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One of your most critical climbing decisions is determining how tight your rock climbing shoes should be. Like your belayer, your shoes are your bond to the rock and thus life itself. Get it right and you’ll discover eternal bliss and solid performance. Get it wrong (i.e., fit your shoes too tight), and you’ll burn in a hell of pain relieved only when you replace said shoes with a pair that actually fits.
This begs the question: Just how tight should you fit rock shoes?
Watch long-time Climbing contributor Matt Samet talk through the ideal fit with four pairs of climbing shoes, including lace, Velcro, and slippers
Eons ago, when climbing shoes were constructed to fit like dress shoes complete with pointed toes, you had to size shoes as tight as torture devices to get them to seal around your feet with no wiggle room. After a season or two, those shoes did start to shape themselves to your feet. But breaking in climbing shoes was never an enjoyable process and footwork suffered. As John Bachar once said, “You can’t have good footwork if your feet hurt.”
Bachar and other shoe designers such as Heinz Mariacher played crucial roles in scrapping the shoe shapes of old and building rock shoes shaped more like your feet. Consequently, today’s many hundreds of models are more anatomically correct. Shoes now come in so many shapes that it’s possible for you to get a pair that seems custom-made just for you. But those shoes still need to fit tight.
Choosing the right climbing shoe size
My hunch is that many old-schoolers like me still buy shoes that are too small out of habit. Meanwhile, many climbers could go up a half size without sacrificing performance. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen because of my shoes, but more than once, I have ended a climbing day because my feet hurt.
Related: How to Choose, Fit, and Break In Rock Shoes
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a golden rule: Size climbing shoes a size smaller than your street shoes? Unfortunately, that isn’t possible. Different shoe brands use different sizing—a size nine in model X might equate to a size 10 in model Y. Plus, your street shoes might be a bit too large or too small. And which pair of street shoes are we talking about anyway? Then, throw in the complication of width: Are your feet narrow as ninja blades or wide as ping-pong paddles?
How to try on climbing shoes for size
In the absence of a golden rule for identifying your climbing shoe size, you generally must try on climbing shoes to find a perfect fit. Start the process by selecting a pair that is close to your street shoe size. How do those feel? I’ll wager that those shoes are comfortable and too large. Step down half a size and see how that goes. Keep going down until you can barely get your feet in the shoes—this is an indication that a shoe size is too small. Now go back up half a size, then another half size if necessary.
A new pair of rock shoes should feel like a tight pair of driving gloves. It’s okay if they’re a bit uncomfortable. In the context of climbing shoes, the definition of “uncomfortable” is subjective, since comfort and pain thresholds vary. One thing is for sure: If you can walk around in those shoes and not feel any discomfort, then they are too large.
A DIY Shoe Hack: Unbearable Rock-Shoe Pressure? Try This Slice-And-Dice Hack
If you can’t find a size in a certain model that fits, try a model with a different shape. The shoe for you is out there, you just haave to keep trying.
More climbing shoe fit considerations
Bear in mind that all shoes will stretch. Leather shoes stretch more than synthetic pairs. Unlined shoes stretch more than lined ones. Unlined leather rock shoes stretch the most. I’ve had them stretch a full size or more, so I fit these types painfully tight. Unlined leather stretches quickly, so you’ll only need to suffer in the shoes for one or two outings (or wear them at home to stretch them.)
The rand also affects sizing, fit, and stretch. Some rands are tensioned like slingshots to compress your feet. A compressed foot has more power than a relaxed foot, which is why a tight shoe feels more powerful and precise than a looser one. Tightness equals compression. Slingshot randed shoes still stretch, but will rebound when you take them off. They also won’t stretch as much as shoes with more relaxed rands. Thus, rands represent yet another variable to work into the fit equation.
A shoe’s support or lack of support also impacts fit and sizing. You can fit stiff shoes a bit larger than soft slipper-like shoes. That’s because the built-in stiffness—often called “board lasting”—provides support, rather than the shoe squeezing your feet. The softest shoes should fit nearly skin-tight in contrast because they rely on squeezing your feet to deliver support.
The hazards of too-tight climbing shoes
You may be tempted to fit your shoes too tight. Don’t! If you wince when you pull on your shoes, then they are too snug. Pain isn’t the only issue here. Too-tight shoes can cause joint damage to your feet over time. As one example, rock shoes can cause Hallux Rigidus. a form of degenerative arthritis in the big-toe joint. I know this first-hand. I developed Hallux Rigidus about 20 years into my climbing career, yet continued wearing shoes that were too small. Performance mattered more than anything … who cares about problems down the road? Eventually, my toe joints deteriorated to the point where I had to have the joints removed and replaced with synthetic ones. Let’s not let the same happen to your happy feet.
Ultimately, you will probably need at least two pairs of climbing shoes. A comfortable, larger pair you can warm up in and wear to send your dialed lines again and again. You can also wear these comfortable shoes on longer multi-pitch routes. You’ll also want a much tighter, more precise pair for redpoint or flash attempts and bouldering. You’ll only want to wear this tighter pair for shorter periods of time when top performance is your priority.
If my advice seems squishy, it is. I can’t tell you exactly how tight your shoes should be, because I literally can’t walk—or climb—a mile in your shoes. But I can say with certainty that you need to get the sizing right.