disobey_gravity | Entries tagged with advice

So I keep meaning to get a rice bucket and otherwise do wrist/grip strengthening exercises but I keep running into a really oddball problem.

Which is that everyone who's interested in improving grip strength this way pretty much assumes -- not without reason, to be fair -- your wrist extensors are relatively weak compared to your flexors and focuses much more on strengthening them.

I just have literally the reverse problem. My wrist flexors are relatively weak compared to my extensors, and I'm really feeling it when I go climbing (or do aerial). (The tl;dr version of how the fuck you get to this really weird place, strength-wise, is: over ten years as a massage therapist.)

So! Does anyone have exercises for the flexors, specifically, that they're fond of? Variety especially would be good; I get bored of conditioning super quickly if I don't have different things to cycle through.

allochthonous

So I have recently got back into climbing, and it's great, and I have a group of friends who I've managed to get hooked on it as well, and I'm saving up for a climbing holiday later in the year, and it's all wonderful. Except that I appear to be steadily losing the skin on the inside of my fingers. Last time I realised that I had ripped all of the skin off the bottom third of my fingers on my left hand and was bleeding (nice). I never ran into this problem when I climbed before, and I guess it's just because I've been out of the game for a while, but is there anything I can do until my hands harden up? Loads of lotion? No lotion? Just tape it up? It's not particularly painful, but I don't want the scrapes to get infected. If you climb regularly, do you just expect calluses? Or do everything to avoid them?

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Tbilisi

rydra_wong

To break in super-tight new shoes faster:

Put your shoes in a plastic bag, closed as tightly as you can. Wrap it in towels soaked in boiling water. After about 5 minutes, the rubber will be warm and pliable enough to get the shoes on with minimal agony.

Put them on and wear them round the house for a while (some people recommend skipping or jumping up and down in them, but that seems unduly masochistic) while they mould to your feet.

Repeated as needed.

(Sharing because I just learned about this trick and have been using it today, with great success. Only traces of water got on the shoes, so looks like you don't have to worry about damaging the leather.)

allochthonous

I've been reading this community with envy for a while and finally decided to take the climbing plunge (hopefully not literally) this weekend.

I've tried climbing a couple of times before and loved it but for various didn't take it any further; now I have a bit of time I'd like to try indoor (and eventually outoor, although this may not be the time of year for it...) properly. I am effectively a complete beginner and wondering where to start.

I've been looking at beginners classes and I am a bit confused with the variety of introductory sessions available for indoor climbing. Some walls offer six-hour beginners sessions while some are happy with an hour-long induction session before they let you start climbing. Would you recommend doing a short induction first, or going straight for the longer sessions (given that I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it)?

Also, if anyone has experience with climbing walls in London, and recommendations which to go for and which to avoid, I'd love to hear about it!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: London

aella_irene

So, I am having some problems with shoes: I bought a pair at Christmas, and since then my climbing has become rather worse: despite the fact that I bought the same model as I had been renting, in the same size, I end up with swiftly cramping feet, occasional agonising pain, and an inability to balance on anything smaller than a mouse.

I am at my wit's end: when I went to my local climbing shop, they generally concluded that I have weird feet, and suggested a) new shoes and b) a course on footwork. The new shoes would be financially impractical, and the course in footwork seems unlikely to help, as I can no longer do footwork that I could do before. Climbing has stopped being fun, and started being painful.

Does anyone have any advice? Recs of possible solutions?

rydra_wong

Those melamine sponge "Magic Eraser" things do a pretty decent job removing sticky rubber scuffs from white-painted walls.

In case you were wondering.

NO REASON.

sixbeforelunch

Hey all! So, I've been really wanting to get back into climbing lately. (I even bought a climbing magazine today for inspiration. Cute dude who rang me out at Barnes & Nobel was totally into it and wanted to chat climbing, but alas I was late getting back from my lunch break already, and there was a long line behind me that probably wouldn't have been into our climbing chat.) Two quick questions/pleas for advice.

1) So, I own climbing shoes, chalk, and tape, but they've been stored in a nylon bag without seeing the outside world for...over a year or more, I'd guess. I don't know that the bag breathes very well. I'm almost afraid to open the bag and peek at them. Any tips on sanitizing/deodorizing a pair of climbing shoes? And, if the chalk seems okay, do you think it'll be okay to use? I'm just wondering if it can go bad. (I don't see how, but my anxiety disorder likes to find the worst case scenario in everything.)

2) One of the biggest barriers to my getting back into climbing has been fear of not being able to go often enough to make noticeable progress. Opinions on the fewest number of times per week/month that you can go and still make some sort of progress?

fadeaccompli

I'm relatively new to climbing--about three months now--and mostly climb at the gym, and I'm running into some interesting psychological blocks in my bouldering lately. If I've fallen off a route before--especially if it happened unexpectedly, and high up--I find it a hell of a lot harder to get back on that same route again later, despite not having picked up any real injuries or even pain in the process. (Hurrah for padded gym floors, plus crash pads.)

So...is there any particularly good way to work past this block? It keeps coming up especially on routes that go fairly high, or that are really tricky to climb back down from. It's not bothering me at all when I'm on a rope; after a few rounds of that, I knew I wasn't going to fall very far, so I can cheerfully plummet off the wall again and again. But in bouldering, sometimes it's enough to make me not try a route at all, because I've done a solid thud from the top hold before.

Suggestions? Anecdotes? I'm just hoping there's a better answer than "wait for it to go away."

0jack

I'm a fat girl who loves the idea of climbing, and I don't mind that my weight will make it hard for me to do anything fancy. I'm happy with just using my body in a new way. The likelihood that I will ever not be fat again is minimal so I'm not going to wait to do something cool.

Fat people are often quite strong, especially those who do keep fit in conventional ways. We can handle our own body weight and set our own limits just fine, but there may be equipment considerations I don't know about because this is new to me. Bouldering, anything low-level, would be great for me, though I'm sure others would like to go up-up-up. I'm looking for advice on getting started (anecdotes, links, books, how to approach a gym, whatever) for people in my situation.

niqaeli

So I'm new to climbing. Mostly, I've been bouldering as I don't have a climbing partner and also I prefer falling on my ass with less of an audience. And by that I mean, I've gone to the wall all of twice since my first lesson. But yeah -- bouldering.

Thing is, the bouldering routes at my wall are nearly all of them on negative slopes. Which, fine, I get the logic, it means people fall onto the mats instead of scraping down the slab. But I'm pretty well baffled as to how I'm supposed to engage my legs more than my arms in order to cling to the wall! There is exactly one route I've been able to send, and while I am willing to beat my head against the wall until I have something resembling upper body strength again, I feel like there has to be a better way especially as I don't think I will ever have the upper body strength to haul myself around that much!

So! Are there any resources online or any deadtree books that y'all would recommend? Videos or whatever, I just -- yeah. (I will go hit up the great god google, I promise! But I figured I'd ask for recommended resources first. *g*)

amaliedageek

I've been doing Pilates Reformer at least four times a week for the last six months; a change in focus on the part of the studio has left me looking for a new challenge. My son and his friends have been bouldering and top-rope climbing since middle school and have been trying to get me on the wall for years; I have some issues to work through (a friend died while free-climbing in the canyons not far from here), but 20+ years is doubtless long enough to let the fear have its way.

I would welcome the community's suggestions: what would recommend a place to you, or send you screaming for the exits?

juliet

It has become increasingly clear that my smearing kinda sucks (it's OK in bridge-type situations, but on faces, not so much), and that I am also reaching a point at which this is causing issues (i.e. there's stuff I can't climb because either I will actually slip, or I *think* I will).

Any suggestions for improving this? I'll go back and look at my how-to-climb-better book, but if anyone's got any personal tips I would appreciate them!

replacementparts

Hello, all.

I haven't gone rock climbing in years, and then only as a special occasion, once a year or so around middle school age. So I'm essentially a complete noob.

I'm interested in joining these gyms in the CA bay area. Specifically I'd be going to Great Western Power Company and Ironworks, and probably some visits to Mission Cliffs, too. Anyone here use those gyms? They look really nice from the website but I haven't gotten to go check them out yet.

Any tips to keep in mind for someone just starting out?

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Disobey Gravity

Entries tagged with advice

favourite wrist flexor strengthening exercises

Hand care advice

Hot tip

Seeking advice!

(no subject)

Incidentally

getting back into it: two questions

On Fear Of Falling

Getting started climbing—for fat people.

bouldering on a negative slope?

What to look for in an indoor climbing center

Smearing

touchstone climbing and fitness

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October 2024

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