King of the Hill – The 2 Best Strength Training Exercises For Climbers!

A truly successful strength and conditioning program for rock climbing must include kettlebells. Kettlebell training is a hard hitting total body workout that is extraordinary for helping you to develop the perfect body to climb anything! I have included 2 great strength training exercises to help you with your rock climbing program.

1. The Single Arm Overhead Kettlebell Snatch: This is a strength endurance lift that is second to nothing when it comes down to helping you to get your body into serious climbing shape. This one exercise is a “hybrid” type lift that is both explosive and endurance based in nature. This exercise involves lifting the kettlebell from either the ground for from between your legs up to a held position above your head. This is done by you having to forcefully flex and then extend at both your hips and knees in order to create the necessary momentum to elevate the bell to a lateral position to your head.

Once you get the bell to this lateral position to your head then you must complete the lift by vertically punching your palm while locking out your elbows and shoulders. This lift promotes tremendous lat strength, shoulder stability, core strength, grip strength, and overall elite conditioning. All of these are traits that you will be glad you have while you are hanging on to the side of some cliff in the Alps!

2. The Dual Kettlebell Man Makers: Once again, this is an extraordinary lift to get your body into perfect climbing shape. For this lift you will need the availability of a pair of moderately heavy bells of equal weight. Place the kettlebells on the floor and get your body into an upright push up position. Stabilize your body on the bells. Next, execute a push up on the bells. As you ascend at the top of the push up pick one kettlebell up off of the ground and row it to your ribcage. Lower the bell back to the floor to execute another push up to row the opposite kettlebell. All of this equates to a single repetition.

By executing this lift you develop a tremendous amount of core strength, core stability, chest strength, and lat strength. Your strength training workout for climbing just went up a notch! If you haven’t included the kettlebell into your training program then you are missing out. Remember that anyone can train hard, but only the best train smart my friend!