Why Rock Climbing May Be the Ultimate Full-Body Workout

The muscles in your hips and torso strain to hold your lower half against the wall. You arch backward and extend one hand up to clasp the next hold—your thighs and calves burning with the effort of holding you steady and in balance. A moment later, when the tips of your fingers have secured their grip, there’s a wholesale shift in the muscles you call on to maintain your safe purchase on the climbing wall. Exercise is all about engaging your muscles—from your heart to your biceps and quads—and asking those muscles to perform work. And when it comes to activating and training a diverse range of muscles, few exercises rival climbing. Both climbing and bouldering, the name for climbing on low rock formations without a rope, involve “nearly the whole body’s musculature,” says Jiří Baláš, a faculty researcher and lecturer at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, who has conducted research on climbing. While running, cycling, rowing and most conventional gym workouts teach the body to perform consistent, repetitive motions—either to build strength, increase cardiorespiratory fitness or both—climbing is “a more complex movement,” Baláš says. In fact, climbing is an endlessly variable series of movements. No climbing surface or route is quite like another, so the work you ask your muscles to perform during a climb changes each time you exercise. This ensures you’r...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Exercise/Fitness healthytime Source Type: news