“Performance Rock Climbing” By Dale Goddard and Udo Neuman is a great book, it describes how your muscles adapt and what you can do to reinforce that process.
Dale Goddard and Udo Neuman; said:
“Fortunately Strength results can be achieved without compromising technical progress. The rule is simply to take steps to ensure success on moves even as you fatigue. In choosing routes for a workout, select a difficulty that allows you to flirt with muscular failure without falling off. As your fatigue increases, choose routes that are less and less technical. This spares your technique by preventing you from solidifying bad engrams.”
I don’t lift weights or do calisthenics; I do have practice trees in my back yard that see regular use. Stretching is great, stretch all the time! My wife thinks I’m loopy and I get some funny looks, but I stretch while grocery shopping or while standing in line at the bank or while driving; not a full blown ,sweat pouring off of me regime, just whatever I can comfortably move.
As important as the actual elongation of muscle and ligaments I find that stretching is like a conversation with ones body, through the process you become very aware of your body. This is important to successful climbing; your body can tell you things about the tree that your mind will miss, another reason why it is better to work out and practice in a tree.
However you must train to improve good engrams, the best way to learn those moves is from someone who already knows them. Find a tree guy in your area and work with him or her. And not just some self taught hack, it doesn’t matter if someone’s been doing something wrong for 20 years, it’s still inefficient and/or dangerous. If you attempt to teach yourself this skill-set, you will in all likelihood, incorporate some very inefficient moves that you will have to fight past for the rest of your climbing career.
Safety, efficiency, productivity, and money; they all go together in this business.
And just so there is no confusion, Thou shalt not practice spur climbing on trees that want to live. Practicing with spurs in a tree will kill it.