Lift, Lock, Pull — 12-week training block
Pick a day
Session order
Fingers twice a week, never on back-to-back days. Pull twice — once heavy, once fast. Do the heavy finger work first in any session it appears in.
Arm Lift + Lockoff
Warm-up
~12 minCold fingers beat everything else. If your hands are cold, nothing in this list matters until they're warm. Add minutes at the top rather than skipping to the bar.
The 50% and 60% ramp sets below carry on from here — they are the specific warm-up, not a substitute for this one.
Arm lift — 18 mm
Per handRest 2–3 min on ramp sets, 3 min on working sets. General warm-up before the ramp.
Form — weight under the shoulder, arm in line with the front of the body. Arm stays straight; lift by extending the knees. No shrug. Lift and lower, no hold at the top. Identical grip set-up every rep.
Stop with 1–2 reps in the tank. If 4 isn't there today, don't grind it. If it feels easy, take 5 or 6 and log it.
Lockoff
Each sideRest 2–3 min. Negatives take 8–10 s to descend.
The uneven lockoff is the main progression. Working hand on the bar, other hand on a towel or sling hung from it. Lengthen the sling a little each week. When the assisting arm is nearly straight, you are close to a one-arm lockoff.
End every hold 2–3 s before you would fail.
Pull, Heavy
Warm-up
~10 minThe curl is elbow prep, not a training set — light enough that it never feels like work. Your heavy curls are on this session's second block.
Weighted pull-up
Rest 3 min between working sets. Keep 1–2 reps in reserve — no failure sets.
Weeks 1–4 use + for 5. Weeks 5–8 move to + for 3. Switch blocks with the toggle above and the working sets follow.
Weeks 9–12 replace this session with Pull, Fast.
Lockoff prime movers
Heavy, slowRest 2–3 min. Slow and heavy on the row and curl — these are strength sets, not a pump.
Add weight when you clear 5 clean reps on every set two sessions running.
Arm Lift + Hangboard
Warm-up
~12 minVolume day, so the warm-up matters more, not less — you're asking the fingers for far more total reps than on Monday.
The hangboard block has its own feet-assisted hangs. Those come later, after the lift, and don't replace this.
Arm lift — 18 mm, 70%
Per handRest 2–3 min. Volume day — the reps are the point, not the load. Same form rules as Session 1.
Hangboard — long isometrics
20 mm, half-crimpRest 60 s between warm-up hangs, 3 min between long hangs.
Full protocol, loads and progression rules are on the Protocols → Hangboard tab.
Cut-off rule
If your third long hang comes in more than 20% shorter than the first, stop the session there. Finishing the written sets is not worth a bad week.
Pull, Fast
Warm-up
~10 minThe last row is the one that makes this a speed session. Those singles are already full speed — they teach the nervous system what you're about to ask for. Rest a full minute between them.
Explosive pull-up
Band assistedRest 3 min. Every rep is a sprint — move the bar as fast as you can. The moment a rep slows down, the set is over, even if it's rep 1 of 3.
No band? Use bodyweight with maximum intent instead. The intent matters more than the load.
Lockoff, holds only
Each sideNo negatives today — they belong on Session 1 when you're fresh.
Climb
Warm-up
~15 min, off the wallThis is the one you'll want to skip, and the one that costs you most. You get two or three of these a month — arriving cold wastes the first hour of a session you can't repeat next week.
Pack the mini bands in your chalk bag. The whole block runs in a corner of the gym with no equipment but the wall.
Session shape
Rest 4–5 min between project attempts. Quality over quantity — you get two or three of these a month.
No hangboard, no arm lift, no lockoff work today.
Tomorrow
Full rest day. Non-negotiable. Treat today as the hardest training stimulus of the month, because it is.
Rest
Allowed
Not allowed: fingerboard, arm lift, pull-ups, "just a few easy ones". Finger tissue is the slowest thing in this program to recover and it is what limits you on the wall.
Arm Lift
Full ramp
Per hand| % | Load | Reps | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 8 | Specific warm-up | |
| 60 | 8 | Specific warm-up | |
| 70 | 5–6 | Last ramp step · working load on volume days | |
| 80 | 4 | Working sets, every strength session | |
| 90 | 1–2 | Peak week only | |
| 95 | 1 | Peak week only | |
| 100 | 1 | Peak week only |
Steps go up by 10% of max each time. Every ramp rep counts toward session volume — log them.
Form
Pin short. A long pin makes you pull the weight toward you, so you're limited by what you can curl rather than what you can deadlift.
Weight under the shoulder, arm in line with the front of the body, roughly under the armpit. Feet forward, weight on mid-foot.
Arm straight, knees do the work. No shrug — if you're shrugging, the pin is too long.
Lift and lower. No hold at the top. This is a dynamic rep, not a hang.
Identical grip every rep. Set it the same way each time or the numbers mean nothing.
Progression
Chase rep records at a fixed load before load records. When gives you 6 clean reps across consecutive sessions, re-estimate your max upward and rebuild the ramp. Don't retest a true 1RM often.
Hangboard
Set-up
Edge 20 mm. Grip half-crimp — fingers at roughly 90° at the middle knuckle, thumb off the edge. Same grip every rep, both hands matched.
Shoulders engaged, not hanging passively: slight shrug-down, elbows soft, ribs down.
Assistance for warm-ups comes from feet on the floor or a chair — take roughly half your weight through the legs.
The session
Friday only| Part | Work | Sets | Rest | Load |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warm-up 1 | 10 s | 3 | 60 s | feet assisted |
| Warm-up 2 | 10 s | 2 | 90 s | bodyweight |
| Long hang — weeks 1–8 | 30 s | 3 | 3 min | bodyweight, then added |
| Repeaters — weeks 9–12 | 7 s on / 3 s off × 4 | 3 | 3 min | + over the 30 s load |
| Benchmark — every 4th week | max hang, 10 mm | 1 | — | bodyweight |
One repeater set = 40 s under load, which matches a nine-move boulder. That's the point of the week 9–12 switch.
The benchmark is a measurement, not training. Log the time and move on — your current mark is 10–12 s.
Loading and progression
Start at bodyweight. If 30 s at bodyweight leaves you with less than 3 s of buffer, assist with feet until it does.
Add when you finish all three long hangs with 3 s or more of buffer, two sessions running. Small jumps only — this is a 30-second effort and it punishes a big step.
Buffer means you end the hang while you could still have held on. End every hang 2–3 s before failure, every time. No open-ended "hang until you drop" sets.
Hard rules
- Two finger sessions a week, total. The arm lift counts as one. The board does not get a third day.
- Never on consecutive days, and never within 96 hours of a climbing day.
- Stop the session if a hang comes in more than 20% shorter than your first working hang.
- Any sharp or pinpoint finger pain ends the session immediately. Dull fatigue across the forearm is fine; a point you can touch with one finger is not.
- Skin first: if the skin is going, the session is over regardless of how the fingers feel.
Lockoff
Full session
Session 1| Exercise | Prescription | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Two-arm weighted hold @ 90° | 5 × 8 s | 2 min |
| Two-arm hold @ 120° | 3 × 5 s | 2 min |
| Uneven lockoff, sling in the off hand | 3 × 5 s each side | 3 min |
| One-arm negative, pausing 60° / 90° / 120° | 3 × 1 each side | 3 min |
| Cable low row | 4 × 5, heavy | 2 min |
| Cable bicep curl | 4 × 5, heavy | 2 min |
The sling ladder
Main progressionWorking hand on the bar. Other hand grips a towel or sling hung over the bar, taking whatever weight you need it to.
Week 1 the off hand is at bar height — roughly an even pull-up position. Each week let the sling out 3–5 cm. The goal is an almost straight assisting arm, at which point the working arm is doing nearly everything.
Measure the sling and write the length down. It is the single number that tells you whether this is working.
Negatives build the eccentric: lower from the top over 8–10 s, pausing a beat at each of the three angles.
Pull
Load table
| % system | Load | Reps | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 | + | 3 | Max strength, weeks 5–8 |
| 85 | + | 5 | Max strength, weeks 1–4 |
| 80 | + | 6–8 | Ramp / volume |
| 76 | bodyweight | 8–10 | Warm-up |
| 70 | assist | 3 | Speed, weeks 9–12 |
| 60 | assist | 3 | Speed, weeks 9–12 |
added = pct × (bodyweight + 40) − bodyweight
Speed sets
Light load, maximum intent, bar moving as fast as you can make it move. A rep that visibly slows ends the set — speed work stops being speed work the moment it grinds.
Warm-up
With the loop bands
Long bandsPull-apart — band at chest height, arms straight out in front. Pull your hands apart until the band touches your sternum, squeezing the shoulder blades together. Let it back slowly. Arms stay straight throughout.
Shoulder pass-through — wide grip, arms straight, band in front of your hips. Take it up over your head and down behind you, then reverse. Widen the grip if it binds. Never force the end range — this is a mobility drill, not a stretch to win.
Assisted pull-up — band looped over the bar, one foot or knee in it. Same grip and body position you'll use in the working sets, just lighter.
With the mini bands
Short bandsFinger extensions — band around all five fingertips, open the hand against it. This is the antagonist to every other thing in the program, and the cheapest insurance you have against elbow and finger trouble.
External rotation — band around both wrists, elbows bent 90° and tucked against your ribs. Rotate the forearms outward against the band, keeping the elbows pinned. Small range, slow.
Biceps curl, light — stand on the band, curl with barely any tension. Elbow tendon prep before pulling, nothing more.
On the bar and the pin
Scapular pull-up — hang with straight arms, then pull your shoulder blades down and together without bending your elbows. You'll rise an inch or two. That's the whole movement.
Edge pulls, unloaded — the 18 mm edge on the pin with no plates. Set your grip exactly as you will under load, pull to about half effort, hold five seconds. Both hands.
Dead hang — 20 mm or a jug, bodyweight, shoulders engaged rather than hanging slack off the joint.
Wrist circles, flexion and extension — unloaded, slow, through whatever range is comfortable today.
Rules
- Nothing in a warm-up ever approaches failure. If a warm-up set feels like a training set, it's too heavy.
- Cold fingers beat every other variable. On a cold day add minutes at the top rather than skipping to the bar.
- Stiff is fine, sharp is not. Stiffness that eases as you go is normal. A pain that stays, or has a point you can touch, ends the session before it starts.
- The specific ramp sets inside each session continue the warm-up — they don't replace it.
The Plan
- Bodyweight
- Finger max
- one hand · 0.73×BW
- Pull-up max
- +0.32×BW
- 10 mm hang
- 10–12 sbodyweight
Rest before a climbing day
- Heavy finger work: 96 hours clear. Fingers recover slowest and are what limits you on the wall.
- Pull and lockoff work: 48 hours clear.
- Two completely empty days immediately before.
- The day after climbing is a rest day.
- At two climbing days a month you run two normal weeks, then a climbing week, repeating.
Blocks
| Weeks | Focus | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Max strength base | Arm lift 80% × 4, three sets. Pull + × 5. Hangboard 30 s. Lockoff: build the two-arm holds. |
| 4 | Deload | Everything at 60%, half the sets. No negatives, no hangboard. |
| 5–7 | Intensification | Add a fourth working set on the arm lift. Pull + × 3. Start the sling ladder and the negatives. |
| 8 | Deload | As week 4. |
| 9–11 | Power and velocity | Arm lift drops to two working sets. Wednesday's heavy pull becomes a speed session. Hangboard switches to repeaters. Shortest sling. |
| 12 | Peak, or deload | Peak only with a trip or project coming: arm-lift pyramid to 100%, one or two reps, then stop. Otherwise deload. |
Before every session
Three questions: how does the intensity feel today, any joint pain, any unusual fatigue?
If light weights feel heavy, you are not adapting. Look at sleep, stress and food before you look at the program, then cut intensity. Don't add it — a bad session is never an argument for more training.
The log needs: every set including the ramp, reps actually completed, how it felt, and any niggles. Rep records at a fixed load are the progress signal, ahead of any max retest.
Sources and reasoning
Where this comes from
Two Lattice Training videos. "This Will Change Climbing Training Forever — Yves Arm-Lifting Method" supplies the arm lift in full: the 50/60/70/80% ramp, 10% steps, four reps at 80%, the 90–95% peaking pyramid, and the autoregulation rules. "The Only Training Video Climbers Need for Exercise Selection!" supplies the method behind the lockoff and pull work rather than a protocol.
How the lockoff work was derived
The second video's five steps, run on its own undercling-lockoff example: identify the movement, then the joints (elbow, shoulder), then the prime movers (biceps, lats), then exercises that load them — its own picks were the bicep curl and the low row — then the velocity, which for max strength is heavy and slow. Its sixth consideration, muscle length, is why the holds sit at fixed angles: "we get strong in the range we train… if we train partials we get stronger in the partial range of motion."
Why the pull block is periodised
"Gains in maximum strength will transfer to gains in velocity… you could start with maximum strength, still see gains in power, but then taper into a more high velocity focus and see even further gains in that power development."
Why the board is for duration, not max
Yves keeps the hangboard for longer isometric work and the lifting for max strength. On matching training to a project: "if it's a nine-move boulder… I need to hold for about 40 seconds, then I'll try to fit that into my training and that will determine my weight." That is where the 7 s / 3 s repeaters come from.
The buffer
"I usually stop after one or two reps, or if it's time, I'll stop a few seconds before complete failure."
Sets taken to failure may add no training stimulus while still costing recovery before the next session. This is why nothing in the program is written to failure.
What the videos do not cover
Rest intervals, weekly frequency, rest days before climbing, the hangboard loading scheme, the sling ladder, and the session split are all additions. They are built on the videos' principles — buffer, rep records over load records, autoregulation, specificity of range and duration — and on your numbers, but no part of them is prescribed in either video.
Your numbers
Loads are calculated from bodyweight, a single-hand finger max, and a + pull-up max. Change any of those and the percentages move.