Smacking your leg with chalk

Why do people do this? I see it a lot at the crag and in videos of pros. is there a functional purpose to smacking your leg after chalking or is it just fun to do?

andyelliott wrote:Why do people do this? I see it a lot at the crag and in videos of pros. is there a functional purpose to smacking your leg after chalking or is it just fun to do?

Puts you in that happy place with just enough chalk but not too much.

andyelliott wrote:Why do people do this? I see it a lot at the crag and in videos of pros. is there a functional purpose to smacking your leg after chalking or is it just fun to do?

Only used by those not cool enough to do a French blow...

I'd always assumed that it was just a weird way to shake out, which just happened to correlate with the process of chalking up, not necessarily as a way to remove excess chalk.

A combination of function and habit. Think of a pitcher in baseball fiddling with the ball before the pitch.

Alternative to blowing. I use the slap when I chalk up too much. I find it works better since i get rid of excess chalk farther away from my face...I feel like I may have used the "french blow" before only to get tiny chalk particles in my eye.

I've always thought the French Blow was pretty dumb since you are blowing hot, moist air onto your fingers. I rub my hands on my pants to remove excess chalk and to rub the chalk deeper into my skin.

With bouldering it can be useful to get a little chalk up during a problem. I don't carry a chalk bag while bouldering so if the problem is long you can "store" a bit of chalk on your pants and give it a quick hit to get some chalk on your hand...

I prefer to smack my ass. Puts me in the mood. Gets my partner turned on.

Lols for days

Greg D wrote:I prefer to smack my ass. Puts me in the mood. Gets my partner turned on.

You could smack their ass, and they can smack yours for maximum value. (Helps if you have experience from playing baseball.)

Great strategy when team following or free soloing together.

Mark Hudon wrote:I've always thought the French Blow was pretty dumb since you are blowing hot, moist air onto your fingers. I rub my hands on my pants to remove excess chalk and to rub the chalk deeper into my skin.

Not arguing for the french blow, but, just for fun--try blowing on your fingers versus exhaling on your fingers. when you blow, the air expands when it gets past the bottleneck of your pursed lips, cooling it off quite a bit. There's a noticeable temperature difference.

hmmm... Interesting! Thanks!

actually I do it for two reasons.

1) takes off excess chalk (sometimes this can hinder climbing in a different but equally annoying way as having too little chalk)

2) after enough slaps pre-crux provides a "pool" of chalk on my pants that if I need a bit of chalk and am too stressed/pumped to use chalkbag I can just slap that area and effectively chalk up