Have you ever wondered how to climb efficiently? In my 30 years as a rock climber, I have heard the following, common lament from many of my fellow climbers:
“I wish I had better technique.”
That’s not surprising, of course, since I have been a climbing guide and coach for most of that time, and improving technique is kind of in the job description.
The simple answer on how to climb efficiently is:
Get your hips to the top of the wall while doing as little work as possible with your arms.
The fact is that nearly every useful skill in climbing can be derived from this one principle as applied to movement on the wall.
It is not always obvious how to do this however, otherwise, we wouldn’t have much need for an article. In this article, we find it helpful to break it down into smaller components.
As the paragraph’s title above suggests, the principle of climbing efficiently requires doing as little work as possible with your arms.
Furthermore, our hips are the center around which we move in climbing, so it is convenient to break this approach into three broad categories:
How to use our legs to do as much work as possible (or how to use our lower body).
- Minimize the load on our arms (or how to use our upper body).
- Utilize the interaction between arms and legs to facilitate both of these objectives (or how to use our core).
Or, to be a bit more formal, our secondary principles of climbing efficiently are:
1) Climbing Efficiently With Your Lower Body
Let’s start with lower body efficiency and how it is essentially all about how to approach the ideal of carrying all of your weight with your legs.
It is (with a few exceptions) not possible to completely reach this ideal when climbing. However, the various skills we will cover are designed to help climbers maximize the weight carried by their legs. This, in turn, reduces the load on their arms.
2) Climbing Efficiently With Your Upper Body
Equally important is your upper body efficiency and it’s about minimizing the weight carried by your arms. At the most basic level, those skills revolve around keeping your arms straight.
3) Climbing Efficiently While Connecting Through the Core
Lastly, we come to the most complicated concept to communicate in climbing. This is perhaps the most important principle to understand and that is connecting through your core.
Importantly, the upper and lower bodies do not function independently in climbing. In order for a climber to be efficient, they must learn to coordinate their hands and feet.
Connecting your core maintains proper balance. It reduces extraneous motion and takes advantage of the interplay between the upper and lower body to generate controlled momentum. This maximizes the effectiveness of the power in their lower bodies and minimizes the work needed from the upper body. The goal is to keep them on the wall.
How To Climb Efficiently
Get your hips to the top of the wall while doing as little work as possible with your arms.
Maximize your legs.
Minimize your arms.
Remember to engage your core.
Sound technical? Don’t worry. I will break it all down for you in upcoming articles. Stay tuned. Are you in the Philadelphia area and want in-person training? Check out our climbing school.
All material is reprinted with the permission of the author. Copyright 2022 David H. Rowland. All rights reserved.
