For someone who can't do a pullup, should I climb more or workout more?

Hi, I'm new to climbing and I'm pretty weak :( 

I wasn't much of an athlete so I can't really do a single pull-up properly. I know a pullup would help, but I'm unsure if I should use my energy to climb more or train more. I climb about 5.10s in top roping and V2s in bouldering indoors. What would be the ideal solution? I really want to get better and be a better climber!

You've come to the right place Daniel. Get ready

I've seen a lot of newer climbers take training seriously and then get disillusioned with climbing. Start taking training seriously once it has taken over your life completely. Until then just enjoy climbing. 

I'm a serious weakling; it took me three years to go from beginner to leading gym 5.11s on the lead roof, where as loads of people do that their first year of climbing. But I did it with just having fun climbing and absolutely zero training outside of climbing other than some hiking and cycling also just for fun. 

I highly, highly encourage you to just have a good time and climb. It will take you very far. 

It's common advice to start thinking about training when you reach 5.11 or 5.12 outdoors. Most people never even make it to those grades, but I think that advice is about right. It's easy to overdo things training and hurt yourself, and I've done it. Once you're climbing at least 11- outdoors is I think a reasonable place to start looking into training. You'll have strong enough tendons and joints in your hands at that point to support the high loads of climbing training workouts. 

Daniel Jeun wrote:

Hi, I'm new to climbing 

Climb More.  Your biggest gains will be from improving your technique.

I would argue that if you're having to do pull-ups when climbing you're not really using much technique.

Ricky Harline wrote:

I've seen a lot of newer climbers take training seriously and then get disillusioned with climbing. Start taking training seriously once it has taken over your life completely. Until then just enjoy climbing. 

I'm a serious weakling; it took me three years to go from beginner to leading gym 5.11s on the lead roof, where as loads of people do that their first year of climbing. But I did it with just having fun climbing and absolutely zero training outside of climbing other than some hiking and cycling also just for fun. 

I highly, highly encourage you to just have a good time and climb. It will take you very far. 

It's common advice to start thinking about training when you reach 5.11 or 5.12 outdoors. Most people never even make it to those grades, but I think that advice is about right. It's easy to overdo things training and hurt yourself, and I've done it. Once you're climbing at least 11- outdoors is I think a reasonable place to start looking into training. You'll have strong enough tendons and joints in your hands at that point to support the high loads of climbing training workouts. 

Thanks for the advice! Yeah I’m just really enjoying climbing even if I’m not the best at it. I’ll take your advice to my heart :)

Gumby King wrote:

Climb More.  Your biggest gains will be from improving your technique.

I would argue that if you're having to do pull-ups when climbing you're not really using much technique.

Yeah! I’m really bad with your techniques :/ But because I’m pretty weak, it might open me more opportunities to actually learn it instead of powering through gradings :)

Climb and have fun. 

If you remember to do a set to failure of pullups after climbing and right before you head out the gym, go for it. If you have a pullup bar on your doorway and you hit that up for a few sets through the day when you can't climb for a while, cool. Don't sweat it though if you can't. 

If you want to do a pullup, I would encourage you to train for that in addition to climbing, and go for it a goal by itself.

I think a lot of climbers, with an athletic background or a naturally favourable body type, will discount "not being able to do pullups". I'm guilty of this. My girlfriend asked me "when did you do your first pullup?" and I had to admit I couldn't remember never able to do one. I can appreciate that it's frustrating and a little humiliating to hang on a bar and strain with all your might and not move an inch.

We found Jeremy Ethier's videos helpful.

It WILL improve your overhanging and steep climbing. Of course you can climb slabs at an advanced level without strength training - but you'll still have to put in your time in other ways for that.

What Kevin said. Technique should come first.

But on the subject of strength… I think much of climbing (depends on the route, of course) has much more to do with finger strength than pull up strength. 

My bar/campfire rant, is that climbing ability has to holistically build on all aspects of it self.

People who say you just need technique, are probably stronger then they think, and people who say you just need to get stronger, have better technique then they think.

Technique enables strength to be applied and vice versa. You need to be able to both float lightly, AND grunt and lunge desperately. The best climbers can switch from one to the other, on the same route, as needed.

If your climbing gym has a reasonable "normal gym" area, and you have the time, why not do some upper body strength training once a week after you climb.  

I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive, but if you do pull-up training, don’t do it instead of climbing. Do it in addition to climbing, either right after climbing, or the next morning, so you would have plenty of time to recover and feel fresh for your next climbing day.  Climbing should be your priority.

My personal experience: I couldn’t do a pull-up when I started climbing. I was pretty close, a little bit of help was all I needed, but I couldn’t do a strict pull-up. Pull-up training seemed pretty boring, and I would have needed to set up a pull-up bar, get elastic bands for assist, etc… it wasn’t a priority, so I hadn’t done any pull-ups for the first ~ 3-4 years. I just climbed.

At some point, maybe 4-5 years later (the details are hazy, lol), it came up in a conversation with someone at the gym, and I earnestly told them that I couldn’t do pull-ups.  The guy laughed in my face, and said: I’ve seen you climb, I guarantee that you can do at least one pull-up. When was the last time you tried?

So, of course I had to try then… and discovered that I could do 3.

After a couple more years of never training pull-ups I won a silly after-bouldering-comp pull-up contest by doing 10 of them on a hangboard  edge.

I don’t see a point in doing more of plain pull-ups. But I have included weighted pull-ups in the strength cycle, and explosive pull-ups in the power phase of the climbing, and it has made a difference in improving one of my weaknesses, which is power/explosive moves. 

Lena chita wrote:

The guy laughed in my face, and said: I’ve seen you climb,

I, too have this experience often. 

I also had a similar experience not being able to do pull-ups when I first started climbing. I probably climbed 5.11 outdoors before I could "do them." However, I think muscle activation is more a limiting factor than strength for most climbers who can't do a pull-ups. Negatives (jump assisted pull-up, followed my slow lower) worked well for me to get my muscles used to the movement.

Everybody here has it covered but you should do both. Spend some time slowly climbing easy routes, focusing on technique, activating your muscles and pausing between moves/weight shifts. All of the climbing that you do at this stage will make you stronger. Hit the pull-up bar for a few sets of negatives on your way out the gym door. If negatives are too hard then just hang, hang and activate your back (engage your back muscles, it's just a small shift from a free hang), activated hang and do knee raises to take your mind off the suck of hanging. Don't stress too much though, pretty much any climbing you do will make you stronger.

Mark Rippetoe has a line at the beginning of Starting Strength (novice powerlifting training program) where he talks about how, if you've not been doing anything and are weak, even running will spur strength gains. Challenge your body in whatever way it needs right now, let it adapt, then fine tune the training later when you have some base strength, starting hitting plateaus, and have a better idea of specific training needs. 

Don't rush to the hangboard. Keep having fun,.

Long Ranger wrote:

I, too have this experience often. 

Ha, thanks for the laugh!

I would add some assisted pullups to the end of every climbing session. Most gyms have a variety of bands that can be used for this, so figure out a band that makes it possible for you to do 4-8 reps and then do 3-5 sets, increasing reps or decreasing band strength as you get the the high end of those ranges. Use the minute or two between sets to do some stretching. Shoulder strength and stability are really valuable.

I pushed strength feats sixty years ago to encourage climbers to be more athletic, but a drawback is you become as interested in them as in climbing. That was fine for me at that time, but things change over the years. The comments on this thread are appropriate for this era.

John Gill wrote:

I pushed strength feats sixty years ago to encourage climbers to be more athletic, but a drawback is you become as interested in them as in climbing. That was fine for me at that time, but things change over the years. The comments on this thread are appropriate for this era.

Holy f*cking hell. Do whatever this commenter says. And frame the comment.

there are a lot of training programs with real life data. 

you need a pullup around v6 and a one armed pullup around v10. this makes sense, since you need to hang on an 18mm with both hands at around v5 and a one arm hang on 18mm at v10. my opinion is start working on them around v5 and you'll be fine. you are too early in your career to worry about pullups. instead, work on all the stuff appropriate for v2 - situps, pistol squats, etc.

Climb more. Train some. You didn't ask about the other likely issue, though. You might benefit quite a bit from losing some weight. I'm not talking about starving yourself into Olympic condition. But getting rid of an extra 10 or 15 lbs around the mid section will provide a huge boost in performance both climbing and doing pull-ups. 

22 years old?  You can do both. Just take it slow. Go climbing. Don't worry about the grades, just have fun and get a lot of climbing mileage. The technique will come. for the time being avoid overhanging stuff, just climb routes that are not so steep. Learn to use your feet.

Put a chair, jump box whatever is stable under a pullup bar and have both at such a height that when you stand fully, the bar is at your sternum... where you pull up to. Or lower a bar to that height while you are standing on the floor. Do assisted pullups using your legs as much as you need to get through the entire motion. Take weeks, months whatever. Use your legs less and less until your arms, shoulders lats etc become strong enough for the real thing.