If you are a casual climber like me, who boulders in a gym every now and then, crack climbing
might seem like a cool variation of climbing that you only see people do on TV.
I never crack climbed once throughout my 10-plus years of casual climbing, but that streak
is about to end because recently I had the chance to connect with the pro climber, Pete
Whittaker, from the YouTube channel WideBoyz.
Pete specializes in crack climbing, and luckily I had the chance to learn how to climb my
first crack completely from zero under his guidance.
The goal I set for myself is to climb this crack in the gym that looks around 4.5 meters
high, and here is Pete's advice for first-time crack climbers.
The first thing is to like, fill the space and use the space efficiently.
If you are doing a hand jam, you make sure that all of your hand is in there because
a lot of mistakes that I see beginners make with crack climbing is you'll show them the
technique and you show them how to do the hand position, but then they fail on the very
first thing, which is actually like putting their hand deep enough into the crack.
Sounds really simple but you want to make sure that if it is a hand-size crack, you
just don't want the edge of the crack running across here. You want to make sure the edge
of the crack is running across the wrist, so all of your hand is inside the crack.
So this is your first step-make an L shape. When you place your hand in the crack, so
you put it in and the edge of the crack is running up here.
The first thing that you want to do is move the thumb towards the little finger like this,
so you're bringing the thumb into the center of your palm here.
I give it like a little bit of a squeeze with the thumb here, so you're pushing it towards
the little finger and then you're giving it a little bit of a squeeze there to make sure
this part is tensed.
When this part is tense, then you can brace the fingers across the crack. So if I had
a crack in front of me here, I would be making my L shape, so like this. Then I'll be slotting
my hand in in that L shape. Then I'll be moving my thumb. Then I'd be pressing my thumb a little
bit so this a bit tense, and then I'd be bracing the fingers across here, so L, in,
thumb, fingers.
Also the important thing when you're placing these jams is to not have them too close to
your chest and too close to your body here, but a little bit higher because what I see
a lot of beginners doing is they have them quite close to their chest here because people
sort of like to be able to see what they're doing with their jams and they kind of have
them quite close here. And then they pull in and then their arms kind of go out to the
side and then they end up doing this, or they end up leaning back and then all their weight
is kind of coming out and away from the wall rather than if they're up a little bit higher,
their chest is close to the wall and they're stood more on their feet.
So with the feet, like I was saying with the hand, you know make the hand as thin as possible
before you put it in the crack. It's the same with the feet. You know you want to make it
as thin as possible and you want to try and get as much of your foot into the crack as
possible. And I think what a lot of people do when they start crack climbing, they don't
put their foot all the way like this. They put it like at a 45 degree angle and then
their foot just doesn't quite go as far in and they're only just getting their toes in,
whereas if they turn it the whole way and then you can slot your foot into the crack.
To get your foot into that position, you want to sort of tip your knee out to the side and
turn at the ankle, so imagine the leg is coming up here. So tip the knee out to the side.
We'll do that and then turn turn at the ankle. We'll do that and then you can put it into
the crack. And then when it's in the crack obviously if we just stood up on it like that,
it would, you know, it would slip through because that's not really doing very much. We want
to twist it so it stays in there.
All you need to do to do that is just like bring the knee up and back in line with the
crack and then you'll get the correct twisting action on the foot.
After the call with Pete, I started attempting to crack climb with only my hands first.
To my surprise, crack climbing was incredibly painful, especially for the skin on the back
side of my hands.
It was so painful to the point that I fell off the wall not because my fingers or arms
were fatigued, but because I couldn't bear the pain anymore.
Additionally, not being able to grip onto something is a very odd sensation.
Even though in theory the hand jam should be secure because the lower part of the thumb
is engaged with the crack, my mind still constantly doubts whether it's actually secure or not.
In the next session, my hands were getting used to the pain, so I was able to climb a
lot higher.
However, I was still too scared to climb all the way to the top because there were no safety
holds on the very top section of the wall for me to bail, and I was not sure if my hands
were able to endure the pain for a longer time.
On top of that, I am too old to fall from that kind of height anymore, so I told myself
that I would climb up to that kind of height only if I am absolutely sure I wouldn't fall.
In the next session, I felt comfortable enough to climb a bit higher since my hands were
slowly getting used to the pain.
I also started to attempt crack climbing with the feet only, and I was shocked at how painful
it felt.
The feet felt at least two times more painful than the hands.
I had to force myself to climb like a beginner by purposely putting more weight on my hands
to relieve the pain on my feet.
The pain on my feet felt so unusual that I had to reach out to Pete again and ask him
whether I did anything wrong.
He told me in order to reduce the pain, I could use a drop heel technique, meaning when
I put my feet inside the crack, instead of having the toes and heels at the same height,
I can drop my heels to be lower than my toes when my feet are inside the crack.
He also reminded me that in order to avoid awkward wrist positions, I should remember
to keep my arms in line with the crack and not to lean to the side too much.
In the next session, I tried out Pete's drop heel advice.
The foot pain was still there, but it was a lot more manageable.
After a few more practices, I felt comfortable crack climbing with both hands only and feet
only.
Therefore, I decided to take on the next step by trying crack climbing with both hands and
feet at the same time.
Unfortunately, I could barely climb more than 2 moves because it was too painful.
The pain level is a lot higher with both hands and feet inside the crack.
The amount of weight the feet took out is a lot when crack climbing is done with the
hands only.
Similarly, the amount of weight the hands took out is also a lot when crack climbing
is done with the feet only.
When I climbed with both hands and feet inside the crack, I was forced to actually put weight
onto them, which caused the pain level to be significantly higher.
However, I still kept on trying, one move at a time, to get my body to get used to the
pain.
In the next few sessions, my pain tolerance got higher little by little.
Eventually I got to a point where I could climb all the way up to the height of the
end of the safety holds.
It felt like I could potentially push myself all the way up at this point, but since I
didn't want to jump down from the top, I needed to figure out how to down climb the
crack.
To my great surprise, down climbing actually wasn't straight forward.
I was having trouble bending the knee of the leg that was still on the wall to lower myself
enough to get the other foot into the crack.
After reviewing the footage of my down climbing fails, I realized the problem is I need to
bring my hands lower, so I will have more room to bend my knees.
Therefore, in the next session, I consciously brought my hands lower during the down climb,
and it worked.
I was able to down climb successfully.
However, bringing the hands lower made the arms do more work because I had to bend the
arms more since the hands were closer to the body.
I asked Pete that for crack climbing in general, is it preferable to have bent arms and keep
ourselves close to the wall, or is it better to have straight arms and lean back away from
the wall?
I had this doubt because I knew in normal climbing, it's better to have straight arms
and lean back away from the wall, but I felt it was easier for me to keep myself on the
crack by staying close to the wall with bent arms.
Bending at the arms is definitely necessary because if you don't and you roll on the shoulders,
your body ends up coming out of line with the crack. You don't want to be like rolling
on your shoulders when you're crack climbing like you would in normal climbing. You do actually
want to pull and bend the arms but when you bend the arms, you want to make sure that the
arms are staying nice and in line with the crack.
What you don't want to do is you don't want to pull up and make the elbows like bend out
to the side.
In the next session, I finally felt confident enough to climb a little bit higher than where
the safety holds end.
I continued to practice, practice, and practice.
At the end of the session, I felt I had built enough pain tolerance for both my hands and
feet to conquer this climb, and I told myself that I was going to send this in the next
session.
Finally, this happened.
Yes!
Haha, I did it.
I know this climb looks like a cakewalk, but trust me, it's definitely not if you have
never crack climbed before.
Therefore, I want to thank Pete again for his guidance.
I don't think I would have been able to finish this climb that fast without his help.
Are you interested in seeing more crack climbing videos?
Comment below and let us know whether we should do part 2.
Definitely check out Pete's channel, WideBoyz if you haven't yet.
Thanks for watching.
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