Climbing

JO MARCH, the heroine of Little Women, declares that no girl can be her friend who refuses to climb trees and leap fences. Louisa May Alcott wrote that book in 1868. British author Charlotte Yonge wrote in the late 1800s that girls showed “a wholesome delight in rushing about at full speed, playing at active games, climbing trees, rowing boats, making dirt-pies and the like.” Award-winning actress Beah Richards penned a poem in 1951 called “Keep Climbing, Girls,” in which she urged girls to “climb right up to the toppermost bough of the very tallest tree.” To keep you in tune with your adventuresome foremothers, here are some tree-climbing tips that Jo March might have suggested to new friends, along with some ideas for shimmying up ropes.

TREES

The key to successful tree climbing is understanding that you are not pulling yourself up vertically; tree-climbing is hard enough without trying to entirely defy gravity. You are sturdily pushing the plane of your body into the tree diagonally while your arms reach around the trunk, and shimmying up, inch by inch. Tree climbing doesn’t necessarily cause injury, but falling out of one surely does. Climb with caution.

ROPES

Read these directions and trust that when you’re standing in front of a rope in gym class, they will make good sense. Here’s how to tackle the miraculous feat that is rope climbing:

♦ Grab the rope with your hands, and pull the rope down as you jump up.

♦ This sounds odd, but it works: Right after you grab and jump, grapple the rope with your legs so that one ankle wraps around the rope, then end in a position where your two feet hold tightly against the rope. You are up.

♦ To climb: Hold tight with your legs and stretch your arms, one after the other, as high up as possible on the rope. Now comes the secret trick. Use your stomach muscles, or abdominals, to crunch your legs up toward your arms. You may not move far, but keep shimmying, inch by inch. Reach your arms, crunch with your stomach, and grab the rope with your feet. As your torso gets stronger, and your arms and legs, too, rope climbing will become much easier, and all the more gratifying.

Climbing walls at gyms are a great place to practice. Keep climbing, but remember once you go up, you still have to figure out how to safely get down!