What most people focus on is the result or the execution, this is the same for climbing. We want that tick, that grade, that achievement. In order to have a good execution you have to have a good plan. At higher levels of climbing it is apparent that planning is a major part of achieving the result of good execution. In the same way, a good plan relies on a good analysis. You need to consider alternatives, prerequisites and consequences for each move. A plan only comes together when the consequence of each move matches the prerequisite of the next. Just as well, a good analysis depends on good observations. Misinterpreting a hold will give a faulty analysis and a poor plan resulting in a bad execution.
Thinking of this in competition context it makes obvious sense, but it applies to all climbing in all contexts. When you slip off, you cannot expect your next attempt to be any better if you have no clue about why you slipped or what change you plan to do to your next attempt. This is where I feel most climbers have the most to gain. Wasting skin and energy by mindlessly throwing yourself at the rock will not be as constructive as actually having a new, well founded plan each time.
In order to get anywhere you need to have a keen observation of everything that happens as you climb. How is that hold, what angle is it, it's surface area and texture. How does your fingers respond to loading it, in what direction do they pull and in what direction are they likely to slip. When you do slip, in what direction did it slip? did it slide off, pop off... how did your arm move after your fingers slipped off? As you can see, these are more detailed observations than you probably care to think about when you climb, but these are observations that can be the difference between mindless hacking and true progress. If you find it hard at first to record all these sensations as you climb, start filming your climbing. This will give you a nice tool to verify your observations and assumptions.
Having a basket of observations is not enough, you need to pick the relevant ones and extract knowledge from them. Knowing which hand or foot actually slipped first and in what direction, will help pinpoint the problem. Considering the hold on which you slipped and the direction of the slip you can apply some logic as to why this happened. The conclusion will never be that the hold is too slippery, it will be that you loaded it wrong!
The direction you slipped and the motion of your limb after the slip will give you a good sense of the direction you were pulling. Comparing this to the shape and angle of the hold, you will see that the hold needs to be loaded in a slightly different direction. If you are unable to tune the direction any further, and your imagination can't come up with a different alternative, there are still options to making it stick. You can adjust the intensity of the load or distribute the load differently.
Only when your analyses have reached conclusions for all problems and you are able to put these together do you have a plan.
The major problem most climbers have with execution is that it is hard to follow your plan in detail. The plan is flawed and based on limited observations and faulty analysis leading to a conclusion mid-climb that you have to deviate from the plan. When we deviate from the plan we fail to harvest new observations that we need to make a better plan. It takes practice to execute with intent of sticking to the plan rather than finishing the climb. This will in turn more and more often coincide as you hone your analytical approach to climbing.
Finally, you need to think of this as a never ending circle. Every execution will lead to an increasing amount of observations and these will need more analysis and form ever better plans for you to execute. I suggest practicing this analytical approach by including full iterations where the plan is to gain specific observations only.
When it comes to climbing we care about not slipping, the friction that exists before slipping is static friction. As you slide however, dynamic friction is in play. Static friction is largely not dependant on the contact surface area of the two materials in question and is proportional to the perpendicular force applied. Please see The Climbing Technique Blog for a full breakdown of the actual science of friction and friction of rubber on rock.
The friction is somewhat out of our control, yet fully controllable. How rubber and rock interact is pretty much a set of physical properties of the two materials. We can only enable this interaction to be as good as it possibly can be by removing foreign elements from the rock, such as sand, dust, chalk etc. We can whack out some moisture from the rock with a cloth / towel and make sure the shoes are perfectly clean as well. Please see The Climbing Technique Blog for a full breakdown of all the actual influences of friction of rubber on rock.
So for now, let's accept that the friction force we can play with on rock is down to the Normal force and the friction coefficient that is somewhat independent and constant. What we are left to play with is the Normal Force.
The Normal Force is the subset of the applied force that is perpendicular to the contact surface between the rock and your shoe. This force is controlled by you. To increase the friction force you can apply more force or change its direction so that the total pressure is more inline with the perpendicular of the contact surface. Now, if you are slipping off, simply applying more force will not help as the component of the force that pulls you off will increase just the same as the normal force. When this happens, you need to alter the force, change it's direction slightly so that the increase is larger to the normal force component than to the tangential component.
To put it in plain words: press your foot more into the rock rather than stepping down on it. In general you should adopt the habit of pressing inward rather than downward, consider every surface you step on and in what direction you should apply force to prevent slippage. By the way, this logic and these laws of physics applies just as well to your fingers and their contact with the rock.
Grabbing a large sloped hold, too large to pinch, it can be hard to stick. The first thing you learn is to position yourself directly under the hold so that your body does not pull out from the wall. Hanging directly below a sloper may still not be enough to prevent you from slipping off. The reason for repositioning your body directly beneath the hold is to reinforce the normal force. How then can we extend this logic? By not having an equal distribution of force throughout your hand, palm and fingers... you can choose more precisely where to apply the force. If you choose to apply it on the palm of your hand, it will go into the hold where it is angled downwards and you will surely slip. By rather focusing the force at the fingertips, at the part of the hold surface that is the closest to perpendicular to the direction of your pull. You have not changed your grip, where you place it... no apparent change, except you don't slip off :-)
Slapping your hand high up on a sloped top-out, hitting a small dimple, you will most likely feel that you start to slip as soon as you touch the rock. Pulling on this only amplifies the slipping. You need to increase the normal force! How can you direct more force downwards at the tip of your fingers on your extended arm? Simply curling your fingers downwards in a crimp style shape will not change the fact that you are pulling on that hold directly back towards your shoulder. If you lock the muscles in your arm so that it is rigid, like a boom, curving down to the contact point on the dimple the force applied can be directed more or less directly downwards. You can think of this as an extension of the previous case of distribution of force, but this time on a larger scale involving your entire arm.
Keeping your body tight, close to the wall will redirect the force you apply to the holds. Dangling below a hold, leaving everything to gravity will result in a lot of force being directed straight down. If you instead use your core muscles to keep close to the wall, particularly in overhangs, the force you apply to each hold will be directed more in line with the direction of the wall. You could think of it like gravity pulling on your center of gravity, by displacing your center of gravity, the gravity's pull will be directed through your arm to the hold, having more the direction of your arm.
The following concepts are not really advanced, but the way of thinking about them and analysing them with regards of the forces in play might be helpful.
An anchor is a mental construct, you just grab a hold and think of this point as the point of reference for the forces you apply. Stepping on the wall and applying forces to that foot relative to the anchor takes some focus away from gravity and over to the push and pull between the wall and the anchor.
Adding yet another anchor creates an axis between the two anchors. This enables you to challenge the forces even more as the two anchors playing together can withstand greater forces than the sum of the two individual anchors. An axis can be created between two anchors in opposition, in compression or between two anchors that share the distribution of load from gravity. Anchors in opposition or compression allows for forces greater than gravity can provide.
Having established an axis you can use this to change the direction of forces. By applying force in one direction on one side of the axis, this will work against creating rotation around your axis. This rotation can be harvested as an opposing force on the other side of the axis, these forces being equal, there will be no rotation. Pushing in one place only to gain pressure in another is a great way to increase the normal force where there is no other obvious way to generate this force.
Doing dynos or having an exaggerated dynamic climbing style you will be challenged by momentum every now and then. The momentum may takes your body out of balance (barn-door, pendulum etc) and too far to bring it back, tearing you off holds. This momentum has to be depleted before it gets the chance to overload your grip. Momentum can be depleted by introducing an opposing force, like catching the wall with your hand or stepping into it in the swing. Momentum can be extra problematic when an anchor is involved, and it usually is. Momentum then quickly turn into rotation as well. It may be easier to counter the momentum when you compress your body, contract your legs... get your center of gravity closer to the anchor. This will minimize the swing, reducing the forces on the anchor. The price of this force reduction is an increase in speed on the rotation. If this gets out of control and you are unable to stop/counter the rotation then this may not be a solution, just a different kind of problem.
You may need to push off with your foot, but there's no foot hold, nor holds that enable you to create the forces necessary to step on the blank wall. What you need is upward motion and both hands are locked or unable to aid you, perhaps a campus move is unrealistic... and your legs are extended beyond the ability to jump. You can solve this issue with momentum. Swinging your leg back and forth to build momentum, your leg weighs a bit and getting those pounds up to a certain speed may provide the necessary momentum to launch to the next hold.
Any application of force to your body that is not countered will create movement, thus momentum. Building momentum is not really a tricky thing to do, the trick is to build just enough momentum and getting the right direction of the momentum. Missing the mark or overshooting the hold will cause problems, some of which may be unrecoverable. Gaining momentum in the right direction is even more challenging, and understanding what direction of momentum is necessary require some understanding. The classical dyno is often missed by misplaced momentum. If you miss a dyno and find yourself flying away from the wall, landing at a distance... you have aimed wrong. As you tune your dynoing, include tuning of your momentum so that if you miss you, land more or less directly below the hold. If you plan to use your momentum for something other than reach, the direction of momentum is even more essential.
Usually momentum is seen as a problem at the end of a move because it transfers into force. At the end of a move the momentum will be depleted, transferred into forces. If you are doing a dyno, the trick is to tune the buildup of momentum so that the momentum is completely lost at the exact moment you reach the hold. This would result in catching the hold in a perfect dead-point, with no motion, no momentum left. This is known territory, but not the end of momentum. As deducted above, momentum is all about putting force into your mass... creating motion, this motion is later transferred back into forces. You now have the recipe for "creating" forces in places where the holds does not allow for this to happen. When you want to push off with your foot, but there's nothing to step on... When you want to pull on a hold, but there's nothing to pull against... Now you have the tools and understanding, go challenge your imagination and close those ghost projects.
Is there nothing more to learn, no more secret powers to harness?
There just might be!
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I started climbing late in life, but with a technical background and an analytical eye for perfection, my progress eventually overcame my age. It all came down to climbing technique.