The movement skills of climbing may not transfer directly to other sports, rob, but the fact is that any skilled movement activity reinforces kinesthetic awareness in a person--that is to say, the less physical stuff (any stuff) one does, the more you lose a finetuned sense of where your body is in space. Any sport or physical activity will not only assist people in retaining their kinesthetic awareness, but can also improve it.

Therefore, in that sense, climbing can improve your baseline coordination and balance in other sports. People think of this as "athletic ability"... They believe some people have better athletic ability than others, but mostly (as far as I learned) it is a function of earlier and greater quantities of skilled movement training--whatever form it may take.

A lot of the threads here deal with the issue of if and how other physical activities, e.g., gymnastics, weight lifting, swimming, can contribute to improved climbing ability.

Let’s consider the converse, Does climbing help in other sports? Let’s exclude general conditioning effects. That is, if one climbs rather than doing nothing at all there will be improvement in one’s physical condition. This is not what I’m asking about, but rather is there something specific about climbing that has aided you in another sport.

I pretty much grew on the American triad: baseball, football, and basketball. When I started climbing, I was still playing some softball and basketball, but they didn’t seem to relate to climbing. Perhaps climbing helped me a little in ballroom dancing in that learning to place the body on the rock is just a little like positioning the body properly when dancing. The connection was moderate at best.

Gratias et valete bene!
RobertusPunctumPacificus

Golf and climbing often take place in truly beautiful surroundings. Other than that, I don't see much similarity.

Curt

Golf goes like wack.....Shit! Climbing goes Shit!.....wack.