Amount of Time to advance one V level?

If someone, just say a generic, relatively athletic young guy, was starting, and could climb V1, what do you think is the time needed to progress to the next level, e.g. every 6 months you should be climbing one grade higher, or every 4 months?

p.s. please hold the sarcasm, it's played out on this forum, and not that amusing.

What are you going to do with the information?

Since you asked for us to save the sarcasm, there is no answer, it varies by person and the grade, as well as how you define being able to climb a certain grade.

James Willis wrote:Since you asked for us to save the sarcasm, there is no answer, it varies by person and the grade, as well as how you define being able to climb a certain grade.

This. It's almost unfair to the sarcastic community here to ask such a general - and therefore nearly un-answerable - question and *then* ask that we hold the snark, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're new enough to climbing to legitimately not know how many variables go into even *ballparking* an answer to a question like this.

Indoors or outdoors?
If outdoors, where? The answer might well be very different at the Buttermilks than it would be for Horse Pens or Pawtuckaway.
How long have you been climbing/how much experience do you have? Are you trying to go from V1 to V2, or from V10 to V11? Big difference.
Do you plan to train specifically for increasing your bouldering strength? How often?
Do you know enough about training to make that time useful, and to avoid injuring yourself? (Pro tip: if you are injured, you might move from one grade to the next, but perhaps not in the desired direction. [Sorry, did that count as sarcasm?])
Are you targeting a specific climb, or just a number? (e.g., I have no particular aspiration to climb "V9," but I sure would like to Soul Slinger.)
+1,000 other questions that would be necessary/helpful in order to provide you with any kind of meaningful response.

^ my palms went straight to my face lol, like the scotts lawn care commercials "feed your troll , FEED IT" anyone?

jamesldavis1 wrote:If someone, just say a generic, relatively athletic young guy, was starting, and could climb V1, what do you think is the time needed to progress to the next level, e.g. every 6 months you should be climbing one grade higher, or every 4 months? p.s. please hold the sarcasm, it's played out on this forum, and not that amusing.

Exactly every 28 days.

Typically to takes me a couple of months to jump a grade. I know this sounds like sarcasm but I was crushing with Daniel woods and he told me he really only climbs for 14 months at a time. He reaches his v14 peak and then goes into hiding for a while. It's working out for me though.

Annnd... As expected.

This board is so full of itself, no wonder its called the boulder forum, only Boulder Colorado or the upper east side is so pompous

jamesldavis1 wrote:Annnd... As expected. This board is so full of itself, no wonder its called the boulder forum, only Boulder Colorado or the upper east side is so pompous

Orrrrr.... as expected, you've asked an unanswerable question, and are surprised when you don't get answers. No one on MP has anythig better to do, so this is how we stay entertained.

Progression is not linear. It took me 2 years to break past V5, but I was probably climbing V4 within 6-9 months of starting to climb. I couldn't possibly tell you the break down between V1-V4. Who even cares?

You decribe yourself as "relatively athletic" but that's completely useless information and means nothing. I've seen some absolute monsters with great modesty who describe themselves as "relatively athletic," and the same thing said by fat tubs of lard who smoke a pack a day. "Yeah bro, I'm relatively athletic."

Do you see the problem?

I've found the change usually happens within 1-3 minutes depending on how long the problem is, but as for the time in between? We don't talk about the time in between...

I started climbing 3 months ago and almost all of it has been gym due to the weather. I'm 5'9" and 145lbs who trail runs, mountain bikes and has a phycially demanding job. I started on V0 and now climb a solid V3 but can manage some V4 at my local gym. At another gym an hour away I can climb V6. Outside at a nearby trail park with granite boulders a V3 is strenuous but do-able. I haven't been able to send a V4 on real rock yet. At the moment I can't climb 3 days a week like I was because my tendons can't handle the stress and I felt that I was very close to injury if I kept climbing. Took a week off but I'll be back at it this weekend.

To throw some more details at you to understand how impossible your question is to answer. Mixed in with the gym bouldering I also did top rope climbs. The top rope climbs is where I really learned better technique and especially balace. I also was able to skip from 5.9 to 5.10b in one day (in the gym of course). In my brief learning process I've had ups and downs where sometimes I would struggle on a V2. On the next day I'll send the same V2 first try and V3s felt fairly easy.

You can pick appart the details that will decide how quickly YOU progress to no end. How tall are you, how much do you weight, how strong are the tendons in your forearms, how quickly do you learn new athletic skills and balance, how often do you climb? NONE OF IT MATTERS, you'll simply progress however long it takes you to progress. I've met someone whos been climbing rock and ice for 10 years. He said he can only lead 5.9 on a good day but hes perfectly happy with that.

Theres your serious answer.

Can you please tell me what lead you to believe that climbers progress at some sort of similiar rate? Climbing is a huge mental game. People think they are pulling as hard as they can and are only climbing v3 then they actually try to push their limit and find they are stronger. Everyone is different and if your climbing in a gym there should not be any grading taken seriously. Now the fact that I actually gave my honest opinion on this question has made me sick.

Your own past growth is probably the best indicator for future growth. Different people progress at different rates, but everyone seems to follow an exponential curve.

im pretty sure zeno climbed trad fyi

Depends, how long does it take you to drive to how's valley?

Who cares, it's bouldering.

for me the first few grades were within a month or so each, the next couple (V4/5) took a couple months, next took several months, V7 was at least half a year, and V8 was probably 6 months after (V6-8 was 12 mo.)

I feel like that is about median for people I know who were reasonably dedicated from day one (3-4 1.5hr+ relatively focused gym or outdoor sessions per week).

Main point being that the first grades come rather quickly but it definitely slows down and really starts to crawl in the upper single digits. I can't imagine the amount of time between grades for double digit boulderers and 13+ route climbers. The amount of time between the grades is what will vary from climber to climber - based on natural ability, climbing with good people, and dedicated practice - but the general pattern will likely be the same.

From last November to Early April over the course of winter and the holidays I went from sending outside V6 to struggling with outdoor V4, so around 2.5 months, with 1.5 holiday meals and 1 larger sports event parties per -V level difficulty.

any more brain busters?

indoors it took me no time at all to get to V3. i was climbing V3's after like a couple weeks. It took me a good few month to move up to V4's though. It then took a good 3-5 months for me to move up to V5. personally, i feel like each level bump from 4 on is going to take a few months. outdoors is a whole different ballgame. i climb pretty consistently at V5's indoors right now and some V6's here and there. But outdoors the hardest thing i've climbed so far is V3. V4 outdoors, at least where i've been going, seems quite a ways away when i realistically can only get outdoors once a week or once every other week or so. i find what's holding me back more than anything with outdoor climbing is my skin. everything outdoors that i've climbed that's V3 and up tends to just get super crimpy and it just hurts the tips of your fingers so bad that i can't get through things because of the pain. has nothing to do with the physical strength aspect. i'm guessing it's going to be like 6 months before i see a grade bump outdoors.

There is no way of predicting your progression, I jumped 9v grades in 2 years then lost 2 then gained 1 then lost 5 ect ect. Grades are relative bullshit, I can think of dozens of v10s that feel easy and dozens of v7's that feel impossible.

You want to track your progression? Thats great but dont bother using v grades as your metric

Progression in climbing follows a logistic growth curve. Some individuals will have a greater horizontal asymptotic value for their ultimate ability level than others. YMMV.