A Radical Shift in How You Take Holds — Coaching w/ Dan #6
Hooper’s Beta Ep. 168
Introduction
A chronic problem for climbers is fumbling, miss-hitting, or completely airballing holds that they're trying to go to, especially dynamically. So today we're going to be talking about three consecutive techniques that you can layer one on top of the last to build better, smoother, and more reliable movement.
Technique 1: Aim Small, Miss Small
Number one is to "aim small, miss small." I find that a lot of climbers, myself included, tend to flow through climbs thinking "this hold, that hold, that foot, this hold," and they just sort of look at where they're going and then kind of go there. That does not allow for as much precision as we'd like.
Instead of aiming just for a hold, I aim for something like a screw hole, a bolt, or a logo—if I aim for something very small—generally I'm going to have much less variation around that point. So the very first thing you can do is simply pick a small but visually clear piece of a hold and aim exactly for that. As you get more practice with this, you can try aiming with different fingers—whether it's middle two, pointer finger, thumb, etc. Over time you'll just sort of be more aware of exactly where each part is going and you can plan and aim more precisely.
Technique 2: Aim with Your Face
The second technique is something that I work on with clients a lot. It's a radical shift in how you think of your climbing, and that's to try to aim with your center of mass rather than your hand.
As a new climber, or to some extent a simple human, we are very sort of hand-oriented. We think about grabbing something: "I'm moving with my hand, I'm going to my hand, I'm grabbing a handhold." If instead I think about where I'm putting my body, it will let me generally be a lot more precise in my movement. Even if I fumble my hand, if my body's in the right place, I generally have quite a bit longer to adjust and kind of settle correctly.
The problem with this is that most of us don't have a great sense of where our center of mass is; it's not something that we're super tuned into. But what we are very intuitively aware of is where our face is. So the trick that I've found over the years is that if you just aim with your nose.
When I'm working on a new climb, I think about where exactly I would want my face to be to be in a balanced position. If instead of aiming for a hold—or at least instead of predominantly aiming for the hold—I aim for where my head needs to end up, it gives me a much better initial sense of where my body needs to be. Once I get there, I then shift over to the "aim small, miss small" on the hand.
Technique 3: Out-to-In Motion
Recapping:
Step one: pick a small precise piece of the hold.
Step two: think about where your head needs to be.
Step three:
The first two techniques help us get into a more precise position, but our last trick is going to help us slow down and move smoothly. This is simply trying to initiate all moves with an "out-to-in" motion. Instead of just pulling linearly towards a hold, I instead think about pulling myself in towards the wall, this is going to give me a little bit of a horizontal dead point.
As I pull in, I'm now going to have a brief pause, hopefully aligned with when I hit the hold. I'm also going to have a somewhat slow fallout from the wall. I have this whole window of coming in, pausing, and starting to move away where my body's not moving that fast. With those three layered one after the other, we can build up more consistent movement.
Summary & Conclusion
In order to execute a move precisely, we need to have our hand in the right place, our center of mass in the right place, and the move executed with appropriate timing.
If my body and my hands are in the right place but I'm flying away from the wall, it's not going to work very well.
If my hand is in the right place but my body position is grossly compromised, it's not going to work very well.
If my body position is in the right place but my hand is completely off of the hold it's not going to work very well.
There's some variability in all of these, but all three are necessary to have a smooth, consistent, perfect motion.
That's all for today. If you enjoy this kind of content, make sure to check out the rest of the videos in this series.
If you would like a more personalized plan or a custom training plan, reach out to me at hyperspace.com/coaching.
If you've unfortunately suffered a climbing injury, we have a variety of very affordable recovery blueprints.
And lastly, since our last video, we're now selling a number of custom training devices which are available at the store.
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