Footwork that Sticks: Learning the Art of Outdoor Precision
One of the most frustrating, but also common technical problems on rock is undoubtedly having your foot slip off a hold. It puts a stop to what could otherwise have been a perfectly good send go, and is an uncorrectable occurrence. In the crucial situations, once the foot has slipped, that’s it. Game over. So how do we protect ourselves against this problem, and ensure as few critical footslips as possible? Read on, let’s step into it.
Key Variables
So when it comes to footwork, what can we focus on, and what can we change? What variables have we got to control, to stop us from slipping? Well the first thing we can control is the trust we place in the foot. The biggest mistake people make, and the reason feet slip, is due to a lack of trust. The arms are weighted, and the feet aren’t. The old adage, “a weighted foot never slips”, may not be completely accurate, but it ain’t far off the mark. A fully trusted and weighted foot slips a hell of a lot less than a partially weighted one which you keep thinking is going to slip. So that’s step one, trust the foot. Then it’s time to think about how sensitively we place the foot in the first place. If that foot was placed with precision and the foot was fully watched until it was perfectly sat on the hold, we’d incur less slippage. All too often the foot is stamped or waved on, and the eyes have moved the second it hits the foothold, not waiting for it to be weighted and fully placed before looking away. So the sensitivity and patience here is crucial.
Next is a subtle one, but it’s stillness and stiffness. When the foot is weighted and you’re doing a move off it, how still is your foot, and how stiff is your body. The more still you keep your foot e.g. not twisting your ankle unnecessarily or micro adjusting your foot, the more likely it is to stay on. Many times we see a foot placed, only for it to be adjusted later on when doing a move. Keeping your body as stiff and rigid as possible, controlled by your core, will maintain the position on that foothold that you need. If your body is wobbling and moving around, the control needed to keep that foot will be nowhere to be found.
Practice
When it comes to practicing these skills, many drills exist, but the primary focus should be on finding and using small footholds whenever and wherever you can; steep walls, vert walls, slabs, and even roofs. Small feet appear everywhere, and each angle calls for a different application of the variables above. Utilise your warm up to improve at these skills, spend the time to make up eliminates or foot sequences just as you would force a hand sequence for training. There are so many options here, but often simply allowing yourself to ‘play’, is the best way to engage in the skill. However, if you’re looking for something more formal, continue reading.
Fingerboard? Footboard!
So I’d hazard a guess that anyone reading this blog has used a fingerboard before, even if just to warm up. But I’d argue very few have used a slab of terrible footholds, or a steep wall with a bunch of poor feet in the same way. Today, resources for climbing technique and improvement are becoming more and more popular. The latest of these is a plywood board, a little larger than a fingerboard with a bunch of tiny foot jibs on it. This can be placed at a variety of angles to practice foot swapping and moving around on tiny feet. Feet can be added and taken away to scale the challenge, and just like we use different grip types on a fingerboard, we should consider different foot types on a footboard. Edges, smears, pockets, holds with more push, holds with more pull. If you can’t afford something like the one linked below, see what you can craft up! 30 minutes a day 3 times a week on something like this can change your game.
The final variable in all of this, is of course the equipment you’re using; i.e. your shoe. Now it’s not for me to say what shoe you should use to build better footwork, except to say that it should be a performance shoe. Whatever that looks like to you, is what you should go with. But whatever you’ve got, use that extra 20 or 30 minutes of your session, to drill into the nuances of standing on small footholds on rock.
Don’t stand on ceremony, get after it.
Eliot.