How long your climbing session is will determine how fast you will improve at climbing, so it’s important to not make our sessions too long or too short because it will have an impact on your future as a climber. Many of us climbers still don’t know how long should their climbing routine be, and we are here to help those climbers and tell you how long should a climbing session last for beginners and also advanced climbers.
Climbing session length should be based on your current skill level, and also what your goal is, but the average climbing session for beginner climbers lasts from 1 to 3 hours long and is mostly based on the break time. For the advanced climbers that can be longer, from 2 hours to even 4 hours to get proper climbing training.
How to improve my climbing session?
You will be surprised how many things climbers tend to do in the climbing gym rather than climbing, and how much of that session is wasted on unnecessary things. Of course, the breaks between every single attempt are needed and shouldn’t be skipped, but there are a lot of things that climbers should avoid to improve the productivity of every climbing session:
- Losing time on the phone – If you bring your phone with you rather than leaving it in the locker in the changing room, then you have to use it only for useful things like a timer or a stopwatch. Unfortunately, most of us bring phones with us to have fun on social media in the meantime, for example, TikTok, or Instagram. It feels almost like a habit but it will drastically lengthen your climbing session time.
- Taking longer breaks than necessary – In most climbing gyms you can find a special place with snacks or a coffee machine. Many people can’t even imagine a workout without a coffee break, but it cost that precious time of yours. That’s why it’s good to have something like a stopwatch to monitor your break time, that will keep you focused on your climbing session.
- Chatting with friends – Climbing alone can be very depressing, but on the other hand, whenever we invite our friends to the climbing gym we will be forced to slow down the pace of our climbing session. It is fun to bring your friends or a partner with you to a climbing gym, but it can lengthen your climbing session by even 3 times. The time passes the fastest with your friends.
Those are the 3 main factors that will make your climbing session longer and less productive. Note that those are going to make your climbing session more effective and productive, but they will also reduce the pleasure of each climbing session.
It’s a double-edged sword, and you have to pick what will be better for you. Maybe you will get bored of climbing due to the lack of your friends that previously supported you, or maybe you will be mad because you do like to do some stuff on your phone in the meantime, like chatting with girls or watching memes.
The most impactful factor in lengthening your climbing session is doing it with your friends, that’s the sad truth. You can try it for yourself but in one of our previous polls when we asked people “How long does your climbing session last when you are climbing alone?” and people gave us the response of 1.25 hours on average per climbing session while alone climbing.
In the other poll, we asked: “How long does your climbing session last when you are climbing with friends?”, and for that question people answered with 3.5 hours on average per climbing session while climbing with friends. So the difference between climbing alone and climbing with friends was almost 3x times.
If you want to climb alone then you can you an auto-belay device or visit a bouldering gym, where you don’t need to have anyone else belay you.
How to improve my stamina at home?
If you truly think about climbing as something that will stay with you for longer then you should definitely start your home training even today. You don’t have to go to the gym to train climbing, so even if still didn’t visit a climbing gym, then you can practice before that at your home!
Most advanced climbers use things like hangboards or other climbing devices for training at home, some even create their own climbing walls in their apartments, but there are small versions of hangboards that are easier to attach, and also they are way cheaper than the average hangboard used by professional climbers. Navaris rock climbing fingerboards are a nice start for less experienced climbers and they are also way cheaper than other climber training tools.
With this simple hangboard you will be able to train even before you visit your climbing gym, and also when you won’t be able to travel that far away from your home. Using a fingerboard is the perfect way to improve your stamina which will let you climb longer without being pumped out so quickly!
Is only 1 hour enough to get good climbing training?
Many people can’t spend more than an hour on the climbing session, due to the work hours or any other reasons, that’s why they are asking about 1 hour of the climbing session, and is that enough to improve as a climber? As a short answer, we have to say, yes it can be enough time to get a proper and effective climbing workout.
Just don’t get distracted by the things we’ve described above, and use climbing training equipment like a hangboard. If you can measure the time between every climbing attempt for breaks then you will be surprised how fast you will get tired. Even if your breaks will be longer than 5 minutes, then 1 hour should be enough to get you tired.
Even when we add a proper warmup then you still can get tired in that one hour. You can have trouble making that on the first try, but after a few tries, you will know what problem types and exercises are making your body tired more efficiently.
In summary – How Long Should A Climbing Session Last?
If you are focused on a good and efficient climbing workout then even 1 hour will be enough to get you tired, but most of us are doing climbing for fun and not on a competitive level, so we also want to have some fun while doing that, and that’s why we don’t recommend you to force yourself to get a shorter climbing session, just take your time, chat with your friends if that’s what makes your climbing sessions special!
