I tried some crack...

After two years of face climbing around Caifornia I finally made a serious attempt at crack climbing on some real cracks yesterday and all I have to show for it are some chewed up hands and sore wrists, 0 sends. I really struggled with hand and fist jams. Only cracks I have ever sent were thin finger cracks or lie backs.

Any advice? Words of encouragement? I really don’t like that I can’t climb crack/jam just yet and I know I will get it eventually, but damn that shit is hard! Mentally and physically/technically. 

Abogado Chris wrote: After two years of face climbing around Caifornia I finally made a serious attempt at crack climbing on some real cracks yesterday and all I have to show for it are some chewed up hands and sore wrists, 0 sends. I really struggled with hand and fist jams. Only cracks I have ever sent were thin finger cracks or lie backs.

Any advice? Words of encouragement? I really don’t like that I can’t climb crack/jam just yet and I know I will get it eventually, but damn that shit is hard! Mentally and physically/technically. 

Did you tape up properly? That's a big help. 

Not really much info to give advice on. Maybe try easier rated hand / fist jam routes. Just because you climb 5.12 in one type of climbing doesn't mean you can do the same in another style. Start out easier and work your way up.

Everyone has to pay their dues to the Lord of the Cracks.  It is as much about your feet as it is about your hands.  Tape helps but as you progress tape often comes off for the off sizes and back on for the off-widths.  In the beginning taping will help with the abrasion.  Also helps reduce the pain on the back of the hand.  Great picture of Micha Dash in one of the Creek guide books showing just how much you gotta want it.

• Every area has its learning curve - humble yourself start at lower grades and Learn to love the pain. Soon you will look for jams instead of face holds!

Hey man, i was where you are two years back. Climbing 5.12 in the gym, and then took a hard whip on a 5.8 "easy" trad climb. Things that helped me improve somewhat rapidly:

Learning how to toe jam, and just how shallow you can actually get and still have it be secure.

Thumbs down jams.

If you're leading, taking advantages of solid stances/foothold to place gear.

Keeping close to the crack. I know it sounds rudimentary, but the technique and body position are entirely different on head-on crack climbing, so itll take time to figure out what works best for you.

Watch the wide boyz' crack school videos. They're smart and stuff.

Hope these help! If not, just keep climbing, youll figure it out eventually.

you gotta want it!   LOL the screencap it chose is perfect

it's really all about long term hand conditioning... i mean just look at all their hands closely..

yea the wild country videos from the wideboyz are great
the crack climbers manual is great
ocun crack gloves are great
finding a hand size indoor splitter crack at a gym nearby you can go do laps on so you can suffer your way into comfort
hand size should end up feeling easier than anything else once you get some mileage in

Unlike face climbing, crack climbing technique is not intuitive and generally does not develop on its own and therefore needs to be taught. Royal Robbins's Rock Craft has a pretty good introduction to basic crack techniques. You can access some of it on ​here​​​

I love that thumbnail of parallelojams. Perfect description of ringlocks. Thumbs in a vice 

Where did you go?

better not say south woodson

Climb crack. Climb more crack. Climb crack again. Repeat. Find mixed routes. When I started, I sucked, my taping sucked, my gear selection sucked. I've ripped cams and hit my back. Now, I'm trying and whipping on 5.12 crack and soloing 5.8. You'll get as good as much as you love practicing it. It's all worth it.  Yosemite, red rock, Moab, Indian creek trips will save your life. 

budman wrote: Everyone has to pay their dues to the Lord of the Cracks.  It is as much about your feet as it is about your hands.  Tape helps but as you progress tape often comes off for the off sizes and back on for the off-widths.  In the beginning taping will help with the abrasion.  Also helps reduce the pain on the back of the hand.  Great picture of Micha Dash in one of the Creek guide books showing just how much you gotta want it.

You know, I was so fixated on my hands that I am sure I wasn’t paying enough attention to my foot work. Like most climbers (I think) I tend to forget about my feet when I am struggling. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure I was basically trying to campus my way up the cracks. 

I tried with tape and without tape. I don’t mind the abrasions at all that’s sort of a good pain even when it is happening, but my wrist bone and wrist joint were super afterwards, and it hurt like hell on the wrist joint while cranking. I know pain and crack climbing go hand in and hand but I’m just not sure how much of mine is normal and how much is from poor technique. I would reach up high, elbow out, jam in, then crank my elbow down in towards/parrallel with the crack. But most of the time I just struggled to make my hand or fist fit properly so that they didn’t pop out. At least that’s what it felt like was my problem, my hands definitely kept popping out of the crack but again, could be as much about foot work and how I pulled on the hand jams (out as opposed to down) as it was my actual hand placement. 
Someone mentioned staying close in to the crack, I think this is something else I should work on. I feel like my ass and body were way out in space away from the crack most of the time. 
I like it, I will definitely be back for more. 
Thank you everyone for your feed back. 

 

I find a good exercise when you come up to a nice splitter crack is to get a good foot jam with one foot, put one hand in the crack (primarily for balance), and try to stand up on the foot (i.e. just using two limbs). Alternate feet and hand combos (thumbs up and thumbs down). This will help train you to really get the weight off your arms and show how, just like face climbing, it is all about the feet. :)

I swear once you figure out the technique it really isn't particularly painful! The only cracks I find particularly pain inducing nowadays are hard finger cracks...

It’s all about the thumbs...insert with thumbs up, then rotate the thumbs in to lock.  This should give you a really solid jam for perfect hands (~Gold Camalots for most people).  Wear comfy shoes so that you can really weight your feet...just like face climbing, you want as much of your weight on your feet as possible, hands are really just there for balance most of the time.  A common beginner mistake is to try to pull your way up the crack with your hands; this will definitely wreck them and also pump you out quickly.  Instead, work your hands up but make sure your weight is in your feet and your upward progress comes from standing up, not pulling up.

Not sure why crack climbing is such a mystery to people. Stick your hand in.and try different positions and locations until it sticks. Same with the feet. What's to know?!

I'm not so sure Chris thinks it's a complete mystery. He's saying, and I hope I comprehend this correctly, that it's quite painful for the most part. He's wondering if it gets less so when you develop good technique. Well, the answer is, uh, for me, yeah! Most of the time. But not always. And get this, if you don't climb cracks for a long period of time you sort of slide on the technique and you are back in what-am-I-doing-ville. You also might not every learn certain techniques because you'll come to hate those for the brief times you will try them.

I had years of not learning technique because I only had ragged, awful cracks to climb that were odd sized for me. Once I started doing laps on a perfect, fake, gym, hand crack, it all started to come together. 

Crack climbing is addicting and a good jam is way more secure than a jug. Check out these videos and tape your hands up. The right shoes help as you don't want aggressive shoes and bent toes when trying to jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W99gN54wLQ

Ryan Dubberly wrote: Crack climbing is addicting and a good jam is way more secure than a jug. Check out these videos and tape your hands up. The right shoes help as you don't want aggressive shoes and bent toes when trying to jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W99gN54wLQ

I would really emphasis watching that - so much that I'll put a proper link with an image to entice you:

They actually have a whole series of these, covering all sorts of crack width etc. etc. Watch them all. A couple times. Go climbing crack & try it out. Repeat until pro.

The 2nd part of the advice is to suck it up. Sorry it's gonna hurt and it will never hurt less, you will just appreciate it more and more with time and eventually you will actively seek it.

Abogado Chris wrote:

 I would reach up high, elbow out, jam in, then crank my elbow down in towards/parrallel with the crack. 

This may be some of your problem. If your elbow is out (assuming this means to the side) then your wrist and forearm aren't aligned with a vertical crack. Which forces you to tweak your wrist into a strange position. I'm working on my crack climbing, too, because it's definitely my limiting factor outside. I've learned that I was not reaching HIGH enough before putting my hand into the crack and that, as a result, my elbows were out and my angles were all weird and painful. Once I started reaching up enough so that my hand/wrist/elbow alignment went parallel to the crack I was trying to jam things started going better for me.

Ben Horowitz wrote:  Alternate feet and hand combos (thumbs up and thumbs down). 

I find myself doing this quite a bit. Muscles that are being used will start to tire out. Alternating, like mentioned above, helps change out muscle groups so I can have a fresher muscle to use (including core).

It's important for cracks that go from vertically to slightly left or right, and laybacking in dihedrals.

The practice pays off. You're gonna hang on gear a LOT while building endurance and experience. But feeling that total control and confidence when you're hundreds of feet up on excellent splitters, like Jah Man in Castle Valley, or on a big wall in Yosemite, is SO worth the effort! Enjoy the pain :)