Breadth or Depth? Repeat until clean, or try something new?

Hi!

I'm a beginner climber, started in September. I currently only climb outdoors, as I travel around the US. 

I'm curious if it's better, especially from those that climb outdoors, to get on a bunch of routes, even if you're not leading things clean, or if it's better to stop and repeat a route until you get it clean.

To note, I can usually flash 5.9s, but then need to repeat 1-3x 5.10s to get them clean, and 5.11s are multi-day projects. 

Generally, if I feel like I have something I could learn from repeating and sending a route, I do it, but if I think I would just send it easily the second time and just made a stupid mistake the first time (didn't see a hold, got too scared and took but it ended up being easy), I don't. 

Thoughts?

I think one of the best things you can do to improve as a climber is to work on your weaknesses.

Hate balancy movement? Get on a slab route.

Have poor strength/power? Find an overhanging route with big moves.

Need endurance? Run laps on those 5.9s until you're exhausted.

You get the idea.

I know this doesn't exactly answer your original question of breadth or depth, but I hope this helps!

Drink from the Cup of Many Routes as often as you can, while you can. Work the routes that stick in your craw. Let the ones go you don't care as much about. It's all good.

Sounds like you're doing just that!  

I think you should do both. 

Doing just easy-for-you climbing all the time is not the best way to improve. But it is a great way to get mileage, and you should do it regularly.

IMO at this stage you would get most value/improve most quickly by sending routes you didn’t flash, but you think you could do in couple tries. There is value in figuring out the sequences that you didn’t read right, in remembering those sequences, and there is value in learning to keep it together when you are climbing something slightly hard for you.

But multi-day/multi-week projects are not very useful at this point. 

The answer is yes. At your point in climbing, your friend is milage.  If you set a goal to climb 5.12 in the next two years (perfectly reasonable goal, you could totally do it if you are climbing 5.10 now) you basically have to do two things. Get comfortable climbing at your grade now and get stronger physically (strength, endurance, power). You can do both to some degree at the same time but its best to focus on one then the other, setting one short term goal is more motivating than setting two mid term goals. You improve physical strength by trying hard routes and focusing effort on a clean send. you improve comfort with milage on a variety of different route styles, rock types and difficulties. If you find a route that exploits your weaknesses, put effort into improving on it! If no particular routes spark the inspiration, just climb a lot until you find one. Keep the psych up by only projecting routes you really are inspired by, not just cleaning up a route for the sake of doing it. If you are traveling a lot, it should be easy to find inspiring rock features to climb. But focus on having fun, making friends and climb a lot!

once you can cleanly lead a route, try downclimbing it.

-Haireball

In terms of motor learning, you still have a lot to learn after you get the clean send. Your body will find slightly more efficient ways to move, for example turning down the agonist-antagonist pairs that were used to stiffen a joint once it knows how much is/isn't needed. Moving correctly and directly to the new weight-bearing position instead of needing additional adjustments, etc.

I mainly practice this in the gym, where I spend 75% or more of my time on routes/problems that I've already done, often multiple times. But outdoors, too, I'm happy to re-climb things that I've sent before.

I dont know. Are you climbing for fun or other reasons?