Speed Climbing Techniques: The Chinese Move

Speed climbing from the beginning started to evolve every year to give the possibility to every athlete to break even more speed barriers.

Today we will talk about the latest update in speed climbing technique: The Chinese move / The Penguin Move

We are calling it like this because, in recent times, everyone identifies this move with the Chinese school, in reality the first athlete that made the move seems to be a Russian athlete but there aren't many proofs.

Overview

The move has to be prepared from a long distance, it starts from the hold 13 if you skip the 14 or from 13-14, after that you move with both hands on the 16 and from here you proceed with the hands doing 18 with the right and 20 (ball or top) with the left. About the feet once you start the move from hold number 16 you have two options:

1.      Left foot on 14 right on 15 and than a big jump to a smear to the left of 18, than right foot on 18 and button

2.      Left foot on 14 than right on small foot 11 and the rest is the same

So two alternatives to do the same move, the most used is the one with the hold 15 and more rarely you can see the “wide” version.

Check out this video to see it in action!

The spanish confidence in the step

The spanish high-level athlete, Erik Noya, has been the first one to use it consistently in the World Cups anticipating all the athletes by one full year, at first both athletes and coaches were not so convinced about the stability of the move, after that year it became a mainstream move for senior first and junior than categories. We have’t seen many Chinese athletes using this move so early due to the Covid years but as now almost all the Chinese athletes are using it consistently.

Nowadays, this move is used almost exclusively by men due to the high power request of the move but some girls are working on it to bring to the world competitions with good times!

Should the name change? Tell us in the comments!