How to Maximize Your Reach with a Pro Climber

I teamed up with pro gb climber Alex Waterhouse to delve into the question of height and to cover some foundational climbing techniques designed to help you maximise your reach on the wall. Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel. Today I'm here with a very special guest, I'm here with Alex Waterhouse and we are here at the Climbing Hangar in Sheffield to talk you through some ways to maximise your reach as a climber. So Alex and I are both on the shorter side. Yeah I'd say so. I am 5'5". Yeah I'm 5'6", perhaps 5'7". When I was growing up climbing, I started climbing when I was like 12 or whatever, but I was tiny, really really small and like I think in the last sort of 10 years or so boulders have got a lot more inclusive and there are a lot more options for climbing stuff if you're a bit shorter. When I started climbing that was not the case, stuff was far apart, like there were things that didn't make sense. So I had to learn all of these like little techniques that would just get me that little extra bit. A lot of the time it was doing some wacky other thing going over my head or whatever, but in like a general way we can kind of distill the important techniques down into like three different things. So I think the most important things are to focus on your hips and how you're twisting them to get an extra reach on the wall, high feet and being able to like pull in on your feet over the things and then adding in some dynamicism into your climbing. And that's not necessarily just like all points off dynos, but finding ways of flowing through moves to just extend your reach a little bit. While these are sort of aimed at shorter climbers, all of these techniques are relevant for anyone. This is basically just good climbing technique. It's very easy to lean on when you just can't reach. I'm too short, I can't do it. There is almost certainly somebody shorter than you who can climb that climb, so you can either do the move better or be stronger. And while there are those sometimes when it is harder to be shorter, there really are as many times when you can use that as a strength. You can get into such a smaller box, there are so many positions where you feel comfortable where other people who have a lot more limb going on will find it a lot harder to get in. So I really do think it's double-edged sword, like it probably balances out somewhere in the middle and anybody can find ways around like any move pretty much. Perfect, should we find a boulder? First thing we need to be thinking about when we're trying to reach as far as possible is always about the hips. That's basically the basis of climbing. If you're standing like straight on with the wall like this, your hips are square, so sort of as far as you think you can reach. When you're straight on, when you turn your hip in, basically your entire body like lines up with the wall better, so you should be able to reach a little bit further. So up on like a standard wall, it doesn't make too much difference but as soon as you're like into a position where you're stuck underneath, then you can find so much extra length like down that side. So I think there's a pretty good boulder here that kind of represents that. So before we get into the bulk of the video, I wanted to have a quick word from the sponsor of today's video which is Athletic Greens. I have been trying out AG1 by Athletic Greens for a little while and it really has just become part of my morning pre-climbing routine. So AG1 is a nutritional drink with 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sources. It's a multivitamin, a prebiotic and a probiotic green supplement that aids in digestion, in gut health, mental clarity, recovery, general energy levels. So AG1 by Athletic Greens is great in that it is super convenient but what I really do enjoy about it also is that it encourages me to take 10 minutes out of my morning to just start my morning right and start with that element of self-care that maybe I wouldn't otherwise. So I just make myself a scoop of AG1, shake it up, put it in my climbing bag and take it with me climbing or sip it at my desk before I start my work. If that sounds like something that you would like to try then you can tap the link in the description of this video to get a one year supply of immune supporting vitamin d3 k2 and five travel packs free with your first purchase. So now back to the climbing hanger and back to trying to maximize our reach with Alex Waterhouse. So if you were to like go straight on your hips first and kind of try and reach it now try and like twist that left hip in so if you're moving your left hand twist your left hip in left hand left hip you can kind of reach a lot further so you almost like use the length for your left side of your body to like get that extra little bit. It's like such an important thing to be thinking about basically if you feel like you're square arm then that's when you can be thinking about like oh how am I going to twist here like not quite getting it like can you bring that hip in just a little bit more and get that extra reach. I used to do this a lot and I don't do it quite as much anymore but like when I would start my session um when it when I was like doing my warm-up boulders or whatever I would climb boulders like really exaggerated in all the hip positions but like even where it's not actually that useful like find places where you can twist all the way in or so it's like it's not the easiest way of climbing the boulder but it's sometimes you'll like find that when you get into that like dropping position you'll just like lock in and then all of a sudden you can go as far as you need to without having to urge or pull really hard oh yeah perfect get that one in what happened there is because you're like got up onto the same hold so because you're all like on this hold when you do a drop knee and you like turn your foot all the way upside down your like foot rolls around on the hold so if I'm like moving around like this like my foot is still in the hold yeah but it's like moving into different bits of it so you need to set it up on the bottom so you have space to roll into the back of it where you actually want to be in the end it's the same with heels actually if you like put a heel hook on here up here and then you were to roll all the way down like your heel started off here but it's like roll all the way down so it's like when you're placing a heel that you want to do a big drop knee over you need to place it like further up than you would otherwise because when you finally end up on it yeah you're going to be below it yeah but you saw and the transition between it and you could probably combine this with a drill that I know Louie likes which is like where you like hold over a hold so it's the same thing it like forces you to set up in a really solid position so it's like it's just good climbing yeah good climbing technique anyway but I think it's so much more relevant if you're a little bit shorter because so often you're relying on that like extra like inch or so to get used to that final bit and just that like twist can just get you a little bit further so another boulder that we found is this purple here which I think will illustrate really nicely that sense of if you're going at something straight on versus if you're managing to get your hip closer into the wall to twist to so if you go for the right one as far as you can reach reach as high as you can oh you're pretty much there right now try it with the drop knee and see what the difference is drop the knee on this so yeah left knee dropped in so much more it's like a hand extra oh cool nice yeah so with the straight on you're like I'm like pretty far off like you also just have to pull really hard on this so if you're I'm standing on the right side of this when I do that so I can like push outwards and I can just like feels like I'm pulling a lot less hard great what a move yeah it's like so to be honest it looked like you could do that move straight on but yeah how much easier was it to get the distance when you were twisted in did it feel different yeah definitely okay but yeah I could probably fingertips over yeah and then maybe like pull into it but the time that that would take yeah versus if I could spot ahead of time that the twist is gonna yeah help me get in there quicker so when you're climbing in general as well like a lot of the time you're racing how tired you're getting to the top so anytime you can make a move a little bit easier yeah if you make if you make 10 moves five percent easier yeah all of a sudden you're totally fresh for that last move that you've been falling off and and not the rest of it that's kind of like got to be as efficient as possible and kind of the basis of climbing hard the next really important thing for climbing for sure is trying to like really think about your feet and how you're using them and bring them as high as possible there are a lot of disadvantages to be sure it can't reach this far but there are some really big advantages well it means you can get into really small positions and really small boxes so that for me means that a lot of the time I'm climbing with my feet up by my ears and now it requires like pretty good hip flexibility and the ability to kind of like scrunch up but once you kind of learn to get your feet really high and then use them in a way like a hand then you can reach so much further so let's see let's see if we can find some like demonstration of it but we like hop on like if I can get my feet up here because I'm in this position I'm like totally chill now whereas oh I've not done this move oh wait a minute another one here so here you could probably leave the foot low but for me I'll come up into there and then I'm just so relaxed because the foot is so close in with my like center of gravity I'm able to just stay really relaxed it's basically like bring the feet up really high and then claw in on them it's just something that's like very much part of my climbing style now from growing up climbing being short yeah squeeze with the hips come on come on come on you got it nice see if you can see if you can let go in that position squeeze let go yeah I think I'd have to toe on the outside squeeze I could let go one nice yeah so if you were six foot two that position would be horrendous because you're five foot five like the distance between this and this means you can just be like tucked up a little tiny box so it's when you're climbing trying to find those positions where your kind of body type is suited for them yeah and not following the tall guy from the go before not trying to do his beat or he uses his feet really low so finding your own way but I think that's also the really cool thing about climbing is that you can have the same boulder that people climb in totally different ways because of the different body styles and what they're really good at so we found a really good boulder that demonstrates this so this purple kind of the natural way that you want to do this next move keep the foot nice and low and then just like wang over like that so you can do that dynamically but we found a cool beater where you can step in like this really tuck on that foot and you relax over to there and it's like you can do that dynamically a lot of people tend towards like a more static style of climbing anyway and we'll look at some dynamic bits and where that's useful in a minute but that's a really nice example of somewhere where just by using your Nathan ain't putting in that box so um yeah give it a go you can try that's next yeah see like you ain't reaching that you could you could jump for it for sure but yeah chill it you the dip when you brought the foot up high like that like obviously it's quite a bunch position but because you're able to use your feet in like a in a small box like that you're able to just like totally feels a lot more secure then especially if say that hold that i was going to i wasn't quite sure that i'd be able to hold yeah and i wanted to go to it static definitely employ the high fat rather than take the risk with the jump exactly so that one's a jug so it doesn't really matter so much um but if that's a harder boulder and say that's a pocket or it's slotted and you actually have to go really slowly like somebody who's tall could probably leave their foot really down down low and reach into that slot but you would have to like flick for the slot and like go into a really small box or into a really small like precise position yeah whereas when you bring the foot up it's pretty static cool so the the third thing and i think people get a little bit intimidated by this but it's adding a little bit of dynamism into your climbing and like moving with a bit of a bit of um when people think of dynamic climbing i think they think of like all points off dinos and jumping a long way and like there's no holds there you have to jump in between to get there yeah would you say that's yeah i think so and pretty much all the dynamic movement that i've covered on the channel it has been like approaching boulders that are set as a dino yeah uh kind of like leaving points of contact yeah i just want to know the most instant jumping really far yeah so the majority of the like dynamic climbing i do isn't that yeah just adding in like a little bit of a flick at the end of a move or like moving for a move momentum that probably you could do statically or somebody could do statically yeah but lets you get through the positions with like much less effort so yeah this white one is like a nice demonstration of it so there's a couple of moves on here where you could probably do them statically if you wanted to like this move out here i could probably like oh okay actually i don't even think i can do that whereas if i like start my hips low explode outwards and come like that it's so much easier and then this next move i could probably lock really hard to this next one i don't know again i don't even know if i can whereas if i like come out with my hips float i get loads of time to grab the hold and it's all done so it's like it's not saying jump really far it's saying think about your hips and your momentum and move through the move smoothly rather than trying to stop everywhere yeah just adding that like extra little bit of like pop through that bit that end bit yeah i feel absolutely in my climbing maybe because i'm a little bit shorter i am because i'm a little bit more nervous with more dynamic movement i'm i try to lock off and then very quickly reach the end of my reach and tire myself out in the move trying to go for things rather than flowing through moves so that's the most obvious example of where this this could be really useful if you're locked off on a hold and you're as far as you can go yeah like you ain't getting any further than that with a lock off yeah if you were to take that move and then even get close to the end bit and then urge yeah or take that even further come all the way through and then go like that you get so much extra reach just by like moving through with that momentum it's like you come to here and you get stuck but you can extend past that with a little bit of a bounce like all the way up so that's kind of the obvious place same idea we can go to the left hold rather than the sorry the right hold go to the left one rather than the right one so foot position in the same place so last time we were getting a drop me to reach here yeah so we can't reach that so if you were to start down here float through that move yeah and then come up to here then all of a sudden you can reach that move with less effort than the so if you go to here and then bounce off that toe or so we'll try that first and then we'll try starting from really down low floating all the way through you see how you feel so lock off most of the way to it and then bounce off the right toe nice float all the way from low yeah nice versus like so if you just can't like you could get there so this is absolutely like foundational in how i climb like i find a lot of the time i just physically can't reach between stuff i have to do some kind of flicky and range motion that doesn't mean that i'm like jumping to stuff and like swinging around because the holes are just too bad to do that the majority of the time yeah but basically if you can hold the final position you can probably get get there a really important concept when you're doing dynamic movement is to think about like the arc of your hips while you're doing it so if you think about standing up against the wall if you're up against the wall and then you so you start in close and then you come up you're always falling out so when you're like coming out from a move you're always falling out so what you need to focus on is to start with the hips out doing the move you have time with the hips come in and then come back out to like come through it so that gives you way more time than if you go up like that and you're always falling out so this blue one kind of demonstrates it nicely if you try and if you put your hips really close to the wall and then jump you're basically just jumping outwards you're pushing your whole body out whereas if you start with the hips out float them in and then you have that like dead point where you're on the inside so hips back thrust the hips in loads more time hips all the way out as far as you can get them and then punch them inwards yeah nice versus versus if you like sit over your foot now yeah now jump up from there but even then you're like you do it naturally which is good is you like you're trying to pull yourself inwards and over the foot it's the same idea but like you almost like really pronounce it and get that like hip thrusty action but it's like so that applies basically for for all the other moves over here so if we go and try that white now yeah um we can try some of those moves and like really focus on the hip movement as we do it we've picked out this white boulder which is kind of uh quite a big step up from the blue that we just tried thinking about hips uh this is slightly steeper so and the holds are slightly worse so we're going to try and apply the principles we've just covered to something at project level and see see how we get on yeah set that left heel a bit higher perfect into your hips punch for your hips so try and do that move on its own so like pull into that final position and then see if you can like do that move really because i think it adds quite a lot doing it from the start especially so um what i'm going to do is break this boulder down a little because i find the first couple of moves quite hard to get into the position where i'm trying to move out to the right hand so what i'm going to do is climb up into it so that i can really drill in that hip movement um yeah just try and climb it for a couple of me from a couple of moves in and then i can think about adding the beginning on if i'm successful here so the way i think about this move is i almost like bring my hips up as far as possible drop them down and then i'm pushing off the left leg sit all the way down oh toe might work as well it's worth having a go so out that way so try and build it all from the hips none from the hand if you can yeah nice you feel that like rock back you did first and then roll in on the heel i think that's you're looking for on and out and then punch with the hips oh that was it breakthrough that was it that with a higher foot heel coming slightly higher up yeah so that i could almost use it was mostly the heel but i had a little bit of toe so that when i like pushed i could then get a tiny bit more nice that's cool so let's do the move like that then we'll have to look at how we can link that in with the start yeah because it's so because we would more difficult position to get into yeah i think it should be okay we'll have to just find a way of like dropping under this so we can put the heel a little higher before oh no you match over here don't you i do yeah oh you could just put it low match shift nice okay game on game on got a lot higher with that heel yeah perfect same again really sit on it pull the heel into your butt nice come on try on this move oh that was a little better that was a lot better so i think what happened i didn't get the heel on so you got the heel on in the perfect place but it's the same thing we talked about earlier where you put it on up the top yeah and then it like rolled all the way down back into the same spot by the time you got over the heel so you might have to just go even higher oh it's so close push oh that was so close yeah and then the push out yeah oh yeah i have no idea oh that was it that was very close yes yes okay kind of punch for this move that was perfect oh good effort okay we can move on the thing we were talking about earlier and now that move that you've just done is quite a subtle version of it yeah but this one you can really focus on like coming out yeah and then pulling in at the hold i'm trying to time it yeah so so this is exactly what we talked about earlier with the high foot basically if you go for that slot in a way where you're like falling outwards you don't have very much time so you're like going falling out and then you have to like snatch into it when you come out in you give yourself more time you hit that dead point yeah you've got loads time you can go into the slot and then you should be chilling and then in oh that was really good oh my god i almost missed yeah you want to come from the right so hips down and like that and then come up like this because when you hit it you were spinning this way because you you went straight up but then it's over here so yeah so you almost need to counteract that final movement by going by going from right to left with the hips you're going from right to that was great you fumbled yeah cool i'm happy with that happy with that good that's massive progress on that boulder that's really cool thank you so i hope you enjoyed that i definitely feel like there was progress made and i think that the boulders you picked really did highlight nice yeah that last one especially i feel like was a really it sort of brought in a few of the different techniques as well yeah i think it was really interesting to try at the project level because like we were saying before when you demonstrate on boulders that are quite manageable for you it makes total sense when you do the movement you're like aha i've got it then when you try and apply that on max level boulders for you it becomes a lot more subtle and smaller changes come into play that's where it really matters yeah um i think trying to bring those techniques in on the easier boulders that's how you kind of build up the movement base and that like like pattern recognition all that stuff to be able to say to not have to think about it when you get into something a little bit that's what kind of the goal is is you can just climb let your body do what it does without having to think too much so yeah yeah i still feel i have a little way to go but i the only way you get there is by focusing really hard on on the moves that you find difficult so yeah that's good and there's there's tons more little things you can do to sort of extend your reach but i feel like we've covered a nice basis for them but yeah yeah thank you very much for your time today i'll leave all links for alex's social media in the description make some very cool holds and some pretty cool shorts so yeah i'll leave links to those in the description of this video make sure you do go check him out and i'll see you in the next video bye