Negative feelings toward Comps?

Alright so I have recently put together a fun event at a gym for everyone in my community, but in the process of asking how I should put this thing together I found out that most everyone at least in my area has developed a negative feeling towards comps. I want to know if this feeling is shared throughout the climbing community as a whole or is it just my home stomping grounds. Give me your opinions, I am curious.

What sort of comp is it?

The ones at my local gym tend to be f'ing fantastic-- a couple of live DJs, a great fun atmosphere, a couple of kegs of locally brewed beer, and a slackline competition or something at the end makes for a great time that you'd have to be crazy to not enjoy.

ChiTwnMeg wrote:Alright so I have recently put together a fun event at a gym for everyone in my community, but in the process of asking how I should put this thing together I found out that most everyone at least in my area has developed a negative feeling towards comps. I want to know if this feeling is shared throughout the climbing community as a whole or is it just my home stomping grounds. Give me your opinions, I am curious.

I believe it just depends how well it is organized, planned and ran. Alot of smaller ones are just half-assed put together and it turns out more complicated than fun. If you plan as if you are wearing the competitor's shoes, you should be fine. Make it casual and fun!!! Also, make sure your ability categories are divided in balance, very inportant. Easy to follow directions and rules are nice and make it worth the time and effort. Good luck! Hope it goes well!!

p.s. get the local climbing shop to pitch in some cool schwag to raffle/award in exchange for advertisment- people love new free stuff. Good for the business and people side, everybody wins.

I think a lot of climbers were originally drawn to climbing because they didn't like the competitive aspects of other sports (baseball, track, what have you..) For a lot of people, climbing is a way to focus on overcoming your own weaknesses without thinking about being better then someone else. So among the climbing community at large, you'll likely find a higher percentage of people who dislike competition then you would in the general population.

Of coarse those climbers who do like competition have found ways to combine the two, but I feel that competition climbing is a departure from the real soul of climbing. It doesn't bother me that people enjoy competition climbing, but I'm not interested in doing it myself.

This could, and probably is, changing with an increase in the number of people who first experience climbing through a gym instead of outdoors. They might be more likely to see competition as the true soul of climbing, and freezing your butt off on the side of a remote mountain as a departure.

I think as long as the focus is CLIMBING and not COMPETITION you're golden. If you can keep it a friendly way to get a bunch of people together push the limits of each other sounds good to me. I don't compete but I think they can be a great time.

"Of coarse those climbers who do like competition have found ways to combine the two, but I feel that competition climbing is a departure from the real soul of climbing. It doesn't bother me that people enjoy competition climbing, but I'm not interested in doing it myself."

This sums up my feelings about comps and why I don't participate. I got out of team sports in HS and haven't looked back.

Comps can turn into a really huge cluster F*** for all involved, so that might explain the negative feelings.

My only realm qualm is that it means my gym is shut down or overrun for a day when I'm still paying membership dues, but its not a huge deal.

Cheers

I hate comps. Having to go to the gym because the weather sucks, or time is short is bad enough. But a comp comes in and half the walls get marked off limits, and the route density gets cut by 2/3 (and it takes weeks till it gets filled back in).

In a general sense the lack of competition ion climbing is a large part of what I like about it. Those who want to turn everything into a competition are sick. In climbing the winner is who ever has the biggest smile around the campfire that night, not whoever racked up 15,000 points in a contrived retard crimpfest.

What next, Yoga comps? "I am the SERENIST!"

any comp co-hosted by a guy named MAD-DAWG is the barstool standard.

C'mon Moof, bang the skillet a few times and you'll come around.

the only comp that I attended was a bouldering comp. everyone competing filled out their own score sheet and had two people (who witnessed the send) initial their cards. of course, fiends teamed with friends and people were scoring as if they flashed it, even tho they fell off three or four times.( rules were to deduct 50 or a hundred points each a fall.) it was my first comp and i thought it was bullshit that douchers would so obviously cheat just for a prana shirt that was way to big for them. it was still fun and a cool experience.

Andy Kowles wrote:" PS- How about "stroke party" instead of "comp"? Still fewer syllables than 'competition'.

andy i think your on to something. if not "stroke party" it should be renamed to "Suckfest." it might bring some more people.

When Paradise Rock Gym was still going they used to have what they called user friendly comps that really didn't feel like comps at all. They were fun. I "competed" in one and won for my division. My prize was a pink Barbie doll with a purple pony. :-)Maybe you could call it a user friendly comp and specify that it is for all abilities and add a little fun factor like goofy prizes and some schwag. Schwag almost always makes things more fun, even for people like me who have no desire to be any part of competitive climbing.

Like mentioned before, comps are fun as long as the focus is on climbing not the competition. First, I like the idea of raffles instead of prizes for placing. It keeps those of us who cannot climb 5.14 more interested in the event, and discourages cheating for the sake of winning a prize. Second, keep kids (maybe 10 to 12 yrs and younger) and adults seperate through different areas in the gym, or having the comp times different. Nothing kills a comp like having a "Chuck-E-Cheese" atmosphere.

ChiTwnMeg wrote:Alright so I have recently put together a fun event at a gym for everyone in my community, but in the process of asking how I should put this thing together I found out that most everyone at least in my area has developed a negative feeling towards comps. I want to know if this feeling is shared throughout the climbing community as a whole or is it just my home stomping grounds. Give me your opinions, I am curious.

I've been to a lot of competitions over the years. The most fun were the ones where nobody was really competing per se. Having helped run quite a few comps, you get to see the results of sandbagging a lot. The absolute worst is the guy who would be somewhere in the middle of the pack for advanced flash the hardest two intermediate problems, the hardest three beginner problems, then turn in his score card before he starts working the advanced problems. Congratulations to that guy, what was supposed to be an opportunity to compare your ability to others in a controlled environment has become a chance for that guy to piss on beginners. Nice work, ass.

I actually had a guy complain to me that there were no good prizes for doing well in your division, only good raffle prizes. I pointed out the sandbagging problem, and he really could come up with a good reply.

Its especially bad when 3 or 4 people do that, so there's a three-way tie for first place in the beginner/recreational division.

So to make ability divisions work, you have to have a pretty good policy for bumping people up a division.

That's just the competition side. The atmosphere is pretty important too. Like has been said, make it feel more like a party than an athletic event, and the positive energy really comes out.

Except, of course, when a certain hairy chested MP regular sends so much positive energy your way that it distracts you from climbing. So I guess if you invite Tony Bubb, tell him to dial it back a notch (I never did get that problem, dammit).

Moof wrote:What next, Yoga comps? "I am the SERENIST!"

Hilarious!!

I'm pretty much anti-comp, but I have participated in two and I had a great time in both. They can be a fun diversion, as long as they aren't the primary objective. I think a lot of old school climbers are threatened by the idea. Rightly so, they don;t want the focus of our "sport" to move away from the outdoor, adventure aspects. But in small, non-serious doses, comps can be great.

Anyway, the more informal the comp, the more likely it is to be enjoyable. Emphasize the beer, de-emphasize the competition.

Tracy Roach wrote:My prize was a pink Barbie doll with a purple pony.

That is funny.

I guess it was just a purple pony.
More importantly, there was beer. :-)

Humans can turn almost anything into a competition...the 1977 Guinness Book of World Records lists records for both bed-making (by the 'rigorous' standards of the Australian National Bed-Making Championship, no less) and piano-smashing (!). So it ought not to be a surprise that people will compete at climbing.

I admire people who can climb 5.13 or get up The Nose in X hours...but I can't say I'd enjoy that kind of climbing. So far as I'm concerned, whoever has the most fun, wins.

I love the purple pony as a prize. I think I might use that as an idea booster for more prizes for the next event. Oh, yeah I'm hosting another one on June 6th in Muir Valley which is why I wanted to get a better feel for how the larger climbing community views comps. For the one in June I was thinking of having a scavenger climb as apposed to a traditional comp. If anyone is interested details are here:
freewebs.com/climbingforcan…

If anyone has any other ideas that could be fun for an event instead of a traditional comp please share. I want to get more ideas for these things.

Moof wrote: What next, Yoga comps? "I am the SERENIST!"

http://www.bikramyoga.com/BishnuGhoshCup.htm

The Internet: screwing with your mind since Al Gore invented it

Darren Snipes wrote: bikramyoga.com/BishnuGhoshC…

Moof wrote: What next, Yoga comps? "I am the SERENIST!"

Funny you should mention that. In an old issue of the Onion there's a similar thing, we had it taped to our fridge for about a year:

(WORLD NEWS) MONK GLOATS OVER YOGA CHAMPIONSHIP
'I am the serenest!' he says

LHASA, TIBET - Employing the brash style that first brought him to prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikudasi won the fifth annual International Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.

"I am the serenest!" Bikudasi shouted to the estimated crowd of 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. "No one is serener than Sri Dhananjai Bikudasi - I am the greatest monk of all time!"
Bikudasi averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and two-time champion Sri Salil "The Hammer" Gupta.

The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss. "I should be able to beat that guy with one lung tied," Gupta said. "I'm beside myself right now, and I don't mean trans-bodily."
Bikudasi got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, "I'm blissful! You blissful?! I'm blissful!" to the other yogis.

Bikudasi, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis. While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally considered "unBuddhalike."
"I don't care what the critics say," Bikudasi said. "Sri Bikudasi is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikudasi's own yoga thing."

Before the Bhutan meet, Bikudasi had never placed better than fourth. Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike's new line of prayer mats and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikudasi's "guru."

"My special training diet for Bikudasi of one super-charged, carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win," Vasti said.
The defeated Gupta denied that Bikudasi's taunting was a factor in his inability to attain TC. "I just wasn't myself today," Gupta commented. "I wasn't any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul."

In the second event, flexibility, Bikudasi maintained the lead by supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo Zen-Off.
"That's my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his," remarked Gupta. "He stole my thunder."
Bikudasi denied the charge, saying, "Gupta's been talking like that ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner."

Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the competition's halfway point.
But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikudasi.
The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual arsenal, but his response to today's riddle - "Show me the face you had before you were born" - was reportedly "extremely illuminative," according to Commissioner Prabhupada.
While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth, insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges "highly enlightened."
With the event victory, Bikudasi built himself a nearly insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events to come away with the upset victory.