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The Kalymnos Workout Combo: 12 Drills Until Failure

Kalymnos routes are long, steep and unapologetically athletic. Your local gym's vertical wall is lovely, but it will not prepare you for 35 metres of overhanging limestone that wants to know what your feet are doing. This combo will. It's a 12-drill circuit that hits kicks, catches, bumps, ladders and flags, and it's built to be a little bit ridiculous.

The workout

• 12 exercises.
• Repeat each exercise twice.
• Make each attempt until failure. Failure means you can no longer perform the move with control, not that you've given up because it's boring.
• Rest 1 minute between exercises. Use a timer, because your sense of a minute is an unreliable narrator.

Expect the session to take about 45 to 60 minutes including a warm-up. Before starting, spend 15 to 20 minutes on easy climbing and a few progressive hangs, and be honest about whether your fingers are actually awake.

The drills, with cues

1. Moon kicks. Explosive, dynamic kicks from a hanging position. Keep your core tight and your arms long, and resist the urge to swing wildly. The goal is a controlled, powerful movement, not a demonstration of physics.
2. Cross overs. Reach across your body to the opposite hold. Rotate the hips into the wall and keep your weight over your feet. Stop dropping your hips away from the rock.
3. Roof smears. Smear your feet on a steep or roofed section while your upper body handles the hold. Push through the whole sole of the shoe, and practice trusting a foot that looks like it has no business staying on.
4. Double catch. Dynamic movement catching a hold with both hands. Aim to catch and stick, not to catch and swing. Absorb the force with bent arms.
5. Bump sideways. Move one hand laterally to a hold beyond your reach while the other hand stays. Time the movement with your hips and lock the core on arrival.
6. Bump up. The same idea vertically. Small, precise movements. Look at the target hold before you move.
7. Crimp ladders. Move up a ladder of crimps, one hand after the other. Half-crimp where possible, which is easier on your finger pulleys.
8. Pinch ladders. Ladder up pinches, using your thumb actively. This builds the pinch strength that Kalymnos features generously.
9. Violins. A traversing drill using alternating pulls, like bowing a violin. Keep the movement smooth and rhythmical, and keep your shoulders active.
10. Thai kicks. A rotational kick that drives the hips across the wall. Keep your hips tight and your eyes on the next hold.
11. Cross flag. Cross one leg behind the other, extending the free leg as a counterbalance. This is a balance drill for keeping the body still on a steep face.
12. Crunched flag. Tighten into a compact flagging position, bringing the knees toward the chest. This is core-heavy, and your abs will send a strongly worded email.

How to progress it

Track how many good attempts you can complete in each drill and how long each attempt lasts. When the whole circuit starts feeling comfortable, increase the difficulty by choosing a steeper angle, smaller holds or a longer sequence, or reduce the rest to 45 seconds. Change one variable at a time.

Technical reminders

• Failure is technical, not reckless. Stop a drill when your movement quality collapses. Grinding out sloppy reps trains sloppy movement.
• Keep the fingers safe. Use open-hand and half-crimp positions where you can, and avoid maximum crimp on repeated attempts.
• Watch the shoulders. Dynamic drills load the shoulders, so keep them active and avoid hanging passively on straight arms in unstable positions.
• Don't do this on tired days. Sessions to failure need a rested nervous system. Do it fresh, or don't do it.
• Recover well. After a failure session, sleep, eat and take an easier day. Read about how adaptation works in our supercompensation article.

Using the combo in a training block

Two sessions per week is plenty for most climbers, spaced by at least two days. Run it for three to four weeks before your trip, taper the final week by dropping to one session with reduced volume, and arrive with fresh skin and rested tendons. If you're planning the trip itself, see our Kalymnos survival guide for tips on goats, honey and where to find good baklava.

Finish the combo, drink some water, and enjoy the specific pleasure of doing something hard on purpose.

Warm-up and cooldown

Spend 15 minutes warming up with easy traversing, shoulder mobility and a few submaximal hangs. After the circuit, cool down with five minutes of easy movement and light stretching of the forearms, shoulders and hip flexors. Your body will thank you tomorrow, quietly, which is the only way it thanks anyone.

What to log

For each drill, note the number of reps or seconds you reached before failure on both rounds, plus any technical problem you noticed. After three weeks, compare the totals. The drills where the numbers barely move are your weak points, so give them extra attention in your next block.