Warning, this one’s gonna be long.

TL:DR There’s a lot of storytelling and analysis, so if you want just my takeaways, that will happen at the end of every section in the concluding paragraphs and bolded text. I can’t really TL:DR my entire climbing career, but most of the useful information will be found in the more recent (2021-now) sections at the end. That said, the chronology does provide very useful context for interpreting my thoughts. Here is a YouTube playlist of all the videos of me climbing in this post, sorted chronologically.

Preface: I’m writing this after receiving a good amount of interest in such a post, and hopefully to inspire similar posts of personal climbing logs. It will proceed sort of like a chronology of my climbing progression, with as much data and qualitative commentary that I can muster to go along with. I want to note that this is purely my own experiences and any advice, recommendations, or claims I make are because they are what I find to be true personally. I don’t claim anything will or should work for anyone else, I just want to share my journey so far. With that out of the way, let’s start at the beginning of my climbing career.

The Climbing Club (October 2018 – October 2019)

Shortly after going to college, I found out my university has a climbing wall. I went with friends in September of 2018 to learn how to top rope. A couple weeks later I joined the club and went to a climbing gym for the first time. As with most people reading this, I was immediately hooked. I climbed anything and everything, whether it was tech slab or thuggy cave climbing. I was fortunate enough to have some decently experienced climbers as my peers in the club who were more than willing to befriend me and climb with me.

Not long after starting, I found myself climbing way too often. I would climb at the school wall 3-4 days a week, for 3 hours each day, then climb 1 day on the weekend at the nearby climbing gyms. In November I had already developed tendonitis in both my elbows (lol), and I remember being physically exhausted at the end of each session. Come December I bought a gym membership and started climbing 5x/week regularly, not letting up until the turn of the year in January 2019. I remember telling my friends to not let me climb with them so that I would be motivated to rest my poor body. Turns out that resting works, and I found out that a 1 on 1 off worked quite well for me (I continue to climb/rest per this schedule).

Around this time, I was sending ~5.11 at my school wall and ~V4 in the gym. I was pretty much just having lots of fun and found climbing to be a great distraction from school. Most of the harder climbs I sent were either big moves on jugs or pulling on crimps, and I quickly gravitated to a powerful movement style. I had no clue how to use my feet or apply body tension, but then again who does at just a few months in? Here are some videos of my early climbing. I don’t think it’s worth commenting on any of these since they’re so early in my progression, but if you’re curious check them out.

My first semester of college passed and my GPA sucked. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to start partying far too often and go through a breakup. The first several months of 2019 was the lowest place I’d been emotionally in a long time, if not ever. I used climbing as an escape from the brutal school days and hedonistic weekends. My emotional struggles did help in a way though. I was motivated to try working out for the first time, get good at climbing, and in general pursue betterment. I started eating at a caloric surplus for the first time in my life and began yoga at my climbing gym about 2x/week. I went from ~120lbs to ~130lbs around April of 2019. By this point, I had competed in a couple competitions and was introduced to slightly more technical movement. Unfortunately, at one of these competitions I injured my right ring finger A2 falling on a pocket. This injury eventually cascaded to me being weak in pockets to this day, but I’ll discuss that later. I took the recovery time to focus on weightlifting and yoga and reached ~135lbs bodyweight by late May.

I was now through my first year of college and starting to get to a better place mentally. I felt healthier and more fit than ever (this period of my life is still the best I have ever felt physically), and it’s no surprise considering my diet, sleep, workout routine, and self-discipline were all incredible. Videos here show some of my climbing around this time period with some in-video commentary. I was getting better, and had quite good pulling strength, but I just never knew what to do with my lower body; I never even knew it was a problem. I would overgrip every hold and generate every move through my upper body. But I was never really climbing with a lot of intent or analysis, just for fun. Now that we’re approximately 1 year into my climbing I’ll wrap up this section with stats, things I would change, and what I’d keep the same.

What I would change: I started off climbing a lot, which is great, but I climbed way too much. I should have listened to my body earlier on, which also might have helped avoid my A2 pocket injury. Not only would that have led to higher quality sessions and better climbing, but I would likely be less scared of pockets today and feel more confident on front/middle two finger holds.

I was told to keep my arms straight very early into climbing. I internalized this advice and it ruined me. Now when I hear anyone say this, I jump in with a huge caveat about it because of how silly it is to simply tell new climbers to keep their arms straight. Here’s what that advice did for me: I never learned how to pull while slightly bent or locked off. I never learned how to lockoff or develop lockoff strength. I became overly reliant on generating movement through my upper body and thrutching to every single hold. And I had to make every move a test of contact strength and coordination. On the other hand, this allowed me to develop insanely good contact strength, dynamic movement skills, and general power, but at the cost of other movement skills and body strengths. To this day I struggle with slow, controlled movements and lockoffs. As a beginner I didn’t know any better and would “fall into the next hold” instead of “move from x body position to y body position.” Fuck “straight arms”. If you give this advice to someone, please specify why you are telling them to do so. Ditto with silent feet and all the other cliché drills/advice thrown out to novices. This comment from /u/justcrimp says what I’m trying to say way better probably.

What I would keep the same: My initial psyche, growth mindset, and climbing with people way better than me from the start are incredible advantages. I was told to compete in advanced in my very first competition to see how high climbing’s skill ceiling is, and it was the best advice I ever received. The opportunity for learning in that setting is so much higher than my desire to satisfy an egotistical requirement of a podium. I owe many thanks to my peers at the time, those who pushed me to think about everything in ways I had never thought of, and to learn how to push myself. I would also say getting into lifting, yoga, and counting calories is a huge silver bullet for me. I should really be doing those things now, but I don’t have the time and discipline at the moment.

Quantitative stats from Oct 2018 – Oct 2019: Unfortunately, I’ve got no logbooks on climbing and no proper stats besides my bodyweight and lifting stats. But I can say I put in about 200 climbing sessions over that year. I went from 120lbs-135lbs. I started at about the 5.9-5.10 and V2 range and was climbing about 5.12 (top-rope) and V6ish at the end. I was still brand new to the sport and climbed everything piss poorly over-reliant on my finger and pull strength. But I was super psyched, and ready to start climbing outdoors.

The Battle Against Mr. Strong (November 2019 – January 2021)

Dave MacLeod released this video about climbing outdoors. I had a few good friends that were interested in bouldering on real rock, so I bought a crashpad off Facebook the next day. That weekend, we drove 2.5hrs to what would become my home crag, Rogers Park. We had one crashpad between 4 people and had no clue about proper outdoor logistics, reading rock, and other outdoor skills; we were just psyched to climb. I ended up doing a couple V4s that day in addition to a few V0-V3 boulders. I immediately fell in love with outdoor bouldering.

We went out again the next weekend and I snagged my first V5 and a V4 flash. I tried some other V5s and a couple V6s but was enamored by a classic V6 called Senor Fuerte. In January of 2020 I made my third trip outdoors and back to Rogers, intent on sending a V5 and working Senor Fuerte. Here’s a video of me flailing on the crux section that day.

At the time I thought I was somewhat close to sending. I didn’t think it would end up being my longest project ever, taking 12 sessions in total over the course of the next year. Senor Fuerte exposed all my weaknesses in climbing with two simple crux moves: left hand lock off, full sidebody tension, accuracy in shallow two finger pockets, and fully extended body tension while locked off. I knew my pocket strength was lacking, and I knew that compared to my friends my ability to lockoff was far behind my other strengths. But I was convinced I could do the move without getting stronger. I read on this subreddit about people like Dave Graham and Laura Rogora, the benefits of ‘being weak and developing technique first’, and soon told myself that I wanted to be the best weakest climber I knew.

Let me say, being weak is a blessing and a curse. Sure, I had naturally strong fingers and explosive strength, but in every other regard I was certainly very weak. I couldn’t (and still can’t) bench press over 100lbs, my biceps and triceps were very weak, I never “trained core”, my shoulders were supremely lacking, I had no muscles in my back and especially none in my legs. What I did have going for me was my mobility on the wall, light bodyweight, fingers, and psyche to climb hard.

The problem is, being weak didn’t necessarily make me a “better” climber as people often claim. The simple truth is I was way too new to climbing for it to have any benefits. Every session I went in to, I came out of marginally better still riding newbie gains. I didn’t learn how to optimize body positions, consider ‘the box’, or get good at heel/toe hooks, camming, kneebars, bicycling or whatever. I instead relied on the strengths that I already had. I knew I could crimp almost anything, I could jump and cut feet on every move but still hold on, I could do insanely high hand-foot matches and power through scrunchy positions. Being weak didn’t help me broadly learn how to move; it taught me how to use the strengths I had and capitalize on what I knew I could do, rather than learning how to do things I couldn’t do. These videos are great examples of how I moved at the time.

Regardless, I was slowly shifting my focus from indoors to outdoors. I had a trip planned during spring break to learn trad climbing in Eldo with a friend/mentor. Unfortunately, that plan fell through, and I ended up bouldering for a few days. By this point I claimed my first couple of outdoor V6s, sent several more V4s/5s and was feeling a little more confident on real rock. As we all know in March 2020, COVID did its thing, and the world went on lockdown.

I was back home and couldn’t stand not climbing. My friend and I did random weighted hangboarding in his apartment, and I found out that I could hang 170% bodyweight from ~20mm for several seconds. That day I realized that by every dataset out there I “should” be climbing around the double digits level. My V6 self was dumbfounded, and I realized that I must suck at climbing to be this strong and not sending that hard. In reality I was still so new to climbing that my movement sucked and I just had 0 skill, but at the time I suddenly had high hopes for myself. My friend and I decided to race to climb V10 by the of 2020. Since I was working in a local climbing gym, I was able to get back to climbing in May, limited to 2x/week 2hr sessions. I continued to randomly hangboard, but never pushed myself and just wanted to stay fit, whatever that means. My friends and I would go climb outside at ungodly hours to avoid people during the pandemic, so fortunately my break from climbing in 2020 was limited to just the month of April. Here’s a video from June 2020 that perfectly showcases my climbing at the time,

Frankly, I generated every move with my upper body, I always stayed square to the wall, I didn’t finish looking at my feet before I placed them, I didn’t move into optimal positions, I fell into every hold, and I power grunted on jugs :). At some point in the summer of 2020 my friends and I ventured to a slightly further gym to try out the 2017 Moonboard set. I was immediately captured by it and the friendly competitiveness of the benchmark system, and soon after made it a goal to climb all the V3-V7 benchmarks. My first session I was able to tick some V3-V6s with a V7 flash. Within the next month I had already hopped on the Moonboard 7 times, and made this post for advice. In October I made it a goal to finish every single V3-V5 benchmark I had remaining by the end of the month. I Moonboarded consecutive days in a row and rarely climbed gym sets in favor of completing benchmarks. One day in October I sent 50 benchmarks up to V7, with ~30 or so V4/V5 flashes. My body was wrecked, but I was hooked.

As I look back on it, Moonboarding did wonders for my strengths. I came out of that board climbing phase stronger, more powerful, and with more application of awkward body positions and body tension than ever. I had a goal in mind to cater to these newfound strengths. A very reasonable looking V10, Free Willy, was a possible tick for my December Hueco trip. I switched over to the Kilterboard as I was satisfied with my progress on the Moonboard, and a more local gym to me had now installed the 2017 Moonboard and a Kilterboard. I set my sights on Kilterboarding to get a little more movement variety in and set a replica of Free Willy’s end sequence to train on before getting on the real thing. I had soon climbed dozens of V7/V8s on the Kilter and was feeling more powerful than ever. I will include a compilation of board climbing and some outdoor climbs around this time in the What I would change section below, because there’s a lot to analyze there.

I spent most of my Fall 2020 semester board climbing and bouldering outdoors 1x/week. By November I had finished all the V3-V6 benchmarks on the 2017 MB, was sending V6-7 outdoors more regularly, and putting down most Kilter boulders in the V7-9 range. I decided to ease off the Moonboarding a bit, as the benchmarks were getting harder and tweakier to climb on so often. I almost exclusively climbed on the Kilter and outdoors leading up to Hueco. From the summer to the end of the year in 2020 I logged about 175 Kilter boulders, most in the V7 range.

I somehow managed to stay injury free leading up to Hueco and all the board climbing made me stronger than ever. My group of four had 4 climbing days for the trip planned on, scheduled as 2 climbing days, 1 rest day, 2 climbing days, leave. None of us had any goals except for having a blast exploring the park and maybe sending Free Willy. Day 1 we went up the chains to climb several V0-V2s and found where the Martini Roof and other areas were. Day 2 we headed to Sign of the Cross, sent that and worked on Choir Boys Lite, and then tried to fathom Power of Silence, Terremer, and Diaphanous Sea, the latter of which I would come back for a year later. On our rest day we travelled to El Paso and discussed how incredible the past two days of climbing were. We had already fallen in love with Hueco.

Day 3 was the big day for me to send V10 before the end of the year. I warmed up by flashing Bloody Flapper and Lip Sync, then went around the rock to start working Free Willy. The first two moves were tricky but not necessarily difficult, and my friend and I worked out microbeta to make them feel more secure. The middle section felt like a breeze; my replica on the Kilterboard was harder than the actual middle moves of the boulder and replicated the movement very well, so I felt quite confident up to the dyno. After about an hour I started pulling on the upper crimps to try the dyno. It was big, and I could get close in isolation, but every attempt wore my already beaten skin down further. I decided to start giving it send goes and try as hard as I could anytime I made it to the dyno. I was soon getting to the last move reliably but couldn’t quite get the distance to latch the finish hold. I knew that day was my only chance of sending, since I didn’t want to go off on my own the last day. I taped around the heel loops of my shoes to make the heel hook feel more secure, taped the ripped Velcro strap down, put my earbuds in and played hype music on max volume. I forcefully inhaled and exhaled on the moves I needed to and cranked on every hold as hard as I could. One huge power scream later and I was topping out Free Willy.

I’ll let the video speak for itself for how excited I was :). Later that day we travelled over to Daily Dick Dose and Babyface, determined the former is the easiest V7 in the park, and the latter is the hardest V7 we’d ever tried. Day 4 in Hueco we were all exhausted but checked out See Spot Run and a couple other areas. I sent See Spot in a couple goes and we decided to head in early to save our bodies from destruction. After that trip I felt liked I’d fallen in love with climbing again. I was more motivated than ever to get better, especially seeing how I single-sessioned V10 before sending V8/9. I wanted to get way better at my weaknesses, send more volume in the V6-V8 range, and finally felt ready put down a certain nemesis boulder of mine.

Senor Fuerte was still waiting for me. My friends and I made a trip out to Rogers in January 2021 for our first bouldering day on rock post-Hueco. The whole time I thought it was funny that I’d sent V10 but was now 12 sessions in to a V6. We warmed up and immediately went straight to Senor. I pulled straight on to the crux, fired it easy, and dropped before the topout. My friend and I discussed a couple small tweaks to make, and suddenly two minutes later I was topping out (Unfortunately no send footy, so here’s a compilation of me failing). I remember thinking it felt it easy. How had I struggled for so long on that crux? Why was I able to do it first go today? I hadn’t tried it since October. Had the board climbing made me that much stronger, or was I just a little bit better? I still don’t know the answers to those questions. What I do know is that 2020 was a year of massive progression in my climbing, and I wanted to make 2021 the same.

What I learned: Climbing on real rock is the shit. If I didn’t live in Texas, I would replace 90% of my gym sessions with outdoor bouldering. Learning how to climb on chossy, sandbagged limestone hardened me up with how unforgiving it was. After just a few outdoor sessions, I was way more confident on route-reading, footwork, and techniques you don’t see in the gym often: heel-toe cams, techy toe hooks, super unique microbeta, grabbing holds in unique ways etc. I learned how to try hard and push through pain (a healthy amount), an ability I still like to think I’m decent at. I learned more about my body: what I can do with proper warmups, what I should/shouldn’t expect to be able to do fresh, my weird abilities that make me, me. I learned projecting tactics, and while not optimized at this point, I felt confident in my ability to make climbing trips and plan accordingly.

What I would change: I took the weakness mindset too far. The title of this section is a double entendre: Senor Fuerte, meaning literally “Mr. Strong”, and the battle against both that boulder and my want to stay weak but climb very hard. Don’t get me wrong, I got sucked into board climbing and it made me super strong, obviously. But it made me very one-dimensionally strong. If your goal is to be a board climber, or a floater on crimps at 45°, or you just have the most fun in this style of climbing, then do exactly what I did. I did have a lot of fun on the boards and sending Free Willy, but my real goals required being a better all-around climber and not hyper-specialized. Looking back, I also probably wasn’t willing to admit at the time that I was really strong, I just thought of strength in the wrong ways. I could 1-4-7, hang 170% bodyweight on 20mm, and do other stupid strong stuff. I was heinously strong at grabbing and pulling, but nothing else.

I went too hard on the board climbing. This one is weird, because I fully attribute it to me sending Free Willy, but what did I learn from that send? Well, I learned how to send Free Willy. Sure, I reached my goal of V10 in two years of climbing. But in the long run that didn’t make me anywhere close to a better rounded-out climber, let alone a “V10 climber.” Moonboarding got me very strong, but what it didn’t do was help anything else I was already bad at. I still didn’t know how to climb on slopers or pockets, how to do techy heelhooks and toe hooks, how to be as solid through my lower body as I was in my upper body, or anything that didn’t involve “grab this heinous hold and yard to the next heinous hold.” I could have reduced my board climbing, strength trained my weaknesses, and done volume on anti-style boulders in the gym. Basically, I could have rounded myself out to prepare myself for hard bouldering, and I’m still confident I could’ve sent say V8 at Hueco that year. I let my goal of V10 get in the way of true progress. It led to one of the most incredible feelings of my life (again, refer to the last 30 seconds of that send video), but also one of the most fleeting feelings of my life. Here’s a compilation of videos that I think showcase me being very strong while lacking in other areas. You can see me flailing a bit on moves I’m not comfortable with.

Looking back, I could have made minor strength gains (like say benching 1-2x/week to get to bodyweight, or easy lockoff training) to round out my body more. I would have been able to apply myself much more on the wall if I had the base strength to do so. There is certainly a balance to be struck here. You don’t want to be digging into a recovery hole, or replacing time on the wall with strength training, especially if you’re still seeing newbie gains from climbing. But if you are so weak in certain areas that it works to your deficit (my mantles and lockoffs for example), why not train those areas and go apply your new gains on the wall? I could have hit a couple weaknesses for a few months at a time and rode those results straight into a volume of harder sends.

Last, I would get more hard bouldering done on the Kilter instead of volume. Volume is great, but when 95% of your sends are flashes, you’re probably not trying enough hard stuff. This is hard to do because on the Kilter there are so many climbs at every angle that you’ll always find something fun. But I could’ve at least replaced 1 session a week with harder boulders.

What I would keep the same: Frequency of outdoor bouldering. This was huge. Some weeks I was getting outside 2x/ week, and I almost never missed more than two weeks without climbing on rock. Living in central Texas this is tough to do, but I’m lucky to have plenty of friends and partners willing to do 2-4hr drives during weird times just to touch rock. Whenever I went outside, I made sure not to be too shortsighted: if it was a hard project day, I would at least send a few V0-V2s or do a highball topout. If it was an exploration day, I would try to flash boulders and go without video/written beta to enhance my skills. If you’re still new to outdoor climbing (<100 sessions on rock I’d say, which is still me), make sure you keep it varied just like gym climbing. There is so, so much to learn from nature.

Working my way up through the Moonboard benchmarks by grade was very beneficial. I learned how the board climbs, nuances of the holds, and general style trends on the easier climbs before I went and pushed myself on the harder ones. Not only that, but limiting myself to VcurrentBenchmarkGrade 2 meant I was rounding out a lot of the benchmarks I was bad at before sending all the VnearMax benchmarks that I’d be good at. Which boulder would I learn more from: the V6 with a technical heel and tricky positions that took me 3 sessions, or a V8 with downpulling crimps that I can send in 5 goes? Obviously the former. What I should have done is apply this to my climbing in general, but oh well it was fun.

And lastly just that, having fun. I had a lot of fun climbing in 2020. I went from 2 outdoor sessions to around 35, I climbed on boards for the first time which generally suit me, I travelled multiple states to go climbing, I camped and experienced nature with good friends, and I very much stayed in a beginner’s mindset. I knew that sending V10 was pretty good, but I could very well fall on V1 slab right after. Laughing at that instead of feeling frustrated (“I should be able to do this”) is key to having fun.

Nov 2019 – Jan 2021 Quantitative stats

Heatseeking Missiles (February 2021 – September 2021)

I had a few small goals for 2021: push my max grade to V11/12, train my weaknesses for the first time, incorporate basic strength/conditioning training, and get stronger on pockets. Remember how I said an early pocket-related injury led to me being weak in pockets? That still isn’t fixed unfortunately. My middle two on either hand is very weak, and just hanging from a bar middle two leads to pain in my forearms and tendons. I avoided two-finger pockets whenever, opting to stack three fingers, crimp the edges, or resort to front two if needed. I still do this, in fact, because I never trained my pocket strength during this time :(. I also never actually began a simple strength training routine. So, looking back I failed two of my four goals pretty early on.

What I didn’t fail was training my weaknesses and pushing my max grade. I spent the first few months of 2021 either Moonboarding to finish the V7 benchmarks, Kilterboarding, or climbing on anti-style gym sets. I was able to send my first V8 on rock in February but wouldn’t climb outdoors again until April. Soon enough I had just one V7 benchie left: Fuzzy Socks Don’t Match. Like Senor Fuerte, Fuzzy Socks is a ridiculously hard boulder for me. I knew it would be my last V7 before I even finished the V6s, and only because of the finish cross move. I tried it every Moonboard session but eventually decided to ease off the Moonboard in favor of the Kilterboard. In February I nabbed my first V10 on the Kilter, with a bit more volume in the V8/9 range.

In April I was able to get my second V8 on rock, but realizing the weather was about to get very bad, opted to stay inside until the summer was over and train weaknesses for the first time. Around this time /u/fishmansnips made a post about free coaching on this subreddit, and he was kind enough to reply with a few thousand words over email filled with advice and specific drills for me. For hangboarding, he recommended max hangs 2x/week at 80% of my max for 8 sets. For improving my shoulder strength/stability and one-arm lockoffs he recommended IYTs, Skin the Cats, kettlebell press, and holding lockoffs on each arm, all 2x/week.

Within a few weeks I was able to newbie gains my way to a 180% bodyweight hang on 20mm. However, I didn’t like how hangboarding cut into my climbing time, and considering my already good finger strength, I dropped the max hangs. The one-arm work and shoulder strengthening did wonders for me. It was now the start of summer and I picked up a summer camp coaching gig, which made this the busiest summer of my life. I would help run camp for several hours each weekday, train or climb afterwards, then come home and crash to do it again.

In June I had a bouldering trip to Colorado planned with my friends. We had four climbing days and planned on getting out to Independence Pass, Guanella Pass, and then somewhere in the Front Range. My goal was to flash (not really, but it didn’t look too bad) Dark Horse for my second V10. We drove to Indy Pass on day 1, and I put down several in the V3-V6 range and my third V8. Day 2 we drove up to Guanella and immediately fell in love with the area. I didn’t flash Dark Horse but sent it after about an hour and a half, and satisfied with my goal, headed to support my friends on whatever they wanted to climb. As I said, we fell in love with Guanella, and decided to spend our last two bouldering days out there at night in the cool alpine air. I saw some people working Crimping Matters V10, and with my fingers feeling pretty good after a rest day, decided to join in. It took two back-to-back sessions and several hours, but I eventually sent late at night on the last day. Projecting that boulder was a huge learning experience with meeting random crushers and working it with them and my friends. Here is my send of Dark Horse and here is my send of Crimping Matters

That trip was a huge boost in my confidence. Instead of just sending one perfectly-styled V10 that I trained for, I was able to do another two in one trip, one without pre-planning at all. I also got a good amount of volume in the V4-V7 range. Now back in Texas and unable to climb outdoors, I knew that putting my head down and getting work and training done would pay massive dividends in the fall when I could climb on rock again. I was still very busy because of work and lacked energy to climb more than 1-2x/week over the course of the summer. I kept training my shoulders and lockoffs though, and was motivated by /u/fishmansnips to get better at my weaknesses:

“You need to broaden your climbing diet. OK, you climbed V10. Summer, while its hot, is time to make sure you can climb V8-9 in every single style, to prepare you for climbing a whole bunch of hard boulders next season…. For hard climbing, I want you to become a heatseeking missile for slopers, compression climbing & tricky-looking problems. Embrace the humility of sucking at it at first…”

These are the words I needed to hear but didn’t want to admit. Looking back, he was totally right, and this did wonders for my development. My friends and I started calling boulders “heatseeking missiles” if we knew they would be hard for us or anti-style. I began to target those instead of powerful crimp lines. Combined with dropping board climbing and strength training, I made pretty good gains over the summer. Unfortunately, I don’t have any quantitative data to support this. I can say that my upper body “chain” felt stronger on the wall, I felt more secure in arms-spanned positions, I was more confident on gastons and overhead underclings/gastons, and I was starting to do lockoffs with more precision and control. When the fall semester of my senior year started, I dropped the camp coach gig and shifted to coaching a casual youth team 2x/week. I was still very busy with school and work but could now climb 2-3x/week and start getting outside again.

I made my first trip back to Rogers in late September and was very successful. I put down my first two V9s in the same session, one of them an extension of Senor Fuerte. I also picked up Kilterboarding again, and I didn’t notice back in 2020, but I had never spent longer than 1-2 sessions on any Kilter boulder despite having about 100 V7-9 ticks. I could have been using my time more wisely to project harder, but my mentality at the time was “I’m a V7 climber, anything above V8 is too hard for me.” Realizing that my logbook was very heavily skewed towards flashes, I started trying harder climbs.

By this point I had done my first V10 flashes on the Kilter and started sending a few V11s. It seems like a big jump, but I had been flashing in the V6-V8 range on the Kilter for a year and a half at that point. I was happy but wanted to put down a V12 before weather started to improve for climbing on rock. I chose to project Plus Minus One at 50 degrees because it only features one proper hard move. I waged war over the course of 5 sessions, and on session 6 did the thing.

What I learned: Training works. Maybe this is obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn’t to me as a noob to training. If you can identify a weakness, create a plan to overcome/strengthen it, and can do so without detriment to your climbing performance, you should train. This is especially true if you have massive potential newbie gains like I did in my shoulders and one-arm strength. I need to be applying this right now for pockets, but because I’m lazy and “training isn’t fun” I don’t.

Confidence is key. The number of times I walked up to a heatseeking missile boulder expecting to fall immediately or make a project out of it, and then proceed to send within several tries, was surprising. I wasn’t as bad at my weaknesses as I thought; I just never exposed myself to them. Lacking confidence on a V7 sloper-compression problem might lead me to not even try it and instead flash a V9 crimp line, when I could very well develop more as a climber from actually learning the V7. Be humble when approaching an “easy flash” and confident when approaching a heatseeking missile.

Sometimes you just suck at a boulder. Senor Fuerte took me 12 sessions, Fuzzy Socks Don’t Match took me at least that many and probably ~100 attempts. Free Willy took me 1 session. Which of these boulders made me a better climber? Well, all of them of course, but which helped me the most? Certainly not Free Willy. Sometimes you just suck at a boulder, and that’s okay, because when you suck at something it means you have something to learn. Right now I’m sucking at a V9 compression bloc in Oklahoma. I get frustrated every time I go out there and fall on the exact same move since day 1. In the moment I’m upset, because I feel that I “shouldn’t” have to 5 session a V9. Well, I “shouldn’t” have had to 12 session a V6 either. But I know looking back that learning Senor Fuerte led to great teachable moments for myself about my body and the types of tension I was bad at. The same will apply when I look back after sending that V9.

What I would change: Replace the max hangs with front two/middle two strength/rehab and stick with it until sufficient improvement. I knew before I even started that I didn’t need max hangs. I also knew my pocket strength was severely lacking. But because it’s my biggest weakness, and no-hanging pockets with my current strength feels shameful, I didn’t.

Replace those Moonboard grind sessions with more useful sessions. I could have done literally anything else and made better gains in that time than slowly grinding the last couple V7 benchies. I could have done them eventually, but I was caught up in the Moonboard ranking against friends and completing my goal of all the V3-V7 benchmarks done. Getting a couple months’ head start on heatseeking missiles or limit bouldering would likely have been more beneficial.

Continue training shoulders/one-arm until the end of the year. I stopped because school had started up again and I anticipated being busier. I was less busy and could climb more than I did in the summer. Replacing a climbing day, or cutting one in half and training, would probably have finished out my newbie gains for what I was working on. I really had no reason to stop other than thinking I should stop, which looking back, I regret doing.

What I would keep the same: Perhaps the easiest, most effective thing I started doing during this time was video myself climbing. Not only videoing, but doing proper analysis and introspection on why a move would work one way and not another, or what I did differently on outdoor sends versus send burns. For board climbing and popular outdoor climbs it’s easy to compare yourself to other climbers. But comparing yourself to yourself, and especially your past self, is far more productive. I now have hundreds of videos of myself climbing, most of them short attempts, stored on my computer and separated by location/crag/boulder/send. In climbs I repeat, or especially board climbs, I like to compare my current self to my past self. See my last post about Moonboarding on this subreddit.

Didn’t mention this yet, but in February of 2021 I started routesetting at my college. I always knew I wanted to get into but couldn’t find an opportunity until then. My amateur routesetting experience brought about a newer way of considering climbing movement and expanded my athletic empathy. Since we only set a few times per semester, it doesn’t dig into potential climbing or training sessions when planned around. This combined with youth coaching really broadened my mind to more critical thinking about movement, which is never a bad thing.

Heatseeking missile climbing. Have I said enough about this already?

Feb 2021 – Sept 2021 Quantitative stats

Post finalized in a top-level comment below, “Embracing the Suck.”