“It's true that theaters have been opening like mushrooms for some time now!
“says Tanguy, barely back down from his route, a 5c black.
With its 200 routes and 7,000 m2, the Climb Up room in Aubervilliers claims the status of the largest climbing room in the world.
"I started just before the explosion in a small room in the suburbs, confirms Paul his climbing partner and all of a sudden lots of new rooms opened".
This mathematics student, and climber for several years, wears a big smile as he arrives at the belay installed at the top of a route: "It's a great room, very big, you can breathe and there's even the sun in the above so it's nice".
The two climbers are confirmed but they have just come to introduce their friend Lucie to climbing, attracted by this new way of doing sport.
"I usually go to the gym but there I said to myself that it was different, explains this young nurse, suspended in her harness 10 m from the ground: it's a sport that is practiced in pairs, you have to have trust in your partner, it makes the physical work.
And it's more fun and interesting than indoor cardio.
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Read alsoClimbing, the sport that never stops climbing: “We are only at the start of development”
Théo Rivollier, route setter and supervisor in the room has seen climbing become more professional in recent years.
“Before, cinemas had time slots and little free access.
You had to be framed.
Now you can come and practice alone in a room at any time of the day.
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With the boom of a new clientele, climbing gyms had to adapt their offer.
Not only do they bring together large areas of bouldering without belaying with a rope and classic routes where the rope is mandatory.
But they now offer catering, bars, well-being areas such as the sauna or “fun climbing” areas with more colorful furnishings.
“Climbing is a sport that develops the three values of well-being, explains François Petit, former climbing champion and founder of Climb Up.
The health sport at the physical, psychic or mental level and the social well-being since there is a time of exchange of sharing between the ways.
It is often said that in climbing: a third of the time you climb, another third, you belay your partner, or you rest and the last third you have a drink, you eat or you change the world.
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