In yesterday’s entry, I talked about why you need to warm up in order to achieve your peak potential and stave off injuries prior to climbing and training sessions. But how do you warm up properly? It used to be that athletes were encouraged to perform passive stretches as a key component of warming up, but these days, this is considered to be counterproductive, causing muscles to actually experience a decrease in power, strength and overall performance in any type of athletic endeavor. So nix the passive stretching, unless you don’t want to climb or train at your highest potential.
Instead, try using the following warm-up protocol:
- Start out with a minimum of 5 minutes of low-impact cardio activity. I actually think at least 10 to 15 minutes is a better amount of time spent doing this, but I understand that sometimes, people are pressed for time. What do I do myself? Prior to working out in my home gym, I usually exercise bike for 15 minutes, starting slowly and gradually increasing the intensity until I’ve broken a sweat and my whole body feels hot, right into my fingertips. If I’m going climbing outside, the hike into the crags suffices as an excellent cardio warm-up period. I actually don’t really mind this part of the warm-up, honestly – it’s the climbing-related part that I find a bit more dull at times.
- After this general warm-up period, I move onto more sport-specific warming up. This can include climbing at a submaximal level, like warm-up pitches or problems, which are the most commonly used forms of warm-ups by climbers, I would surmise. It can also include exercises and/or dynamic stretches that mimic the motions of climbing, like pull-ups, light finger rolls (standing on the ground and grabbing a couple holds open-handed, then rolling your fingers up into a crimp and then back down into an open-hand position) and high steps. I often integrate dynamic stretches into my climbing warm-up problems or routes by deliberately exaggerating movements in slow-motion that may come into play later on in the day in a much more difficult manifestation. For example, I’ll hang down straight-armed off of two good holds, then drop my feet off entirely and arch my lower back to move my feet away from the wall, then let go with each hand in turn, and then slowly swing my feet back onto the wall, do a pull-up in slow motion, and then continue moving up the route or problem.
- After warming up, I’ll usually rest for at least 10 minutes (and up to 45 minutes) before I start to really try anything hard. Sometimes, I use my first attempt on something hard as the last part of my warm-up period, too – it’s like I have to prime my muscles and my body for those specific movements on that specific rock climb, when I’m trying a sport route that’s really challenging for me. Often, I’ll deliberately skip the hardest parts of the hard project on this first attempt of the day, pulling through them and climbing the easier (but usually still hard for me) terrain as my final warm-up.
A question that often comes up in relation to the sport-specific warm-up period is “How many warm-up pitches/problems should I climb, and at what difficulty level?” This is where individuality in athletes really comes into play. The best answer I can give is that you’ll simply have to experiment to determine how much/how hard is the best quantity/type of warm-up climbing for you to experience peak performance, and that the more you work with your warm-up period to optimize it and refine for yourself, the more of an intuitive sense you’ll develop as to when your body is primed and ready to go. I’ve noticed this in myself – I definitely can start to feel it when I’m firing on all cylinders and everything’s smooth like butter. Another thing I’ve noticed is that as I’ve developed more fitness and in particular, more strength and power, the amount of time I need to spend warming up to optimize my power/strength potential has diminished, meaning that I’m primed for powerful routes/problems earlier than I used to be. I’ve also noticed that it usually takes me less time to warm-up for strength and power climbing it does for me to warm up for more endurance-oriented affairs.
If you simply must have a guideline to go with to start developing your own warm-up routine, I’d say for climbing, you need a bare minimum of 5 minutes of cardio (until you break a sweat), and then you need at least two pitches of rock climbing and/or 15 to 20 minutes of easy-to-moderate bouldering to get ‘er done right. If you have more time to warm up, even better. The most important aspect of this, like I said, is to figure out what works best for you as a warm up – but I guarantee that if you operate under the premise that no warm-up is best for you, you’re not only wrong but also, you’re sabotaging your performance/workout potential and flirting with injury.
One thing I’ve found to be really helpful to me is to develop a specific warm-up protocol for every climbing area or training facility that I use regularly as quickly as I can. Once you have a warm-up routine that you’re familiar with, it can become one of your most useful tools in determining where your body’s at on a particular day in terms of potential performance and recovery status. If you’re warming up on familiar terrain and you feel like a big pile of doggy doo-doo, it’s a good sign that you probably shouldn’t be climbing at all, and definitely shouldn’t have any performance expectations for the day. If you’re warming up for weight training and lifts that usually feel easy are inordinately hard, it’s a strong message that lifting isn’t in the cards for you today, unless you want to walk away with an overuse injury. If you breeze through your warm-up routine like it’s nothing and you don’t even feel warmed up, it might be time to up the ante on your warm-up routine, indicating a higher level of fitness and/or strength. This happens sometimes from year to year for me – I have a great warm-up routine at a climbing area one year, and when I come back the next season, I discover that my warm-up routine is like going for a walk with my grandma, meaning it doesn’t do much of anything for me anymore.
The point of this is that warm-ups have the potential to serve us tremendously as athletes on a daily level as well as on a week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year level. Warming up is an integral part of every smart climber’s performance and training regimen, and warming up should never, ever be overlooked or neglected. Perfect your warm-up period, and you’ll increase your chances of climbing and training injury-free and at peak levels every single day you’re active.
