Do Climbers Lose Power Faster Than Strength as They Age?

You can lock off on the starting hold and keep your feet on. But when you go for the next hold, your fingers brush the edge and you drop. On the next attempt, you pull harder and miss it again. Then you push through your feet a fraction earlier, and suddenly the hold is there.

That sequence captures what makes power tricky to assess in climbing. On a big move, you need to apply force quickly, and you need to apply it at the right time. Ageing can affect the first part. The second gives you something you can practise today.

Why strength and power age differently

Strength is how much force you can produce. Power depends on both force and movement speed. A slow weighted pull-up can tell you a lot about your pulling strength. A quick move between two holds asks how fast you can move your body while producing force through your arms and legs.

Research on ageing muscle suggests that power typically starts to decline earlier and falls faster than maximum strength. Part of the reason is that muscles tend to contract more slowly with age, so power can drop even when maximum force changes little. Much of the evidence comes from general muscle testing in older adults, including lower-body tests. It gives us a reason to train movement speed, while leaving open how much any individual climber’s power will change at a given age. Reid and Fielding, 2012 · Skeletal muscle dysfunction with advancing age

What a missed hold can tell you

Start with a move you can repeat on good holds. Notice where the move breaks down.

• You fall as you load the starting position. Check whether your foot slips, your grip opens or you lose body tension before you can drive upwards.
• You can hold the start but come up short on the reach. Try starting with your hips in a different position or pushing through your feet slightly earlier. If you consistently come up short with a setup that works, producing more speed may be worth practising.
• You reach the hold but swing off. Try a closer target and focus on controlling your hips after contact. The catch is a skill in its own right.

Filming a few attempts from the side can help. Compare when your legs start to drive, when your hand leaves the starting hold and where your hips travel. A small change in timing can do more for a particular move than another set of pull-ups.

Three ways to train climbing power

1. Start with a short deadpoint. Pick a familiar move between positive holds. Push through your feet, let your hips rise and aim to catch the target near the top of that upward motion, when your body briefly slows. Start with your feet staying on. Once you can repeat the catch cleanly, try a slightly longer reach or a steeper angle.
2. Practise the foot drive. Use a comfortable high foothold on a slab or vertical wall. Keep your hands on good holds and rise briskly through the high foot into the next handhold. Repeat on both sides. This lets you practise creating upward movement with your legs before you ask your arms to do more on a steeper wall.
3. Try fast, controlled pull-ups. If regular pull-ups are already comfortable, use bodyweight or assistance that lets you pull up briskly and lower under control. Keep the set short and finish while the reps are still quick. This gives you a way to practise fast pulling without adding the demands of catching a climbing hold.

A review of 20 trials in older adults found modest benefits for physical function from power training compared with traditional strength training, with low certainty in the evidence. The drills above apply the idea of moving quickly to climbing. The trials measured general physical function, so they can’t tell us how much these drills will improve a climber’s grade. Balachandran and colleagues, 2022

Fit power into a session you already do

After your warm-up, choose one short move on good holds and give it three to five focused attempts. Rest between tries until you feel ready to move quickly again. When the reach starts getting shorter or the catch gets scrappy, move on to the rest of your session. Use the same move next time and see whether you can catch it cleanly more often.

Keep your strength work if it serves your climbing. A weighted pull-up can build pulling strength, and a controlled hang can build finger strength. A short deadpoint gives you practice using the strength you have at the speed the wall demands.