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We have a Rock Gym not
too far from my house and my daughter and I will shoot over
there on a weekend and get in a quick 3 climbs a piece.
Indoor rock gyms are awesome, rain or shine!
Climbing develops your forearms, shoulders, hands,
neck, upper back and much more. Your entire body, including
cardiovascular and muscular systems, benefits from rock
climbing.
Climbing is a dynamic muscle exercise, meaning your
muscles are exercised because they are flexed for extremely
long periods of time. This requires more blood to be pumped
to them than the short repetitions used when lifting
weights, which in turn causes your heart to work much harder
to keep blood flowing. Your breathing rate increases to
maintain oxygen levels in your blood.
If you have a low tolerance to
cardiovascular activity, be sure to start slowly and work
your way up. For example, you may want to start with five
minutes of rock climbing, and add an additional five minutes
each week until you are climbing for 30 minutes. Research by
the American Medical Association has found that this amount
of time is optimal in order to achieve the greatest
cardiovascular health benefits. In addition, rock climbing at a moderate intensity
for around one hour will burn around 400 calories.
Although most of you are aware that I
am big into the whole "Do-It-Yourself" thing... there's no
way that I have the space (or the permission) to build a
rock climbing wall on the side of my house! So here's
what I did...
No... it's not a full wall... so I
can't get in the full climbing experience with the leg work
and all. However, the rock holds do make for a great
chin-up variation! I also like to start hanging at one
end of the board and walk my hands from hold to hold to the
other side and back. It's a great
back/bi/hands/forearms burner!
This is a pretty cheap setup too...
you can pick up a set of the rock holds off of eBay starting for about $25.
I mounted the rock holds to a 2 x 12 board
and lag bolted the board into a floor joist in the basement.
Placement of the holds are certainly up to you, but I
preferred to stagger them to allow for various grip options
and route variations.
So if you like
climbing... if you're looking for some different chin up
options...or if you just like building whacky workout stuff
in your home gym... give this contraption a shot. Very
easy to make. Just make sure that you have someone
help you hold the board up when you're mounting it.
J
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