Ladder Safety Tips — Part 9

When climbing a ladder:

• Lead with your feet, not your hands. This prevents awkward reaching with the hands and poor placement of the feet. Step, then reach. Don’t reach, then step.
• Watch your foot placement carefully. The toe of a regular work shoe has an insufficient combination of friction and surface area to prevent slipping on a ladder rung. Instead of toe-stepping, place the ball of your foot on the rung and raise your heel slightly. The pressure from raising your heel will increase the friction and “stick” the ball part of your shoe to the rung. This will prevent your foot from sliding forward until it catches on the edge of your heel or even goes through the opening entirely. Look with your eyes at where you will put your foot. Watch your foot go there before looking away.
• Using the aforementioned method, you also reduce the chances of a painful shin slam.
• Don’t stick your arms through the rungs. Instead, lightly grasp the rails or the rungs with your hands.
• What if you have only one hand free to grasp rungs because you are carrying tools with the other? There is only one correct solution to this problem. Don’t use your hands to carry tools. You can wear a tool pouch or use the rope and bucket method, but your hands have a job to do that they cannot do while also grasping tools.

Climbing grip

Don’t over-grip. Using a “death grip” will fatigue your flexor muscles, putting you at increased risk for a fall. Simply curve your hand into a soft hook shape and drape the hook over the rung. If grasping the side rails, it’s a similar technique but with a sharper angle at the fingers (round for rungs, square for rails).

People often over-grip, as if this will prevent a fall. But it won’t. Here’s the math: A normal grip for a male of average size is under 55 lb. but a male of average size weighs much more than that. Even if two hands of a very strong male provide a combined 130 lb. of clamping power, that’s not enough to offset his body weight.

The key is to keep your center of gravity over your base of support. The farther your body mass is away from that ladder, the more force your hands must exert to prevent you from falling off. Many people lean back to see up while climbing, even though the angle of the ladder makes the leaning unnecessary. Lean your body toward the ladder. Maintain a little tension in your core instead of letting your body sag, and you can reduce the load on your hands by 50%.

If you climb a ladder a few times in an hour and your forearms feel pumped, you are over-gripping. And if that’s the case, you probably are not climbing with your center of gravity over your base of support. A nasty slip is inevitable unless you change how you climb.