Adaptive Rock Climbing Techniques

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Kim Millikan. We're at the National Ability Center, in Park City, Utah. I'm the Adventure Living Program Manager, which means I manage the challenge course, the team building activities, and the climbing wall. Every time you climb you use muscles, regardless of how you're climbing, that will become stronger. That includes your head; your mental focus. But yes, it it's it's wonderful, because we have what's called a four to one system, where we can hook up a pulley on the top, and one on the bottom, and run it back and forth, and we take off, obviously it's four to one, so they weigh a quarter of what they would normally weigh. By doing that we can assist when they tell us. We like to force people to be responsible for their own climbing as much as possible. So either they can pull themselves up with that until they get their strength to go without it, or they can have a volunteer help pulling on that, and they will build up strength that way, and we can vary it out by using less and less strength to pull on the cord, and then it will strengthen their arms until we take the four to one away, and they're climbing. I remember an eighty-four year old grandmother who was here climbing with her children, who had visual impairments, and she made it to the top of our wall, and rang the bell. She was being bribed with ice cream, but that also works."