Good for you!! I went rock climbing last week at an indoor climbing wall. My fear of heights was a little stronger than I anticipated LOL. They were like "climb up and then just stop and take a break." "I don't need a break." "Aren't you sore?" "No." "You should take a break anyway." "No, if I stop moving, my brain catches up and goes WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??? So I can't stop." The wall here is 35 feet, I made it about 30 feet up. I could have gone higher but I kept running out of obvious foot/hand holds and the longer it took for me to have to look around, the more my brain would start ticking and I'd start panicking and be like OKAAAAY COMING DOWN! hahahaha.
For some reason I neglected to think my fear of heights should stop me from doing it LOL. But I tried!
It was really fun though, I might be convinced to do it again LOL. I was surprised because I thought it would require more power from my shoulders, which is good because I have strong shoulders - but really it was more in my forearms! That was the weirdest feeling, I'd come off the wall and my forearms would be kind of tingling.
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Haha, totally! I could keep it together as long as I didn't look down. The climbing was really totally ok, because I was focused on climbing and also felt really secure. Rappelling was so freaky though. I didn't really want to do it, but the guys I was climbing with were convinced that I really needed to. I've never rappelled before, at all, so like the mechanics of it (like how to STOP myself) were totally foreign, and the rope is just wrapped around a tree at the top of a cliff and myself and my boyfriend are each attached to a side...and I'm supposed to just back over this cliff. I freaked out once at the very beginning and jumped forward/up, saying NO I CAN'T DO THIS, which caused my boyfriend to fall a bit (since we were just attached to each other), and that scared me more than anything...right, guess I shouldn't do that! So down I went. It was fine, except partway down I thought I was closer to the bottom and looked at the ground, and had a moment of pure terror. So I studiously did not look down again!
But they say the first time is the worse, and at least next time I will have a better idea of what I'm doing, so that will probably make it a bit more comfortable...
Oh and yeah the forearms get a crazy workout for sure! On my climb I was pretty high up, starting to get tired, and hitting a tricky part of the route. I really noticed that my forearms were tired and my grip was getting super weak, so I decided at a certain point to come down. The second my feet hit ground, my forearms started cramping insanely. I have definitely never had arm cramps before, it was terrible! I thought it was pretty funny though that the cramping didn't start until I had reached the ground...I guess adrenaline was doing it's thing!