Too Strong to Learn Technique? How to Move Better & Climb Harder

welcome back for another episode everybody uh I'm pitched about this today uh it's me Louie and Sam right good everyone knows who we are um and we're going to be doing a coaching video today I think this going to be a pretty good one CU I reckon the stuff we're going to be talking about today is really relatable for a lot of climbers um in my experience as a coach the vast majority of students I work with are already stronger than they need to be to go up a couple of grades and they're just like using a bit too much strength by picking the wrong technique at the wrong moment picking the right technique but pulling way too hard or not being confident that they are strong enough in the first place almost always the answer is like I don't know you can just move a little bit better and get a lot further with the strength you already have I guess climbing is a movement based core right it's a skill based thing yeah definitely so um Sam I think is a really really good example of this um really oh yeah definitely man like so we we did a video ages ago of um V5 climber compared to V3 climber and we saw like a whole bunch of differences in movement but it was kind of in my mind like Sam's not that much weaker than me actually and we've now climbed together for like a whole year or so Sam does a weekly session with me and this like adult group that I coach fun it's good fun and slightly less fun for me it Sam's been burning me off in a whole bunch of different strength tests um push-ups we discovered Sam is um absolute Amusement for push-ups um pretty strong like a whole bunch of different metrics including uh we did like a grip strength test of just like yanking on edge recently and Sam was like the strongest in the whole session including me he like completely burned me off so um we're going to double check before we get started um that Sam is as strong as I think he is we've got a fancy new toy to play with I know it's exciting well don't get too excited it's it's a climbing based toy okay okay good um and um no no it's not ink I'm sorry it's not ink today but maybe a future video we are going to bring ink back soon um we're going to do a quick strength test to make sure that Sam is as strong as I think he is oh God and then we're going to have a really fun time going over a movement draw that I think is really effective for a whole bunch of climbers it was very effective for me as someone who also was wasting a lot of strength as a younger climber I think it work wonders with you but also if anyone here is watching going like I also feel like I pull too hard at the wrong moments this is going to be a really useful movement draw for you cool pretty good yeah let's do it okay let's go B we're playing with today is the new tind progressor 200 okay really useful training tool I actually slightly worried um you all know what I'm like with like maths and stuff I worried this was going to be too complicated but they they've made it kind of idiot proof um as proven by me being able to use it so like I've already created like a whole bunch of presets or like workouts to go through uh so I'm going to do my first um warm-up preset what what is it so okay so basically I I've told it that I want to do um pull for 7 Seconds rest for three and I want to do that six times I want to have a rest for 15 seconds while I change hands and then I want to do it again I've told it what my maximum load level is which is like for me I'm I'm being optimistic about 60 kilos but then I've told it that the rest level is 15% and the work level is 30% so it's basically going to tell me how hard to pull for how long and I don't need to use my brain at all tell me okay pull and get it in that red line whoop it's difficult to be accurate there we go little bit more two one and now rest but not all the way to the bottom and now pull again this is a nice gentle warmup actually I lowered it slightly cuz I tried it before we started I was like man that felt like a hard warmup now I keep it there now back up ah it's like the warm-up protocols that we were just doing were based on the um repeaters function so I just built a little um a little program based on that so it's already showing the ones we've done I think though for us to do like a maximum test of just who can pull on the edge the hardest we want to do a peak load test so so this is just testing my maximum pulling strength um so you can see like if I pull a little bit it just keeps showing me what like the most that I've managed to put through it is so okay I'm going to go hard I'm going to set the highest I can come on come on 63 now 63 and then let's try the right arm go on try hard yes 65.3 yes there we go um but right Sam you have a go at this all right uh left hand oh it's on right hand just on right hand oh yeah you're only right hand you got a bit injured yeah go on Sam oh my God oh my God 71.2 what the hell what did you get again 6 65 okay so well yeah there we go folks so I was uncertain before I I suspect that Sam is stronger than I am and now we have it proven with with science thank you tind yeah so well done you are now Captain Cut Loose I should be climbing v13 I'm not well let's go and find out way come on let's go right so just before we get on with teaching Sam to use that mcy strength he has quick shout out for tind progressor 200 um this is great if you weren't sold by just watching us use it I'm actually really really excited about excited about this cuz um really easy to set up even for a dummy like me I've got the hang of it and I'm using it pretty uh pretty easily um and it being like it's it's super light and it's definitely a lot lighter than 50 kilos worth of weight plates so I'm pretty excited to bring this on travels with me now all I need to do all of my fingerboarding is a little crimp block this and something to clip hit to that I can stand on and now I've got all my training sorted so I'm very excited about this if you're excited about it as well click the link in our bio use the code Catalyst easy to guess uh and you get 10% off any of the tnd deck products I'd recommend this one for your trading so I want to start with a movement drone that I've done for years and I I show to a lot of climbers and I'm going to show everybody uh and then I'm going to get Sam to do this but let's just talk through in detail how I think this Draw Works um so imagine a climber who has very little or physical strength as soon as they start climbing anything the like onslaught of Demands on their strength is really really obvious like the holds feel bad it feels hard to pull their way between them so they have no choice but to naturally develop really really good smart climbing technique and then later they have to work on getting stronger for a lot of us though Sam will be a good example of this he's really strong and so that onslaught of Demands on his strength is so much less noticeable every move feels about the same whatever he does if we're on really easy climbs anyway there's no incentive to learn to climb better or smarter or to use any particular techniques I know this I'm talking about myself I'm using sound as an example but I know when I was younger I could climb everything like a gorilla and it felt fine and that was the problem I never learned to climb anything any smarter so step number one notice what you're doing start feeling exactly how you're moving and what types of strength you're using on the wall so I'll go first I'll do a little demo and then I'm going to get sound to try it as well all I'm going to do and you can try this for yourselves if you want to I'm going to climb this very very easy climb but I'm going to put loads of focus towards noticing what am I actually doing is there more weight in one hand than the other am I pushing or pulling with my feet how much tension am I holding in my shoulders uh should be clear there's no uh wrong or right thing to do I'm not aiming to use any particular techniques I'm just looking to be more mindful of what types of strength I'm using so I might start and go right well there is a lot more waste in my right arm than my left so actually yeah if I take my left arm off nothing really happens if I take my right off yep there's more of a loss of balance my left foot is giving me quite a lot of balance even though it's not on anything but actually most of the weight is in my right leg okay so now I'm going to now pull a lot harder on my left hand and push a lot harder into my left foot and now all the way to come off that right arm but at the expense of putting more on my left okay fine taking my weight onto my right again oh my weight is on my right hand yeah can take this off nothing what about the legs tell me more about what your legs are doing uh you pulling or pushing with your left I'm like pulling a little bit and then pushing with my right very good again now I start transfer if I shift my weight to the right the weight actually comes off my right foot and onto my left so I can free up that right leg straighten that a l line of tension here which I can show cuz my arm's not actually doing anything at this point so like I said actually doesn't really matter what moves you do the aim is just yeah okay so straight away I'm like up I I'm pulling in again okay so I'm noticing that I'm doing that so um seems like a weird slightly hippie-ish thing to do I don't do that every session but before I teach anyone this exercise I get them to do exactly what Sam and I just did being a lot more mindful of the type of strength we're using I actually think this is now now that I've done it for so long I'm annoyed at myself for not doing it more when I was younger cuz obviously when I go on hard climbs it's the same thing over and over again of oh I'm finding this move really really difficult how exactly is this move working where am I pulling too hard how could I solve this but I was never preparing myself for that task earlier in the session and now I do it all all the way through my warmup so it just makes me better at thinking about what I'm doing on harder climbs so far though we've not actually looked at how to climb better we've just started noticing how much strength we're using very good starting point but now let's make it a little bit more direct what I'd like to explore now is how climbing technique is not a this is correct and this is incorrect you're choosing to make different compromises y now on a really hard climb the choices I make are really really limited it might be that the handhold is really bad and I need to find a way of not using it that much so I need to put more weight in my feet on easier climbs I could do loads of different things but I'm not made to think about what I'm doing so let's explore it a little bit more closely most common thing most people learn and I know I learned it in one of my first lessons uh oh don't do all the pulling with your arms you should keep your arms straight all the time I think that's an oversimplification uh to be really clear like if I'm on great big overhang with really good handholds and I'm doing this for no reason yes that is that is definitely a waste of strength at the same time though if I was using yeah okay like a really really bad hand hold like this the absolute worst thing to do would be to lean yeah I can't hold it as soon as I do that so again this is why I'm explaining like we make compromises of how we use our strength sometimes it's appropriate to come close other times it makes more sense to lean away we're going to go for just exploring the idea of if I had like zero strength in my arms and my shoulders how would I have to climb this Boulder okay so I pretend that my hands are like Hooks and my arms are ropes so I can like hook them onto stuff but I I can't like engage like that with it so I already need to have that body awareness that we already practice to notice if I'm pulling with my arms so okay um if I start doing this oh relax uh okay so I need to find another way to get there I'm probably going to twist I actually still can't reach it my Temptation would be to do that yeah but actually I think if I move further around yeah there we go I've taught a lot of students how to drop knee really really effectively without having to show them what a drop KN is or explain how it works because it's just the most appropriate solution to this problem of oh I don't want to pull in my arms what can I do as a quick check if you weren't allowed to drop me how would you do the move now still trying to keep the arms relaxed i' probably like yeah I guess that' be your best option that actually works quite nicely yeah it feels quite good really ni kind of just sitting on hips right beautiful I always advise trying to do it really really slowly cuz it's it's hard to notice what you're doing otherwise I've got a couple more challenges Sam and uh you the viewer to go through when you're trying this um how you finding it so far Sam yeah it's a little bit weird yeah right yeah I'm climbing I feel like I'm climbing quite un naturally so um let's talk about that then cuz I think that's an interesting one um yeah moving in this really artificial twisty style when it's such an easy option just to pull with our arms to get between the holds yeah for me also feels quite a natural so I'm like it's not feeling easier it feels like it takes more concentration yeah okay um but I think that's more to do with the idea that we've just practice doing that so much and we're strong enough that it doesn't feel that hard that yeah this technique feels unfamiliar the aim of this drill for me is to make it feel so familiar that when I need to it genuinely feels easier and I only think about what I'm doing so if I do that enough and I've now made myself do it a lot my drop knes have got a lot better previously if if I was on a hard clown I was like oh the best Sol is supposed to be a drop knee but actually I'm just so much better at just campusing stuff I'll just do that yeah it's not I do the climb but I'm not learning how to actually get better at climbing step number one climb it slowly start thinking about what you're actually doing step number two start asking yourself some questions about how the climent would feel if you limited certain areas of strength let's do another quick one you're allowed to use your biceps and your should as much as you want I think we should aim to have as little weight in the hands as possible I'm going to pretend that the hand holds are really really hot as I put more and more weight into them they get hotter and hotter that's not so bad they're not too hot if I start doing that ow ow sh it burns pretty good acting huh I'm probably going to be looking for like as many No Hands positions as I can find oh okay I'm on them very oh okay there I'm not on them no working pretty hard with my legs but down man and oh burning my hands the the only real wrong way to do this exercise if you it was if you were absolutely yarding on every hand hold and going like wow how good am I I'm barely using any strength at all if you're like climbing this and noticing oh damn I'm pulling really hard with my hands that that's the point of the exercise you're doing it okay okay that's better yeah this nothing good man and it kind just means like you're you're basically just doing and learning how to do the moves of a techie V5 up this corner yeah but you're learning how to do it in your warm up on oh that's hot okay nice man but for me this is like a pretty deep topic of like how do you move well when you're climbing it it's complicated I would love it if you could just learn how to climb well by reading a book about techniques and going like oh cool there are nine techniques I'll learn all of them and I'll just apply them but climbing is more complicated than that while you're warming up on easy climbs be aware of how you're using strength and just keep asking yourself questions mindfully experimenting with how you move and how you use strength I think is the best way of learning stuff uh I remember we were all taught like oh when you drop knee uh twist so you get your hip closer to the wall straighten your arm and then you can reach for the next hold this is efficient climbing technique so I learned that and then I watched a video of myself climbing years later and there was one moment where I was like oh I Dro need like the wrong way and didn't notice anything was wrong cuz I just I I completed the steps and the move worked now this is why I like teaching people how to drop knee without ever explaining what a drop knee is and just going like oh keep your arms relaxed see what happens and they naturally learn that that's the best solution and they learn how it works properly I think we should do the same with every technique okay so instead of me just saying here's how a tow Hut Works copy me off you go the better recommendation for how to learn technique would be on an easy climb try and do that technique a million times and keep thinking all the way through of like oh how does it feel what if I change this does that feel better does it feel worse then you will learn everything for yourself and you don't need me to coach you now we're going to do what I'd call like direct experiments so I'll do the first one do all the tow hooks oh gosh I've done this a lot I used to do this all in all my warm-ups actually I think I I would describe myself as like this sounds like big talk but I think I'm pretty world class at tow hooks in an indoor gym yeah I'm very good at toes because I've made I like toe hooks make myself do them like a lot you find them a lot well yeah that's that's what I find interesting is the more you practice them the better you get at spotting opportunities to do them but I'm going to just say simple rule um hand stay on mint any color for the feet a right tow hook to move the right hand a left tow hook to move the left hand so okay I want to move my right hand first and then I'm going to tow hook this white hoay lovely okay now I want to move my left hand nice I think I'm going to up this one now yeah o maybe this maybe this oh no not that this one M crack on we practiced um finding loads and loads of tow hooks while I'm warming up the results been really interesting cuz it means on harder climbs if I'm lucky when I suddenly spot I'm like oh the roers didn't intend this but because that volume's there there's like a massive tow hook which makes the climb like more grades easier so hooray for me that's not usually the case usually the root are smarter than that often what I'd find though is on the hardest move of this like v9 I'm trying there's kind of a rubbishy tow hook here which they definitely didn't intend but I'm good at tow hooks and it does a little bit and actually it makes the hardest move like half a grade easier so I can do it now cuz I found this tow hook and I've tried to do the same with like all of the techniques I can think of so that I'm just better at spotting all these different opportunities oh you know um there was a store video where they were practicing jumping through holes didn't see that one but oh man it was a good one and they they talk in the video about basically they they spend so long doing it in this video that by the end of the video they're like it's like I've got whole eyes that can just see all these opportunities to jump through holes imagine if you did that with every climbing technique so like I practiced tow hooks a lot and now I've got tow hook eyes and I can see all the options for tow hooks Adam Andra has like the eyes of a fly where he can see every technique available at every moment I'm going to pick a technique and I'm I'm just going to explore it as much as possible over the course of doing my jug ladder you'll get warmed up and you will expand your mind uh we just did find all the tow hooks now we're going to do find all the heel hooks expand your mind is this episode slowly becoming more and more unhinged kind of yeah I I like it too nice uh I think you needed to do a left heel hook to move that left hand oh did I move it yeah okay and oh interesting one go on what now great Sam this is quite fun oh that's a weird one no hands ah where do you need to put your left foot for it to be a no hands uh like more than try that see if that's the difference look at that well done buddy like the jelly off well see if you can answer the question Sam so you're being the students who are watching this video yes um what do you think if you could choose any technique to practice in your warmup what do you think you personally personally should choose to practice the ones on weakest at Bing yeah obviously yeah yeah exactly so yeah you can if you want to spend your practicing a technique you're already good at you'll learn a lot more if you pick a technique you're not good at and make yourself learn that though so like I I actually don't practice tow hooks that much anymore cuz I I feel like I've maxed out the scale on how much to I can do I'm doing a lot of like knee bar practice more drop knees so I think I can be a little bit better at those but my practice time is warming up on the E borders and then at the end of it you'll feel a lot smarter and I've already gone through all the reasons why I think people should do this next thing I'd recommend for the Sams among you so people who are stronger than they need to be to climb harder which again I think is most of you um a lot of a lot a lot of you something that I think a lot of climbers will benefit from is repeating mid-grade climbs with a focus on doing them better and for this I think I have a pretty good analogy um so Sam you ever you ever play any music I play piano ages ago okay yeah we're pretty much the same and I think most people will be the same as this if you're not the same as us and you have never ever picked up an instrument don't worry I think this analogy will still work for you but yeah okay I also played guitar a bit when I was younger I played I played piano a l bit when I was a kid so I'm guessing you're the same as most people if Sam you wanted to learn how to play a song really really well yeah what you wouldn't do is get the cord sheet in front of you mess your way through it once and then go yeah cool I got to the end of the song nothing moral Le here and then leave it no you would I think I can see where this is going I think you can right uh so you would probably practice well I think you'd make real sure that you're playing the right notes to begin with then you I'm going to do this a lot for this analogy so you you prac prce until you're certain you're playing the right notes so maybe we're going to check that we're doing the right sequence you'd probably play the song nice and slowly so you can focus on making the notes sound really clean and precise so we're going to practice making our placements really really precise and intentional and then you'd probably practice playing it over and over and over again until you got to the point where you're like I don't even need to think about what the notes are anymore or where the song's going I can just play it with full confidence and that's what makes it sound really really good I don't know what kind of song I'm playing here obviously we're now going to do this on the climbing wall um first we're going to just try and get through the song which we're going to look at this orange V3 okay uh I'm going to have a quick test run of it actually I think you should go first oh yeah I think there's going to be maybe some techniques that we were practicing in the previous driller going to come up straight away let's find out all right let's do it oh oh look at that oh lovely the toe hook straight away what are you going do now now I'm a bit stuck yeah nice very nice out so good man beautiful heel Hooks and tow hooks Gore pry well done good song okay it is man so that is also a tip uh if you're going to play the song a million times pick a good song um cuz sometimes I've done this onong I'm like oh actually before we started I looked around and I was like I tried one I was like well this is the right level but this song is really sharp and I I don't want to play that over and over again it hurts my little skin I'll do it as well let's just check some other options just in case there's any hidden answers that we didn't find um so okay we tow hooked that I just want to see what it feels like to heal hook it I I think I can see why it doesn't look it's going to feel good oh man looks pretty awkward I'm pulling really hard on it to get the same effect as that gentle uh tow hook yeah actually doesn't feel you actually made it look really good it feels okay to me a man this is why I think it's good to not just trust what I'm saying like check for your but I think overall that tow hook yeah it feel feels the best well okay you did the heel hook I'm just wondering what happens if we do that that looks good and then you o okay I feel like I'm pulling on my right arm a lot doing yeah you oh no you're going to have to cuz that's the compromise of not using that left heel hook yeah I the only thing about the heel hook was I was stuck yeah like when I used it this feels good to use and here but then it's hard to get out of it right yeah you can do the next move maybe you can come back down with the left hand now oh oh here either there or into the closer one try that one that feels okay it could be that and now step up again and then I went for the tow hook drop knee tow hook drop knee beautiful and then you went Square on I did a drop knee and we could also have done oh no that puts loads into the left hand yeah Square on or I think the drop knee feels nice try the drop knee that I did rather than Square on a and just double check for me I tried the heel hook and I thought it felt like it put a lot of strength Demand on the left hand oh man you did it quite a lot better than I did actually how does it feel to you it still feels like I'm putting a lot of weight my okay let's stick with the drop knee then I love this drop KNE man me too yeah and then for the Finish try low tow hook rather than foot switch just like that yeah and the other option was switching feet so either are good similar to me yeah pretty similar we're going to even though it might not be the easiest we're going to stick with heel goes there up up back down to this yeah move the feet and then into there yeah and then we're both set for the final bit which is left hand comes up drop knee finish low tow hook for the Finish yeah I reckon just so we can practice more tow hooks Okay so we've now readed on exactly what notes we're going to play when we're doing this song now let's just slow it right down and get really intentional with playing the notes really cleanly so you've probably seen me doing this in a different uh video uh we're pretty much just doing the one touch only drill where the aim is there is a specific place you want to grab every hold hit it perfectly every time nice one uh I wanted to go a little bit further there that's what I want and Big Time didn't want to dab the wall yeah really nice Happ super nice huh so many ranges of techniques in there it's great I really like this this climb yeah from the point you're at now I think you should go for as many more laps as you need going really slowly but you let me know when you're like I play it slowly but I hit all those notes perfectly that time yeah yeah so basically I want to get to the point of rehearsal where I'm ready for performance exactly exactly glad you like the analogy I like it I like it a lot it works well that's why I use it yeah there you go wa way hey that was beautiful happy with that yeah man it was really really and you're actually you're climbing it at a really good Pace now as well yeah yeah yeah so but I think I want to do a couple more laps we can always just stick the tripod on we'll take our time yeah good idea but the AIM now is to get to the point where you're like I would feel confident performing this piece in front of a lot of people okay so I I'm going to make myself lap it until I'm like it's actually hard not to play it perfectly yeah yeah um so a few more goes I'll go as well muscle memory but yeah I'm now wanting to like I want to get to the point where I'm like I I don't even have to think about the sequence anymore I just know where I'm going I don't really need to concentrate that hard on getting the placements right cuz it feels like muscle memory now so okay let's give it a go [Music] I I joked saying oh don't many times we can probably do it with our eyes closed now give it a go obviously I'll stand in front of it and then just like keep my eyes close shut let's see how it goes yeah okay yeah I'm going to be checking oh God yeah nice yeah put it y y yep yep not yeah nice man a bit to the left to the left oh to the left left left yeah yeah there it is thank you sure yep yep God man you show that as well it actually was n that bad and you made that look okay it was okay yeah really I don't know man you try it it's thing I say by the way folks if anyone wants to do like blind climbing like we're doing now I think don't do it with a blindfold on I think just Just Close Your Eyes cuz then you can open them if you want to that makes I've try I used to do some like blindfolded climbing for fun when I was younger and then yeah it's not a good idea no cuz like you fall off you got to the ground is yeah exactly so yeah eyes closed and then you just self discipline yeah did did you close them as soon as I closed them before I grabbed anything okay oh yeah his eyes are closed nice you found it I'm doing my best not to tell you if you're on it or anything yeah mhm just constantly do the sequ you know yeah man oh God that's scary is yeah that's it yeah so good come on this is fun you it perfect is that it yeah that's it okay yeah bit more yeah finish it Goan yeah man man that is really fun but really scary yeahoo oh I'm pleased with that yeah that's what you should be man that's great that does show doesn't it lots of practice I think we have mastered this song yeah I there's many people who can play this V3 better than we play it no way okay nice what's this video now if you spend countless hours making yourself climb really precisely really smoothly having memorized the sequence it becomes more instinctive to do that all the time um so in terms of movement I think doing this regularly makes you a better climax I also think this does wonders for your confidence because okay um if all I ever did was warm up climbing things like a gorilla and then brainlessly smashing mid-grade climbs once and never trying them again and then getting on hard climbs and like fighting my way up them when exactly do I get to see myself climbing well never my only experience of climbing is like brutal awkward clunky fighting if I spend a lot of time doing this as we're doing now and then with that final test like wow I can do it with my eyes closed and it still feels good you get to repeatedly see yourself climbing well and climbing smoothly and that adds like so much confidence and again again you can get that in your warm-up pick three mid-grade Boulders experiment with different methods then practice doing them really precisely and then give them like five laps each just to the point where you're like okay I'm I'm I'm climbing that really really nicely now then move on to the next one if you do that every warmup you get pretty seriously good at climb what do you make of all that Sam man it was really fun um it was fun I had a great time yeah I've learned the importance of repetition uh the analogy of music to climbing I'm glad he likes it which we went hard on but I think it does try it's pretentious but it makes sense so and the importance of warm up Al I feel really confident right now which is so nice to feel after a session and Matt I think you smashed it today your explanations were no no no your explanations were really really good they were long so I don't know how you going to edit this into a I think I'll be fine considering booking a lesson with this guy honestly I'm very biased very biased of course he is he's really really good so SL me enough um well I hope you all enjoyed it as well uh like I said I think the stuff we're doing in this video is really applicable to a lot clim like way more than you might suspect um so please practice the things I showed you in this video uh if you got questions about it or if you got feedback about what you thought leave it in the comments um and aside from that please do all the other healthy YouTube things uh subscribe if you haven't subscribed already what you doing uh you got to subscribe that's how we carry on making videos uh so subscribe to the channel uh leave some likes leave some comments uh it's good for the algorithm helps us out loads please thank you very much um if you want some training plans from myself and from Neil gram for getting stronger and better at clim this is better how about this oh yeah so for expanding your mind click the join button and you can find out all about that becoming a catalyst online Squad member aside from that folks don't forget to click the link in the description uh if you use the code Catalyst you get a 10% discount on any of the tind deck equipment which is pretty cool pretty cool very cool stuff uh that's everything right yeah cool bye see you later folks see you next time

Channel: Catalyst Climbing

Views: 86,176

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Id: AKn8lcOKHd8

Length: 32min 47sec (1967 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2024