Below is the Spring Sport and Speed (and top-rope) competition schedule. Remember that if your team member would like to compete in the Regional Competition, they must compete in at least 2 of the local comps listed below.
Please let me know which competitions your team member plans to attend. I recommend everyone participate in the competition that will be hosted on March 10 at our gym!
Also, for information on how to register your family member please use the link below. I have also included the link to the USA climbing FAQs page that may clarify several questions you might have.
There are some exercises that team members can be doing at home to build up their core strength, antagonist muscles(muscles that support the climbing specific muscles), and push muscles. This will support and supplement their climbing endeavors. The videos below describe the proper form of each of the exercises. Work together to make sure form is perfect, once form is lost the team members should stop, take a break for a minute and repeat. Exercises should not be performed if the proper form cannot be achieved. Begin with the most basic version of the exercises to assure good form (ex: push ups/planks from knees) before progressing to harder versions of the exercises. These exercises can be performed 2-3 days per week.
*Note: Always remember to warm-up with at least 5-10 minutes of cardio before performing exercises.
Exercise 1 & 2: Plank / Side Plank (core)
Aim for planks: 3 sets of 1-minutes holds
Tip 1: begin with knee planks if it is too hard
Tip 2: aim for 1 minute, but if the form is lost before 1 minute, stop when form is lost
Tip 3: If 1 minute becomes too easy, aim to lift on leg off the ground without losing balance, hold for 10 seconds, then switch legs and continue alternating for 1 minute if form is maintained.
Exercise 1 & 2: Plank / Side Plank (core)
Aim for side planks: 3 sets of 30-second holds (on each side)
Tip 1: begin with knee planks if it is too hard
Tip 2: aim for 30 seconds, but if the form is lost before 30 seconds, stop when form is lost
Tip 3: If 30 seconds becomes too easy, aim for 45 seconds
Exercise 3: I,T,Y's (antagonists)
Aim: 3 sets of 30-second holds for each letter
Tip 1: begin with soup cans as a 1 pound weight (these are small muscles and no-weight, or 1 pound is sufficient to build these up).
Tip 2: If you do not have a ball, these exercises can be performed 1 side at time while laying on the side of a bed.
Tip 3: Be sure not to scrunch the shoulders up, if shoulders start to scrunch, rest, then repeat later.
Exercise 4: Push Ups: (push muscles)
Aim: 3 sets 3-10 push-ups with PERFECT form
Tip 1: begin with wall push ups or knee push ups
Tip 2: Note: elbows are NOT out to the side at shoulder height, but rather drawn in towards the side, using the triceps and the trunk of the body to push/stabilize
Tip 3: Do not scrunch shoulders up to ears and do as many push ups/set as can be done with good form, once form is lost, rest.
Exercise 5: Step-Ups or Squats (push muscles)
Aim: 3 sets of 30
Tip 1: if you d not have boxes or items to use for step-ups, perform squats instead
Tip 2: If doing squats DO NOT use weights as in the videos, but begin with just body weight and good form, keeping the core tight and not over-arching the back.
Hi All! Believe it or not, climbing has its own World Cup events and World Championship events that take place throughout the world from Spring through Fall. These World events are sponsored by the IFSC, which has its own webpage and YouTube channel.
The individuals that compete in these events are some of the best climbers in the world. There are videos of both youth and adult competitions. To give an example, I have included a video this year’s World Championship Finals for Youth B (ages 13-14 years old)!
One of the best ways to improve as a climber is to observe those who are better than you and learn from what they do. In this video you can see how efficiently these climbers: move their bodies/hips on the wall; climb with straight arms and using their legs to push; use their feet with great precision; and see how they find rest positions and shake out to preserve energy.
This is a long video/event to watch, if you do not have time for the entire video pick a few climbers to watch and take some notes! Enjoy!
The video below shows part of our dynamic climbing warm-up during team practices. Team usually begins with 5 minutes of cardio, then transitions into many of the warm-ups included in the video below. Feel free to practice as a family when you come in to climb together and let your team members show you how it is done!
It is extremely important to use correct climbing technique while climbing to prevent injury and improve our climbing ability. This takes time to learn and should be practiced while warming up and climbing easy routes so it becomes part of our normal body movement overtime. Below are FIVE tips to help improve body movement while climbing:
1. Keep Good Posture:
Keep the trunk (hips, core, shoulders) upright, with shoulders back, and shoulder blades GENTLY squeezed together. This creates a very powerful foundation from which to engage movement.
*When the body is aligned with good posture the muscles can act more effectively and are less likely to strain.
2. Bring Your Hips into the Wall:
Move your center of mass (the hip/core area) down and closer to your toes and bring the entire pelvis toward the wall by rotating one hip into the wall.
*The center of mass is the area around which the majority of your body weight sits, and the closer we keep that weight near our toes/legs the less our shoulders, elbows and bodies have to work!
3. Don't Over-bend Your Arms:
Try to make every movement keeping straight arms, this means you may need to do a few extra foot moves, including getting your feet really high to stand up. Remember not to lock the elbow, but to maintain a tiny micro-bend to prevent straining the elbow joint.
*Keeping straight arms means we need to bend the knees instead and moves our focus to using powerful legs to generate movement!
4. Push with Your Feet:
Always remember to push through the feet first and ONLY pull with the arms when absolutely necessary.
*The legs are developed to support all of our body weight and are much more powerful than our arms.
5. Climb Like You Crawl:
The rule of opposites! When crawling, babies learn the most efficient way to move their bodies by first moving their right arm then their opposite left leg, and then their left arm followed by their right leg. This rule also makes for efficient climbing by maintaining balance and keeping the power in the core.
(Above tips are from the book Climb Injury Free by Dr. Jared Vagy DPT)
As you know Vladi and I will be gone the next few Saturdays and Anthony and Arlette will be coaching! We will be transitioning to bouldering season/training pretty soon and I just wanted to remind you all about the upcoming competitions so that you can mark your calendars! And athough you are not required to compete we encourage you to try it out!
Membership with USA climbing is required to compete. There are various memberships available depending on your competition goals which can range from a $10 day pass membership for one competition event to $95 for the competitor membership good from 9/1-8/31. For registration and other information please go to the following link below:
Remember that homework for the week??? We wanted to check in an make sure you are all remembering to do it. Our goal is to get you all performing as much strength and conditioning at home for a little while so that we can spend more time at practice climbing. If you missed practice or forgot what the homework was, please see below. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to text, email, or call us!
Daily Home Exercises: (the below exercises should be done daily)
a) 10 push ups (good form, elbows by side; use knees if needed, does not have to be 10 in a row)
b) 2 sets of 1-minute planks (on elbows, aim for 2 minutes if 1 minute is easy, if 1 minute is too hard hold only as long as you can maintain good form)
c) 1 set 30+ crunches (crunch only high enough to get your shoulder blades off the ground)
d) 1 set 12 mountain climbers reps (1 rep includes both right and left leg)
Here is nice video that gives a general overview of basic climbing movement. It is a nice introduction for those of use newer to climbing, and a nice review for those who have been climbing a little longer !
Hi Guys! Sorry for the delay in getting these videos up. Here are the videos on back stepping/drop knees and proper hand placement (shoulder engagement) that we watched during practice a couple weeks ago. Remember, although much of the time we aim to climb straight armed, there should still be some engagement of the upper back to support the shoulders rather than the shoulders being hiked up by our ears. There are also some videos by Ether Smith on the videos tab that looks at this in more detail.
Watch the videos again for a refresher, or if you missed practice take a look; there a few mono-bouldering routes (routes with the same type of movement all the way up) in the gym allow us to practice these skills (the green route we have been practicing on utilizes this technique). The yellow and red boulder routes have us do a drop knee as well, but they also include stepping through on every move to change which hip is facing the wall with our other leg flagged out for support; I will post some videos of these route being climbed soon to use as examples.
Hi Guys! There are two videos I am going to share with you today at practice regarding footwork and I have put them up here for you to reference as well, see below. Also, I have updated the Yoga/Warm-Up page with some new videos and I have added a few links to the resources page. Enjoy!
Hi Guys! Just an update, there is a new page added to the tabs above called "Yoga/Warm Up Videos". Take a look a try to implement some of the techniques at home or when you are at the gym next. Below are a couple of the videos just to give you a sneak peak!