I Survived 9 Days Of Climbing In A 20kg/45lbs Weight Vest 

Heyo all, hope you enjoyed watching this little experiment! Be sure to check out Crimpd and a chance to Win Crimpd+ for LIFE by downloading the Crimpd App. www.crimpd.com/

See this is why you need the hyperbolic time chamber and to turn up the gravity in there.

adding weight looks as if you're regressing to that previous version of you that climbed with less muscular strength and weaker fingers. It's cool to see how movement patterns deprove when we're physically less conditioned. Strength is essential for technique.

As someone who started climbing at 125kgs and is now 80kgs the difference is night and day. I've tried weight vest climbing a few times as well and I've got no idea how I used to climb at 40kgs heavier

As a fat climber, this is me every day.

Cool experiment! I think the drop in technique probably doesnt stem from "forgetting how to climb" while wearing the vest but it may rather be an aftereffect of your movements adaptating to the change in dynamics due to the additional weight (and then losing it suddenly). This is a very well known effect in motor learning called implicit adaptation. If you were trying something similar again, a promising approach could be to slowly increase weight while training on routes of a constant grade to build up strength while remaining your technique. Once you reach a certain weight you keep that weight but go higher in grades. Finally, reduce weight and feel super light :)

I'm tempted to give this a try for when I climb with a friend who has a weaker strength-to-bodyweight ratio. That would make it possible to emulate that, and see what could or could not work for them when looking for ideas on a climb. It's not always easy to intuitively understand what is easy or impossible for someone with a different strength.

I train with ankle weights on my home wall, and it's been very beneficial. I learn to be more aware of feet tension, and usually have an easier time sending my projects once they're off. Ned Feehally (co-founder of Beastmaker) also talks about using ankle weights in his book.

Even The campusing application has limited value for most of us mere mortals since power adaptations are promoted most effectively at lower load and higher velocity. Campusing in a 20 kg weighted vest works well for you because you strap a Volvo on for your weighted pull up training. For the rest of us it would probably make us worse at campusing all other things equal.

Just a thought. Doing a pullup with added weight doesnt really help you gain power unless you train the speed component as well by doing fast unwighted or even assisted pullups. By that logic I think the ideal use for adding weight would be for slow static climbing, to help you gain maximum strength. Then after a few weeks of that maybe transistion to doing explosive climbing on decent holds / big moves to utilise the new strength.I'll probably try it out that way at some point.

Great vid @Emil as always! One comment I would make.. 20kg is a ludicrous amount of weight to be adding (even for a muscly guy like you), hence your feelings of loss of technique after you take it off. Personally I've seen huge gains from using 3-6kg added weight (in the form of ankle weights tied around my wait). It's a really nice amount of weight to add and then try to tackle climbs that are hard-ish but would normally go down in a few tries. There's very little impact on your proprioception with 3-6kg but it does add plenty of extra stimulus to your entire kinetic chain, especially the fingers, which can help break plateaus (or at least, it has for me) or build more sport specific muscle in all the right places. Positioning the ankle weights around my waist is the most comfortable spot I've found as it simulates having some extra 'love handles' but doesn't intefere with movement at all (weight vest I always find inteferes with my shoulder/arm range of motion).

wearing that vest on the subway at 1:02 💀💀💀

Great video! Feeling vibes of good old times with the friends

Let's gooo, the video i needed !!!

Beautifully edited video, can see lots of time being spend into it! Thx for sharing your lessons! :3

Emil's a beast!! Awesome video.

Connection between weight and technique is not obvious at all. Thank you for sharing!

You know Eric Horst did this like 30 years ago and raved about it. Glad you found this useful! Great content!

Glad to see con #3 on the list. I've tried weighted vest climbing for one session and the vest made me climb poorly since I had to compensate for the extra weight, then when I took it off I still was trying to compensate so I started climbing even worse!

Wow. That is really cool! Great video and even better work developing in Costa Rica. Pura Vida!

This is actually super fascinating! I've been climbing for about 18 months now. I'd progressed fairly rapidly, but had started to plateau. I thought maybe I wasn't training hard enough, but I realised that many of my friends that were better climbers were also substantially lighter than me - I'm usually between 94-96kg and they were around the mid 70's mark. I've always wanted to know what it would be like to climb 20kg lighter!

Well done soldier Emil, more quests will appear very soon..

Wow what a cool shot with the boulder in the snow

As someone who has climbed in the range of 215 lbs - 260 lbs, let me tell you (as I'm starting the video) there is an insane difference in performance and in safety. I've only ever gotten serious climbing injuries (elbow dislocation, ankle fracture, etc.) when above 230 lbs, the weight makes a lot of differences. It creates fatiguing faster, reduced mobility, more pull on fingers, etc. props to you for trying this out! Excited to see it!

Great stuff. The change in your movement is the type of thing I wouldn't have expected but it makes perfect sense. I wonder how your climbing would have been affected by alternating between attempts with the vest on and the vest off.

I’m currently at 200lbs (90.71kg) and I’m decently lean, I could and plan to drop some weight because I’m heavier than I want to be and it could help my climbing. Used to be 220lbs but thankfully cut down on some fat because I was just not in shape. That said, I have done some weight vest sport climbing training before. It was only with 25lbs (11.31kg) but I used it for low grade climbs just to help increase the difficulty a bit since the gym wasn’t great and the small number of routes didn’t get reset often. I felt like it helped a lot, but I didn’t use it for an entire session. Increased strain to the tendons was my biggest concern when doing it, especially since I suffer from tendinitis in both elbows

I climb at ~90kg bodyweight and borrowed a 15kg weight vest of a friend of mine. The difference felt huge adding ~ 1/6th of my bodyweight. And you just added 1/4th. That is crazy.

good video, and funny. Keep up the good work

Noone: Boulderer: *tries one move* "yeah that was fun, I had a good time." I love this sport :D

I need to know where to buy that Rock Lee “Stronger than Yesterday” shirt, it’s so sick

Since your body-weight is distributed, you know, all over your body, maybe it would make more sense to strap weights all over your body proportional to the weight in that body part. I.e. if your quads are 10% of your body weight each and you want to increase your overall weight by 10kg then each thigh should get 1kg strapped to it. Maybe one on each bicep, forearm, thigh, calf and the vest. Then you'd be really close to training in high gravity.

Yeah Cordi, one of my favorite climbers!

The movent pattern disruption is why ive avoided this

I get enough injuries already at BMI 21kg/m² without any additional weight.

This is just my life over the past three years 😂 I used to weigh 180lbs at 6'3 (81 kilos 190 cm) and after a bad motorcycle accident I gained all the way up to 240lbs. Getting back on the wall was really frustrating, being so far below the limit I was used to. I'm back down to about 205lbs now, maybe aiming for 190. It's good to see you struggle with the added weight a bit too though. Thanks for all the training tips man, they've been invaluable the past year ❤

Great video! I have the same vest, I am using it for pull ups, but this is an interesting idea - to climb while wearing it 🤔 thanks for useful advice

After watching for a bit, still in awe of this guys back and grip strength for his size like what???

That made it like real climbing in the mountains with your rope, rack and pack.

As a 6' 3 / 205 lb amateur climber with a self-imposed handicap of big legs from squatting and deadlifting, this is one of the most impressive things I've seen. Emil is beasting out boulders way above my ability level at 227 lbs

JM press is a really great tricep exercise, without the chest involvement from narrow benching or the stress from french press/skullcrusher. If you've got a Smith Machine, I recommedn it for that. Perfect to get a high load and high mechanical tension isolated on the triceps in the 5-10 rep range

This was really fun! If you were to do this again, it would be fun to check out how much weight to add for certain bmi cutoffs. Bmi scales with height squared so it's a more 'fair' way to add weight to people.

I read that Ned Feehally would boardclimb in a vest sometimes but also add ankle weights to increase core strength and foot tension

Any high intensity strength focused training also requires more rest. It's a lot more taxing on the body. It'd be interesting to see you try again but with longer rests between climbing/workout days, maybe not wearing it when walking around too.

Very interesting video . I've always been relatively fit around 85kg training for endurance events but since training specifically for strength events im around 110kg i really feel it on a daily basis when doing any cardio

after doing super crazy stuff like this, I give it a SOLID 3 day rest. and you feel so good.

I have used a weight vest (10 kg) for training for alpine ski touring (randonnée). The advice that I got, and followed, was to ease into it, i.e. to do short sessions e.g. 1 hour/day, in the beginning. Since the body's muscles, joints and tendons are not used to the extra weight it is very easy to injure the body. I was therefor not surprised that Emil felt overtrained and pain in the hips and the knees. Since I eased into it, I managed to stay uninjured and I am now able to do longer sessions (3+ hours) with the vest without getting to the point where the body is in risk of getting fatigued and injured. It has greatly improved my core strength as well as the strength in my legs (I do stair training).

My current weight is 102.7kg (down from 116.3), so it was interesting seeing you climb at nearly the exact same weight. Mind you, the vest is a bit harder seeing as it's not as evenly distributed as excess body fat. It'll be a bit trickier for me to take my extra weight off, but I'll get there eventually.

I’ve always wanted to know how climbing with a weight vest for a week or more would be like, thanks Emil

You’re now officially ready for a Master Roshi turtleshell for your next training phase

i love the ghislofi format!

Looks very cool. Maybe worth having one training a week with it (or once every 2 weeks).

15:40 good warm up!

Probably useful to fine tune your training on specific boulders. If there is a really fun boulder but it is 3 grades too low to be fun for you, maybe add 20% bw so you can train on that boulder. Or if there is a boulder that you are stuck on, fiddling with your weight (lighter and heavier) may enable you to learn moves better and allow you to finish it.... though lighter is probably more useful here. In music when we learn a piece, we play it slower (lighter) and also faster (heavier) than intended in order to have our body fully understand the piece.

As somebody who got a V7 as a 250 lb climber this is incredibly validating.

You should try to use the vest only on easy boulders in the begining and only move up in grade when you feel like your movement is normal. With less weight as you said and during a longer period

Would be interesting to test it for a month, but nit with 20kg, just starting with 5kg and add when the body adjusted after a few weeks

I'm a short heavy man at 130kg and 173cm. It's pretty fun seeing them struggle with the extra weight, makes me more confident when I don't manage to go up in the climbing grades 😅

So impressive! I think I could maybe climb a V0 with that vest on 😂

Havent finished the video yet but previously done my own research into weight vest with climbing and a change in centre of mass theorised to make technique worse. Interested to see how that factors here

This reminds me of a sonnie trotter blog post I read many years ago where he tried a similar thing, I'm not sure of the weight added but similar concept for sure (basically trying to train with the weight vest a lot, I tried to find the post but I think the blog is gone). He encountered a similar problem, basically became extremely fatigued. Definitely looks like an idea worth playing around with though, and also looks like something that has a lot more utility for training pure force production, as the technical/skill transfer seems minimal/nada, or even detrimental as you mentioned. What if you progressed this very slowly? Like adding a kg a week until you reach some goal weight then back off again? That would minimize the impact on your movement, and obviously give your muscles and tendons much more time to adapt

JM Press has been a life-saver... for arm wrestling not climbing!

This is why I sorta bulked 15kg around 1.5y in, gonna stay around the +weight for a while then probably cut some fat

I’ve only ever heard that lifting technique referred to as skullcrushers.

Any strength gains? Did I overlook that part of the video? How was it beneficial for training other than understanding fatigue?

so funny yesterday I had the same idea and I thought: "hmm did anyone have the same idea before?" :D obvious yes!!

Cordi putting the weight vest on like she’s Master Chief armoring up lol

veight west training is crazy

Also as a side note coming from a bodybuilder it makes and that the session would be reduced in time as your intensity is sky rocketed your volume has to come down. I think if you did a study on this you could reduce overall training time and see the same gains as well as possibly increase frequency (if possible 😂)

interesting insights

Cool book 📕🤩

Ever heard of progressive overload? If used, I think this would make much more sense, also limiting it for certain training sessions would be better gain I guess. Did u think of working on BigIsland with additional weight? Like doing single moves with progressive overload, small linkups? I imagine that could be a real game changer for specific training at your limits...

Such a stefano move ( the start ) 😂

Love the dragon ball reference. You’ll be over 9000 in no time

05:09 Actually since Mercury has less mass than Earth, the surface gravity is less than the surface gravity on Earth.

perhaps the best way to utilize this would be more for hangboard/rungs training rather than actual boulder training

Due to some reasons (medical stuff) I gained 10 kilos in 3 months, climbing now is so hard. But i see it as a way to traing my fingers, and move better. Secretly still hope to lose that weight, but if not, that ill have to learn to climb while being heavier.

Is there any risk of injury when you take a fall on the bouldering wall with the vest on ?

Waiting for the magnus and emil video

i saw jm press in an arm wrestling youtube. wasn't sure if it worked or not. neat.

On Jupiter. On Mercury, you’d be lighter!

This could be a good way to train strength, but not power. Doing things slower is the opposite of what power training should look like :)

I’m curious as to how many grades lower you were able to achieve with the vest

I started doing this for the past 2 weeks

tendonitis homies 🫡🫡

Emil taking training tips from Goku now

Love the DBZ reference

It would be interesting to see if the results change with a more fine grained approach. Say, if the vest weighted only 10 or 15 lbs. Or if you so added weights to your lower body somehow without limiting movement. Would the more accurately distributed weight increase training lead to strength improvement without technique deterioration? Would more weight signal the body more to lose weight than it would signal to become stronger? How does duration affect all these and what is the optimal time? Great video

I tried this a few years ago to force myself to climb with more control. Cant really be dynamic on every move with 40+lbs on your back. Saw a 3 grade improvement in 2 weeks on slab.

I’ve been using a weighted vest for the last two weeks. Only using 20lbs though 45 seems insane😂, But what I realized is finding what grade is my limit with the vest and working that because it makes you really try hard compared to when not having the vest on that same grade,you just fly through it. But at the same time avoiding anything that I feel will risk injury. The way I see it if you climb with a weighted vest make climb as if you are brand new do all the low grades you possibly can.

This may be good for power training, however keep in mind that tendons take a LONG time to acclimate. As you found out with your hips and knee.

I have quite a bit of muscle from many years of bodybuilding, this video makes me feel a little better about my shitty climbing 😂

Piccolo & Son Goku's training methods :D

110kg here, I will say it's mad impressive what he can do on the campus side with that weight though. I cannot do anything near what he does, even if I dropped 10kg

I guess as a fat climber I have no more excuses when Emil could crush my proj at my weight

You should use 1kg ankle and wrist weights. A total of 4kg with the weight at the end of your body will be way harder than 20kg in the centre

@emilAbrahamsson is finally climbing at my level, weight level! 😂

Funny😅! I just bought a weight vest yesterday and tried it right away. I came to the conclusion to use it once a week. Frankly I felt like my legs were most effected by the vest. Especially jumping down or falling off boulders is very uncomfortable.

At least he got the anime grunts and screams down for sure with the vest on, so it must be working

I totally thought about doing this to challenge my body, now that I've seen this video the answer just appeared. What if instead of just a vest, you apply weights to wrists, feet and also a vest, that way the overall extra kilograms would be spread evenly. I'm about to try that!

I have always thought to try thigs, though my idea was to start with 1kg and add weight aiming to remain at "Peak" performance or a benchmarked level.