Bumping Up Onsight Ability

Say you're trying to bump your onsight level up to the next grade. Sport or trad. Is it best to just get on as many routes of that grade as you can? Or is it better to train by redpointing a few harder routes? What's worked for you?

Nick Stayner wrote:Say you're trying to bump your onsight level up to the next grade. Sport or trad. Is it best to just get on as many routes of that grade as you can? Or is it better to train by redpointing a few harder routes? What's worked for you?

Personally, I find that working hard routes helps me more. To onsight harder routes you need to increase your strength and improve your technique. The harder the route is, generally the more strength and/or technique will be required. If you are only trying routes that are one grade harder than your onsight limit, you won't be building as much strength or technique as if you were projecting harder routes.

Outside of killing it doing core and eating right/cardio to stay lighter, I play the 'stick game' on an indoor wall where someone points out holds and you just keep moving to them. Easy to get 80 or 90 hand movements in a session, assuming you arent on too terrible of holds and dont fall off. Its almost better on a bouldering wall where there is no risk of a big fall, and the stick can easily reach. Its not ALWAYS possible to move to the next hold without matching, but TRY and never match unless you have to. If you are using every technique you know, and the person pointing out the holds for you brings you to a rest jug when you start groaning/getting pumped as hell, you can also build great endurance and shouldnt need to match...too often. As a general rule, try to always bump, or cross, although not ALWAYS possible.

Redpointing works on how efficient you are at climbing, onsighting is obviously a whole differernt beast that is far more mental...im sure you know. This was a great game for me to play which brought my onsight ability within 1 letter of my redpoint ability. Hope that helps.

Obviously if clipping/fear/runouts/sketchy belayer are a thing those cant be targeted in the stick game, but as far as YOU go, it will help a ton to be more comfortable on onsight *movement* in general.

Hope that helps man,
Happy climbing

Oh ya and exaggerate your technique. heel hook, cross step, back step, pogo AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. even when it seems EXTRA. Gets you in the habit of always being EFFICIENT on an onsight, which, to me, is what is the hard difference between redpointing and onsighting. Not to mention more scared. Practice being more efficient onsight by overusing technique. Hope that makes sense.

On what Keyonce said: its sort of right...ENDURANCE is a percentage of OVERALL strength. If Im using 5% of my total strength I can hold on forever. at 90% I only have a few seconds to move off of that hold before I pump/fall. So you can train better ENDURANCE by training raw STRENGTH, but you wont move from v9 to v10 or something by doing a crapload of v0's. You just build better 'general endurance.' Power (bouldering) and power endurance (sport routes/stick game) are what you are after...I think if you are talking about strength.

You were asking how to bring an onsight ability closer to your redpoint ability, yes?

Also, being the stick person helps you read routes a lot better, which is kind of rad.

Best of luck

Specificity- whatever you do you will get best at that. So to improve your onsight grade I would attempt lots of routes at your onsight level or just above it. Personally, I have spent the last two years working on my redpoint grade improving it by 2 letter grades but my onsight ability hasn't improved compared to when I wasn't redpointing as hard but trying to onsight a lot of routes.

You should also keep track of why you are failing on onsights and address your weakness whatever they maybe.

Some questions that might help direct your focus: When you fail on onsights, what is the reason? What's the gap between your hardest redpoint and hardest onsight? typical onsight?

The answers to those questions might help you figure out whether it's strength, technique, or your mental game that needs work.

Nick Stayner wrote:Say you're trying to bump your onsight level up to the next grade. Sport or trad. Is it best to just get on as many routes of that grade as you can? Or is it better to train by redpointing a few harder routes? What's worked for you?

With regard to trad - forget about the grades, skip the guidebooks, develop your own eye, climb what catches your eye at any grade, and climb what makes you obsess. Do that and if you're meant to climb harder grades you will be.

Healyje wrote: With regard to trad - forget about the grades, skip the guidebooks, develop your own eye, climb what catches your eye at any grade, and climb what makes you obsess. Do that and if you're meant to climb harder grades you will be.

If your goal is to plateau, this sounds like great advice!

+1 for getting on harder stuff. I didn't begin to regularly onsight 11s until I began to project 12s.

You'll realize that onsight ability is dependent upon strength, comfort level, and route reading ability. The more you climb thin stuff, the more you learn to use it well and find the hidden stances, etc. And if you are regularly pulling hard moves above a piece on your proj, your comfort level will increase a lot.

When you go back to lower level stuff, the crux holds start feeling like the rest holds on your proj. The route reading gets pretty simple. You will feel very comfortable.

Not to mention that your technique will inevitably get better when you can no longer muscle your way up something and are forced to find the correct move or sequence.

Nick,

I bet the limiting factor is finger strength. I just read Sonnie Trotter's blog and he has some quote about the only thing holding people back from climbing harder is their finger strength (although he is trying to sell his homemade fingerboards so you do the math - I still think there's some truth to what he's saying). You've been climbing for years and years now its probably not technique.

Do you do periodized training cycles with the fingerboard or campus board?

Why do you fail when you onsight? Is it power? Endurance? Fear???

What type of routes are you trying to onsight...some tweaky pockety limestone route is going to be trained for really different than some epic multipitch trad route.

Peace,
Andy

ps you remember all the NC trad routes we onsighted or did or whatever. Well I'm going back and trying to "onsight" them (since it was so long ago!) and am failing like 50% of them or more. 5.11 NC trad is fucking hard man! How did we do it so long ago???????

Aside from the obvious train harder and climb more, a hard onsight comes down to being able to read sequences correctly and efficiently. Which unfortunately ends up being plain luck sometimes. I healthy dose of "try hard and don't say take" usually helps too.

Mike McKinnon wrote: If you want to climb harder grades, you have to put in the hard work not just haphazardley jump on stuff. You make it sound like only destiny can make you climb hard grades. Also sounds like a great way to get on something to hard with marginal protection and hurt yourself.

I didn't say you weren't going to work hard, or that you weren't going to get worked.

"Do that and if you're meant to climb harder grades you will be."

Thou hast been preordained to send. Go my son and crush.

Nick Stayner wrote:Say you're trying to bump your onsight level up to the next grade. Sport or trad. Is it best to just get on as many routes of that grade as you can? Or is it better to train by redpointing a few harder routes? What's worked for you?

I've found a healthy willingness and ability to downclimb comes in very handy when on-sighting. The send doesn't need to be pretty, just has to come clean.

5.samadhi wrote:ps you remember all the NC trad routes we onsighted or did or whatever. Well I'm going back and trying to "onsight" them (since it was so long ago!) and am failing like 50% of them or more. 5.11 NC trad is fucking hard man! How did we do it so long ago???????

Oh yes, classic memories for sure! Can't wait to make a trip out there some fall in the future.

I'd also like to know. I have onsighted 12a of almost every style both on gear and bolts for nearly 10 years. I've probably onsighted less than 5 12b.

I have red pointed several 13a and one 13b and one 13c. The strength is there but I am flailing on my onsight burn.

My current idea is to climb 20 12b's in a short amount of time. Hopefully at the end of that, I'll be more versed with the grade and start onsighting more. I don't know if that'll work though.

I don't know if one can ever just "bump" up a grade.

An old climber once told me to have patience. He went on to say how he spent years at the 5.9 grade. Now, 35+ years later, he does 5.13. Patience.

About your two choices, in my case, I have done the former and moved up very slowly, which is fine by me.

If one is limited by getting too pumped, then maybe trying to persevere and developing more tenacity: keep going even when your muscles are screaming and you swear you are going to pop off. Never expect things to be easy!

I'm definitely no expert on the subject, but looks like all the replies have good suggestions.
Seems like the stronger better all-around climber you are, the better you'll onsight.

Value to be gained from projecting harder routes - that'll teach you how to figure out sequences and tricks for moving on terrain harder than what you want to onsight, gaining strength, getting comfortable taking falls - I could see fear of falling holding people back during onsight attempts (myself included)

Value to be gained from practicing onsighting routes regularly, as this is the skill you're looking to develop. Evaluating why you fail the ones you don't get.

Your overall bag of tricks including downclimbing, resting, climbing on different rock types/angles, etc.

Maybe its a question of how much effort to put into each category and which strategies work best, as our physical and time resources are always limited.

Assuming you have no fear of falling, and are generally a skilled sport/trad climber, there are three major dimensions (technique, mental, strength), all of which could improve your game, but the big question is which is the most effective for you to work on at any given point in your progression.

Signs your technique might be the biggest opportunity: Your bouldering grade is absurdly high compared to your route climbing grade (see comparison here) . You've been climbing for a short time. Other climbers tell you your footwork is sloppy, you don't climb in balance, you aren't relaxed on easy climbing, etc. On onsights you climb far less efficiently than on projects, even if the climbing is well below your level.

Signs your mental game might be the biggest opportunity: You don't know what mental strategies are or haven't thought much about them. Your redpoint grade is more than a number grade higher than your onsight grade. You take a long time to send routes that are a few letters below your max redpoint. On limit onsights, you often fall due to sloppy climbing or poor decisionmaking. You find it hard to recover at rests.

Signs that the biggest opportunity might be improving strength: Your max redpoint is less than a number grade harder than your max onsight. Your bouldering grade is unusually low (see comparison here) , You generally find yourself climbing harder grades than people who are clearly stronger than you (fingers and body) due to technique, tactics, strategy, etc. You fall doing the moves perfectly, even to the end, but you just run out of gas. You tend towards endurance routes and avoid power routes.