I high step too much, tips for breaking the habit?

It doesn't matter if i'm on slab or a steep sport route, I tend to bring my feet high often. As I'm working on progressing through the 5.11 range, some partners have pointed out this habit of mine and are telling me that it is detrimental. I'm not sure if it's ingrained or I learned to climb that way, but even knowing that I do it, I naturally want to step high on a better hold instead of doing an intermediate move. It could be partially because the intermediate hold is not as good as the next foot hold. Either way, I want to fix this and would be happy to hear where I can start!

Try making three foot movements for every one hand movement whether it's necessary or not. Practice this on at least one route every time you climb outside or in the gym and you'll start to get more comfortable with intermediate footwork. In the gym it can be kind of tough, so allow yourself to smear on the wall or cheat and use a foothold on an adjacent route. Try to use nothing but jibs/smaller screw on holds or small features/edges on larger holds if you can. You might notice that you're weighting your arms and hands a lot during this practice, so try to focus on transferring as much of the load to the feet instead. If you make a conscious effort to do this regularly, you'll be much more confident with intricate footwork sequences.

Down climbing is actually pretty helpful for general footwork as well, and could definitely help with this particular thing.

I'd think a steady diet of slab routes and vertical to slightly overhung routes on slopers would help. Because when you can't pull outward (away from the rock) on the hand holds and/or camp on the other foot, it would be difficult to high-step.

But I do see people doing it a lot on slabs, even without being able to pull out on the hands. Since all the weight is on the foot and the body is already away from the rock, there is room to do it. So maybe more slab isn't the answer, but slopers on near vertical route (sub-vert to slightly past vert) would probably help.

Otherwise, aside from slab where it tends to spit you off as the lower foot loses contact area when you're stretching for the highstep, or it makes the stand-up after the high step too difficult (either physically or at least too difficult to be smooth enough when pressing it out on tiny slab holds without much room for error from wobbling, it's almost like doing a pistol squat)...aside from those, it probable helps, as it allows much longer moves and "sitting" on the high foot. If the holds are positive enough you can pull outward, I don't see a big downside to frequent highstepping, unless you're cutting feet, hanging from your arms/fingers, and really straining to get the foot high enough and onto the hold...depends on how flexible you are I guess.

Just because you can pull harder on the holds doesn't mean you should... I will pretty much always make multiple steps up when able even if I'm on jugs. It just helps balance because having one foot way low and the other way high puts you more off balance, so working them up together helps. It's a good habit because I remember my hardest send outdoors involved about 3-4 foot moves before I could make my hand move. Granted that last foot move WAS a high step, but it would have been a very hard high step without working the feet into the optimal position first.

And to answer the question, it's hard to practice in the gym. I think smears are the best way when the setter isn't giving you enough foot holds. Outdoors it's easy to try and you will probably notice the difference. Try going for a high step outdoors, then back off and use intermediate foot moves, notice the difference.

You can do following drills at the gym: choose a slabby or fertical wall with lots of holds. Climb with one arm or climb with tennis balls in both of your hands.

I climb like than when I'm wearing junk shoes. When I put on good ones or ones appropriate to the route, I use the smaller holds because I can. I switched from evolve to La sportiva and I saw so many new foot possibilities that I joked about my shoes improving my eyesight.

Before going through all the advice, check your shoes. Do they fit, is the rubber ok, can they edge? The innate balance of the body tends to sense and adapt to where it is in space. If I had to guess, there is nothing to train, only a gear issue.

Related, you might just have weak arches and good shoes. If it's that, it's like climbing in bad shoes. It'lol get better in time.

Just wait until you´re old, a few creaky joints will cure you of high-stepping:-)

Or don't wait to get old, just wear a nice tight pair of jeans.

More seriously, the problem might be related to what I see as the proclivities of many route setters. They put the footholds far apart on purpose, and arrange them so that you are usually standing on just one foot with the other one flagged. So naturally you develop the habit of high-stepping, because it is the only game in town in the gym. I find that after a winter of gym climbing, I overdo the high-stepping when I get back to real rock because I've gotten into the habit, even though I surely know better.

I'm honestly not sure you can work on the problem in the gym. Smearing on a holdless vertical wall isn't really training for a more measured approach, and the gyms I know have limited slab opportunities and again make high steps part of the difficulty. One possibility is to start doing routes using the marked handholds but any footholds, but how effective this might be will depend on the specifics of the situation---too many good footholds and you lose any real training benefit.

I think at the end of the day it is a matter of more outside time, during which better footwork will probably just come about naturally. Think about "adjusting" your way up rather than "stepping" up, and watch what other people with good footwork do and try to imitate.

Most commercial gyms have vertical or slabby walls with lots of holds - how else could they run kids birthday parties, their bread and butter?

Yes, true enough, but the route-setting is typically for kids in sneakers, so the footholds tend to be too big for any kind of sophisticated training...

Wati a minute---I should be careful here, because I haven't been to that many gyms and shouldn't be speaking as if I have a lot of experience with different ones. But in my now acknowledged limited experience, gyms are very bad at setting easy routes with any interest to them. Think about, say, what one would find in the Gunks at 5.5 and compare them to gym 5.5's.

I mention this because I think good footwork starts on moderate routes.

High stepping is a great technique and will help you on harder climbs. Why would you want to stop doing it, I'm confused?

High-stepping isn't exactly a technique, it's just a choice. On certain hard climbs it can be the only choice. But when there are other options, you're making things harder and more strenuous by high-stepping, and that's probably what the OP is concerned about.

I notice my high stepping to skip bad holds. I climb almost exclusively outside between April and November, so it's not necessarily a gym problem. My shoes are sloppy and my feet are large. In fact la sportiva doesn't make a large enough shoe for my foot. If they did, it still seems that the toe box is overly painful. I wear a 13 men's street shoe, climb cracks and granite in 5.10 mocassyns and face climb in 5.10 huecos. Both shoes down sized to 12s. I've never worn precise shoes, as comfort has been a priority.

Jeff, based on your last post I'd surmise that crap shoes are clearly the culprit.

You need to go try on shoes that fit. I don't know who makes high quality clown sized shoes, go shopping. You might sacrifice some comfort but not much. If you stick with bad shoes, you're probably at your peak.

People here like to argue that old school guys didn't have good shoes and they got better so therefore bad shoes will make you strong. This isn't true for most of us. Bad shoes make most of us sloppy. Do you want to train yourself to be sloppy?

Go shopping.