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Learn how women over 40 can train for rock climbing with better strength, power, endurance, recovery, and injury resilience. Evidence-based strategies for climbing performance and longevity.

Your Body Will Get Stronger — But It Requires More Intention when training to Climb Alpine Peaks I am ceaselessly in awe of what the human body can do—Regardless of you are age or fitness level, our bodies respond to the input we give them it until the day we die. While researching fitness and training for females I came across a study that took a goup of 86-94 year olds and had them do strength training exercises for their legs. Over 12 wks the working group improved quad s

Some climbers fix their elbow pain with exercises , changing climbing technique managing volume and intensity. If other strategies have truly been tired with good adherence over 2-3 months and you have had no significant improved it’s time to look somewhere else. The problem not be at the elbow. It’s upstream—in the neck and nervous system . The Neural Link: From Neck to Climber's Elbow The nerves that brach off of our spinal cord control every aspect of muscle function. In t

In the last article, we broke down what’s happening inside the tendon and how to rebuild it with the right kind of loading. But there’s still a problem: If you only treat the tendon and don’t address the cause, it will come back. Most climbers don’t develop elbow pain because the tendon is weak in isolation. It happens because: Load exceeds capacity Movement is inefficient Other parts of the system aren’t doing their job So the tendon adapts… until it can’t. This is where r

The Early Signs So you’ve started noticing your elbow. At first it’s just a whisper — a little soreness or stiffness on the inside or outside of the elbow. It might feel tight in the morning, but it eases once you warm up and start climbing. Then it grows louder. You feel a sting or quick “ping” of pain on certain holds. Gripping something the wrong hurts. Maybe picking up a bag of groceries reminds you it’s there. Eventually, for some climbers, it crescendos into something m

Consider, climbing to build strength, mobility, and balance in middle age and beyond.

If your impression of climbing is young men with defined muscles grunting their way up dime thin ledges, you are misled. Climbing is for...

How to reduce foot pain climbing We hang on hang boards and do pull ups for upper body strength but what do we do for our feet? If our feet are weak, our toes could be in trouble. Toe joints are pushed to end range extension compressing the joint cartilage and stretching passive structures (ligaments and the joint capsule) often leading to joint hypermobility. Strong feet reduce end range loading by providing dynamic stability to the joint and improves foot work through bet

Eighty to ninety percent of climbers have foot pain when climbing ( 1,2,3) . In those surveyed, climbing with foot pain was considered...

The plan was to spend a week in Squamish, BC, a haven for outdoor sports enthusiasts from across Canadas and the US. Granite walls rise...

Awareness of current research to the effects of stretching is alarmingly low among exercise and health professionals. survey-based study aimed to investigate the knowledge of experts and health care professionals (i.e. sport scientists, coaches and physical therapists, orthopedic physicians) regarding the evidence for or against stretching in different practice applications found that a large percentage of these professionals were not knowledgeable about research-based evide

Before you get injured understand how to build tendon quality and how this differs for women vs men.

Tendon Training for climbers Climbing places extremely high loads on the tendons of the fingers, elbows, and shoulders. Without proper preparation, climbers can develop overuse injuries that limit training and performance. Tendon training helps climbers gradually build tissue capacity so they can tolerate the demands of hard climbing. Tendons have a high rate of injury in climbers. I have treated my share of finger pulley injuries , climber's elbow , and shoulder injures in c

It was summer, the mountains were out, and Seattle was having a crazy run of consecutive days without rain. In the Pacific Northwest,...

Finger Pulley Injuries in Climbers Finger pulley injuries are among the most common injuries in rock climbers. These injuries occur when the small ligaments that hold the flexor tendons close to the finger bones become overloaded. The A2 and A4 pullies are the most frequently injured pulley because it experiences very high forces when climbers crimp on small holds or make dynamic moves. Climbers often develop pulley injuries when training volume increases too quickly, when fi

It is well known that women are more likely to sustain certain connective tissue injuries than men during physical activities (Jones et...

There is a wide range of healing time given in the literature as to when a pulley is healed and ready to bear heavy loads. The extent of...