I am very afraid of heights but I'm always trying to do things outside of my comfort zone, so today I went to a rock climbing gym (www.hoosierheights.com) and the first couple times it was REALLY!!!!! scary, but after that it was so much fun.
I had a BLAST and I sweated up a puddle. I was wondering if any others did this and what they thought...I think it was pretty much a full body workout, but depending on how you went about tackling each wall you could really focus on particular muscle groups. The incline walls would be hellish upper body workouts and some of the walls seemed like they could be really amazing for lower body too...Anyone rock climbing???

I did it for a while, but it was expensive. I had to pay everytime even after I had a membership.

I took lessons and learned how to tie the knots and belay other people and everything.

I liked this free climb rock wall my place had. It was no higher than 10 feet but had an overhang, and it was really challenging to try to climb from one side to another.

My favourite face coincidentally also had a series of jutted out rock faces and overhangs you had to climb over. I would speed climb it against my friend and see who could do it faster.

yeh ive done it before... major forearm workout i think :P

i couldnt even do the angled ones... lol

If anyone's in the Indianapolis area and wants to do this, we are having a local group meet at ClimbTime here in Indy. It's this friday, August the 20th from 10:30PM untill whenever. We have the whole place to our slevs. Price is dirt cheap to attend. PM me if someone's intrested.

http://www.climbtimeindy.com/html/area.html

http://www.climbtimeindy.com/images/College.gif

I've been climbing for a while

I started indoor and after a while did more and more outdoor stuff
now I'm doing more Alpine climbing

I tried to climb Mnt Elbrus (5642m - 18513 ft) in southern Russia last month, the highest peak in Europe and one of the 7 summits. I developed a bad case of Acute Mountain Sickness on an altitude of 5000m on summit day and had to abandon my attempt.

iceclimbing in the Alps

http://freegeek.betanexus.com/wallis055.jpg

alpine rock climbing in the Alps

http://freegeek.betanexus.com/wallis047.jpg

me and the Elbrus in the background

http://freegeek.betanexus.com/elbrus.jpg

I think it was pretty much a full body workout, but depending on how you went about tackling each wall you could really focus on particular muscle groups. The incline walls would be hellish upper body workouts and some of the walls seemed like they could be really amazing for lower body too...Anyone rock climbing???

There are may different types of climbing, but indoor is (perhaps unfortunately) NOT a complete body workout. It probably felt like that simply because you were not used to the motions and using stabilizer muscles that you do not normally need for lifting.

The 'best' climibng shape is not particulary atractive when compared to the typical male-model look (although it certainly varies depending on genetics). The reason is, it is a lot of finger/forearm strengh and pull strength. Now of course if it in not your major workout, it's not going to do you any harm, but good climber have excellent strengh/weight ratios so excess muscle in the legs, sholders, byceps or chest is not a good thing. It's good for upper back and the steep (overhanging) stuff is good for core strength.

After finally making progress on getting back into shape I started rock climbing a few months ago at a local gym after taking my kids there one night. We all got hooked on it, so we ended up joining the gym. We are usually there at least 2x a week. My kids also went to climbing camp for two weeks this summer, for which they went climbing on "real" rocks and loved it. My son wants to join their junior climbing team and he's got his first practice this weekend.

Although, I'm new to climbing I've found I get more of a leg workout on the tall (45ft) walls and a nice forearm workout on shorter (10-12ft) bouldering walls.

Good Luck! :nod:

This (http://www.indoorclimbing.com/worldgyms.html) will give anyone a reference to find a climbing gym in their area.