Rock Climbing

[Hendricks433]

I lifted for 3 months from Feb to end of April and basically took off may for a couple reasons, not good ones though. I was doing a Starting Strength program. I just moved in with my friend and we decided to climb and its fun and I would rather get good at bouldering than actual climbing but I like both. Im not sure if Ill keep getting a membership after this month but my main purpose for working out is beach muscles with some added athleticism as part motivation. If I dont keep my membership at the climbing place I will atleast do some workouts specific for climbing at the gym so if I ever go back Ill have the muscles needed more developed. I like it and its fun but the chances I get real serious about it and make it my life is slim.

[ottsville]

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Or, he could just be taking a month to try out an activity and be unsure how far he is going to progress and at what level of dedication.

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Which is exactly why prescribing climbing specific weight training is a bad idea.

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This is why pro athletes or even high school athletes (assuming its a smart program) are in the weight room during the offseason

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OP is neither a pro nor a serious high school athlete.
A noobie climber will make significant gains in strength and flexibility by just climbing and doing some stretching. Leave the sport specific weight training for when his performance is plateauing and he needs to find some other way of making gains. IF he ever gets to that point...

Now if he wanted to lift to strengthen areas that climbing doesn't work out, that may be a good idea.

[kiddcheckers]

e-pissing contests are cool. I tried to point out nicely enough that my advice was for someone who's seriously interested in climbing while yours, as now clarified is for someone more interested in general shape and looks. Shake on it?

And sorry for starting a thread about a supplement question. Curiosity is stupid, I see that now.

OP if you're looking for beach muscles then my original squats and bench probably isn't enough. Climbing will give you an awesome back, your abs will also get great work if bouldering is your main goal b/c there's a lot more power moves and overhang work there, and forearms. All of those are things chicks dig. It definitely hasn't given me large biceps, they're strong as hell but wirey.

GL.

[Blarg]

No offense, but the problem with the homeopathic supplement thread is not the supplement, but the homeopathy part.

That stuff is such crazily egregious nonsense that it might as well have been something like, Hey guys, I've heard about this great way that an Ouija board can double my bench press -- what do you think?

Read even a tiny bit on homeopathy and you can see that it's about the purest form of spooky you can find -- it's such total horsesh*t that it's pretty much an insult to read it, because it can only be written with the assumption that the reader is an idiot. So a question like that shows such poor research on your own that it's probably inappropriate for a fitness forum. You don't have to be smart here, or knowledgeable, I'm sure, but at least the question has to be legitimate and not idiotic.

Now you may not be an idiot at all, but your question was. You might as well be grateful it was shut down early so you didn't have the whole forum dogpiling on it and asking you how you could possibly be such a moron.

I'm assuming you're just lazy. But homeopathy is really well into moron territory, and there's no such thing as a serious question about it.

[Rearden]

Ottsville,

"Now if he wanted to lift to strengthen areas that climbing doesn't work out, that may be a good idea."

That is incorrect.

Please read my post with respect to issues of joint strength and injury prevention; you may also browse a variety of literature avaliable on training for events in general to see the logic breakdown I'm going to explain. I did not argue that OP wouldn't make gains in climbing by simply climbing however that weight training in general is solid advice for any athlete recreational or otherwise. I stand by my comments that body recomposition beneficial to climbing could occur via lifting and also that muscular imbalance and general injury prevention would be served by lifting. Injury prevention alone is a potent enough reason to include weight training, especially in a demanding sport like climbing.

One does not have to wait for something (flexibility, cardio, strength) to become a limiting factor before working on it and thereby preventing it from getting to that point.

Your comments that the OP should only focus on muscles not hit by climbing is quite false. In a classic roundabout analogy I would suggest that runners (at any professional or even recreational level) interested in improving their sprints do not only do upper body work (they do squats, etc.)... you seem to suggest a similar program by claiming that the OP should avoid lifts that involve muscles involved in climbing; that's absurd. Again, the point of lifting is to augment one's performance not make up for the gaps left by an activity. It's why soccer players still squat, baseball players still do shoulder work, etc. That even though one is technically using those joints/muscles in an activity strength gains and progress in injury prevention can be fast forwarded via lifting.

OP later clarified his pattern of climbing and goals with respect to climbing. I still stand by my suggestion that a complete and intelligently designed program which encompasses all major muscle groups is beneficial regardless of the devotion/time dedicated to the activity(whether or not OP chooses a program that is climbing specific, whatever that may be, or a program such as Starting Strength).

I'm not even going to touch the homeopathy comments aside from saying that I am glad that thread was locked and that more people research such claims before presenting them in any forum.

[ottsville]

A recreational to serious climber can definitely benefit from a weightlifiting regime. However a noobie, although he *MAY* benefit, will do more for his climbing and climbing strength by simply climbing. He will often be working climbing specific muscles to exhaustion. And if he is climbing three days a week that should be plenty of work out(possibly too much) for those muscles and he may wish to supplement his work out with exercises that work muscles that climbing misses.

Your argument would be like somebody saying - "gee, I just bought a bike, and although I haven't ridden in years and don't know if I'll stick with it more than a month, I guess I should go to the gym and do some squats..."

I'm not denying the benefits of weight training...I just believe that there is a certain threshold for the average person to step over before it becomes worthwhile to supplement your activity with. And I read into OP's post that he wanted more of a fun workout than just going to the gym to lift.

[Alobar]

wow, I was excited to see a rock climbing thread and then disappointed once I opened it because this thread totally sucks (except for blargs post, cuz homeopathy srsly?? lol)