[Documenting Memories, Pre-180] Rock Climbing and Belaying

If you know me, you'd know that I've never really been a sports person, despite the fact that I always embrace sporting activities with open arms. However, under the pressure of my family members who wanted to try rock climbing (that was like 4 years back), I did something unimaginable--to climb rock walls. 

My parents signed the entire family up for a one-day rock climbing course at Yishun Safra one morning in December 2012. As the term 'one-day rock climbing course' suggests, I had to learn how to climb walls for the entire day! Not only that, I soon came to realisation that I also had to learn belaying, which was a pre-requisite for rock climbing! So that's learning two things in a short span of one day! (By the way, I obtained a Level One Belaying Certification on the same day, see photograph below.) This seemed like an extremely demanding task for me no matter how well I tried to phrase it. :)

While I do try to embrace rock climbing with my usual positive attitude, rock climbing was truly a challenging sport. Certainly not as easy as it seemed when professional climbers climbed with ease.

Why? First of all, it was extremely difficult to thrust myself as I climb, and it quite made me regret not building my upper body strength. Second of all, I found it challenging to plan for my path along the rock climbing wall, and as a result, I often found myself making some mistakes here and there, which made me climbed less than 2 metres some of the times. Pretty bad performance. 

However, despite my poor performance in sports, I do get to see and learn many things. I have learnt to give more credit to people who managed to do these challenging tasks, as these tasks can be way more difficult than what they appeared to be like. To add on, I got to see the passion in the professional climbers I saw that day, as they persevere and shine in rock climbing in spite of set-backs such as having multiple rock climbing-related injuries (some of which requiring surgery, and leaves visible surgical scars even after years).

Overall, while I may feel a little apprehensive about climbing a rock wall again, it was a great experience for me to try out a new sport and to also get to observe the firing passion in these professional climbers. Kudos to our climbers! :D