Strength training for bouldering: Best exercises to get strong

Looking for how to approach strength training for bouldering? You’ve come to the right place.

From the tips of your fingers down to your toes, bouldering is firing up all your muscle groups. While many climbers consider that hitting the wall 5 days a week is already a great workout, sooner or later you’re going to hit a plateau. This is the point when the lack or absence of training really starts to feel.

The curve of progression in bouldering is anything but smooth. As you progress really fast from V0 to V5, most of the climbers hit that physical and psychological barrier as they get close to V6. Why is that?

Well, mostly because up until V5, you only develop certain skills and techniques, while your overall climbing strength is improving more as a consequence of going to the gym on a regular basis.

The road to V6 (or let’s call it your first crux) requires you to start working on various traits that will help you solve the climbing problems you’re trying to solve.

Climbing strength vs climbing resistance

When talking about building climbing strength, we are basically talking about a whole lot of specific exercises that will help grow our overall performance.

The most precise definition of strength in rock climbing or bouldering is the ability to hold on to various holds, but a strong rock climber doesn’t only have a great grip. Before obtaining that impressive alligator grab, we must be aware that a whole apparatus is behind us, which includes strong forearms, core, back, legs, and so on.

A strong rock climber has resistance or stamina, which can be translated into the capability to hold onto the rock or gym holds for a long time but also make the route or make various movements on the route without getting tired very fast.

Stamina is a trait that you can develop while climbing a lot or by doing various exercises. The first ones that will come to mind are cardio exercises, which are known to increase resistance, but there are also a series of climbing-specific exercises you can try.

When strength meets stamina, you get power. Power in rock climbing is mostly described in terms of strength and speed. We refer to a powerful move when you have to move fast on a small, reachy crimp or nasty sloper, preferably with bad foot holds. When making powerful moves, you don’t really feel pumped but rather tired because these moves will hit you right into the central nervous system.

Working on mastering and staying in the zone on these powerful moves while still having gas to send your problem, is what building strength for climbing really is about. Good news is that you can work on increasing your stats by making some pretty nice and interesting training routines!

Overview on strength training for climbing

Before talking about specific climbing strength exercises, we should draw an overview of how a good session would look like:

• Start with a good warm-up – many climbers neglect this part, making it very superficial. When you neglect a proper warmup, you are exposing yourself to accidents, and your body isn’t used to the whole range of movements, so there’s less mobility and strength.
• Work on your power – start your workout with a wide range of movements, exercise your muscle groups, and of course, don’t forget about your legs. You know that there’s no climbing without legs.
• Build up your endurance – when bouldering, endurance is key to a great session because you can climb as much as your skin lets you. Skin can also be prepped for resisting longer, you should check out this article.
• Improve your balance – working on your balance will help you stay better on the wall and have a more correct position. You can do this by chilling on the slack line if you want to have a more relaxed session or in the gym using the balance board or balance-specific exercises.

Training Exercises for Bouldering

Building climbing strength is not only about growing your chest and your biceps but also working on your antagonists. Maybe you’ve heard this before, but apart from supporting your main muscles, the core is essential to increasing your level on the V scale.

Here are ten exercises for increasing your strength. The first half is bodyweight exercises that can be meant for climbing strength training at home. The second half requires certain weightlifting or machines you can find at the climbing gym or the fitness gym.

1. Push-ups – fantastic exercise to work on your chest, triceps, and shoulders, but they are also fantastic for increasing your forearm strength and core resistance.
2. Pull-ups – what many climbers consider the backbone of rock climbing strength training. The truth is that doing pull-ups exclusively won’t make you a fantastic climber, but getting your climbing pull-up bar game on will surely give you an edge. While doing pull ups won’t turn you into Adam Ondra, your back, biceps, and core will be really grateful, and yes, it helps you improve your strength.
3. Resistance band training – Stretching a resistance band is a great way to start your warmup, but it’s also a great method to improve your strength. Pulling apart the resistance band will work your rotator cuff muscles, forearms, and lateral deltoids.
4. Planking – Planking is one of the most efficient body-weight workouts. While straight-arm planks are more challenging, you can always start with bent-arm ones, and they will do the job just fine. A full-body workout, planking will work the upper body, core, back, and lower body. So yeah, when you have some spare minutes, exercising your planking will bring you marvelous benefits!
5. Box Jumps – As we talked about legs, a good leg training for climbers is box jumps. It will not only help you improve your power and work your whole lower body, but doing box jumps is also beneficial for developing better balance.
6. Wide grip lat pulldowns – into the category of climbing weight lifting, as you’ll need a cable machine with a wide bar. Keeping your hands wider than shoulder-width apart and pulling down towards your chest gives you immense strength on your back. The latissimus dorsi is a huge muscle in your back that helps support a lot of other moving parts, such as the rotator cuff, and the posterior deltoids. This specific exercise is quite wonderful, as it also works on your biceps and forearms.
7. Kettlebell exercises – whether you do kettlebell swings or military presses, this type of climbing weight training will help you increase your power because of its explosive nature. While working with the kettlebell, you’ll hit a wide range of muscle groups, from the glutes and hamstrings to the trapezius and core. This is a wonderful set of exercises that will work not only your muscles but also your heart rate, making it wonderful for developing resistance.
8. Dumbbell rows – Single-arm dumbbell rows are a great way to improve your grip, torso, and core. By mimicking the rowing movement, this can also be a great way to work on your resistance. You can get creative and incorporate single-arm rowing with push-ups to get a real full-body workout.
9. TRX Inverted rows – Working on the TRX is lots of fun. You can get all kinds of interesting routines, such as elevated push-ups or inverted rows. The inverted rows are really good for improving your back muscles, chest, and biceps while increasing your strength. The intensity of the training also doubles as good cardio, increasing your resistance.
10. Deadlift – the Romanian deadlifts are a great way to increase your strength while working on your hamstrings. This classic weightlifting move can easily be translated into climbing weightlifting, as it requires a great grip, a strong core, and powerful hamstrings. Doing a few reps with the barbell will most definitely bring you a lot of advantages.

What does a strength training routine look like?

There are tons of variations of strength training routines for climbing, and most of them include fingerboard sessions, bodyweight exercises, and of course, weightlifting. So a strength session would look like this:

• Warm-up – be sure to cover all your joints and muscles with lunges, and inchworms and basically put all your joints in motion from fingertips to toes.
• Strength sets – this is where the sweating starts. Try a few reps of inverted rows, deadlifts, and bench presses.
• Power exercises – at this point work on your explosive moves, with push-ups, pull-ups, even going on the wall and make a few moves trying to get as far as possible on the length of the climbing wall. Also, this is a great moment to work on your balance with some squats on the balance board or box jumps.

With all the exercises mentioned in our previous section, here is a proposed exercise routine:
Note that this is a mere example and might not be the best for you.

Warm up

• Jumping jacks – 1 min
• Lunges – 10x per side
• Leg swings – 10x per side
• Arm circles – 15x
• Wrist circles – 15x
• Pushups – 10x

Core and strength exercises

• Hanging leg raises – 3×8 sessions
• Elevated pushups – 3×8 sessions
• Pullups – 3×8 sessions

Core exercises

• Elbow plank – 1 min
• Side plank – 1 min
• Bicep curls – 12 rounds with a weight of your choice (start small)
• Pistol squats – 5x per side

Remember that between each rep, take a 30-second break and 1 minute between exercises

Hangboard sessions will become a great part of your training to become a great and strong boulderer, as you’ll need strong fingers. Here’s a great article about hangboarding and how you can integrate it into your climbing sessions.

If you are in a hurry and time is essential, you can always go for a so-called superset. A variety of exercises that will work your whole body after climbing or whenever you have time for a quick sweat.

Here’s a great video that will give you some more insight into training before and after climbing:

Note: Don’t forget to bring your water because you must keep yourself hydrated.

When should I start training?

Moderate-intensity training is recommended for all age groups, whether they’re boulderers, athletes, or desk workers.

It would be a good idea to start a training routine right now because it comes with a ton of benefits. First of all, it helps you stay in shape, and because we are boulderers, it’s really important that it reduces the risk of injury.

Strength training will help you manage quick muscle contractions, cardio will give you power and resistance in climbing, and working with weights will make your joints stronger so you can pull massive dynos!

While you start working on your training, practice the art of listening to your body. It is a must because we are not built the same and what seems easy for someone might be hard for us and the other way around. When you feel something is going to snap, it may very well already snapped.

So pace yourself and don’t overdo it. We are in this sport for the fun of it and training is part of the fun.

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