Defining Strength, Power, and Endurance.
As a climbing coach for many years I’ve run into clients who have a difficult time defining the difference in their Strength, Power and Endurance when it comes to rock climbing. Its crucial to your own understanding of your climbing to understand what these words mean, what defines them, how they are separate and how to train for them. This will allow you to truly understand your strengths and weaknesses and not confuse a bad attempt on a project with a misallocated weakness. Read below to learn the concrete definitions.
Strength: Strength in climbing can be defined by the climbers ability to withstand and hold force or pressure over time. Simply put, your ability to grip and squeeze holds, but also your ability to hold those holds over time. Strength is confined to isometric movements, and static movements only. Strength is also your muscles ability to produce maximal amount of force on an object (gripping hard). Longer time under pressure or force increases strength.
Power: Power in climbing is defined by your ability to generate movement. Not actually doing the movement but your ability to generate force in a given amount of time. You can increase power by focusing on increasing the amount of force you generate in a movement and how fast you are putting out that force (velocity). Repetitive fast movements that require high amounts of force generated increase power.
Endurance: Endurance in climbing is the climbers ability to maintain performance over time. This may be power and strength but also simply your bodies ability to do alot of movement over a long period of time. Maintaining performance in endurance requires both power and strength, but also time spent under pressure (physical movement). Increased time under lite pressure as well as different training sessions with increased time under heavy pressure is a key to building endurance.
Each of the three power, strength and endurance are crucial components to sending any boulder or route that you want too. Training all three becomes important for a big wall climber, sport climber or dedicated route climber. Training power and strength is essential to hard bouldering, and learning to identify what type of training is required for your specific project is the most valuable skill. Learn to read your routes or boulders as well as how you feel in your body in order to identify what type of training you need to help give you that extra performance edge.
