Safer and More Efficient Hip Thrusting

Video Caption File/Transcript by Arborist Industry Expert Nick Bonner and Keith Lesinski.

[Music] Hi, I'm Nick Bonner for TreeStuff.com. We're here with Keith Lesinski.

So, first thing we're going to do is talk about hip thrusting.

Yeah, hip thrusting—I mean, that's been phased out for like a thousand years now, right?

People still do it. You'd be surprised—a fair amount of people actually.

So, I think I remember how to do this. Let's see. Oh, look at that. We have the Petzl L1D up at the top, and you can see what it does is—you can hear it kind of clicking—so it spins really freely the one way, but it gives me air standing up right now. Look at this—pretty much slack there is, right? This big slack, and that's because of the fall factor, right? I fall and boom.

Yeah, okay, so when you're up there—hold up, go up there again. I know it's really tiring to hold yourself.

It isn't because of this Petzl pulley. I love it. But right now, your two hands are the only thing keeping you from going like four or five feet down—fall onto the system.

I kind of assumed you would catch me.

So, come on down.

Oh, got it. This is the time where he tells me there's a Petzl product that's going to fix this.

Oh, am I right? The one that's already on your harness.

Wow, so look at—no, look at the planning. So right now, you're on the short fixed length footage here, but here you have the adjustable bridge that lets you float your Zigzag out at arm's reach, so you can still hit for us, but you can pull on the tail of the rope below your Zigzag instead of above the Zigzag. I think people misunderstand the use of an adjustable bridge. I think a lot of people think that the purpose of the adjustable bridge on a harness is to adjust from like here to here, to like somehow fine-tune your reach. That's not what it's for at all. It's primarily for this technique.

Exactly, yeah.

All right, so hip thrusting, and also for when walking, it's awesome for—or so I usually like to position it just within reach when my full body weight's on the system. So I'd say push the Zigzag up high and then hang on it.

PSA time: a lot of people use cammed adjusters with like spikes on them for adjustable bridges. Please don't do that. Get something like this, or at the very least use a Prusik. Don't use a cammed adjuster—bad, don't do that.

Okay, so here we are, we've adjusted this out. Let me get some weight in it. You want to make sure you can still reach the Zigzag so you don't strand yourself. But now, when you get both hands on the tail here—zero slack, no sit back.

And that's also an efficiency thing, right? Because, like, sure, it's easy for me to hold, but I don't have to take one hand off, pull here—I don't lose anything. If I give any of it back, what do I do if I mess up and I accidentally put this out of reach?

Oh, so my pro technique is: with your left hand, pinch the two halves of your bridge on the carabiner there, and then with your other hand, you're going to shift your right hip high and pull off with your right hand like that.

Yep, and every set—do it again. Terrible.

So if you do find yourself with an adjustable bridge and you've set yourself too far out, now you're able to reach much higher.

Yeah, and another benefit of the adjustable bridge is if you pretend you're doing a little bit of a limb walk here.

Oh, right, because you get out—when you're normal on a limb walk and you get out at that really far angle, you still have to pull yourself back in hand over hand.

Exactly. So you're saying that if I'm all the way out like this—yep, fully set back to her harness—then I'm able to walk myself back in, maintain complete control, and keep my weight in the rope the whole time.

Exactly. No seesawing motion between weight on your hands versus weight on your harness, and just sit back in the harness—nice, controlled limb walks. It's pretty cool.

So that was a really good explanation of how slack can be introduced in the system, and really what it comes down to is the impact on the climber. If they slip with more slack, there's more impact. With less slack, there's less impact.

Thanks, Keith.

Good. Ciao.