Let me quickly give you an update on my finger injury before I start the breakdown. I think my
finger is close to recovering. However, when I crimp on holds, it feels a bit weird. Not pain,
but a weird feeling that feels different. I have been constantly having two lines of
thoughts battling each other about if I should crimp hard. The first line of thought tells me
to crimp hard for the sake of making compelling climbing YouTube videos, as the majority of the
climbers are interested in seeing me climb harder and harder. The second line of thought tells me to
stop crimping hard completely and be a happy V4 climber because it's not worth it to get injured
again. Honestly, I still get a lot of enjoyment from just climbing V4s. In the end, my decision
is somewhere in between. I will still try to crimp hard, but I am going to dial up the intensity very
slowly, and I will only crimp conservatively, which means the compelling climbing YouTube
videos will still eventually come, but it will take some time. Hope you understand, and let's
get started on the V6 I climbed recently. The first confusion happened in this position. My
first thought was to bump my left hand up onto the sloper, and then maybe somehow match my right
hand on the sloper and then get my left hand to the jug. However, it didn't work no matter how
I positioned my feet. By the way, my bad for not having actual footage to showcase the failures.
My gym has already been operating at full capacity, and I felt kinda bad sticking
the camera in the middle of the walkway to film myself when I knew I had no chance of sending it.
Anyways, eventually I asked super strong climber David for the beta, and he told me the beta was
simply bumping my left hand to the jug, which was surprisingly quite doable after a few tries.
After a few moves, I arrived at this crimp. This crimp is pretty bad. Unfortunately,
I didn't have Omar film for me to show you how bad the crimp is, but it was bad enough for me to
worry whether I would injure my fingers again when I reached my right hand out while all my weight
was on my injured left finger. It took me some time to get comfortable with this move. Here comes
the crux that took me weeks to figure out. One guy I met in the gym whose name is Logan sent me this.
He dropped his left foot back down to this jug, and then brought his right foot all the way to
the chip on the right. However, this beta doesn't work for me because I am not tall enough. I saw
David and strong youngsters in the climbing team simply bring the left hand onto the side pull,
bring the left foot all the way up and rock onto the right foot, and then reach out with the
right hand. I tried their beta, but I realized I needed to crimp pretty hard to pull off that move.
I think I can do that move pre-injury, but definitely not now. I also saw people
matching feet and then bringing the right foot all the way to the chip on the right,
but I am also not tall enough to do this. The beta that worked for me is toe hooking the volume.
I actually discovered the possibility to toe hook earlier, but I didn't think it was the right beta
at the time because of how counterintuitive it is to toe hook correctly. Most of the time,
when we reach for a hold, we lean back with straight arms and then reach. We don't pull
in with bent arms and then reach because that's inefficient. However, one exception to this rule
is the undercling, as explained by Peter in my previous video. Holding onto the undercling with
bent arms is actually more efficient than straight arms and since you are closer to the target hold,
it makes the reach easier. The same principle actually applies here. When I lean back with my
left arm straight, this toe hook, which happens to be like the foot version of the undercling,
isn't as efficient as it can be. However, if I bend my left arm to move a bit towards the
target hold, which in normal circumstances is just wasting energy, in this situation
it will actually make the toe hook a lot more efficient. I was so surprised when I discovered
that being in this position actually felt more efficient overall, and I was able to send it
shortly after. I guess my reluctance to crimp hard actually pushed me to improve my technique. I hope
you are able to learn this subtle technique as I did. I know it could be a bit difficult to
understand without having a chance to try the exact same climb, but I think the technique
could be generalized to where you happen to be toe hooking straight up like an undercling.
It will be worth it to bend your arms to get your body close to the wall, which will create
an opposing compressing force that ends up being more efficient. Thanks for watching. Make sure
to like, subscribe, and check out my website geekclimber.com. See you in the next video.