Warming up without climbing

At the gym it's obviously very easy to warm up on easier routes and get the blood flowing, but I have a hard time getting properly warmed up outdoors if there are no real warm ups to be had, or it's a multi-pitch climb and the "easier" pitches don't necessarily warm me up for the crux pitches. Any ideas on how to get properly warmed up without actually climbing? I've tried push ups, pull ups on tree branches and I do notice that I feel more "warmed up" the longer and steeper the approach is. Thoughts, tips?

I'd recommend checking out some of the conditioning for climbing books. They go over pretty much everything you'd wanna know.

amazon.com/Conditioning-Cli…

I would think that pushups and pullups are much less effective warmups than simple stretches.

Ideal warmup: approach of at least 15 minutes (as you mentioned), then yoga, then finger stretches:

legacy.climbing.com/print/t…

Early morning session at Movement.

I always considered the approach my warm-up, with a little light finger stretching.

Jon Moen wrote:Early morning session at Movement.

Matt N wrote: Early morning coffee and a movement.

Even at the gym, I've taken to doing a floor warmup consisting up of about 2 minutes worth of jogging in place with my knees going up as high as I can and then 100 jumping jacks. Then I do arm circles for a couple of minutes. I find this cuts doing on injuries and gets a lot of my muscles warm in a way that climbing around doesn't and I'm a lot more prepared to actually climb.

I need a good 10-15 minutes of activity before I do any moves at all. Usually the approach is more than enough. If the approach is short I wear running shoes. As soon as i get to the crag I drop my stuff and run back to the car, then back to the crag again. Easy routes after that until I'm ready to climb hard.

Most people underestimAte the need to get your heart rate up before climbing. Try it. It works.

I find that one of the best ways to warm up is a good fleece layer or a sweater.

My mentor took his Rock Instructor Course from one of the Hargis brothers , Tom I think. I remember him saying that Hargis would do 2 sets of 25 pushups pre climb. A hard man's warmup I guess. Good for FAs on a Gasherbrum maybe?

Get your self a belay bitch. Learn to breath. Watch some professionals at a real crag, that looks kinda odd huh? You don't need to reach the top on the first try of the day, even if your friends think you should. Go slow. Pause half way between moves and hold it. Climb just until you feel pumped and then whimper "take". If your ego is involved, you will have a difficult time warming up. If your ego is important, than ignore everything that I just said.

+1

Whiskey.

hacky sack gets the blood flowing