I'm a mentor now?

More than that. You're a friend.

Next time you have the opportunity, try to campus a boulder problem or route. Report back if it is easier than doing it normally.

Although I agree with you, I have been on a route where campusing the crux is actually easier than trying to use your feet.

Josh

Gunks route?

Actual response to this thread:

Lately I have focused less on physical training and more on technique. I've continued to improve (probably would have/was plateauing) while my max number of pull-ups and campus skillzzzz have decreased. If I plateau again I will probably start hitting the hangboard/campus board but I don't see that happening until i'm climbing around v10 or so

It is good enough to get you out of a plateau, but not good enough to avoid one?. Is that not the same as saying '' i will train off muscles, once i acquire an injury''?.

Anyway, just like the previous poster likes to laugh at muscle men, i like to laugh at people who have climbed for 15+ year. Yet, never climbed anything near 7c. ''its all about technique'' they say. Clearly they need another 15 years then?.

Personally i think 99% of climbers just can not be bothered to PHYSICALLY train hard enough, and use the excuse that working technique on all the ''comfort'' climbs is going to get them anywhere.

Sorry, but no matter how good you swing a bat.. if you don't got the power, its not leaving the stadium.


I really can not understand why people are so 1 dimentional about climbing. People are either meat heads.. or technique junkies.. i get the feeling the best climbers around, are the ones who draw the line somwhere in the middle.

That is completely irrelevant to climbing.

"Efficiency" in climbing doesn't have the same meaning that it does in physics, where it means performing an amount of work with the least waste of energy. In climbing it means performing an amount of work using the least amount of energy from the upper body muscles, especially the forearms, because it is these muscles that fatigue the quickest. So, campusing a move might be the most efficient in the physics sense, but it is almost always less efficient in the climbing sense.

Jay

I get some sort of sick enjoyment out of the muscly dudes flailing all over 5.9's in the gym and then finish their "workout" by grunting over on the jugs of the campus board to see how many pull-ups they can do. It's an added bonus if they are doing the pull-ups with their harness still on.

Josh

Never said that I disagreed with this.

Then it is unclear why you think your question is relevant to climbing.

Jay

One could campus their way op a route, or use technique and footwork to do the same route with half the energy

I'm challenging this:

I boulder v8, but yesterday I got shut down on an 11c sport route a couple of times. Was it because I lacked the power to do the crux move do you think? I flashed an 11d afterwards.

How do you think I should be training ceebo? describe to me what I should do at the gym tomorrow to maximize my gains.

What exactly are you getting at? If you failed the route due to technique then that could have happened on any boulder route.. you cant blame lack of sport climbing for that.

Unless your willing to admit people of your standard (or any standard) have shitty technique compared to comparable sport climbers, then i only assume theirs a physical endurance issue. If a sport climber wants to try bouldering, would strength hold him or her from their comparable grade?, or would they have such a good level of both?.

But, it is Impossible for physical attributes to significantly hold climbers back because with technique, we can achieve anything, yeah?. Even though engaging technique (thought process aside) directly draws from are physical ability, not to mention that technique is preparation for the physical outburst to follow, no matter how small.

So, can you answer my questions?, since your training question was obviously relying on me being naive enough to try.

Is it true, that the more mass a muscle has (once trained for climbing) the more force it can apply?. And, the more force you can apply the less effort you need to use on a hold?.

So that would ask the follow on question of how much mass can be added before the strength/weight ratio kills the benefit of technique?.

Although I'm most likely wrong in my questioning (as always), if it was even slightly true then it would mean to gain mass we would need to build it through some form of weighted training.. and then convert the mass gained to be efficient in climbing.

So wouldn't the likes of weighted dead hangs, campusing and mass building forearms through weight training be most beneficial for this purpose. Accompanied by low/mid/high endurance training, where conversions and technique can be trained across the other 3 ''normal'' climbing days?.

Farley.

I on-sight 5.12 low end on a regular basis, I red-point upper 5.12 regularly and I can't do ten pull ups. This season, I managed to rep-pint a 12a crack, but no way did I do ten pull ups.

I don't think the two have much to do with each other.

Airscape, you are simply wrong. There are plenty of girls with great technique and puny little biceps who could prove you wrong.

In fact, I know a woman who is a solid 5.12 sport climber who's never been able to do one single pullup in her life.

GO

While I don't disbelieve this, I know it is true, I do think that it is more of an exception when a 5.12+ climber of either gender cannot do a single pull-up. And usually would apply in case of someone who mostly climbs vertical faces, slabs and cracks on the vertical/slabby terrain.


For what it is worth, there was a pull-up competition at the end of a bouldering comp I went to a couple of months ago, while everyone was waiting for the score tally. The pull-ups were done on a hangboard, rounded slopper jugs. Not everybody participated, it ended up being mostly the strongest climbers who had a reasonably good idea that they were good at pull-ups, so not representative.

Guys (and these are strong guys who all climb outside on overhanging terrain in 5.12+ range, some of them 5.13 and mybe a couple of 5.14-ers, though I don't know every one of them close enough to tell you what their best redpoint is, I just know them as strong climbers) all did somewhere between 16 and 25 pull-ups. There was no correlation in that group between the strongest climber and the number of pull-ups. I also don't think that the guy who ended up with most pull-ups was the same guy who won the bouldering comp.


Two female pull-up winners who climb low 5.12 tied at 10 and a half. Interestingly, the female who won the bouldering competition, and who has redpointed V8 outside, did not win the pull-up contest, but still put in about 8 of them, I think.

Okay, great, but did you actually read Airscape's position? He claimed that there is no way you could be a 12 climber and unable to do 10 or more pullups. A completely ridiculous position which only seems sensible if start from the assumption that climbing strength and pullup ability is tied. Which it ain't.

I'm not trying to suggest that all girl climbers have wimpy little arms, or that it's common to find a 5.12 climber who can do zero pullups. What I'm saying is that the correlation between how many pullups you can do and how hard you can climb is, if you measure across both genders, only tangentially related.

If you get much better at pullups, I believe you will see very little (if any) gain in your climbing ability. Yes, if you get much stronger as a climber, you may be able to do a little better at pullups. Carts just aren't very good at pulling horses though.

Taking this out of the theoretical... I've been able to do a one-armed pullup once in my life. I was two number grades weaker as a climber at that time than I am now.

GO

Although I agree with you, I have been on a route where campusing the crux is actually easier than trying to use your feet.

Josh

You're going to have to type that up again. It's extremely difficult to understand.