Dynos: how to commit to a move you have to jump for

The move people avoid for years

Walk into any bouldering wall and watch what happens at the problem with the big gap in it. Most people try it twice, come up short both times, and quietly move on to something else.

They are not weak. Almost everyone who backs off a dyno could physically make the distance. What stops them is that a dyno asks you to let go of the wall entirely and trust that you will arrive somewhere useful, and nothing else in climbing asks that. Every other move is reversible. You can hesitate on a rockover. You cannot hesitate mid-air.

So the skill is not jumping. The skill is deciding, and then not changing your mind.

Deadpoint or dyno

Two words get used interchangeably and they describe different things. Worth separating, because they need different approaches.

A deadpoint is dynamic but your hands never both leave the rock. You generate upward momentum, and at the top of that movement there is a brief moment where you are neither rising nor falling, and your body is effectively weightless. That is the dead point. You take the hold there, while one hand is still on. It is the more useful of the two by a distance, and it is what most "dynamic" climbing actually is.

A dyno is a full release. Both hands leave, usually both feet too, and you are airborne between one position and the next. All the same physics apply, but with no safety line back to where you started.

Learn the deadpoint first. It is the same movement with the volume turned down, and it transfers directly.

Where the power comes from

If you are pulling yourself up with your arms, you have already lost the move. A dyno is a leg movement that your arms steer.

The sequence, roughly:

1. Load. Sink down into your feet. Bend the knees, let the hips drop, keep the arms fairly straight so the shoulders are not doing the work. This is a countermovement, the same thing you would do before jumping off the floor, and it stores the energy you are about to use.
2. Drive. Push hard through the legs and extend the hips towards the wall as much as upwards. That second part matters. A dyno driven straight up leaves you hanging off the front of the hold. A dyno driven up and in arrives with your body already close to the rock.
3. Guide. The arms do not pull you to the hold. They keep you on line and stop the body rotating. Think of them as steering rather than propulsion.
4. Catch. More on this below, because it is where attempts are actually lost.

Most failed dynos are failures of step one. People try to generate from a static start, get nothing, and conclude they are not strong enough. Sink first.

The catch is the crux

You can reach the hold and still come off it, and this is what happens to most people on their third or fourth go.

Arrive with a bent arm. Landing on a completely straight arm sends the whole shock into the elbow and shoulder, and the hand tends to bounce off. A little bend gives you something to absorb with.

Grip before you get there. The hand should be in its final shape as it arrives, not closing around the hold after contact. Late grip means the hold pushes your fingers open before they are ready.

Engage the whole body at contact. The moment your hand lands, everything tightens. Shoulders, core, hips. If you stay soft you swing away from the wall and the hold peels off your fingers as your body departs.

Expect the swing. Unless you have caught it perfectly, your legs will keep going. Get your feet back on quickly and low rather than flailing for the high foothold you wanted.

What the feet do

People forget the feet exist on a dyno, which is odd given the power comes from them.

Off a jug or a decent foothold, drive off both feet where you can. It is more stable and easier to control the direction.

Off a poor foothold, you may only get one foot involved. Accept that and drive off the better one, and expect to rotate slightly towards the weak side. Aim off a fraction to compensate.

On steep ground, the feet often stay on longer than you think. A dyno on an overhang is frequently more of a lunge with the feet cutting loose at the end rather than a true jump, and that is a good thing. Keep them on for as long as they will stay.

Read it properly before you pull on

Dynos punish improvisation, because you get no information mid-flight.

Stand back and settle three things.

The target. Not "that hold up there". The exact part of it you intend to hit, and which hand hits it. Point at it if that helps. A vague target produces a vague result.

The trajectory. Where does your body need to travel, not just your hand. Straight up, up and left, up and in. Watch someone else do it if you can, and watch their hips rather than their hands.

The landing. Where you end up if it does not stick, and whether the mats are actually under that spot. Move a pad if they are not. This is not caution, it is the thing that makes committing possible.

The commitment problem

Here is the honest bit. Most people do not fail dynos, they fail to attempt them.

A half attempt where you drive at 70% and pull back is not a data point. It teaches you nothing about the move, it makes you tired, and each one makes the next go feel worse rather than better. Three genuine attempts are worth more than fifteen tentative ones, and they cost less skin.

If you cannot bring yourself to go properly, the problem is usually the landing, not the move. Sort the landing out. Add a pad, get a spot, check what your heels come down on. Once the consequence of missing is genuinely fine, the commitment tends to arrive on its own.

The other thing that helps is deciding before you pull on. Standing on the holds having an internal debate is how the hesitation gets in. Choose from the ground, then execute what you chose.

How to practise without wrecking yourself

Dynamic movement is trainable and it improves quickly, because most climbers have never practised it at all.

• Deadpoints on easy ground. Pick a problem two or three grades below your limit and climb it deliberately dynamically. Deadpoint to every hold you would normally reach statically. This is the single best drill and almost nobody does it.
• Distance ladders. On a spare bit of wall, dyno between two jugs. Once it sticks, move the target hold up. You are calibrating what your body can actually do, which is usually more than you think.
• Both hands, both directions. Everyone has a preferred side. Practise catching with the other one.
• Keep the volume sensible. Dynos are high force on fingers, shoulders and elbows, and the catch is where the load spikes. Do them early in a session when you are warm and fresh, not at the end when you are pumped and your form has gone.
• Warm the shoulders properly. A dynamic catch on cold shoulders is one of the more reliable ways to pick up an injury.

Where you will meet them

Indoors, all the time. Modern comp style setting is built on dynamic movement, and a good setter will put at least one big move in every set, often on volumes where the feet are useless and jumping is the only option.

On a board, less so, but the deadpoint is everywhere. Steep board climbing is mostly small dynamic moves between poor holds, which is exactly the skill this builds.

Outside, dynos are rarer and usually the result of someone short reaching a move that taller climbers do statically. Grit has a few famous ones. Most outdoor dynamic movement is deadpointing rather than full flight.

Track the attempts, not just the sends

Dynos are a numbers game more than most climbing. The move either works or it does not, and the useful information is in how many goes it took and what changed between them.

Logging attempts in Sendit gives you that pattern rather than a vague memory of it. When you can see that dynamic problems take you eight or nine tries where everything else at that grade takes three, it stops being a feeling about your climbing and becomes something you can go and work on.

The short version

Sink before you go. Drive from the legs, up and into the wall, arms steering rather than pulling. Arrive with a bent arm, the hand already in shape, and tighten everything the moment you touch. Sort the landing out first so you can commit properly, and decide on the ground rather than on the holds.

The first dyno that sticks is a strange feeling, because the move you have been avoiding turns out to have been within reach the whole time. It was never really about the distance.