What is climbing?
In everyday language, to climb is to go up something steep, holding on with your hands and feet: a slope, a ladder, a tree. Plants climb along a wall, prices climb, tension climbs. In the broadest sense, climbing is any upward movement made with the hands, the feet or any other part of the body.
As a sport, climbing means getting over, or reaching the top of, a steep or horizontal feature, anywhere from the world’s highest mountains to small boulders, using your hands, feet and body together with your physical and mental skills.
Today people climb for sport and recreation, for science, for work, in rescue and in military operations. Climbing courses, outings and competitions take place indoors and outdoors, on rock, on ice and on artificial climbing walls.
Climbing in Türkiye
Climbing is growing fast in Türkiye, with interest from both the public and the private sector. New indoor walls are opening with support from the Ministry of Youth and Sports and from municipalities, and suitable rock and ice climbing areas are being developed and opened to climbers. Private climbing gyms, many of them small businesses, are spreading the sport to a wider public. In recent years more coaches have been able to make climbing their main profession, which has helped the sport reach more people at grassroots level.
Climbing brings together mental preparation, strength and endurance, technique, equipment, safety and route planning, and it divides into several disciplines with very different demands.
“Sport climbing”: two meanings
The term “sport climbing” is used in two ways, and the two are easily confused:
- On rock, sport climbing is a style of rock climbing in which you protect yourself by clipping the rope into bolts that have already been fixed in the rock.
- In competition, Sport Climbing is the name of the Olympic sport governed by World Climbing, practised on artificial walls.
In Turkish the two have separate names (sportif tırmanış for the rock style, spor tırmanış for the competition sport). In English, the context usually tells you which one is meant.
