Im gettin back into rock climbing and ..

Question

i cant build up thick muscles i need long lean ones

anyone knoe any good at home work outs and ways to keep myself lean?

i really need to work on my forearm cause im out of shape and cant make it to the climbing gym in a while

Answer 1

To keep things lean and not "thick" you want to do endurance types of exercises. That means lots of reps with smaller amounts of weight. Also Yoga is a great way to build strength, balance, and flexibility.

As for the forearms, a great thing to do is use a dowel or broomstick. Hold your arms straight out infront of you and turn the dowel as if it were a motorcycle accelerator. Crank down with each hand leaving your arms out straight out in front of you. After you have turned the dowel multiple times cranking down (speeding up on motorcycle) you can reverse the motion (slow down on motorcycle). Once this begins to get easy, you can attach an empty 20oz plastic pop bottle to a piece of string that runs up to the dowel, turn the dowel until you wind up all the string and the bottle is at the dowel, then reverse until the dowl is back on the ground. You can begin adding sand or water to the bottle to increase the resistance. This exercise will work your shoulders, arms, forearms, back and abs... amazing isnt it...

Variations of chin ups will also help. Do a full chin-up, hold for 5 sec, lower until your arms are at 45degrees and hold, down to 90 degress and hold, down to 135 degrees and hold, all the way down and rest then all the way back up. Start with 3 reps per set then increase so you are always challenged.

If you have a hangboard then you can do chin ups on the different grips, same with rock rings.

If you have some big trees available, then you can also set up a slackline to work on balance and core body strength.

This is just the beginning... there is a lot you can do... as I said the main focus is lots of reps, low resistance. It increases the strength but keeps the bulk down.

Answer 2

Oviously, the best thing to do is climb. If you can't climb, do dead hangs (hang until you can't hold on anymore) from a training board and also do some pull ups on some of the smaller holds on the board:

http://www.rei.com/product/649051

Good Luck

Answer 3

A good thing to do on a chin-up bar is holding a position. An exercise I do is:

-pull up so your chin is level with your hands, hold for 5, lower to hanging; pull up so your arms are at ninety degrees at the elbow, hold for 5, lower to hanging; pull up so your arms are slightly bent, hold for 5, and lower. Repeat a couple of times, then rest, then do another set. I find this is good for building the strength needed to clip in when leading, or just for holding on to a hold whilst you think about the next move.

Of course, if you do this on a campus board or finger board instead of a chin-up bar, it'll improve your grip strength too.

Answer 4

I bet you're sick of hearing that the best training for climbing is to climb. Actually climbing builds technique as well as strength... and we all know that technique is more important.

If you can't make it to the gym, consider looking for partners for some real rock or if you're looking for some climbing-specific training, get a hangboard or some rockrings. You could also get a simple pull up bar and put it in a doorway.

I would recommend the Nicros Warriorboard.

Also, core is really important in climbing so try doing some V-ups or planks every day. Don't do situps though - they don't do that much.

If you're really out of shape, running every morning will be beneficial.

Hope this helped,

Z123monkey