Rope Climbing, your thoughts please.

**Judah Maccabee** · Posted On: 9/29/2006 11:22pm

I loved rope climbing in PE class.

Alternative is using a climbing wall - that blasts your forearms worse than anything else... as far as I know. I'm sure viking_koto has some crazy-ass strongman workout that'll make your arms feel like linguine boiled for an hour, but feel hard as iron to the touch.

But climbing, hell yeah, nothing better.

**Hannibal** · Posted On: 9/30/2006 2:49am

I climb rope. It's better than chinups in my opinion. I have a huge tree in my back yard. So I just hang about 6 meters of rope from one of the main branches and climb away. The trick is not to use your feet. Let your legs hang in mid air and just your arms to pull yourself up and lower yourself down.

One idea is to do a continuous climb rope circut. That is use your arms to climb up the rope, lower yourself down without letting your feet touch the ground. Then climb up it again and so forth. That's a real killer. To make things harder you can use a weighted vest or get a back-pack and stuff it with sand.

**sdave** · Posted On: 9/30/2006 3:14am

I did a lot of rock climbing when I was in college (though much less now). Back then I climbed a lot of rope as well. It remains one of my favorite exercises.

Originally Posted by El Macho

From a seated position, one can only develop the grip, biceps and to a degree, upper back strenght. But there is no chance to hit the core, back, abs, obliques, and even hip flexors (which get involved to one degree or another depending on the position of the legs.)

On that machine, for sure. However, I've always climbed rope from a "seated" position on the ground (when the rope hangs that low) and kept my legs straight out in front of me (primarily because using my legs to climb slowed me down and I was an impatient youth). That usually hit my abs and hips pretty well.

**Torec_Scrail** · Posted On: 10/06/2006 6:01pm

Yea, climbing with ur legs like a v parallel to the ground is a bitch..when I got to doing it with no legs..tried that..I can get up..but really sloppily liek that..but..I saw some male gymnasts climbing..the get up like that in 2 seconds..then they use 1 arm to lower themselves down..like 4 seconds slowly then switch hands...

**Teh El Macho** · Posted On: 10/06/2006 6:44pm

Honestly I really don't see the value of that machine. Maybe I'm simplistic. Throw a rope up somewhere, climp it up, climp it down. That's my machine :tongue3:

**Dirty Rooster** · Posted On: 10/08/2006 5:32pm

I had a rope fixed to the ceiling beams in my house and used
to climb up and down that from a seated position.
I used a seated position in order to be able to climb more than two feet up it...

One day it fell down, some fixing gave way, and I sprained my ankle.
Had the most awesome sexy limp for a week afterwards ...

One day I will put that rope up again, when I feel the need for another limp.

P.S. Climbing machine? Are you having a laugh? ... Is he having a laugh??

**taekwondoguy** · Posted On: 10/17/2006 4:35pm

Sounds like a great grip excercise and I would definately do them if I had a damn tree big enough to hang a rope from.

**Flash Jackson** · Posted On: 10/18/2006 12:58pm

I have a rope, but I got it from Lowes, and it's too thin I think. You can position your feet in such a way that it can act like brakes when climbing down the rope, but not to help you climb. You have to climb with pure arms, and that's about it. My Navy buddy can't climb it, and I'm having him do lots of pullups and farmer's walks to build up to it, but he still can't. Any ideas?