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► Rock Climbing Technique Guide
BMC Disclaimer
Climbing and mountaineering are activities with a danger of personal injury or death.
Participants in these activities should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions and involvement.
Stretching
A little stretching is good before climbing to ease the muscles and joints into the positions you demand of them.
After exercise, your muscles will tighten a little so stretching them out will help you retain your flexibility. It may even increase it as your muscles will be warm and more amenable to change.
Warming Up
Energy is stored in your muscles in the form of glycogen (see glossary). This is gradually replaced by the body as it is used up.
Starting immediately on the hardest climb you can find whilst you are still fresh may seem like a good idea but will quickly lead you to getting pumped. You will use up all the energy in your arms in one go and end up climbing crap for the rest of the session.
If you start gradually, you will use the available energy slowly and your body will realise it needs to start sending more to the appropriate places. You will be able to climb for longer.
Traversing around the bottom of the wall is a good way of doing this and you can stretch and practice your techniques and foot placements at the same time.
Look to your feet.
Your leg muscles are a lot bigger than your arm muscles, (unless you’re some kind of mutant freak or similar) and you are used to standing on them a lot.
If you concentrate on keeping as much of your weight on your feet as possible then your arms won’t get so tired. Even small features can provide remarkably good footing for rubber soled climbing boots.
Keep close to the rock.
This makes it easier to keep the weight on your feet and not on your arms, see above.
Taking this further, turn your feet parallel to the rock instead of heels out, with the side of the knee almost touching the rock so you don’t push yourself away when you bend your knees.
Use your feet.
If you don’t think you can get any higher, take another look at your feet, chances are you can move them higher and then be in reach of fresh hand holds.
Straight arms
Hanging off straight arms uses up a lot less of your arm strength than hanging off bent arms.
- Hang a short length of rope,
- Pull down on the end,
- About half way up it, pull it out to the side.
This is the extra un-necessary strain you are putting on your muscles.
The longer your arms, the greater the leverage.
If the holds are at a height such that your arms must be bent, then you can always bend your legs. Dropping in to the frog position is an option, crouching position, knees splayed out, body close to the wall.
Locking-off
Locking off your arms whilst holding on is less energy intensive, almost like using a shorter bit of rope in the above analogy, and is also a strong position.
To achieve this grasp the hold, whilst keeping your elbow firmly clamped against your body.
Sometimes a very simple idea that you would never think of can make a lot of difference.. such as:
Reach over
When trying to keep your body as close to the wall as possible and you want to let go of a low hold and reach up to a higher one, the very act of bringing your hand up the front of the body will push you away from the rock. This can push you off balance and maybe cost you your delicate footing.
Simply by dropping your hand down then bringing it back up around the outside and over the top the problem is neatly circumvented.
Shifting your weight
Place foot, then shift weight across from one foot to the next, keeping yourself close in to the wall. The more weight remaining on the legs, the less goes on the arms.
You can think of it almost like having legs filled with water and pouring it across from one leg to the other.
A small bounce of the legs can be used to break the inertia of a move so less has to come from the arms.
Momentum can be generated by using your energy in a circular manner by swinging around sideways then redirecting the energy upwards.
If unstable, try to move only the limb needed for the next move while keeping everything else in the same place, including the centre of balance and weight distribution.
Smearing
Rubber soled climbing boots can be a tremendous advantage when it comes to walking up walls. Holding on with your hands and sticking your arse out a little, your own body weight will push your feet more firmly against the rock.
This uses something called Friction.
The greater the surface area of the shoe touching the rock, the more friction there will be.
Ergo, just using the tip of your boot will, aside from wearing holes in them stupidly quickly, not help as much as using the ball of your foot.
A couple of quick smears/steps can often get you back to good holds with very little energy expenditure.
Flag
You may on occasionally find yourself somewhat off balance and spinning off to the side slightly, and then falling.
If this happens when you are climbing then there is potential to fall further than when leaning against a bar, and you may even have to start the climb all over again.
The technical term for this is Barn-Dooring ( because barn doors swing open/closed in a similar manner, except for the falling off climbs part).
This can be prevented in a number of ways, the simplest of which being just to stand up slightly straighter to regain your balance. A Foot Swap could be employed to put your self in a better position or you could Flag.
This is simply using your other foot (the one with out your weight on it) either as a counter balance or to push/rest against the rock face in the direction you are about to swing in.
Heel Hook
Picture the scene, you’re on a climb, your hands are as high as you can go, and the next nearest foot hold is too high for you to step on to.
- Keeping a firm grip with your hands, either face on or employing a layback position,
- Place the heel of your climbing boot over the hold.
- You can then employ a rock-over to shift your weight onto the foot.
This is a very useful technique for getting past overhangs.
Your heel can also be used to prevent you from Barn-dooring by hooking the foot over the back of a hold, from where you can also use your leg muscles to pull you into a better position, or just rest and take the weight off your arms.
Lay Back
A technique to get up a long vertical edge, I.e. a crack or the edge of an arête.
Both hands are placed next to each other on the crack with the feet about a foot below.
Gradually move alternate limbs and proceed in an upward direction.
Lay Away
If the top of a hold is crap but the side is good you may employ a layback technique.
With a straight arm, hold on to the side-pull and lay away from it.
Pushing off a foot hold in this position will allow you to pivot around the hand hold on the straight arm. Undercuts can work in a similar manner.
Rock Over
Place a foot on a hold higher than you can comfortably step.
Use a combination of pulling with your arms, and pushing with your other foot to rock your weight over the higher foot into a crouching position on that leg.
You can then sit comfortably in this position or straighten the leg to gain more height.
A small bounce can be used to give the body momentum in order to shift the weight across.
As you can see this is a very useful technique for getting over overhangs.
Drop Knee
Hanging back on your arms? Not much weight on your feet?
Twist your hip in and drop a knee down inside to bring you back into the rock and get your weight and centre of balance back where it should be.
Try experimenting by keeping your upper body still whilst twisting on your feet in different positions so first the inside then the outside of the knee rests against the rock.
Twist in the Hip
Twist your hip in and up and reach up with the hand on the opposite side to your main load bearing foot to gain extra height.
Pull from the Shoulder
If your arm muscles get tired from trying to pull up on them the whole time, why not try different muscles?
This way your shoulder muscles take some of the strain instead.
Bridging
In the event of finding yourself upon a climb where two walls meet at a suitable angle, at a corner for example, one foot can be place upon one wall and the other on the other and opposing pressure applied. The hands may be similarly employed.
Chimney-ing
When the two walls are facing each other and not too far apart, an alternate form of bridging maybe used.
The back is placed on one wall, the feet on the other and the hands placed against the wall on either side of the derriere.
By pushing alternately with hands feet and arse the body can be moved up the chimney.
Jamming
The delicate art of Wedging various parts of your body into cracks.
Hand jam – several options here, a closed fist will work but may be uncomfortable and could be hard to retrieve in the event of slippage. This is not called fisting.
More preferable is to carefully insert an open hand into the crack palm flat, then to wedge it inside once a suitable position has been found.
Arm jam – May be possible to lose your whole arm in the crack and lock it off.
Foot jam – You can often stand in a crack with your foot wedged on both sides.
Turning the foot vertical(knee pointing to the side) often helps for thin cracks.
Butt Wedge
For climbing large cracks a whole body jam can be used with the body being propelled upwards by a combination of squirming, effing and blinding.
A useful technique, but need to take into account various considerations:
If you slip off whilst jamming, you may be left hanging by that body part?
What are the consequences of this?
A layer of cloth between you and the rock may help to prevent skin loss, but the quality of the jam may be reduced.
Who knows what’s in the back of the crack that you just can’t see.
It is easy to get to comfortable in a crack as it does offer a strong sense of security, but this may blind you to other better options outside of the crack.
Mantle Shelf
Grab holds or ledge above you, pull in to chest, then press down on said holds to waist level.
Very useful for getting over the top of climbs where there are no useful handholds.
This is often followed by a beached whale impersonation.
Dynamic/Semi-Dynamic moves
A static move is one where you can stop or even reverse at any point.
A Dynamic move, or Dyno, is a fluid move which you can not stop part way through.
This includes things like jumping for hand holds, letting go with one or both hands.
A two handed jump starts in a semi crouching position with both feet on the wall.
At the same time, push with the legs, starting with a slight bounce, and pull and pivot around straight arms to throw yourself up but not out.
A simpler variation keeps one hand on a hold and just requires a small relaxed jump to attain just a few more inches, reaching up with the other hand.
The timing of the catch and the height of the jump are important factors, as is hang-time.
Jump too low and you will not be able to get a good grip in time and the skin will be scraped off your fingers as you slip loose.
Jump too high and although you catch the hold, the force of your body weight going back down again may tear your hand free.
You should aim to get a certain amount of hang time at the top of the jump so you can just place your hand on the hold and get your feet into place so there is no downward momentum to pull you back.
Figure of 4
Ask Scott to show you... It looks stupid, and it rarely works, but if you can do it it is a valuable technique for confusing other climbers.
Used to gain further height in a static manner when all other ideas have fled.
- Simply find a good hand hold.
- Swing a leg up and over arm and dangle the leg down the other side
- Twist around and sit on your arm.
For this to be most affective you need to get as much of your leg over your arm as possible. i.e. your thigh.
Advanced Section
Visualisation – its all about shapes
There are only a certain number of shapes/positions the body can adopt that will be useful in a climbing environment.
See if you can visualise the shape your body will be in on completion of the move, or even during intermediate positions, then move your body into it.
You will not then waste time and energy with random positions and unfocussed effort.
It should also make your moves more precise and there fore more likely to succeed.
Reverse the move
If you can’t figure out how to do a move, try getting in to the finishing position where you wish to end up, then move back to the start point.
This may help you to determine the necessary body mechanics required to do it the other way around.
Rest Points
Try and take advantage off rest points on climbs to regain your strength and take a break.
Bridging across corners is the commonest of these, but you can also drape limbs over holds and around corners in such a way that the pressure is reduced on your arms.
Hang Time
Trying to let go of a hold then snatch for the next hold above gives you very little time to grab the hold and could also jerk you off the wall. If you give a slight pull in towards the wall before letting go, you will have a good half second of hang time in which to grab hold again before gravity reasserts itself.
This can be practiced standing on a couple of good holds and swapping your hands between holds on different levels, both at the same time.
Glycogen – The form energy is stored in in muscles.
Fresh – not knackered / pumped
Pumped – knackered, well kind of, you can’t hold on to anything, your forearms are solid to the touch, the lactic acid build up in your arms may be causing you some discomfort..
Lactic acid – By product on anaerobic respiration. Muscles using energy with out the benefit of a regular supply of oxygen produces a different by-product than aerobic respiration. Happens when lots of energy is used very quickly (like sprinting) as opposed to gradual energy use giving the body time to pump fresh ingredients to the muscles In question (like distance running) . Not comfortable to have too much of.
Locked off – static position with your arm as close to your body as possible so very little leverage is exerted on the arm.
Side Pull – a hold which works best by pulling away to one side.
Undercut – a hold which works best by pulling up from below, works well by getting feet high and keeping arms straight and pivoting around the hold.
Jugs – Large holds
Knobs – Large holds with an amusing phallic shape.
Crimp – not enough water or salt in the diet, or potassium, bananas are good for this.
Common in
Arête - French for stop
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