Slab Climbing Technique Master Class

Hey guys, welcome back to another Hangout Tips. It's Dave here, coach of the Hangout Climbing Center in Duncan, BC. And Matteo in one of our previous videos wrote in the comments section, Hey, do you have any tips for how to get over a fear of grinding your face off on the wall when you slip off a slabby boulder? And I do. I've got a few strategies we can go over today, tactics you can employ right away, and I've also got some training tips, things you can work on long term so that slab climbing becomes easier. Stay tuned, it's going to be a good one. Welcome to Tip 1. We're going to use two different sizes of rental shoes here. One larger and one smaller, and I'm going to demonstrate a point that you may be having trouble feeling secure on your foothold because you're wearing the wrong size shoes. So we're going to try to step on this small little hole here, only about the size of a pinky width wide, and pay attention to how much more secure I look when I've got the smaller shoe versus the bigger one. Now you should have seen from that last shot there that having a smaller pair of shoes helped me become more secure on the foothold by cramming my toes into a tighter spot, having less wiggle room, allowing me to use less force to stay on the holds. Now what happens if you don't have another pair of shoes? It's going to be a while, maybe Christmas is a long time away. Well I've got a nine and a half here, so a full size bigger than the largest shoe I showed in the last demonstration, and a full size larger than my street shoe, to show you that even if you can't size down, you can press harder on the hold, weight your foot stronger, and that'll help you stay on. So it's hard work, but I'm actually pushing down, I'm actively pushing through the foot as hard as I can to stay on this wall. This was a strategy I had to learn with great pain and suffering early on in my climbing career when a brute with a small foothold that required a delicate match would spit me off and smash my knee against another rock so many times, eventually by brute force I learned how to push through the rock. If you practice, this will help you a lot. Okay, so you've mastered the art of getting the right size of shoes. Or if you can't do that, at least pressing really hard into the hold. Now taking this to an extra level, if you notice this foothold here, it's sloped, it's quite a strong slope. And so if I step down through, right into the hold, or even lean my body in and my foot were pushing this way, I would actually be pushing across the face of the rock. I would not be pushing into the rock and that would not give me the most amount of friction. If I don't have friction, I'm going to slip. If I slip with my face here, I'm going to scrape it off. How do we get around that? I'm actually going to move my hips slightly away from the wall so that I can direct the force into this rock. It seems a little counterintuitive. My hip will not be over or even past the rock, it will be slightly out, but it will allow my foot to push right into this rock. Hopefully it works. Stay tuned. Watch. Hopefully I still have a face when I'm done. All right, so I'm on the left side of the hold now. I'm going to try to transfer my weight across the wall using this red hold and this black hold. I'm going to try as little as possible to pull myself, but rather I'm going to use the good technique I've talked about in previous videos by extending my bottom toe up as high as I can to shift my hips up so they can move across first. Then also, I'm going to try to position my hips so I can push into the rock, just like I talked about before. If I do this well, I should be able to hold on without any hands. If I do it poorly though, take two, watch what happens. This time, I won't have my hips far away from the wall like I was before. In this position, where you can see my weight can push into the hold, but rather I'm going to lean into the wall this way and I slip off. Maybe you saw it in my face, a little bit terrifying. So that brings us to the final tip of mental strategy. How can you use your warm-up effectively so you can get over this fear and be able to exit boulder safely even if you do slip? In previous videos, we talked about using your warm-up as a way to prime your mind to work on the skill that you're trying to train. In this case, it's not really a physical skill, it's more of a mental skill, but the principle remains the same. Let's imagine I've just come to the gym, I've done a few physical warm-ups, now I want to warm up my mind. In this case, I'm going to pick a hold that I know is slippery and I'm going to purposely fall off the wall. But I'm not just going to fall anyway, I'm going to try to set up a situation where my feet blow and if I don't do anything about it, my face is going to hit the wall. But because I'm controlling the situation, I have time to prepare. And this is how you do it. I find holds that I feel comfortable on, I slightly weight this foot, and I purposefully make it blow. And as it slips, I'm going to shove the wall, punch it with my palms, and I'm going to exit the situation. I'm going to get out of there as fast as possible. I'll show you that one more time. So I set it up, I know this is going to blow, and I push off the wall. It doesn't have to look pretty, it doesn't have to look natural, you just have to prime the mind to know that when my foot blows, I push away from the wall. And if you get good at that, over time, you have the confidence to know that even when you step on a rough foothold, a really small, slippery one, even if it blows, you know that your reaction is going to be push away from the wall, not lose nose. Now, as you get good at this, you can take it to the next level. I'm going to test myself, I'm going to try to traverse across the duotex part, the no-texture part of these two handholds. This is the final test for me, and it's going to see if I can, I've taken in and mastered all of the tips we've talked about today. I'm going to need to push into the face of the rock, not across it, because I have no texture now. I'm going to have to be confident on the wall, and I can't allow my hips to get too close. If they get too close, I slide down. Let's go back and try that again. I'm going to push in, ooh, it's pretty slippery, weight hard, push, whoa, push hard, whoo, I'm starting to sweat, I don't know about you. Now let's try it one more time, let's see if we can foot match. Now we really know if we're working hard. So I'm going to try to push in hard, match feet, push in hard again, match feet, wow. Bit of a workout, but I'm warming up, I'm practicing, I'm getting better. I'm not trying to impress my friends by getting to the end of the wall, I'm not trying to impress my ego, I'm trying to get good. And that's what's going to make you a great climber, and that's how I'm going to see you at the top. Cheers. We've got a few strategies that you can employ right away, and some training tips so that slab climbing becomes easier. Stay tuned, it's going to be a good one. Hey Dave, friends don't let friends climb slabs.