Top Rope Technique Class: Week 1

So I'll start this blog and the subsequent class blogs by saying you might find them a bit boring.  They are pretty much just here to go over what we covered in class.  I thought it would be nice to place it all in one place for myself for future reference and to solidify what I learned.  So, feel free to skip these if you want.

In our first week we learned about simple techniques, the type of holds and various footwork.  I'm gleaning some of the descriptions and pictures from the Internet to describe what all we learned.  It's just easier then typing it all up myself, all the gleaned information is in the smaller font, hopefully I made it all big enough you can actually read it.

The first thing we went over were the various types of grips and holds (these aren't exclusive, things can be multiple types of hold at once as well):


Crimp: the most natural and stressful way to grip a rock hold; characterized by hyper extension of the first joint in the fingers and nearly full contraction of the second joint.



Gaston: best described as a handhold that is only good from the side; you must hold it with your elbows pointing out and palm facing away from you.



Jug: a massive, easy to hold onto hold.



Pinch: a hold where you must pinch using your thumb and fingers to hold on (they vary in size).



Side pull: crimping or using an open hand grip on a vertical or near vertical hold.



Sloper: sloping hold with very little positive surface like palming a basketball.



Undercling: grabbing a hold with the palm facing up.



Open Hand Grip: gripping the rock with the first joint in the fingers and keeping the hand open. This is the safest hand position for your joints.
(This grip we actually didn't go over in class but it seemed like good info so here ya go).


Next we went over straight arm climbing, we practiced climbing in the back room using the straight arm techniques.

Straight arm climbing: Keep your arms straight as much as you can (i.e most of the time). The basic climbing movement is to keep arms straight, move feet into position to reach the next hold, pull up momentarily to reach next hold, arm straight again to move feet, and so on. This helps you in lots of ways but the most important benefits are reducing the muscular effort from your arms and being able to see what's going on at your feet much better than if your face is pulled hard against the wall.

After practicing the straight arm climbing we learned about matching our feet.  There are three ways we learned to match.  Hop, Controlled and Both feet on at the same time.  These are pretty much the way they sound; for the hop you hop from one foot to the next, for controlled you place one foot on top of the other and then slide the lower one out, and for both feet at the same time it sounds just like it is, you have both feet on the hold at the same time.

We went over edging, it is very important to have proper foot placement on the holds.  The front side of your foot is the edge you want to be climbing on.

Edging is a climbing technique involving the placement of the very edge (either inside or outside edge) of the climbing shoe on a sharp hold. Edging is the most simple and most common approach for standing on holds but, even so, requires some practice to obtain the very best footing. On smaller holds, it becomes something of an exercise in precision.

We went over Step Through and Back Steps, I'm not finding a very good definition of these online so I'll give a really quick overview kind of definition that is completely based on how I remember it.  The step through is when you step in front of your other foot and the back step is when you cross your foot behind you to improve your reach.  We practiced this back in the training room as well.

We went over rotating on our feet to switch directions and practiced doing that as well.  It's very important to be able to do this, I'll have to do lots and lots of practice on this one!

We also learned about having quiet feet and practiced that going up and down the training wall.

Quiet Feet:  This technique has nothing to do with keeping the noise down in the climbing wall, its just a simple technique for good footwork. Avoiding jumping or scuffing your feet up the wall as you move your feet means you have to get in balance to place them carefully.

Static vs. Dynamic climbing:

Static movement is the most basic and common of climbing techniques/movement. It involves moving with control and without great haste to the next hold. Using this is great for most situations.

Dynamic movement is a move where the climber propels himself/herself with a short burst of energy to the next hold. This is very useful if performing the same move static requires too much sustained physical power. This can be the case when the beginning of the move allows the climber to be in a more stable and powerful stance on the climb, but the middle or end of the move will either put the climber off balance, position the body in such a way that the muscles cannot be efficiently utilized, or both.

So that's pretty much our first class in a nutshell.  We probably learned other things as well, but I'm kind of writing this after the fact so this is what I have.
 
Various things in this blog were copy and pasted from these articles or blogs:
http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/2006/08/climbing-beginners-top-5-technique.html
http://www.rock-climbing-for-life.com/rock_climbing_101.html
http://students.cis.uab.edu/keith826/Page_2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edging_(climbing)