Most of us used to be climbers.

You are built to climb.

If climbing is absent from your life, it leaves a hole in your movement experience that you’ll try to patch with inferior substitutes.

Climbing isn’t a niche activity for a strange subset of athletes. It’s a fundamental human movement. Your body was shaped for environments where climbing was normal.

For most of human history we climbed to traverse mountains, harvest food from trees, and overcome obstacles in our path. If you stop and think about it, the instinct is obvious: to pull yourself upward, to hang, to reach for something just out of range, to get on top.

Kids still do it instinctively. Trees. Monkey bars. Playground structures. The back of the couch.

Most of us used to be climbers.

Don’t think climbing is for you? Neither did I.

For a long time I didn’t really like climbing. I wasn’t very good at it, which was irritating because I was already strong and reasonably athletic. But climbing has a way of exposing gaps you didn’t even know you had.

Eventually I made a decision: this is important. Being able to move my body through space like this is worth the struggle. (Let’s be honest, I also wanted to keep up with my husband Jeff and the other boys.)

The more I climbed, the more I enjoyed it. Somewhere along the way, I realized I had become a climber.

Climbing didn’t just make me stronger. It made me a better mover. More coordinated. More composed when my body and brain both start negotiating an early exit.

Climbing’s real advantage may actually be psychological. “Heights” is one of our most deeply wired fears, and climbing gives you a safe place to face it.

Hanging near the top of a bouldering wall or the end of a rope doesn’t look dramatic from the ground. But it feels very real when you’re up there.

Not fear of the movement itself – fear of being high, of letting go, of the quiet “what if I fall?” loop that creeps into your thinking.

Learning to stay there – to breathe, assess, trust, commit – becomes its own kind of training. You’re not just strengthening your body…

You’re recalibrating your relationship with discomfort.

Last week offered a perfect example. I fell off a climb I absolutely could have finished. One of our group, Morgan, looked at me and jokingly asked a simple question:

“Did you believe?” Annoyingly insightful.

Because no, I hadn’t really believed. The hold looked far. My grip felt smoked. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had already decided it probably wasn’t going to work.

So I tried again. Same body. Same fatigue. Same climb.

Different decision. This time I committed fully, moved decisively, and stuck it.

Nothing magical happened between those two attempts. No sudden strength gains. No new capacity. Just a shift in intent and a willingness to tolerate the strain long enough for the movement to work.

Climbing reveals this dynamic constantly. It is physical, yes. But it is also intensely cognitive.

So what does climbing actually give you?

Physically, climbing is unusually dense:

• Full-body strength
• Grip strength
• Mobility
• Dynamic power
• Cardiorespiratory demand
• Balance and coordination

These are exactly the capacities that tend to decline with age if they aren’t regularly challenged.

You’ve probably heard that grip strength is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and longevity. That’s not because strong hands are the missing link, it’s because grip strength reflects a well-functioning nervous system, strong muscles, and a body that can generate and control force from core to extremity.

Climbing develops that naturally. And unlike many forms of training, climbing forces you to apply strength in context: 

You are not lifting an object, you are moving yourself.

I’ll leave you with four bonus tips on climbing: 

1. Like any sport, too much of a good thing can become a problem. Without balancing it with other movement and strength work, heavy climbing can create imbalances that eventually lead to injury. Climbing is best enjoyed as a regular part of a well-rounded active life, not your “only thing.”
2. You don’t need a climbing gym to benefit from climbing patterns. Hanging from a pull-up bar or local monkey bars trains many of the same qualities. A simple hang strengthens the grip, builds resilient shoulders, demands trunk engagement, and restores overhead capacity. Don’t miss the opportunity to “hang out” when you pass a suitable bar.
3. Here’s good news for people who don’t like “working out.” Climbing rarely feels like exercise. It feels like exploration, play, experimentation, problem solving. You become absorbed in the task rather than preoccupied with the effort.
4. An underrated benefit: climbing is rarely a solo activity. Climbing gyms, outdoor crags, and even playgrounds tend to generate something many adults struggle to find elsewhere: spontaneous community. Climbing with friends is the best.

Climbing reminds you of something fundamental:

You are designed to support and move your own body weight. Climbing is not niche athleticism, it is human movement and you are wired for it.

So here’s the homework:

Make a date with friends to check out the local bouldering wall. At a minimum, touch the skill in whatever way is available: climb a wall, a tree, hang from a bar, or hit up the monkey bars at your nearest playground.