Most people view climbing as an adventure when it is much more than that. To be successful at climbing and to do gravity-defying tasks, you need to view climbing as a form of art that needs to be practiced and perfected rather than just taking it as an adventure. For beginners who are just starting to learn climbing, here are a number of tips which can help you understand how to excel at climbing and can help you improve and enhance your climbing skills.

1. Focus on Technique Rather than Strength

Most climbers think that upper body strength especially your muscular strength matters the most in climbing and that if someone is powerful, climbing would come naturally. This isn’t exactly true. If you really want to master climbing then your focus should be on climbing techniques rather than strength as you will gain strength automatically when you will practice but you will never be able to learn climbing techniques if you will only focus on gaining strength.

2. Perfect the Basics

Many climbers think that once they have scaled a certain type of terrain once, they don’t need to do it again. And this is why many climbers fail at really excelling. If you want to enhance your climbing skills and want to be able to scale some high rocks, it’s important that you perfect your basics and learn your trade by climbing a certain rock a number of times. There is no point in moving to more difficult heights if you aren’t sure about your foot movement or hand positioning or grips etc on a rock that is lesser in height and has an easier terrain.

3. Analyze Your Situation before Making a Move

Climbing is not all about foot movement and grips, a lot of it is related with the brain too. You must take some time in analyzing the rock and the best course for climbing before making your first move. Once you will have analyzed the course and thought it all out, you will find climbing to be rather easy. It’s also important to keep a calm head when climbing so that if and when you aren’t able to follow your course, you are mentally prepared to reanalyze your situation and chart a new course from there on in.

4. Invest in High-Quality Shoes

Climbers feel that shoes which are comfortable for them are often good enough for climbing. While this may be true for indoor climbing but is far from the truth as far as rock climbing is concerned. If you want to be able to ensure that your foot movement is perfect and if you want to be able to use every part of your foot in order to help you gain balance and footholds, then you should be investing in a high-quality pair of shoes. The shoes don’t need to be too tight but shouldn’t be too loose either.

5. Try Balancing Yourself on Bad Footholds

When climbing indoors, it’s important that you give yourself targets on climbing over footholds which are poor so as to ensure that you gain the strength needed to be able to navigate poor footholds. Footholds which are rough and are difficult to stand on would help you use muscles which you wouldn’t have used before and using these muscles would at the end strengthen them further.

6. Don’t Stop at Each Hold

Many beginners start overanalyzing the route and over think when choosing the next foothold and the next handhold. You must understand that climbing is very similar to dancing as you have to continue to move consistently if you want to make progress. So, it’s important that you keep pushing yourself to move fluidly and to not stop at every possible hold. This doesn’t mean that you don’t stop at all however; you must rest after every few minutes and analyze your situation.