Rock Wall Climbing

This was most defiantly a first for me! The prior experience I had with this would be climbing on trees way back when in my days in elementary school, but the biggest difference back then was that I was much smaller and had whole branches to grab on to instead little colored knobs that my size 13 shoes are suppose to climb on! On another note, it is a workout! I don’t think my forearms have ever been so worked in my life! This comes from a little improper form I was using, at first I climbed with my body close to the wall and really worked my arms but I soon learned from Dr. Mathias to loosen my arms and hang more away from the wall which was less stressful on the arms and allowed for more abilities to move.

5 pointers I learned about Rock wall Climbing was:

1. Climb with loose arms to keep your muscles less tense and your body away from the wall

2. When needed you can use a technique called matching to help get to the next knob, this is where you put both hands on one knob so your lead hand can get to the next knob.

3. Be a cat not a cow! A cow climber (like me at least at 1st! lol) you can hear hit the wall with their feet and hands, where as a cat climber is quiet and makes each move smoothly.

4. When needing another spot to put your feet you can use a technique called smear. This is similar to matching because you only use this when you need to move your body to get to the next knob except this is with your feet. What you do is when moving to your right you can put your right foot above the knob it is on to the wall generate friction to use the wall as a temporary knob so you can move your left foot over to the knob your right foot was on to move your body enough to get your right foot to the next knob

5. The last item I learned was to never line up your feet and hands straight up and down because you become more like a barnyard door and swing back and forth where instead you want to constantly have a wide base to keep balance on the wall.