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Post by aikibujin on Mar 29, 2017 14:07:04 GMT -7
It's crazy to me that climbing is such a skill dependent sport, yet out of all the sub-forums on "Training Discussion", "Skill development" has the least number of threads (well, except "Rest", but who needs rest anyway...).
Well, let's change that. I know it's difficult to discuss skill and technique because technique is learned by doing, not talking. But there's still some benefit from having a discussion. So here's a question I've given a lot of thought to, what does "good technique" mean in climbing?
We hear people talk about it all the time, "girls usually have better technique than guys", or "he has really good technique, he made that route look effortless". But the thing is, there is no defined way to do most techniques in climbing. In comparison, a lot of skill-heavy sports like martial arts have a predefined way to perform a move. For example, in a particular style of martial arts, to throw a punch you start with your fist at hip level, palm up, arm cocked tight next to your body with elbow pointing straight behind you. You initiate the punch by turning of your hip (core), unwind your arm, fist traveling forward in a straight line, keeping elbow pointed downward while rotating your fist, when your arm come to the extended position (with a slight bend in your elbow), the rotation of your fist should come to a stop at the exact same point. If you throw your punch this way, you have "good technique", if you're off on any of the points (for example your elbow turn out to the side), then you have "bad technique". I'm sure there are also prescribed ways to perform something in gymnastics, dancing, even golf (the proper way to swing a club). But all those other sports have governing rules, for example, a golfer can't putt by using the club like a pool stick (it's actually a lot easier that way!), a martial artist can't go into a karate competition using boxing techniques (MMA is different), a gymnast can't break out parkour moves on their floor exercise. There is a singular way to do something in these sports, and everyone has to conform to that standard.
The unique thing about climbing is that there is no rule in climbing, other than you go from the bottom of a route to the top, hopefully without dangling on the rope. There are many different ways to go from bottom to the top, no two climbers will climb the same way. So back to what I've been pondering, how do we compare two climbers, and say one has better technique than the other?
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Post by tetrault on Mar 29, 2017 17:50:45 GMT -7
I wonder the same thing. The only few things I am able to pick out and explain are:
Movement initiation with the lower body (efficient) vs doing a pull-up then placing next foot (wasteful). Moving CoG up only as much as needed to reach next hold with extended arm (somewhat easy to pick out) Moving CoG away from wall only as much as needed for feet to stick (hard to pick out) Accurate placement of hands and feet with minimal adjustment (no "heel hopping" or bounce testing)
With the disclaimer that I am not actually sure that these are all necessarily hard "rules" for "good" technique.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 29, 2017 19:32:01 GMT -7
Everything you say is good guideline for efficient movement, but I don't think we can expect that for every move. However, I think you touch upon a very important factor: efficiency. As climbers, we don't need to conform to any standardized rules or technique, but we do strive to move as efficiently as possible from the bottom to the top. So maybe "having good technique" in climbing can be defined as "moving from point A to point B as efficiently as possible"?
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Post by tedwelser on Mar 29, 2017 21:42:43 GMT -7
Everything you say is good guideline for efficient movement, but I don't think we can expect that for every move. However, I think you touch upon a very important factor: efficiency. As climbers, we don't need to conform to any standardized rules or technique, but we do strive to move as efficiently as possible from the bottom to the top. So maybe "having good technique" in climbing can be defined as "moving from point A to point B as efficiently as possible"? I think this notion of efficiency is a good first fundamental concept for discussing the nature of technique, but there are a couple other dimensions that occur to me in addition to efficiency, namely, responsiveness, precision of articulation, and strategic awareness. Responsiveness: is the capacity to both read and respond creatively to the constraints and potentials of the route with movement patterns that take best advantage of the helpful features and best avoid the expensive or difficult aspects. While efficiency emphasizes spending as little effort as possible, responsiveness emphasizes directing your efforts towards the things that bring the most advantage. Maximal effort at the right point might be best, and another point, spending as little effort as possible is best. Precision of articulation: here I mean a type of specificity of positioning and movement that takes advantage of small details of the terrain in order to gain strength or efficiency advantages. These add up when a simpler movement also will accomplish the task, but the more precisely articulated movement leads to better efficiency or more power, or greater security. This includes things like noticing that stacking two fingers behind a small crystal on an edge makes the edge feel better, or toe hooking on the third knob from the right on the rail allows you to extent a bit further, and in so doing, you can contain the subsequent swing with less effort. This is one of the major things I love about climbing at the Red and bouldering at Hueco. The rock has the right level of detail to reward folks who pay attention to fine details and leverage that info to make hard things feel easier. Strategic awareness: here I mean a sort of meta level management process that starts from a very critical perspective on your own abilities and uses that to deploy effort and movement in ways that maximize your current climbing potential. For instance, in might be most efficient to climb slowly through an overhanging section with ok holds, but for a person caught before their PE cycle, they might better max their potential by pulling a couple quick and hard moves to quickly arrive at a marginally better rest. One of the hallmarks of good technique is making things look easy. Another is climbing in a manner that when one finally falls off, there were no visual cues beforehand. The climber just kept making the best movements and making them look easy and then suddenly, and inexplicably, they seemed to let go. In reality they were cranking up their strategic awareness and management efforts and just barely keeping things together, yet their precision and calm just seemed to continue without any limit. Anyways, hope that helps the conversation. Thanks for posting this thread!
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Post by daustin on Mar 29, 2017 22:21:29 GMT -7
Great post, Ted. Really well articulated and spot on.
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Post by tetrault on Mar 30, 2017 3:05:43 GMT -7
So, to play devil's (or efficiency's) advocate:
Responsiveness = Efficiency of body movement, taking route specifics/constraints into account
Precision of Articulation = Efficiency of hand and foot placements, taking route specifics into account
Strategic Awareness = Efficiency of route pacing
Making Things Look Easy = Maintaining efficiency until failure? Unless you are silly strong, and making static, one-arm pull-ups all the way up a route look easy...
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Post by srossabi42 on Mar 30, 2017 5:20:06 GMT -7
i think calling all these some form of efficiency is fair but it does downplay the skill involved in selecting body position, hold engagement, or movement pattern. being aware of possible body movements, ways of holding a grip, and order in which features are engaged and selecting the best (most efficient or most likely to result in completing a limit move), especially on the onsight, is an indicator of the technical ability of the climber
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 30, 2017 8:11:47 GMT -7
For instance, in might be most efficient to climb slowly through an overhanging section with ok holds, but for a person caught before their PE cycle, they might better max their potential by pulling a couple quick and hard moves to quickly arrive at a marginally better rest. One of the hallmarks of good technique is making things look easy. Wow! You have some great insights, and it’s going to take a while for me to digest everything in your post. But let me home in on the quoted text real quick because it connects really well with a scenario I’ve been playing in my mind: say you have two climbers of equal height and reach. Climber A is naturally burly and strong; climber B is naturally skinny and flexible. Climber A gets up an overhanging route by moving dynamically and making big moves between good holds. Deadpoints, pogos, even full-on dynos. Climber B doesn’t have the power to make the same big moves, so B climbs very statically and utilizes smaller intermediate holds. Twist locks, drop knees, backsteps and flags. When we observe these two climbers, I bet most will say climber B has better technique. But I think to simply say climber B has better technique than climber A, we are not considering the relative strengths and weaknesses of the individual. Climber A is heavier and less flexible than climber B, so for A to use the smaller intermediates and squeeze into twisted body positions, they’re actually wasting a lot of energy. Efficiency is defined as "achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense" (I pulled this straight out of Google). So by utilizing their strength and climbing dynamically, climber A is in fact climbing efficiently since they are achieving the same result (sending) while minimizing wasted energy. Same goes for climber B. By utilizing their strength (flexibility) and avoiding their weakness (big powerful moves), they are also maximizing their efficiency. Also, there is a lot of technique involved in climbing dynamically. Movement initiation, controlling CoG, hand-eye coordination, timing, etc. What appears to be thuggy big throws actually require a lot of technique to execute well. We have a tendency to categorize static climber as “technical”, and dynamic climber as “powerful”, but to me, both climber A and climber B has good technique, they’re just utilizing different technique based on their strength and weakness.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 30, 2017 9:36:10 GMT -7
i think calling all these some form of efficiency is fair but it does downplay the skill involved in selecting body position, hold engagement, or movement pattern. being aware of possible body movements, ways of holding a grip, and order in which features are engaged and selecting the best (most efficient or most likely to result in completing a limit move), especially on the onsight, is an indicator of the technical ability of the climber Again, I think there’s lots of good stuff for discussion. I do agree with tetrault that a lot of those can be summarized as efficiency. Not to downplay the skill involved in those different aspect at all, but maybe “good technique” in climbing can be expressed as efficiency at the macro level, and then precision, strategy, etc. are expression of efficiency at the more micro level. In other words, when someone asks the question, “how do I improve my technique?” The answer could be, “climb more efficiently”. But how do I climb more efficiently? We can then break it down into precision, strategy, movement, etc. You also bring up a very good way to look at “good technique”: onsight vs. redpoint. When we try to onsight a route, we often don’t have the luxury to figure out the best way to use a hold, best body position, refining the sequence, etc. So generally speaking, we are not climbing in the most efficient way when we’re onsighting. But when we are redpointing, we have usually refined our beta to be as efficient as possible. So if we look at a climber making an onsight attempt on a route, and then making a well-rehearsed redpoint attempt on the same route, it’s very likely that same climber will be using better technique on their redpoint attempt.
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Post by daustin on Mar 30, 2017 10:38:12 GMT -7
I think part of the nuance that just calling it efficiency lacks, and that Ted hit on, is that you can't reduce good technique to doing each individual move as efficiently as possible. Sometimes in order to stick Move #2, a low percentage dyno, you need to do Move #1 in a relatively inefficient way, solely because it sets you up better for #2. If you were trying to do #1 as efficiently as possible, it would put you in a position that makes doing #2 even lower percentage. Climbing success (esp. on routes) largely comes down to your ability to link sequences more than your ability to perform individual moves, so you have to be able to figure out when inefficiency in an individual move can beget efficiency across a sequence. Yes, this probably still does boil down to efficiency, but I think it's valuable to acknowledge the nuance.
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Post by tedwelser on Mar 30, 2017 19:23:48 GMT -7
So, to play devil's (or efficiency's) advocate: Responsiveness = Efficiency of body movement, taking route specifics/constraints into account Precision of Articulation = Efficiency of hand and foot placements, taking route specifics into account Strategic Awareness = Efficiency of route pacing Making Things Look Easy = Maintaining efficiency until failure? Unless you are silly strong, and making static, one-arm pull-ups all the way up a route look easy... Hey tetrault- I thank you for your role as devil's advocate. You inspired a great deal of reflection and thought this morning, but sadly my day has been so busy that I could not reply until now. I think that all of the attributes that I named result in types of efficiency, and in a sense are reducible to that. However, they are connected not by an "=" of equivalence but by an arrow of assignment "->". In other words, responsiveness is the cause of a type of efficiency, as are precision of articulation, strategic awareness, and also simple muscular efficiency. However, I think one of the major 'deliverables' of this conversation is increasing our collective awareness of the things that people do in order to achieve good technique and therefore efficiency. I think it is helpful for me when I talk with others about movement to point out dimensions of precision of articulation because doing so helps them be more efficient in a hard section, and learning those specifics can be the difference between sending and not. So, it is not so helpful to say " be more efficient" but it is helpful to say, push on that jib with your left while toe hooking that blob with your right to keep tension while extending into the roof. I also think, however, that good technique is not reducible to efficiency any more than good music is reducible to efficient performance. Good technique, to me, is an illustration of the beauty and creativity in the problem solving challenge of climbing over challenging terrain. Good technique expresses a level of self mastery and understanding through the process of movement and the selection of solutions, and in this sense, good technique is totally different from efficiency of movement because it refers to the selection of movement options that are inherently implicit and far from automatic. I recently climbed a route that a strong but less experienced climber also attempted. We selected vastly different combinations of holds and movements. My route was, in many ways, much easier than the one he selected, from, ostensibly the same set of information. At many points, I wondered, why would you want to do that section in that way? On the other side of the coin, when I saw photos of myself on the route I saw several instances where my hips were too far from the rock, and were, in my minds eye, not nearly as efficient as I had thought. This is a product of loss of flexibility, and pointed to a way that I really need to work to be able to find good technical solutions using the movements that I know how to execute. So anyways, I think if we consider the causes of efficiency we need a more accurate and descriptive vocabulary to help ourselves and others improve their technique.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 30, 2017 21:50:48 GMT -7
One of the hallmarks of good technique is making things look easy. Another is climbing in a manner that when one finally falls off, there were no visual cues beforehand. The climber just kept making the best movements and making them look easy and then suddenly, and inexplicably, they seemed to let go. In reality they were cranking up their strategic awareness and management efforts and just barely keeping things together, yet their precision and calm just seemed to continue without any limit. I think it's more complicated than that though. If someone falls off suddenly, seemly to just let go, is that really an expression of good technique, or are they just not trying hard enough? Also, why they fell is a consideration too. Are they falling off a really hard move they simply can't do, or are they falling from the pump? For the former, you see it a lot in bouldering. A climber will climb with perfect precision and great movement, and then they just suddenly fall off a really hard move. But for a long route with consistent difficulty (not a bunch of easy climbing leading to a cruxy move), even the best climbers in the world can't keep their technique together when they're pumped. I've watched videos of Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, Alex Magos, and more, and I've watched Mark climb in real life. They may be ale to keep it together better than the rest of us, but all of them (sorry Mark!) show signs of stress (they're pulling harder, their movement becomes less precise, Adam Ondra loves to chickenwing) when they're about to fall off.
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Post by korduroy on Mar 31, 2017 7:48:16 GMT -7
I see good technique as masterful use of the lower half of the body. Anyone can pull their way up climbs, but those who use their lower half perfectly, greatly reduce the use with style. Sure, this may seem like efficiency, but it may not necessarily be the most efficient way for someone to do a climb (ie. Sharma vs Graham on Biographie). I would say that of the climbers you previously mentioned (Sharma, Megos, and Ondra), none of them have technique like Dave Graham. Actually I think Sharma has really bad technique, considering his elite level capabilities. Dave Graham has always been my inspiration for “good technique.” The guy could barely do a pullup, but knew exactly where his body fit into the “relative box between holds” and exploited that. He has said that any climb that require a dyno, he could find an alternate sequence through with clever foot movements and body positioning. If he couldn’t, then bravo, you have stumped him. I would say look at videos of Graham or Jain Kim for examples of GOOD technique. To the original post, I think the reason women are often seen as having “good technique” is their understanding of and ability of using their lower half in climbing. Patience and grace, with a perfect balance of the spatial relationship between their body and the holds. For 30 minutes of Dave Graham’s rambling on technique and climbing, enjoy this: vimeo.com/6048642
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 31, 2017 9:25:05 GMT -7
I think part of the nuance that just calling it efficiency lacks, and that Ted hit on, is that you can't reduce good technique to doing each individual move as efficiently as possible. Sometimes in order to stick Move #2, a low percentage dyno, you need to do Move #1 in a relatively inefficient way, solely because it sets you up better for #2. If you were trying to do #1 as efficiently as possible, it would put you in a position that makes doing #2 even lower percentage. Climbing success (esp. on routes) largely comes down to your ability to link sequences more than your ability to perform individual moves, so you have to be able to figure out when inefficiency in an individual move can beget efficiency across a sequence. Yes, this probably still does boil down to efficiency, but I think it's valuable to acknowledge the nuance. That's a very good point, to come up with the right sequence for a climb, you can't simply just link the most efficient individual moves together. So maybe we don't look at the efficiency at the micro level (individual moves) but at the macro level (a whole sequence or the entire route). Like you said, sometimes you may need to do a strenuous move to create a better set up for the next move. But when you add the whole sequence or even the whole route together, I'm betting that the best technique will yield the most efficiency overall. I wish there is an accurate way to measure a climber's effort level or energy output, my theory is that will be a way to make "good technique" into a measurable quantity. Once we breakdown the route into individual moves, then we can go into the nuances, like body position, hold utilization, movement selection, some may or may not have anything to do with efficiency. But it's equally difficult to talk about all these nuances at the macro (route) level.
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Post by aikibujin on Mar 31, 2017 23:21:52 GMT -7
I would say that of the climbers you previously mentioned (Sharma, Megos, and Ondra), none of them have technique like Dave Graham. Actually I think Sharma has really bad technique, considering his elite level capabilities. I think it's extremely interesting that you think Sharma has bad technique. Someone also said the exact same thing on Mountain Project a while back, and I was like, "what?!" Here we have one of the very, very few climbers in the world who has been climbing consistently at the 5.15 level, and people think he has bad technique? Sure, he may be beastly strong, but so are tons of other climbers in the world. You can't be thinking that he's simply pulling his way up 5.15s, otherwise there should be many more climbers consistently climbing 5.15s. Anyone climbing at that level has a mastery of their body that few of us can ever hope to understand. When I read that on Mountain Project, that was when I started to really think about how we define good technique in rock climbing. Like I mentioned upthread, we tend to define climbers as either "technical" or "powerful". But anyone who has trained on a campus board knows that there's actually a lot of technique involved to campus well, and dynamic moves on real rock are infinitely more complex than simple movements on a campus board. Someone who has mastered "powerful" climbing actually has really good technique in dynamic movement, which is a lot more subtle and much difficult to observe compare to static movement. I think one of the key things I do not agree with most is that strength and technique are mutually exclusive. I think it actually requires very good technique to utilize your strength to the fullest, and as each of us have strength and weakness in different areas, our technique will be different. It's been said a lot in climbing: women has better technique than men; he/she has really good technique because he/she is so in control; static moves are more efficient than dynamic moves. While some of that may be true, I think it's just a very narrow view on what's good technique. To me, "good technique" is a very individualized quality, you cannot consider someone's technique without looking at their strength and weakness. Dave Graham has good technique for his strength (or the lack of) and his flexibility, but I don't think you can say Sharma, Megos, and Ondra don't have good technique because they don't climb like Graham. Why should any of them climb like Graham? They don't have the same body as Graham. To me, Sharma, Ondra, and Megos all have different styles of climbing, but they all have very good technique, honed and mastered to get the maximum return of their strength. In that David Graham video you posted, he mentioned something like he found a better sequence on Biographie/Realization a long time ago, but he couldn't use it because he didn't have the shoulder strength. So he had to keep using a worse sequence until his shoulder got strong enough to use the better sequence. (Or something like that, he was rambling a bit and my mind started to drift.) It's a very good example of how technique can evolve based on how the strength of the climber changes.
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