Climbers Point

Rock climbers wear smaller shoes because it gives them better support for their feet while climbing. Wearing smaller shoes allows you to be more precise with your feet, stand on smaller foot holds, and exert much more force from your toes compared to wearing larger shoes.

Climbing shoes are also designed to be very minimalistic in terms of materials and "fluff". Meaning, they have very little rubber around them in comparison to everyday sport shoes. This allows your toes to actually feel what you are standing on, and, in a way, to grip the holds with your toes. This minimalistic approach also makes the shoes seem much smaller than they are when comparing them with street shoes or general sport shoes.

It is important to note, though, that beginner climbers should probably not try and downsize their climbing shoes too much, or at all. Wearing smaller climbing shoes, which is known as downsizing, provides extra benefits in performance, but, these benefits are not really noticeable for beginners, since the routes beginners climb do not actually require or utilize these performance boosts.

First of all, get the right shoes in the right size. The most common mistake I hear people make in my gym is that their shoes are way too small, and they don't even know it. In that case, their shoes will probably never be comfortable and may always be slightly painful.

If you get the right shoes that match the shape of your feet, and in the right size, you could actually find some very comfortable climbing shoes. But, you have to keep in mind that these are still climbing shoes, and that they were not designed to be comfortable, they were designed to give you support for climbing, for performance.

If your shoes are too small, it will be difficult to make them comfortable. If they are the right size, however, and they are the right fit for you, then you can try and break them in a little bit more if needed, there are many methods for this.

Something that I like to do is to slightly twist and bend them before putting them on. I really notice the difference before doing this and after. It really just takes a minute or two to just bend them and twist them slightly. Not too much to the point where you damage them, but just slightly to loosen up the stiff rubber. After this, the shoes usually become much more comfortable, and after climbing in them, they sort of open up and are just fine.