As you are warming ups, doing some pulse raising exercise you can add in some co-ordination exercises. These will focus your concentration on kinesthesia (your sense of movement), proprio- ception (sense of space) and balance. We can effectively turn on the part of the brain that we use for learning and acquiring new skills.
In the long term, these types of coordination exercises can become second nature, it is in the context of the learning to learn that these exercises will benefit you for the first few sessions that you use this book.
- Balance on one foot and move upper body and other limb to counter balance each other.
- Rub tummy, pat head whilst balancing on one foot. Put the other foot forwards, left, right and back.
- Rotate arms in opposite directions whilst walking around then change your direction of travel.
- Basic Juggling, then move to see if you can do it on one leg?
- Rotate your right foot in a clockwise direction and then with your right hand write a number six in the air.
- Run on the spot with your legs going in slow motion and your arms as fast as possible and vice versa.
- If there are three of you tried the human plait or some gymnastic multi person balances. (see video below)
- Various Yoga poses
Video of German Climbing team warm ups with coordination exercises
The video below show various routines that the german climbing team have used over the years to warm up. Many are fun and require a high level of coordination and look more like acrobatics than climbing.
This warming up people coordination is extremely important when we are teaching people new physical skills. As it helps them to access the right part of the brain for learning.