Pro climber and Friction Labs athlete Zoe Steinberg shares what she’s learned from 20+ years of climbing—including how to stay strong, avoid injuries, and keep improving without burning out. Whether you’re new to climbing or pushing into harder grades, she’s got practical tips on cross-training and staying healthy for the long haul.
As someone who’s been climbing for around 20 years, I’ve had my fair share of injuries. While some of these were in no way climbing-related (it’s always fun explaining to folks that the lumbar compression fracture I experienced when I was 14 was the result of me being an idiot on a skateboard, rather than a bouldering fall), I’ve also been forced to take time off from climbing due to injuries that could have been avoided, had I been more knowledgeable about proper cross-training and injury prevention.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned (often the hard way) that things I was able to get away with 10 years ago—such as getting four hours of sleep before downing a couple donuts and an energy drink, doing a few pullups, then jumping on the wall for a three-hour competition round—absolutely do not fly anymore. Over the years, I’ve had to figure out ways to maintain climbing fitness without overtraining, and this line can be tough to walk. To hopefully save some of you reading this time and frustration, here are some of the tips I’ve picked up about effective cross-training and injury prevention.
Motivation is always sky-high when you get psyched about a new activity. I can remember regularly spending hours at the gym when I was newer to climbing, being happy to push it until my skin was raw and I could barely make a fist. However, looking back on it, I was probably pretty lucky to avoid any overuse injuries from this level of intensity while I was so new to climbing. When you’re just getting into a sport, you may not have built up the strength and technique necessary to push yourself in that activity just yet. That strength and technique will come with time and practice, but an easy way to set back your progress is to push yourself too hard, too fast. If you’re first getting into climbing, keep your sessions a bit shorter than you might think you need. Instead of climbing until your skin is bright red twice a week, end those sessions before you’re completely wrecked and instead add a third session. Climbing when fully exhausted and your skin hurts can lead to bad habits like using poor technique, and climbing when in pain is a great way to force other muscle groups to overcompensate, which could potentially lead to other injuries.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I don’t have the upper body strength for climbing,” it would probably cover a big chunk of my rent this month. While upper body muscles are obviously very important in climbing, it really is a full-body sport. Without some degree of balance, kinesthetic awareness, and flexibility, upper body strength really won’t get you all that far. In addition to climbing and climbing-specific training like pull-ups or lock-offs, incorporate some exercises that target mobility and balance into your routine. These can be anything from yoga classes to slacklining to skiing or snowboarding. Basically, the better awareness you have of how your body moves in space, the better you will be at moving your body on a wall. Plus, doing other sports can develop muscle groups that you might be neglecting if you focus exclusively on climbing and climbing-specific training (more on this later).
There are absolutely times and places when fingerboarding is an incredibly effective training tool for improving your climbing abilities. In most cases, those times and places are not when you’re just getting into the sport. Most newer climbers have never had to build up finger strength before— why would they? It’s pretty uncommon for people who don’t climb to have a reason to care about finger strength. This kind of strength is important for climbing, especially as you progress into higher grades and work on problems or routes with smaller and smaller holds. However, as our fingers are not designed to grab small edges and pull our body weight up on these, it takes time to build up finger strength. As much as I understand wanting to get better faster, spending a lot of time on fingerboards when you are new to climbing, especially without any guidance, is an easy way to risk a finger injury. For folks who are still new to the sport and trying to establish a baseline for finger and upper body strength, focus on trying climbs on steeper angles and being able to complete 10 pullups in a row on a bar or jug (with proper form). These are just a couple of options for building up finger strength, and they’re much less likely to lead to a pulley or tendon injury for newer or less experienced climbers.
Although climbing is a full-body sport, it does have a very high ratio of pulling movements compared to pushing. Without doing anything to mitigate this, muscle imbalances can develop relatively easily, leading to discomfort and other secondary injuries. Addressing this is pretty simple and straightforward, and can be accomplished by doing bodyweight exercises with rings, TRX straps, or basic lifts. These exercises should target the pectoralis, deltoids, triceps, rhomboid, and trapezius muscle groups, and can include things like bench, tricep, and chest presses and reverse fly curls. As a general rule (which can vary greatly depending on several factors), doing two sets of roughly eight reps of whatever lifts you choose to incorporate twice per week is sufficient for the purposes of cross-training for climbing. Aside from the ones mentioned above, there are plenty of other lifts and exercises that can be used as part of a cross-training routine, and specific exercises should be chosen based on your strength and fitness background, health, goals in climbing, and other factors. Plus, in addition to injury prevention, antagonist exercises that focus on pushing can help improve some aspects of your climbing, including mantles and presses.
It’s extremely natural to be drawn towards the things you excel at. Nobody likes to feel as though they are bad at something, so it makes complete sense to want to do those things you’re best at, especially when you have limited time for learning or practice. However, when it comes to climbing, only getting on climbs that are “your style” or on specific wall angles also has the potential to lead to injury. Most injuries in climbing aren’t traumatic in nature; they are overuse or repetitive stress injuries. Climbing on the same angle of wall or the same type of holds will result in repetitive stress being placed on some part of your body, whether it be on your fingers and shoulders from crimps and overhangs, on your elbows from sloper and compression, or on your knees from heel hooks. While it may not happen immediately, the repetitive stress that results from overspecialization can lead to lingering or recurrent injuries. The best way to avoid this is to get on climbs with a variety of holds, wall angles, and movement styles. You’ll very likely gravitate more towards climbs that you feel stronger on, and it’s ok to spend a bit more time on these. But make sure that you’re also switching things up from time to time.
At this ability level, you may not need to campus or hangboard to see gains in your climbing ability. However, at this point, you have probably been climbing long enough and have a solid enough background that a bit of campusing or fingerboarding is unlikely to cause injury (if done properly) and could be beneficial, though to what extent is very dependent on the climber in question. If you do decide to incorporate campusing or hangboarding into your workout routine at this stage, it should be done in a targeted manner. Both of these exercises put significant strain on fingers, elbows, and shoulders, so it would be advisable to keep the frequency to once per week at most. For climbers who want to start campusing, one option is to campus set boulder problems on steeper wall angles, as opposed to on a campus board. This creates less repetitive stress than a campus board with standardized rung angles and spacing, and also is more likely to mimic moves you will see on actual climbs. For climbers who want to begin fingerboarding, it is definitely a good idea to talk to a coach or someone with expertise in this to determine what sort of protocol would be most effective for your goals while least likely to lead to injury.
Being able to do a full split is one thing. Being able to do a full split on the wall and then generate enough force to push out of it is something else entirely. As you start to push into harder and harder grades, general flexibility will become less important than functional flexibility—being able to move out of stretched positions while on the wall. Yoga can be an effective way to train for this, as well as stretches and motions that replicate movements done on the wall. Incorporating mobility training into your workout routine a couple times per week can not only help prevent injury and improve climbing, but it’s also probably the easiest recommendation in this whole article. All you need is a yoga mat. You can even do this in the morning while drinking your coffee before work or in front of the TV at the end of the day.
Although I’ve said this often enough to start sounding like a broken record, I’m standing by it. Climbing disproportionately uses a specific set of movements primarily focused on pulling, making climbers susceptible to muscle imbalances and potentially repetitive stress or overuse injuries. In addition to targeted cross-training, playing another sport or doing some other form of physical activity can help target other muscle groups and develop skill sets that can positively impact climbing. Equally important, having another activity that you’re psyched about can help keep motivation for climbing higher while minimizing burnout.
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Getting into the gym at all while working 40+ hours per week can be a challenge. Most people tend to work out in the afternoon or evening after having been at work for eight hours and awake for even longer, meaning they’re already a bit exhausted and may just want to enjoy themselves and maybe socialize a bit, not spend hours suffering in the weight room. Luckily, cross-training for injury prevention does not need to eat up massive amounts of time. I cross-train about twice per week, and a session generally takes me about 40 minutes. While that is definitely a time commitment, I’ve found the injury prevention benefits to be well worth the roughly 1.5 hours that I spend cross-training per week. If you’d prefer to keep your time at the gym reserved for climbing, most cross-training can also be done at home if you have a yoga mat, TRX straps or gymnastic rings, and a few dumbbells at the weights you need. Regardless of where and how you go about cross-training, it does not have to eat up huge portions of your spare time.
Anyone who has lifted weights before has almost certainly wondered about the maximum amount of weight they could lift. However, it’s not the best idea to just keep adding weight and trying to lift until failure. While one or two rep maximum lifts can be helpful in some forms of training, most of the lifting done as effective cross-training for climbing involves between six and ten reps at around 70-80% of your maximum for a given lift. Regularly increasing the amount of weight you are using for your lifts based on time, as opposed to how well you are completing your lifts and how you feel while doing so, can lead to completing the lifts with poor form and involvement of muscle groups outside of those that the lifts are meant to target. This is a great way to turn what is meant to help prevent injuries into something that is likely to cause injury. Make sure that your first priority while lifting is on having correct form, as opposed to how much weight you’re lifting.
Climbing puts plenty of strain on your fingers, but it’s not exactly gentle on the rest of your joints. Shoulders, elbows, knees, wrists, and hips are all used pretty heavily in climbing, meaning all of these have the potential to be injured by climbing. Adding a few exercises to strengthen the muscles surrounding these joints into your cross-training routine can go a long way as a form of prehab. You don’t have to spend hours per week on it, but even one or two lifts or exercises per joint can be extremely effective in preventing a shoulder injury from holding a big swing or knee issues from a weird heel hook.
This tip is a recommendation to myself as much as to anyone reading this, as it’s a part of injury prevention that I’m working to improve on as well. Stretching is a simple suggestion, but it really can make a huge difference in reducing muscle tightness and keeping joints moving well. You’ll want to incorporate both static and dynamic stretching and try to avoid static stretching while cold—ease your way into these gently before pushing into a deeper stretch. Again, if you don’t want to have this eat into your time at the gym, 20 minutes of stretching on a yoga mat in your living room is an alternative.
No matter how motivated you are, we all have days when we just aren’t feeling it. Maybe you’re feeling a bit sick, a finger or knee feels a little uncomfortable, you had a rough day at work, or life has just been kicking you a bit lately. Whatever the reason, don’t be afraid to take a day off if you feel like you need it. While you might feel worried that you’re slacking off or that you’ll see losses in any progress you’ve made, both of these concerns are likely not the case. There’s a good chance, however, that pushing through injury, illness, or burnout when your body is hinting that you might want to just chill for a day or two, will result in whatever the condition is lingering or even worsening. Annoying as it may be, take what time you need to heal up, and when you come back, use the extra motivation you have after some time off to get back to training. Maybe throw in a bit of cross-training or stretching as you work your way back.
