Want to learn jams quicker? Do this

Hey Cracksters,

As we know you're going to be getting out there and crack climbing with the new gloves, I want to focus our attention today on the three big jamming types—hands, thin hands, and fists.

I see people get confused all the time about what they should work on or how they should prioritize practicing each jam. So, today we’ll look at the basic jamming hierarchy.

1. The Perfect Hand Jam

If you haven’t done much crack climbing before, always start here. It is the staple of your crack climbing diet. Work it into submission until you are hand jamming in your sleep.

Why? Because hand jams are the base of many other jams (including stacks in offwidths), so if your hand jam is sub-standard, everything else will start to fall apart. You have to lay the foundations before you can start building; Jamming is exactly the same. Don’t expect your thin hand jamming to be top-notch if you’re still thrutching up splitter perfect hand cracks. Do the groundwork before moving on.

2. Thin Hands

After you have a solid hand jam foundation, start seeking out those thinner cracks and working on the thin hand and paddle hand technique. I always refer to the paddle hand as ‘the half-crimp of jamming’—this is because it doesn’t just rely on technique; you need some squeeze power and strength to get it to stick.

The reason I put this one second is that the strength in this jam takes time to build, so starting early in your crack climbing journey is crucial. (However, make sure you’ve got that hand jam mastered before moving on to this, or else, like I say, you’re facing a losing battle.)

When you nail and feel comfortable on thin hands and paddle jams, a whole world of strength in crack climbing opens up to you.

5-10 years ago I put some dedicated time into this size, I was shocked how much my crack climbing strength improved—not just in this size, but in many other sizes as well.

3. The Fist Jam

You don’t need to have mastered the thin hand and paddle jam before moving on to this, but I’d say it’s useful to really get stuck into the thinner stuff before dedicating yourself to fists. Fist jamming is slightly less reliant on strength, and in general, I would say it is an easier technique than paddles.

4. Next??

Okay, you’ve nailed the hand jam, the paddle, and the fist jam. Your next jamming homework would be cupped hand jams (a technique used between hand and fist size) and also teacup jamming.

Teacup jamming is incredibly useful and bridges that gap between fists and offwidths. I use teacup jams all the time. The longer you can stay out of offwidth territory and keep moving those hands as individual units—rather than stacking them together—the better.

Why is this order important?

Like with anything you learn, the order in which you learn is very important. If you haven’t mastered one thing, trying to learn the harder skill becomes completely irrelevant and actually takes much longer with an outcome that isn’t as good.

When you learn to ride a bike, you learn with three wheels and your feet on the ground as a kid, then three wheels with feet on pedals, then two wheels, then one wheel… you don’t just start someone off on a unicycle; the same goes for jamming.

Happy jamming