Ladies and Gentlemen

One of the first things I noticed when I started climbing was the surprising amount of women taking part. It didn’t take long to notice how many of these women were climbing just as hard as the men, if not harder. Since then I’ve introduced all kinds of people, men and women, to the sport and it’s been really interesting witnessing the progression curve for all of them. Some people obviously improve quicker than others, some people have a head start (often due to some background in other sports), and everyone struggles to overcome various physical obstacles. To excel at climbing requires a very broad range of skills including, but not limited to, strength (in many of its various flavours), balance, flexibility, co-ordination, problem solving, ability to learn specific techniques, and a relentless devotion to improvement.

I’m not going to spend time discussing whether men have a natural advantage in some of these areas, partly because it’s a rabbit hole, but mostly because I don’t think it’s important. Male or female, we each face our own set of unique obstacles when learning to climb. We exploit our advantages and climb things in a way that best suits us, all the while improving on our shortcomings without necessarily paying any direct attention to them. If you’re strong but inflexible, you’ll find moves requiring flexibility difficult, and vice versa. You might not even be able to do certain moves at all, but attempting them will improve your abilities in the areas in which you’re lacking. It may be subtle and it may go unnoticed, but that improvement is always happening.

When you inevitably hit a point where a deficit stops being a mere hindrance and becomes a deal breaker it becomes necessary to focus on certain aspects more specifically. If you’ve managed to use your raw power to avoid learning to use good footwork and to position your body effectively, you’ll eventually have to climb things where the holds and angles aren’t good enough for you to use brute force to complete the route. Similarly, if you’ve relied too much on your technique to avoid training your strength, you’ll find moves that you are unable to do without a prerequisite amount of force. By the time you get to this point, all of the things you were already good at have continued to improve, but the things you weren’t so good at have improved too.

The good news is that, as far as I can tell, the rate of skill improvement decreases as your ability increases. The gulf between your advantages and disadvantages grows narrower over time as you practise any activity that involves interdependent skills. Your strengths plateau and your weaknesses catch up. Why is this important ? Because, since one strength will only get you so far on its own, most people seem to end up at roughly the same level given the same amount of practice. That broad range of required skills I mentioned above allows for a much more level playing field than you might expect. If you struggle with strength and agility at first, your creativity and imagination may have you out-climbing people much stronger than you sooner than you think.

The point here isn’t that you should spend all of your time worrying about how you’re doing compared to everyone else (if you manage to never do this then you know something I don’t), but that you shouldn’t be put off climbing because of things that you see as being detrimental to your improvement. Work hard on those issues, be patient, and just keep climbing. If you hit a slump, find the resolve within yourself to push through it; there are copious rewards for doing so. Something will eventually click and a new level of climbing will open itself up to you. There is a wealth advice available online and from fellow climbers to help you overcome each individual struggle.

We started on the subject of women and that’s where we’ll finish, because I think this is really important. Being a woman may or may not hold you back in some areas, and it may or may not give you a head start in other areas. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that if you work hard enough you’ll become good. You’ll work on routes with both men and women, exchange ideas, try different approaches, succeed and fail at a similar rate, and (excepting a few unfortunate idiots) do so on equal terms. I’ve been schooled by girls so many times now that any traces of misplaced preconceptions have been entirely washed out. That sense of equality on both sides can only be a good thing.

If you need more convincing, look back to when Lynn Hill was pushing the human limits of climbing, the more recent past where Josune Bereziartu, Charlotte Durif and Sasha DiGiuilian became the only three (at the time of writing !) women to climb the prestigious sport grade of 9a. And let’s not forget the future where the likes of Ashima Shiraishi and Brooke Raboutou are already breaking records and looking set to dominate the world of climbing over the next few years. It’s an exciting time for climbing and the focus is deservedly on both men and women.

If the shoe fits…

Finding the right climbing shoe is a difficult task. After my first couple of pairs of entry-level climbing shoes I decided to get something fancy and opted for the La Sportiva Solution. By all accounts this is a great shoe. I’d even seen my favourite climbers on youtube sending 8c boulders in them, so obviously they would up my game and have me crushing my 6a projects in no time. As it happens, that’s not quite how it went down.

My immediate reaction was that they were well worth the £120 I’d just shelled out for them. Suddenly the tiniest chip became a sturdy foothold. I was standing on things I wouldn’t have even bothered looking at before. I believed these were the next step in my climbing evolution. Here’s what I’ve learnt about those tiny footholds since:

  • They actually were great footholds
  • They felt terrible before because my shoes were worn out, too big and my foot placement was severely lacking
  • They would have felt great in just about any brand new pair of shoes

But I didn’t know that at the time. What I thought I knew at the time was that I was ascending into a new realm of climbing and my shoes had been holding me back all along. Sure, these new shoes hurt like hell but it had to be worth it. This is just how climbing shoes were supposed to feel. I just had to break them in a little and they’d be fine.

So about a year later I still couldn’t wear them for more than 10 minutes at a time without having to take them off, gasping in agony as the blood returned to my toes and a new wave of pain unleashed itself. I’d wait for the pain to subside and go through the process again. By the end of the session the pressure points on my big toe knuckles meant I was wearing them for one minute and taking them off for ten. When I finally realised I was spending more time waiting for pain to go away than I was climbing, I knew it was time to abandon the Solutions. I went on the hunt for new, more practical shoes.

After having my hopes dashed a couple of times, I finally found a pair of shoes that I could wear all session (in my case, La Sportiva Miura lace-ups) without any abnormal pain. This meant I stopped climbing when my arms were pumped or my skin was falling apart or I was hungry or my friends were being dicks, not when my feet hurt. To say the least, I was pretty happy.

The obvious result is that, free of pain, I got a lot more climbing done and I could still walk to my car afterwards. The perhaps less obvious result is that my footwork improved. I didn’t realise it right away but I had been avoiding foot placements because they hurt too much. Now the only restrictions on foot placement were flexibility, strength and balance. They all still sucked but at least I could work on them.

So what would I tell myself if I could go back a few years ? It’s pretty simple: find a shoe that fits your foot, not a shoe that some guy on some climbing forum said got him climbing a whole grade higher. The Solutions are clearly great shoes for a lot of people, but a shoe that doesn’t fit your foot isn’t going to help you climb naturally and fluidly. Instead, you risk having your technique development hampered, climbing becoming an unpleasant and painful experience, and all kinds of acute or chronic foot problems.

Go to a climbing shop, try on as many pairs of shoes as possible in various sizes and pick the pair that mould to your foot the most naturally. Wear them for a good few minutes, walk around in them and test them out at various angles with different amounts of pressure. Ask how much the shoes will stretch when they break in so you know what to expect. When you find the shoes that give you the closest fit without any pressure points, thank the shop assistant for their patience, pretend you forgot your wallet and go home to buy them online for half the price.