Sport climbing offers the excitement of tall or even multi-pitch climbs with none of the worry of placing your own gear. You just clip a quickdraw into bolts drilled into the rock, climb the rope into the quickdraw, and go. Although you must still evaluate and manage risk, not having to worry as much about placing protection allows you to push your limits in other ways, emphasizing the mental and physical aspects of this challenging sport.
Step 1
Practice placing your feet on every hold as quietly as possible. This fosters the sort of precise, delicate footwork that may allow you to immediately climb a grade harder.
Step 2
Keep your arms straight whenever possible. Trying to pull yourself up a route with your arms is a beginner error, but even an advanced climber may catch himself tensing up and bending his arms, especially if he's scared or fatigued.
Step 3
Practice clipping quickdraws until it's second nature. Being able to pull up slack and clip it quickly, even if that means reaching across your body to get to the quickdraw, conserves energy and reduces your risk of falling with a lot of slack out. In particular, you should learn what a back-clip is so that you're less likely to do it and, if you do, you can recognize and correct your mistake before it puts you at risk of injury.
Step 4
Experiment with new body positions. What worked to get somebody else up the route might not work for you, especially if you have a different build. Sport climbing is known for its gymnastic, athletically demanding moves, so don't be afraid to hook your heel or toes on holds, try a dynamic jump, lean sideways from a hold, or drop a knee and turn your hip into the wall to get a better reach.
Step 5
Stretch after cardiovascular workouts or anything else that gets your muscles warm and limber. Even if you'll never be a contortionist, being able to get your leg just a little higher might make the difference between landing that sweet heel hook that lets you make the next reach, or taking a whipper.
Step 6
Do core strengthening exercises, like planks and crunches. As you get stronger, add a stability ball into your routine, and try more advanced exercises like roll-ups on a pullup bar. Although upper-body strength is useful for some hard sport routes, having the core strength to maintain proper body position and tension is even more important.
Step 7
Practice climbing within your comfort zone -- to a certain degree, nothing will help you improve as much as logging a lot of mileage on the "sharp end" of the rope. Then challenge yourself to gradually expand your comfort zone, a little bit at a time, by climbing more difficult routes, or routes on different terrain, such as slabs or overhangs.
Step 8
Practice taking falls, starting with top-roped falls and gradually working your way up to short lead falls, then longer lead falls. This practice makes falling with proper form reflexive, and helps you get comfortable with the idea of falling when you don't mean to, which is inevitable if you push your limits on lead. If you know you can take a lead fall properly, and that your belayer will catch you, you're more likely to go for the hard moves instead of chickening out.
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