Applied Body Tension is a system of proven drills and progressions that can be

applied to nearly any climbing session, and is designed to be plugged into any
training plan or climbing session. These drills begin as warm-ups and progress
over time, making them appropriate for all levels of climber.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at powercompanyclimbing@[Link].

©Power Company Climbing, 2017. Please do not distribute without permission of Power Company Climbing.
Disclaimer

The exercises and information contained in this Effective Body Tension Ebook is for educational
purposes only and may not be appropriate for all individuals. Power Company Climbing and
their affiliates are not responsible for any injuries or health conditions that may arise as a result
of this Training Plan.

While Power Company Climbing will provide advice for how to do each exercise, it is solely your
responsibility to warm up properly and decide if you are capable of performing the workouts
without injury.

Climbing and training for climbing are inherently dangerous activities, and Power Company
Climbing is in no way responsible for your decision making while you are engaged in these
activities.

The information in this Ebook is meant for healthy adult individuals. You should consult with
your physician to make sure it is appropriate for your individual circumstances. If you have any
health issues or concerns please consult with your physician prior to performing any of the
workouts contained in this training plan.
 About Applied Body Tension
Climbing is a movement based sport, and there are thousands (millions?!) of different
movements to learn. That’s part of what makes climbing great… there is always room for
progress. However, millions of moves can be intimidating, so we’ve worked to deconstruct
individual movements into their primary parts. Why do moves work? Why don’t they?

We can all agree that core strength is an incredibly important part of your preparation for
climbing, but possibly more important is how you apply that strength. Applied Body Tension is a
system of progressions that will teach you to apply your core strength through your entire body,
toes to fingertip. Conversely, you will also better learn how and when to relax, and how to
toggle between the two states.

How to use this Ebook

We’ve designed Applied Body Tension so that it can supplement or be plugged into any training
program or climbing session. We’ll detail exactly where in your session each drill should fit, and
how to progress it over time. It will be to your benefit to read through the ebook, understand
the basic principles, and then start from the beginning, with breathing drills and the most basic
forms of Rooting. No matter how strong you already climb, start at the start.

Trust us.
 APPLIED BODY TENSION

Why is tension important?

Why not just core strength? The phrase ‘body tension’ is thrown around often, but it’s rarely
understood by more than just a feeling. You know when you have it: you feel tight, you’re
snappy, you can do big moves, and you don’t sag away from the wall at all, and you definitely
know when you don’t have it.
Tension, when well practiced, is the incorporation of your entire body working together
to drive you up and hold you to the wall. The body is a single piece and should be used as such.
Most climbers learn early on that they should use their legs to help push them up the wall.
While this is learned early on, many either forget this after a brief stint of working on it, or this
is where their tension practice stops.
The purpose of this Tension course is to put you on the path to learning how to use your
legs, arms, your breathing, and the keystone, your entire core, all in unison to help you climb
harder, using a well known and studied theory called Irradiation. While core strength is an
important component for overall body tension, it is only one contributing factor. Lastly, it’s
important to learn how to regulate the amount of tension that you are using.

The theory of Irradiation.

We subscribe to a theory first introduced by Charles Sherrington, a Nobel Prize winning
neurophysiologist, that is commonly called "Muscular Irradiation", in which by creating more
tension, your nervous system will allow you to do more work, as the work is spread out evenly
to muscles that aren't the prime movers. You can see evidence of this if you make a fist. It's
mostly hand and forearm. Squeeze it tighter. Now your bicep is involved. Tighter again, and you
can feel it in your shoulder. Again and your core gets involved. Now squeeze the opposite fist.
You can squeeze even tighter than before. Relax and try to make a tight fist without your bicep,
shoulder, and core. It won't be nearly as tight, even though we commonly believe that the
shoulder and core has very little to do with making a fist.
Once we learn and understand Irradiation, and practice it over time, we can start to
apply it at will to really hard moves, and those hard moves will become that much easier to do.
We can also learn to relax effectively. We do all of this through a system of drills called
Rooting.

Relax? Shouldn’t we always be under tension?

The other side of the Irradiation coin, which is equally as important as tension is
relaxation. Just as being fully relaxed the entire time you try to climb hard is a bad idea, but so
is being completely tense. While tension helps us make harder moves while staying in greater
control, it has to be regulated both between moves, and during easier sections of climbing.
Learning how to toggle between tension and relaxation is an important skill that comes with
practice.
Instead of thinking of the Tension/Relaxation relationship as a switch where you are
either 100% one or the other, it’s better to think of it as a dial from 0-10, with 0 being you fell
asleep in a laydown rest on route or on your crashpads, and 10 being when a boulder falls on
your friend and you are trying to lift it off of them. Performance lies somewhere in between.
For sport climbers, you might spend most of your time around a 2-3 while ramping up to
around a 6-8 for a crux sequence, and then immediately down regulating back to a 3 to not
pump out. For boulderers, the opposite might be true. Most of the time might be spent at a 5-
7, or 8-9 during very difficult crux moves, while still needing to be able to relax to a lower level
in order to conserve energy or to not pump off on longer boulders.

THE TENSION SCALE: 0 Relaxed, 1-3 Easy Climbing, 4-6 Strength Endurance, 7-9 Cruxing, 10 Danger

How do I breathe? Or do I?
Yes, you do, most of the time. While it can be beneficial to hold your breath and
forcefully exhale to create the extreme tension required for the most difficult moves (think
Chris Sharma’s famous “tsaaattttt”), it is even more important to learn to properly breathe
while generating the tension required to keep you on the wall. The higher on the Tension Scale
you can learn to deep breathe (diaphramatic breathing), the better off you will be. Research
has shown that improper “chest” breathing can raise heart rates, which we want lowered for all
but those most difficult moves. The idea is to learn to deeply breathe “behind the shield” as
Pavel Tsatsouline puts it. You’ll practice this in its simplest form using an exercise called 90/90
Breathing, and employ it on the wall using Rooting drills.
 What’s all this talk about Rooting?
Rooting, at its core, is leveraging your contact with the wall as much as possible. The
most obvious way to understand the concept of rooting is to think of a tree “rooted” to the
ground. It doesn’t take much for a small tree to connect to the ground so strongly that you
can’t pull it up.
The idea here is to connect yourself to the wall in this same manner, using every point
of contact to further the “root”. This doesn’t, however, mean that you are squeezing
everything as tense as possible. Like we’ve already mentioned, relaxation is an important part
of the puzzle. The tree remains upright in a strong wind because it is able to bend and sway,
while only remaining “rooted” where it needs it most.
This style of practice is based off of the principle that the body is single piece and should
be trained as such. Your arms, legs, and core are not independent of each other when climbing.
As you work your way through these drills, the intention is to learn how to seamlessly integrate
your entire body together while climbing.
Within the Rooting “system”, we’ve created a progression of on the wall drills that can
be practiced indefinitely over time, and scaled up or down to match the level of difficulty
necessary.
Why do I need to practice?
One of the most important aspects of mastering any sport, or learning any skill, is
effective, deliberate practice. As climbers it is common for us to go into the gym and try to send
harder than we ever have the entire time we’re “training”. No other sports practice looks like
this. Instead, most athletes spend a large portion of their training time doing drills to work on
the basic building blocks of their sport. Gymnasts, fighters, ball athletes, cyclists, board athletes
and most others approach their practice this way.
We at The Power Company believe that the generation and application of body tension
to be one of those basic building blocks of climbing that needs to be practiced.

How do I practice?

An effective practice contains several important elements. First, we must “reach”

beyond our current “comfort zone” into the “learning zone”. If these Rooting drills feel
awkward and foreign at first, and make you feel a little clumsy, then you’re in the right place. As
the drills begin to feel better at the current difficulty, then it’s time to progress them onto
slightly harder problems so that you return to that clumsy feeling. This doesn’t mean that you
should start trying drills at your project level. That will likely put you into the “panic zone”,
where there is too much going on for you to process it all at once, and you’ll not learn nearly as
fast as if you step it down a notch or two. Instead, start at your warm-up level and proceed
from there, no matter what grade you climb.
 Next, we must have feedback. If you can get feedback from a partner or coach, that is
gold. If not, video is a good substitute. If you are particularly body aware, you can often give
yourself the necessary feedback. Did you notice that you sagged away from the wall at the last
moment, making latching that little crimp more difficult?
Finally, we must make small adjustments. You noticed that you sagged away from the
wall, so on the next attempt you try to create more tension at the end of the movement. If that
proves to be a consistent problem, then you can step the difficulty down and add extra Power
Pauses into your warm-ups.
Don’t discount the cumulative effect of good practice and consistent feedback. Keeping
a record of your sessions, and looking back periodically to see where things were going wrong
or right, will enable you to either repeat the good habits or make bigger, further reaching
changes to how you approach your sessions. We’ve developed our Process Journal for exactly
this reason.
 Exercise Descriptions
This is a list of all of the exercises and drills that you’ll be learning and using, along with in depth
descriptions and video links for each. Some of these concepts are nebulous, and you’ll get better
at them with time, so stick with it, even when it at first feels difficult to connect with.

*NOTE: Each Exercise title is a clickable link that will take you to a video of the exercise.

Contrast Warm-ups (AKA Sloth Monkeys): The purpose of this exercise is to get comfortable
with both slow, controlled climbing and faster, more dynamic climbing. You’ll be using this drill
during your initial warmups each session.
Choose a problem that you will climb two different ways, back to back. First, climb the problem
slow and slothlike. Don't hold static positions. Instead, continue a very slow movement. Move
smoothly, but without generating momentum for each move. Feel the necessary body positions
and pull or push yourself into them. Keep your body in position and close to the wall while
moving by keeping your core tight, and focusing on using your legs through the entire
movement.
Next, climb the same problem with momentum. Rather than slowly moving into and through
the body positions, you'll drive harder with your legs and let the momentum carry you through
the movements. If it's better to cut feet and let them swing rather than walking them on holds,
do so. Stay in control, and still keep your climbing smooth.
Exaggerate the movements while you're climbing! The goal is to really explore what it takes to
climb this way. Don't just go through the motions!
The sequence may change between the two efforts. What's important is that you start to learn
which sequences work best for which situation.
With time, you'll begin to get better at feeling when to employ each technique while on harder
problems, and switching between the two will become a smoother, faster process.

Rooting (Legs): The purpose of this exercise is to learn to generate as much power as you can
from your legs. Be sure to drive or pull with your legs throughout the entirety of the movement.
Practice going between using your legs to push yourself through the move, and using them to
pull yourself towards the next hold.
It’s natural to generate a lot of power to initiate a move and then immediately take your focus
away from your legs and put it solely on your upper body and hands. Be aware of this
happening and try to keep your awareness on driving through your lower body.
This is a practice of coordination. Start on easier boulders that you can do without having to
think too much to complete them. As you do this drill over several sessions, it will require less
thought to execute, so you will be able to practice it on harder and harder climbs. The correct
difficulty of climb should be one where it feels about as hard to mentally focus on the drill as it
does to physically execute it.
Rooting (Arms): The purpose of this exercise is to learn to drive with your arms throughout the
entirety of a movement. It’s natural to generate a lot of power to initiate a move and then
immediately take your focus away from the holds that you are still on, and focus on the hold
you are going to.
As you are reaching with one hand for the next hold, turn your focus to the other arm that is
still in contact with the wall. Drive with that arm all the way through the move until just after
you latch the hold. If you stop driving too early, you will hit the hold without enough tension,
causing your body to sag away from the wall and increasing the strain on your fingers.
This is a practice of coordination. Start on easier boulders that you can do without having to
think too much to complete them. As you do this drill over several sessions, it will require less
thought to execute, so you will be able to practice it on harder and harder climbs. The correct
difficulty of climb should be one where it feels about as hard to mentally focus on the drill as it
does to physically execute it.

Rooting: The purpose of this exercise is to learn to continuously drive with your legs and your
pulling arm throughout the entirety of a movement. This is the combination of the Rooting
(Arms) and Rooting (Legs) drills. It’s common to generate a lot of power to initiate a move and
then only focus on the hold you are going to. By using your pulling arm and your legs to
continuously drive through the entire move, you can teach yourself to make larger moves, as
well as arrive to the desired hold with more control and tension. As you start to make a move,
use your legs to initiate the movement. As you are reaching with one hand for the next hold,
engage the other arm that is still in contact with the wall. Drive with that arm and your legs all
the way through the move until just after you latch the hold. If you stop driving too early, you
will hit the hold without enough tension, causing your body to sag away from the wall and
increasing the strain on your fingers. This is a practice of coordination and awareness. As you do
this drill over several sessions, it will require less thought to execute, so you will be able to
practice it on harder and harder climbs. The correct difficulty of climb should be one where it
feels about as hard to mentally focus on the drill as it does to physically execute it.

Hovers (Before and After): This is the most static variation of rooting. Choose boulders that
are moderately difficult for you, but that you won't fail on. Just below your flash level is a good
place to start. Do both variations on the same problem, back to back.
First, Before Hover. Climb the problem, but pause immediately when your hand leaves the
hold you’re on. Hold that position for a couple of seconds… keep your legs, core, glutes and lats
engaged, and then slowly continue the movement. Repeat for each move.
Next, After Hover. This time, when reaching for the next hold, pause your hand over the hold
you are going to for about 2 seconds before actually taking the hold. Be sure to try and engage
all of your body when you lock off. Tighten your core, pull or push with your legs, and really
lock your arm into position.

Power Pauses (False Starts and Dead Stops): This is a dynamic variation of rooting. Again,
choose boulders that are moderately difficult, but that you won’t fail on. Just below your flash
level is a good place to start. Do both variations on the same problem, back to back.
First, False Start. When initiating the move, pause just as you leave the hold and create tension
in that position. Pause there only briefly, and then attempt to “explode” from that position. It
may help to swing your arm in the “discus throw” technique to help create momentum. Start
with controlled tension and then create momentum from “the hole”.
Next, Dead Stop. When doing moves, use momentum to initiate the move, but right as you are
about to make contact with the hold, create as much tension through your arms, legs and
midsection as possible to slow yourself down. Start with power and end with controlled
tension.
The moves should be so large or dynamic that coming to a full stop or creating full momentum
is incredibly difficult or impossible. What’s important is that you learn to create tension at these
inopportune moments. This drill will help you learn to do large moves to poor holds and slow
yourself down enough to latch them. It will also help you to create momentum “out of a hole”
when you may not have two good holds to explode from.

Hardstyle Rooting: Used primarily as a finisher, the goal of this drill is to develop the skill to be
able to quickly engage the high level of tension required for difficult moves and then disengage
it once the move has been completed, back to only the necessary tension required to continue
climbing. Effortlessly toggling between relaxation and extreme tension is a skill that is required
in high level climbing.
Along the Lines of the Rooting drill where you emphasize driving through your arms and
legs, in this drill we will add a layer of extreme (7-9) body tension to each move by using a
strength technique known as Irradiation. This exercise is meant to develop full body tension
that is required for high-level movements. For your first few sessions, this exercise is to be done
on boulders around 50% of your max. Over time, you can increase the difficulty of the boulders
until it is close to your max. However, it’s better to have the boulder be a bit too easy and be
able to fully focus than to have it be a bit too hard, and miss the point entirely.
For each move, you will focus on driving through your arms and legs for the entirety of the
move, just like in Rooting, here we are going to add in tightening your midsection, glutes, lats,
and grip for each move. After you stick the hold that you are going for, hold the tension for a
second, and then relax and settle into the body position needed for the next move. Next,
create tension through these areas again to complete the next move. Do this for every move on
the boulder.
When climbing for performance, this skill should only be used on moves that it is needed for
because it does require a lot of focus and energy. However, for the purpose of practicing, you
will use this technique for every move.

The following exercises are used in the Integrated Tension Practice (ITP) sessions.

90/90 Breathing with Hip Lift: Lie on the floor with your feet raised and against a wall, so that
your knees and your hips both create a 90 degree angle. Create tension through your core and
legs to lift your hips slightly off of the ground. It can be helpful to put your hands just above
your navel so that you can feel where and how your lungs are expanding. Breathe in through
your nose for approximately 3 seconds, forcing the air to fill your belly first, and expand
outward before filling the top half of the lungs, which expands your ribcage and causes your
chest to rise. Next, exhale through your mouth for 4-6 seconds. Pause 2-3 seconds and repeat.
Practicing this drill during your warmups and throughout your session will help it to become
more automatic, and you’ll improve at breathing “behind the shield”.

Pistol Squat Progression: This exercise is intended to provide a tactile sense of how Rooting
(Legs) should feel. Pistol Squats are a little too advanced for some, so we’ve created these
progressions to work into them, while still giving you a tactile sense of how the Rooting Legs
drill should feel. First, Assisted Pistol Squat. Use rings, a vertical bar, a hold on the wall, or the
wall itself to assist you in a pistol squat. Next, Box Pistol. Using successively lower boxes, sit
down onto them with one leg and stand back up. Next, Rolling Pistols. Lower down with one
leg, keeping tension as you get as close to the ground as possible. Once there, roll back and
then forward, using that momentum to stand on one leg. Finally, Full Pistol. Hands in front of
you, free leg in front of you. Squat on one leg to a nearly seated position. Stand again, trying
not to wobble to either side.

Uneven Campus Pullups: This exercise is intended to provide a tactile sense of how Rooting
(Arms) should feel. This can be done on campus rungs, holds on a bouldering wall, or rings.
The important aspect is that the low hand does quite a bit of work to facilitate the pullup,
including switching from pulling to pressing, as will often need to happen on the biggest,
dynamic moves.

Rooting Arms Bumps: This exercise is intended to give you a tactile sense of how Rooting
(Arms) should feel, particularly if the Uneven Campus Pullups are either too difficult or don’t
provide the tactile sensation for you. Get on a wall with two holds at roughly the same level.
Bump out to full extension. Do reps in several directions… up, diagonal, and lateral. Pay
attention to the work that the low arm needs to do for every bump. This is the same work that
your low arm should be doing for every move during Rooting Arms. Only do this on a wall that
is at an angle you feel comfortable on.

Hardstyle Plank: This exercise is intended to provide a tactile sense of how Rooting should feel.
What makes this plank different from the norm is that during the plank you are trying to keep
EXTREME tension in your entire body from the shoulders down (not in your head and neck).
After you assume the plank position, squeeze everything HARD... dig your toes into the floor,
squeeze your legs and glutes, push your fists into the floor to create tension in the shoulders,
and breathe while maintaining tension through the whole body. It sounds too easy. It isn't. Be
mindful of tightening every muscle... it's incredibly difficult to do this. Inevitably, you'll be
focused on one muscle, only to realize that you've lost tension elsewhere.
BE SURE TO BREATHE!
You'll hold this position for ONLY 10 seconds. If you're able to do it much longer than that, then
you aren't applying maximum tension. Be sure to breathe throughout the entire plank!

Hardstyle Climber Plank: This exercise is intended to provide a tactile sense of how Hardstyle
Rooting should feel. Get into a hardstyle plank position, with your feet roughly 2 feet apart
from each other, or a little beyond shoulder width apart. Create tension as though in a
Hardstyle Plank, and without letting you hips or shoulders move or lean to either side, alternate
between reaching each hand straight forward and tapping the ground in front of you, and
raising a knee into a “crawling” position. Be sure to breathe. All 4 movements is 1 rep. After
each rep, relax into about a 2 or 3 on the Tension Scale for a breath, and then create tension
again and repeat. To progress the difficulty of the exercise, move your feet closer together and
move slower.

Now I know all about Rooting. How do I use it?

While there are literally thousands of different ways that Rooting and Body Tension can
be programmed into your training or climbing sessions, we’ve settled on a progressive,
effective way that we like to use.
Number one, start at the beginning. It doesn’t matter if you climb 5.10 or 5.14. Start at
the beginning, with Contrast Warmups. Use these in every session, as part of your warm-ups.
Put a little more focus on the side of things that makes you feel most awkward or hesitant.
From there, we suggest practicing Rooting (Legs) and Rooting (Arms) at the same time,
and doing them back to back on 3-5 problems of a variety of angles, styles, and grip types.
Spend about 4-6 weeks with those drills alone before you move on. It’s common for us to want
everything all at one time, but research has proven time and again that focusing on fewer
elements at a time speeds up the learning process. Take it slow. You’ve got time.
Below is a diagram of how the Body Tension Drills build on one another. Jumping
ahead, no matter how good you believe yourself to be at body tension, will result in an
incomplete interpretation of the drill. Don’t move on until you understand the previous level.
Like I said, you’ve got time.

THE BASIC BODY TENSION, OR ROOTING, HEIRARCHY

 How do I introduce new drills? Just jump in?

You could certainly jump straight in, but as we’ve already mentioned, the sensation
you’re looking to achieve in these drills can be nebulous. Instead of spending a week or two
not knowing if you’re “doing it right”, we’ve developed a light week to be used between phases
that can also serve to introduce the next drill in the hierarchy. This light week can be used in
conjunction with the important “deload” week that you’ll find in many training plans. We call it
Integrated Tension Practice (ITP).

Integrated Tension Practice (ITP)

The goal of ITP sessions is to give you a tactile sense of how each drill should feel. For
these sessions, we’ve paired each Rooting Drill with a physical exercise that isolates the basic
feeling that is the focus of the drill. This is a practice of awareness. Focus your attention on the
way that the low arm works in an uneven campus pullup, and attempt to recreate that work
during Rooting (Arms).
These ITP sessions aren’t meant to be a workout, per se. Rest as much as is needed for
high quality reps. Remember that adding fatigue to the mix is another thing to distract you from
learning the feeling of the drill. However, as time wears on and you’ve spent a considerable
amount of time learning these drills (months), it can be advantageous to slightly raise the
difficulty of the drills, or after even more time (years) to add a layer of pump to the ITP
sessions. That is, of course, way down the road.
During a deload week, 2-3 ITP sessions is generally plenty. In these sessions you’ll be
doing Supersets, which means that you’ll do each exercise in the set, back to back, then rest
and repeat. Here’s how your very first ITP session might look:

ITP WEEK #1

90/90 Breathing with Hip Lift: 3 sets of 5 breaths.

Contrast Warmups: 2-4 easy problems each way.

3 Round Superset of:

Uneven Campus Pullups or Rooting Arms Bumps: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Arms): 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Pistol Squat Progression: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Legs): 2 easy problems

After you’ve done a week of Rooting (Arms) and Rooting (Legs) ITP, follow it up with 4-6 weeks
of climbing or climbing training in which you practice Rooting (Arms) and (Legs) each time you’re
climbing, starting always with your warm ups and very slowly progressing the difficulty of the drills.
Afterward, you’re ready to add a new drill to the mix.
 ITP WEEK #2

90/90 Breathing with Hip Lift: 3 sets of 5 breaths.

Contrast Warmups: 2-4 easy problems each way.

3 Round Superset of:

Uneven Campus Pullups or Rooting Arms Bumps: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Arms): 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Pistol Squat Progression: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Legs): 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Hardstyle Plank: 3 ten second reps
Rooting: 2 easy problems

Just as above, complete a phase of practing the Rooting progressions you’ve learned, and you’re
again ready for another ITP week.

ITP WEEK #3

90/90 Breathing with Hip Lift: 3 sets of 5 breaths.

Contrast Warmups: 2-4 easy problems each way.

3 Round Superset of:

Uneven Campus Pullups or Rooting Arms Bumps: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Arms): 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Pistol Squat Progression: 3 reps each side
Rooting (Legs): 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Hardstyle Plank: 3 ten second reps
Rooting: 2 easy problems

3 Round Superset of:

Hardstyle Climber Plank: 3 reps
Hardstyle Rooting: 1 easy problem

During the phase following this ITP week, use Hardstyle Rooting as a session finisher. It’s a far
too physically difficult drill to do early in the session. Don’t forget to breathe!
 What about Hovers and Power Pauses?

Good catch! We’ve found that practicing all of the Rooting Drills as both Sloth and
Monkey is extremely effective, and leads you right into the more focused drills of the Hover and
Power Pause family.
We suggest that after practicing Rooting (Arms) and (Legs) to a fair level of proficiency,
that you can then add Hovers and Power Pauses to your session near the end of your warmups.
We often add Hovers to a strength workout and Power Pauses to a power workout.
Alternatively, you can focus your efforts on the style of movement that is most awkward for
you. If you’re a lock off master ala Daniel Woods, practice Power Pauses. If you have Alex
Puccio-like control of big moves, then practice Hovers.

Can you walk me through a general climbing session?

For sure, I know this can be confusing. Below I’ve detailed exactly how a full climbing
session could look after you’ve learned all of the Rooting progressions. In this session I’m using
a superset that we really like to use for the Rooting Drills after you’ve spent time learning them
all. I’ve also linked to a few of our other favorite drills and exercises.

Movement Prep/Warmup

90/90 Breathing with Hip Lift: 3 sets of 5 breaths.

Contrast Warmups: 2-4 easy problems each way.

2 Round Superset of:

Rooting (Arms): 1 easy problem
Rooting (Legs): same problem
Rooting: same problem

2 Round Superset of:

Rooting (Arms): 1 mid problem
Rooting (Legs): same problem
Rooting: same problem

Hovers or Power Pauses: 2 moderate problems each way

Perfect Repeat: 1 difficult problem, 3-5x

Limit Bouldering: 45 minutes or 3 problems

3 Round Superset of:

Hardstyle Climber Plank: 3 reps
Hardstyle Rooting: 1 easy problem
 What now? Where do I go from here?

Go climbing. Practice. Learn. We urge you to be creative in your practice. Stretch and
Reach. Make mistakes. Make Adjustments.
Run through a few cycles of Applied Body Tension and then explore your own ideas.
Group the drills together differently and see what happens. Try to repeat something difficult
that you’ve done using the principles of Hardstyle Rooting. Make it a project.
We’ve been somewhat purposely vague and left a few things open-ended for you to
explore through on your own. We hope this encourages you to really delve into these areas and
take more liberties. Get creative and have fun with it. This isn’t a prescription. We don’t have all
of the answers. Applied Body Tension, how we see it, is a suggestion. A nudge toward a better
climbing practice. A place to start.

THE POWER COMPANY PROCESS JOURNAL IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO ENSURE THAT
YOUR PRACTICE IS PRODUCING THE RESULTS YOU DESIRE. CLICK TO LEARN MORE.
 ABOUT THE AUTHORS

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, we’d love to hear from you. Email us at
powercompanyclimbing@[Link]

©Power Company Climbing, 2017. Please do not distribute without permission of Power Company Climbing.