Tuesday 27 April 2010

Dynos


There comes a point when the next hold is too far away to reach. Or when the in-between holds would be too tiring to use. This is where we do a 'dyno'.

The concept is simple - jump!

The technique is harder, and takes confidence. The easiest way to learn is on an indoor bouldering wall with large handholds and a big, soft mat to land on.

  • First, focus on the target hold, just like a tennis player focuses on the ball. Watch it like a hawk (because hawks are obsessed with handholds). Plan how, and with which hand, you will grab it.
  • As always, the power comes from the legs.
  • As always, if possible, KEEP YOUR ARMS STRAIGHT!

Some further notes on keeping your arms straight. First bend the knees, with straight arms above you. Then straighten the knees (hard!), swing out from the cliff (because your arms are straight) and then you will be pulled back in by your (straight) arms as you gain height. So you move in a circle with your hands in the middle:

The tricky part is choosing the right moment - just at the peak of your jump - to let go of the lower holds and grab the higher ones. A common mistake is to do this too early, just at the outside of your circular path, because then your arms will not pull you back to the wall and you will fly off at a tangent. Of course letting go too late is also bad. You just have to learn by experimenting.

Fist Jam

This is for slightly wider cracks
The hand is placed into the crack and the fist is then clenched, so the muscles expand and wedge the hand in place. Easy. But unfortunately painful at times... the thing to remember though is that the tighter the jam, the less it will slip, and the less it slips, the less it hurts. So get it into place as tight as you can to start with.
One way of doing this is to touch the tips of your index and little fingers together, in front of your palm, to make the distance accross the knuckles narrower to start with. Then, slide the hand into the constriction and clench the fist (your index and little finger can come apart now). This may help you achieve that extra little bit of tightness.

Finger Locking

For small cracks.
The hand is inserted into the empty crack, with the thumb pointing down.
The hand is twisted, clockwise for the right hand, anti clockwise for the left hand.

This has a 'camming' effect and locks the fingers into place - you can relax the muscles now and the hand will stay put.

  • Sometimes two or three fingers works better than all four.
  • Overlapping your fingers slightly to stack them up often helps, so that your forefinger is slightly on top of your index finger and your ring finger is slightly on top of your forefinger. The effect is to combine your fingers into a more solid unit. This is known as a ring lock.
  • The thumb can squeeze the outside of the crack (see diagram), but it is often useful to either press the thumb pad against the index finger pad or (more often) to tuck the thumb underneath the index- and forefingers.
  • An alternate finger jam can sometimes be formed where there is a constriction in the crack. Place two fingers above the constriction and your thumb below squeeze the index finger and thumb towards each other so as to form an "O" as if you were signing "OK" to someone. The constriction of the crack can be trapped in the "O" this way.

Good Technique

Some general points to ponder about good technique.

* Some climbers climb very slowly and methodically. At the other end of the scale we have dynamic styles such as that practised by Johnny Dawes. Both ends of this scale are recognised 'good techniques'.
* This means that technique is not about climbing a certain way, it is about adapting your climbing style to make use of your strengths. The slow move slowly because they all have enough stamina to hang on while they work out the best possible sequence of moves. If you, on the other hand, are best at sheer explosive strength it's probably better for you to power through your routes than take the slow approach.
* Don't do this forever though, because improving is about strengthening your weaknesses!

So how do you learn new techniques?

1. The best way to learn is to watch somebody good while you belay them. Notice how they approach the climb and try to imitate any clever moves they do. Or ask them to guide you through a particular sequence, such as rocking over.
2. Practise them yourself, repeatedly. At first, any new techniques will feel uncomfortable and you'll probably think they are not worth the effort but after a while you will get used to them and find more and more places where they are useful, and eventually some places where you couldn't have managed without.
3. For general training, climb when you are tired - too tired to simply power through a sequence of moves. Force yourself to move slowly and use your technique to conserve what's left of your energy (being tired helps as brute force is just not an option). Plan your moves in advance. Snatching for holds is not allowed: find a controlled way of doing it.

Finally a note on weak and strong points: You will get to know what yours are. Just be aware that on any day climbing, you have a choice to make: work on the weak points, which can be trying (but is in the long run essential to becoming a good climber), or just stick to your best type of route and cruise through it. It's up to you which.