Is Climbing a Key to Longevity? Exploring the Benefits of Starting Climbing After 50
- Becca Catlin
- Mar 3
- 7 min read
If we are lucky, we get to live a long and vibrant life. Most agree that quality of life as we age includes the abiltiy to stay independent and functional. Few people want extra years if they are spent in nursing homes at the mercy of caregivers. Health span is a term for living long with our health, independence, and quality of life. What if there was a magic bullet, the one thing we could do to improve our health span? According to current research, the best single action to reduce all-cause mortality is to engage in regular moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. It is recommended that adults get at least 150 minutes of exercise per week (1). Along with lifespan, exercise is a key factor for health span alongside other lifestyle factors including nutrition, adequate sleep, stress management, and social engagement.
Dispelling Climbing Stereotypes
If your only impression of climbing is young lean men grunting their way up dime thin ledges, you are misled. Climbing is for everyone young, old, male, female, fit and not so fit, beginner, and advanced. Climbing is extremely adaptable to a wide range of people. Top rope gyms are becoming ubiquitous and offer a safe and fun way to achieve your fitness goals. Gyms have routes for all ages and ability levels. Injury from falls is near zero with top rope set ups found in climbing gyms.
Strength and fitness
Starting in our 30s we beginning to lose muscle mass at 1-2 % per year and this accelerates for females throughout perimenopause and menopause. In the absence of strength training, women may lose up to 30% of muscle mass by the time they are post menopause around 50 years of age. The decline in muscle mass for men is a bit more gradual. Yet, on average, in both sexes muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of 30 and this accelerates after the age of 50 (2).
The good news is that with strength training we can maintain or rebuild muscle mass at any age and mitigate these depressing statistics. Climbing sits in the category of strength exercise especially for those newer to climbing, sedentary, or seasoned climbers intentionally working on progressing the difficluty of the grade they climb.
Climbing engages nearly every muscle group in your body, particularly our core, upper body, and grip, making it a comprehensive full-body workout that builds both muscular strength and endurance. The varied movements and challenges of climbing on different holds require your muscles to adapt and work in different ways, enhancing functional strength. Climbing activates many smaller muscle groups often neglected in other exercises, leading to a well-rounded physique. Climbing promotes longevity though a fun and novel approach to gaining strength.
Climbing will build muscle far better than cardio but there is still room for lifting weights in your fitness protocol. The stronger you are, the more resilient you are to overuse injury and age-related loss of muscle.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) specifically recommends higher intensity lifting for older (>50) adults, including 2 to 3 sets of 1 to 2 multi-joint exercises per major muscle group at 70% to 85% of 1 RM, 2 to 3 times a week. They also recommend including power exercises performed at higher velocities with moderate intensities (40–60% of 1RM).1 rep max is the maximal load you can lift one time. This can be estimated by the number of repitions to fatigue. For example, If you fatigued at 6-7 reps, that weight is roughly 85% of 1 RM, fatigue at 10 reps is about 75% of 1 RM.
Additionally, rock climbing has proved to be a good aerobic activity. The intensity of exercise is comparable to that recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine to maintain good cardiorespiratory fitness (3).
According to one study, climbing requires the same amount of energy as running an 8- to 11-minute mile. A 155-pound climber would burn between eight and 10 calories per minute, or around 600 per hour (4).
Flexibility
As we age our connective tissue loses hydration and becomes inelastic. Compounding this, the older we get, the less we tend to move our joints through full ranges of motion. Our movements get smaller and less varied contributing to loss of mobility. There is one clique that actually holds true, “if you don’t move it, you lose it”. When did we stop doing things daily like getting on and off the floor, sitting cross legged, squatting with butt to heels. Joint aches, injury, and pain often starts the process and we constrain our movements habitually limiting our movement patterns.
You can gain flexibility through rock climbing; the act of reaching for holds, high stepping, and maneuvering your body on the wall naturally elongates various muscle groups and moves all of your joints contributing to improved flexibility and elasticity. Elasticity is related to nutrition and hydration of tissue. It is the ability of a muscle tendon to lengthen and snap back like a rubber band rather than breaking like a brittle tissue. The more reptations we move, the more hydrated our tissues become. Shoulders, upper back, hips, and hamstrings are mobilized and hydrated during climbing through a variety of repetitive motions.
Balance
Your ability to balance relates to proprioception and limb strength. Proprioception is your ability to know where your body is in space. Because climbing requires unintuitive vertical motion, rock climbing pushes the brain to change body coordination and movement strategies to facilitate an easier and more efficient ascent. Research suggests that these abilities arise not from the mere physicality of rock climbing but from the cognitive demands it imposes on the brain.
Multiple studies have shown that regular climbing contribute to improving postural stability and that climbing can be used as a therapeutic tool for various types of balance disorders and improving proprioception. A study by Gassner (5) confirms this in a systematic review showing the positive effects of many forms of climbing on improving balance in patients with various neurological disorders.
Even foot strength is correlated to improved balance in both young and older subjects. A recent study showed a significant correlation between balance ability and toe flexor strength in adults (6). It is no suprise, climbing is shown to improve foot strength (7).
Social Engagement
It’s easy to find climbing partners and new friends at a climbing gym. Due to the nature of needing a partner to belay people at climbing gyms are looking for partners and belayers.
If you have a friend already in mind, you do not need to be at the same fitness level or climbing level to enjoy sport climbing together. Few sports can be enjoyed together if you are at vastly different ability levels. Climbing allows you to each climb the routes suited to your individual level. According to current research, rock climbing is considered the sport with the smallest gender gap in performance, meaning women can compete at nearly the same level as men in the sport. If you have had difficulty finding an activity that you and your partner can do together, this may be a fantastic option. Having friends to exercise with can significantly improve consistency. Social accountability and motivation from friends can help you stick to your workout routine more effectively than relying solely on self-accountability. The social aspect of working out or in the case of climbing "playing" with friends can be a powerful motivator to show up.
Low impact
Rock climbing is the low impact activity. You are not pounding your joints as with running or jumping activates. Indoor wall climbers had only 0.29 acute injuries per 1000 hours in one study, and boulderers had 1.47 injuries per 1000 hours of climbing. Injury rates for both acute and chronic injuries in climbing is around 4.2 injuries per 1,000 hours of climbing (8). For compairson, running literature varies from 2.5 to 12.1 injuries per 1000 hours of running (9).
Personal characteristics such as sex, age, weight, height, or BMI do not significantly impact the overall number or severity of injuries across climbing disciplines (10).
Thus, climbing provides the antidote for age related issues of loss in strenght, flexabiity, and balance. It also has a strong social factor improivng motivation and consistency with exercise. It a novel activity for most people, it's fun, and provides a satisfying challenge keeping you young in body and spirit.
References
1) Piercy KL, Troiano RP, Ballard RM, Carlson SA, Fulton JE, Galuska DA, George SM, Olson RD. The physical activity guidelines for Americans. JAMA. 2018;320:2020–2028. doi: 10.1001/jama.2018.14854Buriers to exercise are often cited as time, motivation, lack of energy.
2) Melton LJ, III, Khosla S, Crowson CS, et al. Epidemiology of sarcopenia. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2000;48:625–630. Volpi E, Nazemi R, Fujita S. Muscle tissue changes with aging. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2004;7:405–10.
3) Rodio, Angelo1; Fattorini, Luigi2; Rosponi, Alessandro2; Quattrini, Filippo M1; Marchetti, Marco2. Physiological Adaptation in Noncompetitive Rock Climbers: Good for Aerobic Fitness?. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 22(2):p 359-364, March 2008. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181635cd0
4) Mermier CM, Robergs RA, McMinn SM, Heyward VH. Energy expenditure and physiological responses during indoor rock climbing. Br J Sports Med. 1997 Sep;31(3):224-8. doi: 10.1136/bjsm.31.3.224. PMID: 9298558; PMCID: PMC1332525.
5) Gassner L., Dabnichki P., Langer A., Pokan R., Zach H., Lu- dwig M. et al. (2023). The therapeutic effects of climbing: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PM&R 15(9), 1194- 1209. DOI: 10.1002/pmrj.12891
6) Słomka, K.J., Michalska, J. Relationship between the strength of the ankle and toe muscles and functional stability in young, healthy adults. Sci Rep 14, 9125 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-59906-7
7) Quinlan, Shayan, et al. "The evidence for improving balance by strengthening the toe flexor muscles: a systematic review." Gait & Posture 81 (2020): 56-66.
8) Backe S., Ericson L., Janson S., Timpka T. Rock Climbing Injury Rates and Associated Risk Factors in a General Climbing Population. Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports. 2009;19:850–856. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2008.00851.x.
9) Van Mechelen W. Running injuries. A review of the epidemiological literature. Sports Med. 1992 Nov;14(5):320-35. doi: 10.2165/00007256-199214050-00004. PMID: 1439399.
10) Kovářová M, Pyszko P, Kikalová K. Analyzing Injury Patterns in Climbing: A Comprehensive Study of Risk Factors. Sports (Basel). 2024 Feb 19;12(2):61. doi: 10.3390/sports12020061. PMID: 38393281; PMCID: PMC10892067.
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