I've just recently started climbing ALOT and find i have no pull strength which is a pain as i find it hard to do overhang bolder problems. Honestly i can hardly do 2 pull ups.

What shall i do, i'm kind of needing a training programme but don't know where to start.

I've just recently started climbing

As far as getting stronger, I think you're on the right track by taking a strong interest in bouldering and getting on the steep walls. As you gain technique and start progressing to harder things you will also build muscle. Just don't shy away from the burly problems, they're often the most fun!

I've just recently started climbing ALOT and find i have no pull strength which is a pain as i find it hard to do overhang bolder problems. Honestly i can hardly do 2 pull ups.

What shall i do, i'm kind of needing a training programme but don't know where to start.

Shannon, I don't think you are getting very good advice here.

There is no question that technique reduces the need to apply pure strength, and that one can and should learn an enormous amount from texts like The Self-Coached Climber. But I also think it is irrational to insist that general conditioning is either irrelevant or can be acquired along the way. Its a mantra one hears more and more, and it doesn't make much sense to me, and seems to fly in the face of the accumulated experience of virtually all other sports.

I'm not talking here about non-sport specific things like the Crossfit cult, I'm thinking about specific combinations of basic physical training aimed at the kinds of strength climbers either need for certain types of moves or else could use to prevent the kinds of injuries that occur when, for example, dynamic moves are made without enough strength to control the consequences.

But don't listen to me. (The almost political nature of these debates means that very little listening is going on anyway.) Consider, for example, what a highly accomplished woman climber has to say. Responding in her blog to questions about building strength for women analogous to the questions in this thread, Steph Davis writes, (http://www.highinfatuation.com/blog/gymless-training/)

I think you’re on the right track with wanting to increase your upper body strength for climbing. As a woman, I notice that if I improve my upper body strength at all, I instantly see dramatic results in my climbing. Since women do not naturally build upper body muscle like men do, I think we are forced to climb with more technique in general. If we give any attention to strength building, it allows us to make use of that technique to an extremely gratifying degree.
I’ve also seen many posts written for climbers that play down the benefits of pullups and pullup workouts. I couldn’t disagree more, especially for women. If you start to do pullup workouts, and possibly fingerboard workouts, you will see a dramatic improvement in your climbing very quickly.

Her article has links to weight, hangboard, and pullup training regimens she uses. Might be worth checking out, if for no other reason than to balance the "just climb" chorus heard here.

Shannon, I don't think you are getting very good advice here.

There is no question that technique reduces the need to apply pure strength, and that one can and should learn an enormous amount from texts like The Self-Coached Climber. But I also think it is irrational to insist that general conditioning is either irrelevant or can be acquired along the way. Its a mantra one hears more and more, and it doesn't make much sense to me, and seems to fly in the face of the accumulated experience of virtually all other sports.

I'm not talking here about non-sport specific things like the Crossfit cult, I'm thinking about specific combinations of basic physical training aimed at the kinds of strength climbers either need for certain types of moves or else could use to prevent the kinds of injuries that occur when, for example, dynamic moves are made without enough strength to control the consequences.

But don't listen to me. (The almost political nature of these debates means that very little listening is going on anyway.) Consider, for example, what a highly accomplished woman climber has to say. Responding in her blog to questions about building strength for women analogous to the questions in this thread, Steph Davis writes, (http://www.highinfatuation.com/blog/gymless-training/)

I think you’re on the right track with wanting to increase your upper body strength for climbing. As a woman, I notice that if I improve my upper body strength at all, I instantly see dramatic results in my climbing. Since women do not naturally build upper body muscle like men do, I think we are forced to climb with more technique in general. If we give any attention to strength building, it allows us to make use of that technique to an extremely gratifying degree.
I’ve also seen many posts written for climbers that play down the benefits of pullups and pullup workouts. I couldn’t disagree more, especially for women. If you start to do pullup workouts, and possibly fingerboard workouts, you will see a dramatic improvement in your climbing very quickly.

Her article has links to weight, hangboard, and pullup training regimens she uses. Might be worth checking out, if for no other reason than to balance the "just climb" chorus heard here.

With all due respect, you are not taking on Rich's argument. You are talking around it.

Nobody thinks that more gains will be made by generalized strength training than by specific training for climbing.

But using strength training as an adjunct, as well as a means of lowering the likelihood that you will be injured, can lead to improvements.

I think that is why this issue becomes "political", or even "religious". People "believe" in their own side. Clearly someone with zero strength (say, a quadriplegic) can't climb anything. Someone who manually muscle tests as "fair", or 3/5, isn't going to climb anything. You need some strength to climb hard. It follows there must be some optimal strength level, or more properly, strength/weight ratio.

BTW, the biomechanical differences between training pullups and campusing are pretty trivial, especially if you train pullups on an edge or sloper of some sort, rather than a bar. So, if you train campusing, you'd expect your ability to do pullups to improve, and probably vice versa.

It follows there must be some optimal strength level, or more properly, strength/weight ratio.

I never said you can't improve with sport specific strength training, just that you won't be as efficient as if you're using that time to climb. Again, some strength is necessary, but you can certainly build it by sport climbing or bouldering….I'm NOT saying that people can't pursue improvement through alternative means. I'm just saying that movement skill training is considered to have a greater rate of payoff than sport specific strength training.

I don't know what "efficient" or "rate of payoff" is supposed to mean here. It seems to me that both are based on an assumption that no time spent not climbing can possibly be as effective as climbing. Obviously, Steph Davis doesn't believe this, and if this claim were true, then climbing might be the only athletic activity in the world for which it is true. In every other sport I know of, beginning to advanced participants have found it advantageous to spend some time in strength training targeted to the needs of the sport but not developed through simply practicing the sport.

Here's another way to think about it: if you get hurt and need to rehab, you'll be doing all kinds of supplementary training before you get back to climbing, at least if you ever want to recover. Climbing by itself is neither efficient nor does it offer a high payoff in this case.

The rehab analogy is neither far-fetched nor irrelevant. The advantage of supplementary training is control. First, control of the loads imposed on the body, and second, control of the progress of those loads. By contrast, training via climbing has neither form of control. Individual moves, most especially dynamic ones, will place highly variable and unpredictable loads on the body, and although one can go from easier to harder problems, the level of control over the resistances applied to the body isn't even remotely comparable to the fine-tuned ability to adjust supplementary training loads.

Training isn't an either-or situation in any other sport and I don't see any reason why it should be an either-or situation in climbing. Climbing training, involving technique, movement, strength, endurance, and coordination drills, supplemented by weight and/or gymnastic training that targets weaknesses relevant to either climbing moves or injury prevention makes more sense than trying to do it all through climbing. That approach doesn't work for other sports, you can't rehab injuries that way, and there is no reason I can see why climbing should be radically different.

Shotwell's sample of one is contradicted by the considerably more experienced Steph Davis sample of one, and in any case tells us nothing about what the best, safest, and most efficient approach might be, because we can't run Shotwell's wife through an alternate program to see how she would have done, and we can't run clones of her through the same experiences to see what injury potential she may have dodged by building strength via relatively uncontrollable means.

By the way, campusing does not meet the kind of control criteria I mentioned above, which makes it a relatively risky training procedure that is only appropriate for advanced climbers for whom the potential gains outweigh the injury risks.

Many years ago, I had some friendly arguments with a famous climber who insisted that the best way to climbing was just to climb. He developed into a fantastic climber, but I think the lack of supplementary training together with a steady diet of very strenuous climbing resulted in the shoulder instabilities that essentially ended his career.

Getting back to the topic at hand, there are controllable progressive pulling exercises Shannon could do that would double or triple her pullup ability. (Most definitely not the Armstrong program, however. Once she can do, say, six to ten pullups, she'd be far better off building higher pulling strength rather than shooting for pointless high repetition numbers.) Add to the pullups a few simple exercises to strengthen and protect the shoulder girdle and she will be a better and more injury-resistant climber with a better shot at a long career. I'd guess she could make significant progress in an hour a week (split into three 20-minute sessions). That is hardly going to take a big bite out of her climbing opportunities or decrease the "efficiency" of her climbing training.

Tell ya what. You hit over 1500 pullups in one session then talk about "pointless" repetitions. Its called endurance.

But hey I'd listen to you over a two time world record holder and the United States Marine Corp any day. They get results, period. But what do they know? I mean who's ever heard of a physically fit United States Marine? Thousands of people getting results from a proven system adopted by our branch of service that prides itself on being the most physically fit period vs. an internet opinion.

And we're not even talking about anything hardcore here. This is standard fare pre entry to OCS routine we're talking here. Bottom line is pullups are a job requirement for Marines. Not so sure its like that with math profs these days. Its like top rope anchors had sex with hangboards and delivered a child named pullup routines.