The Most Overlooked Climbing Technique | Tip Tuesday

It's February!! This is my 5th Tip Tuesday and I'm going strong! I love doing this stuff, and I hope you enjoy it too!

Watch this on YouTube. 

Here's the Audio:

And if you'd like the video transcript, here it is below!

Welcome to another Tip Tuesday, I’m Mercedes Pollmeier.

Today we're going to be talking about the most commonly overlooked climbing technique to make your climbing movement more efficient, and at the end of this video, I will be giving you one tool to use to make your climbing movement just a little bit better.

Welcome to today's Tip Tuesday. We're going to go over one of the common climbing techniques that is often overlooked for movement efficiency. And this is called “Where the heels go, the hips go. As I do this you can already see how maybe other sports use the same technique such as skiing, snowboarding, even in tennis. When I was a tennis player, this was a fundamental move that I would have to work on in order to generate a lot of power in my stroke, so we can apply the same thing to climbing and with climbing, you know, the less static we are, the more dynamic we are, the more efficient we're going to be. 

In general, if the next move requires you to have a right hand, that means your heels need to move to the right. If I keep my feet in place and I rotate now, I'm basically stuck and I'm limited in my movement. For this technique, we're going to Pivot on our toes and let the heel shift side to side.

I want you to take this practice on the climbing wall. So first just set a timer for a couple minutes and just focus on your toe placement choose a couple footholds that are relatively big enough for you. You to be able to shift your feet side to side, arm should be relatively relaxed and just feel the movement. 

This technique on its own is actually called the bug squisher and I'll go into that more in depth in a different YouTube video. So now that you've practiced going from side to side with the heels.

Just feeling how the toe can stay on the foothold and still be able to Pivot now.

I want you to apply this to an actual climbing movement choose a couple different hand holds, some that are a little closer and some that are a little further away, now initiate from the feet and then let your hips and then your arm move kind of almost like a domino effect.

If your feet move, that means your hips can move which means your upper body can move.

So if one doesn't happen, that means the rest will be a lot more difficult to execute again try to do this as relaxed as you can only think about your feet.

That's really what I want you to focus right now, move those heels and then get to that next handhold. Don't worry so much about actually pulling the hips in just yet.

Once you've practiced this a couple of times. I want you to try to go a little bit more dynamic go to something that is very close to your extension limit

and practice this so go from something smaller climbing position into a bigger climbing position and maybe out to the side. 

Once you've done that I want you to take a video. This is one of the secrets to Your climbing technique video yourself.

So in this technique, I want you to look at where your feet are going.

Zoom in on the feet, are they shifting side to side anytime you're looking at a climbing technique always go to your feet first.

Look at what your feet are doing. Then what are your legs doing?

Are your legs extending our your hips moving and so on set a timer for a couple minutes and really focus on this technique take a couple minutes before Every session and just work on practicing this movement that wraps up another tip Tuesday.

Thanks so much for joining me. And if there's ever any content that you want me to elaborate on our include in this tip Tuesday's please leave a comment below and I'll try to make sure to get to those videos. Alright, make sure to like subscribe and hit the bell and I'll see you next week.