you guys have pretty well convinced me to sign up.
\o/
I have phone-loathing, so I am duly impressed by that bit.
So, what should I expect?
Depends on whether it's a bouldering-only wall or a roped climbing wall.
If it's the latter, a chunk of the time will be spent on safety and protection issues: how to put on a harness, how to belay, etc.. (Maybe some of the folks who do roped climbing can chip in here? I only know this secondhand, owing to my stubborn refusal to do anything that involves learning to tie knots.)
If it's the former, there's very little to learn in the way of safety ("try to land with your weight on both feet and bend your knees" and "for fuck's sake don't walk under anyone who's climbing" is pretty much all of it), so more time may be spent on movement technique.
Either way, they'll tend to start you out on a climb that's very, very easy -- big holds and quite probably on a slab (less-than-vertical, so you don't have to use any muscle to hold on). This is mostly there to get you past the psychological freakout that comes from OMG I'M VERY HIGH UP NOW.
Then they'll try you on something a bit harder.
You may get to deliberately practice falling, so you start feeling confident that it's safe. You will almost certainly get to practice non-deliberate falling, which is a shock to the system at first but (IMHE) surprisingly okay -- at least, not nearly as bad as I imagined it to be, and over very quickly.
Really, all you have to do is not run out of there screaming.
If you can manage that, you're good. And remember that everyone else in the class is likely to be freaking out too, whether they show it or not.
The question is whether, amidst the freaking out, you get that glimpse of it as something you could fall in love with.
Afterwards: drink a lot of water, take a hot bath, and be prepared to wake up extremely achy the day after (and possibly worse the day after that). Climbing works a lot of muscles that get minimal work in everyday life, so initially the delayed-onset muscle soreness is a killer.
no subject
\o/
I have phone-loathing, so I am duly impressed by that bit.
So, what should I expect?
Depends on whether it's a bouldering-only wall or a roped climbing wall.
If it's the latter, a chunk of the time will be spent on safety and protection issues: how to put on a harness, how to belay, etc.. (Maybe some of the folks who do roped climbing can chip in here? I only know this secondhand, owing to my stubborn refusal to do anything that involves learning to tie knots.)
If it's the former, there's very little to learn in the way of safety ("try to land with your weight on both feet and bend your knees" and "for fuck's sake don't walk under anyone who's climbing" is pretty much all of it), so more time may be spent on movement technique.
Either way, they'll tend to start you out on a climb that's very, very easy -- big holds and quite probably on a slab (less-than-vertical, so you don't have to use any muscle to hold on). This is mostly there to get you past the psychological freakout that comes from OMG I'M VERY HIGH UP NOW.
Then they'll try you on something a bit harder.
You may get to deliberately practice falling, so you start feeling confident that it's safe. You will almost certainly get to practice non-deliberate falling, which is a shock to the system at first but (IMHE) surprisingly okay -- at least, not nearly as bad as I imagined it to be, and over very quickly.
Really, all you have to do is not run out of there screaming.
If you can manage that, you're good. And remember that everyone else in the class is likely to be freaking out too, whether they show it or not.
The question is whether, amidst the freaking out, you get that glimpse of it as something you could fall in love with.
Afterwards: drink a lot of water, take a hot bath, and be prepared to wake up extremely achy the day after (and possibly worse the day after that). Climbing works a lot of muscles that get minimal work in everyday life, so initially the delayed-onset muscle soreness is a killer.