If you ask most people where their cycling weakness lies, they will more often than not say hill climbing. Nothing sucks the snap from your legs quicker than a steep uphill grade but nothing is more satisfying than conquering a tough hill. If your goal is better fitness you can’t get a better workout than a ride that hits hill after hill. As a coach, the most common questions I get revolve around how to be stronger on the hills.

Here are the four key areas that affect your ability to go uphill fast.

Climbing Power

Climbing well requires both cardiovasular and muscular endurance. Without getting too technical, the best way to get better at hill climbing is to climb. Hill repeats where you climb to the top, turn around, descend to the bottom and repeat are a great way to get a lot of hill work in a short workout. My favourite is to head out to local hill that is about 1 km long. It’s challenging with a few steep pitches with good visibility at the top and bottom, making it safer for turning around when doing repeats. Early in the season I’ll have athletes do 5-6 repeats, building to 15-20 further into the season.

When training to climb better it is important to work on both seated and standing climbing. Standing up when you hit a steep section is a good way to get up quicker and spread the load over more muscles but it only works if you work at it. When doing hill repeats, alternate doing one time up seated and the next standing. Just remember to switch a gear or two harder before you stand up as your cadence drops when you stand.

If you are a mountain biker, then heading up to your local ski hill is the best place to work on your climbing. You can do either long or steep and as it takes less time to go down than up you will spend more of your ride time climbing.

Bodyweight

This one is really simple. For the same fitness, the lighter you are the faster you will go up hill. Power to weight ratio is an exact science among pro roadies. For every 5lb you lose you will be 30 seconds faster over 5km of climbing at 7 percent grade. If like me, you can’t see your abs then work at cutting weight and you will see a big improvement in your climbing ability. Don’t lose weight too quickly though as it can negatively affect your power output. 1-2 lb per week is a safe level of weight lose without sacrificing energy you’ll need to train.

Core and upper body endurance

The legs are the prime movers on the bike but the support muscles like your arms, abs and lower back work constantly while riding. Over time they get tired and your pedaling form suffers. When it comes to climbing they work even harder so the fitter you are in your support muscles the longer and faster you will be able to climb. While your core can be the weak link on the bike the best way to train it is off the bike cross training. See the workout below to improve your core fitness and climb better.

Mental focus

I won’t lie to you, climbing is hard work. That is where both the challenge and reward come from. Part of climbing well is mental. Don’t look upon that big hill with dread. See it as a challenge to overcome. Keep telling yourself in your head that you are a good climber. Attack the little climbs like you own them.

Core Workout to improve your hillclimbing

Do this workout 2-3 times per week and you will notice an improvement in your cycling within 4 weeks. Try to do the workout with as little rest as possible between exercises. Do a set of each exercise, moving to the next immediately for a total of three circuits. As you become fitter build up to a total of 5 rounds.

3 rounds

15 dumbbell swings 15 Spiderman pushups 15 Sumo deadlift high pulls 15 seconds each of front planks and side planks to each side (build to 30 seconds)

This workout won’t take much time but will do a lot to improve your hill climbing. Put in consistent work and you will see progress in a very short time.

Bouldering is a kind of rock climbing which involves relatively short climbing distances made without a rope and without any special climbing equipment. While people climbing the face of a boulder are generally only going up a few meters, the surfaces that they climb are chosen for being particularly difficult to scale. In the United Kingdom, the routes that people use to climb on boulder faces are usually called “problems”, because it takes some thought to solve the problem of how to get to the top.

Generally the only piece of safety equipment that one will use for climbing a boulder will be a large thick pad on the ground below. This is called a crash pad – in addition, when someone is climbing on a boulder they usually have people below them on the ground who can reposition the crash pad to catch the person in the event of a fall. Most boulder climbs are also in the range of three to five meters, making it very unlikely that a fall onto the pad will result in any kind of damage.

While it is possible to climb many boulder faces without any kind of equipment at all, most climbers make use of a few basic items, such as climbing shoes, sports tape, and loose chalk which is kept in a bag on one’s belt and used to get a better grip going up. Boulder climbers may also make use of a brush to help them clean the places where they need to get a grip. All in all, however, the gear used is minimal and the only piece of really essential equipment for bouldering is a crash pad for safety’s sake.

The most popular place in the world to travel for bouldering is Fontainebleau, to the south east of Paris, France. The Fontainebleau system and the John Sherman V-Grade system are the two systems for rating the difficulty of bouldering ascents. The sport of bouldering continues to develop, and more and more difficult climbs are being located all over the world, with the most difficult one on the John Sherman V-Grade system being the Wheel of Life in the Grampians of Australia. While bouldering was originally just seen as a training method for rock climbers during the Victorian era of mountain climbing, the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century began to see the related skill sets of rock climbing, ice climbing and bouldering split off from being thought of only as necessary parts of mountain climbing and were pursued more in their own right as sports with their own specific challenges and focuses.

If Fontainebleau is too far to go for bouldering, there are also great locations to engage in the sport in Texas, California, Georgia, Alabama, and many countries such as New Zealand and South Africa. An increasing number of gyms are also making boulder classes available, so even if you live in an urban area far from a suitable climbing location you should be able to start trying it out and see how you like bouldering!