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I had never been a gifted kind of a climber being more fascinated by Backpacking than Rock Climbing. Its been almost 2 years that I did some genuine climbing. And, I am planning to resume it very soon. But, Instead of gambling with any actual climbing place I intend to get in touch with it, and do some basic sets of exercise so that I can get back to where I was. Over this long break, I have had a major lower back injury around 8 months back and a Toe injury(which made me limp for about 2 weeks) couple of months ago during trekking.
So I want to ask for any sort of drills with which I can determine what I need to practice more so that I can get into climbing. Due to work place issue, I am going to be away from the Wall and the equipment for about a month from now. But if I can work out on something during this span in order to get into the position where I can resume, would be glad to know!

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    a similar question was asked on the fitness.stackexchange site. Does this speak to your questions: fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/11416/…
    – DavidR
    Sep 12, 2013 at 17:09
  • basically, you can't work on technique without an actual wall. But you can work on fitness and some climbing specific strength.
    – DavidR
    Sep 12, 2013 at 17:10
  • By balance, do you mean balance and efficient movement while rock climbing? I've never tried to do it away from a climbing wall. I'm not sure how much transfer there would be. You could try doing yoga poses (er, you're from India. I mean the Americanized, non-religious isometric balance pose based version of yoga that American yuppies have adopted, not necessarily real "yoga" :) ). If you're recovering from foot and back injuries, though, I'd make sure to take it easy and not reinjure yourself.
    – DavidR
    Sep 12, 2013 at 18:14
  • rei.com/product/478026/power-putty-hand-strengthener Is this what you mean by hand putty? Yeah, that stuff is pretty good. I used to use it as a warmup before climbing. You can use it for a while, with the right level of strength its pretty easy on the joints, and its a fine way to add some endurance to your grip. They're not ALL that strenuous, however. Even the hardest isn't all that hard for a strong climber.
    – DavidR
    Sep 12, 2013 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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The best practice for climbing is to actually go climbing. I have wasted both time and money experimenting with training setups at home for practicing climbing, and I have mostly been disappointed. Since then I have transitioned my efforts at home to staying in shape for climbing (slightly different from what you are asking.) Unless you want to spend thousands of dollars, have a lot of spare time and are very dedicated to replicate something that is not really replicable, I would suggest (like DavidR mentioned in his comment,) you work on general fitness (with a focus on strengthening fingers and core), and possibly loose those few extra pounds that you are not that proud of anyways.

The accepted answer for the question that DavidR linked to does a pretty good job answering the strengthening part.

Since you mentioned balance, I thought I'dd suggest picking up slacklining. I am not sure how much it helps you on the wall, but it is a fun activity and I am fairly certain that it has helped me on some pretty treacherous approaches to climbs (as far as I can recall I haven't actually fallen on bad terrain since I picked up slacklining.)

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