The benefits of climbing for fitness
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 this week's warble I'm going to talk about some of the benefits including climbing in your fitness program. I'll also give you a few ideas as to how to get started. I've picked that as the theme this week because we very recently installed our own small rock climbing wall in our gym at Oxley and hence it felt topical for me. If you look closely in the background of the fifth photo in the post below you'll just see it (yep, I recognise that I definitely could have made that easier for you to see!)
1) UPPER BODY PULLING STRENGTH AND STABILITY - Anyone who has ever done any strength training at a traditional gym has likely done some version of pull ups, lat pull downs, ring rows, bent over rows or another of the many upper body pulling exercises that you regularly see in such settings. And there's a reason for that, the upper body pulling strength and stability that those sorts of exercises deliver is important to our health, physical capability and resilience to injury. Guess what, climbing delivers all those same benefits. In the case of the exercises, we are using our arms and upper backs to pull objects to ourselves. In climbing we pull ourselves to the object that we are climbing on, but the outcome is "broadly" the same.
2) DIVERSITY OF SHOULDER STRENGTH AND STABILITY - I finished that last paragraph by saying that the outcome of climbing and of strength training exercises was "broadly" the same in terms of upper body pulling strength and stability. Let's now look at why I said "broadly" rather than simply "the same".
The shoulder joint is a very mobile joint. This allows us to perform the wide range of highly precise and dexterous tasks that we humans are capable of with our hands. What this means though is that a healthy shoulder needs to be strong and stable in a wide range of angles and directions. You can definitely achieve that through standard exercises like pull ups, rows etc, but you need to do a very very wide variety of them to hit all the angles and positions. Climbing on the other hand provides this variety for you. When you climb, you put yourself in a wide variety of different positions and hence, without really trying, you build strength and stability in a wide range of positions and angles. That's not to say that climbing is perfect, because it's not, but it's a good solid foundation that you can then build upon with specific exercises to suit your shoulder health needs.
3) COORDINATION AND AWARENESS OF BODY POSITIONING - Let's step away from the pure strength and conditioning world for a moment and look at some other benefits of climbing. One of those benefits is the way it helps to build coordination and an awareness of body position when moving. If you've ever spent any time indoor rock climbing, particularly bouldering, you will have likely had the experience of trying a climb, having it feel impossible and then slowly figuring it out over time. That process is one of figuring out how to position your body and how to apply your strength and movement to succeed at the climb. That is, it's one of developing coordination and an awareness of body positioning.
This is all relevant to your health and fitness for an important reason. One of the reasons to be fit and healthy is to be able to do the things you want to do in your daily life. Developing coordination and a greater sense of bodily awareness immensely helps with this because it allows you to do those things more efficiently than you otherwise would have. That in turns allows you to do more of those things than you otherwise would have, and with less effort. Climbing helps develop the coordination and bodily awareness to make that possible.
4) FUN - We could keep talking about the benefits of climbing but this post is already very long, so we'll finish this section with this. Climbing is fun, and that's reason enough to do it!
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Before we finish the post entirely though, I promised to give a few ideas about how to get started with climbing. Here are some ideas. I will just say though that I recognise that in Brisbane's current COVID lockdown some of these ideas aren't practical. That's ok, just keep them in mind for the future when everything settles down again.
A) CLIMBING GYMS - There has been an absolute explosion of rock climbing gyms in Brisbane over the past 5 years, particularly focussing on the style of climbing known as bouldering. They are a great place to start because they colour code climbs by difficulty and cater to all abilities. If you're planning bring kids along though, just be sure to check if the gym you're planning to attend has any age limits because some don't allow young children.
B) PLAYGROUNDS - If you're a child this one probably doesn't come as a shock, but as adults we often overlook the potential of playgrounds for our own health and fitness. Most playgrounds have something to climb on, and if your playground happens to have one of those giant spider web climbing frames then you're in particularly good luck.
C) TREES - Trees are another great option for climbing. When most of us think of climbing trees we think of climbing way up high. That is certainly possible, but it doesn't have to be the case. For example, at Rocks Riverside Park in Seventeen Mile Rocks there are fig trees that are great for climbing. Some of them have grown in such a way that you can climb circles around them with your hands on branches and your feet on either the trunk of the tree or on the exposed roots near the trunk of the trees. Either way, on those particular trees you never have to be more than half a meter off the ground to get a climb in.
D) FENCES - I recognise that every example I've given so far is a little limited in the current lockdown, so here's another option. If you have a fence at your place, you might have options for climbing. Yes, you could climb over, but there's also another, safer option. I'll use a 6 foot high timber fence as an example. Such fences usually have two horizontal timber railings. One near the top. One near the bottom. If you place your hands on the top rail and your feet on the bottom it's possible to traverse (climb sideways) along the fence. From there, explore how the difficulty of the climb changes depending on if you (1) stand tall and pull your chest close to the wall, or (2) bend your legs and sink down low with straight arms.
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