What Magnus isn't telling you. Pro climbers biomechanics secrets revealed.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 มิ.ย. 2023
- theotanchak.com/get-the-book
@theotanchak on the gram
This isn't medical advice, if you're concerned about an injury, see a doctor.
BTC address for flowers etc: 3GvyCkQo3uyKsWP4P9o29AxwcJXERJMUA2
Magnus does kinda tell you though. He keeps saying to keep your body as close to the wall as possible, increasing back muscle usage.
Which without context doesnt tell you much. I see ppl giving this advice to beginners all the time, mostly what they end up doing is either bending their arms too much or pushing pelvis to the wall (while keeping the chest out). Neither of these can generate tension and effective movement of your center of mass.
@@pavelbelik6174 Well more likely than not, they doesn't know much about the technique. They just do that and it works and have trouble explaining it to them. Like singers, saying you need to have proper support, but most people wouldn't know what they are talking about. But at the same time, it is really hard to know what proper support is.
Yeah but he can’t give this level of detail as well as why keeping yourself close to the wall improves your climbing because it’s so natural for him
There is so so much information in this video beyond "engage your back muscles" though. In fact I would say engaging your back muscles is a pretty common piece of advice and not really relevant to this video's topic of posture, balance, and joint movement.
The videos that Magnus shoots are for entertainment not education and he isn't personally coaching the people he is with.
The last video of his I saw he & Juji were discussing range of motion and the ability to control power on a lateral pulldown machine where Juji would pull to his chin but Magnus would pull to his nipples.
Magnus stops when he loses form to ensure he is training evenly through the range of motion instead of going for maximum reps.
Everyone that has been climbing regularly for a year or two understand this stuff very well but nobody wants a biomechanics lecture on a light entertainment video for newbies.
I thought Magnus was "only" the best chess player on this planet. Amazing his also a climb pro.
Lmao
He uses the movement of the horse on the wall well. We have no chance:(
More climbing content please! This video is tremendously helpful for climbers at all levels. Amazing detail and very comprehensive! Thank you.
wow right on man. that is exactly how i wasnt making any gains in the gym. i couldnt not engage my shoulder blades, core and hips because of those postural issues. anterior pelvic tilt, rounded shoulders. i was using joints for most of my time training. it has gotten better but after i watched this video i was livid because that is exactly the observations i made trying to fix my posture. thank you for putting it into words i couldn't still making progress👍
I'm not a rock climber, but this is exactly what i've been working on lately to improve in kickboxing. tight hamstrings and hunching of the shoulders will make every movement so much more difficult. throws off balance when moving in and out of range, makes generating power for punches/kicks way harder. Been working on active stretching exercises for months, and trying to strengthen opposing/ stabilizing muscles and i'm breaking plateaus i never thought i could, especially in my 30s.
Any tips or video suggestions for tight hamstrings? I've been struggling with this lately for climbing, but haven't found much success from the stretches I've found. Only one I feel helps is a straight leg dead lifts and just resting with the weight just off the ground as I lower it.
@@clifforgeironworks2911 Absolutely! I used to struggle with hamstrings for years and only recently have been seeing crazy results, . Lessons i learned definitely has helped everywhere else too.
Upright Health has some really good videos like "Tight Hamstrings - Why Static Stretching Doesn't Work (and What Does)" and "Touch Your Toes Today - 2 Exercises You Need". I'd say they helped me the most.
Most of the exercises i'm doing for mobility are pretty boring to be honest. They are almost like physio exercises. But my main take away was developing strength at the most stretched position.
So when i touch my toes (now more like palms on ground), i will reach behind my calfs and try to hinge my upper body up while holding on. that makes my hamstrings and glutes contract in a stretched position. Usually after a little while of doing that, ill be able to go deeper into the stretch. ill do it again in the deeper position. Ill keep doing it untill i cant anymore, which can take 3-5 min.
After 4 months of doing it almost everyday, its been night and day! I've also been working on my hips, ankles, psoas at the same time.
I'va also been adding nordic curls to strengthen the hamstrings which KneesOverToesGuy has great videos on in order to have better stability in my knees, since my quads are really over developed.
Kinda long winded but i hope that helps!
oh my god dude you desccribed exactly what my problem was. tight hamstrings, (due to my weak core not being able to keep my pelvis in place when I sleep), weak core, hunched shoulders. this helped put my expereinces with trying to improve my posture and excercise within the past few months.😊
Wow! Your way of explaining what's really going on resonates great for me. You've already made a difference and this is the first of your videos I've studied. Thanks for sharing. Cheers
Great video! Love to geek out on this stuff! I’m definitely going to need to check out you other videos. As a climber I often find that the movement starts in the hips even before the scaps get going, similar to an Olympic lift. One of my all time favorite climbing videos is Margo Hayes’s FA of Biographie - so much power in the lower half!
Great video ! A lot of insightful, in depth information , that I didn't find any where else. Hope you keep more climbing content coming
Very interesting! I’m not sure if I completely agree with shoulder engagement and posture being the main difference between pros and amateurs. I think the last subject you touched on, namely the skill of coordinating tension throughout the body, being a much bigger predictor of climbing talent. In some ways I would consider proper shoulder engagment to be a sub-category within the all to broad term of «tension».
Ok, now show me a pro climber with bad posture. I'll wait.
@@MartinDlabaja Of the climbers on the upper echelon of the sport you'll probably don't find any. However, correlation doesn't equal causation as we all know, and "pro climber" doesn't say much in terms of absolute skill level. There are so many steps between amateur and world class, and optimal shoulder engagment in every (most) single position will probably be found only with the absolute best. And even these athletes will have to figure out the specifics of a single move. Maybe the move requires extra attention to pulling and twisting with the leg just the right amount. Maybe it requires a slight change of angle in the shoulder. My point is that there isn't one specific recipe for muscular engagment in climbing, but rather a whole skillset of knowing different positions and being able to respond to changes in the body. Climbing talents usually have an innate intuition when it comes to the complex and nuanced movements required for climbing. If we're talking about having properly bad posture and not being able to engage the shoulder properly most of the time not, we're not comparing amaterus to pros, we're just comparing amateurs to amateurs.
Body awareness and understanding efficient movement is a skill. Athletes are usually gifted with innate understanding of movement efficiency but that doesn't explain everything. A lot of pro athletes in many sports have unique movement patterns that doesn't follow textbook technique. Our bodies do a lot of adaptations, great athletes are the ones that keep making adaptations faster and longer than the average. Posture is only a byproduct of their adaptations, they are not activelly trying to achieve certain posture, what I mean is that overfocusing on posture is not the answer to become better at the sport. Obviously, you should avoid positions that are biomechanically disavantegous due to risk of injury and pain, but that's not where you should be spending most of your time if you are healthy and pain-free. Sport specific practice is the most important variable to keep making adaptations, strengthening exercises comes second.
which also a skill that is genetic, that awareness of where body is in space and how well you can control fire your muscle etc is also genetic, can be improved but still rooted in genes
@@hermannwigers8321 There is a good paper from 2021 that correlated climbing age/ability with thoracic kyphosis angle. Most elite climbers if not all have stereotypically 'bad' posture. It's an adaptation to the demands of climbing.
Awesome Theo. I came across your channel at some point because I watch some parkour videos every now and then and the algorithm randomly recommended it once, but I actually do rock climbing myself and this video is giving me a lot to think about!
Very insightful! More climbing content please!
This was an incredibly informative. I always wondered why my upper peck was under developed especially so on one side and had no idea the impact it's probably having on my climbing. Would be awesome to see more on how to resolve some of the problems you described in this video.
I've climbed for 15 years. This is a fantastic video. Can you recommend any weight training exercises to balance out these imbalances of the mid-back, shoulders, and upper pectorals and the body lines that start with the hips and go up the entire spine?
This is really interesting and hopefully I will be able to make use of this. The shoulder blade + posture demonstration was a bit mind blowing.
The more i learn from you, the more i know how terrible i am at everything :D
Great! Now you know what to fix!
Really illuminating, many thanks!
Another amazing video Theo!!!!
Consistently putting out interesting content that I've totally forgotten the next time I go to move, appreciate it though!
Great and quite timely. I just watched a video with Magnus, Jujimufu and Larry Wheels; because of Magnus’s lat/back engagement he did the same weight as Larry/Juji. Always believe there is body mechanical leverage untapped and this validates how bad I am at it, but look forward to improving. 🙏
Thank you, this was very valuable. Do not agree with everything, but still great content. Great way to address the importance of intention and explaining what “pulling hard” really means for pros like Magnus.
Thanks mate, I've been working on my posture this year and have realised this exact thing! lifetime of hunching shoulders has given me tight pec minor and much worse climbing performance than you'd expect given the years of experience
I really appreciate your approach of taking a deep dive to explain correct body posture and biomechanics. Trying to learn something as knacky as parkour and climbing without understanding where to start and where to finish is futile. By the way, perhaps you’ve tried slacklining, but if you haven’t, at least for me, I found it to be more dependent on technique, posture, and body position than anything else I’ve tried. Many thanks for your videos, they’ve really been eye opening and helpful, cheers!
I would be interested in a followup video where you more explicitly show the application of these concepts in climbing at a wall!
Great video. Is there anything more concrete that can be done to implement these changes? I feel like it will be difficult to try with excercises that can be performed correctly with some sort of internal queue
Pete Whittaker and Magnus demonstrate how you need little arm strength to climb. He(Pete) used exactly the shoulders like you said, ofc he called it "throwing" or technique 😅
Thank You for this movie 🙏😄
Im sure this plays a factor, but no amount of shoulder movements is gonna make me hold on to those razor blades the routesetters call «holds»
7:49 any specific exercises you can recommend for this? preferably with a video? i have had this problem with my scapula for years and its really been holding me back
god tier video im gonna be watching this like 3 or 4 times and taking notes
that one british chick asking "try hard tortoise or jolly giraffe ?"
Can you make similar video about calisthenics?
You should make one of these videos on an Olympic Wrestler
I’m speeches. This sums up everything about I’ve been theorizing in my head last 6 months. Do you accept new clients
do you have a good mental cue to remind me to pull from the shoulderblade while hanging on the wall?
Aidan Roberts is another really clear example of this. Do you have any more suggestions for movement / proprioceptive drills that we can use to work on this?
It's not like pros don't have to learn these things as well. It's skill efficacy, like anything else. The more we pay attention to how things feel, the more information we can get, and can then work to make movements simpler and more repeatable. But that doesn't mean that we have to do things a certain way all the time. A large part of getting better has to do with how we apply the things we are already good at. To get better at "technique", we should stop trying to do everything the 'right' way, and instead start trying to do things the easiest way possible for us. As Greg Lehman says, "Preparation trumps quality".
There will always be difference between pro athletes and amateur athletes. In theory it sounds doable but amateur can never replicate what pros can do. Theres a reason why they are pros and amateurs are amateurs. Range of motion, flexibility, mobility etc are always better by miles and also proprioception for pros vs amateur. The guy is talking from theoretical point of view not practical. Just like swimming, your adult onset swimmer cannot move their shoulder blade to do these early vertical forearm. Its simple.
@@PhiyackYuh I'm not arguing with that. Genetic/environmental factors are massive and will always matter more than hard work. I'm arguing that as long as the swimmer starts moving and practicing, they are going to get better. Maybe not as good as a pro athlete, but the way they move has little to do with that. Telling people they need to learn how to move their shoulder blade before they can even start learning how to swim just creates more barriers to exercise. I agree, it's not practical at all.
@@mattnunes3893 Doesnt sound like his audience is people affected by barriers to exercise though? Im new to climbing but have done sports all my life and geek out on all this stuff, and I feel that someone like me is closer to his audience than the avatar you describe? For example I do find it practical - theres internal cues and external cues, and specifically to climbing, I find that most people rely on external cues for movement learning, whilst overlooking internal cues that could help them move specific areas of the body better in combination with those external cues. I felt this video was helpful especially in conjunction with Hoopers Betas newest video on the importance of cueing in climbing, and I think his point is that its preferable to learn how the shoulder blade moves parallel to climbing with intention, where part of the intention is the biomechanical know-how. Either way, Im always interested in different views, and if you are also a climber, Im curious to know your approach to learning climbing movement since it sounds like it may be widely different from mine.
@@crystalding5589 I just don't think that having an understanding of biomechanics is that relevant to success. Internal cues are great, but they aren't better than external cues, and sometimes they can even overcomplicate movements. It is possible to practice these movement skills without necessarily knowing exactly what your body is doing to get you there. But that said, you can still perform at a high level with less than ideal mechanics. Like Theo said, it is just one of many factors. Being mindful of your body in space, and practicing with intention will always win.
@@PhiyackYuh How do you think pros become pros? Amateurs with a certain amount of athletic talent can drastically improve at any particular athletic quality through dedicated training to the point of nearing or even equaling the pros, maybe becoming a pro themselves or maybe just being a top amateur due to not combining certain qualities relevant to the sport as well as pros do.
There's also no such thing as entirely universal athleticism. I'm reasonably fit and no more than a solid amateur tennis player, but thanks to that I'm willing to bet my hand-eye coordination and ground-based agility are better than 99% of pro climbers who have never played any ball sports seriously. Specific training leads to specific ability.
So the shoulders more like to be activated the by preparing them to be moved a bit back and to the up correct and chest itself pull to the front ?
Hey, super interesting. Another good example of that would be Aidan Roberts i believe.
basically be strong
Inside climbing they also never talk about ped use. Yes they used them, get alex Honold drunk and he will spill the beans. It can give incredible confidence, and apparently it made alex no longer scared of falling without ropes. Look magnus right in the eyes amd ask him which peds he's used to increase grip amd endurance lol
An analyzis of one of my favourite TH-cam climbers? Thanks so much, love your content.
Haven't finished the video yet, but my guess is Magnus' amazing feats are a mix of ideal training from a young age on, combined with fantastic genetics.
Could you please do an analysis of MESSI he is such a specimen and in my opinion possesses far superior body awareness, balance coordination than any athlete i've every seen before also has excellent strength and an incredibly durable body for the amount of damage players have tried to do on him. I think he is an excellent specimen to analyse for your type of work (injury prevention and biomechanics) and i'd greatly appreciate if you could do a video of him and your thoughts on why he is so good.
When I see a video with a title such as this, I expect 20 mins of useless motivational jargain. This video is really technical, useful and interesting. Thank you.
Hmm, thanks for defining the 'arm' for me. Never really understood how complex it is.
Happy to help!
Mostly accurate except my rear lat spread looks amazing, not ridiculous. Lol
0:04 that’s my home gym!
edit: btw that’s inner peaks south end in charlotte, north carolina
he actually used a ton of clips from that gym
Lmao that tree swing V3
I wish I could concentrate on this but I can't:(
scapula awareness
Flexing the Top Logger, classic.
Very intresting video, quite thought provoking. however, Im not entirely convinced the 'claims' you make are actually attributed to the weaknesses you suggest. Where is the data? it seems like an opinion based upon SOME facts / truths. Pro's typically train for very long periods, over their lifetime. They live the sport 24/7 & are supported by rehabilitation / nutrition / experienced coaches while learning / etc to become the 'best' in their field. An amateur generally don't follow this path moreover they spend a huge amount of time doing other things, some of which actually inhibits their ability to climb like 'a pro'. But certainly a good video :)
Your comment has a lot of assumptions, for someone who critisises 'claims' ;) Not all professionals live their profession 24/7 nor are they the best at observing why they are successful, as observing is a skill of it's own. Biomechanics as a field has found it's way into sport and arts (and making healthier lifestyles in general) and the effect on mindset, reconvalence and creativity of training less, but smarter, can't be understated. This is an observable fact, something I use every day, making my job more effortless, boosting my physical hobbies and easing lifestyle pains. My 5 cents👍
oh yay, another "secret" to climbing that will make me a pro in no time! Definitely has nothing to do with the insane training hours, dedication, and years of experience they have, it's because of how they roll their shoulders! Thank goodness you cited all those sources and research studies verifying what you're selling.
Funny how the posture specialist found the pro secret and it just happens to be posture related. Hammer finds the nail I guess.
Holy shit !!!!
You don’t recommend any exercises ?
I think the largest issue with this commentary is negating the role of the hip. A majority of this video is about the upper body which similarly to the role of the bicep compared to the shoulder is focusing on a much less important part of the body for climbing. There are at least a few Pro climbers who are actually pretty weak and have terrible posture but have ridiculous hip opening flexibility. This allows them to keep all of their weight in and requires much less strength overall. And whether we like it or not hip flexibility is actually inherently limited by your hip socket joint and certain types of hip socket joints do not allow full opening to get into a pancake split. It's unfortunately not something that you can just work on to fix yes you can improve but certain socket types will limit you far before others will have problems. Generally I think it is fair to say that in climbing whoever can open their hips more and have the least hip impingement is going to be the far superior climber regardless of finger and upper body strength. That's why all the young kids who look like Gumby and have very little muscle tension in their hips are able to climb High grades so fast ( in addition to smaller fingers and less body weight) it's a perfect example of how strength and body tension is much less important than the inherent flexibility to keep the body as close to the wall as possible.
Thank you for this comment, you hit the nail on the head!
If you look at the majority of pro climbers, almost all have slight/moderate shoulder protraction/internal rotation. Same goes for olympic rowers.
This does not impede performance. It improves performance, since your lats and other back muscles get mechanical advantage.
It isn't just poor posture that causes " the climbers posture". It is an adaptation.
He makes makes it sound like every climber aims to be a professional. I and a lot of climbers I know just climb for fun, for the social, to figure out or break the beta. Always remember to enjoy the journey (climbing) and not to concentrate on the destination too much (trying to be the best)
True, but it doesn't hurt to get better posture and biomechanics.
i don’t know about you but becoming the best at a hobby you can be without dedicating your life to it is where the fun comes from 🤷🏻♂️
those climbers aren’t the target audience
and why would those climbers be watching a video called "Pro climbers biomechanics" exactly?
10/10 insight
You have to speak louder dude, couldn't hear a lot with max volume over here.
Bro talks like his parents are at home
It's great you're trying to teach bio-mechanics but your super tacky and unprofessional for your title and calling out pros by name, not to mention arrogant to assume the don't understand mechanics. They are not coaches and their job is to climb not teach... any pro athlete absolutely understands mechanics. Don't be holier than thou if you want to be respected.
I'm sure everything you tried to explain as being true, but for someone who has lived 60 years without using those large muscle groups and has decided that even walking is to hard on me. The idea of using huge muscles to do simple tasks seems like the worst idea anyone has ever suggested. Maybe this is wrong but it seems like if I have to use those big muscles it will take me much more effort to do everything causing me to say fuck this and go look for my couch or bed to take a nap and delete you from my suggestion videos going forward. Keep teaching those who can and wish to get better, I'm gonna go catch some sleep instead.