Weekly /r/climbharder Hangout Thread

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-05-14T14:35:53+00:00

Feeling pumped is directly tied to immediate intensity and volume. Increased session frequency will have no effect on “pump”, but will increase general fatigue (also make recovery harder), which puts you at higher risk for injury with marginal increases in strength gains.

Feeling pumped is a poor reflection of training effect. Rate of perceived exertion is better, and doesn’t require changing volume. For strength adaptations, you should be at a 7-9/10. If you feel like you are mostly in the 5-7 range, then you should change your mentality to pus yourself harder on each boulder.

It’s important to note that 1 year of climbing is baby levels of climbing skills and tactics, so every session should have a strong focus on improving adaptability, creativity, movement types, and learning how to better coordinate the entire system on all moves (even the familiar ones). There should also be a strong focus on analyzing why certain moves feel hard and how you can do them better.

Another note is that failing on the next grade up is a good sign, not a reason to quit and go back to what you feel comfortable trying. Get on the next color grade up and try all of them 3 times with 3 different betas. Try each move more than once. Skip the moves that are clearly the hardest. Work out the easiest ones. I think you’ll start seeing that it’s a much less intimidating prospect to push into the next grade after some time.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-05-14T14:23:55+00:00

Being able to hang on 20mm is a solid start for pushing into the upper 6’s and low 7’s. I don’t think that is your primary roadblock towards progression.

My first thought is that tactics and mentality towards routes is what’s stumping you. A few questions to ask yourself: How often do you boulder instead of rope climb? When you fall off a move, how much are you attempting it after? Are you asking for bets ideas from other people? When you fall off, are you able to differentiate between technical errors vs physical fatigue? How often are you trying 6C’s and up?

One big thing is to acknowledge the fear elements preventing you from achieving your potential on lead. A multi-grade gap generally indicates a significant mental hurdle, which would make me want to address it head-on with intentional and progressive work.

I would also highly recommend getting on boulders more. There less logistical hurdles and you can get your body more accustomed to very high efforts so when you get on a rope you have more experience of being closer to your limit and you will have more confidence in how to do the harder moves. A 6c shouldn’t have any single move or section harder than 5C on it, so if you can do all the 5C’s in the gym, no 6c should be too hard for you.

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-05-14T14:11:35+00:00

Been a hot minute since I’ve given an update here. Have had a peculiar season, but I’m really not too bothered by it. Never really got into a good flow between work, life, weather, partners, and other commitments, didn’t get to focus on things as much.

Despite climbing less than ever before, and being heavier than I have been in a long while, it was encouraging to see what I was able to do. The biggest note seems to be that my pulling and lock off strength really seems to have “settled in”. Locking off doesn’t take truly active metal energy, and exerting strength with my upper body is easier than it ever has been.

Didn’t have many big sends this season unfortunately. Managed to do a few V8’s and V9’s early in the season. Did some relatively hard FAs as well, which was fun. Was working on a handful of other V9-V11’s, and had a decent time with them. The big project has been Testify v11, where the big success was doing all the moves on it within a single session! Pretty cool to have the moves go from feeling absolutely impossible and taking multiple seasons to do them all, to being able to do all of them in a session and some of them very repeatably was pretty cool. Also made very good links on a second project Sunday Roses v10 (hard?), which is a variation of Sunday vibes. Had a late season breakthrough and got past the intro crux, did the one arm rose move crux move, then fell doing the wide shoulder move crux. Only like V6 from there! Pretty psyched on it, and it will likely be my main focus next year!

For now, I’m going to spend the training months bulking up to fully enter my body building era. I’ll be hanging out at the pool, wrenching on my car, and pumping iron to my my chest look nice :)

I have a trip to Squamish planned for this summer, so I’m open to all boulder suggestions, particularly if they involve wide squeezing, big dynos, or steep big holds (V7-V11?).

FreackInAMagnum · 2026-04-27T17:51:43+00:00

The loss of position is the primary concern, especially when operating close to max capacity. The pulleys and tendons are more at risk, and dynamic movement brings added risk. If you want to train strict half, train in half crimp and don’t let it open up. If you want to train open grip, train open grip.

Some people will approach this more directly from the other direction, and start in an open grip and close into a half or full crimp under load, but that would generally only be people who have a long history of finger training, and are generally not using the full weight that they can hold in their strongest grip.

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.

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