How Many Days a Week Should You Climb?

If you want to make climbing your main workout, you’re probably wondering how many days a week to climb. I get it. When I started, I wanted to climb every day I could so my skills would come faster, but I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t climb every single day.

In this article I’ll walk through what the science says and what climbers actually talk about when it comes to how many days you should climb each week for the most improvement and gains.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here’s the quick version.

Most climbers should climb between 3 to 4 days per week to get the most gains while keeping the chance of tendon injuries low. If you climb more than 4 days per week, you seriously raise your odds of a tendon injury, which sets back any gains you made. As you get into harder training, it’s important to take more rest days so your body can recover enough for the next climbing session.

In general, there’s no “one recovery timeline fits all” rule. Instead, it comes down to a bunch of factors that shift depending on who you are.

On average, if you’re climbing as hard as you can for a long climbing session, then 3 days per week is about right.

If you want to climb more than 3 sessions per week, make your climbing sessions less intense or shorter so your muscles don’t need as much time to recover between sessions.

How Many Days a Week to Climb: What the Science Says

Training for climbing comes down to a lot of factors, including how long you should wait between climbing sessions. There have been plenty of studies on how long you need to recover if you want the most strength gains, and they point to something worth remembering: recovery might be just as important as the training itself. That said, the studies don’t all agree. For example, this study found no significant difference between groups that took short vs long rest periods between training sessions.

Other studies averaged out a decent rest period based on a range of factors. The trouble is those factors swing so much from person to person that an average doesn’t really line up with the general climbing community. If you want a deeper look at spacing your sessions out safely, we cover that in how to climb more often without getting injured.

There are a lot of factors that change how often you can climb, and below are the ones climbers talk about the most.

How Intense Your Climbing Session Is

Just like at the gym, the more intense your workout or climbing session is, the more time your muscles need to recover. Climbing grades play into this too. Climbing 5 routes at your flash grade, for example, is way more intense than climbing 5 routes at your warm-up grade.

If you take your muscles to the max, they need time to recover. If you just warm up your muscles, you can keep climbing.

See below for how to make your climbing session more intense.

Total Volume Of Your Weekly Training

The volume of your training covers how long your climbing session is, plus any other exercise or training you do through the week.

The more you work out, the more time your body needs to recover.

See below for how long your climbing session should be.

Training Experience

If you’re new to training or new to exercising, you’ll likely need more time to recover than climbers who have been at it longer. Elite climbers, for example, tend to climb 6 days per week with only one full rest day. But they built up to that over years, and they do a lot of recovery throughout their training days.

It takes time to get your body used to training. If you want to see how effort and frequency work together, we break it down in how often and hard should you climb to get gains.

Climbing Stage

There are three main training cycles a climber goes through. Each cycle has a specific goal that affects how often you should climb and at what intensity.

• Learning, which is a stage where you climb as often as possible and work new techniques and skills on low-intensity climbs
• Training, which is a stage where you climb 3 to 5 days a week, taking skills and techniques you’ve already learned and honing them on harder climbs until they’re almost second nature
• Performance, which is a stage that has the most rest days so you can recover 100% before a competition. This also works for climbers heading out on a trip who have a short window to send their goal climb.

Most beginner climbers spend the bulk of their time in the learning and training cycle. That said, a lot of beginners make the mistake of spending more time in the training stage when they should be spending more time in the learning cycle.

Age

Your age plays a big role in how much training you can do and how much time you need to recover. Someone in their early 20s can usually go harder and longer than someone in their 50s, no matter how fit they are.

This matters a lot if you’re comparing yourself to your climbing partners. If they’re 10 years younger than you, it makes sense that they can handle more than you can. Even if you eat fewer cookies than them.

Gender

Several studies suggest there’s a real difference between the optimal recovery time for men and women. For example, this study published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance found the optimal recovery time for strength development and function was 48 hours for males and only 4 hours for females.

How Long Should Each Climbing Session Be?

There isn’t a minimum when it comes to how long a climbing session should be. Just like the factors above, a long climbing session looks different for different climbers. If you usually climb for 2 hours and don’t feel tired or sore afterward, then you can usually climb longer or bump up the intensity.

You have to listen to your body and figure out for yourself how long your climbing session should be. In some cases you might even find that some of your climbing days should be rest days instead.

I’ve outlined three things to check below when you’re figuring out how you feel and whether you should keep climbing.

Consider Your Tendons

It can take months longer for your tendons to adapt to the demand of climbing than it does for your muscles. With that in mind, it’s important that we keep checking in with ourselves to see whether we need to give our tendons a break or if we’re ok to keep climbing.

If you read this blog often, you’ve heard this before: if your tendons hurt, stop climbing. The send isn’t worth an injury that can take you away from climbing for months.

The strength and endurance of your tendons will build over time. Grip strength training, when done correctly and safely, can increase the force your tendons can handle. There’s a full routine in our guide to grip training exercises to increase hand strength. Keep in mind that what you can handle today may be different from what you can handle next climbing season.

Consider Your Muscles

While we work our muscles and make them stronger, we’re constantly tearing them (it’s during the recovery from those tears that we build muscle growth). Some climbers are so focused on getting to the top that they don’t pay attention to soreness or fatigue in their muscles.

Fatigue and soreness are a good sign that you should either take a break and see if it goes away, or end your session and start the muscle recovery process. If you’re not sure whether to push through soreness, we dig into that in is bouldering when sore bad.

Consider Your Skin

Along with the length of your session, also think about your skin. A lot of the time climbers are so focused on finishing a specific climb, or on how their tendons feel, that they forget how long their hands can handle the constant strain on the skin.

For example, when I first started climbing, I couldn’t climb longer than an hour without my hands feeling like they were burning by the end of the session. Now my skin has toughened up and I can climb for a lot longer.

How to Increase the Intensity of Your Climbing Session

The intensity of a climbing session is based on how much energy you spend while you’re climbing. This also affects how long your session should be, and the other way around.

If you climb for a long stretch, then the intensity of your session should come down.

On top of that, if you want to take longer rest periods between sessions and still get the same value or gains as climbing more often, consider bumping up the intensity of your session to make up for it.

Below are some ideas for adjusting the intensity of your climbing session.

Take Shorter/Fewer Breaks

A lot of the time in a climbing gym, you’ll see groups sitting around chatting or taking turns between 4 to 6 people on the same route. Those breaks keep your system in recovery and lower the intensity of your workout.

Because of that, taking shorter or fewer breaks is probably one of the most common ways climbers raise the intensity of a session.

On the flip side, if you want to lower your session intensity, take longer or more frequent breaks.

Include Non-Climbing Exercises

Adding pushups between each climb, or an intense ab workout at the end of your session, is a great way to raise the intensity of your climbing session.

Sometimes climbers replace their climbing breaks with 20 pushups.

By keeping your body engaged the whole time you’re climbing, you’ll get a more intense session.

On the flip side, skip the non-climbing exercises if you want to lower your session intensity.

Climb Faster or Slower

When you climb faster, you’re more likely to burn more energy making big dynamic moves compared to slowly working your way up a route.

That extra energy makes climbing faster a good way to raise the intensity of your session.

You can also spend more muscle by climbing even slower than usual. For example, holding each handhold for at least 5 seconds before moving to the next one keeps your body in tough positions longer, which burns more energy.

Keep in mind, though, this depends on muscle fatigue and probably won’t help your technique.

On the flip side, try climbing at a more comfortable pace if you want to lower your session intensity.

Weighted Vest

Wearing a weighted vest is a great way to raise the intensity of your climbing session. It doesn’t matter how far or fast you climb, the extra weight makes the route harder on your muscles, so you burn more energy, which bumps up the intensity of the workout.

On the flip side, skip the weighted vest if you want to lower your session intensity.

Climb Inverted Routes

The angle of the climb has a big effect on how much energy it takes to get up. Not only does it tire you out faster, you’re also more likely to engage more muscles across your whole body (especially your core).

Working more muscles makes climbing inverted routes more intense.

On the flip side, climbing 90-degree walls can lower your session intensity.

When You Need A Rest Day

Until you’ve dialed in your own ability and that sweet balance between training and resting, you can feel out whether it’s ok to go climbing or if you should take a rest day based on how you feel.

Here are common signs you need a rest day:

• Sore Muscles
• Fatigue
• Pain
• Issues Sleeping
• Sickness

It took me a long time to figure out my optimal climbing session intensity paired with how often I climb each week. But if I take a day off that’s usually a training day, or even a couple of weeks off (quarantine for COVID-19, for example), then I have to readjust. For more on making the most of your days off, check out 7 things climbers should do on rest days, and if you’re still not sure when to take one, see when do you need a rest day.

For me, I’ve spent the last few months figuring out what works best. Here’s what I found:

• If I do a moderate-intense climbing session for 1 hour, then I can climb 4 to 5 days per week.
• If I do an advanced-intense climbing session for 1 hour, then I can climb 3 to 4 days per week.
• If I climb a casual-intense session for 3 hours, then I can climb 3 days per week.

Whatever number you land on, the trick is staying consistent without burning your body out, and a little structure goes a long way. If you want a short, useful climbing drill in your inbox every week, that’s exactly what Send Edition is. Each one takes about 15 minutes and it’s free, so you can level up your climbing with 15 minutes of training without adding a full session to your week.

Frequently asked questions

How many days a week should you climb?

Most climbers do best climbing 3 to 4 days per week. That’s enough to keep making gains while giving your tendons and muscles time to recover. If your sessions are shorter or lighter, you can often climb more days; if you’re going max effort, 3 days is usually plenty.

Is it bad to climb every day?

For most people, yes. Climbing every day raises your chance of a tendon injury, which can set your progress back for months. Elite climbers who climb 6 days a week built up to it over years and pack a lot of recovery into their training days, so it’s not a starting point for most of us.

How many rest days do you need between climbing sessions?

It depends on how hard you climbed. If you took your muscles to the max, you generally want more recovery before the next session, and studies point to around 48 hours for strength recovery in men. Lighter, warm-up-grade sessions don’t need as much, so you can climb again sooner.

How long should a climbing session be?

There’s no set minimum. Let your body decide by checking your tendons, muscles, and skin. If you finish 2 hours feeling fresh, you can go longer or add intensity. If your tendons hurt, your muscles are fried, or your skin is burning, it’s time to stop.

How do you know when you need a rest day?

Common signs are sore muscles, general fatigue, pain, trouble sleeping, and sickness. If a few of those show up, take the day off. A rest day now beats an injury that pulls you off the wall for weeks.

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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