Hips and feet: the forgotten half of climbing

Ask a beginner what climbing needs and they will say strong arms. Ask an experienced coach and you will usually hear something about feet. Your legs are much stronger than your fingers, and every bit of weight you keep on your feet is weight your fingers do not have to hold. Hips and feet are the forgotten half of climbing, and they are often the fastest way to climb better.

Why feet matter so much

On vertical and slabby terrain, most of your body weight can sit on your feet. Even on steep walls, good footwork reduces the load on your hands and lets you rest. Climbers with poor footwork tend to pump out early, over-grip and fall off moves they are strong enough to do.

Good footwork comes down to a few habits:

• Look at the foothold until your foot is on it. Many slips happen because the eyes move to the next handhold too early.
• Place the foot quietly. A silent foot is a precise foot. Noisy, scraping feet usually mean the placement was a guess.
• Use the right part of the shoe. The inside edge for most edging, the outside edge when you turn your hip in, and the toe for small pockets and steep terrain.
• Trust the foot, then weight it. Hesitating leaves your weight on your arms.

Hips: where your weight goes

Your feet decide where your weight can go. Your hips decide where it actually goes. Moving the hips is how you transfer weight from one foot to another and how you keep your centre of mass over your base of support.

Three hip positions come up again and again:

Square on

Hips facing the wall, both feet on inside edges. Good for vertical terrain and slabs. The key is to keep hips close to the wall and over the feet, which is a hinge pattern rather than a lean.

Turned in

One hip turned towards the wall, standing on the outside edge of one foot. This lets you reach further and reduces the load on your arms on steeper ground. The drop knee is an extreme version.

Flagging

One leg placed against the wall without a foothold, acting as a counterweight. Flagging keeps you from swinging and lets you reach sideways without a second foothold.

Mobility you can actually use

Hip mobility matters, but it only helps if you can control it. Being able to get your foot onto a high hold is useless if you cannot then push through it. Useful work includes:

• Deep goblet squats and holding the bottom position.
• Cossack squats or lateral lunges for side-to-side range.
• Hip airplanes or controlled hip rotations for turning in.
• High-step practice on the wall: step high, pause, then stand up slowly without pulling with the arms.

Ankles matter too. Stiff ankles make it hard to keep the heel low on slabs and to stand on small edges for long.

Drills for better footwork

• Silent feet: climb easy routes with no noise from your shoes.
• Hover feet: hold the foot just above the hold for a second before placing it.
• Hands-off slabs: on easy slab, try moving up with minimal or no hand use.
• Foot-follow: on traverses, your feet may only use holds your hands have used.

These drills feel slow and easy, and that is the point. They build habits that hold up on hard moves when you are tired.

Strong fingers get you onto the hold. Good feet keep you there.

In Train Climb

• Log footwork drills as a technique session and note which drill you used, so you can see how often you practise them.
• Coaches can add drills like silent feet or high-step practice from the exercise library to planned sessions.
• Use the climbing journal to note when a send came from footwork rather than strength. Over time those notes tell a story.
• Read The basics of movement for how hinge and squat patterns connect to hip position.