Sport climbing made it's debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and it will be making its return at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Pretty soon, it will also be debuting right here in Midland.
If you've never climbed a wall before, or you love to climb and want the opportunity to do it in West Texas, you're in luck, in the coming months, Renewed Strength Fitness at the new Summit Center.
Renewed Strength Fitness owner Levi Kirk said, "there's no rock-climbing place here, so we figured, why not, you know, add this to everything else."
The facility has many different exercise activities like HIT training, cycling, CrossFit pickleball and more.
The most exciting is the state-of-the-art rock-climbing wall.
"The rock-climbing wall is from Walltopia, which is kind of the high-end rock-climbing wall that you can get," Kirk explained. "In the rock-climbing world, they really love this brand. It's about as good as you can get."
Even the materials are top notch.
Kirk said that the wall paneling was flown in from Bulgaria and every time climbers see it, they are always impressed.
Climbing off the heels of the Olympics, Kirk and his team wanted to create the ultimate indoor space for outdoor enthusiasts right here in Midland.
Like Tyler Nordengren, an experienced climber who found sport climbing at Colorado State University.
When asked what he feels when climbing, Tyler said, "Definitely a lot of brain engagement. You definitely still have to use your brain while you’re climbing which I like, because it’s not just totally mindless and it’s still a physical activity so you’re able to get the best of both worlds while still training your mind and it definitely therapeutic to me.”
With plenty of crash pads, different types of grips, courses that will frequently change and a board designed to help your grip strength, Walltopia welcomes every skill level.
You'll want to try and work on your finger strength first.
Rock climbers spend a lot of time working on pull-ups and finger grips and according to Tyler, "It definitely helps a lot more. So at the beginning when your technique isn't as good, but once you can kind of get better technique it you can get away with having not as good grip strength.”
If you don't know the rock climbing language, you'll learn that too.
Kirk described a few of them. Volumes are the blocks that stick out of the wall. There are different levels of routes differentiated by number and different holds that have different names.
As sport climbing grows on the Olympic stage, in the Permian Basin, the thrill of the climb awaits.
“I have a feeling once the word gets out and people actually come and start trying this and I think that people are going to be real excited with the final product," Kirk said.
Within the next few months, Kirk hopes the facility will be operational and the whole family can come enjoy the facility and maybe become the next sport climbing Olympian.