Foot jamming pain

Recently, I’ve been trying to teach a couple people how to crack climb. While jamming a regular #2 sized hand crack, the pain is enough to deter them from the prospect of crack climbing. Personally, even with soft bouldering shoes, foot jams don’t feel painful to me, and I don’t remember them feeling particularly painful when I was learning. I’ve gone over technique with them and it seems like they’re doing everything right, and even have supportive stiff shoes that aren’t super downsized (TC, Katana).

Maybe there’s a technique issue that I’m missing here, but I don’t know. I’m curious if any crack climbers out there feel foot pain consistently on hand cracks and just deal with it? How would you coach someone to avoid pain while jamming?

Unless you're teaching on a low-angle podded crack, or the person has literally no ankle flexibility, it's a technique issue.

The two main points are flexing your ankle so that the force is spread across the top or your foot and not just on 2 points, and trying to sink your heels into the back of the shoe and really try to jam the shoe and not the foot. I think smearing on a steep slab is actually is most similar to how foot jamming should feel.

Maybe take photo/video to compare foot/body positions.

Luke Steinerwrote:

Recently, I’ve been trying to teach a couple people how to crack climb. While jamming a regular #2 sized hand crack, the pain is enough to deter them from the prospect of crack climbing. Personally, even with soft bouldering shoes, foot jams don’t feel painful to me, and I don’t remember them feeling particularly painful when I was learning. I’ve gone over technique with them and it seems like they’re doing everything right, and even have supportive stiff shoes that aren’t super downsized (TC, Katana).

Maybe there’s a technique issue that I’m missing here, but I don’t know. I’m curious if any crack climbers out there feel foot pain consistently on hand cracks and just deal with it? How would you coach someone to avoid pain while jamming?

I struggled with this a lot myself. I finally realized I wasn't getting my foot rotated enough before inserting it into the crack. This kept my foot from getting far enough in and ended up crunching my toes when I tried to lock in the jam by bringing my knee back in line with the crack. Once I started getting my foot inserted more fully, I also found that I didn't have to crank it back nearly as hard to get it locked in. Making sure my heel stayed low when inserting my foot helped also; this gave my foot a slimmer profile and it went in more readily.

Counterintuitively (for me), making higher steps helped as it made it easier to get my foot rotated to a position more parallel with the crack before inserting it. Someone with better ankle flexibility might not have to do this, but it seemed to help me.

I think this is one of those things that really good and very experienced crack climbers have just figured out, and sometimes have a hard time knowing why they can do it so well.

I also believe that with some experience, realizing that your foot isn't going to break off every time you do a jam, dials down the reaction to the inevitable pain and makes it manageable. But, at least for me, the technique tweaks were the key to breaking through a bit.

.

If jamming was easy and comfortable for everyone, it would be way more common skill in every climbers quiver of skills.

Maybe ask them where the pain is? It could be easier to figure out what's going on. If it is a "pressure point" from the shoes/laces/grommets/straps/buckles, it should be easy to figure out. Toes? Heel? Top/side of foot? Is it the surface of the foot or does it feel like the bones/joints get wrecked? If you have somewhat similar shoe size, trade shoes with each other and see if they feel different pain.

My Mythos result in much more pain than my Mariachers...

Just posted this in another thread, but the most important beginner tip someone gave me was to really drop your heel. Your foot is much more comfortable in the jam in this position, and when you stand on it the pressure is transferred through the rand into the heel instead of pushing down onto your toes and crushing them.

edit; they may be over-torquing the jam as well, since they don't feel secure yet, which comes with practice. It's the equivalent of over-gripping on jugs--when I first started it was like I was trying to twist my foot off, but now I've learned that not much pressure is actually needed if you position your foot well.