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Layla Jioussy

Rock climbing is a fun sport. I have some experience with it and in this post, let me tell you all about my journey through it.

Before we get started, let me tell you something. If you know nothing about rock climbing, well, no worries, I’m going to explain a little bit about it.

Rock climbing is a sport, in which you simply climb a wall with hold that have different shapes. You can do rock climbing in a gym or an actual rock, like a big rock in the park. I know about two main types of rock climbing, belay and bouldering. Belay is when you are tied to a rope, so if you fall, you will just slowly lower down to the ground. Bouldering is when you are not tied to any ropes so you have to be careful not to fall dangerously. You can do competitive or non-competitive climbing, it’s your choice. If you do competitive rock climbing, then you go to competitions where you have a path and you have to try to get to the top in a certain amount of minutes or seconds.

Now, let me tell you about my experience with rock climbing.

I used to live in New York City, and when I lived there, I took rock climbing lessons which happened a few times a week. Before I started taking these lessons, I didn’t know a lot about rock climbing and I wasn’t that good at it. And I also didn’t go to the rock climbing gym that often. In fourth grade, I got interested in rock climbing and my parents signed me up for lessons. These lessons helped me with technique, learning how to climb hard climbs, and strengthening my muscles. Let me talk you through the steps of how I learned how to rock climb much better than I knew how to only months before.

When I first started taking lessons, I knew how to climb short climbs, but I didn’t know any special techniques that could help me excel the climb better. As time passed, me and my other partners in climbing did stretches every class, warm-up short climbs and exercise. After this, we would work on climbs that we got stuck on, and we would try to finish them without falling and without using holds from other climbs. Once we would finish the climb that we were working on, we would go to the next level. Something that I like about being in a rock climbing class, is that I get to talk with the other kids about techniques and strategies I should use for a climb and how to climb it. The other kids tell each other which climbs they did and how the got to the top, how many times they fell and how many times they had to change strategies. As I told you before, there are two main types of rock climbing, auto-belay and bouldering. Guess which one is my favorite! If you guessed bouldering, then you are correct! Even with the fun of dangling in the air with just the help of a rope, I favorite bouldering. I find the fun in bouldering because the climbs are shorter, and they can stretch farther, they don’t all have to fit in one section. They can be spread out as far as you want! Well anyways, thanks for reading this, I hope that you enjoyed this post and are looking forward to reading more!