Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

your feet on the best part of each hold. Directing your foot placement demands attention to detail beyond that given to hand placements. Whereas handholds are easy to inspect, the greater eye-to-foot distance commonly leads to less-than-ideal foot placements. Furthermore, your feet don’t provide the same degree of feel as the hands, making the quality of each foot placement more difficult to assess. For these reasons, developing good footwork is an attribute that you must make happen via constant foot focus and practice.
    The another aspect of sound footwork is proper alignment of your center of gravity directly over a foothold. Balance, stability, and application of force are optimized when your center of gravity is positioned directly over your feet, forming a line perpendicular to level ground. On a less-than-vertical wall or slab, this requires a hip position out from the wall and over the foothold. On a near-vertical climbing surface, you simply need to keep your body position straight and over your feet as much as possible. When the climbing wall overhangs, it becomes impossible to position your weight over your feet, so a new fundamental skill takes over (see “Twist Lock and Backstep” later in this chapter).
    Center of Gravity

     
    1. Keep your center of gravity over your feet so they carry most of your weight. This requires a hips-out position when climbing slabs.
     

     
    2. On vertical rock, it’s essential to keep your hips in near the rock to position your center of gravity over your feet.
     

Handholds Gripped Lightly; Arms Play a Secondary Role
     
    In a sport where anxiety and fear often rule, it’s understandable that many climbers hang on with their hands for dear life. This tendency manifests itself with overgripping of the handholds and unnecessary muscling of moves with the arms. The end result is rapid fatigue, pumped forearms, and an eventual need to hang on the rope to rest and recover. You can avoid this outcome by practicing—and making habit—the fundamentals of proper hand and arm use. These critical skills include gripping each handhold with the minimum force required, using the arms mainly for balance and not as a primary source of locomotion, and pushing with the feet in unison with modest arm pull.
    Begin by making each hand contact a conscious process. Whereas many climbers just grab a hold with little thought and continue with the process of climbing, you must make each hand placement a thoughtful act. First, consider where the best place is to grab the hold. It’s not always on the top, and it often relates to the location of your last foot placement. Now as you grab the hold, focus on using a light touch that yields soft forearms. Sure, certain holds will demand that you bear down hard on them, but most don’t. Your goal must be to try to use each hold with a light touch, and then increase the gripping force only as much as is required for the move at hand. This process of minimally gripping each handhold takes but a split second, yet it’s a master skill that separates the best from the rest.

     
    Conserve energy by gripping the rock lightly and maintaining straight arms, especially when you’re climbing on overhanging terrain.
     

    Beyond gripping the rock, you need to decide just how much you need to pull down on a given handhold. As discussed earlier, it is imperative that you push with your feet and let the leg muscles carry the load. Think of your arms as points of contact that simply prevent you from falling backward off the wall. In climbing a ladder, for example, your feet do all the work while the arms mainly provide balance. While rock climbing is far more complex, hold this model in your mind as the ultimate goal—the arms maintain balance while the legs drive movement. Still, there will be occasions on which your arms will need to briefly carry much of your weight. In these situations it’s imperative that you maintain straight arms. This way the bulk of your weight is supported by the skeletal system of your upper body and not by your muscles.

The Left-Right Rule for Stable Movement
     
    The magic of efficient climbing movement comes from the synergistic interaction of the arms and legs and a constant transfer of force and torque through your body. To this end, the Left-Right Rule states that maximum stability and ease of movement comes from the pairing of a left hand and right foot (or a left foot and right hand) in harmonious action. Let’s