Climbing long routes requires endurance.  When most climbers hear endurance training, all they think of is cranking out lap after lap on routes in the gym until their forearms give out.

However, this kind of endurance training is not only boring, it’s also inefficient.  As we learn more and more about how to train for climbing, our understanding of energy systems and how to train them effectively is changing.  With this new knowledge, we are realizing that simply climbing a lot of volume to feel tired isn’t actually the best form of training.

With that in mind, here are the top 5 endurance training articles from the TrainingBeta Blog.  They will help you understand endurance training and tell you how to do it properly.  Get ready to be pumped!

Top 5 Articles on Power Endurance Training:

  • Maximize Your Climbing Endurance With These Workouts

    • “Because most climbers don’t simultaneously focus on both sport climbing and bouldering training, their endurance-to-power ratio (and vice versa) is usually pretty skewed.”

      “If your goal is to become a healthy and well-rounded climber, then the ability to maintain composure through a difficult sequence on an endurance-based sport route is just as vital as the ability to muscle through a powerful move.” -Alex Biale and Eric Hörst

  • 20 Min Endurance Workout

    •  “To help you improve the efficiency of your training, here’s a video from Epic TV featuring Tom Randall and Ollie Torr of Lattice Training that outlines two variations of a 20 min endurance workout that will let climbers with even the most hectic schedules drastically improve their endurance.”
    • ““I knew from reviewing terabytes of video of myself on the route that I would need to be able to endure 150 to 180 seconds Time-Under-Tension (TUT), just to climb between rest stances, where I would need to be able to recover, and then sprint another 100+ seconds of consecutive pumpy moves, and so on. To climb all the difficulties without a hang would take 250+ seconds of just climbing, plus many minutes of taxing shaking at rest stances. Clearly hammering more and more 100-second laps on my trusty Green Traverse wasn’t working, and I think the lack of continuous TUT was the reason.” – Mark Anderson
  • Training for Endurance- Steph Davis

    • The key to having better endurance is being able to recover while on the climb. Rather than looking at a pitch as one long stretch of climbing, start looking at it as different sections broken by rest-able stances…..Even before you leave the ground, look up at the route. If it’s in the gym, see if you can spot the biggest holds on it. If it’s outdoors, look for areas with small ledges, dihedrals or obviously bigger foot stances. You may be able to predict some rest stances even before leaving the ground. If you can find rests on the route, suddenly you only need to climb hard for a short section before you get to your recovery place, effectively breaking up the route into many small sections instead of one big enduro-thon.” -Steph Davis

Cover photo courtesy of Edwin Teran | @edwinteran

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