At some point during our climbing we start to be introduced to holds that are not positive, they don’t have an in-cut section for your fingers to grip onto. Slopers are all about body position and even tension being applied between hands and feet.

Your body position

If you have a sloper that you are struggling to hold try moving around more, move your body up, down, left or right and find the best position to grab hold of the sloper. Move slowly and deliberately, go through a checklist:

1. What are my feet doing? 

2. What are my hands doing? 

3. Are all of them working hard or is 1 or 2 limbs not helping me? 

4. Do I need to balance better? What are my hips doing?

5. If I push or pull on the other holds does that make the main hold I'm using better or worse?

We are aiming to find the best part of the hold to use, and the best body position to use it from. This may change as you progress through the climb and have to move along a large sloper.

Friction!

When holding slopers, we want a lot of skin contact through our fingers to make use of what friction we have. Try to keep your wrists neutral and in strong positions (Your hand will be in line with your forearm). Aim to have you centre of gravity straight in line with the good part of a hold as well. E.g. if the sloper is above you with the best part of the hold on top, you want your body weight straight underneath the hold for the best grip. As you start to move out of this zone, your grip on the hold will worsen.

Train your sloper skills
A valuable skill for sloper climbing is one touch, make sure you grab a hold once and grab it right. Not readjusting reduces the risk of slippage, you can find more on the skillset here: https://youtu.be/5tFFqnFi5c0