Adam Ondra #17: The Alchemy Of Climbing Shoes

in today's episode i'm going to talk about one of the most important parts of climbing gear which is climbing shoes using your feet is almost as important as having the power in your arms and it definitely depends a lot on what you are wearing on your feet interesting fact regarding the size of the shoes is that the direct translation of italian scarpetta is little shoes and of the spanish piece de gato is feet of the cat one of the most frequent questions that i get during interviews is how much smaller my climbing shoes are compared to a regular shoe this is my approach shoe and it's size 44. this is the shoe that i use the most and it's size 40. this one for example is even size 39 and a half [Music] when the shoe is brand new i have zero chance to get inside without a use of plasti bag i actually used the original one from the package and with the use of the plastic bag i can slip inside the shoe much easier well it's still not so easy and i must admit that breaking up the new shoe and climbing the first couple of routes with them is the worst part of climbing but it's absolutely essential and after a couple of routes they get comfortable and you can get the best performance with them as i said breaking up the new shoes is not fun at all and i have to actually do it quite often i think i use maybe 12 pairs of climbing shoes every year and actually when i was climbing on a dawn wall on el capitan those tiny footholds were so incredibly sharp so only for that climb during a month i think i used like seven pairs of climbing shoes like staying there smearing on absolutely no food holes there's a wide selection of climbing shoes on the market and the choice is very personal and it's also very dependent on the style of the climbing for example this shoe is great for the modern bouldering in the gym [Music] whereas for example this shoe would be absolutely terrible for the modern bouldering but it's amazing for climbing in the cracks outdoors [Music] in general we can find most basic difference between climbing shoes in their stiffness this one is really soft and this one is really stiff whereas soft shoes gives you much more sensitivity for climbing in the gym or climbing in a steep overhang and obviously the older the shoe is the softer it gets as you could see in some of the previous episodes on the competitions i usually bring two pairs of shoes these ones for standing on super flat volumes so this volume is very flat and slippery and actually needs something very soft and oversized so i can use the whole surface of the foot and this gives me actually quite a lot of comfort and something for small footholds and sometimes it happens to me that i reach a bowl of problem with these shoes only to find out that there are nothing but flat volumes and that's why i don't even start climbing first i change the shoes and start climbing with a different pair it's absolutely crucial many times with the other pair of shoe i wouldn't be able to do the moves in the ball problem the second difference is whether the shoe is completely downturned or just totally flat so this shoe is flat and stiff so because it's flat i can go relatively deep inside the crack and it's also stiff and that makes it quite comfortable to make this toe jam [Music] so this is a shoe which is stiff and just a little downturn and it works really well for me for the stuff which is vertical with really small foot holds [Music] so for example this shoe is soft and flat and i use it for speed climbing where you obviously have to be super fast with your feet and you can't really be that precise [Music] this shoe is on the other hand really stiff and really downturn and you really have to take your time to place your feet and that's why i use it outdoors for the stuff which is not that overhanging the combination of relatively soft and really downturn works great for me for the steep overhangs where this downturn part really works like a claw of your feet each shoe has its advantage and disadvantage and i actually like mixing up two different shoes at the same time for example i did my hardest route silence the world's first 9c in the right solution and left miura velcro solution works really well for this kind of overhang but there was this very tricky toe jam where only this shoe actually worked because it's relatively flat and at the same time quite stiff in general everybody who just started climbing i would not go four size slower as i do i would go maybe one or two sizes lower just not to suffer too much and i would go for something which is rather soft or medium stiff and which is not that downturn because if you really want to use the downturn shoe you have to be at least intermediate climber because you have to be much more precise with your toes when you're placing it on the full holes when you have a flat shoe you don't really have to be that precise and in the easy climbing you don't really need the performance of the super downturn shoe as you will get better you can go more downturn well my feet don't really look like a feet of a 26 year old but i think it's worth it it's worth for the fun that you can have while climbing [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Adam Ondra

Views: 1,572,912

Keywords: Adam Ondra, Climbing, Olympics, Tokyo 2020, Lead, Bouldering, Speed, Climbing gear, Climbing shoes

Id: a5CT8B6eI0A

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2019