Some thoughts about injury prevention, antagonist training and hypertrophy for climbers

There’s a bit of a paradox regarding non-specific strength training and climbing performance, based on conventional wisdom. On one hand, you want to strengthen the ‘opposing muscles’ to stay balanced and prevent injuries. But at the same time you also want to keep bodyweight as low as possible while maintaining good health (physical and mental); therefore, general strength training may cause too much hypertrophy. So what to do?

Great discussion of different ways to do antagonist training! Especially relevant to me as I’ve been dealing with a chronic overuse injury in my shoulder - one that could be easily dealt with if I applied some of these techniques.