Stretch Goals

In the last few months I've found a new obsession -- rock climbing. I randomly met someone online and one of the first activities we did together was to visit EarthTreks in Columbia. I am really looking forward to getting good enough to boulder and climb outdoors, perhaps by the end of this summer early far and defiantly by next year taking on some sport/lead climbing.

Thanks to the introduction to climbing class and the great help of my new climbing friends Vince, Neta and Mike, I've seen some tremendous improvements in the difficulty I can complete at the gym. My grip is improving and I've went from not being able to do any pull-ups, even after working on it in crossfit last year, to being able to do 5 pull-ups without any difficulty.

Climbing has exposed a bunch of things I didn't know about myself. First, this is a physical activity that is very taxing that I LOVE doing. That is new for me. I like the body composition improvements and upper body mass gains I've seen which is probably more due to being a beginner than anything else. I also have noticed just who inflexible I am, especially in my legs, which is funny since those are by far my strongest and largest muscles. I've started learning what I can about flexibility and stretching.

There are lots of different ways to stretch. I found a great explanation of the different types of stretching and which ones can improve what kinds of flexibility. The most effective kind of stretching for static-passive flexibility (the kind I need to improve for climbing) is PNF. "PNF is an acronym for proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. It is not really a type of stretching but is a technique of combining passive stretching (see section Passive Stretching) and isometric stretching (see section Isometric Stretching) in order to achieve maximum static flexibility." (see link above). This is the kind of stretching my massage therapist and cross fit coach had both tried to explain to me. I know I get it a lot better after reading about it so I'm going to try to mix it in to my workouts.