Usually, we focus on the new skills that you will want to master to increase your performance and reduce wasted energy. These are the “do’s” of good technique. But let’s talk about 6 climbing habits to unlearn.
In this article, we will discuss habits that climbers tend to bring into the sport which can burn up unnecessary energy and increase the likelihood of falls. These are the habits we would like to ‘unlearn,’ and replace with the more efficient skills we have so far discussed.
1) Avoid "Cheating" into a Barn Door Position
New climbers often try to “muscle” their way through moves. They unconsciously substitute speed for good technique when doing a desperate move or trying to recover from a poor choice in their sequence.
This can lead to climbers holding on with their right hand, and pushing on their right foot, or vice versa, out of convenience. On easier slab and vertical routes, this is often easy to do, because holds are larger and sequences less strenuous.
However, even when this ‘works’ it should be discouraged. As the climbing gets steeper and more difficult, this approach puts you in a barn door position. It will inevitably lead to wasted energy and lots of unnecessary falls.
Even though it may seem slower, (even unnecessary on easier routes) climbers should develop this habit:
Always stand on the foot which gives you cross-body tension.
If you notice you’ve done a move this way, you should repeat the move with proper cross-body position and commit it to memory. Once you have made yourself accountable for these inefficient positions, you will find that your habits will rapidly improve.
Read more about cross-body tension here.
2) A Match is a Move
Many climbers have a tendency to match a handhold without switching their feet.
For similar reasons to the issue discussed above, matching a hold requires the same attention to footwork as moving to a new hold. If you are standing on your right foot to reach right-handed for a large hold, then you must switch to weight your left foot in order to match. This is because you are now effectively “reaching” with your left hand.
Just like with any other move, a failure to do so will result in a barn door.
So, it bears repeating: even though it may seem slow or unnecessary, climbers should develop the habit of always standing on the foot that gives you cross-body tension, regardless of whether you are matching or grabbing an unoccupied hold.
3) Avoid Keeping Your Arms Bent After Completing a Move
Nearly all climbers, after they do a move, will pull down on the upper handhold as they grab it. This generates more force on the hold, making it easier to stick.
However, this also results in a bent-arm position on that hold immediately after the hold is grabbed. Our brains, however, frequently do not consciously realize we have done this, and will not, in general, automatically relax that arm.
Climbers will frequently allow that arm to remain bent when continuing to climb. This results in an almost constant locked-off position, which wastes energy.
Straight-arming reliably requires that we keep this unconscious response in mind. It makes a habit of intentionally relaxing our upper arm after each move, settling our weight into our shoulder, and a straight arm.
Read more about straight-arming here.
4) Avoid Bending Your Arms in Order to Get Your Hips Closer to the Wall
As mentioned previously, newer climbers have a tendency to pull in with their arms in order to get their weight over their feet. This is often in an unconscious effort to feel more stable.
Just as with the lower body, this unconscious desire to feel stable generally creates more work rather than less. Pulling in onto bent arms, a locked-off position wastes a great deal of energy.
This habit should be replaced with a good arch of the back on straight arms, using your core and your legs to get your hips into the wall–as opposed to your arms.
5) Avoid Bending Your Arms to Arch Your Back
Of course, when learning to master the skill described above, many climbers will still try to ‘pull’ their weight into the wall. They even feel like they need their arms bent in order to arch.
Much as above, this results in over-gripping and wasted energy. Once again, climbers must focus on keeping their arms straight while arching their back, only bending them at the last possible moment in order to complete the move.
6) Avoid Shorting the Swing
One of the most common errors that climbers make is to not bring their hips quite in line with their heel.
As with a number of other moves described here, this is frequently the result of a climber focusing primarily on the hold that they are reaching for. This means they are focused upward on their hands, not downward on their feet.
This often leads to our hips stopping at a point an inch or two outside the line of our heel, then stepping up. This results in us pushing diagonally up and away from the hold we are reaching for, shortening our effective reach and causing more work with our arms.
As with the other topics in this section, this is an unconscious habit and requires an intentional effort to replace it with something more efficient.
In many moves, the feel of where your hips are does not line up exactly with reality. So, when shifting your weight onto your motion point (or upper foot), it often helps to consider that the point at which your hips are actually over your heel will often feel as if you’ve gone a little too far.
One trick to developing this feel on slab is to make sure that, before you actually reach for your next handhold, you can take both hands off of the wall and balance solely on one foot.
Read more about training on slab here.
All material is reprinted with the permission of the author. Copyright 2022 David H. Rowland. All rights reserved.
