Learning to Fly
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of flying through the air, latching onto some distant hold and reeling your body back towards the wall, sticking the monstrous dyno that you’ve been trying over and over. The thing about dynos is that they are more attainable than most people think. The key is all in the initial movement…
Being able to dyno well all boils down to being able to drive the body upwards with the legs while following the angle of the wall. If you can do this, you’ll be amazed at how far you can fly. To set yourself up, make sure the feet are high so that you can get good, explosive power from the legs. You don’t jump without bending the knees, you shouldn’t dyno without doing the same. Once you have your feet set, initiate your movement by pulling the body into the wall and driving the hips in towards the wall. This gets your weight over your feet and allows the body to travel along the same plane as the wall.
This is crucial to a successful dyno. If you aren’t travelling along the same plane as the wall, you’re moving in a different direction than the hold you are shooting for. This will equal failure. Once you get these two motions down (pulling in with the arms & driving the hips in), use the explosive power in the legs to propel the body up the wall. Follow through with the arms to gain a little extra push, and try and latch the target hold at the apex of your jump. This means that when you grab the target hold, your body should be in between moving up and falling back down, a point of weightlessness if you will. This will allow you to latch the hold without putting too much strain on the body.
Last, but not least, are your feet. You want to make sure that you get your feet high enough so that you can achieve the spring that will launch you up the wall. This would be equivalent to squatting down before jumping. Without it, you don’t get much height. The same goes for dynos, if your body is extended, you aren’t going to go very far. It might feel uncomfortable getting the feet high, but it will allow you to use the explosive power in your legs.
Master these movements, and you’ll be dynoing like a pro in no time.
