Great video! This may not be fundamental but I would really like a part two about the footwork letated to dropknees. It just came to mind because I really struggle with properly placing my feet and not sliping of as soon as I drop the knee. Whenever I have big holds to hold on to I get my dropknees and I really like it but since they are kind of essential to overhang climbing I get frustrated a lot. I place the foot normaly and have good grip, I twist the leg and obviouly the pressure relative to the hold changes and I slip. In an overhang I don't have the time to make long adjustments. Also I feel like my hips/body are getting in the way from time to time. All the tension in my body to keep me close to the wall so the hands don't slip or the weight is on the feet but the closer I am to the wall the less space I have to drop the knee. Maybe more of a rant than a request but I really like your series! I learn a lot.
You want to make sure to place the inside edge when doing a drop knee and push with your toes on the hold. You will have to give yourself room for your knees to pass through but push hard with the feet
You can really see the difference when you go climbing outside. In the gym you can compensate with pulling harder, but you should train your footwork. Outside (Fontainebleau f.e.) you need to place your feet precisely, trust them and put your weight on them. Being able to do extra pull-ups won’t help you.
maybe you could've added some reasoning behind your claim to make it easier for other to understand it, I almost exclusively boulder and don't really get why you wouldn't be able to just compensate by pulling harder. the only reason I can really figure out is maybe the "holds" on rock walls are worst?
In my gym they just set a really nice and intricate 6C problem on a slab with start hold, close to it a very small 1/1.5 finger ... "thingy" and the top hold. In between 2 very small footholds and one larger to go to the top, traversing around 3m (ish). I like it a lot, but my big toes don't. oO
Just a question, when u try different brands, shoes and you always have a buble near your heel (therefore can't hell hook safely) what do you recommend ? Thanks
@@LatticeTraining Thanks for the info! They look so cool too. Ooof, I probably need a find a pair to try on before I start purchasing online. And love this essential series!
Dear people of Lattice (and other climbing nerds), Every foot-placement video I've watched mentions that - when standing on volumes - you want as much surface area as possible. It is mentioned in this video, an earlier Lattice video and a TAMY climbing channel video on footwork. However, I think this is incorrect. I don't know why it bothers me, but it does. Can anyone confirm my presumption? When looking into physics, the formula for friction force is simply f=mu*N -f: friction force -mu: fricion coefficient -N: normal force Surface area is not mentioned. mu is simply a constant depending on the two contact materials, the hold and the shoe, not much you can do about it. The normal force, however, is something you can control with the position of your foot. The reason you want to lower your heel on volumes/sloped holds, is that it changes the angle of the force you exert on the wall. Simply said, a lower heel results in a more perpendicular force exerted on the foothold, and thus a larger normal force. I think it should be pretty easy to test with a camera, a bunch of differently angled volumes, and some different foot positions. Simply stand on the middle of the volume with your heel high and low, and stand on the edge of the volume so that (let's say) only 1cm of your sole touches the volume and do the same. Then test it for a bunch of different volume angles and/or heel positions and see if surface area of the sole has any correlation with being able to stand or not. The only downside is, when you stand on a different position on the volume, your centre of mass is usually differently positioned with respect to your feet. So you somehow need to keep that consistent as well. Anyways, anyone who shares my opinion and/or has the possibility to test it?
I’ve read that a few times before, have never tested it. But I also feel like it’s easier to apply more force with a larger contact area, hence why we put the focus on contact area. This also works for hand holds, say holding a sloper with your entire hand as opposed to putting the same amount of force on the hold with just your fingers. What do you think?
@@motherlove8366 well, so the whole idea of my reasoning is that you surface area is completely irrelevant. Perhaps you need stronger toes (or fingers for slopers) to hold the correct position, but it shouldn't negatively affect you sliding off the hold. For standing, it might be beneficial to rephrase the 'maximise contact area' to simply 'lower your heel', because the first can be interpreted that it is better to stand on the middle of the volume. Whereas for balance reasons you often want to stand on the outside (you create more distance between you and the wall, and increase the ease of a no-hands resting position) With respect to holding slopers, I'm fully convinced that focusing on as much contact area is really counter productive. In my experience, holding slopers comes down to finding the best little dimple/area on the sloper, and putting as much force on that area with your fingertips. Slopers are rarely uniformly flat, and even then (i.e. beastmaker2000) I get the feeling I have more chance in hanging when focusing on driving my fingertips into the hold rather than maximising surface area. But more often, there usually is a 'best spot' on the sloper you want to hold. For that, I believe it's really counter productive to try to maximise surface area, and instead you should focus on putting as much pressure on that particular part with your finger tips
I agree with the formula but just test it out next time you are in a gym, no need for fancy testing setups. For me more contact patch definatly gives more grip on steep volumes/slopers. In reality materials seldom act according to simplistic physical ideal models, other factors have to be considered aswell. Perhaps its the angle of attack that changes with heel up or down, the leverage or the increased deformation of the rubber with a smaller contact patch are the reason for this and would have to be integrated into your physics model. Also why would you have to try to disregard a change in center of gravity for the test? If heel down gives more grip due to that change then the statement that you should try to maximise contact patch to maximise grip remains true. In a different area concerning grip and contact patch look at race cars, they all have wider tyres then your standard road tyres and slicks (unless wet) which both increase contact patch. Here I know the reasoning is heat and wear and less deformation. Warm tyres are grippy, but overheated ones loose grip, so that has to be taken into account on your physics model aswell.
The force of friction equation assumes that the two objects that are in contact are smooth hard objects. Skin and rubber are not hard and rock is generally not smooth (unless you are in camp 4). Skin and rubber deform to meet the shape of the rock. This deformation can therefore lead to microreliefs between the rock and the rubber (or skin) and actually change the coefficient of friction between the two objects. If you'd like to really deep dive into what is happening, look up Tribology and elastic deformation.
@@Pietervanloon1996 Your bodyweight distributed over a smaller surface like just your toe is more likely to exceed the maximum parallel force allowed for that particular coefficient of static friction and slip, whereas when your bodyweight is distributed over a greater surface area, if the distributed force is broken up into a bunch of smaller normal vectors, for each small fraction of area or dA, the corresponding normal vector will contain less force and will therefore be less likely to break the coefficient of static friction offering better grip in the climbers shoe and lowering the chance of a dry fire.
