Critique my climbing technique please...

youtu.be/m98zI_y0VBk

I'm quite new to climbing. I've been going to Planet Rock climbing gym every couple weeks or so for about 5 months. This is one of the first V4's I've ever climbed and I was looking for a place to get some helpful criticism. I feel like I was muscling it toward the end in particular.

I think video analysis is a great tool that’s fairly underutilized by us as climbers. But I’m not sure if MP is the best place to get feedback. How do you know what you’re getting is valid, and not a bunch of BS?

But since you put yourself out there and you haven’t gotten any feedback, I’m going to give you some of my BS, and maybe that will get things rolling for you.

The biggest thing I noticed was a lack of body tension. At 0:11 when you matched on the big hold, and at 0:20 when you went up with your left hand to the big hold, your center of gravity swung out from the wall. This required you to catch the next hold more dynamically (very noticeable at 0:20), and that used more power. Now this is the problem with looking at a video without knowing how good the holds are. Maybe the holds are so bad you had to do the moves the way you did. However, more likely than not, you’re only focused on pushing on the foothold instead of pulling on the foothold with your toes. Again, this is very noticeable at 0:20 where your left leg is almost completely straight, pushing your CoG away from the wall.

So if we just look at the move at 0:20 for example, I imagine you can pull in with your left foot a bit more, get your CoG higher and closer to the wall, twist your body to the right so you’re creating a line of tension between the left foot and the right hand gaston. This should allow you to reach the next hold fairly statically. But again, without knowing what the holds are like, this could just be a bunch of non-sense.

Another one I noticed was at about 0:34, you had your left hand and left foot on the wall, made a throw with your right hand while your right foot was dangling, then step on a hold with your right foot that was pretty much level with your left foot. This could potentially be a place where you could’ve used a drop knee and made the move easier.

Hopefully I've opened the flood gate for you.

JosephRachael Epley wrote:https://youtu.be/m98zI_y0VBk I'm quite new to climbing. I've been going to Planet Rock climbing gym every couple weeks or so for about 5 months. This is one of the first V4's I've ever climbed and I was looking for a place to get some helpful criticism. I feel like I was muscling it toward the end in particular.

My eleven year old daughter would tell you to use "quiet feet."

Are you wearing pajama bottoms at the gym?

Thanks a bunch, aikibujin!

Pulling with your toes is definitely a new idea for me. It makes so much sense now that you say it, and in retrospect I'm sure that would have the move at 0:20 significantly more smooth. I think the area at 0:20 is a little more overhung than it appears in the video, making more difficult to achieve a static move, but I could tell it was much sloppier than it should have been.

Also, I'm really glad you mentioned the possible drop knee! That's a technique I haven't really used much yet and I still don't have an eye for it.

And yes, I was definitely rocking my PJ's that day, lol. Not my standard attire, but they were comfy and flexible.

JosephRachael Epley wrote: I think the area at 0:20 is a little more overhung than it appears in the video, making more difficult to achieve a static move,

So I think you should get the idea that it’s harder to static a move on an overhang out of your head. If you see someone bouldering a V3 roof by throwing themselves at every jug with their feet cutting half of the time… don’t learn from them. Whether a move should be done statically or dynamically depends entirely on whether you can maintain a stable body position when you reach the next hold. The angle of the wall can affect your stability, but the angle of the wall alone does not determine whether to do a move statically or not.

Use that throw at 0:34 for example, you had your left hand and left foot on the wall while reaching with your right hand. That’s the classic “barn-door” position, an unstable position. If you were on a slab, your center of gravity will fall into the wall, so it doesn’t matter. If the wall is vertical, the instability is more noticeable but can sometimes overcome by pulling hard with your hand. But when you’re on an overhang, your CoG will be falling away from the wall as soon as you released your right hand, that’s why you had to throw for the next hold. The move may feel more difficult as the angle increases, but the root of the problem is not the angle, but that you’re not in a stable position.

Now for the same move, if you could get a backstep or a drop knee with your right foot, all of a sudden your CoG is not falling away from the wall and you reach the next hold statically. The angle of the wall did not change in this case, but you were able to stabilize your position by using a different move.

Bouldering is pretty in-your-face because it gets steep quickly as you move up the grade. While you can often overcome some instability on a vertical face by clawing really hard, overhangs penalize unstable body positions heavily. Toeing-in, backstep (with flagging), and dropknee are techniques that are vital to climbing steep stuff. Heel-hook and toe-hook are used often too. This is especially true in the gym, where the protruding nature of the holds give you plenty of opportunities to practice these techniques. Try some drills to focus on them, get them dialed, know when to use them, and you won’t be the guy campusing the V3 roof because you can’t keep your feet on the wall.

I would echo Aikibujin's advice about body tension. Aside from any other very specific criticisms, I would say the general deficit appears to be that your feet follow your hands about a step too late a lot of the time. Your legs should be propelling your body upward, while your arms should primarily be used for balance. There are a few instances during the climb when it seems like a change in pelvic/leg position would allow your legs to do the hard work instead of your arms.

As has been mentioned, it's always difficult to really tell what the key issues of the problem are in a video because you can't really tell how steep certain sections are, nor how positive the holds are. Strong work!

Also, that rodent hanging from your waist is eventually going to bite you in the ass!

JosephRachael Epley wrote:And yes, I was definitely rocking my PJ's that day, lol. Not my standard attire, but they were comfy and flexible.

Hopefully you had your Tasmanian Devil coffee stained T-shirt on too.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'll finally be going back to the gym again on Saturday; if that problem is still there I'll give it another go and report back.

Justin Laursen wrote:Aside from any other very specific criticisms, I would say the general deficit appears to be that your feet follow your hands about a step too late a lot of the time. Your legs should be propelling your body upward, while your arms should primarily be used for balance.

I just noticed this while watching some pro climbers (on the YouTube) the other day. I realized that, in general, their feet are much higher with respect to the rest of their bodies than mine. This is, of course, an oversimplification of my issue, but it's an important trend to note.

BigNobody wrote:Hopefully you had your Tasmanian Devil coffee stained T-shirt on too.

Lol, I feel like this is an allusion to something specific, but I'm not familiar with it :P

Rachael Epley wrote:

I just noticed this while watching some pro climbers (on the YouTube) the other day. I realized that, in general, their feet are much higher with respect to the rest of their bodies than mine. This is, of course, an oversimplification of my issue, but it's an important trend to note.

I had the pleasure of watching Ashima Shiraishia lead climb in person the other week. What struck me is that she moved on the wall like a dancer. Feet moved first, leading, and hands followed (even though they were technically "ahead" of the feet.) If you're at all like me you have a tendency to climb like a chimpanze. All arm strength and feet as an afterthought. At least that was where I was when I started out. Now I've learned to put the focus on my feet and let the hands figure themselves out. 

Okay, here was my latest attempt at this problem. I think it went a lot more smoothly (although I wasted a lot of time and energy being indecisive about my foot placement, lol). I felt like I was able to ascend with fewer dynamic moves, and the drop knee at 0:45 made that move far easier than before.

I keep hoping someone else is going to jump in on this, but apparently not. So just a few comments from me:

1. I definitely saw improvement between this video and the last, so good job.

2. being indecisive is not a good habit. That said, I think in the process of learning and practicing technique, it’s worth experimenting with as many different sequence/body positions you can come up with, just to see what works and what doesn’t.

3. I know in my other posts I mentioned toeing-in, that’s assuming putting your toes on a hold is the best way to use that hold. In your second video (0:20) you put your left foot on a higher and larger foothold (instead of the smaller one below it). You did a good job toeing-in on that hold and maintaining body tension, but I can’t help thinking that foothold looks like the perfect shape for a heel hook. That may or may not be true, but something to experiment with.

4. The couple of moves between 0:28 and 0:35 looked a bit unstable. I think there could be a more efficient sequence. It’s worth playing around with, try using different footholds, turning body in different direction, flagging in different ways.

5. I’m not sure if you’ve read the “Self-Coached Climber” or not (if you haven’t, you should), but that book laid out a very simple and effective way to analysis your stability. Here’s how: with the exception of dynamic moves, we usually only move one limb at a time. By drawing three imaginary lines between the three stationary limbs you get a triangle. By looking at the shape of the triangle and your center of gravity in relationship to this triangle, you can get a rough idea how stable your position is.

6. So to put the above point into practice, pause your video at 0:34 at the exact point when you moved your left hand to a higher hold. If you draw imaginary lines connecting your right hand, right foot, and left foot, you get a triangle with a right edge that’s leaning to the right, and your center of gravity is even further outside of this triangle. This is an unstable position, and you can see you struggled a little to keep your body from falling out of this move in the video.

7. Now obviously there are inherently unstable moves in climbing. Often you can create stability in an unstable position by using opposition or compression between two holds, but at the expense of using more energy. So ideally you can find the stable moves, and save your energy for the inherently unstable moves. Without trying that move in person I don’t know if there’s a better way to do it, but just looking at the holds there are at least two different ways I’d try the same move: a) use the same footholds, but turn your body to the right so you’re doing a drop knee with the outside edge of your left foot and inside edge of your right foot; b) put your left foot on the foothold above and to the left of your right foot, flag the right leg, and lock off with right arm.

8. A good rule of thumb for stable body position is to use arm and leg on the opposite side of your body. That basically means if your right hand is holding onto the wall (you’re reaching with left hand), then you should support most of your weight on your left leg. But don’t think of this as gospel, there are often exceptions to this.

9. The drop knee at 0:45 made the move easier, but you’re going into it a bit dynamically. Not to say all drop knees must be static, but it’s more efficient if you can twist into the drop knee before you make your hand move. Go to youtube and search for “Neil Gresham drop knee” for a good tutorial on drop knees.

10. If I write any more, I probably should start charging you for this.

Agree about the above. Also, you climbed the bottom part better but the top part worse, IMO. Your top part was worse, really, just because you were indecisive. Not that you did anything particularly "wrong."

It's interesting that you said I should drop the knee and then move the hand to make it a more static move. I remember watching a video a while ago where the guy said that the vast majority of the time, drop knees aren't supposed to be done statically because the twisting motion is supposed to help give you some momentum. Which now reminds me of your earlier advice about getting technique tips off of the interneut, lol. I'll definitely rethink drop knees now. And I will be getting a copy of "Self-Coached Climber" as well.

Thanks a bunch for everyone's input (especially aikibujin)! I definitely got a lot out of this. It was good to see what experienced climbers thought, especially since I don't really know any other climbers or anyone to help develop my technique in person.

BigNobody wrote: And yes, I was definitely rocking my PJ's that day, lol. Not my standard attire, but they were comfy and flexible. Hopefully you had your Tasmanian Devil coffee stained T-shirt on too.

LOL do you live in my apartment complex?