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Climbing endurance: How to best train and improve it

Just improving your climbing endurance won’t keep you from getting pumped on those long climbs. The misconception many climbers experience is that they must avoid getting pumped to complete harder climbs.

The secret to gaining power endurance isn’t about trying not to get pumped. It’s about being able to work through tired forearms and keep climbing. It’s about finding proper rest throughout a climb to regain some energy.

You’ll never continuously try at your limit without getting tired; it’s just not possible. But what separates the top 1% of climbers from the rest is their ability to manage their energy efficiently.

Think about that. You may be able to do each move on a tough climb, but that’s not why you haven’t sent. Your endurance and ability to regain energy while climbing is why you haven’t sent. This, coupled with performing inefficient moves that tire you out quicker, is why you struggle with endurance.

Endurance training looks different for everybody. With so much information out there, it’s hard to decide how to train. Here at Boulderflash, we’ve gathered the best information on the web and put it in one place to help you.

Here, you’ll learn different training methods for your different climbing goals. There are a variety of endurance training programs out there that will help you send your project. But by identifying precisely what you need to focus on and applying it to your regimen, you can send harder.

What is endurance in climbing?

Climbing endurance, simply put, is the ability to hang on to the wall longer. Lattice Training states that there are two categories of endurance:

  • Aerobic capacity—Intense endurance training aimed at changing physical structure and metabolic processes in muscles
  • Regeneration – Recovery activity

Tight forearms result from lactic acid building up in these muscles. Your arms stop allowing as much blood to flow through your veins, making it harder to hold on. Our arms can feel tight and even painful when we’re pumped. Ever try pulling your fingers back when you’re pumped? Then you know what I mean.

The good news is that, unlike finger training, endurance takes less time to improve. When you train your endurance, you expand your capillary veins to allow more oxygen. This increased blood flow will help you not get pumped out so easily.

Lattice Training provide an excellent definition of capillary veins about endurance: “The presence of higher-density muscle capillaries means a larger blood-to-muscle exchange surface area, which in turn allows for faster exchange of exercise-limiting factors such as oxygen and carbon dioxide transmission.”

Luckily, if you’ve been climbing for a little while, you’ve naturally built up your endurance on the wall. But by not training it, you may find that you’ve plateaued in your grades and can’t seem to improve.

Many climbers cross-train by lifting heavy weights to improve their power. Or they improve their finger strength with hangboard exercises. However, a lot of people still need endurance training. You can have the strongest fingers in the world, but it won’t matter if you have poor endurance.

Improve your power endurance with Adam Ondra

Prolific professional climber Adam Ondra has a series on Epic TV where he demonstrates his endurance training regimen. If anybody knows about climbing hard and for a long time, Ondra’s the climber.

Ondra’s description of the workout is, “It’s gonna’ hurt. You’re gonna get to climb, you’re gonna get pumped… We’re gonna focus on power endurance.” In typical Ondra fashion, we try hard to climb hard.

Pick four boulder problems consisting of 5-7 moves for this exercise. The boulders should be doable for you but not easy. Finding the exact problems you want to use for this workout may take some time.

Exercise: Climb each boulder back-to-back. Rest for one minute, then repeat.

Aim to perform 4 sets of this workout. You should have climbed 16 boulder problems with four minutes of rest.

You’ll clearly get tired as you climb. But by repeating the same problems, you will find the best beta to send each boulder. The more tired you get, the better beta you’ll need to use.

Ondra likes to add some weight with a weight vest to his routine. If this is your first time training power endurance, he recommends choosing three boulder problems instead. If necessary, you can substitute a difficult hold for a better one to finish any of the climbs.

For a look at Ondra demonstrating his power endurance workout, you can check out the following video:

YouTube video

Power endurance exercises with Lattice Training

Lattice Training has been well-known in the climbing industry for years. The company focuses on training for climbing and offers customised programs to help climbers achieve their goals.

Below is a power endurance workout created by Lattice Training. This routine will help you improve your time on the wall to keep more energy in the tank. Lattice calls it Boulder Triples.

To start, you want to find 3-5 semi-steep boulder problems. Each problem represents one set. When choosing these problems, consider what you want to improve. For example, train on smaller holds if your project is full of crimps.

Each problem should be around 8-10 moves long and should be a relatively continuous difficulty. The crux of the climb should be trying to match the top rather than one specific move throughout the boulder. You’re aiming to barely be able to finish the last attempt of each climb.

Exercise: Climb the first boulder of your chosen set three times in a row with a one-minute rest between attempts. Rest for 5 minutes, and then move to the next boulder. If you can’t find suitable boulders at your gym for this exercise, you can use a systems board instead. A spray wall, kilter board, etc., will work.

Complete 3-5 sets of this exercise. As you progress through this training, aim to increase the boulders you climb each session. The idea is to be almost entirely out of energy by the end of this workout.

A good tip is not to artificially speed up the climbing once you know the beta well. Try to climb each problem at the same pace as you would any new boulder problem. Here is a link to their video explanation of this routine:

YouTube video

Eric Hörst’s Training4Climbing endurance tips

Eric Hörst, owner of Training4Climbing, has helped thousands of people improve their climbing skills since 2000. He has written several books to help climbers guide their training worldwide.

As an internationally renowned author, researcher, inventor, climbing coach, and climber, Hörst has some tips to improve your endurance. Below are Hörst’s five golden nuggets to enhance your endurance.

1. Climb fast, rest well

What Hörst means is to climb more efficiently. Before trying a climb, look for areas where you can rest. After deciding on those, you only rest when you reach those areas. Climb quickly but efficiently between rests.

He recommends limiting your time on any given hold to five seconds or less (unless on a rest hold). Climbing slowly and indecisively will only pump you out quicker.

2. Embrace the “micro-rest”

Hörst describes the “micro-rest” as something to do between reaching for holds. Try opening and closing your fingers or flexing your wrist between each grip. “Think about flicking water off your fingers or hand as you reach for the next hold.

These “micro-rests” help generate blood flow through the forearm muscles. According to Hörst, this will significantly reduce the pump throughout a route.

3. Keep your eyes peeled

In other words, be creative with rests! Look for knee bars, hand jams, and heel-toe cams—anything that reduces the strength needed to hold on.

Adam Ondra sent Silence, the world’s first 5.15d, using two creative knee-bar rests. He could remove his hands from the wall and recover enough to send the route.

4. “G-Tox”

Hörst calls this rest method “G-Tox,” which involves raising and lowering your arm while resting. He recommends raising and lowering one arm for 30 seconds, then repeating with the other. You can continue back and forth as needed until you have enough energy to keep climbing.

This technique uses gravity in your favour to increase blood flow. Getting pumped is the act of restricted blood flow, so this method speeds up the rest period.

5. Consider using supplements

Hörst’s last tip is to use natural supplements to elevate muscle oxygenation. Two of the most studied performance-enhancing substances are beetroot and citrulline malate.

PhysiVāntage, another of Hörst’s companies, was designed to develop science-based nutritional supplements. After learning about beetroot and citrulline malate, he created Sendure X to improve climbers’ endurance.

Eric Hörst has helped climbers worldwide improve their skills and send their projects. He understands that while basic climbing movement is intuitive, advanced climbing skills and techniques are not.

Want to stay uninjured and climb your best? If you want to book a coaching session with a veteran from Training 4 Climbing, visit this link here: Coaching for Rock Climbers – Training For Climbing – by Eric Hörst.

Climb Strong endurance tips

Climb Strong is a training organisation that believes everyone is an athlete. They coach climbers of all ranges, not just the elite, and believe each climber can be better. Working as a team, Climb Strong understands that collaboration is the key to success when coaching.

In believing that fundamentals are the answer almost always, Climb Strong can help you reach your full potential. Steve Bechtel explains how he believes training for endurance different from the previous routines.

Bechtel states that there are three primary factors affecting endurance. I’ve summarised his points below:

1) Try hard: The best way to get strong is to do things that require you to be strong. What does that mean? It means to try hard boulders and routes! It doesn’t matter if you fail, but you must try hard.

2) Confidence: Gaining experience climbing challenging routes will improve your ability to believe that you can climb them. Climb after climb, keep trying hard no matter the outcome. Just focus on staying injury-free!

3) Manage fear: When you work on becoming strong and confident, the fear factor of climbing will shrink. Fear is the last primary factor affecting endurance. If you’re afraid, your heart rate increases, and your fight-or-flight senses kick in. This can tighten your muscles and pump you out quicker.

These three tips will help you improve your climbing endurance. But how can you put them to practice? Bechtel states that the simplest way to train overall endurance is to set up three sessions of intensity. The goal is to place the body under three different types of stress in training.

From his article over at Climb Strong, here is Bechtel’s plan to broken down for you:

1. Intense short sets with long rests (work times under 10 seconds)

This option aims to do 5-10 seconds of work for 4-6 exercises in a short circuit-style session. The idea is to move between general fitness modes and specific climbing movements. This will prevent too much fatigue in one muscle group or pattern. His example looks like this:

  • 3x pull-ups
  • 5x kettlebell swings
  • 1 lap up the campus board
  • 3x clapping push-ups
  • 10s hang on the hangboard

The circuit-style routine performs the first exercises on a rolling 30-second clock. Perform each exercise, then rest the remaining 30 seconds before moving on to the next. Rest for 30 seconds at the end of the set and repeat for as many circuits as you wish (or can).

2. Medium duration sets (work times in the 10-40 second range)

This training routine aims at developing power endurance for a specific route or climbing trip. Here, you can focus on specific hold types, angles, and the difficulty of each problem.

Start with a bouldering warm-up to get a slight endurance pump going, and then rest for 4-6 minutes.

Select 2 problems near your onsight level. Climb the first to the end. Downclimb on easier holds and then traverse to the next and climb this one to the top. This is one set.

Perform 4-8 sets of this routine and rest at a 1:5 work:rest ratio. For example, a set lasting 90 seconds requires an 8-minute rest.

3. Long-duration sets at low intensity (up to maybe 10 minutes)

Bechtel states that most climbers don’t climb enough. Instead, they make up for it, focusing on hangboarding or spending hours on the Moon Board. You aim to increase your time on the wall with the long-duration routine.

He suggests the average climber aim for 20 pitches per week before focusing on any specific training. Thats it.

In terms of boulders, we can break that down to problems 10 – 15 feet high. If a normal pitch is 60 feet, let’s multiply 20 pitches x 60ft = 1,200ft.

We can then divide 1,200ft by 12.5ft (the middle ground between 10 and 15ft) and get 96 boulder problems a week.

If you have access to an auto-belay, it might be easiest to perform these reps here. Or you can traverse around the bouldering wall!

The idea is to move continuously at a level where you feel relaxed and not at your limit. Bechtel states that you should still be trying and not simply climbing a jug haul.

Increase your climbing endurance

As you can see, there are many ways to improve climbing endurance. What I’ve found in my research is that there isn’t one best way. However you decide to train depends on your goals and the time you can dedicate.

Perform bouldering exercises like Lattice Climbing and Adam Ondra to focus on your power endurance. You can tap into the mental side of endurance training with Eric Hörst’s tips. You can also choose from Steve Bechtel’s list of workouts!

With endurance training, the possibilities are quite endless, and it is ultimately up to you. Do any of these routines sound like something that can help you? Let us know in the comments if you plan to start your endurance training!

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