Transition your body from skiing to climbing

I have a confession: this is the first winter in a long while where I pretty much stopped climbing for a few months and let my attention & time be captured by skiing lovely powder in the Northern Rockies.  My body changed - many of the changes I predicted, and some I did not.

Now I am working to regain climbing fitness without losing the benefits of skiing in the backcountry all winter.  I am constantly tweaking my exercise plan (I get bored quickly), but below are sets of targeted exercises and stretches that I find particularly useful.

What skiing does to my body

After a winter of backcountry skiing my legs are incredibly strong, my core muscles are in decent shape and my cardio vascular endurance is up.  My legs are also significantly less flexible than they were before, especially all of the various muscles attached near the hip joint. My calves are always sore.  My arms and fingers are, frankly, a bit wimpy.  As I move into climbing season I want to keep the power in my legs and maintain/increase my endurance while increasing overall flexibility and gaining strength in my arms and fingers.

Maintain benefits from skiing

Legs of steel & Endurance

I work to maintain strength in my quads, hamstrings, calves and other leg muscles by trail running.  This is not quite sufficient to keep my body at the endurance level it had when I was skiing uphill for thousands of feet during the winter, and I look forward to including more long days in the mountains (hiking and skiing once the snow has stabilized a bit for spring skiing) later in the season because nothing beats 8 to 14 hour days in the mountains for overall endurance (and enjoyment).

I find that the best trail runs for building and maintaining strength and endurance have rolling or variable terrain. Pushing myself to run up big, long hills helps with the fitness, but I can't yet run up a mountain.  If the terrain includes those necessary hills, but also sections of flat, I can keep going much longer.  I love finding new trails because the drive to see what is around the bend keeps me intrigued and focused on the scenery instead of focused on fatigue.  I have found that running three miles through variable terrain at least three times a week keeps my level of fitness from slipping.  If I increase mileage and intensity I can make fitness gains.  What it takes to maintain and build fitness will be different for every body.

Core

It turns out that skinning uphill with the added weight of ski boots and skis on my feet really builds core muscles. Core muscles are essential to climbing, to keeping your feet glued to small holds, to balancing your body while reaching the next hold or placing gear and to climbing efficiently and decreasing the burden on fingers (sometimes).

I find core exercises to be the most tedious and so I am constantly on the lookout for new alternatives to crunches to add to the rotation.

Doing leg lifts on my rock rings

Hanging leg lifts targets the upper abdominals more than most of my other core exercises.

There are a wide variety of boat poses that really work the abdominals.  I find that a few sets of 10 to 12 boat pose extensions are a good replacement for crunches.

Running, hiking and carrying a heavy pack also yield high benefits for the core.  It seems that the core, even more so than other parts of my body, benefits most from variety.  Yoga is incredible for the core, since most of the exercises require core strength and control to perform correctly.  Remember, core also includes back.  Your back can get out of whack if it is weak compared to your abdominals.

Hanging on the smallest hold on the rock rings

Restore arm, finger, back strength

As any climber can tell you, finger and forearm strength diminish even when you take a week or two break from climbing.  When you take a longer break, you have your work cut out for you to strengthen these areas without doing harm to your joints.  There is really nothing like logging lots of time climbing to get in shape for climbing, but there are exercises that can greatly help build strength and target weaker muscle groups to get a more even workout.

Fingers & Forearms

I gain the most benefits for my fingers and forearms when I do workouts with a hangboard or rock rings.  Right now I'm enjoying hanging on the Metolius Rock Rings off of our deck.  The idea is the same for both rock rings and hangboard: do sets of hanging exercises that challenge you to hold onto small holds with your fingers.

I train for real life situations: if I can hold onto the small crimp on the hangboard then I can better utilize smaller holds outside

For both hangboards and rock rings, warm up your fingers on the larger holds before moving on to smaller holds.  I do a few pull ups, or a couple sets of 10 leg lifts on the larger holds to warm up.

Next, move on to smaller holds.  My target hold is one that I can only hang on to for five seconds or less.  Hang from the hold for as long as you can, fall off, and repeat.  Do five of these five second holds in a row.  Rest for a minute or two, and repeat the set.  Do three to five sets.

When I am done working the small holds, I move back up to the large holds until I can't hang any longer.  When I am being very good and diligent, I'll go back to the rock rings or hangboard a couple times throughout the day. That said, only do hanging workouts once or maybe twice a week to protect those finger and elbow joints.  Too much hangboarding can lead to tendonitis.

Ryan wrote up an excellent post on building a hangboard setup so you don't have to drill holes in your walls. Hangboards usually have more hold options than rock rings to help you improve different hold techniques.

Whole arm & back strength

I am a huge proponent of yoga for overall arm and back strength.  An hour long yoga flow routine can work your biceps, triceps, trapezius and lats until you just want to sit in child's pose to recover.  Variations on the sun salutation sequence can work climbing muscles and opposition muscles to protect your joints and build your climbing support muscles while increasing strength and endurance in your climbing muscles.

Flexibility

A good climber is a flexible climber.  You don't need to be as limber as a ballet dancer, but some measure of flexibility is necessary to get your feet up to holds by your knees or hips and to leverage those high steps, heel hooks and other footwork for all they're worth.  Skiing turned my legs into burly legs of steel: steel is not very flexible stuff.  I look to hip opener stretches and hamstring stretches to return some of that needed flexibility to help me be a better climber.

Stretching in warrior pose after climbing Trapper Peak last year

Warrior poses, forward bends, pigeon pose and a host of other poses target my less flexible areas.  If you don't know what these stretches are, do yourself a favor and check out some of the resources below.

Yoga Resources

Finding a local yoga teacher that teaches classes you enjoy (not all teachers are alike) is the best way to get the most out of your yoga practice and keep your body safe in unfamiliar stretches.  However, there are other great resources that help you do yoga at home or at a trailhead.

• Doyogawithme.com is a website with many free yoga videos for beginners through advanced practitioners.  They also have videos of short classes to help you work on one area at a time such as the sun salutation or hip openers.
• Ryan and I like Tara Stile's video filmed at Joshua Tree to get us into balance poses that help with core, knee and hip strength.  This video is also a good whole body workout and includes lots of hip openers.
• Yoga for Climbers is a good (and hard) workout created specifically for climbers.
• Here's a great blog post by Stevie Haston on lower body stretches for climbers.  Excellent photos...though I may leave off the climbing shoes while stretching.

Opposition Exercises

Opposition exercises strengthen the muscles that support your climbing muscles keeping your body in balance and preventing tendonitis and other issues.  Pushups are a great example of an opposition exercise: pushing, instead of pulling like in climbing, balances the muscles around your elbow joint.  If you climb hard enough for long enough, there is a good chance that you will start to experience tendonitis in your elbows.  Pushups help balance those muscle groups.

Opposition exercises are a critical component of a good workout to get in shape for climbing.  Stay tuned for our blog post featuring opposition exercises for fingers, elbows, shoulders and knees.

Simple, Adjustable, Flarable Crack Machines

Lifting a weight with a ring lock in a handscrew clamp

Living in rural Montana near vast quantities of granite is amazing for climbing...part of the year. Some of the locals are tough enough to enjoy wading through snow to climb dripping rock in fridged temps. We recent transplants from more temperate climates will need to get creative with our training if we hope to keep up come spring. 

These rocks are dripping wet and covered in snow and ice at the moment

I've always sucked at ring locks and off fingers and I would like to train those and a few other specific types of jams this winter. I think I've found an ideal tool, 10" Wood Handscrew Clamps.

Fist Jam

Handscrew clamps are a nifty bit of mechanism that my Dad uses in his shop for holding pieces of wood together while glue sets. Each clamp consists of two long blocks of hardwood mounted on threaded rods with handles so that you can adjust the width and flare of the clamp.

Without any modification they are perfect for all sorts of finger, ring and fist jams as seen in the photos above. Adjusting the flare allows you to make the the jam easier or harder.

I've been lashing the clamp to a free weight and dialing the flare so I can hold a jam for under ten seconds and then doing sets (say three sets of ten) like a weightlifter (I use a hangboard the same way). You could also hang them and use them like rock rings though I haven't tried this yet.

The corners are a bit sharp (like some real cracks) and I might take some coarse sandpaper to them at some point to smooth out the sharp bits and roughen up the faces.

Maximum Width of this clamp is about six inches. 

It is flarable...

...in two directions.

You can quickly adjust the width by spinning the clamp.

They don't really work for hand jams which require more surface area than the jaws offer. To solve this I will probably attach boards inside one of my two clamps. I also have some 12-Inch Handscrew Kits (unfortunately not available through amazon at the moment) and some 8 foot 2x12's that I plan to turn into a ceiling height crack machine.

Future plans include adapting for hand and thin-hand jams and an 8 foot crack machine

I was originally considering mounting the clamp kits at odd angles to allow the crack to be bomb-bay flared but I think this is impractical which means it might be quicker to just order 12-inch clamps. There are a couple of things I need to figure out to make this work well:

• How to mount the crack so it can be adjusted and flared but can't shift while in use. 
• Some kind of crank and chain system to allow quick adjustments. Turning the shafts by hand is too slow when you can't spin the clamp.
• An easy way to mount the crack so it can be tilted into an overhang or roof crack.

I'll post updates as I get all this figured out. 

Mounting a Hangboard Without Drilling Holes in Your Wall

I'm a hangboard addict. Hangboarding for me was key to breaking into to hard climbing on granite and I use it to maintain some degree of finger strength and fitness when I can't climb on a regular basis and to build strengths needed for specific routes or problems... I would go nuts without my hangboard and I certainly wouldn't climb as hard. Jen and I recently moved into a new place where we can't drill into the walls so I derived a simple system for hanging my hangboard from a GoFit Elevated Chin Up Station I got from amazon. You can modify the plans to work with any no drill chin up station but the go fit has some nice features including eye bolts that can be used for hanging gymnastic rings or rock rings from.


I'm quite happy with the results. The chin up bar itself is great for warming up, doing various lock off and chin up drills and practicing leg lifts and front levers. The hang board mount has a bit more flex then a proper wall mount but it is nice to be able to move it from door to door and take it down and put it away.


I think this would be a great system for collage students, people in dorms, apartments or shared housing, roadtripers who stay in hotels or people who travel for work.

What you will need to make it:

• GoFit Elevated Chin Up Station
• A hangboard and mounting screws of your choice. I'll write another post on this later but my choice would be either the Beastmaker or a single metolius campus rung.
• 4 bike storage hooks. You can get these from your local hardware store or on amazon.
• A 6 foot 2x6, 2x8 or 2x10 board depending on the height of your hangboard.
• 6 3 1/2" wood screws.
• A drill, screw driver and saw and possibly a level.
• Coarse (~80-grit) sand paper.
• Some felt like you put on the bottom of furniture to protect hardwood floors if you wish to avoid damaging your door frame.

To build your hangboard mount (note: these instructions assume your hangboard is not as wide as your door frame, if it is you will need to mount the horizontal supports described in the optional steps before you mount the hangboard):

1. Install the GoFit on your door frame.
2. Cut a length of board wider then your door frame. Set the rest of the board aside for use as horizontal supports. Sand the exposed edges and corners.
3. Mount the hangboard in the center of the board being careful to keep it parallel with the top and bottom of the board.
4. Determine where you need to place the hooks so that they will sit evenly on either side of the support bars of the GoFit (it is easiest to have some one help by holding the hangboard against the door frame). Mark the four spots with an X and drill piolet holes for the hooks. You should use a bit smaller then the threads on the hook, about the size of the center cylinder of the hook or slightly smaller.
5. Install the hooks and verify that the board hangs correctly from the lower bar. You can make small adjustments by bending the hooks.
6. Install some felt on the back of the board where it contacts the door frame.

At this point you have a functional hangboard that hangs a bit low. Depending on the height of the door frame you may wish to add a couple of horizontal supports to allow you to hang the board from the upper bar without it swinging.

To do this follow these steps:

1. Hang the assembly from the upper bar.
2. Hold the board so that it hangs vertically. You will need to use a level or a plumb line for this. If you don't have either you can use a piece of string with a weight on the bottom hold the board so that it just touches the string along its whole height.
3. Carefully measure the distance from the back of the board to the lower bar of the go fit and note this distance.
4. Cut two sections of board to this length.
5. Using the six wood screws install these pieces on either side of the hangboard making sure they can fit through the door frame when the assembly  is hung from the lower bar. If your hangboard is wider then your door frame you will need to mount the boards behind it so either remove it or do these optional steps first as I mentioned above.
6. Sand the exposed corners and edges.

That's it, enjoy your new hangboard but don't overdo it. When I started hangboarding I would restrict my self to one good session a week and that was plenty to develop the strength to power through index 5.11's and v5 bolder problems. Make sure to always warm up on the pull up bar and on easy grips. Don't fall into the trap of doing a pull up off bad holds every time you walk by the thing, you will get hurt. If your fingers feel at all tweaked take some time off.