Good hip motion is key to staying in balance when rock climbing. One way to drive hip motion is to use a drop knee. The drop knee helps create tension across your body and drive your hip toward the wall. The result is better climbing balance and less effort expended on a move. Read this post to learn more about the drop knee motion and see a few examples.
Flagging your foot is a climbing move where one of your feet presses to the side and touches the wall, but doesn’t rest on a hold. Flagging is a really useful technique for maintaining good balance and is a key part of the foundational X-Motion movement pattern that I coach. Read on to learn a great practice drill to help you know when and how to flag.
Proper balance is critical for good rock climbing. Properly positioning your center of gravity is the best way to create balance, and your hip position is the dominant driver for your center of gravity. In this post, we discuss and demonstrate a few examples of how to get your hips more centered over your anchor foot, increasing balance and making moves easier.
Last week I described X-motion, which is a dominant movement pattern for quality climbing. One of the keys in X-motions is to have sufficient core tension to maintain a stable position between your two anchor points. In this post, I describe a drill that helps you increase your perception of how much core tension to use on a given move.
X-motion is my name for the most basic movement pattern used in quality climbing. X-motion creates balance by anchoring your body in a series of X’s as you ascend a wall. If you struggle with balance when climbing, or feel yourself barn-dooring off the wall frequently, X-motion may help you climb better. Read on to learn more.
Power is force applied quickly and it’s an important skill for hard rock climbing. The campus board is the classic way that climbers train power, but it’s not the right tool for everyone. Lots of climbers aren’t strong enough to actually get a good power workout on a campus board. You can get a good power working just using a hangboard. Read on to learn more.
Shoulder strength integrated with core strength is helpful for climbers, especially if you like to climb steep routes. My three favorite bar-based core exercises to help build that integrated shoulder and core strength are “Toes to Bar,” “Windshield Wipers” and front levers. Read on for more info.
Climbers need both strength and power. Power is just strength applied quickly. A power pushup is a great way to build power in your antagonistic pushing muscles. No extra weights are required and you can do it just about anywhere. This blog post covers a few different variants of a power pushup.
In the Lyti training summer series, Lyti struggles with doing regular pushups, making it hard to progress the exercise for her. One alternative exercise that works pretty well is an isometric plank. Read on for a few variations on the exercise to make it harder or easier than a regular pushup.
I break down project route visualization into two key areas: Visualizing beta and visualizing success. I use these two sides of visualization to help increase my likelihood of sending. Read on to learn more about how I use these two techniques.
Climbing is a skill sport, but strength also plays a huge role in climbing success. As you progress up the grades in climbing, strength grows in importance. In this video, Lyti and I do a simple strength assessment, including pushups, pullups, crunches, a one-rep max hang and max duration hang. This measurement represents our baseline strength prior to starting a specific training regimen. We’ll test again after two months of training to see how we’re progressing.
