-[Geek Climber] If you follow me on Instagram, you would know that I broke a mini plateau lately
and have been uploading MoonBoard benchmarks sends on a daily basis.
This is largely thanks to the help of my strong friends, and one of them is MoonBoard enthusiast,
FearlessTofu. I had a chance to train with her a few weeks ago, and here's what I learned from her.
Ya, so this is, um, surprisingly difficult. So it looks easy, but it's actually difficult.
If this is angled better, I would be able to hold it and get my foot back on, but.
Wow, super strong! OK, what's the key here? -[FearlessTofu] So I move the feet over more to the right,
and then I felt a little more stable on the left arm, and then I can make
the bigger move from the left. -[Geek Climber] OK, so you're saying get your left foot like here?
Ya.(FearlessTofu) Oh (Geek Climber) -[FearlessTofu] Ya, does it feel better? -[Geek Climber] It's actually better. I think I can actually finish this thing.
Oh, this hold is actually bad.
-[FearlessTofu] Come on. Nice. Ya. Come on. Nice! -[Geek Climber] Yes! The reason why moving the feet more to
the right works is because the target hand hold is angled to the left by 45 degrees.
When you grip a hold, if you apply force to the opposite direction of where the hold is angled,
it will become a lot easier. For example, when you grip a side pull angled to the left,
you want to pull to the right. Similarly, for this target handhold, you would want to apply
force downward and rightward. The hardest point to hold onto a handhold during a dynamic move is the
moment when you first hit the hold. In my original beta, when I hit the handhold, most of my weight
is at the center, which means there's only mostly downward force and it's very difficult to hold
onto the target hold. However, with FearlessTofu's beta, when I hit the handhold, my lower body is on
the right side. Hence, it creates a downward and rightward force, and that makes holding
onto the target hold so much easier. Next, I showed Fearlesstofu a move that I was stuck on.
-[FearlessTofu] So if you just jump from the mat, you can hold it, right?
-[Geek Climber] Ya, it has to be super precise. -[FearlessTofu] Try to hold this move, no feet, and just hang for like 3 seconds
to get that muscle memory there. What it should feel like when you hit it
and you have both hands there. -[Geek Climber] Ya. I mean this is definitely not a comfortable position.
-[FearlessTofu] When you catch something like this dynamically, I find that
watching videos of myself and other people, when you don't catch it, it's because they are
not engaging the scapula, lats and traps, so they end up looking kinda like this.
But if everything is engaged and you catch it like this, you should be able to control it.
-[Geek Climber] It's like hangboarding. -[FearlessTofu] I think that time was better than
the time before when you tried it. -[Geek Climber] With the engaged scapula tip, I can hold onto the handholds better
but that also means I have to jump further to get into the position. However, I was having
trouble generating enough power. I tried to bring my left foot high and jump from my left
foot but it didn't work, either. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the move during the session
with FearlessTofu. When I worked on it by myself the other day, I realized I could jump with
more power with both feet. Even though the body position is less ideal for each individual foot,
jumping with 70% of both feet is still better than jumping with 100% of one foot. With that
extra power, I was able to jump to the hold, engage my scapula, and finish the entire route.
Depending on the position, there are exceptions where jumping with both feet is not better than
jumping with one foot. The main thing is don't forget that you have the option to jump with
both feet. Thanks for watching. I encourage you to find a MoonBoard to try out the exact same moves.
I am also pretty sure that I will get stuck on other MoonBoard moves along the way and I will
be reaching out to strong friends for advice, so we can all learn from them together. Just in case
you don't know yet, FearlessTofu has a YouTube channel, so be sure to check her channel out here.