Blog

Hangboard Workout for Climbing: How and Why

• February 2013
• Climb Training

Hi Steph,
First of all, let me say what an inspiration you are! I really enjoy hearing of all the things you and your husband do. I recently got a hangboard and want to take my training/climbing to the next step. I live about an hour away from the closest gym and further from the closest natural spot to climb, so I have to work out on a non-rock climbing gym. I have looked up numerous hangboard workouts and understand to stretch and warm up, but I was wondering if you had any tips on training for climbing without being extremely muscly. I feel from just pull ups, my biceps and arms are very large. While I admire strong women, I’d like to retain a little femininity. I have seen pictures of women climbers that are extremely bulky and also of ones that are very thin and feminine, yet very strong. Please don’t take this in an awkward manner, but from pictures I’ve seen, I consider you in the latter category. What do you do to stay top notch while still having a cute shape?

Thanks for your time,
Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,
Thanks! First I have to admit, I have never been able to get muscle-y, whether I want to or not (in college when I was into lifting weights, this was very annoying for me….as a climber, it seems pretty good). I’ve also noticed that I’m even less “bulky” since becoming vegan. However, it’s funny you ask about hangboard workouts, because I’m doing those right now for the first time, and it involves using the board without doing much in the way of pullups (I’m doing just a few sets of regular pullups and Frenchies to warm up). So this could be exactly what you’re interested in.

Personally I’ve never trained for climbing in the past–I considered climbing on my backyard wall and doing pull-up workouts to be training. I’ve always trained for projects on the routes themselves and have never lived somewhere where I had access to a real climbing gym or training facilities. But this winter I decided I wanted to find out more about “real” climbing training and give it a try. Though we don’t have a proper climbing gym in Moab, I do have a slowly evolving backyard training setup and a very helpful and kind friend from Rifle (as usual) named Kingsley who is into training. We were climbing up at the Cat Wall a couple of months ago, and I was telling Kingsley about my great new campus board. He got all interested and started asking questions about things I’d never even heard of….turns out he does periodization training, which means several weeks on a hangboard, then seguing into campus training, and then finally into systems training, for a total of about 2 months. And then he crushes for a while.

There is a lot of information out there, and there are many many ways to use these climbing training aids, as I’m sure you’ve noticed–for me, it’s too much information and I start getting a headache trying to figure out what to do and how. A great way to start is to find someone who’s been doing it for a while with good results and an understandable method, and just do exactly what they do for a phase–along the way, you’ll learn and start to figure out if there are any tweaks or changes you want to make. So that’s what I’m doing right now with Kingsley’s training system. I think it’s great, and I’m really psyched about it, 3 weeks in. I asked him to write his basic overview of what he does and why, to share with others here who might want to try it too. Then I’ll go through the steps of exactly how I got everything set up and got going as a newcomer to this workout in a second post (Hangboard Workout for Climbing, Getting Started) for those of you who have always been interested to try using a hangboard but didn’t really know where to start (I know I can’t be the only one!).

Here’s what Kingsley says:
I used to think that if I started training, which to me meant going to the gym twice a week and climbing at my limit, that my climbing would improve. Boy was I wrong. I started training because I was tired of getting injured. One summer, I dislocated my shoulder on a route that I had no business being on at the time. That’s when I decided to do something different with my climbing routine, and that’s when I learned that training doesn’t involve climbing. I encourage everyone to read an online article by Mike Anderson, “The Making of a Rockprodigy”, which laid the groundwork for the program that I use today. I’m more of a “tell me what to do and for how long” kind of guy, and he does a great job of that in his article of periodization. Since being more regimented, I’ve made letter grade improvements every year, onsighted higher grades than I previously redpointed, and have stayed relatively injury free.

Check back for the next post to find out how to set up your hangboard/pulley/weight pin system, how to set up your timer with an iphone, and how to start a training log.
Thanks Kingsley!