The Most Specialized of the Skills
Twist-locking refers to a family of skills, all of which are based on the same underlying concepts: the twist, and the lock. These two concepts provide a new, and flexible, approach to “locking out” our lower body, and therefore reducing the weight our upper body needs to carry. The family of skills include back-steps, drop-knees, and the reverse flag.
The most specialized, and least frequently used, of the twist-locks, the reverse flag is nonetheless an important skill to master. It allows climbers to do certain moves that may otherwise be impossible. Or at very least, moves that are extremely difficult or awkward. To understand why, let’s first look at the move, and highlight its differences from other twist-locks.
Get Into Position
To begin, the reverse flag starts like any other twist-lock:
ONE: Place your hand on a flat or side-pull hold.
But, from here, things start to diverge a bit from other twist-locks.
TWO: Place the foot which is on the same side as your pulling hand (right hand, right foot, or vice versa) on a foothold in a front step.
THREE: Take your opposite leg (the flagging leg) and cross it behind your posted foot like you were doing a formal curtsy or bow.
FOUR: Twist your hips into the wall and tilt them toward the vertical. The feel is that you are aiming to place your opposite hip over the foot you are standing on (place your left hip over your right foot, or vice versa). The “twist” and the “lock”.
FIVE: Once you are in position, the upper body portion of the twist lock is similar to a back-step or drop knee.
Forget About Cross-Body Tension?
You may have noticed something a bit strange in step 2 above. No, it isn’t a misprint.
The reverse flag actually does require that we violate the principle of cross-body tension. To be precise, it requires that we almost violate it. In fact, it allows us to take advantage of a clever trick to compensate for the barn door.
The critical element of this skill is that you twist your hips to settle the opposite side of your body over your motion point. So, even though you might be standing on your right foot, you twist until the left side of your body is as close as possible to being directly over your right foot before you initiate movement.
In this way you are following the spirit of cross body tension by placing the side of your body that you are reaching with over the foot you are standing on.
When to Use the Reverse Flag
The value of a reverse flag is that it gives you a twist lock option when you have no good footholds available for cross body tension. It even helps occasionally, when a footswitch to get into a back step would take too much time or be otherwise low percentage.
Though this position is frequently useful on steep face, the use of a reverse flag is mandatory for overcoming certain roofs, where the only decent foot is waist height or above, and on the same side as the hand you are pulling with.
Requires More Upper Body Effort
All this flexibility comes with a price though. While we can prevent a barn door with this skill, we can’t actually attach our motion point to the opposite hip.
As a result while our weight is positioned above the correct side of our body, gravity is still tugging on our hips, trying to pull them out and away from the foot we are standing on.
Unlike a back-step or drop-knee, we can “lock out” our center of gravity by balancing on our foot, a reverse flag inherently requires more upper body effort to maintain the lock.
As a result, reverse flags are inherently more strenuous than other twist-locks. They should be reserved for specific circumstances where they are required such as when all of the footholds are on one side of your body. Another example where they can provide a definitive advantage is in speed.
All material is reprinted with the permission of the author. Copyright 2022 David H. Rowland. All rights reserved.
