“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
>”,”name”:”in-content-cta”,”type”:”link”}}”>Download the app.
When I was 18, I fell off gunning for the first bolt on Smith Rock’s Churning in the Wake (5.13a) on a hot October morning. My heel stayed hooked in a hueco and I fell onto my head, earning a concussion—and a lifelong aversion to hooking. However, as I’ve gotten older and needed better technique to compensate for lessening power, I’ve tried to become more of a hooking scientist.
I’ve also come to realize that most of us suck at heel hooking. We just plunk our heel on like a walrus flopping onto a ledge and carry on, hoping the heel sticks, exercising minimal intentionality. We might call this “old-school hooking” or “passive hooking.”
Back in the day, our slipshod approach to hooking was informed by both the newness of steep rock and our clunky shoes, which had slidey, insensitive heel cups and, with tension rands still rudimentary, little dialogue between the front and back of the shoe.
Case in point: Masters of Stone (1991), wherein the late Dan Osman climbs Slayer (5.14) at Cave Rock, Nevada, wearing the original Boreal Ace. Narrates Osman, “You’ve got to keep the opposition going … To keep the flow going in these moves, you’ve got to be constantly looking for these toe hooks, heel hooks, backsteps. Body English is extremely vital.” But then, from 16:30-16:50, he slaps his heel on blindly and just keeps climbing. This is not a knock on Osman, who was a superb climber; it’s just an observation of how incipient the technique was back then.
Contrast this with Benn Wheeler, whom Josh Horsley of The Testpiece Podcast has called a master of hooking, with off-the-charts ankle mobility, climbing the Rocky Mountain National Park problem The Phoenix (V14). From 5:40 to 6:40 in this video, Wheeler sends the compression arête, relying on multiple left heel hooks. He’s precise and intentional and dynamic, looking at his heel, placing it just so on tiny crystals, rotating over and around it, and squeezing hard with his leg muscles to create opposition. His heel becomes another hand—or a tail.
We might call this “new-school hooking” or “active hooking”—and it’s what we should all be doing. Our rock shoes and the collective knowledge have gotten so good; there’s no excuse for lazy hooking.
So next time you place a hook, study it, refine it, and activate it. Find the exact dimple or crystal where your heel locks in, and then play with the optimum angle of articulation in your ankle based on that hold and its position relative to your body—wiggle your foot around; flex your toes toward you or point them away. Once the heel is situated, fire up your leg muscles from your calf to your quadriceps to your hamstring to create opposition, and then drag your heel back toward you.
Now you’re heel hooking; now you’re on fire!
