Lattice Training | How to: Train for Bouldering
Bouldering can be delicate or dynamic - it is a great form of climbing for challenging your movement skills and ability to unlock climbing sequences, as well as your physical capabilities.
Bouldering is becoming more and more accessible with indoor bouldering gyms all over the UK. This blog isn’t about bouldering destinations or how to be respectful in the outdoors (although those things are very important!). This blog is about how to train for bouldering so that you can get satisfaction out of developing and challenging yourself in this discipline (often something that draws climbers to bouldering!). Whether you’re just starting or are an experienced boulderer, effective training can make a big difference in developing your climbing.
If you are interested in outdoor bouldering, you will have noticed that UK weather doesn’t always cooperate for outdoor practice, so indoor preparation is a good way to make the most of good weather days. Training for bouldering not only impacts your climbing but also builds transferable skills like identifying strengths and weaknesses, building confidence, and staying process-focused.
How can you tailor your training to bouldering?
Climbing is multi-faceted, but here I am going to cover 3 pillars that I think are crucial when it comes to preparing for bouldering:
- Developing a warm-up routine
- Practicing movement
- Adding strength training to your schedule
1. Develop a Warm-up Routine
Your warm-up isn’t just about getting your body ready for bouldering—it is time to prepare mentally and focus your attention on your body and movement. Many climbers lead busy lives with busy jobs and allowing time before you climb to prepare helps switch your attention to climbing. Including exercises that are relevant to your bouldering helps to incorporate an element of training into your routine.
Flexibility Exercises: Bouldering requires us to get into weird and wonderful positions with our bodies. It is full of high steps and heel hooks that require good flexibility around the hips. Including stretches focused on the lower body will help open up a range of movement, that you can then use in your bouldering. You can use a mixture of static and dynamic stretches. Good examples of these that we find useful for bouldering are a side runner's stretch and leg kicks.
Top Tip: Explore what works well for you and then write it down! Ensure it is not too long - warm-up routines need to be repeatable. For more information, check out this blog on warm-ups here.
2. Movement Practice: Master Movement Concepts
Bouldering isn’t just about raw strength; it’s about moving effectively, being balanced, and using momentum. There are many techniques in bouldering such as heel hooks, toe hooks, drop knees… and there is merit to refining these techniques. However, an approach to movement practice that has great transfer to intuitive movement is working on movement concepts instead. There are four movement concepts we find help develop movement for bouldering.
Direction of Pull: I am sure we will all agree that there is a lot of pulling in climbing. But the direction that we pull on a hold makes a huge difference. Some holds we will want to pull down on, whilst others we will want to pull side ways on such as in laybacking movements. Generally speaking we want to pull on a hold perpendicular to the best part. Finding a good body position often revolves around being able to make the most of the hand holds that are available. Once you have established the direction of pull you want to achieve you can think about what fooholds and body position will help you achieve this.
Momentum from the Hips: You may have seen videos of boulderers generating momentum from the hips for big dynos. However, understanding how to generate momentum from the hips is a skill that can be applied to many movements to make them more efficient (even those that can be reached statically). Momentum from the hips helps to drive our body towards the wall, and the next hold. The timing is important to give us time to catch the next hold - this takes practice!
Anticipate the End Position: Visualising your body’s final position for a move, and how you will need to then change this to make the next move can help you plan ahead. This is particularly useful when you need to do things like foot or hand swapping on a hold or rocking over a foothold. If you are struggling to hold the end position of a move you can also pull into this (without having completed the move) and take note of the position your body is in. Next time you try the move think about moving into that end position.
Triangle Base: Maintaining three points of contact helps with stability and balance. Trying to maintain two feet on the wall will make you pre-emptively move your feet and help give you more strength from your lower body. Of course, we don’t always get two footholds for every climbing move, so you may want to push your foot against the wall where you think a foothold would be useful. When we do this we tend to form a triangle base with our feet.
Top Tip: Try to identify which movement concept will be most important for any given boulder you try, then visualise what putting that movement concept into practice will look like.
3. Strength and Power: Build the Engine
Strength and power are the cornerstones of bouldering. Developing these areas will help you have the prerequisite physical resources to try a given climb.
Increase Your Pull Strength: Introducing simple conditioning exercises allows you to target muscle groups that are important for bouldering. Pull-ups are a classic exercise that transfers well to bouldering. You can try completing 4 sets of 5 pull-ups using assistance or added weight to make them challenging, but whilst still being able to complete them all. You can gradually increase the intensity over the weeks as you progress.
Finger Training: Completing finger exercises off-the-wall using a fingerboard or pick-up edge can help build finger strength alongside your climbing. It is important to keep finger strength training high quality and ensure good recovery between sessions. I
Limit Bouldering: Work on hard problems at or just above your limit with ample rest between attempts. The rest is important to allow quality in your climbing. This will help you apply any general training you do to your climbing.
If you want to learn more about strength training check out this course.
Top Tip: Periodise your strength training to avoid overtraining and ensure progress.
How do I apply this information to myself?
No matter where you are in your bouldering, developing these 3 areas will help you. However, we don’t all have endless time and resources! We need to be selective with what we choose to do.
When it comes to choosing what training to do you need to consider the following things:
What do you want to prepare for? You need to find what goals are truly meaningful to you, based on your motivations and what you value in climbing.
What attributes are important for your goal? You need to define what attributes/skills are important for your goal. In this blog, I have highlighted 3 for trad climbing. There are of course more, and you need to go through a process of analysing the demands of your goal compared to your current climbing.
What exercises develop these attribute? You need to choose an appropriate exercise for your level that will develop the important attributes you have highlighted.
Top tip: Whatever you choose you need to make sure you can be consistent with it week on week. The number 1 mistake climbers make when it comes to training is choosing exercises or a number of exercises that they can’t be consistent with. You will want to complete your exercises for 6 weeks minimum and monitor how this is impacting your climbing.
I am going to summarise this by giving some rough guidelines for beginner, intermediate and advanced boulderers. These are not hard-and-fast rules! Training for climbing requires an individual approach, but these might get you thinking about what holds you back and ways to work on it.
Beginner: Focus on movement fundamentals, by spending lots of time climbing a variety of problems and thinking about the movement concepts
Intermediate: Start incorporating a specific warm up and strength exercises.
Advanced: Prioritise weak areas and refine high-level skills. Implement training exercises consistently for a longer period.
Tips for boulderers
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog - training for bouldering can be a learning process in itself. There are a few things that climbers often neglect to do, that can help with this learning process.
Not Resting Between Attempts: Avoid rushing—resting allows you to give 100% on each try.
Not Brushing Holds: Build up of chalk on holds can affect friction and make problems harder.
Not Persevering with One Method: Don’t give up on a move too soon; refine your method before trying alternatives.
Changing Your Training Too Often: Stick to a plan for consistent progress. If you are going to do pull-ups stick with them!
Not Thinking About Pace: Match your climbing speed to the problem’s style, whether it’s controlled or fast and dynamic.
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