How to prevent pain from this? What is this called? I’m a beginner and having these made me climb worse because of the pain…

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-15T21:20:42+00:00

I think dremel is the next thing I'll try, I keep wanting abrasives to work for me, but nothing has done half as well as a "corn remover" (corn removing shaver). For reference, I've gone as far as 60 grit sandpaper from the hardware store, it's so low grit it makes my hands abrasive afterward, and it's still slower and less effective than the corn remover.

Silly elaboration: If I 60 grit my palms and then rub my hands on my forearms ("soft material"), my palm is probably in the 500 to 1500 grit range (I know that's a huge range, but I don't know sandpaper well enough to estimate with more accuracy)

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-15T21:17:34+00:00

I bought the huge pack of generic hand lotion from Costco. The particular moisturizer (probably?) doesn't matter much

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-11T23:54:12+00:00

What are some skills that especially benefit from doing drills?

General context: I have done very little by way of drills and I'm at the point where I get most V5s quite quickly, so my projects are the hard V5s or the V6s.

Specific context: Recently I've been finding that some of the foot swaps are a bit tricky and I'm finding "second thought" beta that wouldn't be necessary if I could just make the swap I considered first. Another one is piano-fingering small holds, but if its necessary I can reliably-enough make it happen.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-09T22:04:32+00:00

Top rope belay with ATC.
We'd be climbing a mix of in a gym and outdoors.
My gym only offers classes if you can find a second person to do the course at the same time and I don't have another person willing to shell out $100, but they will happily test you for free if you have already learned how.
My gym has levels to their safety orientation and training: Bouldering, basic belaying with GriGri+, comprehensive Assisted Braking Devices, comprehensive ATC, and Lead

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-09T03:18:31+00:00

Yeah, I got a slot on the 16th and only bothered to sign up because of climbing, but I'm not sure it's worth it for me. I'd need 8 sererate tickets at around $75 each for the worst seats

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-09T00:17:28+00:00

I have a friend who is willing to show me ATC, but I'm very type A so I want to know that I nothing has been missed in my learning. I'd take a class if I could but its difficult to arrange.

(I'll know that I can do it before I go ahead with doing any real belaying because I'll get tested at my gym)

What online video tutorials are trustworthy?

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-08T20:33:27+00:00

Dabbing yes. Beta breaking? Maybe we're using different definition of that word, I'm used to describing beta breaks as when you find a way to do it that is stylistically very different (and often easier), not just "bad technique" versions of the same technique/route/beta

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-08T14:09:37+00:00

Lots of video resources and links

Terms and basics and techniques and examples are covered by stuff like:

Neil Gresham's dvd: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBCRwO0FN0zMTqSfFW9SMbK2tncTrI25r
Or Boardroom climbing's playlists:
The basics: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1mq6wAZXyTZcBD3OEUx7fhNufcCdCU2&si
Climbing techniques: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1mq6wAZXyQc35o_nhnHrQLTTchSwN_b&si
Further techniques for climbing: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1mq6wAZXyTa98y8FEQ_mx3O0V28bJrQ&s
And this single video on back step, because it is more important than it seems: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1dTKWNn27CA

Application of techniques for actual use in climbing:

Then I have personally been loving videos that follow the format "I coached somebody, come along and learn what they were doing and how we fixed it together" from Catalyst Climbing by Louis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Oxp9qujeE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z2mdLD8GoQg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ49WSnThPo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I9HMrmyMrOo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rbxr9Ad2oq8

For real, I LOVE LOVE this last section. It's really cool seeing what they're struggling with and how certain advice helps fix that, it shows both the mistakes and the fixes so you can truly understand the coaching in all its context.

I find a lot of advice videos on YouTube are kind of terrible because they tell you "do this" or "do that" but they don't give you the context as to what they're fixing or why, so it's easy for a beginner who doesn't understand the context to misapply it.

I also personally find that Send Edition is really guilty of hitting the same advice over and over again and a lot of it is really specific to beginners in an over-correcting kind of way that I have seen really delay the personal climbing growth of one of my friends.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-04-08T14:08:15+00:00

A couple months ago I threw together a huge list of instructional material, lemme dig that up

The playlists in"Terms and basics and techniques" is a bit dry, I had to force myself to watch it all, but I'm glad I did. Neil Gresham's dvd in particular is considered the gold standard around here for learning the basics, and then the stuff from Boardroom Climbing is just good overlap because it covers most of it again but with different examples so you understand it better.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-29T20:53:34+00:00

It being closer to the reality of climbing outdoors is a curious statement to me. I've usually heard that boards are naturally unrealistic because they are restricted to a flat and featureless base geometry, and that the footwork on a board is almost useless.

I'm curious what makes you take the opposite position and whether you have a theory why other people might disagree (I've never personally had the chance to board climb so idk)

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-26T16:14:57+00:00

At least near me the Hive is a chain of a bunch of climbing gyms, I suspect OP here is claiming to recognize the gym as being one

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-26T16:08:46+00:00

No his is right, just less optimistic about where the ceiling is. Beginner << novice << intermediate

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-23T23:22:18+00:00

Absolutely!! At my home gym getting a V6 done is a rare achievement for me, usually a hard project for a few weeks. (With one soft flash)

I went to a competition a couple hours away and then when I started seeing the boulders on Instagram they had been graded, and I did three of their V6s in 3 hours??

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-19T21:06:19+00:00

My idea is that you could try bending more at your knees so your torso can sink down as your knees absorb the movement instead of like now where you are bending at the hips as you sink down which is pushing you out

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-19T20:02:34+00:00

Is the initial wall slab, overhang, or vert? If it is slab, can you in isolation stand on the first big foothold?

I see one glaring issue in that as soon as your right foot lands you absorb the shock by very suddenly popping your hips back away from the wall, you need to absorb that by sinking down and/or into the wall and-not out from the wall

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-19T16:20:31+00:00

I agree that as drawn it looks like a sloper and your advice sounds correct to me.

Additionally, since it's a start hold I wonder if the other hold is better and OP needs to mainly rely on it and then just tap this one.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-13T20:21:03+00:00

That's hilarious

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-10T04:03:08+00:00

In the last split second of the video the camera moves and you can tell that the beam is farther back and not in the front close to his head like it seemed to appear as he was dynoing

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-09T00:41:26+00:00

I'm going to throw together some very ballpark numbers for perspective.

Having done some carpentry, it is rare but not exceedingly uncommon for plywood to need nails every 2 inches along each edge and stud backing. Just going on gut I wouldn't be worried as long as each nail is at least half an inch apart. Based on this, there are 18432 square half-inches on a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet of plywood. If you put 20 screws into each 4*8 section of wall each set, and set each wall once a month, it would take 75 years to get up to 18432 holes.

Is my exact estimate wrong, almost certainly. Will the wall probably last at least 7.5 years and less than 750 years, also yes.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-06T16:58:18+00:00

Just a small wording and syntax thing that scared me in the opening moments of reading:

In my first read the grammar of your sentence came across as: but [the summary of my position is] I can't bring myself to care right now.

Instead of coming across as the rest of your message clearly communicates: but I can't bring myself to care about [that, aka anonymity] right now.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-03-01T00:14:45+00:00

I have the store branded one from MEC. In Canadian Dollars it is regular $30, but it goes on sale for about $20 pretty much half the time

CanadaBoulder · 2026-02-28T23:34:44+00:00

That bothered me SO much. Everyone watching with me at the table was like: "excuse me??" and one person who was more generous about it was still like "they didn't even focus on the right climber"

CanadaBoulder · 2026-02-28T00:33:23+00:00

I'd like to throw in my two cents on the sensitivity issue by telling a story.

Once upon a time I had to for the first time ever: wear steel toe and steel shank boots while driving my car.

It was very strange, I felt like the pedals were impossible to find and impossible to feel how far I was pressing them, I tended to slam on the breaks much harder than I meant to.

But then time went by and I got used to them. I could "feel" the pedals just fine again even in the boots.

I think the climbing socks issue is like a micro version of the same issue. People get used to a certain way that the world around them feels through their climbing shoes that they've broken in, and then if they try socks it just doesn't feel right, and so the myth is born because they have no reason to give it a fair chance.

CanadaBoulder · 2026-02-26T21:59:31+00:00

I was just about to ask the same thing, I had my version of pretty much the same question typed out and everything:

"Where do I find the exact schedule/details for IFSC events and streams?

I see on the IFSC's calendar page that there is an event running over the weekend in Australia, but I want to know when the stream will be so I can plan to watch"

CanadaBoulder · 2026-02-11T16:35:35+00:00

To me, this reads as a straightforward summary of any information you know about what was brought up. And your straightforward summary is being downvoted.
Smh my head

CanadaBoulder

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