With this technique once you place your foot your not allowed to move it. No rotating your foot as your move past the hold. No replacement for a better position. You want to look at the hold as you place your foot onto the hold. Of course depending on the hold you may place your toe, inside/outside foot, heel or whatever. Moving your foot once you have placed it is the biggest reason for losing contact with the hold and causing falls.

Second technique: traverse with feet only going one direction. toes first or heel first. At the halfway point or repeat the traverse and use your feet in the other direction. It's important to do half the exercise one direction and then the other.

How many of you only traverse their gym/outdoors going left to right or right to left. Try and spend an equal amount of time going the other direction.

I personally always traverse in multiple directions. Our gym has a short traversing wall, it is about 6'6" high and maybe 30'40' long and I'll traverse all the way to one end and then back to the other.

Or we also have a free standing pillar that is probably 100' around and I will make a lap around it and when I get to my starting position reverse and then lap it in the other direction.

I actually learned when I was younger that you should always work out both sides of your body equally and when I started rock climbing I just naturally brought that training ethic over with me.

Yeah, it is amazing some of the things you can do. We had a new route go up in our gym last week, 5.11d, and when I looked at it from the ground there seemed to be no logic to it.

I waited until the end of the climbing day and jumped on it before we left; Once I started moving on it, there was actually a nice flow across the rocks and I ended up flashing the bottom half of the route until it came to this nasty overhang.

I'll definitely be back on this route again tomorrow night!

Another training idea to improve footwork. Climb with tennis balls in your hands while top roped. Because you grip is reduced by the tennis balls you MUST make better use of your feet. No cheating and slipping a finger or two away from the tennis ball onto a hold. You'll have to drop down to easier climbs to complete any.