A Better Framework for Assessing and Improving Climbing Movement and Technique

For the past five years or so I’ve had this image on the whiteboard in my gym. It’s a five-part Venn diagram with the individual circles labeled Tension, Position, Commitment, Effort, and Precision. In the center where all of the circles overlap is the word “Mastery” with a big question mark after it.

I was searching for the principles of climbing movement.

What are the very base levels of the moves we do?

I started down this road after I watched a friend easily do a move I just didn’t quite understand. I knew I was physically strong enough, but I couldn’t make it work. Over months, I made up several variations of that move and I began to realize that as long as I kept some of the elements, I could create nearly infinite variations of the move that all felt nearly equally difficult for me. I kept digging deeper until I finally hit something solid. A possible foundation. Then I took that knowledge and dug for more, experimenting with moves I’m good at.

What was at the root of those type of moves?

After going down that path, I can’t be happy with the idea that the foundational principles of climbing movement are a set of thousands of different techniques that we have to memorize, because in reality, each one of those techniques arose as a solution to some movement puzzle and there are themes that run through all of these moves. But I realized I had to draw a division between technique and skill, because even though we use the words interchangeably, they just aren’t the same thing. 

Technique is the move, or moves, we choose in order to solve whatever movement puzzle is in front of us.

Skill is the ability to adapt those techniques to a variety of situations, using the principles of the movement as a guide.

Being able to recognize and then adapt to the various uses requires skill. To be skillful, we have to understand the principles of the movement itself.

You’ll hear things like, “Heelhooks should always have a pointed toe,” or “Your leg should be externally rotated,” or some other “rule”. These aren’t actually rules, these are just methods of adapting the technique to a specific situation. If you’re skillful, you understand when to employ these adaptations to the technique – not because you’ve tried and memorized every possible variation, but because you understand the foundational elements that go into making the heel hook work in any given scenario.

This is why good climbers can find micro-beta on the fly – not because they already have these techniques programmed into their head, but because they are skillful. They understand how to use global thematic principles in combination to make any movement solution work.

We can think of it as similar to a grade pyramid.

It might seem faster to send the next grade if you just spend a bunch of time projecting that next grade. But the person who spent an equal amount of time shoring up the level they were on, instead of jumping forward, can suddenly do multiple of this harder grade in short order, passing the person who took the shortcut.

It’s certainly faster to send a project if you dial in the microbeta and dedicate your time to those specific moves. But if we can dig a little deeper and find the foundational skills we need to work on, this allows us to better understand what’s required of us during a move.

We must recognize the distinction between performance and practice.

During performance, spend time working out all of the subtleties and microbeta.

During practice, spend time building more robust, more adaptable, foundational skills.

How can we address and improve our skill in a way that translates to various performance situations? How can we make sure it improves all of our climbing and not just our ability to use single techniques in single situations?

Is it even possible to look at all of the individual techniques and break them down to their foundational principles?

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But I believe I’ve gotten to the root of it. I call these principles The Five Atomic Elements of Climbing Movement. 

These five Elements can be combined in various ways to create every climbing move there is. Every technique depends on them to work, and often, when we think we’re bad at a technique, we’re actually just being challenged by one of these Elements.

I was pretty close with that original graphic on my white board, but a few things occurred to me. First, that some of these pieces were inherent to the movement itself – sort of a requirement in order to do a given move the best way for us, and that some of the pieces are what we bring to the table – playing a more regulatory role in the move. 

And second, that Precision was actually a product of other Elements, namely Position and  Tension, while regulated by Effort and Commitment. But there was still something missing. Something that when added to the other elements could account for pace and trajectory and arousal levels, and a bit of that precision that I had deleted: Rhythm.

So the three Inherent Elements are: Tension, Position, and Rhythm. The two Regulatory Elements are: Commitment and Effort.

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Besides the years of experimenting and exploring in my own climbing, I went through several months on my podcast talking with experts like Udo Neumann, Taylor Reed, and motor-learning researcher Rob Gray, reading dozens of books and studies, and repeatedly asking co-host Nate Drolet to poke holes in my theories. That led to several revelations, and once I felt good about all of the ideas, I turned it into a course that includes an evaluation tool using this system, opened it to 50 people, and then asked those people to tell me all the things they thought could be improved. And we made those improvements. We remade several videos, we reworked the evaluation. I filmed examples of the movement situations to give context. 

And I’m not going to say that what I’ve landed on right now is its final form, but I can confidently say that it’s really damn good. I’m proud of it. And personally, I think this system and the evaluation tool are game-changing. It’s out and available now. Check it out.

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This isn’t some magic pill. You aren’t going to become a better climber just by enrolling. That’s the other part of that original graphic I got wrong. The overlapping center isn’t necessarily mastery. There’s a lot more to mastery than this system can encompass. But improving movement skills and technique are by far the most abstract part of becoming a better climber. And arguably the most important part. 

This course and this evaluation tool, in my opinion, are the best way to remove the guesswork and find a clear direction forward. That’s going to save you time and energy, and ultimately, make you a better climber, faster. 

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EXPLORE FURTHER

You might enjoy these related articles, episodes, and other resources:

Taped Tips | The Secret to Hard Moves that Most Climbers Are Missing

Taped Tips | The Setup Mistake Climbers Make on Hard Moves

Our Movement Practice Resource Page

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