One of the best ways to increase your climbing threshold is to keep changing the problems that you climb in the gym. Most of us get into the rut of working on the same problems and getting to the same crux and failing.  I have found applying restrictions to easier problems lets your body learn something new. This is a great way to step away from the projects and get stronger while still working at your maximum.

After your proper warmup, pick 5 problems approx 30% of your maximum ability and pick target difficulties of:

Maximum Ability                                 Target Difficulty

V1                                                                    V0-

V3                                                                    V0+

V5                                                                    V1/V2

V7                                                                     V3

V9/10                                                                V5

Here are a couple different restrictions to apply to your climbing to make easier things feel harder, and increase your strength. Climb your five problems with both of these restrictions (total of 10 ascents):

1. Hand to Foot Matching – Try to climb your problem with using only hand-to-foot matching. This is not a tracking exercise (tracking is using your feet on holds that you grabbed with your hands), make sure to match your foot to your hand. There will be exceptions to this based off of body position, hold orientation, or hold type (If a move is to strange with this restriction, skip it and continue with the restriction on the next move). Hopefully you picked problems easy enough for this because it can be a humbling/frustrating exercise if your problems are to hard. I feel the biggest goal of this learning how to use your body effectively in a different style from how the problem was intended.

2. 3 Second Hover – This is a lock off exercise. When you climb, you must climb every move with locking off at your chest, and hover your other hand over the target hold for THREE SECONDS. Make sure to count – one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi BEFORE grabbing your target hold. The lock off applies even when you are matching holds. With super steep climbing, you may not be able to hold your lock off at your chest – Do your best to hold it in as tight as possible.

Remember – this is training. It is supposed to be hard. If it was easy, the whole gym would onsite  v10…..and that would be fun until the gym is packed, and then everyone is on your problem.

Until next week!!!!

Have fun and train hard.