Climbing Endurance: Muscle, Skin and Mental Training

At some point in your climbing you’ll want to climb harder and longer. The tricky part is that it’s tough to get there without, well, climbing harder and longer. That’s where climbing endurance comes in. Before you can push your limits, you’ve got to build the base that lets you keep going when your arms and your head both want to quit.

For climbing, there are three main pillars of endurance: muscle endurance, skin endurance and mental endurance. 

This article walks through all three, plus what works for building each one so you can stay on the wall longer.

Muscle Endurance

Muscle endurance is the most obvious of the three pillars. It’s also one of the hardest to build, or at least the one you notice most when it runs out and you can’t hang on anymore.

That’s probably because we treat every move in climbing as something our muscles have to power through. 

To build endurance in your muscles, you have to look after them so they last. Here are a few things worth doing:

Warm-Up

Yeah, you’ve heard the warm-up speech a hundred times, but it still matters. 

A good warm-up gets your muscles loose and ready to keep working for a long session. If you want a routine to steal, we broke one down in our 5 to 10 minute warm-up for climbing.

It also cuts your injury risk. And an injury makes it really hard to build endurance, or to train at all.

Manage intensity

When you’re building muscle endurance, pay attention to how intense your sessions are. The more endurance you have, the harder you can climb. 

While you’re still building that base though, you’ve got to keep an eye on how intense your sessions get.

Try a longer session at lower intensity, or a shorter one at higher intensity, and see what works best for you.

You can dial the intensity down by taking longer rests between climbs or picking easier problems.

You can dial it up by doing more climbs in less time or by getting on harder stuff, like steeper or overhung walls.

Diet

Most people tie muscle endurance to exercise and stamina, but what you feed your muscles matters just as much.

Eat a balanced diet and your muscles can hold their strength and rebuild the way they need to for better endurance.

A healthy diet can also shorten your recovery time, which gets you back on the wall faster.

Rest/Sleep

Just like diet, sleep matters. Get enough of it so your muscles can actually recover.

Skimp on sleep and you’ll feel the fatigue, which chips away at your endurance. Rest days are part of the same deal, and we covered how to use them well in 7 things climbers should do on rest days.

Focus on Injury Prevention

A lot of climbers don’t think about injury prevention when they ramp up their training. Besides listening to your body and how your tendons feel, it helps to build the muscles that keep you healthy. There’s more on this in our guide to climbing more often without getting injured.

For example, pushing motions like pushups build the muscles that oppose the pulling muscles you lean on in climbing, which helps balance out your shoulders and cut down on injury.

Training your rotator cuffs helps protect your shoulders too. 

Any muscle you’ve been neglecting in your climbing training is worth working so you lower your chance of getting hurt.

Skin Endurance

Even with perfect muscle and mental endurance, a skin tear or sore tips can wreck a session. That’s why skin endurance is worth building too.

Skin endurance isn’t just about calluses (which you want to keep in check so they don’t tear).

It builds from steady contact with whatever texture you climb on. If you climb in a gym, your skin needs a different level of toughness than it would on something like limestone.

Here are a few things you can do to keep your skin healthy and durable:

Sand Down Callouses

Calluses that get thicker than the skin around them are more likely to catch and tear. And a skin tear sets your skin endurance back to zero for that spot.

Use Salve

To keep your skin healthy, try rubbing in some salve. Something like Joshua Tree hand salve or Climb On hand salve can help your skin stay supple and take more abuse.

Adjust Chalk Usage

How much chalk you use changes how your hands feel while you climb. 

One way to find your sweet spot is to run a few sessions of similar length and intensity with different amounts of chalk. Then check how your hands feel a few hours later and see if you notice a difference.

Adjust Chalk Type

Try switching between liquid and dry chalk to see what leaves your hands feeling best. If you go liquid, Friction Labs makes a great alcohol-free liquid chalk that’s easier on your skin.

I haven’t tried the essential-oil-infused dry chalk like Joshua Tree’s chalk line, but plenty of climbers say it feels refreshing on their hands.

Wash Your Hands

After you climb, wash your hands. That clears off the bacteria and leftover chalk you don’t want sitting on your skin for hours.

If your sessions run long but your skin doesn’t hurt afterward, try washing your hands partway through the session too. 

Mental Endurance

Mental endurance might be the most powerful of the three pillars.

With enough of it, you can climb through some of the gaps in your muscle and skin endurance (injuries aside). If you want to go deeper on the head game, we have a whole piece on mental training for climbing.

To build mental endurance, start by getting honest about where your head’s at now and where you want it to be.

For example, in Vertical Mind (a great book on the mental side of climbing), a fear of falling can hurt you physically by making you over-grip or rush your moves. If that one hits home, our guide on how to deal with the fear of falling is a good next read.

Here are a few things to practice for better mental endurance:

Use Visualization

Visualization is a strong way to prep your body for each move. Like reading beta saves energy by knowing the moves ahead of time, picturing them first makes each one a little easier.

Positive Self-Talk

The power of positive thinking has been studied a lot. The research suggests you’ll perform better if you respond to your climbing with positive self-talk instead of tearing yourself down.

One simple way to do it is to check in with yourself mid-session and do your best to keep it positive.

Keep A Climbing Journal

Plenty of climbers use a journal to track how they felt about their sessions. 

A climbing journal is a great way to see your growth over time, and it’s handy to look back on when you need the motivation to keep training. If you’re not sure what to write down, here’s what to record in a climbing journal.

How To Keep Building Climbing Endurance

Building climbing endurance is a slow process, and where you start depends on where you’re at right now. Put in the time and the effort though, and you’ll be able to train harder and longer.

The main move is to keep working all three pillars: muscle, skin and mental endurance. 

Get stronger in all three and you’ll have what it takes to climb harder and longer. Grip strength is a big part of the muscle side, so if that’s your weak spot, check out these grip training exercises for climbers.

If you’d rather have your endurance work laid out for you instead of piecing it together, the Grip & Grind app is built for exactly that.

And if you want to stay consistent without overthinking it, join the free Send Edition newsletter. You’ll get one short climbing drill a week, about 15 minutes each, straight to your inbox.

Frequently asked questions

What are the three pillars of climbing endurance?

The three pillars are muscle endurance, skin endurance and mental endurance. Muscle endurance keeps you pulling, skin endurance keeps your tips on the holds, and mental endurance keeps your head in the game. You need all three to climb harder and longer.

How do you build muscle endurance for climbing?

Warm up properly, manage how intense your sessions are, eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep, and work on injury prevention. Balancing your pulling muscles with pushing work and training your rotator cuffs helps you stay healthy enough to keep building.

How can you toughen your skin for climbing?

Sand down calluses so they don’t catch and tear, use a hand salve like Joshua Tree or Climb On, dial in how much and what type of chalk you use, and wash your hands after (or during) a session to keep them healthy.

Does mental training actually help climbing endurance?

Yes. Strong mental endurance can carry you through gaps in your muscle and skin endurance. Visualization, positive self-talk and keeping a climbing journal are all simple ways to build the mental side.

How long does it take to build climbing endurance?

It’s a long process that depends on where you’re starting from. There’s no shortcut, but if you put in steady time and effort across all three pillars, your endurance will keep climbing right along with you.

Sara Climbing Coach, Climbing Trainer, Writer

Sara is the founder of Send Edition, author of '77 Drills to Help You Climb Better,' the creator of 'Elevate Your Climbing: Training Planner and Tracker,' and climbing coach.

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