Rock Climbing Tips, How To Overcome Your Fears

Rock climbing can be an extremely difficult challenge that can confront your fears all at once. Overcoming these fears can be done if you follow a few key tips and tricks when climbing. For some first time climbers all they use are their arms. This is hypothetically the wrong way to do it. You want to use all of your body parts at once to help yourself get to the top. Picture your body as an X and your stomach is the middle of the X. Always move your legs higher first then push-off with your legs to reach up. Putting your arms up first will just put more strain on your arms and make you a lot slower, quicker.

Watch the area that you are trying to defeat first. You don’t want to look at the top as the ultimate goal. Break the climb up into pieces and once you make it to one section, start over again as if you were at the bottom. If the fear of heights really bothers you, never look down past your feet. Concentrate on looking at where you are placing your feet rather than where your feet have already been.

Over gripping is another issue that you want to avoid. If you grip to hard on a ledge this will make your arms tired a lot faster than they would be if you were using softer grips. When climbing, use littler holds to get to larger ones. You want to take smaller steps rather than one huge one. This will make you more relaxed and help you not become as tired as fast.

If you stay relaxed and do not hurry through a course, you will be just fine. One of the reasons why a person would not be able to finish a course physically is because of injury or because they are too tired. You can prevent both but becoming tired is easiest to prevent. Take your time and be as swift and relaxed as you can be with your movements.

Emily Flory

Born and raised in Iowa, I have been an enthusiastic outdoors woman from a very young age. From the very beginning my dad had me throwing a line in the water and following him out into the woods to sit and wait for that big Iowa buck to walk by. By doing all of this, I was raised country and always will be.

With my home being positioned literally in the boondocks surrounded by timberland and no one else around, I had a pretty good opportunity to make the best out of my resources and my love for the outdoors came when I scored my first whitetail from my backyard. Seeing that 8 point buck come hiking up the path from the riverbed, this little girl’s life was changed forever. Since then, I've had the chance to score some nice whitetail and have also developed a love for bird hunting as well. If it flies, it dies in my case. I love the challenge and will continue broadening my trophy room around the United States.

If it wasn't enough to grow up in an area of heaven like this, we of course needed to put some of our experiences on TV as well. Starting in November of 2010 my family aired the first episode of Outdoors on the Farm, a Farm Journal production. Hosted by Chip Flory, aka the wonderful dad who is the reason why I am the way I am, my family along with our pro staff have been able to put a unique twist on the usual hunting show. OOTF brings farmers and hunters together to maximize their habitat by explaining and teaching what they can do around the farm to increase their profits and quality of their land and even more importantly, how they can have more fun outdoors on the farm. The most important people in my life are my family and to be able to experience this with them is more than I could ask for.

Outdoors on the Farm airs every Thursday at 7:30 a.m. (central time) and Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on RFD TV. You can also view any of our episodes on our website at outdoorsonthefarm.com at any time. Be looking out for our 2nd season to start in Fall of 2011 and check out our blogs to keep up with the Flory family and our pro staff!