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Climbing-specific Strength Exercises
It is a widely held view in sports training science that to increase sport-specific strength at an optimal rate, supplementary strength training is required. This is why sprinters lift weights and perform plyometric jump exercises – they can’t just sprint every day and reach a world class-level. For climbers, it’s the same: climbing alone is not the fastest way to get stronger; supplementary exercises can accelerate one’s progress.

Unfortunately strength-training is not very popular among climbers – perhaps because many top climbers seem to "only" climb and they keep improving without specific training. To me, all that this suggests is if you have the right genes, you can tolerate a huge volume of climbing at a high intensity without getting over-trained or injured – obviously with this amount of climbing, one will get stronger. This is great for top climbers, but most of us are not built like that, and if we train like headless chickens, our bodies will eventually give out. We need to figure out how to train more efficiently, and strength training is the way!

This article will focus on "specific" strength exercises, which are directly related to the demands of climbing, including campus training, fingerboard training and system training. These exercises are used primarily to increase finger strength and/or pulling strength. In a later article I will discuss non-specific or "general" strength exercises that are used to prevent injuries and increase core strength, or "body tension". General exercises are important as well, as they contribute indirectly to climbing performance.

It is important to emphasize at this time that the strength-training methods described in this article are supplementary to your climbing. You do not have to cut back drastically on your climbing volume to introduce some of these exercises. For most climbers, it is adequate to do some strength exercises for 20-30 minutes prior to your climbing sessions, 2-3 times a week.

Adaptation:
The goal of strength training is to apply a specific kind of stress, or an overload, to the body and cause it to adapt so that it is better suited to handle that type of stress in the future. This overload needs to be repeated numerous times, so that the accumulated adaptations result in measurable change over time. In other words, the exercises you select need to be repeated at least twice a week, and be done for at least a month. Only then will you have an increase in strength that will be noticeable in your climbing (not just in that exercise), and will stick around for a while!

Progression:
If you’re doing the same exercises regularly, you need to increase the intensity as you adapt to them. Otherwise, your body will no longer see the exercise as an overload, and will not need to adapt to it. Thus, a "progressive overload" is essential to continued progress, so when choosing exercises, make sure that you know how you will make them more difficult as you get stronger. I will explain this separately for each exercise.

Specificity
Specific strength training is only beneficial if the exercises used are specific to climbing. This means that the exercises must place demands on the body similar to those experienced while climbing. A few things to consider are: Which muscles are being used? Is it a static or dynamic contraction? What is the angle of the working joint?

Usually, we fail to do a climb because we can’t hang on to the handholds anymore, so it’s safe to say that lack of finger strength is the most common limiting factor. Lack of strength in the arm and back muscles (pulling strength) can also limit you in steep climbing, long reaches, and/or when there are poor footholds. Thus, if you improve these aspects of your climbing, you will climb harder.

Campus Board:
Made popular by the late Wolfgang Gullich, this is the strength exercise of choice for many top climbers around the world. A campus board is a slightly overhanging board with a ladder of wood rungs (0.75" to 1.5"), and is climbed footless.

This type of exercise has a notorious reputation for causing injuries, so be careful. The best way to avoid injuries is to hold back on the intensity, rest adequately, and build up the amount gradually. I can’t stress this point enough!If you are training to improve your finger strength, you should be using the smallest rungs that you can campus on. If you want to increase arm and shoulder strength, use the biggest rungs and go for bigger moves. There are various exercises that can be done on a campus board:

Campus training is about explosive power, and this places high demands on the central nervous system (CNS). For this reason, the rest between repetitions should be at least 3 minutes if the exercises required a maximal effort, to allow the CNS to recover. Campus training can also be used to develop power endurance; for this, do the exercises at a lower intensity but do multiple repetitions without resting.

• Ladders: This is a good place to start if you’re new to campusing, or haven’t done it for a while. A ladder is basically starting at the bottom of the board, and campusing to the top using every rung (without matching on any of the rungs on the way up). I usually don’t recommend campusing back down, because the risk of injury is higher. If you want to keep going after one ladder, just drop off and start again at the bottom without resting. As you improve with this exercise, you can skip rungs, use smaller rungs; or you can do the moves more slowly and statically.
  
• Touches: Hang on rung one, and lunge up with one hand almost as far as you can go, and catch the rung. Drop back down with the same hand to the starting rung. Then do it with the other hand. Repeat until you get fatigued.
  
• Power throws: The basic idea is to cover as much distance as possible in 3 moves, finishing with both hands on the top rung. To do this, hang on the first rung with both hands. Lunge up with one hand to the rung that is just below the highest rung that you can reach, and then lunge up with the other hand as far as possible. Finally, match hands on that rung. When doing this second pull, think about pressing down with the lower hand, which will give you some extra power. Make sure to alternate the leading hand (left/right).
  
• Double-hand campusing: Hang on the first rung. Quickly pull up, and reach up with both hands and grab the highest rung you can. Repeat until you get to the top. This exercise holds a great potential for increasing the ability to grab holds quickly. It also places a huge strain on your joints! So if you’re new to campusing, don’t even think about it, but if you’re experienced, you can use it relatively safely.
  
• Plyometrics: This is where you do a downward double hand campus-move, and then spring back up with both hands, catching the highest rung possible. It is a technique that takes advantage of the "stretch reflex" that results from muscle stretch, and it allows the muscles to contract more forcefully than usual. To truly achieve this effect, you cannot pause on the lower rung; you must spring back up almost as soon as you touch down. You should be able to do double-hand campusing fairly easily before attempting this type of exercise.

System Training:
This type of exercise is used to practice specific moves, body positions and types of handholds. It is performed on an overhanging wall, with ladders of identical, symmetrical handholds, and rows of footholds below. The idea behind system training is that you train various muscles throughout the body to work together more efficiently (i.e. "intermuscular coordination").

Here’s how the exercise works: pull on to the wall with one hand, and the opposite foot (e.g. left hand and right foot). Pull your body close to the wall, and "lock-off" with your arm, while reaching as high as possible with the free hand. Hold that position for about 6 seconds, then grasp the next hold with the free hand, adjust your feet, and let go with the other hand and lock off for 6 seconds. Repeat until you get to the top of the board. The exercise can be repeated with different types of handholds and body positions for each set.

Each set will take about 30 to 45 seconds, depending on how many moves you make, you should rest about 2-3 minutes between sets. Do about 8 to 15 total sets, and a workout shouldn’t take longer that 30 to 45 minutes.

Some sets should involve relatively easy body positions but more challenging and varied handholds, so that the fingers are trained primarily. Then, to train the arms and other muscles, some exercises can be done on big holds, but with higher feet, bigger lock-offs, and different hold angles. The number of sets you dedicate to each component depends on what aspects you feel you need to work on most.

This type of training takes some time to get used to, and will take some experimentation on your part to figure out the exercises. There are no standards to say how a "system board" should be set up, so the exercises will be different depending on the board’s set-up.

Planning:
If you are going to strength train twice a week, then you can make each session a "hard" one, that is, go to the point fatigue/failure with the exercises. If you plan to do three sessions a week, which is for more advanced climbers, then two of the sessions can be "hard" and one should be "easy". In an easy workout, you decrease the intensity of the exercises by about 10-20%, so you finish the set only slightly fatigued.

Strength training should be planned in 4-week segments, in which you increase the intensity and amount of training over the first three weeks, and then in the fourth week, cut the amount in half, and lower the intensity. The reason for this is that our bodies can’t handle continual increases in load, so periodically you need to have an "unloading week". This gives the body a chance to fully recover and "super-compensate", as some like to put it. You will probably find it difficult to cut back on your training load when you are making steady gains because getting stronger is addictive! Do it anyways, because this will allow you to keep making gains for month to come, and you’ll avoid getting injured as well. After a one-month strength training cycle, you can do the same exercises at a higher intensity, or you can select a new complex of exercises.