How to Practise Climbing Footwork: Watching Your Feet, Quiet Feet, Edging, Smearing, Foot Swaps and Hooks

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The easiest way to tell who climbs well in a gym is to listen. Some people move up the wall with almost no sound from their feet. Others land every step with a thud, then scrub the shoe around on the hold before it settles.

This is post 1 of the Climbing Movement series. The series overview suggested that when you plateau, you first work out whether you lack strength or movement, and the first movement lesson is nearly always the feet. This post covers watching your feet, making them quiet, which part of the shoe goes on which kind of hold, swapping feet, choosing footholds, and when your feet should pull rather than push. Footwork details for steep walls are saved for post 8, wall angles.

Why footwork comes first

Baláš and colleagues (2014) put pressure insoles in climbing shoes and compared novice and intermediate climbers on the same route. The novices pushed less force through the footholds, yet their oxygen uptake and heart rate were higher. When your feet don't take the weight, your hands and your cardiovascular system pay for it.

The British Mountaineering Council (BMC) FUNdamentals coaching notes are blunter: beginners often lack precision placing their feet, and even advanced climbers often show poor footwork. So this isn't only for beginners.

Footwork has two parts: which foothold to choose, and which part of the shoe to use and how. The BMC and Kevin Jorgeson's footwork article on Climbing.com make the same point: climbing shoes are designed to concentrate power into the big toe. The big toe is the pivot you stand and turn on.

Watch your foot and place it once

The German Alpine Club (DAV) article Die Basics der Klettertechnik (in German) boils footwork down to two lines: eyes on your feet; step precisely with an unweighted foot, on the front of the foot. It also has a line worth remembering: stepping blind is like playing the lottery.

Beginners tend to keep looking up for the next handhold. DAV wants the opposite: look down at the footholds and your feet, and follow the whole placement with your eyes. A Taiwanese coach, A-Lun, gives the same advice in HANCHOR's bouldering lessons (in Chinese): don't rush to look up; spend a few seconds checking your foot is in the best spot.

Once you step:

• Pick an exact spot. Lattice Training's footwork basics tells you to choose a specific point on the hold, put your big toe on it without bouncing around, and commit.
• Keep it still. REI's climbing techniques guide says that once you set your foot, keep it still, and you're less likely to slip off as you make the next move.

Something you can do tonight: do the Philly Rock Gym sticky-feet drill. Pick boulder problems one or two grades below what you can onsight. The rule: once your foot touches a hold, you can't adjust it. Pretend there's superglue on the sole. If you placed it badly, climb on from that position anyway.

Quiet feet: no noise when you step

Quiet feet is the most common footwork drill. Jorgeson says it came from his early coach, Andrew Wallach: if his foot squeaked or made a sound when he placed it, he was punished, in his case with a 200-foot gym traverse. The key is having someone nearby to call you out.

Jorgeson's method:

1. Straighten your arms and hang on your skeleton while you survey your foothold options.
2. Bring the foot in slowly, touching the wall face and the top of the hold at the same time. Imagine the rock has wet paint on it: your shoe should leave a tiny dot, not a smear of lines.
3. As you make contact, relax the foot and let it absorb weight. He says noisy, sloppy footwork comes partly from a rigid ankle.

Philly Rock Gym adds one rule: keep your eyes on each foot until it starts taking weight.

HANCHOR's article notices the same thing: top climbers move carefully, adjust their feet precisely, and place them lightly and quietly.

Something you can do tonight: in your warm-up, pick three problems in the bouldering area two grades below your level and climb them with quiet feet. Ask a friend to listen from below; any sound and you start again.

Which part of the shoe: toe, inside edge, outside edge

Standing on a defined hold with the edge of your shoe is edging. REI splits it in two, and Taiwanese gyms simply say 內側 (inside) and 外側 (outside):

• Inside edge: the big-toe side. REI says the big toe gives stability on small holds.
• Outside edge: the little-toe side. Which one you use depends on the direction you need to move.

HANCHOR adds that the inside edge usually lets your body get closer to the wall, while the outside edge can help you keep your balance on certain moves.

The most common mistake is spelled out in Neil Gresham's footwork article on UKClimbing: many climbers stand on the rounded middle of the edge, near the instep, instead of the front toe part. The middle is less stable, and you can't rise onto your toes for extra reach. For most edging moves, he says, the foot should make roughly a 45-degree angle with the wall.

Outside edging gets overlooked even more. Gresham says many beginners lack it, which shows when they duck-foot along traverses or vertical routes and lose balance. Use the front of the outside edge too, not the rounded side: turn your heel outwards slightly as you step through so the foot makes a 45-degree angle to the wall instead of lying parallel to it.

Something you can do tonight: try Lattice's pivot drill. On a big foothold, place the inside edge of your big toe, pivot round onto the outside edge on the same hold, pivot back, then repeat on smaller and smaller holds.

No hold? Smear the wall

When there's no defined foothold, you press the front of the shoe flat against the wall and stand on friction. That's smearing; HANCHOR's Taiwanese term is 踩板. REI says smearing is most useful on slabs, and you can look for small depressions or bumps for extra friction.

Gresham's ten footwork tips on Climbing.com sum up how to smear:

• Don't keep testing. Tapping the foot on and off becomes a nervous habit.
• Keep the pressure constant and even. Move your weight smoothly from foot to foot.
• Take small steps. Several small steps usually beat one big one.
• Press hard. Pressing hard on a tiny smear feels counter-intuitive, but if you are tentative you lose friction.

Should the heel be low?

REI and Gresham both say keep the heel low: a high heel puts less rubber on the wall and makes it easier to lever the foot off on the next move.

Lattice adds a caveat. Dropping the heel adds contact area, which is great when smearing on volumes. On holds, though, a heel that drops too low shifts weight to the back of the foot, so less force goes through the toe and friction drops. Lattice's conclusion: there's no one size fits all, and every hold is different.

So drop the heel when smearing; on a hold, find the angle that lets your big toe press hardest.

Something you can do tonight: on an easy slab problem, follow Philly Rock Gym's sequence: climb it normally, then right hand only, then left hand only, then no hands. DAV's version is fists only. If no hands is too much, stop at one hand.

Swapping feet

You swap feet when footholds are far apart or you need to switch which foot stands on a hold.

Gresham's first advice is to plan your foot sequence to minimise swaps. But gym footholds are limited and sometimes you have no choice. Then don't "jump and clump". He teaches two methods:

• Pivot: roll the weighted foot off one side of the hold and slide the other foot in from the side into the free space.
• Ballerina: turn your knees out into a plié, hover the toe of the new foot pointing down over the weighted foot, then quickly roll the old foot out.

Either way, be quick and accurate at the moment of the switch, because that's when your feet carry less weight. Gresham also suggests a habit: on large footholds, leave the inside corner free in case you need to swap later; don't do this on small footholds.

HANCHOR describes two ways too: step onto the toes of the other foot and rotate the original foot out, or do a small hop so the other foot can take its place. Lattice lists at least five common swap methods, far too many to memorise. What matters is knowing which foot carries your weight during the swap.

Something you can do tonight: on the traverse wall or on big low footholds, swap feet ten times with the pivot method and ten times with the ballerina method. After each swap, pause for two seconds to make sure the new foot is solid before you move.

High or low footholds?

Higher isn't always better, and neither is closer.

DAV uses stairs as an analogy: on a staircase you push your knee forward past your foot until your hip, and with it your centre of gravity, is over the foot, and only then straighten the leg. On the wall it's the same. After you place a foot, move your weight over it before pushing up with the leg. Put the foot too high and you can't get your weight over it, so you end up pulling with your hands. REI suggests keeping your feet roughly below you for better balance.

Hooper's Beta notes point out another trap: getting trapped by "good" feet. You see a big hold and put your foot on it, so the foot goes where the hold is, not where your body needs it. Before you step, ask why you're putting your foot there.

Something you can do tonight: on an easy route, try two footholds at different heights for each move: one around knee height, one around hip height. Compare which one lets you get your weight over it and reach the next handhold by straightening your leg.

Feet can pull too: an introduction to heel and toe hooks

So far your feet have been pushing. On overhangs and roofs they also need to pull. HANCHOR uses the common Taiwanese names 掛腳 (heel hook) and 勾腳 (toe hook).

• Heel hook: hook a hold with your heel. In UKClimbing's heel-hooking lesson, Gresham and guest coach Louis Parkinson say the most common mistake is to plonk the heel into place and hope it stays. The foot must be at the right angle, and you keep pulling back with the hamstring.
• Toe hook: hook the underside of a hold with the top of your foot. UKClimbing's toe-hooking lesson says its main use is stopping your feet swinging off on overhangs, by pulling with the shin muscle. Commit fully: a tentative toe hook that blows suddenly leaves you worse off than not using it at all.

A line from Parkinson is worth keeping: don't think of your limbs as "arms, for pulling" and "legs, for pushing", but as four completely interchangeable limbs. You're as likely to pull with your legs as push with your arms.

This is only an introduction. How to combine heel and toe hooks on overhangs and roofs is in post 8, wall angles.

Something you can do tonight: in the steep area, hold a big jug with both hands. Hook one heel on a hold next to your hands and pull back with your hamstring until you feel the weight in your hands drop. Then switch to hooking the underside of a hold with the top of your foot and see whether your feet stay on when you let go with one hand. Come down when you're done; don't hang there grinding.

"Climb with your feet, not your arms" is half right

This is probably the cue beginners hear most. REI uses a ladder: you don't pull yourself up a ladder, you step up, and use your hands for balance.

On walls near vertical, that roughly holds. The three wall angles in Baláš 2014 went from slightly less than vertical to slightly overhanging, and at every angle the novices loaded their feet less and used more oxygen.

But the steeper the wall, the more weight goes to the hands, however good your footwork:

• Baláš 2014 found that foot loading fell as the wall got steeper.
• It also cites Noé and colleagues (2001): in static stances on a wall overhanging by 10 degrees, footholds took less force and handholds more than on a vertical wall.
• Bonelli and colleagues (2026) measured forces with instrumented holds and reached the same conclusion: steeper walls move load from the feet to the hands.

So on overhangs, the more accurate cue is "keep your feet on the wall". Gresham's UKClimbing article says that on slabs and on vertical walls with good footholds, you can use your feet passively like a platform. On a steep overhang with poor footholds, you have to tense your hamstrings, glutes, abs and lower back as one chain and imagine drilling your toe through the hold into the wall. Otherwise a foot pops and you swing off.

Something you can do tonight: climb two routes of the same grade, one vertical and one steep. On the steep one, before each new hold, check both feet are still pressing on the wall and drive your toes into the holds.

Practice: five scenarios

Answers are under each question. Think first, then open.

1. You step onto a small foothold and scrub the shoe around twice before it settles. When you reach, the foot slips.

2. You're standing on a small hold with the middle of the edge near your instep. You try to rise onto your toes for a high handhold and can't.

3. You're smearing on a slab and don't trust it, so you tap each foot on and off before committing.

4. You want to switch from your left foot to your right on the same small hold, so you just hop, and both feet slip off.

5. Under a roof, a friend keeps letting their feet dangle and just reaching with their hands, saying "steep climbing is all about arm strength".

Next

Once your feet are solid, the next question is your centre of gravity. With your foot placed, how do you move your body over it? When should you keep "three points of contact" and when should you let it go? That's post 2: balance and the three-points rule.

For the series map and the self-check table, go back to the series overview.

References

• Baláš J, et al. The Effect of Climbing Ability and Slope Inclination on Vertical Foot Loading Using a Novel Force Sensor Instrumentation System (Journal of Human Kinetics, 2014)
• Bonelli E, et al. Climber's muscle excitation and force distribution at different wall angles and body positions (European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2026)
• FUNdamentals of Climbing 1, 2 and 3 Guidance Notes (British Mountaineering Council, 2014)
• Die Basics der Klettertechnik (Deutscher Alpenverein, in German)
• Climbing Techniques and Moves (REI Expert Advice)
• Neil Gresham: Quit Floundering—Turn Your Feet Into Precision Instruments With These 10 Tips (Climbing.com, 2022)
• Neil Gresham: SKILLS: Technique – Use of the Toe (UKClimbing)
• Neil Gresham & Louis Parkinson: SKILLS: Technique – Heel Hooking (UKClimbing)
• Neil Gresham: SKILLS: Toe-Hooking and Clamping (UKClimbing)
• Kevin Jorgeson: How Kevin Jorgeson Practices Perfect Footwork (Climbing.com, 2022)
• Rock Climbing Footwork: The Basics (Lattice Training, 2023)
• Learn 100+ Climbing Techniques With Just 4 Movement Concepts (Lattice Training, 2024)
• Four Awesome Climbing Footwork Drills (Philly Rock Gym)
• The "Off Foot" is Climbing Technique #1 (Hooper's Beta, 2025)
• A-Lun's bouldering class: using footholds and footwork (HANCHOR, in Chinese)
• Strength or movement: series overview