Technical hard climbing or physically hard climbing?

Which do you prefer, Hard cause it's very technical or hard cause it's super physical?

You go first, since you brought it up.

well, it usually was hard steep physical but after taking a sport climbing break I'm enjoying technical trad climbs

yes

technical. I have no upper body strength so I suck at the physical

They are the same.

What Eli said

I've never done a route for the sake of difficulty - physical, emotional (R/X), or technical. All my FAs were put up solely because I got obsessed with some aspect of the route aesthetics and some just happened to turn out to be physically, emotionally or technically difficult or all three. But 'difficulty' for it's own sake in all three realms I find boring beyond words - a route has always had to have more than that going for it for me to bother.

I definitely tend towards physical routes rather than technical routes. I fairly consistently climb at least one number grade harder on physical routes than techy stuff.

I suck at technical routes. But when it comes to the strength routes, I have no problem with em

Techy for sure, I love to have to think about it. Plus I have an old broken body.
I do consider offwidths to be techy (read: creative movement), even though I also usually find them quite physical. But it's the creativity that makes me enjoy that sickness.

My favorite routes and problems have a good mix of the two. I like a climb that some moves are burly but others more delicate.

Nivel Egres wrote: Are they? There is technical movement and then there is strenuous movement. Frequently "you can twist your ass any way you want, but you have to do the move". On other problems, you can be a cave-raised teenage mutant ape and still fail. E.g. take two boulder problems, Forge and Duroxmanie. Both are on the same Font sandstone, both are 6C+, both are classic. Yet one is a "technical" while the other requires a fair bit of raw strength (maybe even better example of "physical" at that grade would be Hercule's 13th Feat). To answer the question - I am good at balancy and technical, but I like to spend more time on burly. Gotta work my weaknesses.

I would argue that if 6C+ is your limit....that it requires a perfect combo of both strength and technique to execute. The term "technical" gets used way too loosely in the climbing world. Technique allows one to be more efficient. "Raw strength" as you put it is strength without any of the fine tuning that comes from knowing one's own movement patterns, skill-based movements, etc. Practice is what turns your strength into coordinated movements.

I've climbed horizontal routes that require more technique than slabby ones...and vice versa. If you're just swinging your feet around and putting them anywhere you like, then you're not using "raw strength"...you're simply using poor technique. There's a difference.

right on Blake....

they are confusing easier versus harder..

Give me a route that brings out the big guns and leaves you panting really hard any day. The ones where ou literally have make the final moves as fast as you can to beat the pump.

Nivel Egres wrote: I am sure you have also been on routes/problems where strength decdes everything. I have a good radar for technical solutions because when I started climbing after chemo raw power just was not there. At that time I also realized that some cruxes can only be solved by brute force. It's not the angle, it's the available features - if you have to dead point to a bad sloper no amount of technical skill will make up for the contact strength.

Was it brute force though? Or an awareness of what your body can and cannot do? There is technique involved in a deadpoint to a sloper...no amount of strictly pure strength without skill will allow you to do a hard deadpoint at your limit.

Contact strength is useless without the skill required to engage the necessary parts of your body in that split second...there is absolutely technique involved in those movements. Are you just putting your foot anywhere you please? Do you have no idea if you're engaging the other hand? Is your opposing leg flagging or hanging plumb? These are all skill-based things that you will absolutely be thinking about when engaging in an at-your-limit movement. Deadpoint or not.

Blake Cash wrote: Was it brute force though? Or an awareness of what your body can and cannot do? There is technique involved in a deadpoint to a sloper...no amount of strictly pure strength without skill will allow you to do a hard deadpoint at your limit. Contact strength is useless without the skill required to engage the necessary parts of your body in that split second...there is absolutely technique involved in those movements. Are you just putting your foot anywhere you please? Do you have no idea if you're engaging the other hand? Is your opposing leg flagging or hanging plumb? These are all skill-based things that you will absolutely be thinking about when engaging in an at-your-limit movement. Deadpoint or not.

I get what you are saying, and sometimes better technique will allow you to perform a move that you felt too weak to do otherwise. However, there are some situations and sequences, especially in bouldering, where sometimes you just need to be strong enough to perform the move. For example, if a route or problem has an obligatory campus move (coming out of a roof to a vertical face and having feet on the roof make you unable to reach and there is nowhere to heel hook on the face, for example) you MUST be strong enough to perform the campus.

How about: C - none of the above.

Quinn Baker wrote: I get what you are saying, and sometimes better technique will allow you to perform a move that you felt too weak to do otherwise. However, there are some situations and sequences, especially in bouldering, where sometimes you just need to be strong enough to perform the move. For example, if a route or problem has an obligatory campus move (coming out of a roof to a vertical face and having feet on the roof make you unable to reach and there is nowhere to heel hook on the face, for example) you MUST be strong enough to perform the campus.

Campusing = power which is strength x speed. That is a coordinated movement requiring technique. I have seen plenty of VERY strong climbers have no idea how to campus. It takes practice to know how to campus...you just don't get "strong" and do very hard campus moves.

My argument is that if one is trying at their limit...incredible technique is mandatory to succeed, whether or not the route is burly or "technical".

Heading down an academic black hole...it seems that some degree of both strength and technique are needed for climbing of any style, and I agree with Blake that they can't really be separated. Often a person can use one to compensate for a lack in the other, but to really climb at your limit ("hard"), you need to optimize both. I could see the argument for certain styles like stemming or slab which don't result in a forearm pump as being techy and not physical but to do stemming at your limit you need a lot of core and back strength or the technique doesn't work. What does the OP mean by "technical"?

Yeitti wrote:well, it usually was hard steep physical but after taking a sport climbing break I'm enjoying technical trad climbs

Maybe technical = trad = placing gear?
And physical = steep = pumpy?

Side note, my own use of "physical" is most often applied to steep/wide/flaring cracks which require unusual use of body parts, chimneying, scumming my hip/knee/shoulder/head, deep jams, etc. I'm sure better technique will fix this...

verticalworldtraveler wrote:Heading down an academic black hole...it seems that some degree of both strength and technique are needed for climbing of any style, and I agree with Blake that they can't really be separated. Often a person can use one to compensate for a lack in the other, but to really climb at your limit ("hard"), you need to optimize both. I could see the argument for certain styles like stemming or slab which don't result in a forearm pump as being techy and not physical but to do stemming at your limit you need a lot of core and back strength or the technique doesn't work. What does the OP mean by "technical"? Maybe technical = trad = placing gear? And physical = steep = pumpy? Side note, my own use of "physical" is most often applied to steep/wide/flaring cracks which require unusual use of body parts, chimneying, scumming my hip/knee/shoulder/head, deep jams, etc. I'm sure better technique will fix this...

Yes.

There's a mind/body awareness that IS technical. How'd you do that campus move on the boulder problem? Chances are if you analyze it there is technique to what you just did. Understanding a move will help in the long run if you start to NOT do the move...then you have technique to focus on. If moves aren't at your limit or easy for you...then of course you can get by without putting much thought into it.

I don't care what kind of climbing it is...a roof, compression boulder, or an 89* slab...if you are trying at your limit, you need enough strength as well as enough technique to execute the movements. You won't get by on just one...and if you do get by on just one...then you're not at your limit.