The role of movement in climbing

There is no doubt that muscles are important. They are the contractile tissue responsible for moving our bones in concert with our ligamentous system and facial system. The thing I never hear much about is how we move our muscles to do our bidding. In fact, it seems like a prevailing theory amongst the layman that we actively need to contract muscles to help them function. Squeeze your glutes, fire your core, contract the biceps… absolute nonsense.

If you’ve ever seen a flock of birds flying together or a school of fish swimming you are aware there is no singular mind controlling their actions, yet they are somehow intricately connected. It seems like they must be communicating with a bird in the front screaming “LEFT, RIGHT, SLOW DOWN BOYS, DIVE DIVE!!!” This is analogous to assuming you need to contract your muscles to make them work… simply ignorant. When we pick up a coffee cup, we look at the cup, decide you want to drink it and through a staggeringly complex motor process we reach out, grab the cup and put it to our lips. I guarantee that you didn't need to “contract your biceps” on purpose to make this work however.

Our perceptual system is tightly coupled with our action potential. We perceive to act and we act to perceive and this coupling forms the basis for all of our movement actions. We perceive the coffee cup and move to act, and throughout every minute time increment we are still bringing in information through our perceptive systems so we can finely tune our actions to bring about the end goal we have in mind- to drink the coffee. While we are going through our highly coupled, highly complex task of picking up this cup, our muscles are being specifically recruited to achieve this goal. Yet, we are not the top-down controller of this action, the same as no specific bird is controlling the flock. There are simple rules involved, physics and bio-mechanics coming together to create a pulley system of our tissues to utilize ground contact and turn it into actionable energy to move around. Muscles can only contract after all, and the series of contractions needed to create complex movement is way to complicated for any human to do well. So if you feel the need to “squeeze your glutes” during a lift, just know you are doing so to satisfy your ego only and this intervention only serves to gunk up a well coordinated action like squatting.

But what if something hurts during a movement, you might ask. My glutes simply aren’t firing so I need to do that myself! The reality is, optimal movement patterns are so complex, that we need to get creative if there is truly a maladaptive pattern being exhibited. Instead of cuing “squeeze your glutes” a better strategy would be to pair the squat with something that gets a high amount of perception into a place in your body that has somehow gone under the radar. Something like a Single Leg Romanian Deadlift hold w a Single arm kettle bell row would create quite a bit of fatigue in your glutes. Then you go squat right after and watch how the system re-coordinates to the new sensory information in the system. Your glutes are fatigued and are now very available to your current sensory profile. Now you are likely to have a new motor pattern emerge as a consequence of this new information. It seems like the same thing as squeezing your glute, but I assure you, the end result will be quite different. I’ll bring the idea that your hamstrings “extend the hip and flex the knee” into the picture. While this is generally true, in certain positions, like the bottom of the back squat, the hamstring in closed chain high knee flexion angles will actually extend the knee for many degrees due to a shifting moment arm in that position. We do not have to tell it to “extend the knee at high flexion angles, then after you get up past 90* at the knee, stop doing that and extend the hip.” Physics and biomechanics do not need our personal instigation to exist.   

Let’s bring this around to climbing. Talk about complex, the movement possibilities are so expansive it can get really hard to know what “good movement” really is. There will likely be times when a movement that yields a positive result in climbing (I grabbed the hold!!!) can also not be very good on the body (oh no, now my shoulder hurts!!). Also true is a great and well trained movement pattern (my horizontal rows look great bro!) don’t always yield on the wall prowess (oh man, I didn’t get the hold!) I’m going to bring in the idea of constraints to the conversation. A constrain is something that acts on the system to alter the available movement solution. An example of this is asking someone not to bend their elbows as they climb. This new constraint brings about a host of new and possibly helpful (to the right person) movement solutions they would not have tried with out instituting the constraint.  Another constraint might be to blind fold someone so they have to search for movement opportunity without the use of their eyes.

The idea of constraints isn’t just obstacles and eliminating joint angles. A major constraint to the average climber is strength and flexibility. If you do not posses pre-requisite joint mobility to do a hard Gaston move, your brain will likely not see it as a viable option. If you can’t produce the amount of force necessary for a hard lock off move, you will likely not see it as an option for that sequence. Climbing injuries are often a long time in the making where the athlete has found a way to surmount a common climbing move with less than efficient technique. This is often due to a climbers passion to grow, but not having the knowledge or tools to help become the most well rounded climber they can be. So they see a move and they handle it in the way they know how- **insert over-used climbing move here**.

An example is over utilizing the full crimp because their wrist flexors are not developed. Another is freezing their shoulder to gain control over a side pull because their deep core muscles aren’t able to give the rib cage the support it needs to have fluid scapular mechanics. The possibilities are endless and very unique to the athlete in question.

Often a climber will be recommended to go to a PT where they receive a hand full of super easy exercises or stretches designed to open up range of motion. Perhaps this is not a bad place to start, but it most certainly isn’t where the work should end. Once an athlete has identified the reason for their set back and what they need to do to help move it forward, the role of a Physical Therapist ends- so says our current medical system. “Oh, they are moving the shoulder without much pain after 3 weeks of theraband exercises? Great, they can return to their sport, no restrictions!” Yikes…. There is so much more to the puzzle if you really want to not have a recurring issue. An athlete needs to have the capacity and coordination to bring these changes back to their sport or the next time a hard move comes around they are likely to resort to the movement pattern that hurt them in the first place! And, like a flock of birds with no top-down controller, the athlete needs to be brought along in such a way that they are not trying to interfere with their system (Squeeze my glutes so my knees don’t collapse). Weakness, tightness, pain and fear are very common constraints that will severely (or perniciously) shift the system into using sub-optimal movement patterns that will degrade rather than grow over time if not addressed.

How to overcome this? Seeing someone who specializes in movement education is a great place to start. Often the first step is dismantling long standing movement rules (no knees over toes, shoulders pulled back and down, SQUEEZE YOUR DAMNED GLUTES) and replacing them with much more robust and flowing movement solutions. Learning how to spread the load to other areas so no joint or muscle is overburdened with too much demand is essential to good movement outcomes. My process is simple and effective.

Assess the athlete

Mobilize the area in question

Stabilize through PNF or unstable surface training

Load the movement patterns

Express through sport

This part is half science, half art. No one is ever the same so my approach is based on the person in front of me. That being said, there are some very common issues that I often see with climbers that give me a place to look, then I go about trying to poke holes in my assumptions. If you have a chronic issue that you have not been able to solve, I would love to work with you! I have a deep passion for rock climbing and have helped many people gain a higher level of athleticism that translates to less injury and more time in their sport! If you want to get rid of nagging injuries you have to be willing to learn how to move in ways you are currently not employing. If you are in need, I can help.