Free Climbing Tips: Why Get Stronger When You Can Get Better?

This article, written by Andrew Bisharat for rockandice.com discusses the importance of technique over strength. 

Free Climbing Tips: Why Get Stronger When You Can Get Better?

Being good at rock climbing is all about learning proper technique and then ingraining it so it becomes second nature. In the long run, technique will take you much further than a strong back and a vice grip. Yet most climbers are hyper-focused on trying to get stronger oftentimes at the expense of learning good tecehnique.

Emily Harrington, who has climbed multiple 5.14's in various stages of personal fitness, recognizes the superlative of proper technique. Emily has been climbing for 13 years, putting in well over the requisite 10,000 hours one supposedly needs to master any craft. As a result, she believes that no matter what shape she's in, she will always be able to climb at a baseline of 5.12a throughout life.

If you know how to move your body, you should be able to climb 5.12a, Emily says, no matter how strong' you are.

This may seem surprising to the climbers out there for whom 5.12a is a lifetime goal, yet the point is not that 5.12 is easy, but rather that proper technique honed over many hours of practice is more enduring than one's momentary form
(strength and fitness
). The problem is, it's easier to get stronger than it is to get better. Anyone can go to the gym and rip off a bunch of reps or climb a bunch of boulder problems and feel as though they have accomplished something. Training with the goal of improving technique is more cerebral, requiring a certain degree of consciousness about what you're doing. This is because good technique is all about ingraining movements, coordinating the upper and lower body and maintaining awareness of how much effort you're expending to the point that it becomes second nature. Great climbers aren't thinking about what they need to do -- they just do the exact right thing. This is the art of free climbing.

Improvements in one's technique are much less tangible -- harder to measure or gauge. Thus, it can be difficult to know how to approach the gym with the goal of becoming a better free climber. Here are a few tips that you may find useful
:

First, be good: Many beginner and intermediate climbers have approached me wanting to know how to get strong, but I've never heard anyone ask how to get good. The two are undoubtedly related. But instead of jumping on the hardest route or boulder problem you think you can do, focus on making perfect ascents of easier routes and problems. Try to be good before you try to be strong. How perfectly can you climb something?

Bad feet: Problems in the gym typically get harder as the hand holds become worse and farther apart, while usually the foot jibs remain pretty good. But if you have the ability to help set some problems wherever you climb indoors, I recommend setting decent hand holds and the worst, most polished, difficult-to-stand-on footholds you can find. You want them to be bad, but not so bad that you just force a campus move. You want the focus to be on using your feet properly -- the first and most lastingly important step in becoming good. As a double benefit, nothing will get you stronger than climbing problems with bad feet.

Master the back-step: One of the most useful maneuvers in climbing is the back-step, where you stand on the outside edge of your right foot and rotate your lower body so that your right hip is against the wall (or vice versa). Most people climb straight on, with their hands and feet set as if they were climbing up a ladder. If you watch great climbers, they are rarely so squared up; one hip or another is always twisted toward the wall, with a foot back-stepping. Also, focus on getting into back-steps quicker. Many climbers put, say, their left foot on a hold, then match their right foot on the hold in the back-step position. Instead of messing around with matching feet, many times it's better to cross the right leg over and get into the back-step right away.

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Over at Climbing.com, Chris Wright has put together a "how-to" for packing your bag in such a way to make you the most efficient.

Learn This: Pack Smarter

When I see that guy on the trail with a tent, banjo, puppy, and pony keg swaying from carabiners, I’m just left wondering why. Why do so many of our otherwise reasonable mountain buddies want so badly to strap their kit to the outside of their sad, under-utilized packs instead of just putting it all inside? First is the matter of style. I’m not talking about what kind of jacket you’re wearing; I’m talking about whether you’re the guy making it look easy or making it look ugly. Here’s another way to look at it: You wouldn’t strap a banana to the outside of your grocery bag, would you? Then why do you clip water bottles and cams to the outside of your backpack? Bags are meant to be filled, and we should all strive to put our gear inside our packs. Not only will you win those style points, but your pack will carry better because the load will be properly distributed on the frame and not sway. If all of your things are inside, they won’t get in the way, fall off, get snagged, or get wet. Take a look at the pros: Steve House didn’t summit the Slovak Direct on Denali with a Nalgene swinging from a biner on his pack. Here’s how to pack for success.

Choose the right packThere is no single tool for every job, but you can find one pack that will work for most of your trips. The pack that I take to the Himalaya is often the same pack I take to Alaska or the Cascades. You want something that’s big enough to carry everything for the climb, yet small enough that it won’t get in your way on-route. My favorite is a model that expands to 50 liters, cinches down to 30, and weighs 2.5 pounds. It’s light and versatile. I have a quiver of bigger and smaller packs, but this is the one I use most.

Sort your gearTry dividing things into a few categories before you load them. The first group is the little stuff you might need in a hurry, like a headlamp, food, and water. That’s going in the lid for easy access. The rest of your gear is going to fit into one of two categories—things that can change their shape (such as a jacket), and things that can’t (like a pot or water bottle). These subsequently fall into two additional categories: light and heavy.

Arrange by weightTo keep your pack’s weight in line with your center of gravity, it’s better to pack rigid, dense items (rack, cooking gear) in the center of your pack near your back, especially with high-volume packs. Then position lighter items near the top and outer layers of the pack.

For the rest of the tips click here.

Top 10 Technique Tips for Indoor Climbing

Here's a great article from Britain's Climber magazine with tips for indoor climbing, written by Neil Gresham.

TOP 10 TECHNIQUE TIPS FOR INDOOR CLIMBING

1) Footwork Drills

One of the best times to work on your footwork is during your first warm-up climbs. On easy ground you can focus on making each placement perfectly and this will set the standard for the rest of the session. It will also help to reduce the boredom of your warm-up by keeping you mentally challenged. Slow each foot placement down and pause over the hold for a split second while you decide on optimum positioning. Place the foot silently, and without scuffing the wall above the foothold. Try not to re-adjust your feet or to test the footholds excessively. Work on doing this more quickly and intuitively as the warm-up progresses.

2) Basic Body Position for Steep Walls

The movement pattern for overhangs is entirely different to the movement pattern for vertical walls. The way we learn to climb on slabs and vertical walls is with our hips parallel, as if climbing a ladder, but this causes all sorts of problems on the steep stuff. With your hips parallel, your arms will be forced to pull extra-hard and you will constantly feel out of balance. The answer is to twist into the wall with your hips and straighten your arms. The way to do this is by stepping over the ‘centre line’ and using footholds on the left with the outside edge of your right foot (or vice versa). You can then brace your spare foot against the wall to form a stable tripod. Each reach can then be assisted by the rotational motion of your body, rather than doing it all with the arms. It is a myth that you need strong arms for overhanging walls – if you get this movement sequence right, you may barely need to bend your arms at all.

3) Flagging

If you are unable to position yourself using your outside edge on an overhanging wall and find yourself off-balance with your hips parallel, then you have two alternatives to correct yourself: first simply to swap feet and get onto the outside edge of your other foot; but swapping feet can feel precarious and you may find that you need to swap them back again as soon as you’ve made the reach. A much slicker option is simply to ‘flag’ your trailing leg into a balance position, to make the reach and then to come out of the flag. You can either do this by bringing the trailing leg behind the active leg (if the foothold is high) or by bringing it inside the active leg (if the foothold is low – see photo). Note that the ‘inside flag’ is a more efficient option as it enables you to twist in to the wall.  

4) Slapping on Steep Walls

Speed and timing are the two most important variables for dynamic moves. The faster you pull-up, the more momentum you will be able to capture at the ‘deadpoint’ (this is the split-second weightless moment at the top end of a dyno). Thrust upwards with your legs and hips rather than just pulling with your arms. You must then co-ordinate the upward reach precisely with the dead-point – if you are too slow then all momentum will be lost. Another common mistake is to lose pressure on the footholds at the moment when you move your hand, especially when the footholds are poor. Keep thinking feet as you slap and keep your body taught to take the strain. On steep walls you must ‘pull’ with your feet rather than pushing. Curved ‘toe-down’ shoes help you to use your foot like a claw. If you are having difficulty sticking the target hold then try ‘cheating’ into position and hanging it, to gain confidence and learn the position. Your hips should finish vertically below the hold to minimize outward swing. If you really are a ‘static’ climber then try double-handed dynos on a gently overhanging wall with your feet on good footholds to teach yourself the timing sequence.

5) Cutting Loose

It’s always best to avoid cutting loose on overhangs but sometimes you have no choice. The secret is to take one leg off before the other to reduce the severity of the swing. Arch your back as you swing, bend one of your legs up behind you and keep the other in front. Tense your back muscles as hard as you can to kill the swing. Try to use the momentum on the reverse side of the swing to help you lift your feet back up. Aim to re-locate them first time, because another attempt will seriously drain your energy. 



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The Gravity Vault was featured in the May issue of Climbing magazine. The article, titled "Secret Agent Gym," was written by Climbing Reporter, Kevin Corrigan, details how Lucas and Tim were contacted by a defense contractor to train their technicians to perform maintenance on a spy blimb.

The article is below. Be sure to pick up a copy as well!