Alta Climbing & Fitness engages every muscle in the body, increases strength from head to toe and provides a cardiovascular workout. It also helps improve balance and motor skills.
Climbers are a tight-knit community of supportive and encouraging individuals. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned veteran, you’ll find a welcoming tribe to support your goals and cheer you on as you overcome challenges.
1. Strength
Climbing demands a great deal of strength from a variety of muscles. Most notably, the grip requires the use of multiple muscles including the lats, biceps and forearms. In addition, the legs and torso work hard to keep the climber upright against the wall and moving forward as they attempt to reach for that next hold. When it comes to integrating and training a variety of muscle groups, few exercises compare to climbing.
Increasing maximum strength improves the ability to conduct multiple repetitions to failure at sub-maximal loads. This in turn reduces the amount of effort required to perform a specific climbing movement. This may also decrease injury risk for the finger and shoulder girdle, which are frequent locations of injury in climbers. Longitudinal high-quality studies are needed to support this theory.
It is important to consider the different physiological responses to varying levels of intensity and load exposure. Increased weekly training volume has been shown to result in greater gains in a number of dynamic muscle tasks, but less so in isometric muscle tasks (e.g., bent-arm hang time or finger flexor strength). However, a lower weekly training volume may still be advantageous for improving climbing-specific performance if it is augmented with high-intensity, low-volume RT.
With the 2024 Paris Olympics adding individual competitions for lead, bouldering and speed climbing, it is likely that elite climbers will begin to specialize in one of the disciplines, resulting in specialized training approaches and prioritized improvements in local muscle endurance capacity. Further improvements in strength capacity will require a gradual build-up of fatigue with repeated bouts of exercise, which may necessitate the use of a more limited training volume per week to maximize performance outcomes.
2. Endurance
Climbing is a full-body workout that strengthens muscles from head to toe. It also improves balance and coordination, which are necessary for navigating the various hand- and footholds on a rock wall. Plus, it’s an exhilarating and rewarding activity that doesn’t feel like a workout until you’re done.
If you want to climb more difficult routes, or take your climbing skills to the outdoors and conquer natural rock formations, then endurance is key. Developing endurance for climbing helps you stay active on the wall longer, prevents fatigue, and manages your “climbing pump” (overall exhaustion, grip strength decline, and forearm pain).
To develop endurance, it’s important to build up your aerobic capacity – or your ability to keep pushing yourself through short intervals of work while maintaining a high level of exertion. To achieve this, climbers should train at a pace that allows them to speak in full sentences and maintain a conversation without gasping for air (the “talk test”), or a heart rate of 120-150 beats per minute.
You can increase your aerobic endurance through a combination of intense, moderate-intensity sessions that feature a mix of sustained climbing and walking or light cardio exercise. These types of sessions are effective because they provide the body with a high volume of work and the opportunity to recover during rest periods.
Another way to increase endurance for climbing is through local muscular endurance training. To perform these sessions, athletes should use a technique called dynamic resistance, where they alternate between climbing and walking. In this type of session, it’s recommended that you decrease the amount of time you walk between sets and increase the number of reps per set to gradually add volume to the session.
3. Flexibility
Keeping your body strong and flexible is key to climbing. Flexibility involves stretching your muscles to improve the range of motion in your joints, and it also helps you move more easily and reduces your risk of injury. Flexibility isn’t just about being able to do the splits or a cartwheel—it’s an essential part of any physical activity, whether you’re playing sports, doing chores around the house, or reaching for something on the top shelf.
Most people define flexibility as a muscle’s ability to stretch and lengthen, but this is a limited view of the concept. True flexibility includes not just stretching, but bending, twisting, and the ability to shorten the muscle. Developing all of these movements is necessary for a healthy, functional body.
Climbing requires a high degree of flexibility to get your arms and legs into positions where you can grab onto the wall with your hands or feet. In addition, rock climbers must be able to problem-solve on the fly, figuring out how to make it to the end of a route and resolving any issues that arise during the climb.
While some of this problem-solving is done by memorizing the routes and the sequences needed to complete them, a lot of it happens as you are climbing. And this is where good flexibility and balance come into play, because if you can’t hold your position on the wall, you won’t be able to reach for the next handhold and continue up the route.
Most rock climbing gyms use a system called “top-roping.” This involves the climber being attached to a rope via a carabiner linked to a bolt on the wall, and the climber’s partner (known as the belayer) stays on the floor with the other end of the rope, taking up the slack when the climber falls.
4. Balance
Climbing is a full-body exercise, but it also requires balance. The complex processes that keep you upright and moving gracefully through space involve the brain and spinal cord, inner ear, eyes, peripheral nerves, and muscles and bones. But they can start to break down with age, resulting in poor posture and a fear of falling that limits your activities. Strengthening your core and finger/core strength can help improve balance.
Most climbers spend much of their time on a rock’s surface, and that means the footwork and handholds you choose to use determine your success on a route. Developing strong feet and understanding how to move and shift your weight on the wall can make it easier to progress up routes and enjoy each challenge as you overcome it. Watching more experienced climbers and learning from their techniques can help you build this skill.
When you’re on a rock, climbing can be a meditative experience as well as a physical one. Some crags offer spectacular views that you would never see from the ground, such as rivers meandering over canyon walls or towns and cities looming above hilltops.
The combination of strength and endurance required to make it up a climb can wear you out, so being aerobically fit is important. That will help you recover faster between routes, and it’s also helpful for preventing fatigue on the climb itself. In addition to regular cardio workouts such as running or cycling, incorporating climbing-specific training like hangboard training and campus board workouts can improve your balance and stability on the wall.
5. Mental Stimulation
Unlike the isolated muscle groupings of other aerobic exercises such as spinning or resistance workouts, climbing engages the entire body. Using muscles in the legs, arms, fingers and torso that need to work in close coordination with each other, the climbing experience is truly full-body cardio exercise. But what really sets it apart is its mental challenge. Climbing requires intense concentration and focus to navigate the wall. It also fosters a mindset of mindfulness and presence that transcends the climb and benefits daily life.
The mental aspect of climbing can be as challenging as the physical activity itself, especially when faced with an obstacle that is slightly outside one’s current ability level. In these moments, the climber is challenged to stay calm and think strategically rather than panic or generate negative self-talk that can hinder performance. Developing mental strength in these situations is essential to success and can be used to help overcome other challenges in life as well, such as a fear of public speaking or taking on new projects at work.
Ultimately, the goal of climbing is to get stronger from head to toe and to build long-lasting endurance. Climbing’s combination of cardiovascular exercise, strength training and balance work makes it an effective overall workout that provides a unique, full-body experience. It’s also a fun, social activity that promotes personal growth and fosters a sense of community among its participants. So get out there, grab a harness and give it a try! Your body will thank you. And your mind will be stimulated as you push past your limits and achieve more than you thought possible.