Slab Climbing 101: Techniques and Exercises for Beginners

Today we are joined by the slab pro Anne Hazelnut. She is specialising in slab climbing. She has come to the UK, she's joined us today to actually talk about some slab techniques. So we're going to run through like two really fundamental slab techniques to help you with your own climbing because slab is important. And we're also going to give you some exercises which you can take to the gym and you can work on to improve your slab skills. If we're talking about slabs we have to talk about smears. So I'm going to run you through a few little tips and tricks to making smears on a slab work really really well. So unlike an edge which has you know a good lip to step on, smears are defined by their rounded, I guess their rounded shape. And in order to get the most power through a smear you have to try to get as much surface area of the shoe onto the smear. So that's like dropping the heels, I'm sure you've heard that before for slabs. You can do it on volumes, those are kind of like smears as well and get as much rubber basically on the hold as possible. And this means that you actually have to keep your butt like out of the wall. So I'll get on here and that gives you so much more pressure through the feet. And this is kind of also one of those things that you hear a lot which is keep your hips into the wall when you're climbing slabs but that's actually not what you want to do with smears because I'll show you the difference. So here I'm pushing really hard, I have a lot of rubber on these smears and it feels like quite comfortable. I can kind of like use them however I want but right when I kind of get my hips into the wall it doesn't work so well. Another thing with smears is that you want to take baby steps and the reason for this loops back in to the first thing I said where you want to make sure your tension is as much into the wall as possible and we have this box where the tension is at its greatest and that's kind of from your hips to your knees. So when I get on the wall here I'm able to really press hard when my feet are in this smear box. If I'm too high I like start losing like a lot of like force with my hands and then when I'm too low like down here I just kind of like also lose tension because I'm not just I'm not using enough force into the wall. So that's a good little I guess tip to use when you're when you're using smears on the wall. You won't always have really really nice jugs like these ones we've put up and so as the jugs or as these hand holds get smaller and smaller you'll notice it's a lot harder to keep the tension onto your feet and the feet are going to feel worse and worse because you kind of have to make that that balance between okay how much can I actually down pull on these and how much can I sink in and get my butt out. So it's just something to keep in mind when you are trying other climbs that maybe you don't have jugs. As Anna was saying there's like this perfect kind of zone for where you're able to apply pressure or like torque into the wall and that's going to help you get friction on the surface. So a really good drill if you want to get familiar or comfortable with smearing is actually not to use any footholds and just use the texture of the wall. So this is not even a textured wall it's just normal paint and you can see if I keep my hips out I'm able to smear in this zone and now you can literally just get used to walking around. This zone is a little drill to do warming up at the climbing wall you'll notice if you go a bit too low you start to lose tension or like Anna said if you make big steps out you're unable to like apply pressure to this to be able to move the other foot. The other thing this drill is really good at is getting you to learn like how much you need to drop the heel so I've heard other people mention that like you don't need to drop the heel because even if it's a small point of rubber you've still got even more force going through that smaller surface area so the friction is the same but we forget sometimes that the softer rubber shoes particularly what you want for this kind of style of climbing will deform and scrape so you can see all of these lines this is where I move to a small area of rubber and the rubber just shears off and I can kind of demonstrate this now if I keep the heel low as I roll up you see it drop as soon as I get to that like small edge of rubber so keeping that heel down is really important So next we have edging to directly contrast the smearing lesson and the thing about edges on a slab is that they're really directional so you can really take advantage of flexibility say to do really high steps and move vertically very well so I'll show you this really cool kind of lock-off move where we have one little edge here we go up to this edge and there will be two points where I'll try to find the balance to go hands-free just to show you how much of slab climbing especially on edges is really in the feet and in the toes if I can come all the way into no hands it's pretty good and then I can grab and then all the way up here I can also being able to do your classic no hands slab movements is about weight transfer and making sure all of your weight is over your hips and therefore over your feet where you're standing so when I put my foot onto this this edge here I start with all of my weight on this edge and then I slowly shift shift shift shift shift until I get to that exact balance point where all of my weight is essentially over my right foot in which case I can then go hands-free and a similar principle for when I stand up I have to find that tipping point and while I'm standing up I can also use my other leg as a counterbalance and maybe even bring that up like this you'll see me do a lot of that on no hand slabs because it just like offers that little bit more of weight over the foot that I'm that I'm pushing on so I want to cover one thing that's probably obvious when you watch Anna climb is that she's really flexible and I think it's probably one of her greatest assets being such a good slab climber is being flexible because it helps you open up your hips get your hips into the wall but particularly with high steps there's a lot to do with the strength in the hip flexors and how that works in relation to the flexibility in the hamstrings so if you're placing your foot up and over to a foothold you need to have a lot of flexibility in your hamstrings to be able to display this range of motion with precision so if I wasn't very flexible what you would often see people doing is swinging their foot up at speed because that momentum helps you gain more flexibility but if you want to do it with accuracy first you want to be developing that flexibility as an asset to be able to do that if you compare it to like a lock off people that struggle with lock offs will think I need to train my strength my biceps and my lats to be able to have the prerequisite strength to climb in that style it's the same with precision footwork flexibility in the hips needs to be developed first I'm going to give two very simple exercises that help train your ability to lift your leg up high and out to the side the first element is the lengthening side of this movement so we're looking primarily at the hamstrings and the hip hinge so we're going to do a pancake exercise for this because that involves the adductor flexibility the separation to a straddle and also the folding which is your hamstring flexibility for most folks you're probably going to want to do it elevated up against a wall for example so if I just come into a leaning position here I'm going to work on first separation I'm not going to my max here I'm primarily working the hamstrings and then trying to fold with a inline torso fold into it until I feel a stretch in the hamstrings if I feel like my center of gravity is getting so far forward I'm going to fall forwards I'm going to shuffle my feet out a bit and in this way get deeper into the pancake and you can keep doing this going deeper and deeper and deeper folding into a pancake as your ability level gets better exercise number two is the lifting element so this is where your strength and your ability to place that foot of accuracy really comes into it and we're just going to do something really simple it's like a hip flexer raise and it's going to be off out to the side and I normally like to use a platform to establish the height because here range of motion is our progression not weight or reps or time and attention so if I'm in this position I'm simply going to try and lift the leg off and hold and then down and I can perform reps like this lift off, hold and down using the strength for the hip flexors to create that movement because I want to increase the range of motion you can stack weights, yoga blocks, elevate the height establish that position again and without leaning too much off to the side try and lift off and hold and then down and then you're trying to progress the height and this is going to strengthen your quads, hip flexors and develop that hamstring flexibility I hope you found that helpful and thank you Anna for joining us today talking all about slab don't forget to also head over to Anna's channel to go check out an amazing YouTube channel with some absolutely amazing climbing footage also you can find her on Instagram and I'll leave a link to that in our description thank you so much for having me see you later