There is a peculiar tradition in climbing footwear.
You walk into a climbing shop wearing, say, a size 9.
Someone immediately announces:
“You need a 7.”
Why?
Because apparently the ability to endure unnecessary foot pain has become a measure of climbing ability.
It hasn’t.
Climbing shoes do need to be precise. They are deliberately designed to fit much more closely than walking shoes because the shoe has to transmit force through the toes onto footholds that may be only a few millimetres wide.
But there is an enormous difference between precision and crushing your feet into a shoe because somebody at the climbing wall told you that Leo Houlding, Neil Gresham or their mate Dave wears his shoes three sizes too small.
For most recreational climbers, that advice deserves considerably more scrutiny.
Climbing shoes are tools
The first mistake is thinking that there is simply one thing called a “climbing shoe”.
There isn’t.
Different shoes are designed for different types of climbing.
A relatively flat, neutral shoe allows the foot to sit in a more natural position and can be extremely effective for beginners, long climbing sessions, traditional climbing and longer outdoor routes.
Moderately curved shoes place more pressure towards the big toe and offer increased precision while still retaining reasonable comfort.
Highly aggressive, downturned shoes concentrate power towards the front of the shoe. They are particularly useful on steep climbing, overhangs and difficult bouldering where toe hooks, heel hooks and tiny footholds become increasingly important.
The most aggressive shoe in the shop is therefore not automatically the “best” shoe.
It may simply be the wrong tool.
Indoor climbing and bouldering
Modern indoor climbing has changed climbing shoe design considerably.
Large volumes, steep walls, smearing, dynamic movement, heel hooks and toe hooks tend to favour softer and more sensitive shoes.
Bouldering in particular rewards sensitivity because problems are short and powerful. A climber may wear the shoes for only a few minutes before taking them off again.
That does not mean every person walking into a bouldering centre needs an aggressively downturned competition shoe.
Someone learning foot placement on easier problems may gain far more from a comfortable shoe that allows them to practise for two hours than from an aggressive shoe they desperately remove after every attempt because their toes are screaming.
Technique improves climbing.
Pain does not.
Outdoor climbing
Outdoor climbing introduces different demands.
Small edges, cracks, slabs and sustained routes often reward greater support from the shoe.
A stiffer shoe can provide more support when standing repeatedly on small edges, particularly during longer routes.
Multi-pitch climbing introduces another consideration entirely:
You may be wearing the shoes for a long time.
A shoe that feels impressively aggressive during thirty seconds on the carpet in a climbing shop may become considerably less impressive forty metres up a route when your toes feel as though they have been inserted into a garlic press.
For long traditional routes or multi-pitch climbing, comfort becomes part of performance.
If your feet hurt badly enough that you are thinking about your shoes rather than the next move, the shoes are no longer helping you climb.
They are interfering with it.
Lace-up or Velcro?
Again, neither is inherently superior.
Lace-up
Laces provide excellent adjustment across the whole foot.
They are particularly useful for people with unusual foot shapes, low-volume feet or differences between heel, instep and forefoot volume.
You can loosen them slightly for comfort and tighten them when greater precision is required.
For long outdoor routes, that ability to fine-tune the fit can be extremely useful.
Velcro
Velcro shoes are incredibly convenient.
Climb.
Take them off.
Rest.
Put them back on.
Which makes them particularly suited to indoor climbing and bouldering.
Then there are slippers, which remove much of the structure altogether and maximise sensitivity.
Different tool.
Different job.
Now we arrive at the great climbing shoe obsession
Downsizing.
Somewhere in climbing history, sensible advice—
“Climbing shoes should fit closely.”
—apparently evolved into—
“Buy them two or three sizes too small and endure the suffering until your feet surrender.”
That is not a fitting system.
That is folklore.
Yes, some high-performance climbers deliberately use extremely tight shoes.
There are legitimate reasons.
A very tight shoe reduces movement inside the footwear, eliminates dead space around the toes and heel, and helps transfer force accurately through the front of the shoe.
But that does not mean everybody should automatically buy two or three sizes below their normal footwear.
The correct amount of downsizing depends on the model, the construction, the material, the shape of the foot, the type of climbing and the individual’s tolerance.
There is no magic formula.
So the person confidently telling every customer:
“You always go two sizes down.”
isn’t dispensing climbing wisdom.
They are repeating something they heard.
Performance fit versus stupidity
A performance climbing shoe should feel:
- snug around the heel;
- secure through the midfoot;
- closely fitted around the toes;
- free from significant empty space;
- capable of transmitting pressure accurately through the front of the shoe.
What it does not automatically need to be is agonising.
And this is where perspective matters.
The overwhelming majority of people climbing at their local wall are not professional athletes.
They are not sponsored climbers receiving endless pairs of shoes from major climbing brands.
They are not competing for selection to a national team.
They are not training for World Cups.
They are people going climbing after work on a Wednesday evening.
They have jobs.
They have families.
They have feet they would presumably like to continue using for several decades.
Yet somehow recreational climbing has inherited the footwear habits of elite competition climbing.
It would be like buying Formula One racing boots for the school run because Lewis Hamilton wears them.
Your foot shape matters
The number printed inside a climbing shoe tells only part of the story.
Two shoes carrying exactly the same numerical size can fit completely differently.
The last — the shape around which the shoe is constructed — determines heel volume, forefoot width, toe shape, instep volume and overall curvature.
A narrow, low-volume foot may swim inside one model while being perfectly held in another.
A broad forefoot may be tortured inside a narrow asymmetric shoe regardless of whether the numerical size appears correct.
This is why trying climbing shoes on matters.
The objective is not:
“What is the smallest shoe I can physically force onto my foot?”
The objective is:
“Which shoe holds my foot securely enough to climb precisely?”
Those are very different questions.
What about stretching?
Another classic piece of climbing-wall advice is:
“Don’t worry, they’ll stretch.”
Possibly.
How much depends heavily on the materials.
Traditional unlined leather shoes may stretch considerably more than synthetic shoes, while lined and modern synthetic constructions generally change much less.
Buying a painfully small shoe on the assumption that it will eventually transform itself into the correct size is therefore not particularly sophisticated footwear fitting.
It is gambling with your toes.
Comfort is not the enemy of performance
This is perhaps the strangest part of climbing footwear culture.
Comfort is sometimes treated as evidence that the shoe isn’t sufficiently technical.
That is nonsense.
A climber who can concentrate on balance, movement, body position and foot placement will probably climb better than someone whose entire neurological system is screaming:
REMOVE THE SHOES.
There will always be climbers operating at a level where tiny improvements in precision justify very aggressive footwear.
Fine.
If you are competing internationally and trying to gain a fraction of an advantage on a microscopic foothold, squeezing into an extremely tight shoe may make sense.
But most climbers are not in that situation.
For recreational climbers, the sensible equation should be:
Precision + support + sensitivity + comfort = appropriate climbing shoe.
Not:
Pain = performance.
Stop fitting the ego
A climbing shoe should fit the climber.
Not the grade they hope to climb.
Not the professional climber they follow online.
Not the opinion of somebody standing beside them at the climbing wall.
And definitely not an arbitrary rule that says:
“I normally wear a size 9, therefore my climbing shoes must be a size 7.”
If a size 7 genuinely provides the best fit for that particular shoe and that particular foot, excellent.
Wear it.
If an 8½ provides excellent heel retention, no dead space and accurate toe control while remaining comfortable enough to climb properly?
Wear that.
Because there isn’t a medal for the person who managed to squeeze their foot into the smallest shoe.
There is, however, considerable benefit in finishing a day’s climbing with your feet functioning approximately the way nature intended.
The objective is to climb the rock.
Not permanently reshape your toes in tribute to it.
purchonrichard-yobgv 