[Fiend]

Apparently yet unsurprisingly I am rubbish at turning the lips of roofs and overhangings. Getting all my limbs to the lip is generally easy, hauling my bloated carcass over it seems disproportionately difficult. Hence I am wondering what sort of general physical training I can do to improve this.

Climbing-wise I should be doing okay, I've been working my core, I feel quite comfortable throwing my heels up high, I like high rockovers especially and enjoy roof jiggery pokery.

Gym-training-wise I should be doing okay, I often do weighted pull-ups (for the pulling up bit), heavy rows (for the locking tight in bit) and dips (for any pushing down bits).

I seem to be missing something, and while that something might be a load of sarcastic piss-taking, maybe someone has some proper ideas??

[SA Chris]

Hip flexibility?

[Fiend]

Seems relatively fine to me, as I say I feel comfortable throwing my heels up and getting some weight on the, but there seems to be an awful lot of me dangling underneath that doesn't want to move upwards.

[tomtom]

Stating the f*cking obvious - but go to the wall and do lots of lip turning problems. Get confident -get to know the movement/methods/techniques. I suspect you'll make faster gains finding some knacks that suit your body morphology than improving hip flexibility (for example).

Also - eat less pies.

Or - if you don't like lips - avoid routes/problems that have them. Pucker up :p

[benno]

Press-ups will be more use than dips for tricep and shoulder strength for lip-turning, I'd have thought? Some nice wide ones should give you a much more similar body position. Failing that, you could try religion? It's no good for lips, but it really helps with turning the other cheek, which is close enough.

[Fiend]

Tomtom, actually despite being fucking obvious, that is an interesting idea to try to find "the knacks", I hadn't really thought about working on the technique side.

Benno, I'm not too bad on presses, nearly 1XBW bench etc, and I do pressups regularly for antagonistic training. But I could do more, and deeper ones, for sure.

[SA Chris]

Proper 90 deg roofs have become a bit of a rarity at walls. Come do some training on the one at TE before it disappears.

[36chambers]

Is this an issue with lips in general or a few specific ones? I've found these kind of moves can feel easy or utterly desperate with only a slight change in beta.

I'd agree with it likely to be more of a "knack" issue rather than strength or flexibility. Apologises for being obvious, but it may be helpful to find someone to work these kind of problems with to see how others go about the moves.

[Falling Down]

Disclaimer _ I've not climbed for ages _

What TomTom said. I struggled with this for a long time and it was mainly psychological. Oh god there's a roof coming up... I'm rubbish at turning roofs.. Where's the next piece of gear... Can't see what's next.. Tense up. Spend ages faffing around trying to find the best sequence. Get pumped... Struggle back to the rest... Try again...Pumped/Tense Fall off.  Reinforce all those negative feelings then repeat next time.

I ended up practicing at Awesome Wals on the stepped roof section and it really helped.

[filz]

I have problems with these too. And more so with mantling on boulders.
In my case I think it's a lack of strength in the triceps combined with height which is often a disadvantage for this kind of movements.

IMHO anything that works the triceps is a good training in this case.

Since you already do dips and pressups you could try working on handstands pushups and muscleups.
Also on pressups I try to keep my elbows closed to the body to increase the work of the triceps.

And as TomTom suggested practice a lot of lips turning 

[tomtom]

Yup, stuff like palming down on a hold - learning to get your weight over a heel/lip foothold etc...

[jwi]

Well, turning the lip of the roof is almost always the crux, isn't it?

That's always going to be the case, regardless how good you are at it.

For training away from the wall: do leg curls on the balance ball, weighted dips and hip flexibility stretches I suppose

[Nibile]

All the above is correct, but you have to distinguish between turning the lip of a roof into a slight overhang or a slab, and manteling out on top of a boulder.
For the latter, pushing is often the thing to do, and it goes along with hip flexibility, hamstring pulling, properly placing a heel hook and making it work (toes pointing outwards so that your meniscus gets a proper beating... ), etc.
In the first case, the position of the holds from which you turn the lip, with respects to the lip, is crucial. The closer they are to the lip, the more difficult it is to turn it. So, depending on each case, it's important to aptly choose the holds for the move: it can happen that using higher but worse holds make turning the lip easier because you have less of your body underneath it. Like doing the move in small progressive bits.

[benno]

Yeah, if you're benching that much I doubt press-ups will help much Get practicing!

[Falling Down]

I was assuming Fiend was talking about a 90 degree roof; horizontal to vertical not topping out and mantelling.

[Fiend]

Yup that's right. And Nibbles description of one of the main difficulties with turning those sort of lips sounds spot on too. It usually feels like there is too much of my body underneath it.

It doesn't feel THAT psychological although I still am a bit more nervous about falling around lips than other (extensively practised) falls, so I can do more of that.

[filz]

Sorry my fault! I thought you meant something more similar to mantling.

Like from overhanging to a ledge or similar.

[Will Hunt]

Stating the f*cking obvious - but go to the wall and do lots of lip turning problems.

With Stubbs gone, somebody has to take up his mantle.











See what I did there.

[Falling Down]

It doesn't feel THAT psychological although I still am a bit more nervous about falling around lips than other (extensively practised) falls, so I can do more of that.

Sorry, didn't mean being worried about falling.  More like "oh this going to be hard" and it becoming self-fulfilling.  I think it's the whole - weight onto arms, being sideways and a n unfamiliar COG with technique required that takes some getting used to.

[lagerstarfish]

old school vertical climbing walls offered plenty of opportunities for mantling thin ledges of different lengths and widths (and altitudes)

it used to be a regular thing trying to see how small or thin a brick/concrete edge you could mantle onto

something that is hard to replicate on walls with bolt on resin holds

I used to feel that it was skill and experience gained from such shenanigans that got me round the lip of routes

[tomtom]

Hmm.. I think some walls do it well - depends on the setup. At the Depot they've a large section of wall with a deep low roof and then cross the lip and carry on up etc. (Usually hold on lip, heel on and rock up for something higher). Makes you realise you have to do the rock up onto the head wall before you're comfy etc..

When many moons ago I did perverted rope based climbing ( ) at the lead wall in Hull they had a roof head wall section at about 10m.. All about clipping while under then pushing on until comfy - ie not faffing at the lip.

Of course if it's Slopey lip shizzle you're after - I recommend a Lagerstarfish productions lip masterclass at Secret Garden (10% finders fee to me Lagers..)

[Will Hunt]

There's a lot of chat about heels here. People always assume the heel is king because it looks more "rad". The toe is more often better.

[Johnny Brown]

No, the heel is king because it requires less strength and is more secure. You often need to switch it to a toe as you stand up though.

[jwi]

Unless you're Edlinger in the 80s, then use the toe

[lagerstarfish]

the heel is king because it requires less strength and is more secure

where's the training value in that?