Psychological and Emotional Benefits of Rock Climbing

Psychological/emotional benefits of rock climbing

This is a great article found on http://www.transcendyourlimits.com/awesome-benefits-rock-climbing/

Climbing is a full body workout, meaning your head as well.

It doesn’t just keep your muscles fit, but it also stimulates and improves your cognitive ability, problem solving, confidence etc. Let’s look at the mental benefits of rock climbing.

Goal setting. To climb rocks you must set goals and move towards them. We’ve already talked about why that’s important in life.
Being aware of yourself. It requires you to be more aware of the space around you, and how you’re moving your body through it.
Relieve Stress. When you’re climbing, nothing else matters. It’s much the same effect that skydiving has on you, because you’re so focused on the moment and what you’re doing right now, you don’t have time to worry about things like work or bills. It’s an antistress device!
Confidence. If you can climb up a mountain, you can do anything. Things that seemed like a big deal before, (public speaking, confrontation, job interviews) now don’t seem hardly as daunting.
Perseverance. When you’re climbing you always want to get to the top, and you’ll keep trying to get there. That’s what makes it such a good sport because it teaches you life skills as well as giving you a workout.

There are a whole lot more benefits to rock climbing, but I’m just covering a few here. It’s sort of an introduction to the sport if you didn’t know about the benefits, and I’ll probably do a few more posts about the sport when I get back into it in the coming weeks. Oh, I almost forgot.

This is probably my favorite part about rock climbing (Apart from getting thick, strong forearms!)..

The very important reason! – It’s YOU vs YOURSELF

Just like in other areas of life, often it’s just you vs yourself.

You’re the one who normally holds you back in most things, and learning that through rock climbing will show you that in other aspects of life, you can often remove limitations by just stepping outside of them.

I know that sounds like a weird idea, but stick around on the blog for long enough and you’ll understand what I’m trying to say here. The point is, rock climbing is about you challenging and pushing yourself, so it makes you stop thinking about competing and getting approval for others (Unless of course, you’re actually competing in a rock climbing competition!).

It pushes you and makes you want to achieve more, and that’s a skill that’s useful not only on the climbing wall, but in every aspect of your life.