Bouldering and rock climbing is sport that has tremendous benefit to one’s health, and here’s a couple of reasons why its beneficial to keep one fit, strong and healthy in your youth days all the way till old age.
Bouldering Benefits
Toning and Sclupting
Spending hours in the climbing gym or out at the crag will help you to maintain low levels of body fat and keep a toned body composition. After all, if you leave out all of the pauses in between boulders and routes, rock climbing burns around 8-10 calories per minute. Laps on the lattice board or splatter board are a fantastic way to reduce your body fat, build up your endurance, and to work on your technique and strength.
Something else worth considering, especially for outdoor climbing, is that the approach can be physically demanding and you will burn a decent amount of calories in the process of getting to the start of your route. The time in nature is also relaxing for your mind, and makes many climbers feel overall more positive. These small climbing habits have an overall positive effect on your mind and body.
Aside from pure strength, rock climbers develop a good level of aerobic fitness. Training endurance through cardio can be helpful when you’re trying to send a route at your limit, with little or no opportunity to rest, so it is important to include some sort of cardio routine into your rock climbing training, whether or not it be climbing specific. Two fantastic options are swimming, which develops a lot of your antagonist muscles, and also simply cycling to the climbing gym instead of taking the car, where possible. Cardio training will help you to keep your body fat levels low, so you’ll be able to see those toned muscles that are so confident boosting and important to your success as a climber.
Do bear in mind that too much cardio can have counterproductive effects, so do your best to balance this out if your goal is to develop as a climber and to work on having an overall healthy body. Rock climbing and bouldering is a brilliant sport for generally toning your muscles both for men and women, and with a little bit of persistence, you will quickly notice changes in your arms, legs, abs and glutes.
Aside from pure strength, it’s important for sport climbers to have a good level of aerobic fitness. Training endurance through cardio can be helpful when you’re trying to send a route at your limit, with little or no opportunity to rest, so it is important to include some sort of cardio routine into your rock climbing training, whether or not it be climbing specific. Cardio training will help you to keep your body fat levels low, so you’ll be able to see those toned muscles that are so confident boosting and important to your success as a climber.
Do bear in mind that too much cardio can have counterproductive effects, so do your best to balance this out if your goal is to develop as a climber and to work on having an overall healthy body. Rock climbing and bouldering is a brilliant sport for generally toning your muscles both for men and women, and with a little bit of persistence, you will quickly notice changes in your arms, legs, abs and glutes.
Brain health and focus
Lastly, rock climbing focusses your mind. When you set your mind to the next move and hold, you learn to cut off all distractions and force yourself to focus on sticking the hold. Even with distractions like fear, wind, screaming children, angry birds, ego, or general background noise, an adjusted climber is entirely in the moment and ready to commit their mind and power with absolute finesse.
You can train your mind to focus best from a young age, as this takes time to develop, however, regular yoga and meditation, frequently tackling your fears on the wall, and practice will help you to refine your mind and build up a mental tolerance for what can be, quite frankly, a terrifying sport
No Comments