Stronglifts and climbing

While Stronglifts is a great program to build strength and muscle it is not very specific to the sport of climbing. Your time is better invested on the climbing wall or doing calisthenics if your main goal is to become the next speed climbing world champion.

What are your goals

Why are you looking into combining Stronglifts and climbing? Do you feel too weak? Do you want to pack on some muscle? Are you not able to do pull-ups and want to progress towards them? Whatever it is that brought you here it is important that you have clear goals. Clear goals get clear results. Fussy goals get fussy results. When I talkative beginners in fitness their goals are often all over the place. Prioritising then is the first step to more clarity. The three big fields in fitness are:

Looks
Performance
Health

If your main priority is looks be prepared for a hard time. To achieve the perfect physique you have to say no a lot of times. No to dessert, no to the second helpings and no to fizzy drinks. Being ripped is no fun and takes hard work. Don’t be fooled by the Instagram Accounts. These ladies and gentleman peak for one week in the year. During that week they get as many pictures in as many scenarios as possible taken. These are then slowly released to the public to make it seem like they look top all year around. It’s not impossible to look great just know what you are up against. Your choices will not always be healthy or help your performance wen you prioritise looks.

If you are all about performance your focus shifts. The main driver for success becomes intensity and not the diet. You will go all out in your sessions to make them count and improve. Each day is training day. Food is your fuel, but not your main regulator of success. You want that trophy or personal record. While you go after them hard you get injured. It won’t be pretty all the time. But you don’t care. The main thing is to conquer the podium.

The last group is mainly interested in health. If you feel at home your main interest is a balance. The choices you make will stay away from the extremes. Injuries and stress do not occur. You like different types of diets just to try them out. Meditation and yoga are at the core of your routine. Traveling this road youmight not to the top or front cover, but you won’t care. You sip your tea and smile at the people who waste their time in the rat race.

As you are researching Stronglifts and climbing you most likely belong to the performance. Just determine what’s more important to you, lifting heavy or climbing high.

Stronglifts

Stronglifts 5x5 Isbone of the most popular beginner lifting programs out there. You will train three times a week performing the following movements:

Barbell squat
Barbell deadlift
Barbell bench press
Barbell overhead press
Barbell row

You will squat each session while all other exercises are being rotated. Starting point is an empty bar except for the row and deadlift. Your aim is to complete 5x5 repetitions in each session except for the deadlift. For the deadlift, it is 1x5. Once you complete the 5x5 you go up in weight. If you stall for more than three sessions on the same lift you deload by 10%.

The Stronglifts program uses linear progressive overload which is well suited for beginners. An easy way to track your development is in the Stronglifts 5x5 app.

The biggest advantages of Stronglifts are its simplicity and clear progression. You don‘t have a lot to think about and get rewarded in the beginning to keep going.

The biggest disadvantages of Stronglifts are its advertising and standardised approach. When you are especially small and light you will overtrain on Stronglifts. If you are big and strong you will be undertrained as a beginner. Stronglifts alone will also not make you ripped like van Damme even though the website suggests it. This has a lot more to do with diet than lifting.

Climbing

Climbing is about upper body and especially grip strength. Apart from that, you have to be able to read the wall you are climbing and how to build momentum.

This has less to do with maximum strength and a lot more with technique and timing. Additional muscle mass will only slow you down. Youvwant to be as lean as possible to be a good climber as every kilo counts when you hang from the side of a cliff.

You can train your grip with Captains of Crish grippers and take your climbing to the next level with peg boards. I rarely see great climbers use barbell exercises.

Should you combine Stronglifts with climbing

In my honest opinion, you are better off investing your time in pull ups, dips and a calisthenics routine than in barbell work if you want to be a good climber.

Barbell work will help with maximum strength but that is not the nature of climbing. Climbing involves the skill of performing at submaximum loads for a long period of time. It also needs you to be smart about building momentum and find the area on the wall with the most leverage. Spent your time on developing these relevant skills.