Part I: The Principles

For too long now, climbers have assumed that certain exercises—as opposed to the manner with which they complete those exercises—inherently increase power output. Unfortunately, this mistake often means that many climbers are completely wasting their time when they think they’re training power. The most obvious tool to pick on here is the campus board, but since this article is about off-the-wall power training, I’ll hold my tongue for now.

But why train power off-the-wall?

Simply put, off-the-wall power training is more objective and reproducible than on-the-wall power training, which is just climbing at a particular (in this case, high) power output. While on-the-wall training is a great way of practicing your sport, it’s different from training your physiology to better perform in your sport. Because every climbing movement is unique—every move requiring a slightly different combination of body position, power output, range of motion, and so on—non-climbing power training movements are useful to us because they are simpler to reproduce and help us train more general movement patterns that apply to a wide array of climbing movements. They are also more stable, easier to modify, and far more measurable .

What is power?

The simplest definition of power is moving quickly.

Non-climbing training movements should be as fast as possible, even heavy ones. When I say as fast as possible, however, I’m not referring to the exercise’s tempo, i.e. how long it takes to get all the reps done; instead I’m referring to the concentric (muscle-shortening) portion of the exercise. In the bench press, this is pushing the bar away from the body. With a squat, it’s standing up. With a pull-up, it’s going from a straight arm to pulling your chin over the bar. Each of these movement directions represents the concentric portion of the exercise, and when training power that’s the portion where your intention should be to move fast. By slowing down the non-concentric portions of the exercise, you’re then able to keep good form and bring the most intention to the powerful concentric portion of the movement.

Every movement, even slower ones, has a power output. Heavy loads (85+% intensity) have a power output in the .17-.35 meters/second range; lighter loads (40-60% intensity) are typically in the .65-1.0 meters/second range. But if an athlete spends all of their training time at a power output that is slower than their actual power use in their sport, their adaptations are not likely to transfer neatly to their in-sport movements.

The difference between power training and strength training

First of all, to properly understand the adaptations generated by strength training, read my previous article titled How Strength Training is Misunderstood by Climbers, which will (a) help you understand how the strength adaptations we get from exercises are specific even if the exercises themselves don’t feel particularly specific to our sport, and (b) serve as a good primer on how to train with weights. The article discussed various adaptations to strength training programs, including: coordination with the exercise; voluntary activation (muscular recruitment); antagonist coactivation; developing hypertrophy (muscle size); lateral force (dispersing load to adjacent fibers); and tendon stiffness (increasing capacity). In this article I’ll be covering the same adaptations as they pertain to power training. The good news is that we need to highlight only a few significant differences, mainly that training power is all about dropping intensity and increasing movement velocity. We must get in that 40-60% intensity range for the adaptations to be optimal for climbing.

Do not change the exercise.

Movement coordination is the biggest reason changing the exercise in your power phase is a mistake. My strength article discusses how you must become coordinated in the exercise before you can actually gain strength from it. The same principle applies to increasing power output. Too many climbers change the coordination requirements when switching from strength training to power training. They might, for example, go from doing weighted pull-ups in a strength training phase to bodyweight muscle-ups in their power training. But even though the movements look the same, they aren’t. Even though the intensity might be appropriate for power training during the pulling portion of the muscle-up (for most climbers, body weight is roughly 60% of their max), the muscle-up has no deceleration at the bar and uses momentum generated by the legs to “kip” the climber’s body into position, thereby circumventing the power requirements of the arms and back. A better way to transition from strength training to power training would be to do bodyweight pull-ups with high concentric velocity. All we have to do is move our chin over the bar as rapidly and intentionally as possible. By changing the coordination demand of the exercise, we lose the adaptation that we’re trying to gain: coordination at speed. The good news for recruitment, however, is that large fibers are naturally fast.

The strongest climbers are rarely the best climbers. The athletes who apply force quickly, slow down quickly, and move through space efficiently are far more successful at applying the strength they do have, which translates into success on the rock. Part of the challenge for many climbers is that proper high-intensity strength training methods are naturally slow, i.e. the exercises we use to get strong involve low velocity movements. That means that if we spend too much time strength training, we aren’t coordinating the large motor units at their natural climbing speed, which is fast. In the long run, this overemphasis on strength essentially slows you down, which makes little sense for performance.

Similarly, if I change exercises between my strength and power phase, I’m not necessarily coordinating the large motor units at that speed. During my strength phase, I’ll work to gain coordination and voluntary activation (recruitment) of the pull-up exercise using progressive overload, i.e. by adding weight. Once I’ve gained that adaptation and plateaued, instead of switching exercises I want to train the same movement at a lower intensity and focus on doing the concentric repetitions as quickly as possible. Switching to a new exercise—like, say, switching from weighted pull-ups to muscle ups—means learning a new skill, which misses the point since it means you have to start the coordination process all over again. Recruitment is the most transferable adaptation between a training exercise and a sport.

Don’t stress the antagonists 

Antagonist coactivation—the thing happening on the opposite side of a given joint when it’s working—is best trained at sporting speeds. This means that to optimize power output I need to train the muscles on the opposite side to relax at the same speed at which the agonists contract. If I hammer away at antagonist strength training, however, I’m likely reducing movement efficiency and, consequently, my power output. Modifying your exercise method to emphasize lighter weights and faster movements will account for what’s happening on the opposite side of the joint. Don’t try and make them even.

Your muscles won’t continue to grow.

If you gained a little muscle size in your strength training routine, don’t fret; your muscle size will reduce slightly once you move to a power training phase. This is because there will be less total time under tension for the exercises in this phase. The same goes for lateral force transmission. Because there will be less need for synergy between fibers, which is required when lifting heavy loads, you won’t get as much force dispersing to the side before going down the muscle. That’s why power training methodologies are not typically used for muscle hypertrophy adaptations, and why you don’t need to worry about putting on too much muscle weight.

Tendon stiffness doesn’t change. It stays the same.

It’s long been thought (indeed, I used to espouse the idea myself) that increasing movement speed naturally increases connective tissue stiffness. We know now that this is not the case. Moving heavy loads intentionally will increase connective tissue stiffness, which is one of the most important reasons for strength training in the first place: Building stiffness to the connective tissues of the upper and lower extremities is protective for athletes.

So what are we doing when we train power if power training doesn’t increase connective tissue stiffness?

Well—and this is likely the most critical paragraph of this article—if we properly use strength training for the required timeframe, our connective tissues will gain a stiffness adaptation, and our high-threshold motor units will be coordinated; after that, however, we need to increase the movement coordination at speed, which will automatically increase power to the working muscles and movements, which in turn allows us to apply our strength to our sport. It is that simple.

A simple analogy works well here. Imagine pulling a rock that weighs roughly 30% of your body weight with a 10-foot dynamic climbing rope: The rock will move at the speed of your muscles only after the rope has stretched to its maximum length. Now imagine you’re moving the same rock with a 10-foot static rope: The rock will move at basically the same speed as the muscles you’re using to pull it, including at the beginning of the movement. The static rope is faster because no energy is lost in the elongation of the rope—i.e. because the rope is stiffer. The same thing holds true for muscles.  A muscle’s rate of force development defines its power output/movement velocity.

Part II: The Application

If you’ve ever heard the adage, strength before speed, or have ever been told that strength training automatically makes you powerful—well, it’s true for the most part. Strength training increases power by producing recruitment gains for athletes with less training experience, particularly youth athletes. But thoroughly trained or more advanced athletes generally need a more nuanced approach with distinct training phases.

When moving from a strength training to power-training phase, use the same exercises you’ve been using  but change their intention. In general that means decreasing intensity (weight), increasing range of motion (you can flex and extend further without that extra weight), increasing the velocity or speed of the contraction part of the exercise, and focusing on coordination. While strength training, you can modify each exercise over the course of the phase to help maximize adaptation; but in the power phase isometric exercises—ones that use partial ranges of motion— should be eliminated. The full range of motion will be more insightful and trackable, especially when measuring movement velocity.

The basics of  power training.

Use a full range of motion: The body, bar, and handle must travel a certain distance to track power output. (I use a vitruvefit power meter.) Coordination loss is also more detectable with a full range of motion.

Lower the intensity: Keep the intensity in the 40-60% of max effort range for the exercise. (I personally tend to make it easy for myself and just go with  50%.) A quick example: my pull-up strength is twice my body weight. That means I can do a 1-arm pull-up, and my body weight is 50% of my max with two arms. For most adult climbers I’ve tested, their body weight is in the 50-70% intensity range.

Reduce fatigue: Fatigue is the biggest limiter for power output. If you train power when tired, the velocity will be off, and the rep-to-rep quality will reduce. This is why you tend to feel slow and heavy when you’re tired from climbing multiple days in a row. By tracking the velocity of every rep, we can easily see when the power drops. If you don’t have the option to track velocity, pay attention to the speed and coordination of every rep, knowing that every set will have a rep or two less than the previous set.

Build capacity: If we have a fixed load (50%), the right intention (i.e. movement velocity), and keep the fatigue low, we can sit back and let the body adapt over 6-10 sessions. Remember, building better power output (i.e. capacity) is the goal of non-climbing power training. It’s designed to target a movement pattern we use in our sport. The goal is to build the capacity for more powerful climbing practice.

What movements make sense to train?

Pushing: Barbell bench press or push-ups. Note in the video how power decreases as fatigue increases? We’ll talk more about that below.

Pulling: Pull-ups or inverted rows.

Triple extension: Deadlifts, kettlebell swings (if you know the skill), or box jumps.

Fingers: powerful climbing movement practice—i.e. training on a board.

How much—and when—to power train.

Choose three exercises and progress the volume over time. Two to three times per week is a good target for most athletes, though twice per week for a month should be plenty of time to gain a power adaptation. Once familiar with the stimulus, you could train power off the wall before every season or climbing trip, generally after a dedicated strength training phase. If done on the same day as climbing, it should be 4-6 hours later. If you’re new to training, do it on a non-climbing day because you’ll be sore at first.

A simple power training progression

Duration: 2-3 times per week for 3-4 weeks. All three movements per session.

4-5 sets of 4-10 reps/set at 50% intensity for 4 weeks. I propose a broad set and repetition range to give you  the ability to adjust as you  adapt to the exercises. In the first session, do five reps per set, rest two minutes between sets, and try to hit the same velocity each rep. Aim for rep consistency, ensuring that you can get within one rep of your previous set’s rep count. This method keeps the power high and the fatigue low.

Do not try to complete a predetermined rep number, and don’t evaluate the quality of your workout based on the number of reps you can complete. Remember, you’re trying to maintain your power output. As you get tired,which is inevitable, you will lose power, which means that you will do fewer reps as you do more sets. That’s normal. Eliminating junk reps (here defined as slow, wobbly ones) is the intention. If you come into each session recovered, adequately fueled, and remember that your intention is to move powerfully, you will naturally do more volume.

Here is an example of a power progression with four sets at three weekly sessions.  A sport climber might do this at  40% intensity, while boulderers will be better off adopting a twice weekly schedule at 60% intensity.

Week 1: sessions 1-3.

Session 1 reps per set 5, 5, 4, 3 = 17 reps

Session 2 reps per set:  5, 5, 4, 4 = 18 reps

Session 3 reps per set: 6, 5, 5, 4 = 20 reps

Week 2: sessions 4-6.

Session 4 reps per set: 6, 6, 5, 4 = 21 reps

Session 5 reps per set: 6, 6, 5, 5 = 22 reps

Session 6 reps per set:6, 6, 5, 5 = 23 reps

Week 3: sessions 7-9.

Session 7 reps per set: 7, 6, 6, 6 = 25 reps

Session 8 reps per set: 7, 7, 6, 6= 26 reps

Session 9 reps per set: 8, 7, 7, 6 = 28 reps

Week 4: sessions 10-12

Session 10 reps per set:9, 7, 7, 6 = 29 reps

Session 11 reps per set: 9, 8, 7, 6 = 30 reps

Session 12 reps per set: 10, 8, 7, 7 = 32 reps

As you can see, even though the intra-set volume decreases each session, the total powerful repetition number (capacity) slowly increases over weeks. When athletes use a power meter, we see that each set has the same approximate peak power, but the average power goes down over the course of each session. This methodology is power training at its finest and can be applied to any exercise, including on-the-wall climbing training, which we will cover in another article.

In the next article series, we will discuss fatigue types and how they influence our strength and power adaptations.

If you’re interested in measuring and tracking power output with your exercise check out vitruvefit here. Use the code:C4HP10 at checkout for a discount. 

For more information on Dr. Tyler, follow him on Instagram @c4hp or check out his website for online or in-person courses (link). In addition to the certification course listed above, he works remotely, diagnosing and prescribing rehabilitation (link) for injured climbers.