Jason Momoa has become one of the fashionable actors thanks to the incredible roles he has played in Game of Thrones or in Aquaman. Besides that, what has most impressed his fans is his incredible physique.
One of the workouts that Jason Momoa has done to achieve his spectacular physique in Aquaman 2 is rock climbing, and in this article we are going to comment on various aspects of this fun sport.
What benefits does climbing in a climbing wall bring us?
Climbing in the gym has been recognized for many years as a recreational or entertainment physical activity that links its peculiar form of sport with fun.
In indoor climbing, the muscular system and facet joints can receive a lot of stimulation, so you should have a good effect on the balanced development of various parts of the body.
During the climb, climbers are faced with a variety of different angles and heights of the wall and have to overcome their body weight and continually complete turns, pull-ups, and even adventurous actions such as jump to different places.
climbing has high and complete physical demands for climbers, so it improves certain skills such as muscle strength and endurance of the upper and lower limbs (hands and feet included), waist, core, and hip flexibility.
Some researchers such as Muehlbauer and his associates examined the effect of an indoor climbing training program on core/handgrip strength and trunk mobility in men and women and concluded that maximal isometric trunk flexor/extensor strength, trunk mobility in the sagittal and frontal planes, and handgrip strength were significantly improved after 8 weeks of training.
body function
VO2 max and heart rate are the two indicators selected to reflect the impact of climbing on body function. VO2 max is the maximal rate of oxygen consumption measured during incremental exercise. It reflects the individual’s aerobic fitness and is an important determinant of their endurance capacity during prolonged submaximal exercise.
On the other hand, heart rate is the heartbeat measured by the number of heart muscle contractions per minute. Prolonged training can lead to a reduction in resting heart rate and an increase in cardiac output.
What has been seen is that climbing has a significant effect on VO2max. but it does not have it on the heart rate.
muscle power
Muscular power is the ability to generate maximum force in a short time in any accelerated movement. Muscular power may be more important than muscular strength when doing some activities of daily living, such as getting up quickly from a chair, walking up stairs quickly, or crossing a street.
In that same study an improvement in muscle power was observed both in the lower and upper limbs.
joint mobility
Mobility can be defined as the range of motion at a single joint or a series of joints. The results showed that the impact on mobility in climbing is significant.
This may be due to the need to stretch the body and limbs to the maximum extent possible during climbing.
How to start climbing
We recently uploaded an article about the importance of being in shape first before starting to run. Well, that article can be extrapolated to the scale as well.
As we have mentioned before, Climbing is a very hard sport that requires a lot of strength and endurance. In this sport it is very common for beginners to exert all their strength with their torso when climbing. That is, instead of using their legs in line with the torso, they try to climb only using the strength of their back and arms.
In this article we are going to comment on what are the limiting factors when climbing in a gym and how to improve on them.
- Excess weight or percentage of body fat: It is obvious that the higher the body weight, the greater the difficulty in climbing. The greater the body weight, the more force we will have to use to climb, jump, etc. Therefore, if you are aware that you need to lose a little weight and want to start climbing, we suggest that you spend some time in caloric deficit to use fat as an energy source while performing two to four strength workouts per week in order to improve your strength
- Lack of strength and endurance: Climbing requires a lot of strength and endurance to climb and not exhaust yourself on the way. Therefore, we suggest that when you go to train in the gym, you perform specific movements when you go to climb, such as a squat or deadlift (as it requires a lot of strength in the knee and hip extensors to go up) and pull-ups or pull-downs (although personally I prefer the pull-ups).
Important points to develop if you are a big person like Jason Momoa
We have been able to see a very funny video of Jason Momoa on the YouTube platform when he was training on a climbing wall for the Aquaman 2 movie.
First of all, comment that in that video, it seems that Jason Momoa had tendinitis. We recommend that before proceeding with an activity as hard as rock climbing, the tendinitis is well treated because it could become chronic.
a tendinitis is the inflammation of any of our tendons. The tendons connect the bones with the muscles and act as a lever when it comes to moving. In this way the tendons intervene directly in the movement when it comes to achieving more strength. For this reason, and because the tendons receive little blood supply, it is more difficult for them to recover from the effort and they tend to become overloaded and therefore inflamed.
Something that Jason Momoa comments in his video is that being so big and having muscular mass, what fails him most is the grip and prehensile strength of his fingers, so he had to work on it. It is useless to have a lot of muscle mass in your legs and torso if you are not able to hold yourself with your hands, so if you are a person with a lot of muscle mass, we recommend that you work on that specific grip strength.
To do this, we have several exercises that we present below:
Dead arm hangs
To perform this exercise, we only have to have a bar and hang from it. As we adapt, what we can do is, or add ballast, or let go so that the force does not come from our hands but from our fingers.
farmer’s walk
Apart from training the core, a very important area if we want to be good climbers, also we improve our grip strength when holding a dumbbell, barbell, kettlebell, etc., with our hands, in order to improve the prehensile strength of our hands.
Hand Resistance Bands for Finger Stretchers
If we want to improve our forearm dynamically, this gadget, which is also very cheap, improves the extensor strength of the fingers and forearm, something that can be very useful in climbing as well.
Boolavard Hand Resistance Bands for Finger Stretchers, Hand Extender Strengthener Strength Trainer Gripper Set for Arthritis Carpal Tunnel
Note: Some of the links posted here are affiliate links. Despite this, none of the items mentioned have been proposed by either the brands or the stores, their introduction being a unique decision of the editorial team. Prices and availability may change after publication.
In Vitónica | Key aspects to prepare in the gym if you are going to practice climbing
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Images | Jason Momoa Instagram, photo news, Amazon
Videos | ATHLEAN-X™, PowerexplosiveTeam