Movement Blog

If you spend any time climbing or hang boarding, you can benefit from some additional wrist and finger exercises to help build strong, durable joints. Doing so allows us to practice our favorite sport pain-free and hopefully prevent future injuries. Here are a few great exercises you can do at home or before your climbing sessions.

here's how to overcome the overhang mental game  When it comes to climbing terrain, few things seem to inspire as much fear and intimidation as the overhang wall. So if you find yourself quickly walking past the Gnarwall at Rockville, Megaprow at Dallas the Hill, the Constant Wall in Sunnyvale, or the Iceberg in Portland to climb more vertical terrain or you’ve ever questioned whether you have enough upper body strength climb through steep terrain (you probably have more than you think), keep reading! One of our awesome climbing coaches, Ezra Park, has some great advice for ya. 

Nothing inspires us to dream big quite like a brand spankin’ new year, am I right? We get inspired; we resolve to make improvements; we set goals.   But for some of us, big dreams don’t always translate into sticking with and crushing our goals.    That’s why this year, we thought we’d help by laying out some steps you can take right now and later this month to create a routine you can get into and stick with in January 2023 and beyond.

We get a lot of questions about how to climb better and because we are so stoked to see you succeed, we’ve asked our trainers, coaches, and instructors at Movement locations all over the country to provide as much training, technique, and fitness advice to help you achieve your goals. But what is a good goal? Who are climbing goals for—are those only for those who’ve been climbing for a while? How do you make a good goal? In all parts of life goals can give us a clearer path toward the outcomes we desire. In climbing, goals can help you focus and approach your gym sessions with more intention. You’ll make the most of your time at the gym while on your way to crushing your objective, whether it’s to climb one route at a certain grade, feel comfortable climbing most routes at a certain grade, send a certain route, you get the idea. So instead of more general climbing tips and tricks, let’s take a step back and look into how to craft a climbing goal made specifically for you by you.

Do you practice failing? Probably not. Let’s be honest – failure is hard for a lot of us, especially if you’ve been conditioned to think of failure as a bad thing. 

If you’re guilty of climbing one “easy” route, jumping on your project once or twice and then heading home, this blog is for you. Warming up gets the blood flowing and raises your body's temperature. It's critical to preventing injury, increasing mental focus, and getting the body primed for producing force to try hard. Conversely, what you do AFTER climbing can be just as important as your warm-up before. An effective cool-down routine releases the muscles, slows your breath, and jumpstarts the recovery process. 

A pistol squat is an exercise that is very easy to explain, but hard for most people to do. From a standing position, shift your weight to one leg while the other leg shoots forward. From there, you squat down, bringing your tailbone to your heel and then stand up from a seated or squat  position, again only using one leg.   Pistol squats are great for increasing leg strength and improving balance, which means they really give you a leg up in your climbing.

Climbing requires a lot of overhead shoulder and arm movement and can put quite a bit of stress on the shoulders. All of this strain can lead to injuries ranging from minor muscle tweaks to major tendon tears. The good news is there are a few very effective exercises that strengthen the shoulder and prevent injuries.

From weight shifting on a slabby route, to long approaches or summer hikes, to everything in between, the legs are the powerhouse of climbing. We talked to Francy at our Englewood gym in Colorado. She is one of the personal trainers there and teaches a weekly Ski Fit class, so we figured that if anyone could recommend a thorough workout to strengthen their bottom half, it would be her 😆. Enjoy! 

Campus board workouts are a great way to build upper body strength and improve climbing power. Incorporating these kinds of workouts into your routine can improve finger strength and make powerful or dynamic moves easier. Here's a great workout one of our staff members created that you can incorporate into your climbing routine.