Beyond finger-focused exercises like hangboarding, there isn’t a go-to workout program for climbers. Most climbers believe they would be better if they were stronger but they don’t know what to do. When anyone in a climbing gym starts talking about getting stronger, half the people listening will tell them to try hangboarding and the other half will tell them to Just Climb^(TM). The first advice is good if the person is already climbing hard and the second if they are a beginner. Hangboarding isn’t for everyone and neither is Just Climbing.

The most important element of climbing-specific fitness is finger strength. Nothing uses the finger muscles quite like climbing. It will take months of climbing regularly before you build up a good base and years before you are truly strong because of slow tendon developement. There are plenty of climbers who have relatively low general fitness but strong fingers and good technique because they don’t do anything but Just Climb. The best climbers have more than that: they have excellent general fitness as well.

Just Climbing isn’t worthless for general fitness. Climbing is a full body workout that ranges from short powerful boulders to long endurance routes. The problem with Just Climbing for general fitness is that it quickly reaches a plateau. This is because of the relative fragility of the fingers. For example, one of the most important elements of general fitness is core strength. Just Climbing will get your core fairly strong if you go a decent amount. However, once you are somewhat fit, your core development will be bottlenecked by your fingers.

Climbing is simply much harder on the fingers than any other part of the body. The timing of your next attempt or the end of your session is basically always determined by your fingers. A normal climbing session can last 1-2 hours but most of that time is spent resting the fingers between attempts and the session usually ends when the fingers are too tired to continue. The fingers are getting stronger and so is the core, but the core is not being trained with anywhere near the same intensity. Finger recovery both within and between sessions is absolutely critical because the fingers are easily injured and fatigued fingers perform poorly.

Therefore: Just Climbing isn’t enough to consistently improve general fitness. However improved general fitness is certainly useful for climbers, e.g. having the stability and mobility to back up their strong fingers. Another element of general fitness is simply the balance of muscles in the body. Since climbing is so focused on certain muscles (forearm flexors) and motions (pulling with the arms), it will develop the body asymmetrically. This is why antagonist training, especially of the forearm extensors, is important to remaining injury-free in the long term. General fitness training is a great way to ensure you are developing a healthy, balanced body.

Now that we are convinced that general fitness is useful to climbers and won’t be trained efficiently by Just Climbing, we may wonder how to train it efficiently. Luckily, since general fitness is important for every athlete in every sport, there is no shortage of information on the subject. On the other hand, there is way too much information and no consensus among climbers. This is even true among pros with coaches. To make a long story short, Pavel Tsatsouline’s Simple and Sinister (S&S) seems to be a great choice.

If you want to know why S&S is good for general fitness, I direct you to Pavel himself. He makes an excellent case. Past that, we may ask why his program is well suited to climbers. S&S consists of only two exercises: the kettlebell swing and getup. These two exercises include both types of climbing movement - the swing is dynamic and the getup is static. Both develop straight arm strength, which is a key feature of good climbing technique. Both emphasize shoulder stability and mobility. Both are full body movements.

The swing teaches you how to move from your center of mass using a fast extension of the hips, just like a dyno up to a far away hold. It is great for hip-initiated movement as well as explosive pulling power. The getup is a slow static movement which places your body under tension in various positions from lying down to standing straight up. This improves the stability of the core, hips, and shoulders as well as the ability to maintain body tension through a sequence of difficult moves.

By using lighter weights and fast dynamic movement, kettlebell training will naturally build a more agile athlete than heavier weights moved slowly and statically. It won’t cause as much hypertrophy of large muscles, especially in the legs. This is good since climbers pay a significant price for carrying extra mass. On the spectum of high mass, low acceleration to low mass, high accelation, there isn’t much more towards the latter end than the kettlebell swing. The getup, while slow and static, moves through a large range of body positions and doesn’t use heavier weight.

S&S is an effective general fitness program using exercises that nicely align with climbing-style movement. As a bonus, most climbing gyms have kettlebells. Here is a sample training plan that includes general fitness, climbing specific, and climbing antagonist training:

General Fitness: S&S  
Climbing Specific: bouldering  
Climbing Antagonist: reverse wrist curl, open hand pinch, ring pushups  

Monday - S&S, bouldering, reverse wrist curl, open hand pinch  
Tueday - rest  
Wednesday - S&S, bouldering, ring pushups  
Thursday - rest  
Friday - S&S, bouldering, reverse wrist curl, open hand pinch  
Saturday - S&S, easy bouldering
Sunday - rest

This is about a 2 hour training session. Pavel recommends S&S every day if it’s all you do but only twice a week if you do serious powerlifting. This is in the middle of that. The reverse wrist curl and the open hand pinch are from Eric Horst and are the meat and potatos of forearm extensor training. The ring pushups give you one other antagonist exercise, mostly for triceps and pectorals, but also another serious test of the stabilizer muscles.

If you can comfortably train any more than this then you are a pretty damn good athlete.

Don’t forget to eat good food.