4 exercises to improve climbing flexibility!

If you're like me and flexibility is something that you neglect then this video is for you. I met up with a flexibility coach to get some easy to incorporate drills to add into your climbing training to help you get the most out of your mobility. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Welcome back to another video with my guest Fran. So you'll have seen a couple of videos with Fran and I now climbing at The Hangar in Sheffield but in this session we're going to be going through a strength and conditioning routine that you can integrate into your climbing training to improve your flexibility. So what have you got? Yeah so it's a sort of a superset so we're going to cycle through four exercises for legs. I will show the sort of technique and the sort of form of it and then we'll go through the sets and reps that you can approach with or without weight so you can kind of adapt it to your needs and to your abilities. Yeah I'm trying to make this as accessible so we'll give a few options of gravity floor not floor based stuff so yeah let's get into it. Let's go. This is really good for any double heeling, double toeing or just single heel. We'll start with just one round of warming up the muscles. If you feel good then you add like the weight to it. This is called a good morning elevated pancake. Simple, medium, a bit stronger with the weight you wouldn't be out here. You just stick out the bum, keep the spine really long and try to get all the way until you can't go any further which means potentially for people who can't sit on the floor it might just be here and that's fantastic because this is the highest percentage of tension compared to the gravity. If you're going over your sort of parallel level of the ground then the gravity is less but if you're up here the gravity resistance is more hopefully it makes sense and so you can do maybe like a couple of rounds just to get this sort of softened out. When you sit on a bench for this purpose imagine that you're sitting right at the edge so that your sit bones are kind of coming out so you almost feel like you're spilling already and then obviously you need to find the right balance between falling off the bench and being on it but that's it and then get the sort of width that doesn't have to be your full width something that you're semi-comfortable keeping your feet on the ground and your knees fully long then choose maybe start with the hands on the hips stick your chest up and then come down as far as you can go. Not far. There you go that's perfect then hold it there for a couple of seconds and then slow return as well perfect so we want to aim for a slow tempo here because if you go it too fast your muscles will perceive that tension happening your brain will be like nope no thank you and it will make you freeze sooner than what you can actually go so aim for so three down two hold and three up nice do you feel it working? Yeah in my like hamstrings yeah yeah yeah that's what we want yeah yeah again one more you hoped to get out of it sooner okay so from here we get standing we're going to come into a whole stand squat really good for frogging really good for anything that has to do with your hips open on the wall here again we want to stick the bum out ever so slightly so think ballerina is really straight no we want to like be out so it's softer it doesn't pinch in the hips only a few people will have the right the anatomy to not stick the bum out and go wide but majority of people will need to do this little trick of sticking the bum out and start usually I take three or four steps out so one two three four usually that's average for people when you become really comfortable you can go wider we rotate ever so slightly out perfect knees try and keep track onto the toes and then I just want you to squat as deep as it feels good trying to keep the spine straight you should feel a bit of a pinch there maybe at the back and then slow tempo up again yeah yeah yeah yeah perfect good we're doing two more so we're going down for three two one we hold for one two we go up three two one that's a lot usually harder than if you did like this yeah it's a complete different training this is fast twitching you do it for diners this is to get the depth this is to prime the muscles to hold those positions as well really good nice so before we get into the next flexibility drill I wanted to have a quick word from the sponsor of today's video which is Squarespace so I have been working with Squarespace for a few months now but I have been using Squarespace to host my online website and store for much longer than that recently we launched our online store hannahmorrisbouldering.com through Squarespace and honestly they just made it so easy to integrate everything we needed to integrate all in one space what I'm finding particularly useful about hosting our online store with Squarespace at the moment is their mobile app which means that I can keep track of things like inventory and orders whilst I'm on the go the app is super easy to use I just pull it up on my phone it lets me know when a new order comes in it lets me know when stock is defeated or running low so if you are in the market for a then I absolutely recommend Squarespace head to squarespace.com forward slash hannah morris and then when you are ready to launch use the unique code hannah morris for 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain so since that your bum is in line with your knees there I would like to try and go a little wider that's kind of an indication that you can go a bit wider so it feels a little stronger but you should have the mobility to do it perfect beautiful nice now stay there see if you can rock more weight onto one side like you were on the wall perfect and then all the way to the other side good very nice back to center and all the way up yeah yeah nice okay this is something you can do in like sets reps always low tempo yeah nice final one for the flexion hip oh no two more actually one for hip flexion is this so let's hold onto a bar so you don't have to worry about balance and what we're going to do is we're going to squeeze and hold it would be more ideal if you could do this so lift the heel as well because most of the time when you're climbing you're not bringing your knee to the wall you're bringing your foot so for climbing purposes grabbing hold of the foot if you can't grab hold of your foot with your hand very likely you can use a band or strap anything you're going to bring it to a height that feels semi-uncomfortable squeeze hold hold it for like as far as you can maybe like 20 30 seconds would be really good then you grab hold of it again go a little higher squeeze hold good and then a little more it's like three times and then squeeze hold that leg it's my maximum and you can see yeah because i'm shaking like mad and then that fires up hip flexor and the standing leg which is really important in climbing because you have to keep the tension through the lower foot right if you if you lost the tension through the lower foot you'd just be slipping through so great one i'm going to give it a go so if i trained one-to-one with clients i would be the one holding the leg so i can be meaner you can hold on to harder if you want perfect then you want to start with sort of like imagine you're bringing the phone to a foothold so let's start here good squeeze and then hold nice tall tall tall tall good do you feel the shake yeah good so relax now and then we'll bring a little higher really think about compacting here good and squeeze hold there nice strong yes breathe breathe okay great last one relax we'll go a little higher that's it that's the one flex the foot as well it might help you so the ankle sorry flex the point whatever so it's nice and strong either way okay as long as it's active let's squeeze and hold you got it yes yes look it's shaking yes good nice release so eventually you want to aim for this leg not to come forward so at the moment you were kind of like sinking a little bit it's fantastic for when you're applying it on the wall because that gives you immediate range of motion but when you're training flexibility you want to be a bit more like specific and isolating the parts of the body that you want to work with um yeah other leg some people train it up to failure so if you want to be really mean with yourself you can like continue doing it until that leg just drops down and instead of allowing it to drop down you're trying to contract in as many places as possible on the way down as well but this is a bit more sort of intermediate work so if you're just starting off three times is more than enough you'll have a lot of doms tomorrow okay squeeze hold final effort nice like contract everything stand as tall as possible yeah good good good five four three two one well done then it's usually like but awesome so we've seen this we've seen this we've seen that now for the hamstring this is usually the preferred one for people because like i the only thing that has always been flexible in my body has been my hamstring so the rest i had to work really hard hamstring i can do this without warming up like i just i've always been able to do that so i understand that it doesn't come up to my head for me as first form of flexibility but a lot of people are like yeah right so to make it very accessible we're doing a b stance which means that we're working on a single leg instead of doing two legs together you're going to offset your stance ever so slightly and working specifically onto the front leg um this one can have a slight bend as long as you feel comfortable this one is steady and long so yeah almost like you're sat into a reverse lunge so this knee is bent and the leg is extended perfect same principle as the pancake we want to stick the bum out and then we think i call this a sandwich we make a sandwich from the belly to the thigh your hands are your ham tofu salmon whatever you're into we squeeze and we try and compress we don't bend the front leg we only bend the back leg do you feel the hamstring yeah good you go as far as it feels good without rounding your back and the same thing you hold you squeeze and then slow tempo up quite strong already yeah yeah good a few more if you feel wobbly through your stance you can take the back for a little wider that might help nice very good see you're just about to run here so this is your stopping point yeah yeah yeah yeah good one more very good yeah yes yes yes yes amazing nice the little trick that you can do if you want to work on your calf as well is to flex the foot this is a little stronger on the hamstring so if you have really tight hamstring i would avoid flexing the foot but if you have a somewhat okay then you're gonna flex and then here just pulls a little lower it pulls into the calf so it's a really nice stretch if you want to get those that that back of the leg as well so it's small adjustments same thing on to the other leg b stance is what we call a stance with b legs together but yeah perfect long front leg bent back leg sandwich to the front leg sometimes i teach this in classes and i'm like i'm really sorry if you're hungry i'm gonna i'm about to make a metaphor with food good yes yes yes keep extending nice so one thing that hannah's doing really well already without me saying anything and she's not pivoting from the hips so you want to make sure that they're quite steady which means that you're not bringing one hip more forward and one hip more back she's really really steady here this is what we need to make sure that it's done somewhat correctly you can then vary it for a variety of movement but this is the main one good that i feel like this leg is a little tighter isn't it yeah it feels it definitely not going down as far nice awesome so you've got your four exercises now just for the sake of showing with weights we're gonna do like a tiny little circuit just five reps each one all together one like 30 seconds in between and i would suggest start with one set like just go through the motions of the four exercises once if the next day you're still able to walk and you don't feel too bad then maybe you can think about increasing it slowly it's really important not to jump straight into the deep end of things i've done that too many times and then i just ended up walking like a penguin the next day so recommended take it slow and easy yes um you can start with a 2.1 since it was already quite challenging okay and then we'll do the same round okay five reps on each one so we start with the front kick then we come into the whole stance squat then we come into the hip flexion this one you don't need the weight and then we come into the V stance okay okay so i will do the floor version of some of them so you can see how you can change it as well and you can use the bench for the first one yeah nice so we'll just do well if it feels too much five reps you can do less like three but just for an idea the weight can be here can be at the back let's start nice and slow yeah we go down exhale slow and steady pause one two and then up one two three good then straight into horse sound squats so usually i just pull myself up this one is better to do standing either motions it's the most successful with the weight i use it like this but you can also have it here it's better widen the feet find the width that works best and we take a deep breath in stick the bum out exhale three two one pause two one and up three two one you can feel after the second or third rep that it's beginning to find it'd be a little harder to come up good hip flexor this one will just do more of a like a slightly less of a engagement so we're not holding for seconds i just want you to take your knee up try and extend the foot then bend the knee bring it higher extend it higher good and then a little more good and then back down tall through the standing leg good nice i knew you were gonna cheat it out nice same on the other side start with a comfortable height extend up and then up again good obviously i'm already compensating as well because i'm finding it hard so you will feel a bit of movement but you do the best you can final one our legs so b-stands with the weight this is called a b-stands pike good morning you can do this so you slide the weight down just be careful because you want to make sure that you're not going straight deep and you're going nice and slow nice perfect good and then pull it up really slow back straight and then just two more each leg with the variation of the lifted heel and even if i do this quite a lot my foot is still shaking because and it never ends great and that's it so this can be as simple as your conditioning session for legs flexibility that's it you can attach it at the end of your climbing session but what happens sometimes is you're quite fatigued yeah so i would suggest keeping it as an entirely different session even on the same day like if you are a big keen climber and you climb in the evening you could do the session in the morning should still feel better than doing it straight after and that's it so i hope you enjoyed that strength and conditioning circuit thank you very much to fran for running me through it i definitely feel like i'm going to be feeling that in my legs tomorrow i think so too to be honest i'm quite excited for that but yeah thank you so much for your time as always i will leave all of fran's information in the description so do go and check her out we didn't cover the upper body um but if you want tips or hacks for upper body you feel free to hit me up and i'm more than happy to give you info