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Are you thinking you’d like to try your hand at some climbing competitions? While they are challenging, they are an excellent way to push yourself and to develop different aspects of your climbing. Here are a few helpful tips that will get you started on the right foot. Choosing the right event as your first competition experience will be a big deciding factor of whether you love it or leave it. For your first competition, whether bouldering or rope, pick something low key such as a local event or a citizen’s competition and register in the recreational category. Pick an event that is low stress, but one that will familiarize you with the qualifying format used by most of the bigger competitions. If you start at a more advanced competition, it may leave you feeling overwhelmed and doubting your future potential. Just remember, competitions are supposed to be fun and should leave you wanting more.

is the application of your strength training. This phase will focus on applying that pure strength and integrating it into more difficult climbing movement. Choose boulder problems that require you to jump or pull a large distance between each hold and work on trying to complete these problems. Remember to do this exercise on lots of different styles of boulders such as pinches, crimps and slopers.