Having the strength in your hands and forearms so you can hold on to a rock wall is of the utmost importance to your surviving a great day of climbing. If your arms are getting tired long before they should be, you need to start exercising them to be more able to increase endurance and help support you. There are a lot of exercises that can be used to strengthen the forearms that are important to climbers.

If you have access to a pull-up bar or something similar, you can use it to hang by just the tips of your fingers. Allow your full weight to hang from the bar and hold for as long as you can, it would be best to hold on until you can not hang anymore and your fingers slip off the bar. Pull-ups need to also be a part of your workout. Pull-ups are the best upper body workout you can do that closely simulates climbing.

If you can already do alot of pull-ups and you think you have good upper body strength, you can start doing weighted pull-ups and hangs to increase the stress of hanging. Try hanging by one hand and hold a weight in the other for added difficulty, then change to the other arm.

You must make sure to workout your thumb also. If you have some hand grippers, squeeze them by holding the handles with your finger tips and tip of your thumb only. This will make it more difficult to squeeze and will exercise your thumb much better than using them the regular way. You should do grip exercises at least two times a week and you will see the benefits come pretty quick.

Go to Grip Strength Like a Gorilla for more info on how to improve your grip strength. Fitness Training has been Tim Archbold’s life long interest.