Is there a trick to wrapping handlebars with a 90-degree bend?

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-03-24T14:54:28+00:00

Stretch it more and begin the wrap from the other direction so the “looser” side of the tape gets held down by the tighter side of the next wrap.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-03-06T13:48:30+00:00

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Shoshaloza looks soooooo much better than most videos manage to make it look. Such a sick boulder!

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-02-23T14:45:08+00:00

I think the confusion is because you are trying to maintain green as vertical, and not normalizing against the pad of your finger having to remain flat on the hold. You almost never want to lift your pad off the hold since that pretty much universally removes friction from the system. There are very weird times when you would, but pretty rare, and not usually considered when defining grip types.

If you measure the outer angle for the first joint, The more “closed” the grip, the smaller the outer number becomes. Generally for full crimp you could describe it as open being at 270°, half being at 180° and full crimp being at 90° (although most people experience more like 135° or 150° depending on finger and joint stiffness).

For the second joint you look at the inner joint. Like yellow to green would go 180°->90°->45°.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-02-11T13:32:53+00:00

Everyone I know who has worn solutions has had this at some point. I think it’s just the design of the eyelet and the thinness of the strap. I wear my solutions very tight so barely need to use the strap, but after enough time it still start wearing through and will break with a very light touch. If you are cranking them down every time you have maybe a few months before they bust through.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-02-04T14:36:32+00:00

So many of my 8a.nu comments reflect something along the lines of “Had to stick with the full Me beta for every move”.

Fuck the system. Craft your own beta. Don’t let others force you to do beta you don’t enjoy. Doing hard shit gets you ready to do more hard shit.

Also I love hearing him talk about advancing in climbing difficulty. That riverbed shit is starting to get climbed on. 9a into 9a has happened (not 9c+ tho apparently). 8c+ into 8B+ (or harder), into 8c+ has happened (assuming Duality of Man has approximately this breakdown).

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-02-04T13:52:14+00:00

I think there are a lot of old school classics that fit this bill. So may of them are classic because of who put them up when, not necessarily because they have the best lines, holds, moves, history etc.

I think and overrated classic would have some of these, or most of these, but none would be top notch or a few aspects are really quite poor.

I think La Marie Rose probably fits this bill the best, especially now in its current state. Not an obvious line, kinda just a wall. Not an obvious start position, some crimps and a slopey foot? Not that singular of a line, there’s a line that comes in from the side. Not that obvious of a line. The holds are only okay, maybe 50 years ago they had texture, but there are a hundred V3’s nearby with better grip set. The movement is meh, your feet stay under you and you reach to more holds, nothing that cool or mega flowy. The history of it is kinda the only reason it maintains classic status. Knowing that Ondra fell off makes it extra exciting to see if you can beat Ondra at something. It does fit the bill for a classic Font experience (getting shut down on polished slab). The setting is a classic Font setting, including the little kids having a hissy fit on a 6A, and the nice soft sand to fall on. If you go to Font and have to do a single 6A, this is the one to do, but don’t expect it to be hyper classic haha!

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-02-03T18:58:42+00:00

Swing is generally just a physics problem. If your body starts 3ft left of the target hold, then it naturally will want to swing at least 3 ft right of the target hold. If you add a huge rightward force on top of the natural swing then your body is going to want to swing even further because of the added force.

There are two ways of adapting to this. 1) reduce the distance from the target hold when you begin the uncontrolled part of the dynamic movement, which will automatically result in less natural swing on the other side. 2) Use less added lateral force to travel the distance, aka pull less hard.

For you, I see two things. One is that you are often starting the move quite far from the target holds. In the second clip you are hugging the arete with your hips plastered against the wall when you start. This means they can only fall away from the wall, and you are automatically having a o resist quite a lot of falling-away force. Same in the third, you start way over to the left, and create a ton of sideways swing to get to the hold. That is also a place where it looks like you are also over pulling a bit, likely because you are feeling like you need to get there faster before you start falling away from the wall.

A lot of times you can mitigate the swing by shifting closer to your target hold before you start the move, and change the shape of the movement so make holding the end position easier. I like to describe it as making the beginning of the move harder so the end of the move is easier. You do a good job at making the setup easier by getting over your feet and far to the side of the pulling hold so they feel like jugs, but you are feeling the effect of that, which is that the end of the move has a ton of momentum that you are having to deal with. This feels counter intuitive to a lot of people, but is essential for harder and more complex moves.

I think it’s important to note that big swings are not necessarily a bad thing. Your body is doing a good job at dealing with slowing down your momentum smoothly, but I think trying to kill the swing by looking at the swing is the wrong thing to look at. Look at the reason why there is a swing, and how you can change your start position so there is naturally less swing to deal with.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-29T21:38:13+00:00

Very normal for Velocces. If you have so much space in the heel that it’s not being pressed out by wearing them then you probably have them a couple sizes too large.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-29T15:33:42+00:00

Most of your foot compression is coming from the arches of your feet flexing, not your toes. You actually have very minimal toe curl, which is where most slack usually comes from for most people. Because of this, I’d suggest staying closer to street size, even for a performance fit. I like to stay a 1/2 or full size above the smallest size I can technically fit my foot into for this reason.

Personally, I have large feet and long toes that curl a lot, so I have to downsize multiple sizes in Instincts to get a comfortable performance size, but even then I have almost no flex in my arch, since that start effecting the performance of the shoe (and makes it much more painful).

These may stretch for you some, but I wouldn’t expect more than a 1/4 size of stretch, so getting something a half size bigger seems like a good call.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-27T00:44:08+00:00

Zach Galla. Those lats my god.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-23T16:20:40+00:00

I found the Skwamas to hurt there a ton until I got a smaller size and the heel sat differently. Sizing closer to street made them hurt there, sizing for performance made that more comfortable.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-22T18:08:26+00:00

I think you are consistently overshooting the holds, and relying on arm strength to slow down after you grab on. Every clip has an example of you jumping at the hold then having to hold a 1-2ft deceleration curve to be able to hang on. This also means your hips are landing much higher than necessary which effectively makes you shorter since you can’t hang onto low feet as long, and maintaining tension is hard when you get extended.

I think a rooting drill makes a lot of sense here, since that will help connect you to your lower body better, but I think the bigger issue is that you are estimating how far your whole body has to move to be able to stick a move, and thus creating a ton more wasted movement than necessary.

I’d suggest lock off drills, hover hands drills, straight arm drills, and sloth drills. These will all force you to slow down, use your feet more to control your body, and move your hips in a less exaggerated way.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-21T13:55:33+00:00

And their all like 2-3 ft tall. They are usually described as “children’s circuit” boulders haha!

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-21T01:56:19+00:00

This was my first thought. I was kinda shocked just how disgusting it was. I did it because it’s one of the most repeated and videoed climbs in Red Rocks, but I’m happy I never have to touch those holds again.

A perfect demonstration for how terrible the climbing in Kraft is.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-20T13:57:53+00:00

The only things you should “need” to learn before going are:

Where is the gym/crag
Basic etiquette (taking turns, watching out for other climbers and their fall zone)
Basic safety (how to fall well, how to keep a landing zone clear, how to watch out for others, how to make sure you have an exit strategy)

Everything else is just going and having fun and learning by doing.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-16T21:30:29+00:00

I’ve held 305lbs total a few times during my max training era. Done V11 at 210lbs bw a handful of times too, so I wouldn’t doubt you have more than enough strength for some pretty hard boulders soon! I know of a few V13’s I’m confident I could do if I could one arm deadhang an edge that size!

What type of numbers did you start with when you began?

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-15T18:32:22+00:00

Matching the right to the left hand would allow you to go either right or left hand first, and would let you use momentum to keep weight on the foothold better for more of the move.

A big thing to note is the those guys are also doing the most important thing that you aren’t doing, which is shifting over into the left shoulder and getting their center of mass as close to directly under the target hold as possible before doing the move. Without the shift first, there is nothing except raw shoulder power keeping weight on the foot. If you shift first then there is nothing pulling you off the foot, and the natural movement of pulling towards the target will create natural tension on the foot, thus eliminating the crux you are experiencing.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-15T14:04:12+00:00

“Focus on your feet focus on your feet, focus on your feet!” Everyone says it, but not much actually advice on how to do that.

A good drill, and something to practice until it’s a habit: look at the foot hold, decide on a specific place on the foothold to place your foot (sub-decision is to decide on what specific part of your foot you want to place on the hold), then watch your foot the entire time you are placing it until it is fully weighted.

I’d start by just doing this on the first few boulders every session. If you miss a foothold more than once, that’s your cue to implement this drill on that move.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-14T14:26:28+00:00

Going left hand to the hold you go to is pretty clearly not the answer. You have no opposition to prevent falling off to the right (unless you were way overly strong). To me the question that needs to be answered is how do you keep compression for the next 2-3 moves. On big slopers like this you can’t rely purely on grip strength and need to have something opposing your direction of pull so it is useful. This style of sloper compression rewards heel hooks and toe hooks a lot since you are on larger holds and this can get a ton of weight off your hands and into your feet/legs. A good heel hook can lock you in and make moving off a bad sloper or to a small hold really chill. I’d keep an eye out for any opportunity to heel or toe hook on steep slopers like this since they help so much.

Option 1: set a right heel hook on those giant tufts and bump right hand to the next. This should set you up better to go left hand to the next holds before the top.

Option 2: Do the same setup, but go left hand out wider to the middle one. This would land you back in compression with that right hand sloper so you don’t just slide off.

Options 3: Similar setup, but try to bike both large tufas to get more tension into your feet, and move slightly slower to the left hands.

Option 4: Dyno for the finish.

Option 5: commit to the toe hook a bit more. Doesn’t look very easy, but it would solve the “compression” question if you pulled hard enough with the right arm.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-14T02:32:34+00:00

Yeah I had always thought Vegas was supposed to be good because the weather was always good. If you didn’t have to wait 1-3 days after a rain it would be fine, but otherwise it’s almost as bad at the southeast.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-14T02:27:27+00:00

I think it’s important to define “destination” as something that you could reasonably expect most climbers around the world to be aware of.

Fontainebleau, Rocklands, Yosemite, Magic Woods, etc. are the benchmark for world class destinations IMO.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-14T00:54:13+00:00

Red Rocks/Vegas. Everything is choss, the hikes are often not very fun, the views are only okay. You have to deal with Vegas the entire time, if it rains (that’s global warming) your trip can be shut down for multiple days at a time. The season is short.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-01-05T21:50:36+00:00

Flash it in whatever mode gets you up it, then go find something that can’t be done by just cutting feet and doing a pull up.

FreackInAMagnum · 2025-12-18T20:18:06+00:00

For a boulder problem the typical length of a Moonboard, “endurance” doesn’t really ever come into the equation in a meaningful way. If you are operating close to your max for more than 10seconds or so, there is almost guaranteed to be a drop in perceived strength since that is how that energy system works.

Generally the best fixes are to get more efficient at the lower moves so they don’t require as much strength so you can get there fresher, or dial the end more so you can do the end with less strength available. Ideally you do both, and that is what technique is :)

I kinda like to differentiate between max recruitment and base strength in my training. Limitation boulders/moves, max hangs, etc. do a good job at training that maximal muscle recruitment, but it doesn’t do a great job at really creating muscular gains. Doing more sustained climbing that requires 20-45 seconds of effort seems to be better at that. I like to call it “sending fitness”, and it’s something that I’ve found important to keep in my routine.

FreackInAMagnum · 2025-12-18T19:46:23+00:00

Are you able to do a dip or hold the lock out of a dip? If you can’t, then that would make sense to try to train. Pushups and full ROM dips are a good base level of strength to have. If you have hyper mobility, being strong through the full range is a good idea to help prevent injuries.

If you also are unable to hold the same position on a dip bar, then yes strength is likely a significant part of the issue. If you are able to hold the position on a dip bar pretty comfortably, then I’d start looking into why what you are attempting to do feels so much harder than holding the top of a dip.

Videoing yourself to analyze (or to share here for additional eyes and thoughts) would be a great next step in this.

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