So everyone wants to hear about those’s little secrets or tips that can help improve your climbing.
So not all of these are secret, some are just obvious advice, but this can be often overlooked. When your focusing on sending you can sometimes forget some of the basics.
1: Carb up!
There is nothing worse than climbing and feeling like the tank is empty, It can cause you to feel a huge loss of energy.
As we all know carbohydrates are your main source of energy,
A lot of people neglect this and tend to adopt low carb diets usually to try and cut weight. what people don’t seem to realize is you’re not going to be able to climb to your fullest while hungry or carb deprived.
A quick carb snack, about 30 mins – 90 mins before your climb is perfect to help you climb at peak performance.
Recommended snacks: My favorite climbing fuel is sweet potatoes or oats, sweet potato mashed up is an amazing meal or snack that is easy to make and store.
For some cool outdoor recipes, I recommend Dirty Gourmet.
2: Record Your Failures
Again, pretty basic, but I don’t see climbers doing this enough. Most people just record successful top outs for Instagram or other social media.
While there is nothing wrong with this and its great to keep track of your achievements! but you’re not going to learn much from watching your successful climbs, you need to find out where you went wrong, what you are doing wrong, and how you can do it better next time.
Recording your climbing is a great way to observe yourself and pick out your weak points to improve on.
With everyone owning smartphones there is no excuse for not giving this a try and seeing how much you improve!
3: Antihydral (Be Careful)
So this one is going to only apply to those of you with what I call swamp hands! Pretty all of my friends seem to have bone dry hands 90% of the time when climbing, I, however, don’t.
When I was climbing the easier early grades with large jugs and huge hold’s this wasn’t an issue, but the better I got the more and more I found my hand’s feeling like they were holding back my climbing.
Sometimes on climbs, I would have to chalk 3-4 times especially if it was a bold one. Liquid chalk helped but it didn’t seem enough to clog the showerheads on my hands.
After reading about Antihydral on rock and ice I decided to give it a try! I couldn’t believe the difference it made.
Antihydral basically blocks your hand’s pores to stop you sweating as much. Now as mentioned this is perfect if you have swamp hands, but if your hands are already pretty dry I do not recommend you use Antihydral.
Without a proper skincare regime, it’s very easy to damage your hands. Due to the Antihydral, you will develop calluses extremely quickly and they will need to be maintained in order to ensure no you don’t get any huge flappers or damage your skin.
4: Get a good night’s rest
People always forget the importance of rest for repair and recovery. You will never climb your best running on less than 8 hours sleep.
If you are trying to climb at your limit you are going to need to make sure you take advantage of any tip available to you and this is a biggie.
Sleep is incredibly important not just the night before but also on the days leading up you climbing.
It’s common knowledge that your muscles repair and grow while you are sleeping, this is why its crucial to get enough sleep to allow your muscles to fix themselves and develop. This not only helps your climbing ability but it will also reduce the chance of injury.
This one might sound strange but memory is also pretty important when it comes to climbing, this can be shown by Adam Ondras weird visualization techniques.
Adam memorizes the route and then sits down and does each climbing move in his head, so the next time he climbs it the route feels familiar and therefore easier.
Another example of this is climbing techniques.
These are efficient and good practices that you drill into yourself week after week to ensure your climbing is fluid and smooth.
So where does sleep come in? Well, sleep is where your brain stores and processes the memories of the day. If you want to ensure you retrain as much technique as possible or memories of a route, it’s important to get enough good quality sleep.
Now, lack of sleep can cause lack of reactions and sometimes in climbing you need to react and fast.
This is usually when you slip off a hold. Split-second decisions to bail or stay will sometimes need to be made to avoid injury.
Some days you might feel extra tired but don’t worry about taking a few extra hours if you feel you need them. This is your body telling you that it needs more time to repair it’s not just you being lazy.
5: The Sharma Ondra Screams
So this one is not really a tip for the gym unless you want to get some weird looks…
So Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra are often called the best sport climbers in the world and they have one thing in common.
They both Scream their hearts out when trying hard. Both interestingly enough have different reasons.
Chris attributes his scream to trying to raise his levels of aggression in his moves, to ensure he is going at them with his full power and strength, along with this he has also mentioned it helps him shut out the doubts in his head.
Ondra, on the other hand, said he screams to ensure he is breathing out on certain moves, Ondra has some of the best breathing control I have ever seen so it was interesting to find out his screams were tailored into that.
It won’t really matter if you use psyche screams for breathing or just to shut out those negative thoughts and bring out your inner power, It’s clear it can be used as another tool in your to ensure you give it your all and climb harder.
6: Investing In A Good Fan
As a climber, you already know the weather is never on your side. If anything it’s out to get you.
But you don’t always have to rely on nature to get that nice upwards draft going on. Thanks to tech improving over the past decade its no longer unrealistic to take a portable fan with you to the rockface.
If you are looking for recommendations I know Daniel Woods is always seen sporting his portable Makita fan, it can be found on Amazon here.
7: Break Out The Crocs
Honestly, this is one of the best bits of advice on the list. It’s super annoying swapping out your climbing shoes, then back to your approach shoes and then back again after you have finished belaying.
A cheap pair of Crocs are great to slip on and off while at the crag, they are super comfy to belay in too.
You can easily attach them to the outer of your back or stuff them down the side of it so it’s not too hard to store.
This tip honestly was such a good quality of life tip.
But beware you might lose style points, or gain them depending on your friends.