8 Top Tips To Improve Your Climbing

Are you a beginner looking for ways to quickly improve your climbing? Look no further! After coaching kids and beginners for a number of years, I have learnt the common mistakes and easy improvements that can be made that will make all the difference to how you climb. So I have collated 8 top tips to help you become a better climber, read them here!

1. Using your legs is essential!

Often I see new climbers relying heavily on their arms, reaching high above their head for the holds and trying to hoist themselves up, while somewhat clumsily following with their feet. This method will tire you out and it won’t be long until your forearms start burning! The most efficient way to climb in most cases is to LEAD with your feet and push your weight up with your legs (which have some very strong muscles by the way!). Use your hands to balance yourself and stay on the wall. 

2. Keep your arms straight

This kind of links in with the previous point about using your arms too much to pull yourself up or into the wall. Having bent arms uses much more energy than keeping them straight and hanging back from the wall, although when starting out, this often feels like the opposite of what you instinctively want to do. By keeping your arms straight, not only do you reserve more energy, it also allows you a better view of the wall and holds near your feet so you can look down and carefully watch your feet onto the holds more accurately. This does not mean to say you should hang loosely from your arms. You should keep your muscles and especially your shoulders engaged, but simply move away from the wall so your hips are away and arms can be more relaxed.

3. Focus on your footwork

So in case you hadn’t already worked it out, using your feet and legs correctly is imperative to becoming a better climber! A lot of people who are just starting out tend to try and get as much of their foot on the hold as possible which often means having toes pointing outwards and standing on the sides of their feet. This approach will really limit your range of movement and reach.  When using a foothold, you want to look at the hold and place your big toe carefully and precisely. By using this part of your foot, you allow room to pivot on the hold, stretch right on your tiptoes to reach up and allow room on the hold (given its not tiny and rubbish!) to swap feet elegantly. Practice using your feet on smaller and smaller holds by finding some comfortable hand holds and moving your feet around, swapping and stepping through to build your confidence.

4. Body positioning is key

Ever heard of three points of contact? This basically means in order to be stable you should always aim to have ‘three points of contact’ i.e. one foot and two hands. This is a pretty simple concept, but progressing from here, you need to think about how you use these three points of contact to manage your centre of gravity. Think about it like an equal triangle, which is a very sturdy shape. You want to create this with your body to create this stability. This can be helpful in situations where you feel like you are going to spin off the wall or ‘barn door’ as it is called. In this scenario, changing where your feet are will prevent this. See the diagram below for a clearer explanation. If your position on the wall doesn’t feel right, have a go at swapping your feet.

Swapping feet to achieve stable positions

5. Flagging! Your feet don’t always need to be on a hold…

Sometimes, always using holds for your feet can make climbing more difficult. Using the same technique from point number 4, you can achieve a more stable position for progressing up the climb. However, there may not always be a foothold, so instead you can achieve balance by ‘flagging’, meaning pointing your foot against the wall out in a certain direction. The image below shows a climber ‘flagging’. Try this next time you feel off-balance or imitate the situation low down on the wall to get used to the technique.

Source: rockclimbingforwomen.com

6. Momentum

Do you sometimes find that a hold is just out of reach? By introducing some dynamic movements into your climbing, you’ll be able to progressively reach holds that are further and further away. There are many variations of momentous moves but we’ll explain in more general terms here. Essentially, you want to use your momentum to ‘pop up’ to a hold that may be above you or out to the side that you wouldn’t be able to reach statically. A great way of practising this is to find some good holds for both your hands and feet that have a hold or two above for you to aim for. Keep straight arms and bend your knees, then release both hands and reach up for the next hold. This hold only needs to be slightly higher than the ones you are holding so that you can get used to the movement. Your hips should move from a low position far from the wall, to a higher position and much closer to the wall in order to gain that height.  To practise reaching holds out to your left and right, again, find some decent ones to hold and a target hold out to either side. Let’s say you are reaching out to your left. Move your hips out to the right using your legs, then swing them to the left, releasing the left hand hold and catching the target hold. Practice these movements on a lower wall like a traverse wall, and get used to the feeling of dynamic movements. There are many different ways of moving dynamically, but this should help get you started!

7. Observation

You will learn A LOT from watching climbers that are better than you. Pay close attention to their feet, how they place them and move off holds. Look at where they position their body, or alter this to achieve more stable positions that allow easy progression up a problem. Think about when they swap their feet and how they do this and also how this allows them to reach higher and more comfortably to holds. 

8. Buy a decent pair of shoes!

Although some gyms have some decent rentals, in general you’ll have a much harder time using small holds in them and you’re more likely to slip. Some popular beginners shoes include ‘La Sportiva Tarantula’ or ‘Mad Rock Drifters., but I’d recommend going to a well stocked gym and trying on a few brands to find the ones that work for you.

Extra reading - I would highly recommend purchasing “Rock Climbing Technique by John Kettle”. It has great diagrams and descriptions of numerous techniques used in climbing and even includes QR codes that take you to tutorial videos.