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Started by Paul Del Casino, February 14, 2017 · 4 Replies · 165 Views
I start the rope climb seated on the floor with my legs in a straddle (I only have about 12 feet of rope to work with) and when I climb I fully extend my arm to reach up and grab the rope. In the video, the guy performing the rope climb is making relatively short reaches up with each arm and they're mostly still bent around 90 degrees.
Should I be reaching up with a fully extended arm or should I take shorter "steps" up the rope with my arms?
Hey Paul,
Keeping the elbows bent like the athletes in the exercise video will help with your grip. The higher up you reach each time, the harder it gets. Reaching higher and performing slow negatives on the descent are both great longer term goals to work towards.
OK that makes sense. I don't have any problem with grip. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't hurting anything reaching higher.
As an aside, once an exercise (any exercise) is mastered, how often is it recommended that a person perform the exercise to keep their abilities up?
Hi Paul,
Once an element is truly mastered then it becomes a warmup for the harder elements. 
The choose of reaching with bent elbows it is necessary at the beginning since biceps and brachialis exert the maximum strenght with approximately 90° of flexion especially on concentric movement. develop a full arm flexion on rope requires the one arm pull up on rope.