Ideal difficulty for skill-enhancing "projects"

Regarding pyramids, at least in my experience, the higher the grade at the top of your pyramid, the broader it will likely be.  So if the top is 11a, 2 10ds and 4 10cs below that is prob OK.  But when 13b is at the top, its more likely you will have done 4 or more 13as by then, and many 12d and 12cs.   This is b/c as grades increase, the distance between them increases too.

aikibujin wrote:

What the... did they legalize marijuana in Russia too?!

But no, you're wrong. Tom Randall has actually done data analysis of climbers (none of this "muscular sectional area is k^2 times more, which translates to k^2 times more strength" stuff that's totally unsubstantiated), and concluded that height is generally (with caveats) an advantage in climbing, even with the higher body weight and such.

http://latticetraining.com/2017/08/10/height-in-climbing/

Ahhh... Tall vs short, my favorite subject! 

I think that Pavel's calculations would make sense, if you could create a climb using 3-dimensional measurements of two climbers, one short and one tall, keeping all holds proportionally exactly in the same orientation and pattern  to each other, only closer for the shorter climber, then yes, the shorter climber would have an easier time, because they are moving less weight up the wall. But they would also end up lower at the end of doing the sequence, bc all the holds were closer. 

But climbing doesn't work that way. The grades are consensus, so the climbers who are close to the average height of FAs, or gym route setters, will have the easiest time and most consistency at any given grade, and the farther away you are from the average, the more likely the grades are going to feel erratic. 

On some routes the height would make no difference whatsoever, a long move at the crux would be progressively harder the shorter you are, and occasionally there would be routes that are easier for short people because you can use smaller holds, or get into a scrunchy position that is harder for taller people, because their center of gravity is farther from the wall. 

S. Neoh wrote:

Interesting.

Power E is my weakness; first to go and last to regain,

Within reason, power is not my weakness.  Or at least that is what I thought based on my observation that I boulder at about the same grade or harder after taking 10 days or two weeks off, provided I have the discipline to warm up slowly and thoroughly after a long hiatus.  But maybe not because power is not my weakness.

My technique has almost certainly plateaued after > 25 years of climbing,  In fact, my footwork has probably gotten worse with better shoes and stickier sole rubber.  In the 90's, we thought LS Mythos and Tao were the best climbing equipment since SLCD.  LOL.

I don't consider 10-14 days to be a long time off, and certainly wouldn't expect that to have a noticeable effect on bouldering. :)

when I'm talking about time off from campusing, I'm not talking about  time off climbing altogether. I meant that I continue climbing at a regular frequency, but don't do campusing for several months. And my power declines dramatically. 

 An equivalent time off for bouldering would be something along the lines of, I'm just not bouldering, I'm doing roped climbing.  I had taken almost a year-long break from bouldering after a knee surgery. I was back to roped climbing in about 3 months, but avoided bouldering because it took almost a year of PT to get my knee to where I was ok landing on it. After a year of not bouldering my bouldering grade had not changed. 

It is possible that I just don't push myself as far when bouldering, so I'm not truly testing the limit bouldering ability, which may have changed, but I didn't notice. 

Since 1990, I have only taken more than 3 weeks off climbing at a stretch (cold turkey) 4 times.  Only once was it for a happy reason. 

That said, this being a "get better" post, I think it is good and beneficial to one's climbing to take 10 to 20 days off (cold turkey) periodically.  I do this at least twice a year, if not three.  I always come back more motivated, rejuvenated, and free of minor but nagging injuries.  

Someone should start a separate thread on short vs tall.  It should garner 20 pages of posts, if not 30.

David Kerkeslager wrote:

How does multipitch figure into this?

How much time do you have on your hands and how committed to the route are you? The same questions apply to your partner.

Lena chita wrote:

It doesn't...

This thread is pretty much talking about single-pitch sport climbing.

Even if you take trad out of equation, and focus on only multi-pitch sport climbing, the emphasis there would be a lot more on endurance and stamina. I am assuming here that we are talking about all-day-long multipitch, and not a 250ft tall 2-3 pitch Gunks route.

For a long multi-pitch climb, you would not be sending routes that have pitches as hard as your hardest single-pitch redpoint, assuming that you want to do this climb in a day, and not siege-project each individual pitch until you send it.

I disagree, and think that the pyramid model still totally applies.
Many "hard multipitch" routes earn their grade because of one pitch. A good example would be something like a trad route that is 3 pitches, 11d, 12a, and 12b. Its a 3 pitch 12b, and pretty sustained, but climbing 3 hard pitches where two are below your number limit isn't unreasonable. You could rap in, or free/aid the pitches and work them individually on top rope, or just work the moves on lead until you are ready, then come back and fire the whole route with your friend. It's pretty much the same thing as projecting a hard sport route, with some added logistics and knowledge necessary. The process mentally is very similar, with likely a much higher time commitment.

I say this because I think that a lot of people shy away from 'projecting' stuff like this because it seems intimidating, when basically it's the same process in a different application.
Maybe with the added benefit that you tick off a series of pitch requirements to your route pyramid at that!

I get the most out of projecting about 2-3 letter grades above my insight level. I've done as much as 6 but that becomes a long term rehearsal process and less about climbing progression.

Eli wrote:

I say this because I think that a lot of people shy away from 'projecting' stuff like this because it seems intimidating, when basically it's the same process in a different application.
Maybe with the added benefit that you tick off a series of pitch requirements to your route pyramid at that!

This is my thinking too, but it's hard to work out how to approach this in practice. I guess I should have clarified that I meant multipitch trad, which adds a few other issues to the mix. I've fairly worked out how to apply a pyramid to single-pitch trad safely, but some of the techniques (running it first on TR, placing gear) are harder and more tedious to apply to multipitch.

David Kerkeslager wrote:

This is my thinking too, but it's hard to work out how to approach this in practice. I guess I should have clarified that I meant multipitch trad, which adds a few other issues to the mix. I've fairly worked out how to apply a pyramid to single-pitch trad safely, but some of the techniques (running it first on TR, placing gear) are harder and more tedious to apply to multipitch.

It's definitely harder, knowing how to aid climb, microtrax, or having the ability to rap in basically becomes mandatory.

Eli wrote:

How much time do you have on your hands and how committed to the route are you? The same questions apply to your partner.

I have lots of time and am very committed to the route(s), but I think my approach is a bit different from the way my partners climb. They just want to climb a lot of stuff, so I can't necessarily get partners to spend more than one or two belays per session on the same route. So far this has meant I run up a project once or twice every session, and I can only climb where my project is about once every two weeks, so it's taking me months to get as many laps on my project as a sport climber might get on theirs in a day. But with multiple partners over time, I've slowly been making progress. I think I only need one more mock lead run before I'm comfortable leading the hardest of my projects, so I'll probably finish it the next time I get out there (which may not be this month due to holidays).

The nice thing here is I'm not under any real time crunch. I'm 30, so the biological clock is ticking in the sense that I don't build muscle or recover from injuries like I used to, but my patience, mental stamina, and experience are only getting better, and I think I've got at least 20 years of progress left in me. So it's okay with me to spend 4 months on a project. It's not like the time I'm not working on my project is wasted; I'm just climbing other things.

However, the time it takes to work a project in this fashion is such that I haven't really taken on any projects that aren't single pitch.

Eli wrote:

I disagree, and think that the pyramid model still totally applies.
Many "hard multipitch" routes earn their grade because of one pitch. A good example would be something like a trad route that is 3 pitches, 11d, 12a, and 12b. Its a 3 pitch 12b, and pretty sustained, but climbing 3 hard pitches where two are below your number limit isn't unreasonable. You could rap in, or free/aid the pitches and work them individually on top rope, or just work the moves on lead until you are ready, then come back and fire the whole route with your friend. It's pretty much the same thing as projecting a hard sport route, with some added logistics and knowledge necessary. The process mentally is very similar, with likely a much higher time commitment.

I say this because I think that a lot of people shy away from 'projecting' stuff like this because it seems intimidating, when basically it's the same process in a different application.
Maybe with the added benefit that you tick off a series of pitch requirements to your route pyramid at that!

I specifically qualified my response to say that I was talking about longer multi pitch routes, training for 2-3 pitch routes with one crux pitch would be fairly similar to training for a longer single-pitch route, plus the gear/ropes/anchors logistics. 

The pyramid concept still applies, sure, but you have to think about the original question: ideal difficulty for skill-enhancing projects.  

With sport climbing, which is the context in which this question was asked, skill is pretty much climbing itself. It doesn't take all that long to learn how to clip, and how to fall,and once that is out if the way, pushing the difficulty grades is relatively straightforward, because falls on bolts are generally considered safe.

The skill in trad climbing is a lot more about gear placements, and only after that skill is in place, comes the difficulty pushing. So the "pyramid" for a new gear leader is a lot more of a flattened knoll, rather than a pyramid. Nothing like 8-4-2-1. You have to spend a lot more time on routes in the onsight range, well below your max physical ability, to get comfortable with the gear.

I wouldn't have serious qualms in encouraging a newish sport leader with 12-20 leads of 5.7-5.9 under his belt to get on 5.10a, even if he isn't sure that he can do 5.10a cleanly on the first try.

 I wouldn't be telling a trad leader with a grand sum of 20 leads to push the difficulty up to the grade where he would be reasonably expecting to fall. I would be telling him to get mileage leading on easier routes where he would be getting his gear placement skills, and mileage following more experienced climbers on slightly harder routes where he would be honing his movement skills and learning more about gear placements. 

Lena chita wrote:

I specifically qualified my response to say that I was talking about longer multi pitch routes, training for 2-3 pitch routes with one crux pitch would be fairly similar to training for a longer single-pitch route, plus the gear/ropes/anchors logistics. 

The pyramid concept still applies, sure, but you have to think about the original question: ideal difficulty for skill-enhancing projects.  

With sport climbing, which is the context in which this question was asked, skill is pretty much climbing itself. It doesn't take all that long to learn how to clip, and how to fall,and once that is out if the way, pushing the difficulty grades is relatively straightforward, because falls on bolts are generally considered safe.

The skill in trad climbing is a lot more about gear placements, and only after that skill is in place, comes the difficulty pushing. So the "pyramid" for a new gear leader is a lot more of a flattened knoll, rather than a pyramid. Nothing like 8-4-2-1. You have to spend a lot more time on routes in the onsight range, well below your max physical ability, to get comfortable with the gear.

I wouldn't have serious qualms in encouraging a newish sport leader with 12-20 leads of 5.7-5.9 under his belt to get on 5.10a, even if he isn't sure that he can do 5.10a cleanly on the first try.

 I wouldn't be telling a trad leader with a grand sum of 20 leads to push the difficulty up to the grade where he would be reasonably expecting to fall. I would be telling him to get mileage leading on easier routes where he would be getting his gear placement skills, and mileage following more experienced climbers on slightly harder routes where he would be honing his movement skills and learning more about gear placements. 

I could totally have read your original post wrong, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not saying you're incorrect about anything or calling you out. I just wanted to bring into this thread that the pyramid is an awesome structure for pushing yourself, but it can be looked at in a much wider scope than just smashing up new sport grades.

I definitely wouldn't encourage a newer leader over the internet to push it on gear. I wanted to bring up that this is a totally doable practice in places other than sport climbing. Perhaps for "skill enhancing projects" in the trad game for a lot of people would benefit from doing "x" amount of pitches in a day or slightly increasing what they're onsighting at well before they start bombing onto gear. I think if you're comfortable placing gear though you can bring these "sport" type tricks and mentality to your trad game and suddenly those big numbers don't look so big anymore.

I recently built my own pyramid and looked at a lot of holes in my resume that technically should be filled on  my path to a higher grade. When I built the pyramid I was sure to make about half of those routes be gear protected because I climb somewhat the same grades between bolt clipping and cam plugging. I don't know if the pyramid idea has to suit a singular genre as much as it has to suit your goals. A good example might be that if I want to climb a 13a i need about 4 12c sends, but maybe one of those 12c's can be replaced with a v5+/6 boulder that emulates the crux of a later goal or is currently hitting a weakness of mine. For me projecting that kind of thing might require the same or more time investment than a route, but I might get more out of it in terms of perusing the goal.

A good example (or horrible misleading example maybe) is that I've often felt like grunting through hard offwidths and holding core tension together on overhanging sport routes require a lot of the same type of strength. Say you're projecting a 12b bolted roof: your pyramid could stack as 12b sport, 2x12a sport, 4x11+ sport...... or you could start substituting variations in below your goal.
One of those 11+ routes could be that gnarly offwidth you've always shyed away from. Even if you just top rope if because you're not comfortable placing gear you're still probably going to see the benefit of it later when you try that heinous roof because you were able to not puke when thrashing up the wide thing.

Maybe I'm just ranting about shit no one cares about, but I guess I just want to remind people aiming at goals that the journey there doesn't have to be so linear if you don't want it to be.

Eli are you trying to tell me I coulda sent the Stand if I climbed more OW?

Oddly, my trad pyramid is way more fucked up than my sport one. Lot of every grade of 5.10, no 11s, a 12, and another 12 or 2 coming soonish.

Eli wrote:

A good example (or horrible misleading example maybe) is that I've often felt like grunting through hard offwidths and holding core tension together on overhanging sport routes require a lot of the same type of strength. Say you're projecting a 12b bolted roof: your pyramid could stack as 12b sport, 2x12a sport, 4x11+ sport...... or you could start substituting variations in below your goal.
One of those 11+ routes could be that gnarly offwidth you've always shyed away from. Even if you just top rope if because you're not comfortable placing gear you're still probably going to see the benefit of it later when you try that heinous roof because you were able to not puke when thrashing up the wide thing.

This makes perfect sense to me. Early in the thread there was talk about the importance of picking climbs that aren't your strong suit for the pyramid routes below your top goal. And that could definitely be something that focuses on climbing style that isn't common on sport routes, whether offwidths, or cracks, or stemming dihedrals, whatever.

My trad climbing experience is rather limited, compared to sport climbing, but I definitely found that there is some skill transference, e.g. learning to jam and fingerlock, while not seemingly directly applicable to a sport route, made the difference for me in those few occasions where finding an odd handjam or ringlock made for a better rest on a sport route.

And I see the reverse being true for a lot of people who climb harder trad-- they consider sport climbing great for building overall endurance/PE, which comes in handy on an overhanging gear route, even though the movement is quite different, the basic fitness is still helpful.

Jon Frisby wrote:

Eli are you trying to tell me I coulda sent the Stand if I climbed more OW?

Oddly, my trad pyramid is way more fucked up than my sport one. Lot of every grade of 5.10, no 11s, a 12, and another 12 or 2 coming soonish.

Pshhh, you couldn't send the Stand on a good day. Save those muscles for Supper's Ready or Kansas City.....

More what I'm saying is maybe you shouldn't separate your pyramid(s) by trad or sport, but if you wanna climb the stand for instance, just climb thin balancy slabs and less than vertical stuff until you're regularly 11- good at it.
Seems like we've diagnosed a weakness. Come to NH and we'll "fix" it.....

Lena chita wrote:

My trad climbing experience is rather limited, compared to sport climbing, but I definitely found that there is some skill transference, e.g. learning to jam and fingerlock, while not seemingly directly applicable to a sport route, made the difference for me in those few occasions where finding an odd handjam or ringlock made for a better rest on a sport route.

And I see the reverse being true for a lot of people who climb harder trad-- they consider sport climbing great for building overall endurance/PE, which comes in handy on an overhanging gear route, even though the movement is quite different, the basic fitness is still helpful.

Altho this post is about pyramid as it applies to sport, I happen to believe 'inter disciplinary' training works very well and good complementary training if done consistently and with the appropriate mindset.  I recall the one year when I climbed better than I had thought possible was the season during which I alternated between Gunks trad and NH sport one weekend to the next.  I would try to onsight Gunks .10 on lead (fully acknowledging as difficulty rise on Gunks routes, protection rating generally go down) one weekend and try to send sport .11 and .12 in a day the next. PE gained from harder sport gave me the ability and confidence to figure out and get the best possible gear in on lead at the Gunk and conversely, having a fat bolt for last piece of pro made me more willing to 'go for it' when attempting to send a hard (for me) sport route in as few tries as possible.  We did not work harder Gunks routes on lead.  If we felt like it, we would try our hardest to link the route on TR in one day; the likes of Scary Area, The Sting, Birdbrain, Slammin The Salmon, To Be or Not to Be.  All very serious leads.

snowdenroad wrote:

Regarding pyramids, at least in my experience, the higher the grade at the top of your pyramid, the broader it will likely be.  So if the top is 11a, 2 10ds and 4 10cs below that is prob OK.  But when 13b is at the top, its more likely you will have done 4 or more 13as by then, and many 12d and 12cs.   This is b/c as grades increase, the distance between them increases too.

I don’t agree with this. While grades are very subjective, the difference in difficulty between adjacent grades does not get wider as the grade gets higher. More likely than not, as a climber progress into the higher grades, they start to pump up against their genetic limit. Let’s face it, we all have a genetic limit. Not all of us can climb 5.15c, no matter how hard we train or how much we believe it! So let’s say your genetic limit is 5.13c, which will require the perfect combination of weather, diet, style of the route, physical and mental preparation in order for you to send, then the gap between 5.13b and 5.13c will feel huge to you, and the difference between a 5.13c and 5.13d will feel impossibly wide to you. But if you ask a 5.15 climber, they will probably say, “yeah, I think 5.13d is just little harder than 5.13c.” Likewise, if you are a 5.13 climber, you’ll probably think, “that 5.11b feels just a tad harder than that 5.11a.” Yet if someone is genetically limited to a maximum grade of 5.11a (theoretically), then a 5.11b will feel impossibly hard to them.

I’m not sure how many of us actually get to our true genetic limit in our lifetime, but the grade pyramid will more likely turn into a “grade fence” at our limit. We may be able to send just a handful of routes at our true limit in our lifetime, but a lot more at a grade or two below our genetic limit. But it’s kind of hard to tell if it’s just a plateau or our true limit, unless you’re climbing 5.14s and 5.15s.

IMO, go boulder to acquire/enhance movement skills, and climb routes you can send in a few sessions (or at least have very good linkage) to reinforce those skills.

Project hard routes if the moves are very specific and can't be replicated close to the ground.

aikibujin wrote:

I don’t agree with this. While grades are very subjective, the difference in difficulty between adjacent grades does not get wider as the grade gets higher. More likely than not, as a climber progress into the higher grades, they start to pump up against their genetic limit. Let’s face it, we all have a genetic limit. Not all of us can climb 5.15c, no matter how hard we train or how much we believe it! So let’s say your genetic limit is 5.13c, which will require the perfect combination of weather, diet, style of the route, physical and mental preparation in order for you to send, then the gap between 5.13b and 5.13c will feel huge to you, and the difference between a 5.13c and 5.13d will feel impossibly wide to you. But if you ask a 5.15 climber, they will probably say, “yeah, I think 5.13d is just little harder than 5.13c.” Likewise, if you are a 5.13 climber, you’ll probably think, “that 5.11b feels just a tad harder than that 5.11a.” Yet if someone is genetically limited to a maximum grade of 5.11a (theoretically), then a 5.11b will feel impossibly hard to them.

I’m not sure how many of us actually get to our true genetic limit in our lifetime, but the grade pyramid will more likely turn into a “grade fence” at our limit. We may be able to send just a handful of routes at our true limit in our lifetime, but a lot more at a grade or two below our genetic limit. But it’s kind of hard to tell if it’s just a plateau or our true limit, unless you’re climbing 5.14s and 5.15s.

I think one reason why people would have flatter pyramids higher up is that your work capacity gets really good over the years. people like megos can send many routes within 1-2 grades of his max in a week long trip, while most of us don't get enough burns in to pull that off. I also think the onsight/top send gap decreases as the grades increase because the better your technique gets, the less drastic your improvements between burn 1 and burn 4 are. I'm a really shitty onsighter, and my 4th burns look way different than 1st. I think this is less the case at the top end.  

reboot wrote:

IMO, go boulder to acquire/enhance movement skills, and climb routes you can send in a few sessions (or at least have very good linkage) to reinforce those skills.

Project hard routes if the moves are very specific and can't be replicated close to the ground.

I would say this approach lacks a very important step. It does not train intellect (especially decision making and long-time laser-like focus keeping under strong pressure) that hard as long hard routes projecting.

Basically to become a hardcore climber one should throw themselves into any kind of battle. To name a few - hard bouldering, hard projects, long hard multipitches, speed climbing (yes, I insist any climber should invest a decent amount of time to speed climbing training to get anywhere close to theirs so called "genetic limits"), etc, etc, etc.