When you look up at a 100 foot sport climb, we all understand that you need good endurance to climb to the chains.  However, when you break down even the longest routes, the difference between success and failure often comes down to being able to climb smaller several bolt sections of really sustained climbing.  This is where power endurance training comes in.

Whether you call it power endurance or strength endurance, this attribute is your ability to sustain a slightly sub-maximal output.  In other words, we aren’t talking about your ability to do the crux in isolation, but we aren’t talking about a debilitating forearm pump either.  Power endurance is the in between.

To help you understand exactly what power endurance is and how to train it properly, here are the top 5 power endurance training articles from the TrainingBeta Blog.

Top 5 Articles on Power Endurance Training:

  • Free Power Endurance Workout

    • “The focus of this workout is climbing, campusing & fitness. Each of the videos show you how to do the drills for beginners, advanced, and elite levels of climbers.This should take you between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. Have fun!”

  • Steve Maisch Training: Strength Endurance

    • “Strength endurance is what gets you up the route. It’s the ability to do 5 to 25 just barely sub-maximal moves in a row without resting. Because these moves are just barely sub-maximal they require that one can do hard moves (though not maximally hard moves) and sustain a roughly 70% maxmimal output for multiple moves in a row.” -Steve Maisch

  • Climbing Training: Power Endurance

    •  “Unlike endurance, where you have a manageable pump, in training power endurance you will become very pumped to the point of possibly coming off the wall. Power endurance is the ability to do many difficult moves and not get pumped”. -Jackie Pettitt

    • “Below is a screenshot of one of the core workouts from the Power Endurance Training Program that Kris Peters, one of the top climbing trainers in the US, wrote for us.”“Give it a try and have fun! And if you like it and want to learn more workouts to improve your core strength and power endurance, be sure to check out the whole training program.” – Katy Dannenberg

  • Building a Better Climber Part 4: Power Endurance

    • “Power endurance is the type of fitness required for sustained sequences of between 15 and 40 moves and will be the main focus of the phase, although I’ve included a small amount of strength work to prevent performance losses.” – Neil Gresham

Cover photo courtesy of cruxcrush.com

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