Good hip motion is key to staying in balance when rock climbing. One way to drive hip motion is to use a drop knee. The drop knee helps create tension across your body and drive your hip toward the wall. The result is better climbing balance and less effort expended on a move. Read this post to learn more about the drop knee motion and see a few examples.
Flagging your foot is a climbing move where one of your feet presses to the side and touches the wall, but doesn’t rest on a hold. Flagging is a really useful technique for maintaining good balance and is a key part of the foundational X-Motion movement pattern that I coach. Read on to learn a great practice drill to help you know when and how to flag.
X-Motion is an excellent tool for staying in balance during 90% of your climbing movement. But there is the 10% case where the available holds don’t support X-Motion climbing and you need to break it. In this blog post, we give three good methods for breaking x-motion while still maintaining balance.
It’s often necessary to switch feet on small holds. By itself, switching feet is hard enough, but when you’re on an overhanging route and the foot is far off to the side, it gets even more difficult. A lot of body tension and foot pressure is needed to be successful. In this post, we demonstrate a drill to practice this important technique.
Accuracy during dynamic movements can be critically important. A good example is a dyno to a pocket. It’s really hard to hit the pocket in exactly the right spot to stick the hold. Like everything, practicing accuracy is helpful. In this blog post, we give a drill that lets you practice dynamic movement accuracy without risk of injuring your fingers if you slightly miss a hold.
Proper balance is critical for good rock climbing. Properly positioning your center of gravity is the best way to create balance, and your hip position is the dominant driver for your center of gravity. In this post, we discuss and demonstrate a few examples of how to get your hips more centered over your anchor foot, increasing balance and making moves easier.
If you struggle with staying in balance when climbing, try to pointing your shoulder at the next handhold you’re trying to reach. Shoulder pointing makes reaches easier and helps you maintain good balance while moving up the rock. Read on for more details.
Proper hip rotation is a critical skill in efficient climbing. Lots of beginning climbers tend to climb with their hips square to the wall the entire time. Sometimes this is needed, but more often than not, rotating your hips as you ascend keeps you in better balance and saves energy. If you’re someone that always climbs square to the wall, try this drill. It will really imbue the importance of great hip rotation when climbing.
Last week I described X-motion, which is a dominant movement pattern for quality climbing. One of the keys in X-motions is to have sufficient core tension to maintain a stable position between your two anchor points. In this post, I describe a drill that helps you increase your perception of how much core tension to use on a given move.
X-motion is my name for the most basic movement pattern used in quality climbing. X-motion creates balance by anchoring your body in a series of X’s as you ascend a wall. If you struggle with balance when climbing, or feel yourself barn-dooring off the wall frequently, X-motion may help you climb better. Read on to learn more.
Power is force applied quickly and it’s an important skill for hard rock climbing. The campus board is the classic way that climbers train power, but it’s not the right tool for everyone. Lots of climbers aren’t strong enough to actually get a good power workout on a campus board. You can get a good power working just using a hangboard. Read on to learn more.
Shoulder strength integrated with core strength is helpful for climbers, especially if you like to climb steep routes. My three favorite bar-based core exercises to help build that integrated shoulder and core strength are “Toes to Bar,” “Windshield Wipers” and front levers. Read on for more info.
