Hey guys, my name is Paul Wilson and I am locally known in the West Midlands for my fat loss programmes and fitness systems. In fact in a recent survey from thebest.co.uk I was voted in the top 5 for most loved personal trainers in the UK.

I have also been bouldering now for 4 years and recently I noticed a huge improvement in my climbing after performing forearm-strengthening exercises that has increased the strength in my grip. I started to introduce these exercises into my weight training programme when I found that I was getting a lot of forearm fatigue when climbing.

Anyway enough about me, here are three awesome forearm strengthening exercising that you can do to achieve a stronger grip in an area that often needs some special attention.

Easy enough, now get out and do it. Below I have attached a 12-week progression program for these exercises.

Week 1 to week 4

(in these weeks have a 30-60 second rest in between sets. Take a 60 second rest in between exercises.)

• Towel Wide-Grip Pull ups
  3 sets of 6-10 reps
• Towel Leg Raises
  2 sets of 10-12 repetitions
• Towel Inverted Row
  2 sets 10-12 reps

Week 5 to week 8

(in this week you have no more than 30 seconds rest in between sets. Take 30-60 seconds rest in between exercises)

• Towel wide-Grip Pull up

1^st set -6 reps
2^nd set -1 rep
3^rd set -6 reps
4^th set -1 rep
5^th set -8 reps
6^th set -12 reps

• Towel Leg Raises
  1^st set -15-20 reps
  2^nd set -10-12 reps
• Towel Inverted Row
  1^st set -15-20 reps
  2^nd set -5 reps – with a 3-5 second hold

Weeks 9 to weeks 12

Now we are going to combine a 3-exercise circuit. This one is advanced, hence why you should have completed all previous weeks to reach this point. Perform each exercise back to back with no rest until you have completed all 3.

• Towel Wide-Grip pulls up
  8-10 reps
• Towel Leg Raises
  8-10 reps
• Towel Inverted Row
  8-10 reps

Rest for 30-60 seconds and repeat 5 times.

(Your ability to recover faster is a way to measure your level of fitness. Notice I have given you 30-60 seconds to recover in between sets. Keep on eye on how long it takes you too recover as you progress through the weeks – this will be an indicator of your improvements as the less time it takes you to recover. On weeks 9-12 you will perform all exercises back to back without rest. Good luck!)

Awesome, there you have it a 12 week progression to implement into your workouts that will build insane forearm strength and endurance while also focusing on back and core strength.

If you have any questions, I will answer them below in the comments, and for more of my articles you can take a look at my fat loss blog at www.trainwithwilson.com.

Be incredible,

Paul

12 week progression to insane grip strength – guest post by Paul Wilson is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

1. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 5 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 2)
2. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 4 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 1)
3. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 6 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 3)

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.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 7 – A review is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

1. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game (and mine)
2. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 4 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 1)
3. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 5 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 2)

3 weeks ago I decided to embark on a mission to improve my climbing techniques and climbing grades. I invited anyone interested to join me.

So far we have covered nutrition and weight management. In this post we’ll get stuck into the fun stuff – strength and grip training!

When designing a training program to improve your performance in rock climbing (or any sport), the best place to start is by looking closely at the demands placed on your body by your sport and try to replicate them in your training.

You’re probably thinking; why not just do the sport?

Well, you can get a long way just doing that, but there are advantages to using resistance training:

1. You can incrementally add more resistance

When you’re actually climbing, the resistance is your body weight being pulled down by gravity. The amount of resistance is usually affected by the steepness of the climb and your technique. Because you want to climb as well as possible, you’re likely to focus as hard as you can on your technique, thus lessening the load on your muscles.

Now imagine using that technique with the addition of stronger muscles – you will climb like a machine!

To achieve that strength you need to isolate those muscles and make them stronger by incrementally increasing the loads placed upon them.

2. You can focus on your weaknesses

The joy of resistance training is that you can isolate each of the movements that you’re going to need in rock climbing and use exercises to focus on improving them. You can focus on areas of weakness and make incremental gains.

3. It’s easier to measure

If you’re simply climbing, it’s not always easy to see exactly how much you have improved in any one aspect. The only time you can be sure you got better is when you start consistently climbing higher grades.

With resistance training you can measure your improvement in each aspect of your game.

For instance, your hang times on the fingerboard might have improved by 30%, or you might be able to do 10 chins where before you could only do six.

Strong rock climbing relies heavily on these important factors:

a) Strong grip

Whether it’s small crimpy holds or open handed slopers, finger and hand strength is vital.

b) Powerful legs

Good climbing technique comes from positioning your feet and driving the moves from your legs while using your hands to support your upper body. You need to be able to develop power from an extended or fully compressed position with either or both legs (think really tough rock-over moves).

c) Pull strength

You can’t always rely on a good foothold to push from. Sometimes you’re going to need to haul your body up just with your upper body strength.

d) A strong core

Have you noticed on overhanging routes that when you twist and push from your feet, pushing your hips up, that it’s easier to hold on? A stronger core will enable you to hold this position for longer, making it easier to handle sustained routes.

e) Cardio vascular fitness

It’s no good having all that strength if you’re out of puff halfway through the route! You need to have a good level of general fitness. We’ll focus on this after an initial strength training period.

I’m going to base the training on three separate workouts. If you can only fit in one or two, don’t worry, you can just reduce the number of sets.

This post is going to get really long, so I’ll give you the actual workouts in the next post. To make sure you don’t miss it, you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

As with all my posts, I would love to hear your views, please drop me a comment below if you have a minute.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 3 – strength conditioning and grip is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

1. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game (and mine)
2. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 1 – nutrition and weight management
3. Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 2 – nutrition and weight management (part 2)