4 Steps to Improve Your Quality of Movement and Climb Harder!
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Loading... - Noah Taylor
- 26 Apr 2023
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Clean up your act! Improve your quality of movement for better efficiency, fluidity, precision, and focus while climbing.
Fighting for a send feels good. Kicking your feet, grasping for holds, gritting your teeth as your fingers slowly lose traction one pad at a time…the battle is exhilarating (especially if you win).
But as satisfying as a dirty send might feel, it shouldn’t be the norm. Save the struggle for the rare climb that pushes you up against your absolute limit. Climbs below that threshold deserve a different kind of effort: a focus on high quality movement.
Now, there’s no such thing as perfect execution on a climb. We’re not robots; human beings can’t do anything flawlessly. But the goal of focusing on quality movement is to climb as close to perfectly as possible. The closer you get to perfect execution on a move, and the more times you rehearse doing it that way, the more ingrained it becomes. Soon enough, near-perfect is your new normal.
Step One: Climb!
Pick a climb that’s a grade or two below your redpoint level. Climb it as you normally would, with no extra intentions beyond your typical approach. Really try to release any expectations and rely on instinct. The point here is to slowly, methodically improve your natural climbing habits—which means figuring out what those natural habits are to begin with. Allow yourself to explore what that looks and feels like for you without trying to change it (for now).
Step Two: Analyze
After you send, give your quality of movement a rating from 1-10: 1 being piss poor, 10 being a work of the gods. I find it helpful to start at 10 and subtract a point for each fumble. Readjustments, foot slips, wrong placements, missed reaches, barn doors, chicken-wing elbows, saggy hips, shakiness, moments of hesitation, and anything else that makes you feel less than the best version of yourself on the wall are all reasons to dock points. Read More…
