The Keys to Climbing: A Beginners Guide
The adrenaline rush of being 40 feet in the air reaching for one inch by half inch handhold cannot be beaten. The forearm pain as you lodge your fingers on razor-sharp rocks to hold all of your body weight up. The mental flow state you must enter to only focus on that one body movement — or it’s all over — creates this unbeatable rush.
If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’ve been climbing a time or two and want to improve. Well good! You’ve come to the right spot. I know when I first started climbing, I wanted to get my hands on any information I could. I still do. Climbing is a great sport. It’s amazing that just anybody can become a decent climber. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 22-year old fitness guru or a 48-year old past their glory days — oftentimes those with less strength are better in the beginning! All that matters is you master these three things. Or like Meatloaf says: Two out of three ain’t bad.
Technique
Anyone with good technique can outclimb someone with four or five times the strength. Nearly all of the technique involved in climbing is focused on one thing: your center of gravity. Many beginners think about climbing in two-dimensional terms, thinking about going side to side and up or down; but climbing is three dimensional.
Keeping your body close to the wall is critical for climbing as then you can pretend climbing is about the up/down & side to side (X & Y) aspect rather than focusing on the Z. Don’t get me wrong, there are many routes that require changes in the Z, but for most of the beginner routes, you will only need to focus on the X & Y if you keep your hips on the wall to minimize the changes in Z.
There are many times in climbing when you need to do funky things with your body to get a better handhold. These things include flagging, crossing, and matching. Flagging is when you stick one of your feet far away from you on the X plane, typically not on a foothold. This enables your center of body to elongate so you can reach things differently.
Crossing is just what it sounds like: crossing your hands. This is often required when there are funky handholds in a vertical pattern. Crossing engages your whole oblique so all of your weight isn’t just on your forearm and shoulder. Spreading the love to other muscles is KEY.
One of the more counter-intuitive pieces of technique is climbing on your big toe. When many people start climbing, they like to use their big toe like a hook. Climbing shoes have a natural bend in them right around the big toe, so many people turn their ankles into the wall to try and use the hook feature. But this is actually the opposite of what you want to do. You want your foot perpendicular to the wall so you have the least amount of surface area of your toes on a hold. This decreases the surface area of your shoe to hold contact which increases the friction to create a better hold. While strength and technique are important when learning to climb, the climbing mentality is critical.
Strength
The strength aspect requirement of climbing is one that is often overhyped. Many of the best climbers in the world agree that if you can do eight to ten pull-ups, you have all the upper body strength you need to be an average climber. Who would have guessed that it’s that low!? From the outside looking in, it seems as if all climbers do is pull themselves up the wall. But it’s actually the opposite. You only use your arms to reposition your feet. If you’re constantly doing pull-ups, you’re going to tire yourself out very quickly. When you watch professional climbers you’ll notice they keep their arms straight and only bend them when they are using their legs to stand up. It’s common knowledge that our thighs are our largest muscle, so we might as well use them while we climb. Core strength is arguably the most important aspect of strength. This is because of all of the techniques you use to change your center of gravity. All of the aforementioned techniques require core strength. So start doing those situps!
Finger strength is the most obvious, and needed, aspect of strength. Finger strength is measured by how long you can hold yourself up on the number of finger pads. A finger pad is the area between each knuckle on each finger. Most people start out struggling to hold themselves up with less than six pads on each hand. Eventually, you will only need a pad or two to hold your whole body weight. Some of the best climbers only need one pad on each hand to do horizontal pull-ups!
Mental Abilities
There are two parts of the climbing mentality that each play an important role. Problem Solving / Visualization is one of the first things you will need to focus on learning. After you pass the first few warm-up routes, you will ultimately get stuck on something. This is my favorite part of climbing. You will try something seven times and fall every single one of them. This is when you need to sit down below the route and think about each move as an independent aspect of the climb. Think through the whole problem and see what clues the wall gives you. If you know you’re always falling on the fourth handhold, think why? Odds are it’s because your body positioning is wrong and gravity wins the strength battle. So go back to the step before and think about how you could move differently to get your body in the right position. Visualize the moment required. Quite often the wall will give you hints. Handholds will be set in a specific way. It’s telling you there is only one way to grab it. So how do you set yourself up so you can grab it correctly? These are the scenarios that keep me coming back to the climbing gym again and again.
The other part of the mentality that is key is what I call the “send it” attitude. Once you have a little bit of confidence in your climbing abilities, this is easier to tap into. This is critical for when you’re up on the wall and the only option to make it to the next hold is to just reach for it. There are no other options. You just have to buck up and go for it. This is where the adrenaline really kicks in for me. It’s about having a healthy fear about what might happen if you fall, but engaging that laser focus to see only one option — to send it.
Climbing is natural to humans. The primal instinct you tap into when sending it is something that cannot be compared to anything else. It’s my favorite part of climbing. There is something about that rush. I also love that it can be a group activity or a solo venture. I prefer to hole up in the climbing gym with friends for hours on end. It’s always nice to have someone else to bounce route ideas off of. But some days it’s nice to put the headphones in and go solo. Either way you prefer to climb, just keep sending it. You won’t be disappointed in the growth.
