UKC

Climbing coach and movement expert Udo Neumann is producing a UKC series on understanding and practising adaptable skills that you can apply to the dynamic and complex movements becoming popular in indoor bouldering, from IFSC World Cup finals to your local wall. In Part 3/3 Udo looks into some spatial and temporal aspects of modern bouldering and how to improve them.

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In reply to UKC Articles:

This series is fascinating even though I don't have a cat in hell's chance of replicating any of these movements and sequences. What I'd like to see next is how the knowledge here can be translated to 'ordinary punter' level. I suspect many of the points here can be connected to our conventional understanding of climbing technique, and would provide new insights even for the less skilled and atheletic amongst us if this could be articulated.

Great article from Udo Neumann again, thanks for sharing years of experience and scientific dissection of bouldering! Just have a quick question for the author and would be great to have some clarification: 

In the Hip section:   “…movement at the hip and movement at the pelvis. This effects overall coordination between the two areas. Better interaction between hip and pelvis increases balance, coordination, and mobility at the hip joint.”

Traditionally hip point is considered the acetabulofemoral joint (where three pelvic bones meet the femur) that allows multiplanar movement, and hip and pelvic joint are sometimes used interchangeably -  is the author referring to the posterior/lateral aspect of the hip joint as “hip” and anterior/abdominal aspect as “pelvis”?  Or was it meant to refer open/close chain on the hip joint? 

On the side note to the Terminology section, Monkey bar would be the closest word/concept in English that refers to locomotion describes brachiation. 

In reply to UKC Articles:

A brilliant read and a lot of food for thought. Much deepening of subjects I might have known a bit about, and some stuff I didn't really think about at all. Cheers!

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Bob, as a good starting point for anybody:

drive from your hip a bit more than you usually would. Pull less / hold the hold with less fingers. See if you find something interesting, enjoy!  

In reply to Simoncat: Thanks for clearing that up, I meant posterior/lateral aspect of the hip joint as “hip” and anterior/abdominal aspect as “pelvis” and especially the interaction of them.

Yeah, "Monkey bar", but that still sound like the apparatus and not like a movement to me. Just adopt "Hangeln" from German!

In reply to udini:

Hi Thank you for clarifying that, looking forward to more awesome articles like this! 

In reply to udini:

Thanks Udo- I’m looking forward to a chance to experiment. 

Cheers. I enjoyed this series as it talks about some things I like to think about it, sometimes in a different way, and also some interesting things I hadn't thought about too much.

But I'm just going to make an uninteresting terminology comment, regarding the term "brachiation". I think this is unsuitable for campusing. Brachiation makes me picture horizontal motion, generally moving the body forward, as you would on monkey bars. Campusing, even smoothly as shown in the article, the body swings side to side and the torso moves up against gravity.  I think if you are going to call campusing "brachiation" it is something similar to calling jumping "running".

EDIT:

Having watched the Jan Hojer clip, I can see that this is closer to actual brachiation, since the torso actually swings underneath the hand. In the campus board clips, the torso or c.o.g. never crosses the horizontal position of either of the two pivot points, the two hands.