Two winters ago I spent three months setting exclusively on the 28-degree slab panel at Summit West in Fort Collins. My forearms thanked me. My ego did not. Slab climbing strips away every trick you have relied on for years — the lock-offs, the campusing, the raw pull strength — and asks you one question: do you actually know how to use your feet?
Movement Over Muscle
The route-setting community talks a lot about "flow" on overhangs, but the real movement school is vertical and below. On a 15-degree slab, a V2 can feel harder than a V5 on a 40-degree wall. The holds are generous — big rounded jugs, textured slopers — but the feet are thin, polished, and spaced wrong. You cannot campus your way out of poor footwork.
I watched a competitive climber flash a V8 overhang problem and then spend forty minutes falling off a slab V4. That gap is not a strength problem. It is a movement vocabulary problem. Slab forces you to read the wall differently — to trust friction, to shift weight incrementally, to commit to a high foot before your brain agrees it is safe.