Those of you that do rock climbing know how important it is to have strong hands for hanging and supporting your weight, not to mention the need to have the endurance to make it through a days climb.
Your grip strength is a very important link in the chain of your climbing ability and your grip strength could be the first to go after a short time of climbing. If you add some strength training for your hands and forearms you will much better be able to hold on with less loss of endurance. Listed below are some of the exercises you should use that work great for the climber.
Do push-ups on your finger tips. If this is painful or difficult for you, try just holding yourself up in a push-up position on your finger tips for a few seconds at a time until you get stronger. This exercise will work the muscles that both open and close the hands.
Try hanging from a pull-up bar by only your fingers. Just hang on until you absolutely can not hang anymore and your fingers slide off the bar. Try the same thing using only one hand then switch to the other hand. Hang by your finger tips on the narrow ledge of a door jam above a door and hang on as long as you can.
Do not forget the rest of the body, you should find a good whole body workout that you can do. Try doing pull-ups, this is one of the best upper body exercises and it mimics climbing. Also work on your core strength which would be your mid section.
This was only an example of some of the exercises you can do for your forearms. Another great way to exercise the forearms and hands is to simply go out and climb as much as you can. This way you will work out your grip in the most realistic way.
Go to <A HREF="http://www.squidoo.com/gorillagripstrength">Grip Strength</a> for more info on how to improve your grip strength. Tim Archbold’s interests are Fitness Training and Health.
