Product Description

Rock climbing is one of the most physically challenging sports, testing strength, flexibility, and stamina. To improve in the sport, climbers must build and maintain each of these assets. Conditioning for Climbers is the first book to help climbers of all ages and experience design and follow their own comprehensive, personalized exercise program. Part I covers the basic principles of effective physical conditioning and provides the climber with tools for self-assessment and goal-setting. Part II covers general conditioning, including warm-up and flexibility exercises, entry-level strength training, weight-loss tips, and fifteen fabulous core-conditioning exercises. Part III opens up the rich area of climbing-specific exercises, and includes twenty effective exercises to target the all-important muscles of the fingers, arms, and upper torso, with strategies for developing strength, power, and endurance. There is also a chapter devoted to a subject that is overlooked in most exercise books: training the antagonistic muscle groups that are so vital for maintaining muscle balance and lowering the risk of injury. Rounding out Part III is a chapter on stamina conditioning to increase your capacity to climb long days. The final section, Part IV, teaches how to assemble a comprehensive training program. Based on the results of the reader's self-assessment, this section guides the climber in selecting and combining exercises from throughout the book to create a weekly conditioning program. Workout schedules are provided for beginner, intermediate, and advanced ability levels. There are also special tips for youth, women, and over-fifty climbers, and information on performance nutrition, the benefits of taking planned breaks from climbing, and the secrets of reducing the frequency and severity of injuries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61176 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Eric Horst has been climbing for over thirty years. He is a performance coach who has helped thousands of climbers improve their performance through his books, magazine articles, seminars, and Web sites. Horst is the author of Rock Training for Climbing, How to Climb 5.12, and Learning to Climb Indoors, and Rock Climbing Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. He lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. .

Customer Reviews

The Only Book You Need
This book is brilliant I have read the other Falcon Guides an most of Erics books but this is like them all in one great volume with full colour photos everything you need to know about training for climbing this book will get you in superb condition for climbing!

Conditioning for Climbing
Having read and been impressed by previous books by Eric Horst I thought it was worth giving `Conditioning For Climbers' a try and I have to say I am glad I did. It offers up comprehensive training techniques in a colourful and well laid out format. If you have read `Training for Climbing' or `Learning to Climb Indoors' then some of the information will seem repetitive, but if not then this gives you a detailed and sound training plan to improve overall climbing fitness and strength. A lot of the training outlined is based on sound scientific principles and gives you confidence in trying them out. This book covers Conditioning Principles and Self Assessment, General Conditioning, Climbing-Specific Conditioning, Conditioning Program, Performance Nutrition and Injury Prevention and appendices looking at muscle anatomy and training charts. This has extensive photos in colour that illustrate the exercises being shown, and plenty of graphs and charts to back up information in the text. Horst's writing style is very easy to read and makes what can be a dry topic fun and engaging. If you are serious about improving your climbing abilities then this is the book to head for.

Excellent book
Both the content and the presentation of this book is absolutely first class. As well as being usefull for climbers of all levels of ability this would interest people who do other sports or cross training aswell.