the pillars of climbing

I'm so excited to start this new series, The Pillars of Climbing.

Now, I won't pretend like I'm the first person to ever identify strength, technique, and mindset as the supports of climbing performance (or any sports performance for that matter). Nor am I the first person to ever create a rainbow Venn Diagram (lol).

However I'm a pretty visual person and I wanted to make a graphic representation of these pillars, how they interact, and how we know if something is missing or can be improved.

To begin the series, we will isolate each of the three pillars and talk through them. We'll then take a look at their intersections and lastly zoom out to look at the big picture.

The first pillar we are going to talk about: STRENGTH!

I consider strength to encompass anything purely physical in our sport. Today we're going to quickly walk through the general strength component of this pillar.

General strength is the foundation for athletic preparedness. General strength training increases your ability to exert force on the wall and prepares your body to handle the variability of our sport. In this way, it is also important for injury risk reduction.

General strength supports increased sport specific strength and has the broadest scope of health benefits. So how do we train it?

While I won't get into the nitty gritty detail of strength programming, here are some quick bullet points to summarize general strength training for climbing:

-The first step to designing any strength program, for climbing or otherwise, is a needs analysis. This considers both the movement and physiological demands of the sport. The movement requirements inform exercise selection, while the physiological requirements guide the intensity, volume, and rest times of a program

-Different training goals, or outcomes, of a program are strength, hypertrophy, or muscular endurance. For climbing, the primary training goal is strength. Energy system work should take place in a sport specific manner.

-The best way to train strength for climbing is to train functional movement systems. This is done by choosing compound lifts. These are also called multi-joint lifts because they create movement around multiple joints, for example squats, deadlifts, pull ups, and bench press.

-Strength requires an intensity of about 85% 1RM or greater (RPE 8-9), around 6 reps or less and anywhere from 3-6 sets of the exercise. A rest time of 2-5 minutes between sets is appropriate.