Anyone can climb V10/5.14-

Mark Frumkinwrote: Rest is as big a part of training as anything else, but pros turn it on when they have to.
Walter Payton's 275 yard game sick with the flu. On the training table covered with towels shivering with fever minutes before the game. Then 275 yards.
First, you learn to put the socks on properly so that you never have a problem with our feet. Then you slowly and purposely learn everything you need to know as you practice harder than you thought possible & then you go out sick as shit & totally physically & mentally destroy 12 men much larger than you.
Walter Payton was not just talented he worked hard than anyone! And every step he took in life he took with pride.
Built from the bottom up.

Dont know this story but the one where Michael Jordan had the flu before a championship game against the Utah Jazz and went on to be the high scorer and win the game is similar. Jordan recently admitted it was untrue. It was a lie to get into the opponents head so they drop their guard and focus on other players.

Luke Bertelsenwrote:

Sorry, you lost me there.  I was simply making an attempt to point out that the convo had derailed a bit.  

Don’t get me wrong the story about the power lifter turned turned climber really piqued my interest, but I’m still waiting for someone to give a better take on the original question. As I said initially I think it’s totally false - you’re average fit climber will not eventually be able to climb V10/5.14a.

As a climber and former powerlifter, I think genetics play a more important role than people give credit.  Most competitive lifters will not hit a double bodyweight bench press, yet I can do that nearly off the couch and have done 365 at 165 body weight.  Not because I work harder than others, but because some other factor such as tendon insertion points and torque arm length that lets me bench at an elite level without having to work as hard for it.  There are times I have gone months without training and within a few weeks, hit double bodyweight.  Yet I have only done one v9, and a couple low 5.13's  

M Mobleywrote:

Dont know this story but the one where Michael Jordan had the flu before a championship game against the Utah Jazz and went on to be the high scorer and win the game is similar. Jordan recently admitted it was untrue. It was a lie to get into the opponents head so they drop their guard and focus on other players.

Completely false.  

The game was called the "flu game", but he in fact had food poisoning from a pizza he ate around midnight the night before the next day's game.  You may be referencing the time he did tell teammates he had been slighted at the end of a game by a rookie that had scored more than him.  He said the player had snarkily told him, "good game, Mike.", thus making him want to get even.  That never happened but he said it did, and he still torched said rookie the next time they met scoring (nearly) that player's game total in the first half - 36  points.

How's that for thread drift?

Eric Carloswrote:

As a climber and former powerlifter, I think genetics play a more important role than people give credit.  Most competitive lifters will not hit a double bodyweight bench press, yet I can do that nearly off the couch and have done 365 at 165 body weight.  Not because I work harder than others, but because some other factor such as tendon insertion points and torque arm length that lets me bench at an elite level without having to work as hard for it.  There are times I have gone months without training and within a few weeks, hit double bodyweight.  Yet I have only done one v9, and a couple low 5.13's  

I admire/hate people like you!  ;)  just jealous for sure!

Chase Morganwrote: Skimmed this. Surprised no one has mentioned that mediocre normal-ass climbers with normal-ass genetics like me injure the shit out of our tendons and cartilage when we "try harder". 

This x10, every time I started to train or get to that next level, I would end up popping a tendon.  

Luke Bertelsenwrote:

Completely false.  

The game was called the "flu game", but he in fact had food poisoning from a pizza he ate around midnight the night before the next day's game.  You may be referencing the time he did tell teammates he had been slighted at the end of a game by a rookie that had scored more than him.  He said the player had snarkily told him, "good game, Mike.", thus making him want to get even.  That never happened but he said it did, and he still torched said rookie the next time they met scoring (nearly) that player's game total in the first half - 36  points.

How's that for thread drift?

Altitude sickness, he shouldn't have stayed in Park Shitty. That and he probably had some of that famous local beer from the tap.

Screw M Jordon, the Walter Payton story is true.
Eric, how much training did you do to get there in the first place.
Genetics play a huge part in everything but training properly is more important than anything.
Once I stop racing I stopped training & yet twenty years later when I showed up at tracks to fool around I would still be in the top 5% of anybody on the track.
Getting into the top 5% of almost anything is easy all you have to do is work your ass off keep the injuries down & learn all the little thing that makes what you do what it is. After that comes the hard part. The difference between the top 5% & 1% is huge you have learned everything you can you have trained till you drop there seems to be no more & yet you are getting beat.
The difference between 5% & 1% in most sports is small yet to get there is a hundred times harder than going from being in the top 50% to the top 5%.
Life is 95% psychological & the other 50% is mental. 

Mark Frumkinwrote: Screw M Jordon, the Walter Payton story is true.
Eric, how much training did you do to get there in the first place.
Genetics play a huge part in everything but training properly is more important than anything.
Once I stop racing I stopped training & yet twenty years later when I showed up at tracks to fool around I would still be in the top 5% of anybody on the track.
Getting into the top 5% of almost anything is easy all you have to do is work your ass off keep the injuries down & learn all the little thing that makes what you do what it is. After that comes the hard part. The difference between the top 5% & 1% is huge you have learned everything you can you have trained till you drop there seems to be no more & yet you are getting beat.
The difference between 5% & 1% in most sports is small yet to get there is a hundred times harder than going from being in the top 50% to the top 5%.
Life is 95% psychological & the other 50% is mental. 

I started lifting in 9th grade and in 10th, did a 235 bench at 131 body weight.  Stopped lifting about a year after high school.  Lifted off and on, but mostly off for about 12 yrs.  Started again, and took about 6-8 months to hit 315 at 150 body weight.  I have a moderate lifting background, but nothing extensive, really.  

TBlomwrote:

This x10, every time I started to train or get to that next level, I would end up popping a tendon.  

More likely than not you were over training and climbing on routes you weren't physically prepared for.

Speaking of weight lifting my bench press was never my strong point. However I’m very strong with legs and back. As mentioned tendon insertion points and body geometry differ.

I read an analysis of Micheal Phelps and how he has the perfect swimmers body. Giant hands and feet “they act as flippers”. A long torso that glides on the water, etc.

Adam Ondra has a great video on YouTube about the best body type for a climber. Of note to another thread he said height is pretty much irrelevant. For fingers: short for the best leverage and thick for strength is good. Then they show his fingers and they’re like short sausages.  He talks about how a lot of factors are trade offs. Eg a large ape index means you can reach further holds but makes your leverage worse so it takes more effort to maintain body tension.

 given an athletic disposition, and adequate training, time, diet and rest, any average climber can attain the level of 5.12
seems like an actual reasonable level that "anyone" could get to

About injury, I have an interesting anecdote. When I first started breaking in to V4/5.11 or so, I started climbing problems that had holds that could be considered "tweaky". What followed was a whole slew of injuries. I injured A2 pullies on both ring fingers and both middle fingers over the course of maybe 2-3 years, and I gave myself a rotator cuff injury that causes my shoulder to click and pop still 10 years later. It took years for the palpable lumps of scar tissue in my fingers to dissipate.

What followed was a shift away from crimping and a change in both my training tactics and climbing style. Over time, I slowly reintroduced the kinds of moves that hurt me before and had the skill set to recognize when I was getting close to the proverbial edge and back off. I have not had a pulley strain in my fingers in over 5 years, and I am climbing much harder than I ever was when I was getting hurt over and over. It took me a solid 6-7 years of climbing before I learned which painful tweaks could be powered through and which tiny twinges were red flags that required an immediate end to the session and several rest days.

This is what I meant when I said getting to 5.14a or V10 for most people would probably require a coach. Most people actually don't train very smart or climb in a way that's unnecessarily risky to connective tissue. I would have saved years of wasted stagnation if I had someone to tell me when I was doing more harm than good while trying to get better.

Gloweringwrote: Speaking of weight lifting my bench press was never my strong point. However I’m very strong with legs and back. As mentioned tendon insertion points and body geometry differ.

I read an analysis of Micheal Phelps and how he has the perfect swimmers body. Giant hands and feet “they act as flippers”. A long torso that glides on the water, etc.

Adam Ondra has a great video on YouTube about the best body type for a climber. Of note to another thread he said height is pretty much irrelevant. For fingers: short for the best leverage and thick for strength is good. Then they show his fingers and they’re like short sausages.  He talks about how a lot of factors are trade offs. Eg a large ape index means you can reach further holds but makes your leverage worse so it takes more effort to maintain body tension.

Talking about the likes of Phelps or Ondra might not be super productive here. The difference between 5.14- and 5.15+ is so vast that noting that you need to be a genetic freak to be able to climb like Ondra or Megos does not have a ton of bearing in my mind on whether 5.14a is attainable for people at the top of the genetic bell curve.

Thomas Chapmanwrote:  given an athletic disposition, and adequate training, time, diet and rest, any average climber can attain the level of 5.12
seems like an actual reasonable level that "anyone" could get to

There is a subset of the climbing population that wants to climb at an unreasonable level.

Thomas Chapmanwrote:  given an athletic disposition, and adequate training, time, diet and rest, any average climber can attain the level of 5.12
seems like an actual reasonable level that "anyone" could get to

People can squabble over pessimistic hypotheses all day long. However, we have two high profile case studies ((the Anderson Bros.) where guys who were -not- reared in a gym, who got into serious climbing relatively late, and self-admittedly had no particular genetic gifts where climbing is involved, went from 5.11 chuffers to 5.14+ crushers by dint of meticulous training methodologies and an insane capacity for hard work.  They both have families and full-time engineering jobs, btw.  Now, I would absolutely concur that that level of discipline could itself quite possibly have genetic roots. It's also been shown that the extent of our neurotransmitter rewards for exercise and exertion is based on our genes. But that's not what's being argued here. 

I'd say that mental and geographic factors have a -much- larger impact on a reasonably athletic individual's ability to climb 5.14 than corporeal genetics. Why? Because I don't think I've ever seen someone who puts in an Anderson-Bros. level of dedication (and lives proximate to hard outdoor routes) -not- get to that level. However, to my point, the number of people I've seen willing to make that effort has been -miniscule-. The RCTM basically explicitly states, "here's what it takes to go from a completely average climber to elite level".  The secret? Religious devotion to training.  They could have easily called it "The Poor Man's (or Woman's), Non-Genetic-Freak Guide to Climbing 5.14". Hell, I did the RCTM protocol religiously for over a year... and I got stronger! But I also got bored. I wanted to climb the new set at the gym, wanted to climb with my friends instead of hangboard,  wanted to go on trips instead of sticking to the plan.. etc, etc. Had I -actually- stuck with it for EIGHT YEARS (the time it took the Bros. to get from 5.11 to 5.14), I have no doubt I'd have ticked a couple 5.14's by now. But I came to the realization long ago that, although admittedly climbing-obsessed, I'm simply not willing or able to put in the work.

To all the naysayers on this thread; did you meticulously grind it out for 8 years, stick with the program, log every session, do like 350 hangboard workouts, and yet -still- aren't able to climb 5.14? Because that's the only methodology that would -actually- prove your point. There are a million valid reasons to not be climbing 5.14.  However, "I did everything humanly possible to reach the ceiling of my genetic potential, yet still fell short" is certainly not one that -I've- ever encountered.

I'll speak to the sport in which I'm more experienced, which is running, and in running, genetic variation in ability is absolutely everything. It also helps that there is an absolute measure of how good you are at running, namely, the clock. I ran at a d3 school which a bunch of guys that were more or less all equally motivated, but came from very different stock-- some guys ran 4:20 for the mile in high school off of not much training, and others came in sporting a 4:55 mile PR and had worked fairly hard for it. No matter what the 4:55 guy does, he'll never be able to catch up to the 4:20 guy if they both train to the best of their ability. Ever. Personally I worked from 4:37 to 4:23 in college, and another guy in my year worked from 4:31 to 4:06. Different people respond differently to the same training, full stop. I will never ever be able to run a 3:59 mile no matter how much I train, because I've already trained quite close to what I believe is my potential (I ran about 13,000 miles over 4 years, and tried really hard to do the little things right). There's just not that much more water to squeeze out of the sponge. That being said, I think anyone that started running as a young teen can make it to a 5:00 mile if they take running as seriously as me and my teammates did. You just have to kind of no-life it for a while.

So in terms of climbing, I really think the same is true in that pretty much anyone could start climbing when they are something like 14 and make it to mid 5.13 in 10 years. I think that's about the equivalent of running a 5:00 mile as far as number of people that can run that fast or climb that hard. past that, I think a lot of it is genetic response to stimuli-- some people just take training better than others, whether that is injury limited or something else.

The comment that said "more likely than not you were overtraining" yeah probably, but there's only so much time to train at a high level. For some people, taking it slowly enough to not get injured means that they never make it before aging really kills recovery and ability to train hard.

The suggestion that the Anderson brothers are not athletically gifted is simply unbelievable. 

Mark Paulsonwrote:

People can squabble over pessimistic hypotheses all day long. However, we have two high profile case studies ((the Anderson Bros.) where guys who were -not- reared in a gym, who got into serious climbing relatively late, and self-admittedly had no particular genetic gifts where climbing is involved, went from 5.11 chuffers to 5.14+ crushers by dint of meticulous training methodologies and an insane capacity for hard work.  They both have families and full-time engineering jobs, btw.  Now, I would absolutely concur that that level of discipline could itself quite possibly have genetic roots. It's also been shown that the extent of our neurotransmitter rewards for exercise and exertion is based on our genes. But that's not what's being argued here. 

I'd say that mental and geographic factors have a -much- larger impact on a reasonably athletic individual's ability to climb 5.14 than corporeal genetics. Why? Because I don't think I've ever seen someone who puts in an Anderson-Bros. level of dedication (and lives proximate to hard outdoor routes) -not- get to that level. However, to my point, the number of people I've seen willing to make that effort has been -miniscule-. The RCTM basically explicitly states, "here's what it takes to go from a completely average climber to elite level".  The secret? Religious devotion to training.  They could have easily called it "The Poor Man's (or Woman's), Non-Genetic-Freak Guide to Climbing 5.14". Hell, I did the RCTM protocol religiously for over a year... and I got stronger! But I also got bored. I wanted to climb the new set at the gym, wanted to climb with my friends instead of hangboard,  wanted to go on trips instead of sticking to the plan.. etc, etc. Had I -actually- stuck with it for EIGHT YEARS (the time it took the Bros. to get from 5.11 to 5.14), I have no doubt I'd have ticked a couple 5.14's by now. But I came to the realization long ago that, although admittedly climbing-obsessed, I'm simply not willing or able to put in the work.

To all the naysayers on this thread; did you meticulously grind it out for 8 years, stick with the program, log every session, do like 350 hangboard workouts, and yet -still- aren't able to climb 5.14? Because that's the only methodology that would -actually- prove your point. There are a million valid reasons to not be climbing 5.14.  However, "I did everything humanly possible to reach the ceiling of my genetic potential, yet still fell short" is certainly not one that -I've- ever encountered.

I want to highlight "self-admittedly had no particular genetic gifts where climbing is involved" because that does not mean they didn't have any genetic gifts, they were just unrealized.  Also, yes you found two high profile cases, but there are thousands or tens of thousands that don't hit that level.  For that matter, name one person who followed the Anderson Brothers training (which I think is phenomenal, BTW) and got to that level, who wasn't already a gifted climber.

Dylan Colonwrote:

Talking about the likes of Phelps or Ondra might not be super productive here. The difference between 5.14- and 5.15+ is so vast that noting that you need to be a genetic freak to be able to climb like Ondra or Megos does not have a ton of bearing in my mind on whether 5.14a is attainable for people at the top of the genetic bell curve.

My point is that certain body types are going to be predisposed to have the ability to do certain things. And it’s probably going to fit a bell curve. Ondra and Phelps may be the 0.1%. But the question here is what Is the genetic limit of some other part of the bell curve. An athletic disposition may mean the top 50% or it may mean all but the bottom ~16%. 

It's funny how personally people seem to take this argument.

It wasn't that long ago that climbing 5.10 seemed to take superhuman ability.

Now it's intro level.

Maybe someday 5.14/V10 will be similarly elementary and we'll actually know that it's within the physiological range of the average climber.

Until then, it's anybody's guess.
Are cutting edge climbers nearing the limits?
I hope not, and would be psyched to see them climb harder and draft on their accomplishments to harder climbs of my own.

FWIW, I don't see a downside in believing all of us could reach 5.14/V10.
A will to ignorance is sometimes, also, a will to power.