effects of rock climbing exercise on physical fitness among college students: a review article and meta-analysis

Background: the aim of this study was to systematically determine the effects of rock climbing on college students’ physical fitness by means of meta-analysis. methods: studies investigated the possible fitness benefits of rock climbing were identified through a comput-erized search of six electronic databases: china national knowledge infrastructure, china science periodical database, pubmed, web of science, sportdiscus and psycinfo. effects of rock climbing exercise intervention trials≥4 wk, published in english and chinese between jan 1996 and may 2016, including between subject and within subject designs, were reviewed. nine studies were included in this meta-analysis. ten selected variables in this meta-analysis were: body fat percentage, vo2max, heart rate, handgrip strength, lower limb pedaling power, vertical jump, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and sit-and-reach. the effect sizes of these ten variables were calculated (p<0.05) and forest plots along with effective sizes were presented. results: rock climbing can significantly improve handgrip strength, lower limb pedaling power, vertical jump, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups and sit-and-reach (p<0.01), and significantly increase vo2max (p<0.05), however, rock climbing did not show significant improvement on heart rate and body fat percentage. conclusion: as a newly popular physical exercise, rock climbing has a significantly positive impact on the phys-ical fitness among college students. rock climbing may be more effective if the college students engage in it for a longer term.