For the past few months, I've been working on my first V7 post finger injury. Unfortunately,
I failed to send any of them again, so I decided to take a step back and work on another V6
instead. Let's take a look at this route. The starting handhold is a pretty good undercling.
There are two slopey footholds below. There's a pinch here and a sloper above it that looks like a
foothold. Another pinch to the right. A small foot on the volume and a pretty bad looking foot here.
A long crimpy rail here. A small sloper on top of it. A crimp on the left side of the volume.
Two side crimps on top of the volume, and then a semi slopey finish hold. With the close-up shots
of the holds I showed, you can pause the video a bit and see what beta comes first to your mind
before I start talking about it. Alright, the beta of the first few moves is pretty straightforward.
The pinch is large enough to match, and I just need to make sure to maintain foot tension when
stepping on the first two slopey footholds to make sure that I won't slip. After that,
I reach the second pinch, bring my left foot up to the small hold on the volume, which feels
surprisingly good because I can press into the volume, and then I reach the crimpy rail with
my left. I am pretty sure the setter wants us to back flag, and then match the right hand onto the
crimpy rail. However, to make this move happen, I am required to crimp hard with my injured left
finger. If this were after my first finger injury, I would probably just crimp hard and move on,
but since this is after my second finger injury, I don't want to do so. I tried various ways to break
the beta, such as switching feet and bicycling the volume, but the volume is a bit too slippery.
I tried directly going for the small sloper with the right, but it felt impossible. I
tried bumping my left hand to the small sloper, but it felt impossible to match hands on it.
I tried bringing my right hand down to the crimpy rail instead, but no matter how I placed my feet,
it felt impossible to reach the crimp on the left side of the volume with my left hand. I decided to
reach out to my longtime friend, Max, who is a V11 climber, for help. He recommended that I do
whatever works instead of respecting the setter's intention when I climb at my max grade. However,
it will be good to follow the setter's intention when I climb at my flash grade to diversify my
climbing movements and styles. He also told me that whenever I have trouble matching on a hold,
I need to think about how I can put more weight on the feet to make it possible. It might not
click right away why it's about the feet, but you can imagine that the easiest scenario to match
is if you can literally let go of your left hand and then put your right hand onto it to match,
which typically happens on slab climbs when you can put 100% of your weight on your feet.
On the flip side, if you campus and your feet are in the air, matching will be the most difficult
because all your weight is on the arms. The reason why I couldn't match is that too much weight was
still on my left arm, and I need to figure out how I can get into another position where I can
offload more weight onto my feet. The position Max immediately saw was to bring the right
foot up onto the pinch at the right and rock my weight onto it as much as I could, and it worked!
Somehow I was able to break the intended beta and continue on. I reached the crimp with my left.
The most natural continuation is to step on this bad foothold and reach the crimp with my right,
but the next move looks like I need to match feet on this bad foothold and then bring my left hand
up to the crimp above. The main problem for me is that the foothold is so bad and small that it
doesn't feel possible to put both feet on the hold at the same time when matching, which also means
I will have to hold my entire body weight with both hands for a split second when I take my left
foot off and immediately get my right foot on. The problem is, because of my injured left finger,
I don't want to hold my body weight on these two crimps even for a split second. Instead, I want
to see if I can break the beta again. I tried bringing my right foot all the way to the pinch
on the right, but it didn't feel like something would work. I talked to Max again, and he told me
that a lot of times beta breaks come from skipping holds, and there are two main ways to skip holds.
The first one is taking advantage of raw strong pulling power and dyno to the higher better holds.
The second one is utilizing good hip mobility and using a foothold that is unusually high.
Even though my finger strength regressed due to the injury, my raw pulling power and hip mobility
are certainly at the peak due to my cross-training in calisthenics. After hearing the hint from Max,
I immediately started to search for options that I normally wouldn't search for, trying to take
advantage of my pull power and hip mobility, and I saw it! I can step high onto the rail. It might
be crimpy for the fingers, but it's a very good hold for the foot. I was able to reach the final
hold directly with my right hand, shift my weight and bring my left foot on to the small sloper,
and match on the finish hold. Finally, let me play my send again without any pauses in between. Here
is a quick recap on what I learned from my friend Max, who climbs V11. First, if you have difficulty
matching hands, think about how you can offload more weight onto your feet to make matching
hands possible. Second, if you are an injured climber like me who doesn't want to crimp hard,
think about how you can dyno or use high feet to skip the crimp-heavy section. Hope you have
learned something as I did. In the near future, I don't plan to project another V7 again until a
pinch and or sloper dominant V7 appears in my gym because it seems impossible to avoid crimping hard
on V7 routes in my gym. I plan to take a step back and work on my slab game, and also try out another
exciting form of climbing, which I am not going to reveal what it is now. All I can say is it will be
fun, and there will be collaborations with big names, which I am sure you will find exciting,
so definitely stay tuned for that. Thanks for watching. I launched my own healthy premium
food bar called 5Bar a month ago, and I want to thank everyone who purchased it and spread the
word with their friends. 5Bar is a product that I believe in. I eat 5Bar for breakfast every day,
and I also eat 5Bar as a snack in the afternoon every day. Definitely check
out the link in the video description below to order some 5Bars. See you in the next video.