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Warm-up Routine

Warm-up Routine

training • • Félix Bourassa-Moreau • Updated

Climbers often jump straight on the wall when they arrive at the gym. A proper warm-up reduces injury risk and gives you more strength for the session that follows. Five minutes is enough: cardio, mobility, a finger warm-up, specific work, and climbing pyramids.

Cardio

Raising your pulse and blood flow prepares your body for what’s coming. A steep approach to the crag, or the ride to the gym, already does the job.

For a warm-up at the gym, use this time to play and make it fun. Animal walks, modified jumping jacks, and team games are a better alternative to the standard treadmill minute. Find something you like and do it for a minute.

Mobility

Now is a good time to test your body’s range of motion. I focus on the fingers here because of the risk they carry in climbing, but equivalent work for shoulders, hips, and ankles belongs in this slot too.

Note that this is mobility, not stretching. A 2019 study in Science & Sports found that static stretching of the forearm muscles reduced isometric finger-flexor endurance in an open-hand position. Broader reviews find that holding a static stretch beyond about a minute costs measurable strength and power. Save the long holds for after the session — before it, keep the fingers moving through their range instead.

The sequence I use is the five tendon glide positions, which move the flexor tendons through their full excursion without loading them:

  1. Straight hand — fingers extended, knuckles flat.
  2. Hook fist — bend the two end joints, keep the knuckles straight. This is the one that isolates tendon glide the most.
  3. Full fist — close everything down.
  4. Tabletop — bend at the knuckles only, fingers straight.
  5. Straight fist — tabletop, then curl the middle joints, leaving the fingertips straight.

Move through all five, three times, keeping your attention on the range of motion and on what each individual finger tells you. If one of them feels different from the others today, that is useful information before you load it.

Finger warm-up

Low-intensity finger work lets blood into the small structures of the hand. Tendons and tissues warm up and get ready for the workout.

Pull on grips for 10 second intervals with 5 seconds of rest, four times through. Keep it at roughly 20–30% of your maximum — an effort you could hold well past 10 seconds without any urge to stop. Without a force plate, the test is simple: if you feel like you are gripping, you are too high.

Specific

Once you’re warm, move to more advanced exercises and grip types. This is what prepares you for whatever the session throws at you.

I use one-finger hangs and dynamic contact-strength exercises here. Both are done at low load — the point is to visit the positions and speeds you’re about to climb at, not to train them. If today’s session is a bouldering session, this is where you wake up the fast, dynamic end of things. If it’s endurance, keep it calmer.

Climbing pyramids

Finally, get on the wall. Even after a proper warm-up it’s still good practice to start with easy climbs and build a pyramid of progressively harder problems. Each step confirms you’re ready for the next one.

This is also the part most people skip when they’re short on time, and it’s the part that most reliably prevents the injury. The first hard move of the day is the one that hurts you.

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