Rock Climbing Tip: Fitness and Technique

Hello AkshunKat fans!

The whole point of this blog is to inspire people to get outside, get some exercise, and find some adventure.  In the first couple of posts, I started to explain how to take those first steps into the world of rock climbing, because climbing can take you all over the world, introduce you to lots of great new people, and help you to experience adventures that you've only dreamed of.

But as you start to dip your toes into this new world, it's important to understand that, like everything in life, the journey won't be all rainbows and unicorns.  We all love to travel to new places, meet new people and see new sights, but we also like to succeed.  It's never fun to fail miserably, but part of any learning and growing process is always failure - sometimes miserable failure.

Every climber, including me, has failed.  We've all pushed ourselves too far, dreamed a little too high, and put together plans that just never worked.  All we can really do is do the best we can - we should set goals in front of us that we think we can achieve, and then put ourselves into the best possible position to succeed.  Two of the elements that will help in this regard are physical fitness and technique,

Climbing is a physical activity.  It can be strenuous and taxing on our bodies, but this can also be a great motivator to get in shape.  Like I said, nobody likes to fail, and the truth is that a climber who is physically fit will be more likely to succeed than one who pays no attention to fitness.  This doesn't mean that you need to be able to do 400 pull-ups while dangling from one finger (although that would help!), but it does mean that the more fit you are, the better your chances of succeeding on any given climb.

Fitness is a whole-body thing.  You'll need strong arms, but you'll also need a strong core (abdominal and back), and strong legs.  One important thing to think about is strength to weight ratios.  If you are really heavy, then you'll need stronger arms to pull yourself up, stronger legs to push yourself up and a stronger core to keep yourself stable.  People who are really light don't need to be as strong, so weight can play an important role in your success.  So, if you really want to get better at climbing, then you should try to both strengthen yourself and lighten yourself - attack the problem from both angles.

The good news is that you'll most likely achieve both goals no matter what kind of exercise you decide to do - even just climbing a lot.  The more you climb, or lift weights or do pull-ups or whatever, the more calories you'll burn; so you'll be getting lighter and stronger!

Another part of fitness is stamina.  You might be super-strong, but if you get so tired after 10 feet that you have to stop, then you won't be very successful.  This is where cardio exercise comes in handy.  Running, riding your bike, hiking around with a backpack, bouldering up and down an easy "problem" really fast a bunch of times (remember from Part 1?  Bouldering routes are called "problems")  - there are a million different ways to get your heart-rate up and build your cardiovascular endurance.  And, like I said, this will also tend to lighten you up, so you'll see benefits on two fronts:  you'll feel stronger because you'll have less weight to drag up the climb, and you'll be able to climb longer and higher before you get tired.

One of the risks when you first get into climbing or when you start exercising to get into shape is, of course, injury.  Climbing can be really hard on your tendons and ligaments, so it's a good idea to never push yourself too hard and always listen to your body.  Tendons and ligaments take FOREVER to heal - they're the slowest-healing parts of your entire body, even slower than bones - so be nice to them!

This brings us to the other big key to climbing success:  Technique.

One of the ways to put less strain on your tendons and ligaments, as well as your muscles, is to use good technique.  A huge part of this picture is footwork.  Good footwork can really take a lot of your weight off of your upper body and your core, using the biggest, strongest muscles in your body - your leg muscles - to push yourself up instead of using your smaller and weaker arm muscles to pull yourself up.  Even when you get into more advanced, steep or even overhanging climbs, you can use good footwork to "hang" some of your body's weight (the lower half) off of your legs so that your arms only have to support the upper half of your body's weight.

So pay attention to footwork.  Don't always be looking up for your next handhold, instead make sure you pay at least as much - or more - attention to your next foothold.  Generally, the best technique is to start from a stable position where your weight is centered over one or both of your legs, then step one of your legs up, use your leg muscles to push yourself up to the point where you can now reach your next handhold, then stabilize yourself at the new height.

A good, stable position means that your arms are really not actually working very hard at all - you're just standing on one or both feet and just using your hands to prevent yourself from falling off.  Those kinds of positions are where you can rest, recover a little bit and scope out your next moves.

Of course, the harder the climbs get the more difficult it is to find these stable positions.  You might have to do several strenuous or awkward moves between each "rest" spot, but the same principle applies - try to make your legs do most of the real work.  PUSH yourself up instead of PULLING yourself up.

Even if you do find yourself using your arms a lot, you can also use good technique to reduce the load on your muscles.  If you elongate your arm or arms to the point where you are just hanging there, then you aren't really engaging your muscles much - the load is being borne by your skeletal system (bones, tendons, ligaments), not your muscles.  Often, you'll see people stationary on a climb with their arms bent, which means that they are using their muscles to hold them in that position.  After a while, you'll sometimes see them start to shake uncontrollably as their muscles give out, and then they fall.  If they had just dropped their body down and straightened out their arms so that their weight was hanging off of their bones, they probably could have stayed in that position for much longer and actually rested.  Instead, because they were using bad technique, they exhausted themselves.

This is also a great way to "shake out" one of your arms or your hands that has gotten tired.  If your feet are stable, you can hang off of one elongated arm and drop the other arm down to rest it.  Shake it out, get some blood back into it, then maybe even switch hands and do the same thing to the other arm.  Taking a rest like that can often be the difference between success and failure.

So I hope that this has given you a little insight into how to be more successful in your new endeavor - rock climbing.  Too many people think that they'll never be able to do it because they aren't strong enough or fit enough, but there are always ways that you can improve your fitness.  And, a little bit of good technique can go a long way toward overcoming your shortcomings in the fitness department.

Sure, not all of us were designed by nature to be great climbers, but the great thing about climbing is that there is such a wide range of climbs and levels of difficulty that most people can get out there, have some fun, challenge themselves, and maybe even experience a little success.

But remember, whether you succeed or fail (or even fail miserably) you're sure - at least - to find a new adventure!

Until next time,

Chris at AkshunKat