3 Reasons to Stretch in Your Warm-Up before Climbing
In today’s post, coach Josh explains the benefits of incorporating stretching into your warm-up for improved mobility for climbing.
1. CONSOLIDATE GAINS
If you’re doing flexibility training for climbing, your warm-up is the best opportunity to consolidate gains in range of motion. Incorporate these movements into your warm-up and then actively practise them in your climbing.
Athletes in sports, such as dance, taekwondo or gymnastics, will do some stretching beforehand until they can access full ROM.
This part of training is almost unquestioned in these sports… but we see it much less in climbing.
Maybe climbers should change our habits to be more like those in other sports, where flexibility and performance are synonyms.
2. WHAT ABOUT MY POWER?
MYTH: Stretching before climbing will limit my power.
This myth comes from poorly designed research, taken out of context.
More recent research has shown that practical stretching, followed by a typical warm-up, mitigates any significant loss of power.
Any loss in power still present is likely negligible (1-2%) and should not affect your session.
It may be of concern to top performers in a competition setting…
3. DON’T HAVE TIME TO STRETCH?
Most climbers will do several easier climbs before jumping on the project, or will warm-up under a hangboard or pull-up bar. While resting between sets, squeeze in some stretches.
If you are already quite flexible, this may be less important for you. But let’s be honest, most climbers need more hip flexibility!
This needs to be bumped up the priority list of things worth your time. So make time!
References:
Negative effect of static stretching restored when combined with a sport specific warm-up component
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