The benefits of playing around (in this case, with a climbing rope)

NOTE - This post was originally written for our 'weekly warble' segment in a few Facebook groups for the community local to our gym.


Welcome to the weekly warble here at Ideanthro Movement!

In last week's warble I walked you through part of a recent session here at the gym. That warble was really well received, so this week I've decided to double down and talk you through another recent session. As with last week, the reason for doing this is because I know that our sessions look very different to the traditional fitness industry, and hence it can sometimes be a little difficult to deduce exactly what we're aiming to achieve in any given photo (and that can make it hard to play along at home etc).

Ok, let's warble!

This week we have 3 photographs to look at. The common theme in all three is the climbing rope. For this part of the session we set up the rope and collectively explored different movement skills and challenges using the rope. As coaches we came in with a few ideas (e.g. climbing underneath the rope shown in photo 2) but we also created space for our members to get creative (e.g. photos 1 and 3).

Let's now take a look at the benefits of this semi-guided exploratory session using the climbing rope.

A quick note before I start. Like always, everything we do is adjustable to various skill levels. The rope might initially seem intimidating because it looks like hard core climbing or balancing is required, but there's plenty of more gentle little challenges available as well, it just depends on how we set it up.

Ok, let's talk about these benefits.

1) UPPER BODY STRENGTH - No surprises here. As soon as there is climbing involved (e.g. photo 2) then there's upper body strength to be built.

2) THE SKILL OF BALANCE - This isn't necessarily the type of balance that you might first think of when you think of balance (e.g. walking a narrow beam), but a rope gives opportunities to practice your balance. One moderately challenging example is shown in photo 3's 'I can't believe it's not a hammock' pose, but there are other simpler ways as well.

3) PROBLEM SOLVING - A rope set up as shown in photo 3 gives opportunities to set and solve physical problems. We do this sort of thing quite a bit in our program for children living with autism, but frankly it pops up a lot in our youth program and adult classes as well. I'll give you an example. It's not pictured, but you can see enough detail in photo 3 to imagine what's going on. Imagine the rope set up as shown in photo 3. Now imagine that we took the gymnastics ring that's hanging in the background and hung it above the middle of the rope, half way vertically between the metal bar at the top and the rope. Now imagine that we asked you to get onto the rope at one end (hands on the metal bar, feet on the rope) and to move to the other end without touching the ring, it's strap or the floor. How would you do it? There are at least two distinct solutions, one requiring more physical effort, and the other more precise movement.

4) SPATIAL AWARENESS AND FINE MOTOR SKILLS - In item 3 we described how we can use a rope to set movement challenges that require problem solving skills. The particular challenge we described can be solved using really precise movement. This provides opportunities to practice and improve our spatial awareness and fine motor skills. The same concept applies in similar ways for other movement challenges on the rope.

5) FUN - Last but not least, fun! As soon as there's a rope involved there's fun to be had (e.g. photo 1), and that's a good enough reason in itself to have a play!

And that's it for this list. This style of semi-guided session on the rope feels like play, but as you just saw, there's plenty of other good stuff going on as well! And what's more, while the photos don't show it well, there are plenty of options for all ability levels.


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Jack Mullaly