one tip left off most heel hook videos- warm up your hamstrings. I've strained both of my hamstrings doing slightly too intense heel hooks, so if you are prone to hamstring injuries or have tight hammies this is for you. warm up your hamstring by contracting the muscle, bring your heel to your butt, maintain the contraction through the range of motion, this is essentially an unweighted hamstring curl. this does not need to be super intense and can be done laying down or standing up. I usually do one set of 8-10 reps per leg and I'm good to go. I can't heel hook without risk of injury, even on easy ones, so I do this before every sesh and it helps a lot
Thanks Charlie, we totally agree. Very important to warm-up! Jen makes a point of recommending glute bridges and SL-RDL's for a warm-up in this video (5:01) but the key is activating the muscles involved in the heel hook like you say.
thanks for this video -- i think one of the main reasons i always failed my heel hook is i would just passively slap my heel onto a hold and not engage. this has given me a lot to work on!
does anyone have knowledge to share about pressing the inside of the foot into the wall when heel hooking to lever the hips into the wall? it helps immensely, but also feels like doing that will destroy my knee.
Thanks Mathieu. Yes, totally agree. We debated doing a bit on shoe selection but decided to keep things simple in this video because we have another with Tom Randall that covered different shoes "Best Climbing Shoes...". We also see heel preference vary quite a bit e.g. some like a tight fit and other like a bit of bagginess to "sky hook" or mould into the holds.
you would want to have a medical doctor have a look at your knee. It should not excessively hurt (or at all) when hooking. So something is probably going on in you knee where you don't want Dr. Internet to give you medical advise.
Most of the knee problems in regards to the heel hook technic revols around excessive external foot orientation in regards to the tibia. It puts loads of pressure to the ligaments such as ACL, MCL as well as meniscus. Wish you all the best Physio
