How Filming Yourself Can Make You a Better Climber
Becoming a better climber is always challenging, but filming yourself may show you how you can improve.
Climbing relies on soft skill development. Although we often talk about training within the context of strength, movement analysis and visualization offer room for progression outside of the slower strength training process. Pro and semi-pro climbers like Ross Fulkerson often discuss attempt analysis and learning from each session. Determining a takeaway, remembering it, and considering how you can use the new skill to improve between sessions accelerates progression. Without a coach, no better tool exists than your phone’s video camera.
How To Film
Although in-the-gym videography can feel odd, understanding why you fall will increase future chances of success. Video displays a climber’s weaknesses in all of its depths. Filming is most easily done with a tripod, but a person can lean their phone against a water bottle or street shoe. After the attempt, analyze what you could have done to improve.
What To Watch For
What is the purpose of a coach? They are someone that analyzes your performance and suggests areas of improvement. They have the advantage of watching you in a way that you cannot.
A movement coach analyzes their climber’s movement. Video replaces an external coach with an internal one as it forces each climber to become their own critic. Critical thinking regarding movement and its execution is not negative self-talk, but instead an expression of efficiency. How would climbing without a mistake, given current strength, power and flexibility metrics, look?
The sorts of mistakes we are looking for are obvious. Although subtle mistakes are also present, let’s begin with the bigger, more common mistakes.
Readjusting
While many climbers may know that they readjust, few realize how frequently they change their grip on a hold. Learning how to hit a hold and move on is one of the most obvious things to look out for when watching video and is easily fixed through more conscious movement.
Although we most commonly thing about readjusting with the hands, climbers frequently readjust their feet. Learning how to precisely place a foot is essential to progression. Missing a foot hold to then replace it later will cause you to waste energy or fall. Newer climbers will often place their right foot instead of their left, or vice versus, and switch feet purposelessly before moving forward. Even more experienced climbers will do this at times. This only occurs when a person has not consciously considered their path up the wall.
Flow
Flow is continuous movement. A climber without flow will move to a hold and then stop on that hold. Much of the climb will follow this jerky pattern. Conversely, a climber that moves with flow or momentum will not have to pull as hard as they will climb from the hips. A person’s centre of gravity should guide their pacing up the wall. When things become difficult, flow becomes hard to manage. With that said, climbers that move at their limit, almost always do so with flow. Sometimes the beta asks a climber to force the movement in an awkward and jerky manner but moving with momentum should allow you to climb harder as you will not have to pull as hard between the grips.
This concept can further expand toward momentum-based coordination movements, all of which ask climbers to swing their way to the next grip. An easily described example is the moon kick or pogo where a climber generates upward momentum by swinging their leg and pulling with that leg to reach the top of the wall. A mistake in pogos often comes from the timing. Many folks will fail to synchronize with their swinging leg. Instead of being carried up the wall they will receive a small amount of lift but will still rely on their ability to pull toward the top.
How to Adapt
Having an image in mind of efficient climbing is helpful for this stage of development. If there isn’t a climber to watch in your gym, there are videos of professional athletes by to which you can compare your movement to. Naturally everyone has different body shapes and sizes, but concepts still relate between these differences.
A six-foot male climber can learn a lot from watching the much shorter Olympic athlete Brooke Raboutou complete a lateral jump or a moon kick. Furthermore, if you are board climbing on a standard board then you should be able to find footage of that climb somewhere on the internet. This is most easily done with MoonBoard boulder problems.
Holding your climbing to a professional standard will lift you up. That doesn’t mean you should climb like someone else, everyone will have their own beta, but core concepts regarding flow and efficiency remain regardless of beta. Video presents our mistakes and give us those take-aways that pro climbers deem so important.
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