How many days should I train per week for climbing?

Data Dive: Training Days & Weekly Exercise (V4-V12+)

We analysed our data on over 2,300 climbers training and logging their sessions on the Lattice app, to try and better understand how training days and weekly exercise changes as climbers grades progress. We found, a V4 climber training with Lattice logs an average of 3 training days per week, where-as a V12+ climber logs 4. That is roughly one extra day at the elite end, a clear difference and smaller than many climbers assume when they picture how hard-grade climbers train.

The less expected finding is what stays flat. Total weekly exercises logged is nearly identical across every grade band: around 22 at every level, from V1-V4 through to V12+. Weekly session load climbs steadily but modestly, from 240 at V1-V4 to 375 at V12+, a 1.6x increase. Noticeable, but nothing like the step change most climbers associate with elite training.

What changes is the distribution. Fitting 22 exercises into 3 days gives a beginner roughly seven exercises per session. Spreading the same 22 across 4 days gives an elite climber closer to five. The elite week has more days, and each day has slightly fewer things on it.

As coaches, this matches what we see in elite practice generally: athletes do indeed complete fewer exercises per session; however, these sessions tend to be more focused on training a specific adaptation.

For beginner climbers, it’s often beneficial to complete dense, generalist sessions that develop a wide range of skills on and off the wall, build work capacity, and create a solid and complete foundation from which specific training can begin. 

However, sometimes this ‘scatter gun’ approach can actually hold beginner climbers back: it can be hard to execute each aspect of a diverse training session well. When a single day tries to cover climbing, hangboard, pulls, core, and mobility all at once, we sometimes see each element only receiving a fraction of the attention it needs.

Since elite climbers aren’t building the foundational adaptations for climbing, their training is likely to be targeting a narrower range of attributes. Typically, they will separate each aspect of their training across the 4 days, giving each session a single, tighter focus: for example, one day built around maximal hangs, another around limit bouldering, another around strength, another around conditioning or skills.

The same weekly volume, arranged and focused differently.

If you’ve hit a plateau, ask yourself: do my current sessions have a clear purpose? Or has every session turned into a bit of everything? Adding a fourth, deliberately lighter, more focused session to your week may impact the outcomes of your training more meaningfully than lengthening the ones you already have.

There are two honest caveats on this data before drawing conclusions from it:

The first is that this describes engaged Lattice users with a recorded boulder grade. These are climbers who are committed enough to log their training for months at a time. Climbers who stopped logging after only a few sessions are not in these numbers. 

The second is that the weekly load figure reflects what each session is prescribed to do, not what the climber actually trained at. 

Neither caveat changes the shape of the finding: load rises modestly, exercise count stays flat. Both matter if you are trying to read absolute numbers.

Data sample size: 2,250 active Lattice users with a recorded boulder grade, active as of March 20 2026. Weekly load is based on prescribed session intensity, not measured effort.

Data FAQ’s

Q1: What counts as a ‘training day’ or an ‘exercise’ in this data?

A training day is any calendar day on which a client logs at least one completed session. An exercise is a distinct logged entry within a session: a deadhang, a pull-up set, a climbing block, a hip flexor stretch. Sets within a single exercise are not counted separately, so one session containing four exercises counts as four, not twenty. This keeps the numbers comparable across different session types and avoids inflating the count on high-volume days. The “exercises per week” figure reflects training breadth, meaning how many different things a climber works on, rather than total set count.

Q2: Isn’t this just survivorship bias? You’re only measuring people who stick around.

Survivorship bias is real in this cohort. It includes 2,250 engaged Lattice users with a boulder grade recorded and at least one logged session in the six months before March 2026. Climbers who signed up but stopped logging after a few sessions are not counted. The findings describe engaged training behaviour, meaning what climbers do when they are committed to a plan. They are not a read on average behaviour across everyone who tries structured training. For a question about how training shape changes between V4 and V12, engaged users are the right cohort to look at. These figures should not be read as claims about every climber at those grades.

Q3: The weekly load figure is based on prescribed intensity, not actual effort. Isn’t that a weakness?

Yes, and it is worth naming clearly. Our load score reflects what a session is designed to do: the target intensity attached to the session template. It does not know whether the climber crushed every set or skipped half the work. Two climbers with the same weekly load figure may have had very different weeks in practice. That is one reason we have focused on patterns across grade bands rather than absolute numbers. The shape of the finding holds regardless of how the effort within each prescribed session plays out in practice: load rises modestly with grade, exercise count stays flat.

Q4: If the average across all grades is 3-4 days, does that mean training three days a week isn’t enough?

Three days is a workable training frequency. The interquartile range for V5-V7 climbers is roughly 3 to 4 days, and the same is true for V8-V11. There are plenty of V8 climbers training three days a week, and plenty of V5 climbers training four. How you use your days matters more than how many you have. A climber training three days a week with a clear purpose for each session will often outperform a climber training four days where the work is scattered. If you are scheduling yourself, the better question is not “can I fit another day in” but “what is each of my current days actually for”.