Today, rock climbing is not a rare sport as it used to be sometimes back. It is an everyday activity and can be found everywhere, and even kids do engage in climbing activity way too early before they begin to walk. So, I don’t see why you should find this sport a challenging task for you.
However, if you are a starter, you may find the sport a bit technical. But there are techniques you need to master as a beginner to become a pro in this sport. If not, you will find the hobby so intimidating to take part in. The techniques will make rock climbing a natural thing for you.
Rock Climbing Barriers For Beginners
The fear, anxiety, and being overwhelmed in the safety gear are common among beginners. You also can’t stop thinking about your safety. These are some of the barriers that prevent most people from trying rock climbing. However, once you try and get used to it, you will defy gravity, overcome the physical challenges, and rock climbing will soon become one of your hobbies. You will come to love it.
What To Do Before You Begin
If you want to succeed in rock climbing, it is essential to find out the climbing style that interests you. There are several climbing styles where each has a specific gear, learning curve, and culture. So, if you want to become a guru in this sport, you need to spot your climbing style to help you improve your rock climbing activity as a beginner and become an expert climber.
What Are The Techniques F_or Improving Your Rock Climbing?
- Improving Flexibility
Improving your flexibility and mobility is essential because it will help you avoid injuries and get into rock climbing. When you improve your mobility and flexibility, it will make your tight muscles become flexible. It will also make your climbing performance even much better. Remember that tight muscles usually strain your joints, making you more vulnerable to injuries. So, the supplier your body is, the better because climbing moves will become much easier for you.
One way of improving flexibility is to ensure that you stretch your body muscles as often as possible. Make it a habit so that your muscles are always flexible. Two types of stretches can help you improve your mobility:
- Dynamic stretches: This is where you stretch while moving up as well as within. It enables you to reach a comfortable maximum motion range. These types of stretches help in activating and loosening your muscles as it lubricates your joints.
- Static Stretching: This stretching stretch helps to stretch your muscles at a challenging, painful limit for about 15 to 30 seconds. The stretches ensure the preparation of muscles to improve your flexibility. However, avoid this type of stretches when your muscles are cold.
- Antagonistic Training For Climbers
As a rock-climbing beginner, it is essential to take part in antagonistic training. This type of training entails offsetting the flexion and pulling you do during lifting, pulling, and other extension exercises. Antagonistic training will help you to balance your body. It gives the joints crucial support as it helps keep your body in perfect alignment, more mobile, and synchronized.
During rock climbing, we mostly use the interior forearms, biceps, upper back, and lats muscles. That is why antagonist training for climbers usually targets the opposing muscles such as the posterior forearm, triceps, chest, and mid anterior deltoids to help you keep fit. Below is some of the best antagonist exercises ideal for beginners:
- Wrist extensors (also known as a posterior forearm): This exercise entails lifting lighter weight to enhance your palm-down wrist curls.
- Finger extensors: This exercise helps you to flash your fingers. Here, you assume that your finger is inside a puppet and then using a medium intensity rubber band, open your fingers to exercise resistance.
- Anterior triceps, delts/pecs: This includes narrow press-ups (push-ups). Here, you place your hands at shoulder width with your elbows in, your knees off, or on the floor. However, if you want to achieve more accessible variations, you should do what we call standing wall press-ups.
- Improving Core Strength
It is common to see people fall off when they try to climb a wall. The reason why this happens is that their middle part of their bodies is either weak or soft. Working on your core inner muscles is critical if you want to become a pro in rock climbing. Inner core muscles are the deeper layer of our postural muscles and are found at our bodies’ center.
So when you stabilize our core muscles, you can compress our joints so that they allow control movement and promote our centering during rock climbing. It prevents the joints from giving away. They will help rotate and keep your entire body well aligned, including your hips, wrists, elbows, feet, hands, and ankles.
Activities you can do to improve your inner muscle strength include a one-leg bridge, digging your heel on a stable surface like suspension straps, and a stability ball.
- Hangboarding
One of the most critical strengths for rock climbers is finger strength. So, hangboarding is an essential exercise that will help you climb a rock with minimal struggle. Regardless of the climbing style, you are interested in working on, and your finger strength is not an option. It is a must exercise if you are looking forward to becoming a rock climbing guru. To help you achieve the grip you need for your hand and fingers, you need to do many handboarding exercises. The exercises will help you increase your grip strength.
Conclusion
Rock climbing is a challenging sport, and to be able to succeed, you will need to be consistent in your exercises. With the above exercise tips, you should be able to become a rock-climbing expert. As you progress more quickly through rock climbing grades, always remember to apply all the training techniques you learned. The good news is that no one stays at the beginner phase for long.
