When you have the weight in front of you, it pull your hips forward, arching your low back and putting your shoulders in a less advantageous position. When the weight is behind you, it sits more in-line with your center of gravity and pulls you into a more comfortable, hollow body position.

To attach the weight, you can use your haul loop if your harness has one, or wear your harness backwards. Putting the weight behind you might require an extra quickdraw or sling to make it easier to reach behind and connect the weight. You can see in the image above that I use a sling to attach the weight to my haul loop.

I used to get a lot of low back pain and the occasional shoulder soreness with heavy hangs. Switching to this method made the low back pain go away entirely and took a bulk of the stress off of my shoulders. Adding one-arm active hangs helped make my shoulders completely comfortable with heavier weight.

Shortly after I started using this weight attachment method I came across Eva Lopez’s poster that she sends out with her hangboards. The poster talked about the training protocol that she used in her research (check out Kris’s new podcast on training research to hear more about this), as well as tips for how to get the most out of your hangs. In one corner of the poster there was a little cartoon showing where your center of gravity should be when dead-hanging. Because I love finding things that confirm my beliefs, I immediately took a photo of it.

It was cool to see that someone who has put a lot of thought into how to hangboard well also had a similar idea for where our center of gravity should be when we hang.

So if you or someone you know finds heavy hangs uncomfortable or if you want to make them feel a little better, give this a try. If you do, be sure to let me know how it goes for you.

Around the Internet

If you like climbing competitions, statistics, and detailed explanations about both of those things, then you’ll probably enjoy this video from Plastic Weekly. It’s a 17 minute deep-dive into the question “Are the best climbers really getting younger?” I was afraid this would be a bit dry before I watched it, but I was surprised by how many interesting takeaways there were.

Maybe the most fascinating takeaway for me was that great climbers are great regardless of their age. The video does a great job of showing how people like Ondra, Ramonet, Anna Stohr, Akiyo Noguchi, and others maintained top performance in comps across many years. Each time one of them appeared in the competition scene it gave the impression that only young climbers would be able to keep up. Time has shown again and again that great climbers can continue to compete among the top of the field well into their twenties, and in some cases, their thirties.

I love sport climbing, but hate feeling like my fear of falling holds me back. Anytime I take a break from taking big falls I have to go back through the process of getting used to it again. I know that if I was more comfortable trying hard above a bolt that I would be able to send harder routes in less tries. Less tries per route means more routes sent every year - and more routes that I can have fun on every year.

For that reason, I really appreciated this video of high level climbers talking about their fears around falling. Hearing that 5.15 climbers also get scared above a bolt makes it easier to appreciate that getting really comfortable trying at my limit while sport climbing is a long term investment and I shouldn’t expect it to happen overnight.

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In the same sport climbing vein, I recently switched from tying a bowline to a figure eight. I loved my bowline, but the knot makes a lot of other people uncomfortable because they don’t know how to check it. I didn’t like my partner feeling uncomfortable with my knot so I decided to make the change. I was fine with the idea of switching knots, but I hated the eight because no matter how beautifully it was tied it would always tighten up on me and be impossible to get undone.

The same guy who made the fear of falling video above also made a video showing how there are two ways to tie a figure eight knot that both appear to be perfect, but can result in entirely different experiences when trying to untie them. This video was what made me finally switch over to using a figure eight and have zero issues untying it. I’m not usually into knots or general rope-craft, but I found this really interesting.

If you need a short video to boost your bouldering motivation before you go into the gym, this is what you’re looking for. This video shows Elijah Kiser making the first ascent of Levity, (V14) with an incredible display of power and psych.

In this video he says, “There’s a really big difference between trying not to fall, and trying as hard as you can. That ended up being the epiphany.” I’ve said before on the podcast that it’s important to make the distinction between climbing with the intention to climb well vs. climbing to not fall.

I see sport climbers climb in this defensive “don’t fall” mentality all the time. It results in more hesitation, less confident movement, and a lot of frustration. If your goal is “don’t fall” then there’s only one way to find success. However, if your goal is to give a great effort, you’ll have endless opportunities to find success. The “give a great effort” mindset will help you climb better, too.

Final Thoughts