Crack climbing advice?
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Basically it kills my dainty feet. Any tips other than stick to face climbing? Wearing Mythos. Thanks folks. |
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Most people I find tend to go in to far and it fucks they're ankles, man up and maybe wear some socks. |
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Stiffer shoes might help. I know you see a lot of people in mocs and mythos but they are really better for hard crack where a lot of smearing and smedging and thin toe jamming is required. For hand cracks and bigger... stiff shoes, not too small, and yea, socks. |
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Wear shoes that allow your toes to be straight (not bent as is normal for edging shoes) |
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Are you practicing indoors or outside on real rock? I’ve never encountered an outdoor crack that hurts as much as gym cracks. |
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Sorry the initial post was so brief and lacking. I'd composed a masterpiece initially with all the details and the damn page froze eventually pulverizing my post. |
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fuzzy muzzle wrote: ... Yep, it’s pretty much exactly that |
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Get tc pros that are comfortable. no bunching of toes in the toe box, no down turn, at all. you should be able to wear socks with them when you are outside. make sure to get them resoled before they fully blow out since they are your expensive comfy crack learning beaters. how your knee is turned out when you slot the jam, how you stand up into it, drawing you knee in line with the crack to lock it, and how far you are slotting your your foot in. Those are what you need to play around with. At that size crack you should quickly get to a place where there is no pain at all. You probably need to look at the size shoe you are wearing. have fun! |
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fuzzy muzzle wrote: Switching from Mythos to TC Pros for crack climbing (and really for anything else) made a HUGE difference in comfort and performance for me. |
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I hate being mainstream, but I had a nasty pair of cheapo 5.10s, and cracks were super painful on my feet, I wanted nothing to do with them. I got a pair of TCs and the difference is night and day. The sole is alot stiffer than mythos. +1 on wearing thin socks with them too |
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First time my wife climbed an IC splitter - "WHY THE F$*) DON'T YOU PEOPLE JUST HIT YOUR FEET WITH HAMMERS INSTEAD!" |
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I had an epiphany on my local gym crack when I realized the goal of foot torque is to smear the side of the crack with your big toe, NOT jam your foot all the way in solid and stand on it. "Jamming with Finesse" is right. Apply just enough torque to stick to the edge and no more, and things can be pretty cozy. You also need to avoid pressure points on the top of your foot, and that just took lots of practice for me. For me, I have my big toe smearing on one side of the crack, and use the top of the foot well behind the little toe to push off the opposite side, avoiding the delicate parts near the toes on the top. Lowering your heel a little can help with that position. |
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if you want to actually learn how to crack climb go to IC. |
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The most important thing for me was getting shoes where my toes could be totally flat. I have a pair of Mocs with blown toes and Katanas sized up a 1/2 size from my previous pair for this very reason. |
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Nick Goldsmith wrote: if you want to actually learn how to crack climb go to IC. I'm pretty much PNW only. As much as I'd love to go to Utah and Nevada my life isn't wired that way. Thanks for the suggestion. |
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fuzzy muzzle wrote: We have plenty of cracks up here in the PNW, you just have to know where to look. ;) |
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Chris Fedorczak wrote: Yeah, I'm becoming very aware of this. My gf lives in Naches which is like 15min from Tieton, fair amount of cracks there...and friggin snakes |
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that guy named seb wrote: Most people I find tend to go in to far and it fucks they're ankles, man up and maybe wear some socks. Just came back from the gym and with my reg tight Mythos figured I'd play around on the hand crack. Oddly the best feel I get is by putting my foot "in too far". I think it's how flat my feet are, pretty much no instep. |
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fuzzy muzzle wrote: Snakes for sure. I put up some routes there. As for the topic, the older I get, the more my toes hurt in cracks. When I was younger I thought that all my nerves were already dead. Crack climbing sure isn’t elegant but it gets you up the big cliffs of this planet. I never really understood the allure of single pitch trad climbing. |