In the past few months, I've been working on my first V7 post finger injury. Unfortunately,
I failed to send my V7 project before it got reset two times in a row. While I was feeling defeated,
I came across a video from arguably the world's best climber, Tomoa Narasaki, giving out 5 great
tips on slab climbing. Personally, I never liked slab climbing because I was afraid of
slipping and then hitting some holds on the shins. I preferred overhang and cave climbs,
and all the difficult V6s and V7s I did throughout the years are all overhangs and caves.
I think my max grade on slabs is probably V4 or at most V5. After watching Tomoa's video,
I told myself this was about to change. I decided to set a goal to climb this seemingly impossible
V6 slab in my gym. Let's take a look at this route. There are two badly angled volumes for
our feet. Two very crimpy side pulls for the start. A good foothold here, considering this is a slab.
A confusing volume in the middle. Two very bad holds here that feel like footholds.
Two bad crimps higher up. A crimp undercling on the volume that actually feels surprisingly solid,
and then a slopey finish hold. With the close-up shots of the holds I show, you can pause the
video a bit and see what beta comes first to your mind before I start talking about it.
Alright. If the beta of this climb is obvious to you, my salute to you. It
was extremely confusing to me, and it took me weeks to figure out the entire sequence. First,
I need to apply tip number 4 from Tomoa's video in order to step on this badly angled volume,
which is keeping the heel down and maximizing the surface area of the contact with the volume.
Next, I have to bring both hands onto the volume and compress it. I actually got stuck here for a
while because I tried to make it work by gripping this hold. Next, I have to bring my left foot up
to an even more badly angled volume and then scrunch my body to bring my right foot up to the
good foothold. I had to compress really hard with my arms because I couldn't put too much weight on
my left foot. This beta also isn't straight forward. I tried to grip this hold, or tried
to reach up directly to this crimp. The last thing that came to my mind was scrunching up like this.
Next, I reached the crimp, but it was pretty bad, so I wasn't able to put weight onto it.
I ended up having to do something like a pistol squat and stand all the way up to reach the solid
crimp undercling. Having to pistol squat all the way up was also the last thing that crossed my
mind. I tried getting help from toe hooking the volume, pushing this crimp with my left,
gastoning the lower crimp with my left, and reaching up the volume with my right, but the help
from all these options was not good enough and they all ended up throwing off my balance. Next,
I bring my left foot onto this hold, bring my right hand onto the right side of the volume,
and then step over with my right foot to step on the volume, and then bring my left foot to
this bad chip. This sequence is also not very straightforward. The first thing that came to
my mind was directly bringing the left foot to the chip, and then matching my right hand onto
the solid crimp, but I was totally stuck in this position because it felt impossible to let go of
my right foot in order to rock onto the bad left foot chip. I actually discovered the possibility
of stepping over with my right foot, but it never felt solid enough because of my hand placement.
Putting the right hand on the right side of the volume allowed me to compress to the left,
which, to my great surprise, made it a lot more solid. After I matched my right hand on the
undercling, now comes the killer tip by Tomoa. It is very hard to explain, so you should definitely
watch how Tomoa explains it in his video, but in this situation, my understanding is that if
I turn my right foot to make my toes face to the right, I will be able to push my hips in,
and it will be easier for me to transfer my weight onto the left bad foot chip. It is not possible
to do this move without Tomoa's tip unless this left foot chip feels like a good foothold. Once
I reached the slopey finish hold, I kinda lost my balance a bit, but the crimp on my right hand and
the sloper on my left hand were good enough for me to use brute force to overcome poor technique
and save the day. I am really proud of this climb, so I want to play my send again without any pauses
in between. I also want to thank Tomoa again for putting up an awesome slab tutorial video,
which helped me out a lot. Now that I send this slab climb, I will go back to find another
V7 to project, and hopefully I will be able to finish it before it got reset this time.
Lastly, I want everyone to take a step back with me and appreciate the fact that the two
arguably world's best climbers, Adam Ondra and Tomoa Narasaki, are making incredible YouTube
videos for us to watch for free. This kind of thing does not happen in any other sports.
I am pretty sure all the climbers who watch my videos have already subscribed to Adam Ondra,
but I am sure a lot of you probably still don't know that Tomoa Narasaki
actually teams up with Akiyo Noguchi and Yudai Ikedai to start a YouTube channel since their
channel is still fairly new. Their videos are very good and have English subtitles.
You should definitely check them out if you haven't yet. Thanks for watching. Make sure
to like, subscribe, and check out my website geekclimber.com. See you in the next video.