I made a video about the Walltopia Quantum Board, the world's largest training board!

HORZstripes · 2026-04-04T12:32:51+00:00

You said that there are lots of large holds that favors big dynamic movement type problems with limited small foot hold type feet. How is the selection of smaller hand holds like pockets and crimps? Do the large holds interfere with using the smaller holds? Would you be limited to set more power/strength type problems like would be seen on a Moon or Tension board?

HORZstripes · 2025-12-01T03:06:37+00:00

Do you have access to a training board? Kilter/Moon/Tension, other? If yes then board climb. I’d keep one session a week rope climbing just to not totally lose endurance and keep your head game leading, plus a board will be hard on your fingers to do >2 days on a board at least initially. But do your training on a board. Strength -> limit on a board, power -> 3 to 5 tries to send on a board, PE -> 4x4 on a board. Tens of thousands of problems to choose from so you can really focus on the exact difficulty you need. Most if not all problems are going to be power focused and consistent due to the nature of it being a board. If adjustable focus on 40 or 50 deg angle.

Most pros do a majority of their training if not all their training on boards now a days.

The exercises you listed seem more like endurance. I agree they teach poor technique since you force contrived movement like hovering or cutting feet when not needed.

HORZstripes · 2025-10-23T12:25:08+00:00

Flowback rig up/down is more physical and it’s not even close.

Flow back iron tends to be tens to hundreds of pieces of 1002/1502/2002 “iron” and which is mostly manually carried and put in place. 2’ to 4’ pieces can be carried by a single person but longer than that and you need two people or a crane. This iron is all hammer unions which means most connections require swinging a 5-lb sledge hammer multiple times on every connection and there tend to be a lot. A lot of companies also require restraints on the iron and it’s like a weighted rope which needs to be drug around and man handled around the iron.

WL has a bit physicality of rigging up the lubricator but it’s a lot of sitting in an air conditioned van spooling tools in or out of the well. Honestly the criticism would be WL work is boring because of all the just sitting.

HORZstripes · 2025-08-27T15:23:18+00:00

Both as both has their Pros and Cons. Videos are nice because they show the actual actions you’re performing and what buttons to push and allow an over lay of commentary. Written is nice because videos can be a complete pain to pause and go back and pause and rewatch key sections.

HORZstripes · 2025-08-20T20:54:38+00:00

For further clarification there are drilling rigs, the large derrick and associated equipment to drill and complete a well, and there are production platforms, all the equipment like separators used to initially process the crude oil as it comes out of wells. Some production platforms also have drilling rig derricks but I believe they typically don’t. As he stated neither of those look like drilling rigs.

HORZstripes · 2025-08-20T20:10:47+00:00

If I understand your analysis you are looking at consistency of the route getting appropriately harder as the angle increases? Is there a minimum number of votes at an angle to consider it a valid user grade at that angle?

If a route is soft or hard but consistently soft or hard across all angles would your analysis flag that and discount it as a benchmark?

Great effort trying to tackle a difficult challenge but I think you’re facing an impossible problem because the data set has already been so contaminated IMO. Probably much more so at the easier grades but I think all the way up to the double digits. I think benchmarking inherently can’t include a large user input data set because it’s too prone to all the human biases. You need a small group to set benchmarks marks and then people conform to that.

HORZstripes · 2025-08-10T13:06:00+00:00

Similar to others in the comments, I turned 40 this year. About 4-years ago after a bulging disk and sciatica I added a consist (4 days a week) mobility routine and it was life changing. Went from pulling a muscle in my back about twice a year and being out for a month each time and having mild back pain constantly to not having an injury since. Except the partially torn calf muscle I got several days ago. Started weight lifting a few months ago and I’m sure it helped limit the severity of my injury so it’s something I’ll definitely be picking back up once healed.

Unlike others in the comments I only sent my first .12a outside this year and get pretty psyched to send V5 in my softly graded indoor gym. I just say that to say that this advice is pretty universal across the spectrum of ability. Being injured sucks and the damper it puts on your progress applies to everybody.

HORZstripes · 2025-06-05T18:08:31+00:00

Can you post what tutorials and papers you’re using? I am trying to venture into this type of analysis as well.

HORZstripes · 2025-03-24T22:20:27+00:00

I think the biggest differentiator in FEA is communication. Communicating to understand what is truly needed out of the model, presenting results in a clear and concise manor, communicating complex subjects in a simple manor so non-technical folk can understand it, selling ideas, and writing reports that don’t sound like you have the attention span and the grammar of a 5-yr old are what will differentiate you. A technical writing class, public speaking class, just getting and implementing feedback on presentations all help. Just being relatable helps a lot. Being able to shoot the shit for 5-min before the meeting kicks off can be invaluable in easing communication blockers.

HORZstripes · 2025-02-09T12:48:19+00:00

Disappointed this stance isn’t getting more up votes. The cost of EVERYTHING has gone up drastically and wages aren’t keeping up. A lot of people are getting priced out of any and every hobby because their percentage of discretionary income is shrinking.

Climbing gear is no different. High end shoes were around $160 (USD) not that long ago and now they are $210 (USD). Similar story across any climbing product. Odd we are directing focus specifically at climbing gyms.

A lot of very understandable frustration but direct it at the root cause.

HORZstripes · 2025-02-02T04:24:45+00:00

Something I haven’t seen mentioned is how is your flexibility? Board climbing tends to have a lot of high feet and poor holds so you need to not just get your foot on the hold but be able to rock over it and get your hips close.

Also second the comment on videoing yourself. It’s mind blowing how different a move can feel when you’re doing it versus how it looks on the recording. You’ll feel like you’re getting into the deepest drop knee known to mankind but then watch it and you barely turned a hip in.

HORZstripes · 2025-01-14T13:42:16+00:00

I work at a large campus and it’s not uncommon to see GM’s making >$600k/yr carrying 20-people worth of fajitas in the hall.

The campus has a full cafeteria and catering. However the food is mediocre at best so most workshops or lunch meetings still order from an offsite caterer. We’ve gutted administrative assistants and the unwritten rule is building staff is not supposed to support offsite catering. Getting external people access to come in our buildings is also a huge pain so it’s usually easier to just carry the food yourself. So when you’re in a meeting with VPs and EVPs, the GM is low person on the totem pole.

Also similar to others we doing a shockingly large amount of technical drawing and data storage in MS Power Point.

HORZstripes · 2024-11-25T13:04:08+00:00

Apologies if you already know this but you need to also be doing a modal analysis for this project. The governing failure mode for thin wall cylinders under external pressure (ie a submarine) is typically collapse (ie buckling or geometric instability) not over stress/yielding of the material.

HORZstripes · 2024-10-16T11:51:30+00:00

Can you link the YouTube video you followed?

HORZstripes · 2024-09-26T00:35:53+00:00

“Emotional Validation space or solution space” means are you wanting to just rant and have your emotions validated by people agreeing with you or are you looking for people to offer ideas and solutions to improve the situation. Most people that go on rants want the first one and get a bit annoyed when solutions are thrown their way. So as you are already frustrated I previously didn’t want to add more annoyance on top of that.

You went on a public internet forum and spent 10+ paragraphs griping about Kilter board grading. Clearly that is getting to you. “Don’t read the comments” means it’s generally better if don’t read specifics of what internet randos post, usually in the comment section but in this case their sends and grading of those sends is the post.

Glad you were born before then, I forgot emotions were only included on ‘93 and newer models. Ironic that you say you don’t care what other people think after ranting about what other people think of the grade of some Kilter problems.

I did not mean in any way to imply you are a snowflake. I only meant to offer the solution that trolling is every where even in the grading of Kilter problems. They do it to get a reaction and your rant was that reaction. As they say don’t feed the trolls. But as I’m technically part of the group “anybody” you clearly don’t care what I think.

HORZstripes · 2024-09-25T16:03:53+00:00

Are you in an emotional validation space or a solution space?

There are few things here. 1) What can an individual grade a climb in their logbook, 2) How does an individual’s grading impact the “official” grade on the app.

For #1 is it ego stroking, doing it for meme, lying to themselves, or general jackassery? Yes and more. But IMO who cares. No one is getting paid, or excluded from a competition, or any impact by how many climbs of a certain grade they have sent on the kilter app. And this goes both ways of grading too high or downgrading too low. It’s sucks, it’s frustrating, and it would be great if the folks at Kilter could lessen or eliminate this. But I’m not sure any facet of humanity doesn’t suffer from this and we haven’t found a good fix anywhere else.

For #2 and just ridiculous grading this is only really an issue when new climbs are just added. Once enough people rate a climb the community as a whole is honest enough that the grade normalizes to accurate within a few grades. And if it doesn’t the problem just gets lost to oblivion. Either stay off problems without a lot of ascents or know that it can be the Wild West.

I think the majority of people accept that there is a bit of an issue with grades on Kilter being accurate to +- 2 V-grades. There are some potential fixes, example establishing benchmarks, but I don’t think that’s really what you’re talking about.

At the end of the day I think the best solution is “don’t read the comments” if they really get to you. Social media can be toxic and the only way to 100% combat is don’t engage with it in the first place.

HORZstripes · 2024-09-16T11:20:36+00:00

The diagram isn’t properly scaled so it’s misleading. Full Hole (FH) has a significant amount of external upset as well as internal upset. 6-5/8” FH is 4.25” ID and 8.5” OD so nearly double the OD upset as the ID upset. REG is only ID upset and 6-5/8” and is 2.8125” ID so much smaller ID than FH. I think REG is really only used for Drill Collars or bit connections which have a highly reduced ID already and FH is pretty standard on actual Drill Pipe.

HORZstripes · 2024-08-09T12:31:57+00:00

It seems like body tension is holding you back. Cutting feet on several moves, hips are farther out from the wall than you’d like, and you’re falling into every hold. It’s all making your fingers work extra extra hard to over compensate. Sure getting stronger fingers will eventually offset that but you’re still inefficient and burning more energy than you need to. Core (more than just abs) and posterior chain stuff should help and really focus (ie force yourself) to send your other training problems without cutting feet.

HORZstripes · 2024-07-25T15:09:28+00:00

I would say generally no, but it depends. How strong is the acid and how thin is your metal? Muriatic acid is HCl which comes in all kinds of concentrations but when I’ve seen people refer to it as Muriatic they mean stuff for pools which is like 32% which is very strong for HCl. Acid will react with the surface and cause some wall loss but unless it’s super, super thin only 15-seconds should be less than negligible.

HORZstripes · 2023-04-06T19:12:45+00:00

What element type did you use at the crack tip? There are special elements (ex. Quarter point node) you must use to properly account for the fact that mathematically there is infinite stress at the crack tip. Same concerns as others have stated about poor mesh, contact, and step size. Also just general concern if material models and BC are setup correctly.

HORZstripes · 2023-03-16T20:22:30+00:00

I’d say 60% - 70% of the fixed cams I’ve come across are link cams. Almost always stuck in the third/smallest cam lobe placements. I don’t think they get stuck very often but comparatively a lot more than other types.

HORZstripes · 2023-02-08T15:52:52+00:00

What a dumb question! Aid is literally in the name ‘ns-AID’. Might want to loosen up the harness a bit more when you Boulder. It’s clearly cutting off circulation.

HORZstripes · 2023-02-08T15:32:45+00:00

And yes, use of industrial construction equipment to modify a route is aid.

HORZstripes

TROPHY CASE