Relaxed Grip & Resting

Set your feet and hips first so your legs carry your weight. Then hold the handhold only as hard as you need to stay on. Squeezing harder than that is over-gripping, and it tires your forearms faster.

weight in your feet, hands just secure.

Don't keep a nonstop squeeze. A steady grip drains oxygen from the forearm muscles, and in lab tests climbers' forearms recovered oxygen even in 3-second pauses between grips. Ease off your hand whenever your feet are taking the weight.

squeeze to move, soften to stand.

Choose the gentlest grip the hold allows. Open hand (finger joints only slightly bent) or half crimp (middle finger joints bent to about 90 degrees, fingertip joints straight) are your defaults. Save the full crimp (thumb pressing down on the index fingertip, fingertip joints bent backward) for small edges where nothing else works: it puts the most strain on the finger pulleys.

fingers draped over the hold, not clawed.

Look at the route before you start. Work out where the hard sections are and where the good holds and footholds are, so you know where you will rest.

a plan of where to stop.

Rest on a good hold with good feet, before you are fully pumped. Don't hang around on the hardest moves just because the holds are small. That pumps you out. Climb through, then rest where it's comfortable.

stopping because you chose to, not because you had to.

On vertical and steeper ground, hang on a straight arm at a rest. Your skeleton then takes the strain instead of your muscles. Bend your arms to move, not to wait.

hanging from the shoulder, elbow long.

On a slab or an easy vertical wall, stand tall on your feet at a rest instead of sinking low on a straight arm. Standing tall puts more of your weight through your feet. Sinking low made the forearm muscles work harder at every wall angle tested.

standing on your legs, hand barely holding.

At the rest, take one hand off. Let that arm hang straight down by your side and shake the hand and forearm loosely. In a lab study, shaking the forearm beside the body between grips gave longer endurance and faster forearm re-oxygenation than keeping the hand up on the hold.

a loose, dangling arm.

Put that hand back, then shake out the other arm the same way. Keep your feet weighted and your body still while you do it.

one hand holding lightly, the other shaking.

Give the rest some time. Forearm recovery is slower in less-trained climbers: in one study, intermediate climbers took around 47 seconds to recover half their forearm oxygen after a hang, elite climbers about 8. While you shake, read the next moves and spot the next rest.

breathing slows, eyes on the next section.

Between hard attempts, rest off the wall. In a lab study, walking between exhausting grip tests kept finger performance better than easy climbing or hanging did.

Warm up before you climb: raise your pulse, rotate your joints, then do some easy climbing. Skipping the warm-up is a listed risk factor for finger pulley injuries.

warm and loose before the first hard hold.

If a foot slips while you are on small holds, let go rather than catching yourself on your fingers. A sudden load on bent fingers, especially in a full crimp, is the classic way finger pulleys tear. Only do this where a fall is safe: above a pad or on a rope.