Sierra Blair shows you how to get a handle on rock climbing

Sierra Blair shows you how to get a handle on rock climbing

When it comes to total body exercise, there is perhaps none more mentally and physically imposing than rock climbing. If you can get past the thought of climbing, the benefits are plentiful: increased muscle strength and improved balance and flexibility, to name a few.

For professional rock climber Sierra Blair, it was love at first climb. As a child, she was invited to a friend's birthday party at a rock climbing center at an outlet mall near her home in Scottsdale, AZ. She had never climbed to this point before, but was immediately amazed by the joy she felt as she stood on the wall. She enjoyed it so much that her mother drove back to the same place almost every day after that.

It came to a point where Blair told her mother that she wanted to pursue a career. Her mother supported her, but didn't know if that was a possibility until a few weeks later when she spotted an article in her local newspaper highlighting a youth climbing team in Arizona that had just won a national title and that had some athletes making the Olympics. Mama Blair asked her daughter if she wanted to sign up and that's when the journey began.

“Something about it just feels right to me,” Blair said. "It's fun and exercises my brain. I love climbing and I love how it feels. It's a good way to relax, but it also helps me focus at the same time. It gives me a good workout and it always feels like there's something to accomplish when climbing, no matter what."

Blair joined inM&Fabout how to get started on your own climbing path, important tips before you get on the wall, some of the basic exercises that are part of her training, and how she found a way to refocus on difficult climbs.

Keys to getting started with climbing

Just go to the gym. Climbing halls usually have particularly friendly staff. If anyone is ever nervous about trying to climb, the staff are usually incredibly helpful and will really help you more than you think. In addition to feeling like a fish straight out of water, I also encourage people to see if the gym offers introductory climbing classes or private lessons you can take. Once people actually decide they want to climb and be involved, a lot of it boils down to what you can handle. I think two days a week is a pretty good amount to go in there and climb for a beginner. It will definitely make you sore, but also help you get better.

There are a lot of good climbers who only climb two days a week - not necessarily at a professional level, as we are there about four to five days a week. But two days a week you can really have fun and make a lot of progress while climbing. I think it's important to just keep at it. Many people in climbing develop these friendship groups because it is a very social sport. You can really design it however you want.

How to keep climbing

What has really helped me throughout my career is working 90 to 100 percent for long periods of time. I see a lot of people come in and out of climbing at all levels, and many of them work at 120 percent constantly for a few months, but then they drop out. It's so important to have that long-term consistency. I think that's why I haven't been able to burn out on climbing and I'm getting better and better. You don't have to go crazy if you work hard. There is an acceptable level of hard work, and if you maintain that, I think that's where you'll see the biggest gains.

Checkpoints before climbing

I'm the kind of person who packs his bag before a climb - even if it's just a training session, because I want to go into the climb well looked after and relaxed. The most important things I need are my climbing shoes, my chalk bag and liquid chalk. We use brushes when climbing. They look like toothbrushes, but the bristles are made of horse hair and you use them to brush chalk for a better grip. I grab a few snacks and some Perfect Hydration and that's really all I have in my climbing bag. It's an easy operation unless you're away for a long time. Once I'm ready to go to the wall, I usually put on my shoes, your chalk bag, chalk my hands and see what you're going to climb.

You're trying to figure out what you're going to do from scratch. It's actually a pretty quick process for the most part because at a certain point you can see from the ground what it's going to be. When you're on the wall, sometimes you have to adjust because even if you can see everything from the floor, you don't always know how it will feel on the wall. So you have to make changes along the way.

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate

I'm from Arizona, so hydration is one of our core tenants of life out here. As an athlete, when I'm hydrated I feel so much better and more powerful. I think the hard part is that you don't always know when you're dehydrated. Now I'm really focusing on tracking how much water I drink each day. Just to make sure I get everything I need. It definitely makes a big difference in my climbing and recovery.

Nerves are OK

Since I compete a lot, nerves can be a big factor. Sometimes they can hit really hard in a competition, although I have competed in several. Whether the competition is going well or not, the nerves can somehow all remain the same, which is crazy.

One of the things I do when I feel stressed - and sometimes I can even do this while climbing the wall, depending on where I position myself - is count backwards from 10. When I'm standing against the wall, I count backwards from five or three just to think about something else for a second so I have time to calm down. That was a little thing I did over time. I think it's really helped me calm down when I need it.

Climbing can be scary…sometimes

It's important to remember that there are a lot of safety precautions in place, so it's really in your mind. So this is a way of forcing yourself or reminding yourself that everything is going to be okay. One of the things I've been struggling with recently was about a year ago I had a herniated disc in my back. Last year I just had it treated and am still training for climbing.

For about six months I didn't pursue climbing at all. I would stop if I felt it was getting too risky on the wall. I would climb down because the force of a fall was just too great. There were a few times where I talked myself into moving because I was so afraid of falling on it and it was very difficult to pull off.

Climb the mental hurdle

What was really hard was that there was a certain point where I was in just mild pain almost constantly. This was hard for me mentally because I believe your body can only take so much mild pain before you're in a bad mood all the time. You're moody and you also have an injury that you're working on. Unfortunately, climbing was what irritated my back the most.

I had to learn which positions I could climb into and which I couldn't. Because my lower back hurt so much, I couldn't use it as well as some of my abdominal muscles. I just felt like my arms were taking over because my lower body just wasn't cooperating. So I was climbing much easier than usual, but it felt much harder. Strangely enough, what really helped me when I was climbing was always

I still felt like I was getting a great workout because I had to push myself so much harder in a different way. It was true, even if the climbs were easier than what I would normally climb. I think that helped me mentally. I still felt like I was working hard even though it wasn't what I would normally do. I love the feeling of working hard. This helped me not to completely lose my mind because of the injury.

Train like a climber

For most climbers, climbing takes up a large portion of their training. I think that's because it's so specialized and you have to be familiar with so many movements that are constantly changing. Then you train for a lot of finger strength. We have these things called hangboards that we hang from. You can do pull-ups if you want, but it's not shaped like a pull-up bar. It has a number of different handles that allow you to work from different positions. They hold on to them for specific time intervals. You can add weight, hang with one arm, two arms and two different handles for your hands. There are so many ways you can mix it up.

We also do something called campusing. People who aren't climbers usually think it's cool because it looks like they're little flaps of wood on a slightly overhanging wall. This is really good for your fingers and arm strength. As far as the general exercises we do, it's a lot of core, plank, and hollow body holds. Some people can do front levers while climbing and some can't. For the arms, it's a lot of pull-ups and weighted pull-ups. People are actually training their legs now, which is cool. These are squats, deadlifts, squat jumps, lunge walks and lots of plyometrics too. Climbers actually become pretty well-rounded athletes when it comes to fitness. For a long time you just climbed and didn't do anything else. Now it has become so competitive that everyone has to hit everything from all angles.