Climbing and Martial Arts

Having become slightly bored with climbing(I'm scared to even admit this) and wanting to take a needed break, I am considering studying a martial art to pass the time and build strength, focus, awareness, and concentration. Can someone please provide guidance regarding a suitable art to study or is my logic out of whack.

Thank you

judo

/thread

Sounds like you have the right idea. If I remember correctly, when Mark Twight lost a couple of partners he took some time off and did kick boxing a couple times a week. Good luck!

ju jitsu !

Shane Zentner wrote:build strength, focus, awareness, and conentration. Thank you

All martial arts will do this including boxing. I think the best one for body awareness would either be kali or a grappling martial art such as brazilian jiu-jitsu or judo. My personal favorite is muai thai, but you can get a little/lot beat up doing that one. If you're looking for practical (real-world) applications you can't do any better than krav maga, jeet kun do in a close second.

Another benefit of climbing is that your grip strength will be better than the average person. It is crucial in the grappling arts.

Probably the most important is to find a good instructor. Some can really mess you up. If I were going to train again, I would probably do Krav Maga or Systema

Shane,
Id recommend Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Like most martial arts its excellent for endurance, but you'll find yourself gripping (somewhat similar to Judo) a lot building forearm strength.

You also dont get hit since there's no kicks, punches, knees or elbows which reduces the risk of injury.

Let me know where you're at in Colorado and I can recommend some places to train.

Spend a summer at Shaolin Temple?

Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

bjj is great, its quite popular,I trained under a Roy Harris blackbelt for awhile.

Krav Maga, incredible workout and you'll work out a lot of stress, while learning a proven combat system. Krav is not a martial art, there's nothing pretty about it. I was an instructor. One of the best true fighting systems.

Though I didn't do it concurrently with climbing, I did a form of Kung Fu for 9 years. It definitely taught me a lot about controlling breathing and maximizing explosive force (classic e.g. is flicking water from your fingertips, concentrating the energy of your whole arm into a drop of water). In contrary to the dynamic theory in kung fu, Yoga, while not as badass, uses very similar alignments (and your climbing antagonist muscles) in a static way while still controlling your breath.

I just explained some physical benefits, but I think the biggest benefit of mixing body arts (climbing included) is learning your body and your mental discipline. Most martial arts are high on discipline so that might turn into more regular and regimented climbing, more flexibility or better dynamic control. I'd research the mental and physical pillars of whatever martial art intrigues you and go with what matches your own ideals (this might be esp. important because some studios can be v. rigid). I'd also think about what you are looking to augment your climbing with (e.g. bettering your headgame might call for boxing/sparring vs more flexibility might call for stretching) and go from there.

Personally, the most useful martial art I learned was joint-locking and pressure points. After a couple years I know where the major organs/tendons/nodes and bones are and how to manipulated them for therapeutic and self-defense purposes.

Someday I'd like to learn tai-chi, I know its slow but it improves your static muscle control and flexibility (who else but a tai-chi master can spend 20 seconds controlling a head-high kick with perfect form). It teaches you self-defense theory and as for mental control, its name means "mastering life energy" how about that for a discipline!

If you just wanna play/have fun, many of my friends ABSOLUTELY LOVE capoeira (afro-brazilian dance fighting). Wicked cool martial art that has an interesting history and mix of media.

youtube.com/watch?v=Z8xxgFp…

Baguazhang is my favorite type of martial art. It can be hard to find an instructor in the USA but the eight palms are some of the most intense work outs you can imagine. I highly recommend. It improved my climbing and made me a stronger person.

A few years back I trained BJJ with a Gi. It's definitely a good supplemental training for rock climbing. Training with the Gi and "hand fighting" will give you tremendous grip strength. Plus there's a good amount of "body tension" involved in grappling as well as keeping mental focus on body position under duress which transfers well in intense climbing scenarios such as bouldering. Occasionally, my instructor would teach Judo which is also a great martial art that could benefit someone's climbing.

One thing to be mindful of is that there's a lot of painful joint manipulation holds which can lead to injury. Beginners and White Belts are known to "spazz" and really crank on submission locks. Sparring with blue belts and above is usually safer because they are much more controlled. I had to throw that in there because I got really banged up in training and ultimately decided not to renew after 6 months when a newbie hyper-extended my elbow and I sat out the last two weeks of my membership.

know quite a few climbers who have loved ju jitsu - as i think a lot applies across disciplines. They taught me how to do the diving roll and it has helped a lot with taking big falls bouldering.

People get hurt grappling more often than they do striking. Wrenched shoulders, bent fingers, tweaks to the back and ribs... I'd do some kick boxing of some sort, and maybe Aikido for grappling and wrist strength.

Evan S wrote:People get hurt grappling more often than they do striking. Wrenched shoulders, bent fingers, tweaks to the back and ribs... I'd do some kick boxing of some sort, and maybe Aikido for grappling and wrist strength.

I have been practicing aikido for the past 10 years, over all the injury level is quite low for a martial art. it will deffantly help with focas, strength, flexability ect. I find that climbing and aikido complment well IMHO. The added grip strength of climbing applys ot many techniques in aikido. But as far as being a harcore kickbutt art that its not.

M Sprague wrote:Probably the most important is to find a good instructor. Some can really mess you up.

I'll second this opinion. Unless there is a specific art/system you want to study, you may want to just find the best school/instructor in your area.

emmet wrote: I'll second this opinion. Unless there is a specific art/system you want to study, you may want to just find the best school/instructor in your area.

+1 on this. An instructor can set the tone for the whole school, if the ego is not left at the door one can get hurt and that's not conducive to climbing for sure.

Whatever you choose to take up "empty your cup." That was advice I got when I first got into Krav, because I had studied several other systems year ago and kept trying to incorporate it all into Krav during class. That is disrespectful to the instructors and the school. There is time for that after class.

Move from NJ to LA. Go to a high school and befriend a hot cheerleader named Ali. Make sure she has a dick boyfriend named Johnny. Soon Johnny and his friends will jump you; you might have to take a little bit of a beating at this point. No worries, a highly skilled martial arts master janitor will bail you out. Hang with the janitor guy, fix up his crib and become a martial arts master. Its just that easy.