The Tick Tock Drill

“I feel like I need more tension when I’m climbing on steeper terrain.” Nearly all of us have said or thought this at some point during our climbing careers. What is tension though? How do we apply it? How do we train for it? The Tick Tock Drill was designed to build and apply whole body tension while climbing.

The Tick Tock Drill came to life one day when I was playing around with some ideas on how to build applicable tension when climbing on my home wall. There are a lot of ways to train for better tension, and it’s important to point out that tension isn’t just one type of movement pattern. I like to think about movement patterns as front (anterior), back (posterior), and side to side (lateral). When you combine those three vectors, the possibilities for training movement are endless.

The definition of Tension is: “the state of being stretched tight”. A ground breaking definition I know, but there’s a lot of meaning and interpretation in that handful of words. Staying “stretched tight” starts with strength basics, a foundation in core strength throughout the whole body. I mention this because athletes so often think of core as our abdominal region, which absolutely makes up an important part of our anterior core. However; our “core” is comprised of so much more, starting in our hamstrings and quads, then extending all the way up into our Thoracic Spine and muscles like the Lats. The Tick Tock Drill focusses on lateral tension, staying tight when moving your lower half side to side, engaging muscles like your obliques.

This drill also focuses attention on footwork and making the neural connection between the feet and trunk. This drill can be scaled to meet all skill levels but I would suggest this for athletes climbing at ~V4/5.12 level. It’s also most effective on terrain of 30˚ or steeper, and ironically enough can even feel easier on angles past 45˚.

I never program more than 3 different skill focussed exercises per program cycle (read that again!). I like to use this as a transitional exercise between basic strength training (hollow body holds, russian twists, etc) and full blown tension building exercises (specific feet on/off campusing, fishing drills). The two biggest modifications you can make to this drill are the hold sizes for the hands and the feet. Those arguably being the best modifiers, increasing reps with this drill will only yield limiting fatigue and limiting results.