How to climb volumes: the big blank shapes nobody teaches you

The shapes everyone climbs around

Walk into a wall built in the last ten years and a good third of the surface is not flat. Big plywood and fibreglass shapes bolt onto the panels, changing the angle underneath them, and setters hang problems off, over and around them.

Most climbers have a quiet relationship with these. They use the ones with holds screwed on and treat the bare ones as scenery. Then a problem comes along where the only foot is the volume itself, and there is a lot of stepping up, sliding off, and blaming the shoes.

Volumes are holds. They are just holds that do not look like holds, and they reward a completely different set of habits to the crimps and jugs most people learn on.

What a volume actually gives you

Three things, and it helps to know which one you are being offered before you commit.

A surface. The face of the volume, with nothing on it. This is friction only. Your foot works because of how much rubber you get on the shape and how the force runs into it, not because there is an edge to stand on.

An edge. Where two faces of the volume meet. Often the best thing on it and often ignored, because it does not look like a foothold. A volume edge can be a genuine edge, a heel hook, a toe hook or a hand hold depending on where it sits.

An angle change. The volume alters the wall underneath it. A big shape on a steep wall creates a bit of slab you can stand on, or a hidden corner you can bridge into. Some volumes exist purely for this, and the useful bit is the terrain they create rather than the shape itself.

Look at a volume and name which of the three you are using. That one question sorts out most of the problem.

Standing on a blank face

This is the bit people get wrong, and the fix is mostly about weight rather than strength.

Get the whole shoe on. On a proper foothold you use the toe. On a volume face you want as much rubber in contact as you can manage, which usually means dropping your heel and standing on it more like a smear. The instinct to point your toe at it comes straight from indoor footwork on small holds, and it is exactly wrong here.

Push straight into it. Friction comes from force perpendicular to the surface. If your hips are away from the wall, your foot is being pulled down the face instead of into it, and it goes. Getting your weight over or behind the foot, depending on the angle, is what makes it stick.

Stand up and trust it. The classic failure is half committing, keeping most of the weight in the hands, and letting the foot creep. A volume face holds far better with your full body weight on it than with a tentative fraction. Same as slab climbing, which is what this really is.

Stop moving once you are on it. Readjusting your foot on a blank surface is how you find out where its slippery bit is. Place it once, deliberately, and leave it.

Working the edges

The edges are where volumes stop being awkward and start being useful.

A rounded edge takes a hand like a sloper and takes a heel beautifully. If you are on a steep wall with a volume above you, the top edge is very often a heel hook that turns an impossible move into an easy one.

A sharp edge where two faces meet can be a genuine crimp or a foot edge, and it is frequently better than the small holds bolted next to it. Setters know this and set around it.

The underside of a volume on an overhang is a toe hook waiting to happen. Nobody looks there.

Get in the habit of running your eye around the outline of a volume rather than at its face. Most of the good stuff is on the perimeter.

Palming, not gripping

Volumes ask your hands to do something they rarely do indoors, which is push rather than pull.

An open palm flat on the face, arm fairly straight, pushing down and into the shape, is often the strongest thing available. It feels like nothing is happening because there is no grip involved, but it holds a surprising amount of body weight and it costs your forearms almost nothing.

Corners between two volumes, or a volume and the wall, are a bridging problem. Push out with both hands, or a hand and a foot, and the opposition holds you in place. This is stemming with different furniture, and if you have climbed a dihedral outside you already know how it feels.

Dry hands matter more here than anywhere. A palm on a big fibreglass shape is pure friction, and a sweaty hand slides off a surface a chalked hand would hold.

Why setters use them

Worth understanding, because it tells you what a problem wants.

Volumes let a setter change the angle without rebuilding the wall, so one panel can produce slab, vertical, corner and roof in the same set. They also make a problem physically bigger, which forces the kind of full body movement that small holds on flat panels never will.

The other reason is that they are hard to read. A volume hides holds behind it, blocks the line of sight to the next move, and makes you commit to a position before you can see what comes next. That is deliberate. Comp setting leans on it heavily, and the skill it tests is willingness to move into an unknown position rather than finger strength.

If a problem has a big shape in the middle of it, assume the shape is the point of the problem, not an obstacle in front of it.

Reading a volume problem from the ground

Three things to settle before you pull on.

Where the volume is in the sequence. Is it a foot, a hand, a rest, or the thing you have to get over. Watch someone else and look at what part of them touches it.

Which face you end up on. Volumes usually have a good side and an awkward side, and getting onto the wrong face means reversing or falling. Decide which one you want before you leave the ground.

Whether you go over or around. Big shapes on vertical ground often have a cheaper line round the side that setters leave open. On steep ground, over the top is usually the only way and it will involve a mantel.

Topping out over a big one

Getting established on top of a volume is a mantel, and the same rules apply. Get the hands in a position you can push from, get a foot high, and stop pulling with the arms the moment you can start pushing.

The specific problem with volumes is that the surface you are pushing on is smooth and often sloping. Press with a flat palm rather than fingertips, keep your weight moving forwards over the shape rather than upwards, and get a heel or a toe onto the face as early as you can. Hesitating halfway is what makes it feel desperate.

How to get good at them quickly

Nobody practises this, which means it improves fast.

• Climb a few grades below your limit using volumes only for the feet. Ignore the footholds entirely and stand on shapes. Ten minutes of this teaches you more about smearing on fibreglass than a season of avoiding it.
• Do a session on the slab. All of the weight and friction habits transfer straight across, and slabs are where you learn to trust a foot with nothing under it.
• Deliberately use the edges. Pick problems with a big volume in them and find a heel hook or a toe hook on it, even if there is an easier way.
• Get your shoes resoled. Volume climbing exposes worn rubber more than anything else indoors. If you are sliding off shapes other people stand on, look at your soles before you look at your technique.

Track where they catch you out

Volume problems tend to be the ones that sit unfinished for weeks, and it is easy to lose track of the pattern. If you log your sessions in Sendit you can see it plainly, that the problems taking you five or six visits are all the ones built around a big shape, which turns a vague sense of weakness into something specific to go and work on.

The short version

Volumes are holds. Stand on them with the whole shoe and your weight properly committed, push with flat palms rather than gripping, and look at their edges before their faces, because the heel hooks and toe hooks are on the outline. Work out what the shape is doing to the angle underneath it, and treat the whole thing as a slab problem attached to the wall.

Once they stop reading as obstacles, a lot of modern setting gets considerably easier.