Climbing at an Elite Standard: How Much Time Does It Take?

When I describe how many hours it takes to climb at an elite standard, people are often surprised. For the very best, like Lattice athlete and Olympian, Erin McNeice, training time tops out at 35 hours a week. This includes a lot of off-the-wall training like flexibility, and she doesn’t do any open or outdoor climbing, but still, that’s pretty high!

I decided to look into the training hours the average climber (working with Lattice) puts in across a week. This cohort includes people with jobs, families and other life commitments, not Olympians. A clear and linear relationship emerged: harder climbers train more, significantly more.

Firstly, I define training as anything structured with a clear intent and timings. Most climbers will climb for more hours when taking into account warm ups, social time and open climbing, but this averages out between levels. Remember, I was looking at data from climbers IN a training season. So someone climbing at an elite standard may climb outside way more in the on season, but the same amount as a lower-level climber in the training season.

My findings showed: climbers in the V1-V4 range report an average of 2.6 hours of dedicated training per week. At V5-V7, that rises to 3.2 hours. V8-V11 climbers commit 4.4 hours. And at V12+, the average is 7.5 hours per week, 2.9 times the bottom level. In practical terms, that’s over 50+ hours per month and 600+ hours per year.

An interesting finding emerged when we split the data by age. The V12+ training figure barely budges: 7.7 hours per week for under-30s, 7.3 hours for the 30-39 group. Elite climbing demands roughly the same weekly investment regardless of what age you are. This could show a clear time-commitment gateway required to perform at this standard.

What does change dramatically with age is the starting baseline. Climbers under 30 already report 4.2 hours per week at V5-V7, they’re training seriously before they start climbing at an elite standard. But climbers in their 30s report just 2.5 hours at the same grades, likely reflecting the “life squeeze”, often consisting of careers, families, and competing priorities plus, the reduced commitment requirement to reach the lower grades. By V8-V11, the gap narrows (5.5 hours for under-30s vs 3.8 for 30-somethings), and by V12+ it all but disappears.

This means that despite the complexity of life increasing in your 30s, the time commitment remains the same on average to perform at the higher levels. Unfortunately, we do not have a large enough data set for me to include older athletes confidently here, but from what I can see in our data and from my own coaching experience working with elite climbers over 50, training time actually stays the same or even goes up slightly as older athletes become more aware of how they can use training to stay healthy and as lifestyle demands reduce (e.g. kids leaving home).

One thing I want to make clear: you cannot just train more next week and jump up multiple grade boundaries. These numbers reflect average training times across a training season. That means you need to be able to maintain the training load, not just spike it next week.

If you’re keen to increase your training hours per week (or aiming to climb at an elite standard), choose a date 6-12 months in the future to work towards. Anyone can jump up to 7.5 hours next week, but to maintain this safely and use the time effectively is what’s most important. Small and consistent increases in training load will almost guarantee progression, whilst quick spikes in load will almost certainly result in a need to slow down due to injury, demotivation or burnout.

Going from 3 hours to 7.5 hours of training per week over a year works out to adding just 5.2 extra minutes each week. Small gains increased in blocks each month will be far better than jumping the gun next week and getting injured.

This is why we need to make every training hour count!

A Lattice Plan structures your week so nothing is wasted, whether you’ve got 3 hours or 7.5. 

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Sample size: 2,300+ Lattice clients.