Series Part 1 – Rock Climbing for beginners

Welcome to Spider Monkeys blog about rock climbing for beginner series.

Over the course of the next few months we will be writing a series of blogs for beginners who are just getting into the sport of rock climbing. This will cover a series of topics with a variety of different formats.

We want you to enjoy getting into a new sport. We know how intimidating it can get when you hear people throwing around all the fancy lingo. (Here is a key tip though, if someone says you can flash that route, please keep your clothes on!) 

So we are going to be covering a variety of topics, but we will start with the basics:

how to look after your hands when you go rock climbing, (you will learn some of the new lingo here like ‘flapper’)

How to warm up correctly. Warming up is such in important part of any sport, rock climbing puts stress on the body so warming up correctly will help prevent injuries and improve your performance while climbing. We will also include common injuries that occur and how warming up correctly can help prevent them.

Basic Techniques, this will be really important for beginners. If we are strong it is easy to get away with poor technique, but as we progress to harder climbing routes, technique becomes very important, so instead of unlearning all those bad habits we will focus on how to build them correctly from the start.

Equipment guide – Sometimes the amount of gear available is scary, and it can be overwhelming trying to decide what to get. Often when we are new to the sport we accidently invest in the wrong gear to start with. We will help guide you by speaking to professionals in the industry about selecting the right gear aimed at beginner rock climbers.

I’m Hurt, now what – We will have a chat with our resident climbing physios about common injuries, how to avoid them and when is a good time to book an appointment with them. This is especially important for people just starting out because it’s possible to do too much too fast.

Training Program – We know some of you like to just go to the gym and climb, you hop on whatever route looks interesting and enjoy finding your way to the top. We also know that some of you like a more structured approach, so here we sit down with the local coaches who put their favourite training program together for beginner climbers. Remember you can book an appointment for one on one training with them on the links page. (feature coming soon)

Transition from Indoors to Outdoors – When we go from learning about rock climbing in the gym to climbing outside for the first time there are a few things we need to know. Some of it is unspoken rules around etiquette and some of it is about safety. We can help guide you through this by chatting to long time climbers about the right way to do things.

We will help you learn all the things you need to know! So stay in touch and chat soon. Out goal is to make transitioning into the sport easy and fun, so keep an eye out on our blog or sign up to be updated on our new content as it gets released.

We are always looking for interesting content, so if you want to help teach the community about the sport you are passionate about please send an email to hello@spidermonkey.co.za

Follow us on instagram @spidermonkeystore

Stay safe and chat soon!