Rope Climbing

Rope Climbing Instructions

Rope Climbing Overview

Climbing a rope is an ancient exercise. It's such a simple action, but highly effective for physical development. There is a reason that the rope climb has been a staple exercise in military training and combat fitness for thousands of years - it is, quite simply, one of the best upper-body strength exercises available to you. 

You will need a decent level of fitness before successfully practicing the rope climb. Many people approach the ropes with the tenacity and enthusiasm of their gym class days, when they scaled the school ropes with ease, only, as an adult to be left as a frustrated mess on the floor. 

Building up the strength to support this exercise is highly worthwhile as you'll target many muscle groups (arms, shoulders, abs, back...), develop an iron grip and improve your coordination and agility skills. The rope climb has a real biceps dominance - check-out the biceps development of any consistent rope climber and they will be light-years ahead of average gym-goers. 

Rope Climbing for Beginners

Rope climbing isn't an easy exercise and it's typically reserved for the fittest amongst us. You will need to be in decent physical shape to accomplish it, but it's worth the effort to learn.

Solid exercises you should develop competency in to help prepare you for the strength demands of the rope climb are -

• Pull-ups - for developing muscles for lifting your own body weight.  
• Push-ups - for general development of the upper-body muscles with particular focus on building endurance levels.
• Sled pulls - for training similar muscles to the rope climb using weights you're comfortable with.

You can also try tying a kettlebell or dumbbell to the end of your rope and throwing the other end over a pull-up bar. You can then pull the kettlebell towards you to mimic the exercise with only a small portion of weight. You can increase the weight as you gain strength until it's not such a huge leap to hoisting your own bodyweight up the rope. 

Advanced Rope Climbing

When comfortably scaling the rope in seconds, you can consider some of these more advanced rope climbing techniques  -

Climbing without your feet

Remove the use of the feet when climbing the rope and lift yourself up with pure upper-body strength only for an additional challenge.

Weighted rope climbing

Adding additional weight to your rope climbs is a very effective way of increasing the exercise intensity and maximising development. Please note that weighted climbs should only be attempted when fully competent with bodyweight rope climbs, and you should start small and incrementally add weight.

• A weighted vest is a simple and versatile way of adding weight to your rope climbs. The great thing about weighted vests is that they're safe, comfortable and evenly distribute the weight over your body. 

Other rope climbing exercises

• Climbing rope with feet
• Climbing rope without feet
• Climbing two ropes simultaneously
• Climbing upside down

Substitute rope climbing exercises