Shortcutting warming up (inside or out)??

[duncan]

You're going to get lots of different answers because different people warm-up at different rates and are warming-up for different things. A warm-up for an aging crock before a hard slab will be different to a youth about to jump around a cave. It depends on where you're coming from and where you want to go.

Where you're coming from: what previously injured bits need particular care, how old you are, how much you need to warm-up - like most things exercise this varies a lot between individuals.

I nearly always do side planks and handstands to waken up the shoulders as I don't want to dislocate them ever again. I've got creaky hips and right knee so I'll sometimes add some frog squats and single leg squats. As I get older I need to spend longer warming-up (no shit!) and I often now do 20-30 mins of something before trying hard. None of this applies to a 20-sometihng about to do a board session.

Where you're going to: a good warm-up is not much more complicated than doing a gentler version of the thing you want to do and gradually build up the intensity.

Warming up for The Depot will be different to warming-up for a grit slab. If it's off vertical trad. then some frog squats and high steps are going to be at least as helpful as pull-ups. If it's pumpathon then getting a little pumped is crucial for most people. If you’re monkeying around a cave then getting your fingers recruited is a good idea. Fingerboards might be an idea if your skin is a limiting factor. My tendons usually fail before my skin so I’ve tended to warm-up on rock rather than wood.

Dose counts as much as what you do: 10 minutes of uphill hike would be a good warm-up for Cloggy, unfortunately 90 mins of uphill hike isn't.

Having said it’s good to individualise your warm-up, it’s also good to develop some kind of routine. It makes it harder to avoid if it’s a habit. Warming-up is also mental preparation, so going through the same ritual before going into battle can help put you in a better frame of mind.

Lots of good ideas above, experiment with them, design your own, then stick to it.

 

[jwi]

Is that in response to the 11+ warm up?

No just a general thought. I liked the FIFA resarch you linked by the way.

Other than that Duncan's suggestions seem good to me.

After all these years, when I get to the crag I am still psyched out of my mind and just want to climb as soon as possible. Doing something that is not climbing to start is always going to be almost impossible for me. I can really only warm up off the wall indoors.

 

[abarro81]

I don't buy the proposition that warm ups cost skin.

This might be true in some areas, but not painful crags like Margalef or Buoux IMO! If I'm warming up for redpointing I'd often just use a fingerboard to get to the point where I can dog the route a bit to warm up for a redpoint go. If I'm onsighting I need to do some actual climbing as well as hang - either by dogging a hard route or doing easier warm ups; trying to just use a fingerboard and then onsight or flash something hard has always ended up in regret for me!

 

[Liamhutch89]

To reduce the time needed to warm up, ensure you are well fueled, well rested, doing regular strength training, but are not over trained.

 

[GazM]

I recently got a skipping rope and have been taking that out with me. A few bursts of skipping get my body temperature up nicely for a chilly bouldering session.
And I enjoy looking like a lunatic.

 

[scragrock]

I recently got a skipping rope and have been taking that out with me. A few bursts of skipping get my body temperature up nicely for a chilly bouldering session.
And I enjoy looking like a lunatic. That is fortunate as i cannot recall a time when you didnt

 

[andy moles]

If someone looks like a lunatic in Easter Ross where there is no one there to see, do they really look like anything?

 

[GazM]

Thank you gentlemen.
I had it out at Higgar Tor a week ago, needed to get the blood flowing before a battle with The File on a gloomy afternoon. My pal Chris was most amused.

 

[Fiend]

I had it out at Higgar Tor a week ago, needed to get the blood flowing before a battle with The File

 

[SA Chris]

If someone looks like a lunatic in Easter Ross where there is no one there to see, do they really look like anything?

Given the general population I've met when I've spent time in the area, I would have thought it was a prerequisite.

 

[GazM]

I had it out at Higgar Tor a week ago, needed to get the blood flowing before a battle with The File

Your UKC comment of HS 4b felt a bit stiff!

 

[GazM]

Just re-read my comment and realised how it read.... superb!

 

[andy moles]

I had it out at Higgar Tor a week ago, needed to get the blood flowing before a battle with The File

Your UKC comment of HS 4b felt a bit stiff!

Climber with relative specific strength in proposed downgrade of route that favours said specific strength shocker.

 

[Fiend]

Thanks for the replies, some of these are really useful (the ones with general concepts rather than exact schedules):

In a recent podcast (Training Beta?) I think Tom Randall was talking about doing some max hangs at home before heading outside? And said the warmup last for much longer than you would think. I've been doing general warm up (jogging on spot and star jumps) then a short fingerboard session before heading out for short boulder sessions (usually time limited lunchtimes) and I can definitely get to pulling harder quicker.

I'm almost loath to give this advice fiend, as I imagine something will go ping and you'll be bemoaning yet another injury, but as Chris says, I honestly find the best warm up these days to be a 15-20 minute fingerboard warm up.
I basically warm as I would for any home fingerboard session.
Some press ups. (like, sets of 5).
Some pulls ups with jump start, sets of 5.
Some light hangs, 5s or less.
Cycling these for a bit.
The progressive loading to max through about 15-20 hangs.
Drive to crag.
Smash project.
I use this now for Dumby sport, and, despite not actually getting my latest project yet, I've always found I'm pretty well recruited and don't get injured.
Personally , too much easy volume, slow, long progressive "warm up" just fatigues my big muscles and doesn't recruit the small ones. I get less tweaks now than ever before when I used to do those warm ups.
Same for indoor sessions, whether it's pottering around on boulders, board sessions, max hangs - the *max hangs* warm up works best for me.

Cheers, both of these go along with what Process Biscuit has recommended, incorporating some hangs into my warm-up. This seemed counterintuitive to me because I thought hangs were a Serious Strength Exercise but of course I've realised that they can be done incrementally and gently to get recruited - and I have started doing them (along with shoulder shrugs) some of the time. However, see reply to duncan later.

From a sport climbing perspective, I'm not convinced that pulling on a fingerboard while stood on the ground or even hanging on a fingerboard is good enough preparation for jumping straight on your project.. I think 1 or 2 pitches of a much easier level is definitely a good idea.

In a recent Power Company podcast Kris Hampton was saying how dumb it was people saying they were saving skin by not doing warm up pitches. His argument was that if you are losing skin on the warmups on bigger holds then you won't stand a much better chance on smaller sharper holds on your project. I don't buy the proposition that warm ups cost skin. If anything, they'll be toughening up your skin so its better for your project.

By only using a fingerboard in your warmup, you're not preparing your posterior chain, abs, shoulders and other bigger muscle groups for the rigours of a hard pitch. Just warming up your forearms and fingers on a f/b won't hit these areas.

I agree entirely some of that - that an all over body warm-up is needed, especially for me with my weight, gammy legs, and tendency to seize up. I can usually get that at the crag, less so at the wall unless there's a rowing machine. I probably do need to make sure I incorporate the all over body stuff unless somehow I'm feeling perky and springy. I disagree about not saving skin - mine is very soft and sweaty and always tends to feel worst on warming up - warming up on wood has tended to help it feel ready for climbing without feeling trashed already.

I usually seem to climb best when I've had a really long slow warm-up, ideally a scenario where it happens partly naturally and doesn't feel like a chore - so normal exploratory days out, with a bit of an uphill walk and just having a go on some good easier things, rather than projecting.

For projecting I find it hard, because I'm impatient. Just recruiting arms and fingers doesn't seem to work for me - I'm sure it helps with preventing injuries, but I don't feel remotely ready to try my hardest after just doing hangs etc. Not that I always stick to it, but I consider a decent amount of pulse raising and general mobility and core recruitment pretty much essential for trying hard.

I've had plenty of experiences of the former - I remember a lot of days driving over to Ratho and feeling pretty ropey with, I dunno, manflu, indigestion, or the wall arena being -5'c, and thinking "No chance of trying hard today, I'll just punt on a load of F6bs" and then after an hour of punting on F6bs, realising I actually felt really good after that long a warm-up. I guess part of this thread is not about shortcutting warm-ups at all but making warming up for enough to forget that it's boring and do enough of it to have that sort of experience more regularly.

To reduce the time needed to warm up, ensure you are well fueled, well rested, doing regular strength training, but are not over trained.

Good point. I always find it a lot easier to warm-up (quicker, or at a higher level) if I've been doing enough climbing over previous days to feel either semi-recruited or recruitment-ready on the day (I notice this especially on sport climbing trips abroad where my comfortable warm-up grade increases by 1 every day or two). Unfortunately I do find this a bit challenging getting the balance right between keeping semi-recruited and active, and not getting injured, especially when any non-climbing activities to support climbing are almost entirely solitary and hard to motivate myself to do.

I recently got a skipping rope and have been taking that out with me. A few bursts of skipping get my body temperature up nicely for a chilly bouldering session.
And I enjoy looking like a lunatic.

The less said about the "two hours trying to skip and not managing even a single jump" the better

You're going to get lots of different answers because different people warm-up at different rates and are warming-up for different things. A warm-up for an aging crock before a hard slab will be different to a youth about to jump around a cave. It depends on where you're coming from and where you want to go.

Where you're coming from: what previously injured bits need particular care, how old you are, how much you need to warm-up - like most things exercise this varies a lot between individuals.

Having said it’s good to individualise your warm-up, it’s also good to develop some kind of routine. It makes it harder to avoid if it’s a habit. Warming-up is also mental preparation, so going through the same ritual before going into battle can help put you in a better frame of mind.

Lots of good ideas above, experiment with them, design your own, then stick to it.

Finally, as always, wisdom from The Professor Of Climbology... And actually this goes back to....hmmm I think what I was chatting about with Biscuit again. Or maybe someone else. Focusing my warm-up specifically on what I personally need to warm-up. Generally my fingers feel okay overall. As does my core. The rest of it, hmmm, elbows always on the verge of injury, shoulders always semi-impinged and creaky, legs if they're not injured, they're probably seized up. So whilst the max hangs are a good idea I do need to make sure I focus on what is most susceptible on my body. Now how to make elbow, shoulders, and knee warm-ups ""fun"".....oh :whatever:

Actually that's got me thinking, maybe I should take my MP3 player to the wall. 15 mins of tedious warming up elbows, shoulders, and knees (before some hangs and easier climbing), is going to feel a lot easier with raging gabber than without raging gabber :yes:

 

[Hoseyb]

Definitely gabber. Good pulse raiser.

Maybe interspersed with Doomcore for the more mindful exercises?

 

[mrjonathanr]

Actually that's got me thinking, maybe I should take my MP3 player to the wall. 15 mins of tedious warming up elbows, shoulders, and knees (before some hangs and easier climbing), is going to feel a lot easier with raging gabber than without raging gabber :yes:

Just ask Santa for a really powerful portable Bluetooth speaker. Not only will you enjoy yourself more, you’ll have the place to yourself. A winner all round!

 

[SA Chris]

maybe I should take my MP3 player to the wall.

The late '00s want their music system back!

 

[Fiend]

Hahaha yes. Not only that, I buy the MP3s and organise them into folders myself. Barbaric.

Anyway last night at the wall I felt my arms were semi-recruited (so I skipped hangs) but my legs were stiff and heavy as always. So as well as shoulder rehab to warm-up, I did some leg mobility, squats, moving around, and I also warmed elbows up by locking off with feet on. Nothing exciting but trying to take on board some of the stuff I've gleaned.

 

[SA Chris]

Can you even get Bluetooth MP3 players? I found an old iPod the other day and charged it up and I could accurately date to within about a month the last time I played it, based on what was on it.

 

[slab_happy]

I just use my phone with VLC on it as a music player, and Bluetooth earbuds. Will play mp3s or whatever (yes, I too buy mp3s).