tech tip: heel hooking

ok, so i like to heelhook things when i climb. in fact, the technique's allowed me to static otherwise dynamic cruxes and figure out triple wicked cheater beta to bring difficult testpieces down to my lowly level. but you may recall that after a childhood of mogul skiing, my right knee is devoid of an ACL and had massive amounts of cartilage removed. it's as rickety as all get-out. my left knee has also had damage to its cartilage and LCL. so, how do i keep hooking my life away with bum knees? better strategy, technique, and a keen sense of limits. since any powerful heel hook move can CERTAINLY destroy your knee, the last factor is perhaps the most important.

so, for what it's worth, here we go. any idiot can heel hook on a super in-cut ledge, but you don't have that luxery, you have a sixty degree overhang and a non-positive, but large feature that you can get your heel onto to take weight and to provide balance and power for a long lock-off or dead-point stab move coming up. what do you do?


















1. the most common heel hooking problem is see is someone throwing their heel on a feature with now outward bend in their leg. they contact the hold with toes to the sky, sole away from them, and only with the inside of the heel cup rubber. while this positioning can work temporarily, it is by no means optimal: your leg is too straight to utilize the most powerful squeeze muscles in your leg and as your body progresses through your next move, the heel will pivot right off of the hold, or enough so that you lose contact with the sweet spot of your heel. this photo isn't great, but behold the poor technique:
















2. another poor technique is the flip side of #1: a climber points the knee way out from the wall so that the inner thigh points straight up into the sky, and the outside of the heel makes contact with the feature. this technique is used mainly on more flat, horizontal features. while it is certainly more powerful that #1, the problem is that it puts undue stress on your knee joint and in such a way that the muscles of your leg cannot do much to support your ligaments. so, if you crank down in this position, you very well may hear a sickening pop in your knee. thankfully, there are little adjustments that you can do to help protect your knee. check all the comments, below, about how #2 has explodamacated knees of your favorite climbing heroes! will lemaire will never look at this site or post, so i'll also toss his name into the injured list... doing a heel-toe lock in the #2 orientation, he substantially damaged hisself in the knee-u-lar region.

3. so, perhaps the most powerful heel hook technique for more vertical features is depicted below. the climber's leg is bent out from the wall, maximizing the power of the leg muscles, but the sole of the shoe is roughly pointed towards the face of the wall itself. thus, the meet of the rubber on the shoe is contacting the hold and no unnecessary stress is placed on the knee joint since this alignment allows the muscles to suppliment the ligaments. the bend in the knee allows the leg to wrap around features in the stone like aretes, bulges, or similar. if the climber needs to make a long move from this position, photo 4 shows how the heel's orientation should change; as the climber's body rises above the heel, the heel is allowed to rotate on the feature so that the sole of the shoe goes from facing the wall to eventually facing the hold itself. slowly, the foot will actually gain contact area with the feature as the toes come down and the climber perches the heel hook beneath his or her hips.

this progression is extremely helpful for bunchy, mantle top outs and seems to tweak my knees much less than having a heel farther out from my body that involves the torque described in #2, above. note that in some cases, you will get to a point perching over the heel hook that you will be able to simply roll onto your toes. don't be afraid to experiment with this technique, as it can often help you stand up substantially further than the heek hook could ever allow.

photo 4:



5. but what if the feature you're trying to heel hook on is too sloping for the angle you are climbing on? what if the heel hook pulls you away from that long reach you need to do? like all climbing, mastering heel hook technique requires an innate sense of balance and positioning. sometimes a heel hook is necessary, but can pull your center of gravity out of the alignment you need for the next move; or, the heel hook is just very very slick and you cannot seem to have your heel stay during the move. look for oppositional foot holds for your other foot. sometimes this can be a tiny dime edge under the roof that you can push against just enough to hold your heel on. the positioning you are looking for is again, oppositional to the heel. so, look to edge with your keen pointed directly away from the direction your other heel. sometimes this even means that your knee is pointed slightly down to the ground. or, consider a "bicycle" move. for the feature pictured above, this would mean having my left foot pushing on the underneath of the large feature that my right heel is hooking on. this technique can provide a tremendous amount of stability for an otherwise very fussy and grim heel hook. finally, never overlook the possibility of finding a heel hook or toe hook for your opposite foot... even if not optimal [i.e. it's small, inobvious, or is going to spit off during the move], that little bit of opposition can stabilize the trajectory of your next move long enough to make the difference between sticking it, and spitting off.

6. the heel-toe cam: another way to optimize a heel hooking opportunity is definitely the most dangerous for your knee... it involves placing your heel on a feature, then twisting your foot so that your toe or even the toe-rand presses strongly into a roof, crack, slot, or pod feature. like it sounds, you are camming your foot between heel and toe and it gets locked in place. this is dangerous because it often involves torquing your knee in exactly the orientations in which your knee is most vulnerable to damage. also, once your weight settles on a heel-toe cam, it is difficult to release... or, your heel may stay if your hands blow off their holds unexpectedly. this can be catastrophic. nevertheless, heel-toe cams can be the most secure ways to use your feet in bouldering.

7. not all shoes are created equal. don't be afraid to try different shoes on different heel hooking features. just because a heel design involves a good covering of rubber does not mean that it is any good for heel hooking. also, a shoe that dominates heel hook moves on certain types of features may not be as good as another design on a particularly unique or thin feature. i've spent way too many hours of my life experimenting with different shoes and discussing the pros/cons of different designs and i will not bore you with the details at this time. suffice to say, however, that you can often watch a heel cup deform as your friends perform heel hook moves. the more deformation and the sloppier the fit, the worse the shoe will be at hooking. also, the more distant the heel hook feature needs to be, the more important that laces or other secure closures will become. also, remember that just because one shoe works perfectly for a friend of yours does not mean that it will perform the same for you. we are all built a bit differently and the heel cup of different models will fit more snugly, without pain or baggage. so, don't be afraid to wear a different shoe model on each foot if it helps on a certain climb. climbing shoes are tools and for the precision necessary for desperate climbing, one tool will never excel at all jobs, no matter how cutting-edge it is.


NOTE: as i have mentioned repeatedly, heel hooking in any orientation can damage your knees very very easily. be extremely careful and make sure to have a very close spot when experimenting with different techniques to ensure you can have weight taken off by the spotter immediately if necessary. if you feel something tweaky in your knee, DO NOT CONTINUE. drop off immediately. pushing through torque on your knee will pop something. it has happened to me numerous times and i will pay for it in my old age.

finally, if anyone has photos of actual climbing that would show these techniques, for good or bad, please feel free to post links. better illustrations could help tremendously.