Normal shoe wear or bad footwork?

null bought a pair of Scarpa climbing shoes about 9 months ago, and I've already got a hole in one of them! How long are shoes meant to last? I climb roughly once a week so they haven't been through that many climbs. The top edge of the sole seems to have worn through on my left shoe and created a hole. Is this where it is meant to wear or is this a sign of poor technique like foot dragging? I have caught my self foot dragging a couple of times, but I don't think I do it that much and this seems a bit low to be caused by that.

Left shoe with hole



Right shoe no hole yet

I'd say poor technique. I climb at the gym 3-4 times a week and send my shoe out to get resoled once a year. Cant resole them if they are worn through. Try to place your foot on a hold rather than slide it down the wall onto it.

You're most likely not toe dragging in the conventional sense, but rather climbing how I catch myself doing it once in a while.  Set foot inch or so over the foot hold, let foot slide down. I just had a conversation with my partner last week about this as we were both doing it! 

Unfortunately you trashed the shoes beyond what makes $ents for a resole.

You can still get it resoled, but at an added cost of changing the toe cap.
Another less known shoe damaging action is rotating your shoe on a hold and rubbing  the toe on the wall in the process.

Thanks all!

ConorCarroll wrote: You're most likely not toe dragging in the conventional sense, but rather climbing how I catch myself doing it once in a while.  Set foot inch or so over the foot hold, let foot slide down. I just had a conversation with my partner last week about this as we were both doing it! 

I think I probably do do this. I'll have to keep a look out for it - I do like to keep my foot quite close to the wall so I probably am touching the wall as well as the hold.

Not poor foot work per say, but rather lousy attention to detail. You wore through the sole and continued to climb with the shoes and wore through the rand. The rand is 1 mm rubber while the sole 4-5 mm of rubber. Uneven wear between the left and right is not uncommon. Just like hands, one foot is more dominate, and it is the shoe on the opposite foot that wears more.

This is not bad technique. As the above poster noted, you should have resoled these things a looooong time ago. The wear is exactly where one would expect from proper edging.