climbing shoes

For warming up on the wall, many climbers like wearing slightly looser shoes. This is to give their feet time to also warm up, but also to not have to warm up with the pressure from the tighter climbing shoes.

If you are climbing hard routes or projects, you will most likely benefit from tighter shoes that have little to no dead space in them.

If you are a beginner climber, it won't make much of a difference, and you should probably stick to slightly looser shoes. Tighter climbing shoes can provide extra performance advantages for climbers climbing difficult routes. If you are not climbing difficult routes, and you are a beginner, you most likely will not even notice these performance gains from the shoes, as the routes you are climbing do not even utilize their benefits.

Climbing shoes should be snug and tight, but not too small. What that means is that there should be as little dead space in the shoes as possible, ideally, none.

Climbing shoes are designed to be snug and tight, and to not have dead space within them. But, climbing shoes come in all shapes and sizes, and not all shoes will fit every climber. This is why it is important to try on different shoes and different sizes in order to find the right pair of shoes for the shape of your feet. The right pair meaning shoes that are snug, have no dead space within them, and fit the shape of your feet also in terms of the toe box and how wide it is.

Whether climbing shoes should be bigger or smaller depends on what you are comparing them to. I personally wear half a size larger than my street shoe size in all my climbing shoes. I have a very difficult time finding shoes that fit properly, especially in the heel area, and I find that going up half a size is even a semi performance fit, as going down is just unbearable.

So you can go down in sizes or even up, as long as the shoe fits the shape of your feet, is snug, tight, and has little to no dead space, and most importantly, is not too small.

If it helps, I wrote an article on this very subject on this site's blog, it goes over all the steps for choosing the right climbing shoes for your feet: Climbing Shoes 101: How To Pick The Right Pair For You

There isn't really a correct amount of shoes you should have. Some people have just one pair, while others may have many. More experienced climbers tend to have at least a couple of shoes, and professional climbers usually have quite a few shoes.

The amount of shoes you should have does not necessarily depend on your climbing experience. Professional climbers have many shoes because they actually need them. They go through their shoes quite quickly due to all of their training and competitions. Climbers who are not professional climbers, but are more advanced, sometimes end up having a few shoes because they just bought them with time.

If you are just starting out, just having one pair could be more than enough. Some like to have a pair that is used only for warm-ups, and another that is used for their harder climbing and projecting. Some climbers also like to have 2 pairs of climbing shoes so that if one pair is being resoled, they can still climb with the other pair.

Some buy shoes because they are on discount also.

In the end, it depends on your needs, and budget of course. There is no general correct amount of climbing shoes a climber should have.