Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 7 – A review

Hi everyone. Here we are, week 7 (out of about 16) of my climbing techniques and climbing improvement plan.

Here’s what my goals were / are, and where I’m at so far:

I would like to lose around 5% body fat – less weight equals less stress on the fingers when climbing.
Hmmm, not so great on this one. If you have been following this series, you’ll know that I started out with a very heavy strength workout. This combined with not really following my own nutrition advice has meant that I actually gained a couple of pounds. I have since cut my calorie intake a little and I’m now about where I was to start with (75kg). But I’m a fair bit stronger. I think some of the extra weight is muscle. I have yet to get onto some fat measuring scales so I can’t be sure. I’m going to be starting a body composition workout in the next week which will cut my weight, hopefully without shedding muscle. I’ll share it with you when I start.

I want to improve my hang times on the fingerboard by 30% – 50%
I have definitely improved here, but only by about 20%. I struggle with crimps and I’m truly dreadful on the campus board. I have very small hands, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse.

I currently lead around 5b (F6A+ / F6B) indoors. Outdoors I consistently lead HS, and have managed VS. My climbing goal is to lead climb at 6a (F6c+ / F7a) indoors, and E1 outdoors.
My last 3 visits to my local climbing gym has seen me nailing 5c lead and top rope routes. I’m going to do a few more before I claim it as solid, but I feel like I’m on the right track. My confidence is improving week on week and I’m thoroughly enjoying every single rock climbing session.

So what’s working?

I feel like my best gains can be attributed to the following:

1. I have doubled the amount of climbing I’m doing, from one session per week to at least two.
2. On the nights that I climb on my own I have had to concentrate on bouldering as I have no one to provide a belay. I feel like this is really forcing me to focus on individual moves and technique.
3. My workouts have been heavily focused on core strength and grip training.

So that’s me. How are you getting along? Drop me a comment below.

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Tagged as: Climbing Improvement, Climbing Techniques, Grip training, Strength conditioning, Training