Chapter Six

Dynamic movement

A dynamic move uses momentum (the speed your body carries) to reach a hold. Your legs and hips throw your body, so your hand arrives while you are still moving. This chapter runs from the small deadpoint on a V3 to the jumps of comp-style setting. Comp style means problems set like competition boulders, with runs, jumps and big shapes.

If you climb V4 but not yet V5, start here. Gyms set more competition moves for ordinary climbers than they used to. Setters (the staff who design the problems) call a move “compy” when it is dynamic and coordinated: “usually runs, jumps or dynos” [202]. World Cup holds now turn up on gym V2s [203].

If you’re tall, you reach many holds that shorter climbers must jump for [106]. The missing skill shows when a setter forces momentum: a span too far for anyone, or a hold that only works if you arrive moving. Practise the V3 and V4 entries on problems you can already climb slowly. Whatever your height, read the falling section in Chapter 9 before your first dyno or running jump.

6.1 Static or dynamic?

You can stop a static move, such as a lock-off, halfway and go back. Once a dynamic move starts, you catch the hold or come off [204]. In return, one coach’s training-plan page calls momentum a big energy-saver [205], and moving faster can mean less time on the wall [21]. Lattice Training’s advice is to match your speed to the problem: some want control, others fast moves [206].

Choose a static move, or a very small deadpoint, when:

• the target is small or awkward, such as a thin edge, a finger hole or a slot. Dynos to small pockets are a common cause of finger injuries [207].
• a fall would be dangerous, for example onto an awkward landing or into a volume (a big hollow shape bolted to the wall) [208].
• your body must end in an exact position, as on a slab (a wall that leans back) [21].

Otherwise, try the move dynamically first, with the smallest deadpoint that reaches. Small deadpoints are fine (judgement), and one gym owner’s article says dynamic moves are generally more efficient than lock-offs [21]. Apart from a few practice goes low on big holds, keep big jumps for the moves that need them (judgement; see Chapter 9), and don’t snatch at small holds, because grabbing a hold very quickly in a dynamic move can rupture a pulley (a band that holds a finger tendon against the bone) [161]. Strictly, a move like this is a deadpoint while a foot stays on and a dyno once both feet leave [209, 210]. In the gym the names blur: many climbers call a one-handed dyno with a foot still on a deadpoint [211].

6.2 Where “deadpoint” comes from

Throw a ball straight up. At the top it stops for an instant before it falls. Your hips do much the same when you throw them up the wall. Near the top your legs have finished pushing and you are coasting, so little presses on your hands or feet and you feel light. You are also barely moving, so the hold starts to take your weight gently as you begin to sink (this book’s reading). Grabbing at that instant is the deadpoint [21, 212].

By 1987, Wolfgang Güllich was studying how to use the deadpoint [213]. But John Gill used the word in print in 1969, for a hand reaching a hold “at the high deadpoint of the swing” [214].

6.3 Power comes from the legs and hips

Coaches agree: think of your “arms as a pivot and your legs as a spring” [207, 215].

1. Start with straight arms. A bent arm at launch has already spent its power [21, 216]. See Straight arms.
2. Load. Let your hips sag out from the wall and down. Move them away from where you will go [217].
3. Drive. Push with your legs. Swing your hips back into the wall towards the target. Your body turns upward around your hands [216, 217].
4. Pull last. Your arms join in once your hips are moving [217].
5. Turn the hip in. Turn the hip on the throwing side to the wall. That raises the same shoulder. It also keeps you close on steep walls [218, 219]. See Turning the hip in.
6. Keep the hips close. If they drift off the wall, you fall short however hard you push [217, 220].

6.4 Momentum and timing

• Don’t pause. Once you start, any stop kills your speed [21, 211].
• Pump once at most. See Hip pump.
• Let go late. Keep pushing on the start holds until the movement pulls them from your hands [207, 220].
• Use only the speed you need. Extra speed gives you a bigger swing to hold [208].
• Keep your eyes on the target through the whole move [207].
• Think in three phases: set up, launch, catch [215]. Most failures happen in the first or the last. The catch is Latching.

6.5 V3: momentum in everyday moves

6.6 V4: leaving the wall

6.7 V5: comp-style coordination