[Scott Johnston]

This question came up at the end of our Climbing Coaches’ Corner.

max velocity+power recruitment

– how do you like to train people to increase their speed and power recruitment safely? On the wall or in the weight rooms? Is it possible while using only one modality?

[Dave Thompson]

The more specific you can make speed and power recruitment to climbing the better. For this reason if you had to choose only one modality, a climbing wall would be most preferable.  I think this post addresses how to increase speed and power for climbing on the wall: Bouldering is a fantastic power-building exercise. The key is choosing boulder problems that have movements that are uniquely powerful for you. Power here being defined as the generation of force with respect to time. There are many power exercises for climbing that are less complex than bouldering — campus boarding being one example. But the nature of climbing movement involves the generation of power using almost infinite combinations originating in all joints of the body. So simply focusing on the upper body (campus boarding) has it’s limitations. There is a relationship between power and coordination during the execution of climbing movement. Often the more coordination gained for a specific set of climbing moves, the more efficient the execution of power becomes. For this reason it is important to do movements and boulder problems where there is a need for accuracy that results in a net gain in coordination. This results in powerful movements being less ballistic and more in ‘control’. So when you can do a particular boulder problem that was once very explosive and ballistic, that has become more static and controlled, it is best to move on to different boulders that require ballistic and explosive moves that you can become more efficient on in the process outlined above.

One thing I would add is that doing these movements safely involves choosing movements that require accuracy. For this reason, powerful and high recruitment moves don’t always have to be big movements. If you desire to be able to execute big moves efficiently then it is best to choose movements that begin with bigger target holds and progress to smaller target holds.

[Author]

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