Sustained straight up wide hands - both hands thumbs up or top hand thumbs down?

I had read some tech tip about for wide hands thumbs down (camming) with the upper hand and thumbs up with the lower hand may be best.

But I TR'd Supercrack over the weekend trying this and, although it worked, I was distinctly more tired at the top than when I had led it in the past just doing thumbs up with both hands and high stepping and trying to fly. (Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot). Maybe I just wasn't doing big enough moves with the shuffle. Ran out of daylight/dry weather to try it both ways.

For you Indian Creek experts when you are doing sustained straight up wide hands when would you go both hands thumbs up versus top hand thumbs down camming and the lower hand thumbs up? Is the top hand thumbs down more for corners or placing pro?

I know when the crack slants you may be forced into top hand thumbs down.

I plan on spending a lot more time at Indian Creek next year and I thought why not ask the experts? A quick search showed nothing.

Not an expert, but supercrack is definately both thumbs up for me.

Daniel Winder wrote:Not an expert, but supercrack is definately both thumbs up for me.

thumbs-up for progress, thumb-down cam above my head to catch a rest or sometimes to place gear.

For wide hands, I’ll almost always go with one hand each way such that your thumbs point toward each other. In this position the rotations of your forearms react against each other and you can shuffle along. This is especially true for deep cracks like Supercrack. Upper hand thumb-up is nice when the crack narrows to good hands that don’t require the cup and twist motions to fill the cleft. If you have to large mits then maybe the upper hand thumb-up on Supercrack is OK.

Some like to go one up/one down and not switch them on the way.

Personally I like both up for Supercrack and long sections of good hands as I can get into a good rhythm as I go. To place pro and rest sometimes thumb down can feel more secure.

I will almost always use high-hand thumbs-down to place gear or otherwise rest. If I can get away with it, I'll go both hands thumbs up because it involved bigger muscles, but if its truly big hands, I can't get a secure enough jam to really make that work.

Straight in splitter vertical wide hands = both hands thumbs up.

For me, Supercrack is arm barring with a fist jam way deep in the back, ha ha, but I have always done wide hands at the Creek with both thumbs up. I tend to only use the "top hand-thumbs down and bottom hand-thumbs up shuffle" in tight hands. Guess I need to also try it with wide hands and see what happens!

Supercrack is thumbs up for me.

Thumbs up is ibetter ergonomically: You get more distance per move with thumbs up, and it is much easier on your rotator cuffs/shoulders!

Also if the rock is frictiony enough I find it easier to roll the back of the hand along the index finger's metacarpal into the side of the crack like turning the palms up, rather than "cupping"

I turn to thumbs facing each other and doing the shuffle with leaning splitters or corners