Climbing 5.15 isn’t something most of us are going to achieve. However, watching videos of top climbers, like Margo Hayes, send their projects is beneficial beyond simply being entertaining. That is as long as you watch the videos critically and analyze the climber’s movement, pacing, climbing style, ect.
To highlight just how much we can learn from watching footage of the top climbers, here’s an article by Eric Hörst of Training for Climbing. In it, he breaks down the uncut footage of Margo Hayes’ historic send of Biographie 5.15a.
“One of the beauties of climbing is its scalability. You climbing at your limit demands a similar effort and technical perfection as a pro climber needs to send at their limit (the strength & power requirements are vastly different, of course!). Rock climbing is a vertical dance with many mental, technical, physical, and tactical elements that dovetail into (what I believe is) the ultimate performance puzzle in all of sports. Your long-term quest to improve as a climber, then, demands that you must work on all of these areas. So in analyzing this video of Margo, you can glean some powerful clues for technical and tactical improvement.” – Eric Hörst
Learn From Watching Margo Hayes Send Biographie
As we mentioned above, the key to actually learning from watching Margo’s send and not just using it as entertainment is analyzing her climbing and breaking down her performance.
To do this, Hörst focuses on four parts of Margo’s climbing on Biographie:
- Pace of climbing between rest positions
- Footwork and hip/COG positioning
- Use of momentum and deadpoint movements
- Use of moving “micro rests”
Click through below to watch the video of Margo’s send and read Hörst’s in-depth analysis of these four elements for yourself!
Ultimately, there’s a lot to learn just from this video and Hörst’s breakdown. However, seeing how Hörst analyzes climbing footage will let you apply this same process not only to videos of other top climbers but even to your own climbing. Learning how to critically break down your own climbing performance is an important step to continued climbing improvement.
Full Article: Eric Hörst – Learn From Watching Margo Hayes Send Biographie
(video still courtesy of Joe Hedge)
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