Climbers often look for opportunities to work out wherever they are because they want to get better at the sport they truly love. Sometimes we don’t have enough time in our whole day to do proper climbing training, even if that is only about 30 minutes, so we often think about removing some important activities from our daily schedule like work time or home duties, but that often leads to some minor consequences. That’s why we will solve your problem with many exercises that will let you train climbing while sitting.
Climbers to make the biggest progress in their climbing skills should focus on their forearms mostly, and there is a way you can train them while sitting. To train your forearms you will need a handgrip that will let you train while sitting, but there are some consequences to that method and also there are other ways to train while sitting so if you would like to know more then keep reading.
Can I train my forearms while sitting?
Forearms muscles are trained by using our hands because our fingers are attached to our forearms muscles by tendons, that is why if we want to increase our grip strength then we need to use our forearms a lot.
There is a great tool for that called “Handgrip” that will let you train your grip strength, on the other hand, you don’t need any fancy device to train while you are sitting. For example, you can try to stretch your arms, shoulders, and even back while still sitting before your desk.
That way you won’t get distracted too much and you still be able to do your normal daily duties using a computer. Of course, it will take time for you to get adjusted to your new exercises but we bet that it is worth the effort.
To make it easier you should try to set up the difficulty level below your normal grip strength to not get tired quickly. So you should focus on the quantity rather than difficulty at the start to not burn out quickly.
Should I train at my office?
There are a lot of climbers with desk jobs where they don’t have a lot of movement involved in their daily work routine, it is also a quick scheme to gain additional body mass which is highly unpreferred for most climbers.
That’s why you should take a few minutes of break to move around a bit, simple stretching can be a good exercise if you have only a few minutes left before you get back to work. That will also let your eyes rest from your monitor.
If you wonder if it is appropriate to train at your office then you have to know that many people do that in 2022. In the modern world, a typical desk job is getting more popular and it is not good for our health overall, that is why simple exercises during your workday are important.
If the positive aspects of doing exercises are still not enough to convince you then you can simply do them while sitting and working, they won’t require you to move away from your desk. As we have mentioned, handgrip can lower the level of stress and you can do this while working with another hand, also there are stretches for upper body parts that are preferred to do while sitting, like arms stretching and back stretching.
Also to be fair to your employer you should not do that if that will slower your performance at work, but if you lower the difficulty of the exercises then you will totally forget that you are working out at the moment.
Will exercises at the office make me smell bad?
Unfortunately like every other activity, even simple exercises will make you sweet after some time of doing them, that’s why it is a good idea to bring a shirt for a change in the middle of your workday or at least use antiperspirants to block the unpleasant smell.
Of course, that can be an issue if you are working with others in the same room, which is often called an “open space”, but if you are working from home then you can take a quick shower or change your clothes more often.
Is handgrip a good training for climbers?
A handgrip is a great tool that will let you train your grip strength which is a very important thing for many climbers. Some handgrips will even let you change the difficulty level.
The difficulty level is represented by the force generated by your grip strength, so if you set your handgrip to 40 pounds then you will need a grip strength of at least 40 pounds to do a full complete repeat.
The handgrip has many difficulty levels but the most common one is from 20 pounds to 90 pounds, that scale should be enough even for advanced climbers because you should focus on quantity over difficulty.
Of course, you can find a handgrip that will let you set up the difficulty level even at 150 pounds but you won’t use that very often unless you are one of the professional climbers.
The handgrip that is shown in our pictures here in this article is from Europe where we use kilograms rather than pounds for weight metric, and its scale is from 10 kilograms to 40 kilograms which is also a very common scale for handgrips.
Should I train while sitting?
Our muscles relax too much while we are sitting and that can lead to a decrease in their strength, and we as people who would like to prevent that behavior should look for methods that will let us stay in shape while even sitting.
It can be hard to understand how our muscles get weaker after sitting, but if you think about it from the perspective of a year or even a few years then you will understand our point of view. So if your work requires you to sit for about 8 hours at the computer 5 days a week then that will lead to thousands of hours yearly spend sitting and doing nothing than clicking your keyboard and mouse.
If you could spend that time working out or at least doing some simple exercises like stretches or using a handgrip then you will be able to maintain your fitness for a longer period of time and even increase your strength overall.
Using your time while you are not doing a lot of demanding things will do you good, so we will highly recommend you try exercising, even if you can’t do that at work then you definitely can do that while you are at home.
In conclusion – Can I train climbing while sitting?
Being a climber is often demanding and forces us to look for alternatives to train outside of our climbing gym. That’s why people do like to place a pull rod in their door frame at home to do some pullups, but some people are even crafting their own small climbing walls at home just to train while they can’t go to the gym.
One of those alternatives should be our tips to exercise while sitting so make sure to check out our stretching exercises and also handgrips if they will be enough to give you a proper workout at your workplace, without any unpleasant incidents.
If you are not sure if you should train your hands then make sure to check out our article “Are Big Hands Better For Rock Climbing? – (For Beginners)“.
