What I Wish I Knew When I Started Climbing | 10 Tips to Climb Harder

climbing is a sport where you don't stop learning I have been climbing for 10 years now and these are the 10 most important things I have learned in that time that I think will help you climb harder and what I wish I had known when I started climbing so the first thing we're going to talk about is technique it's really important when you're first starting climbing to focus on technique and deliberate practice so when you climb a bowl with your warm-up climb it and then think okay what could I have done better climbing this Boulder and then climbing again but try and climb it perfectly so I'm gonna do it on this blue I'll climb it once and then I'll try and think what I could do better like my whoa there were a few mistakes I made like I wasn't very precise with my feet so what I'll do is do it again but really focus on being very precise with my feet and I didn't feel like I got my hips over my my body enough my body over my hips enough to also do that so I'll do it again try and be a bit more precise a bit more fluid foreign still made some mistakes but focusing on deliberate practice when you make a mistake on even something easy is really good because when you then go to climb harder things you'll have that I'm sorry breath because when you go to climb harder things you'll be have that knowledge in your head of okay that wasn't right that wasn't right and it's very hard to bring these techniques into practice on your projects when you haven't mastered them on easier Boulders and I think if I had to practice that when I'd started climbing I'd be a lot better now and just try and climb everything perfectly even hard Boulders but if you do it once like finally yes I've done it I know I've tried again sometimes it's a good idea to try it again and try and climb it better some of the drills you can use to practice this is like really quiet feet so try and make climb like a ninja is what my coaches always used to tell me climb without making any noise so if I'm doing this I know I'm probably not climbing it very well like I've been too aggressive with my feet but I climb it like this there's still some noise but it is oh God I'm falling off it is better another good thing to practice on your warm-ups is trying to climb things without bending your arms because it means you're climbing efficiently if you're bending your arms if you're always like this you're gonna get really tired really quickly like I'm already tired now but if you climb straight arms just watches okay your arms may bend like a little bit wow but it is easier if you also want to steal things this is a useful tip because like if you're trying to steal the Mona Lisa's long-loss cousin Beatrice you want to be quiet right another good thing to practice is being really critical of your climbing so when you climb something think like how could I have done that better what was bad what was good don't be harsh to yourself don't be like that was that was just be Chris could be like okay this bit wasn't great so what can I do better there maybe I need to go like one and then immediately two and if you do that on every climb you'll you'll notice that your improve your Technique is improving so much more and also when you're actually projecting your your harder Boulders you'll be able to be like oh yeah you'll be able to notice things smaller things that you might not have noticed before that you're doing wrong which will then help you get up those climbs too possibly one of the most valuable things that I think you could take away from this video is to climb with people that are better than you the like people have been climbing for a long time they've done thousands of moves thousands of hours practice and they've built up this knowledge in their head of how how to move through climbs and these little these little details can make such a difference between not being able to do a boulder to get into the top so it could be as simple as like doing an inside flag a little drop knee here like dropping your hips an inch these little things can often be the make or break of an actual Boulder people that are better than you what might also push you to climb things that you might have thought are too hard for you so often it's easy to get psyched out by a grade or a climber like look at it and be like man that thing looks way too hard I'm never going to be able to do that I mean I still do that now and I've been climbing for 10 years but to climb with people that are betting you they'll be like go and try it like why not what's the worst thing that could happen and then you might notice that like ah something that you thought was impossible it's something you could actually do the biggest way to hinder your improvements as a climber is by getting injured so looking after your body is one of the most important things you can do to become a good climber so it's really important to find a warm-up routine that works for you everyone's different everybody's different so just find something that you feel comfortable with that gets you warm and ready to be ready to climb I often see lots of new climbers getting straight on their Project without actually warming up and this this can be a pretty good way of getting injured I know warming up is boring and I don't like it too but you'll find if you warm up properly you'll also be able to avoid injury and actually climb harder in the session as well [Music] this one's a bit of an extra tip so we'll call it tip 4.1 if you will good Dino recently I've been trying to work more on my nutrition so I've cut out sugar and I've been drinking ag1 for the last three months thank you 81 thanks for watching this video from these changes I've been feeling more energized than ever thanks to ad1's ingredients which include 75 vitamins minerals and Whole Food sourced ingredients which are super important for foundational nutrition I tend to drink 81 before breakfast and it's a really good healthy way to start the day and luckily for me because I have a really sweet tooth ag1 also helps reduce your cravings and seeing as I've quit sugar that has definitely come in handy never drunk its thing on hold inside before I wanted to see if you can do this V2 by doing a flip round I'm wearing trainers so oh actually it's much harder than I thought but genuinely from these changes I feel healthier than ever flip around oh okay that was close if you want to try ag1 out yourself then they're offering you five free travel packs and a three year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 if you use my link here or in the description thanks ad1 for watching this video allowing me to continue to make client videos because I freaking love it another thing I feel like is often overlooked is resting rest days are incredibly important they allow our body to recover they allow it to us recover mentally so we don't get bent out from climbing and we've all got other things going on in our lives like work family relationships everything else that takes our attention and it also allows us to have incredibly high quality sessions rather than lots of quantity and if you look at most of the best climbers in the world they all focus on having high quality sessions which helps them improve and get stronger trying things at or above your limit can be a bit demoralizing trying each individual move failing constantly but I think it's one of the most important things that you can do as a climber to improve it teaches you lots of like the smaller details of projecting and if you keep trying something eventually you will be able to do the moves and maybe even link it together and I think it's very good mentally that you can look at something like oh that's impossible it feels impossible and eventually get there it opens up your mind to ah there's loads of other climbs that are harder than this or just as hard as this that are also possible to me if I put that work in every climber who's been climbing for a while has had that experience including myself like my most recent project took like two or three seasons for me to do and when I first started I couldn't do any of the moves eventually after like a lot of hard work I did it and it was one of the most satisfying feelings of my life come on one thing I wish someone had told me when I first started climbing is that progress isn't linear when I was a kid and started climbing I wrote out every year what grade I wanted to climb so I was like I don't know 7A 7B and it all went up to like 90 plus and if that was true if progress wasn't linear I would currently be one of the best clowns in the world obviously I am not you're for sure I'm stuck come on so I think it's very important to remember that some years it might not feel like you've actually improved it may be on paper you haven't climbed a harder grade but that doesn't necessarily mean you haven't improved you might be climbing your the warm-ups you might be climbing might be harder or on your medium day it might be better than your best day last year or your worst day climbing this year could actually be a middle normal day for you climbing last year so even though it's sometimes hard to see the progress you're making you are definitely making progress even if it's not a new number or a new tick or something but on paper means you're improving sometimes you'll just climb things a bit faster than you would have lost it and that's fine it's just important to stick with it and appreciate the little wins like maybe if you're having a bad day climbing just think ah well I climbed this Boulder which was my warm-up probably the best I've ever climbed it and that is something that I've tried to incorporate into my own climbing I'm having a bad day I was like what is the win I can take away even sometimes when you're projecting something you're like oh I didn't I didn't send it but maybe maybe you climb to the Crux I know as efficiently or as fluidly as possible or maybe you've got like one hold higher that sort of thing those small wins are the things that will keep you psyched and also help you improve in the long run [Music] something that is good for General life is just to not care what other people think about you and I think that is equally important for climbing when you come into a new gym it can be quite intimidating lots of people are incredibly strong or you don't know what you're doing but I think the important thing to remember is no one cares how hard you climb I always used to struggle with this when I was younger I'd walk into a gym and see all the really strong people being like Oh my God I don't want to climb in front of them they're so much better than me but then the more I've climbed and The more I've in the climbing Community I realize that no one actually cares how hard you climb whether you're the best climber in the world or someone who's just starting out it just doesn't matter just go have fun the climbing Community is a friendly place and if someone's a knob to you and I was like oh you know judge you for how hard you climb probably don't want to be friends with them anyway so it doesn't really matter climbing grades are incredibly subjective and they are different for every person everyone has their own strengths and their own weaknesses you might be climbing with a friend who can do a certain move that you can't do then equally you might be able to do a move but they can't do so I think the important thing is to just not worry about the grades make sure you build up a big base of grades below and up to your maximum so then when you move on to the next grade you've got all this experience behind you and Confidence from doing lower grade climbs to then bring into higher grade climbs and this also if you do these in a variety of styles this also gives you like a massive base of skills on slabs overhangs slopers crimps dinos backwards dinos bat hangs double front flips it gives you all these skills that you can then bring into climbing harder things and you'll actually find if you do this you'll actually be able to send things at your max quicker because you've got it all locked in your head this is something I didn't do and I really regret it because now I I went like ah I've climbed my first 7B let's go straight to 7c I'll climb one of each and I kept doing that and then I realized huh I haven't got this experience behind me which would allow me to climb these grades quicker so now at the moment I'm going back through those grades and trying to climb more of them so that I have that experience when I get on rock or if I climb inside and the last thing I think one of the most important things to remember is to have fun I know it's simple I know it's like oh well obviously we climbed our fun but it's also I think one of the easiest things to forget is that we started to climb because it's fun so don't forget to you know still be a kid still play around have fun climb with your friends do weird weird ass moves you know jump just enjoy oh enjoy moving on the climbing wall and you know what the more fun you have oh the bet you get foreign

Channel: Josh Rundle

Views: 8,165

Keywords: climbing, climbing tips, coaching, coaching climbing, climbing coaching, what I wish I knew, bouldering, what I wish I knew when I started climbing, rock climbing, setting, pro climber, professional climber, climbing competition, indoor climbing, climbing gym, boulder, climbing training, how to improve your climbing, rock climbing coaching, how to be a better climber, parkour, expensive climb

Id: OF9yC0E3MMs

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023