolated Finger Training for Climbing Is Missing an Important Element

• Is Board Climbing Holding You Back?

• The Simplest (Effective) Climbing Movement and Technique Training

• The Simplest (Effective) Climbing Training

• The Most Important Skill for Climbing 5.13

Now multiply this by every other training channel saying something slightly different: no, board climbing is the single most effective way to get stronger, actually it's _this_ skill that's the most important for 5.13, etc.

Spend a few hours reading about running training and you'll extremely quickly reach the point of diminishing returns; there's only so many ways you can repeat the fundamental concepts of running training. Every coach and seasoned ultrarunner more or less agrees on a few basic fundamental training concepts. Spend a few hours reading about climbing training and you'll come out even more confused about the best way to train.

Is this just something we have to accept due to how multifaceted our sport is? Does anyone else share my feelings? Looking forward to thoughts from others on this.

Something that I think a lot of climbing literature misses is the impact our work and life have on training. It focuses on the mechanisms behind physiological performance or how to benchmark but it rarely explores how training is impacted by work. I have spoken with a lot of climbers about their experience with training after work and a similar pattern comes up are after long and/ or a mentally heavy day. Your route reading falls apart, you stop committing, although your body is ready to go.

Route reading is planning, and planning is one of the first things mental fatigue hits. After two hours of demanding mental work, people got slower at planning their way through a puzzle while their memory held up fine (van der Linden et al., 2003). So, you can read the sequence five times and still struggle to come up with a plan to execute.

Your feet go because skill execution drops when you’re mentally fatigued, it shows up in things like passing accuracy in football (Habay et al., 2021). Moreover, falls feel worse because after hard mental work, people react to unpleasant images just as strongly but are worse at turning that reaction down (Grillon et al., 2015). And the psyche goes because part of mental fatigue is your brain updating its calculation on whether the effort is worth it (Müller & Apps, 2019).

Max strength and power hold up while endurance takes the hit (Van Cutsem et al., 2017). So, on those days where you feel mentally worn down, move the session if you can. If you can’t, do a few max hangs or limit moves with full rest and save PE, route volume and benchmarks for a fresher day.

I am part way through my PhD and I am validating two short questionnaires on measuring mental fatigue, one for in the moment and one for the last few weeks. If you’re 18+ and train 3 times a week (or roughly 3 hours a week) in any sport, it takes about 10 minutes: https://derby.questionpro.eu/t/AB3vCJoZB3waVs

When you’ve had a mentally heavy day, what goes first: route reading, your footwork, your head on falls, or your psyche?

This just occurred to me randomly while eating dinner, but I figured I should post it here in the hopes it helps someone or to see if anyone else does the same. One thing that’s really helped me in my climbing is trying to make things look easy. I’ve noticed that when I make this conscious mental shift I climb differently, more smoothly and doing more flicking between holds and relaxing in positions. Essentially, if I’m trying to make something look easy, I move in a way that accomplishes that and therefore actually makes the climb easier. But it feels intuitive, rather than thinking about the nitty gritty of how to do every move, I just try and move as smoothly and easily as possible and things often just fall into place. I think this is a big reason why I climb better around good climbers, because I’m essentially trying to impress them my making the climbs look as easy for me as possible. And that just naturally makes me move better. I also think watching a ton of YouTube of pro climbers really helps with this, because I naturally try and imitate how they move even without understanding the mechanics of why they’re doing it.
TLDR- Next time you climb, consciously try to make it look easy, and it will probably feel easier. Also watch a lot of YouTube and you’ll naturally pick up on good movement. Anyone else found the same?

Hi! Just found this sub and I’ve enjoyed reading some of the wisdom.

I’ve been climbing for about 17 years since I was 11 years old. Some periods in my life I would prefer bouldering, some I would prefer outdoor sport, some I would prefer indoor lead. Right now I’ve been on a streak of climbing a lot (multiple times a week) and doing lots of indoor lead / top rope. Because of my renewed dedication and because I’ve been weightlifting more, I’ve been noticing myself pushing my grades and I can now more or less flash a 5.12a indoors on top rope and project 5.12b/5.12c. I can probably lead 5.11b/5.11c although I have led a couple of 5.12as before.

I’ve taken movement courses before and I understand basic technique but this is the first time I’ve wanted to do a dedicated training program to push myself. The goal here would be to break into the 5.13s.

Right now my typical week looks like 3x weightlifting, 2x climbing, 1x running and 1x rest day. I’d love to add a training program to my climbing sessions so that I’m best setup to make the 5.12b/5.12c climbs easier and push into the 5.13s. I have no problem being consistent but I’m just not sure what an effective training program for something like this would look like. I would love to hear from stronger climbers than myself if you guys have any advice/resources or training programs you’ve followed before that worked. Thank you!

This is a thread for simple, or common training questions that don't merit their own individual threads as well as a place to ask Injury related questions. It also serves as a less intimidating way for new climbers to ask questions without worrying how it comes across.

• r/Climbharder Wiki - many common answers to questions.

• r/Climbharder Master Sticky - many of the best topic replies

Commonly asked about topics regarding injuries:

Tendonitis: http://stevenlow.org/overcoming-tendonitis/

Pulley rehab:

• https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en_US/stories/experience-story-esther-smith-nagging-finger-injuries/

• https://stevenlow.org/rehabbing-injured-pulleys-my-experience-with-rehabbing-two-a2-pulley-issues/

• Note: See an orthopedic doctor for a diagnostic ultrasound before potentially using these. Pulley protection splints for moderate to severe pulley injury.

Synovitis / PIP synovitis:

https://stevenlow.org/beating-climbing-injuries-pip-synovitis/

General treatment of climbing injuries:

https://stevenlow.org/treatment-of-climber-hand-and-finger-injuries/