Troubleshooting offwidths: how to make upward progress?

When I’m using a hand stack with some sort of lower body jam (eg calf lock, knee lock, frog foot, banana foot) I can remove the handstack, but I can only make upward progress of an inch or two at a time.  

Any advice on how to make more vertical progress? Any tips that worked for you? 

Leavittation: https://vimeo.com/46589051

FWIW: Moving up an inch or two in a calf lock or hand stack crack is normal upward progress... for me, at least!

• Hi Jennifer,  it would be useful to know the nature of the offwidth cracks you feel you are struggling with. The use of hand stacks in OW climbing is the fundamental part of "Leavittation", named after Randy Leavitt. I don't believe he is necessarily the originator of the method however. There are other,  alternative, techniques. They all have their place. Leavittation is at it's best on overhanging cracks, which are not that commonly encountered on traditional multi pitch routes. It's more of a niche technique. But it's quite the fad these days. I was introduced to hand stacking for OW cracks in 1974 or '75,  by Dave Altmann.

Edit added: so I have utilized many hundreds, probably thousands, of knee locks. They are great, when your knee fits in the crack. If you are working on an OW in a gym, that's fine. But don't just bust your ass flailing away. Because flailing away is what you will learn from that, and flailing isn't very helpful in the middle of a long multi pitch climb. Do what you can to failure, the come back another day. Don't expect improvement with every attempt, it takes time. But it will come. If you can get GOOD coaching, great! But if whoever is demonstrating for you is making a big physical battle out of it, find another coach. Someone who is good at OW will naturally pace themselves and might breath a bit hard, but if they can't talk to you while climbing it, their technique is lacking somewhere. See my comment to Ben's post.

I would suggest a little time on easier OW's (5.8-5.9). Scrap the hand stacking on those. You will get better at using your feet. Also, some flared chimney time will help. And some cracks that widen up to OW, and chimneys that narrow down to OW. 

Pharoh's Beard in THE VALLEY is a good place to start. Hair Shirt at Donner Summit is good,  and can be top roped, Although it is probably snowed up already. 

I thought the below article was somewhat helpful for thinking it through. And especially for motivation purposes.  I have not tried since reading, but I’m about to go put it to work in the creek!

I would imagine that speeding up the process would involve hiking the locking leg as high as possible during each “cycle”  but again, I have done like 3 knee locks in my life  

Best of luck!

http://www.widefetish.com/pages/how_to.html#leavittation

“Inch at a time” is what I’ve always said

Jennifer Hersomwrote:

When I’m using a hand stack with some sort of lower body jam (eg calf lock, knee lock, frog foot, banana foot) I can remove the handstack, but I can only make upward progress of an inch or two at a time.  

Any advice on how to make more vertical progress? Any tips that worked for you? 

Pretty sure that slow progress is normal for any offwidth regardless of whether you use stacking or not 

Luigi Mwrote:

Pretty sure that slow progress is normal for any offwidth regardless of whether you use stacking or not 

I think the term to use should be "measured progress". That's what fits. That's what you should strive for. Get as much as you reasonably can for where you are, but if you try to get too much, you likely will Fxxk yourself. That starts to apply with fist cracks, and then on up in width size. Think about it. 

In flared cracks and offwidths wider than fist/fist stacks or twisted knee locks, you’ll have to cycle through arm bars, chicken wings, kneebars (different from knee-locks), and heel toe cams.

Learn some terminology:

In these style of cracks, you will have an inside hand/arm/shoulder and an outside hand/arm/shoulder. In straight on Levittation stacking cracks you might not have an inside arm/outside arm, since both are working together to hold you in the crack.

In both styles of cracks, you will have an outside leg/foot and an inside leg/foot. In stacking cracks, you must have a plan to be able to go totally handsfree, otherwise you will fall out of the crack whenever you release your stack to try and move it. You’ll use your inside leg to hold yourself in there each time you move your stack, via either calf locks (misnamed - actually more like a banana foot/pointed ballerina toe jam), kneelocks, or twisted kneelocks/kneebars. In armbar/chicken wing style cracks, your arms work independently so you don’t actually have to be able to use your legs to get handsfree, since there is no handstack to move. Usually your inside arm uses an armbar or chicken wing to press opposition against your inside shoulder, and your outside arm gastons the lip of the crack to press opposition against the middle of your back or, if you’re lucky, your outside shoulder.

Pop quiz - what have I talked about so far? Think about it for a minute before you keep reading. If you don’t know what I mean, then maybe the following questions is better “what have I not talked about so far?”

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Whenever people are talking about offwidth, they usually talk about stacks, arm bars, kneelocks, and all that shit. That’s all great and wonderful, but all of those things only serve to HOLD you in the crack. They are all tools to maintain progress. So far I’ve talked about the inside arm, outside arm, and inside leg. What extremity is missing?

That’s right! The outside foot is KEY to moving upwards. Unless you are mega strong and can fully campus on an arm bar and a lip-gaston, or do a pullup and multi-second lockoff on a hand stack, then there is no possible way to make progress without using your outside foot.

Now take a minute to think about what your outside foot has been up to the last time you tried and offwidth? Have you gotten effective, secure heel-toe cams that are trustworthy and stable, and placed into the crack with a slightly (but not overly) bent knee? You’re probably a pretty good offwidth climber then. After you stand your weight onto that foot and straighten your leg, you’ve progressed the distance between your slightly bent leg and your straight leg. Probably 3-6 inches, depending ok where you placed your heel toe cam. Smaller moves are easier, because the heel toe cam is easier to place when your leg is oriented more in line with the crack.

When placing a heel toe cam, think about dropping your heel as much as possible. Most of the time, I will spread my legs like I’m doing child’s pose, point my belly button fully perpendicular towards the crack (face sideways towards the wall, not in towards the wall), and then I’ll insert the heel of my TC pro in to the crack first, maybe about 4 inches, then use the natural closure of my hips from my immense inflexibility to naturally lock the inside of of my big toe against the opposite corner of the crack. Yes, your heel will be deeper in the crack than your toes. Your toes will be pointing about 45 degrees out of the crack. They seem to stick better right on the edge. If I put my foot and big toe all the way inside, then I really have to exaggerate my hip opening in order to get it all the way in there. Dropping my heel and lifting my toes seems to help as well. Try to exaggerate that because then you get the actual sole rubber on the inside of the crack, rather than the rubber from the top of your toes. Too many people point their toes down towards the ground when trying to heel toe cam.

It there is a foothold on the face that you can reach with your outside foot, for the love of god do anything you possibly can to use it.

Here’s your mantra - **arms and inside leg hold you in, outside legs pushes you up.**

Repeat that to yourself over and over while you climb. DO NOT try to make progress using your arms or inside leg. You will only slide uselessly down the crack, losing every inch of progress you think you made. And you’ll huff and you’ll puff and you’ll curse offwidth and climbing and everything and want to go back to the Red where everything makes sense. And you’ll overgrip and tire yourself out and won’t be able to control your breathing. The upward movements are not hard. 

Oh yeah, one more piece of advice, don’t forget to release a little bit of tension in your arms and inside leg whenever you’re pushing up on your outside leg. Otherwise you’ll be fighting yourself and won’t go anywhere. Keep tension with your arms and that outside foot while your readjust your inside leg.

That’s all. Hope it helps

Very well written post Nico. For those that are challenged to follow all of it, don't worry about that. If you keep at it long enough, it will all make sense.

Also don't underestimate the amount of difference that a small bit of logistics can make. For example, always make sure that you have absolutely nothing on the inside hip. It will completely ruin your day. Absolutely nothing. Grigri, atc, cams, slings, EVERYTHING, must go on outside hip or hang from a shoulder sling. If you will be in a very tight squeeze/almost-can-fit-your-ass in style offwidth, consider lengthening how far your figure 8 sits from your hard points so that your knot sits below your testicles or vulva or whatever you got down there. Consider wearing long socks and tucking your pants inside of them so your pant legs don’t roll/bunch up on your calf. Or tape your pants to your lower legs. Wear larger shoes or a stiff approach shoe on the outside foot if there are no edgey face footholds and you’re having trouble getting good heel toe cams with your outside foot. Never wear a backpack. Cover your inside elbow and maybe shoulder if you’re new. Maybe wear a neoprene arm sleeve. Tape your palms if armbarring or chickenwinging on abrasive rock like Vedawoo

Nico, passing out wisdom like Halloween candy to a bunch of us kids pretending to be OW climbers!

Lords work there, Brother.

Start a trolling thread on mountain project. Somehow attract attention of "Arms and Anus" guy for additional insights

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

Nico, passing out wisdom like Halloween candy to a bunch of us kids pretending to be OW climbers!

Lords work there, Brother.

Fun fact the day I met Nico in real life he was climbing an off width and sent. He graciously had his follower hang my top rope. Nico is stoked and friendly.

edit to add logistics tip: Make a decision early, are your cams going to be deep or shallow? If the crack is deep, I push that cam as deep as I possibly can. This helps keep things out of the way and allow for easier jamming since stacks are shallow and legs are typically deep. 

If you are really lucky you will bump into Nico and climb stuff with him for a day to 2. Him yelling "ring lock high" at me (in a nice way) was super helpful. As was following his wide leads.

Good morning. I woke up realizing I was wrong, and consequently deleted my disagreement with Nico. His comment about full extension on the outside leg is correct. Were I differ is in use of the INSIDE leg, in certain, but common enough circumstances: crack too narrow for knee. I tend to use both feet for upward propulsion. It is imperative to not go to full extension on the INSIDE leg, because you will then have no place for your outside foot in the crack (an outside hold for your foot would negate this point). It's likely hard to imagine this if you haven't experienced it. The same can be true in wide hands to (especially) rattley fist cracks, where shuffling both hands and feet is sometimes the best method. The lower hand is used in a more underclinging fashion (keeping your upper body from falling away, as Nico mentions).  You maintain a high hand, a low hand, a high foot, and a low foot. Full extension on the high foot is maybe fine if you are going for a jug or slammer hand jam,  but if you're just pump jacking your way up a fist/OW crack, full extension on the high/inside foot is likely a mistake. 

Of course what your goals are in wide crack climbing should influence how you prepare. If your interest is in the challenge of one pitch high end OW's, Leavittation is often the key. If your interest is the classic multi pitch routes of Yosemite, Leavittation will rarely be the neccessary to success. As an example, if you have the armbar/chicken wing/outside (and sometimes inside) foot propulsion thing wired, the often awed Hollow Flake is piss easy. Really not any harder the walking up the sidewalk of Lombard Street in San Francisco, just a bit more exposed. And the Hollow Flake is probably more secure. 

If trad multis are your thing, I couldn't emphasize enough mixing it up. Fist cracks to OW to flared chimneys. There is so much carry over from each to the others. And the cruxes are often the transitions between. When you can work through those without blowing a gasket, it's a wonderful feeling. 

Nico's two posts are the best dissertation on OW climbing I have ever seen. A LOT better than a YouTube on it by a very famous current climber. 

+1 for Nico’s answer. The Wide Boys also have a video that helped me a ton when I was trying to figure out the gym offwidth at Pacific Pipe (butterfly jams and calf locks the whole way, just too narrow for knees). For a while, I was just using core strength to try to basically do a sit-up from a calf lock while crawling my hands up the crack, and that was an exhausting battle for inches of progress. Pushing through the outside/lower foot and kind of standing up on it made it possible to move my hands quite a bit higher with much less effort.

https://youtu.be/2J0eiblt3dI

The most important thing you need for offwidth is an instagram account   

I avoid off-widths like the plague but I'm a big believer in the value of gym cracks to develop and maintain crack specific technique and strength. Just yesterday, I gave a belay to a local gym employee who was training ring locks at one of my local gyms for his Indian Creek project.  I think the only reason I still have the ability to climb cracks outside is that I practice hand, fist, fingers and ring locks on the gym cracks every time I go.  

Your profile says you are based in SF, and there are a number of good off-width cracks in the gyms there, both in SF, Belmont, Sunnyvale and across the Bay. When I lived there, a bunch of us Supertopo climbers had a meetup we called "PGSF this weekend".  The off-width guys - Jaybro, Ed Hartouni, Xander, etc would usually spend most of their times on the off-width cracks.  At the time I think Jay was still doing lots of 5.12 and some 5.13 off-width, so it's not like he needed to practice the technique. He was keeping that muscle memory and size specific strength current. I'll bet there are still off-width masters who go to the Bay area gyms all winter to keep in shape.  Just go and introduce yourself. Climbers are generally a quite friendly bunch. Besides the detailed advice given above, you'll get to practice practice practice.

Or you could just change one letter of your last name and probably climb 2 grades better in all styles just by osmosis.

Eric Craigwrote:

it would be useful to know the nature of the offwidth cracks you feel you are struggling with. The use of hand stacks in OW climbing is the fundamental part of "Leavittation", named after Randy Leavitt. I don't believe he is necessarily the originator of the method however. There are other,  alternative, techniques. They all have their place. Leavittation is at it's best on overhanging cracks, which are not that commonly encountered on traditional multi pitch routes. It's more of a niche technique. But it's quite the fad these days. I was introduced to hand stacking for OW cracks in 1974 or '75,  by Dave Altmann.

Edit added: so I have utilized many hundreds, probably thousands, of knee locks. They are great, when your knee fits in the crack. If you are working on an OW in a gym, that's fine. But don't just bust your ass flailing away. Because flailing away is what you will learn from that, and flailing isn't very helpful in the middle of a long multi pitch climb. Do what you can to failure, the come back another day. Don't expect improvement with every attempt, it takes time. But it will come. If you can get GOOD coaching, great! But if whoever is demonstrating for you is making a big physical battle out of it, find another coach. Someone who is good at OW will naturally pace themselves and might breath a bit hard, but if they can't talk to you while climbing it, their technique is lacking somewhere. See my comment to Ben's post.

I would suggest a little time on easier OW's (5.8-5.9). Scrap the hand stacking on those. You will get better at using your feet. Also, some flared chimney time will help. And some cracks that widen up to OW, and chimneys that narrow down to OW. 

Pharoh's Beard in THE VALLEY is a good place to start. Hair Shirt at Donner Summit is good,  and can be top roped, Although it is probably snowed up already. 

Thanks for the advice. To answer your question, I’m generally climbing offwidths that are a smaller part of another climb. Maybe it’s only 20 feet of an 400 foot climb, but right now that is usually the hardest part of the whole route. They aren’t usually overhanging.

I have seen the leavittation video, but I’m not making the kind of upward progress that he makes. Obviously, he’s THE offwidth pro, but I don’t look as smooth or intentional as him. 

I’ll think about how I can work on some easier offwidths so I can focus on the feet first. thanks for the route recommendations too.

TJ Bindseilwrote:

I thought the below article was somewhat helpful for thinking it through. And especially for motivation purposes.  I have not tried since reading, but I’m about to go put it to work in the creek!

I would imagine that speeding up the process would involve hiking the locking leg as high as possible during each “cycle”  but again, I have done like 3 knee locks in my life  

Best of luck!

http://www.widefetish.com/pages/how_to.html#leavittation

Thanks for the link. I have read this article before. I understand the concept, and it looks so easy when Randy Leavitt does it…. Let us know how it goes for you in The Creek.