Grip strength/strength-endurance for rock climbing

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

First, thanks for all of the exceptional content that you put out. I’ve gotten a ton of information and value from the website, templates, and podcast and have referred friends and family to many of your atíceles as go-to resources.

I was wondering whether you have any suggestions for training grip strength/strength-endurance for rock climbing?

Over the last year my family and I have been climbing regularly at a local climbing gym. One limiting factor for climbs (particularly longer climbs, or ones later in a session) can be a forearm pump that makes it impossible to hold onto the wall.

Most of the rock-climbing-specific training suggestions that I’ve seen for this issue involve either climbing for a sustained period (basically at a lower RPE) or hanging from a fingerboard. Since those require a trip to the rock gym, I was hoping to add something to my regular strength and conditioning routine at home that might help develop grip strength/strength-endurance with less climbing-specific equipment. One option that seemed like a possibility was relatively high-rep sets of plate pinches for a set time, but I’m sure there are other options

Thanks,
Jason

2

Jason,

Thanks for the post and the kind words. We appreciate it.

For climbing specific grip performance, the biggest ROI for your time is going to be climbing and finger board work, for sure. This needs to be dosed similar to other training, e.g. progressively loaded.

If there’s absolutely no way to climb/finger board a few times per week, then we have to move to other options that don’t require a trip to the climbing gym. In general, we’d want the training to transfer well to sport by using similar muscle groups, ranges of motion, energy systems, etc. I’d be looking at things like hangs, a forearm roller, DB or BB wrist extensions and curls, etc. Be careful to progressively load these things and not overdo it. Grip fatigue is real!

-Jordan

3

Thanks, Jordan. I really appreciate your response. More trips to the climbing gym are doable, so I’ll plan on that (and possibly adding a fingerboard to the garage gym) as titrate the dosage.