Different training for different body size, age and gender

In general, tall and especially female climbers should give more priority to upper body and arm strength and in fact the same goes for the skinny ones and everyone below 20 and above 40 years of age. The 25 year old guy, 170 cm and 60+ kg, have the least to gain by replacing climbing with physical gym training. However, if the muscle guys train 15+ hours with a focus on technical- and forearm training, they will probably become a better climber also by exchanging som climbing hours with gym training. (Not to mention stretching). Björn Alber, alias Dr 8a, confirms these thoughts and give some practical exaples from his training with, 176 cm tall and 22 year old Matilda Söderlund who has been #12 and #6 in the two last Lead World Championships. - Matilda is the tallest girl among the top Lead competition climbers and as the routes are very steep, she has to tackle different physical challenges compared to 155 cm Jain Kim. Lately, we have put in a greater focus on upper body and arm strength and we have seen great results. To do a pull up, lock off and rock over on the lip of a roof is much harder if you are 20 cm taller and have 10 cm longer arms. Also joint stability is greatly improved. In for example a kneedrop the kne/kneecap mechanical stability is greatly enhanced by strenght training the knee extensors. The gain by separating and training specifically targeted muscle groups in this fashion you get a significantly much faster and stronger response. In Matilda's case we are using a Swedish world patented strength training innovation, www.x-force.se,that uses negative overload and thus gives a faster and safer training response. We use 20-25 minutes once a week for this complementary training.