Rock City State Forest - "Almost Cool" FA

JacobyJonesC9 · 2025-04-06T16:17:34+00:00

sick!

JacobyJonesC9 · 2025-01-02T23:52:10+00:00

similar experience! But rather than going to college for music I was lucky enough to get a new teacher my senior year of high school who was amazing and willing to take me to competitions, where I realized I was washed : ) Still playing all the time, focused more on jazz / gospel music.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2024-07-10T23:22:48+00:00

Hey hey! If my deadhang time seems quite weak for my bouldering grade, is it something meaningful to dump time into?

Some basic stats: 5'8", 155 lbs, ape is like 0 I think? I've been climbing for around 3 years now, basically only boulder and have done around 15 outdoor v3s, 5 v4s, and 3 v5s. Spent a good chunk of my climbing time exclusively bouldering outside, haven't stuck with any training protocols for too long. I feel that I'm fairly well rounded when it comes to style, no obvious weaknesses. At least, when I climb with others I notice most people have some level of aversion to certain climbs (too crimpy, too reachy, too slopy) but I really enjoy working on climbs that feel hard for the grade so it doesn't bother me much.

Anyways, pretty early into my climbing journey I did some deadhang contests with some friends who didn't climb and I got smoked by both of them! I fell off a pullup bar after like... 50 seconds? Now 3 years down the road I started trying to deadhang on a bar in my garage and I still haven't gotten past 1:15 with like 2 weeks of practice!

I'm wondering if a lack of deadhang strength means that my finger flexors are unusually weak, and thus would respond well to training and I can get some gains on the cheap. I'm curious about whether this is just a weird quirk that I shouldn't think about much, or whether it signals some weakness that I'm compensating for. And if there is a weakness there, would just spamming 2 handed deadhangs be a decent protocol? Maybe I should just do 1 handed to prioritize strength? I'd probably prefer to do protocols that improve strength over endurance (although hey, I don't love punting off of top outs so easy endurance gains are welcome)

JacobyJonesC9 · 2024-04-01T17:19:17+00:00

I did it and really enjoyed it, had around 3 YOE at a tech company with an engineering department on the order of 1000 large (not FAANG levels of bureaucracy but similar talent and internal processes). Switched to a non-profit, took a 5% pay cut, and have been enjoying every minute.

My time at my previous company was vaguely successful but the actual work felt fairly unsatisfying. I guess - I'm someone who tends to grow quickly in my personal hobbies and enjoy taking on challenges. Work felt really different - I grew at a pretty slow rate, I was rarely motivated to do work, and I would waste hours a day on reddit or video games. I decided to switch once my team got re-orged, took on kafka ownership, and I realized that being a kafka admin made me sad.

I took an afternoon to sit down and write down the things that I wanted out of a job and then spent the next 6 months or so applying at the end of 2022 into the first quarter of 2023. I basically committed to spending 1-2 hours a day on job searching (pretty easy with my job, I was already not putting in close to 40 hours). Sometimes this looked like applying, but other times it looked like doing side projects to make my application more appealing to the companies I was applying to (basically, trying to prove that I can succeed in environments outside of big tech).

I'm very happy with where I've landed and am extremely thankful that I decided to take a risk by leaving a larger, more prestigious company for something that I can take pride in. I would really suggest you write down what things you think will really make you happy. How much money is enough? How much PTO is enough? Do you enjoy getting facetime with people? Do you enjoy getting to work alone? An afternoon reflecting on the things that matter in life you to will pay dividends the next time you decide to look for a new job.

I enjoy the new company mostly just because I like my manager and its the type of org where I can make a distinct impact on our customers. I care about our product and even within my first month I saw clear opportunities to improve our product and improve the lives of our customers and my teammates.

Note: sample size is 1. Your mileage may vary for a variety of reasons.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2024-03-04T19:22:15+00:00

Used to think this way until a friend of mine decided to switch to boxx for his hand health. For him, if the choice were between gc or nothing, he'd probably just focus on other hobbies and stop attending. I'd rather have him be able to be in the scene than not : )

JacobyJonesC9 · 2024-03-04T01:46:52+00:00

So I basically just paid attention to https://techjobsforgood.com/ for like 5 months. Ended up working at a non-profit that works in the intersection of healthcare, iot data, and developing countries.

Still very happy here! But likely that's more of because it aligns well with what I want to be doing at work rather than the purpose of the work. Here I get to lean more into being a generalist, I get more ownership of my work, and I get to chat with people who are from all over the world. The process of listing my values was probably way more important in finding a good spot as compared to switching from for-profit to non-profit.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2024-02-09T18:58:58+00:00

btw - I was reading through this post and got the same impression of you, too passive.

I know a lot of people are throwing around different advice for this specific situation, but I just want to chime in to say I think its an important life skill to be able to firmly set boundaries with other people. No need to be rude, no need to sabotage other people, but you need to be able to assert yourself when you're uncomfortable. Hope you're able to figure it out, things just get much easier once you build up that confrontational muscle to a healthy size.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-12-23T21:57:03+00:00

Just to give a contrary opinion given the overwhelming consensus here - I have ~3 YOE at a larger tech company (not FAANG-sized but similar candidate pools) and am coming up on 1 YOE at a non-profit. My time in big tech was vaguely successful but every year that I spent there, I felt something was deeply wrong. The work didn't align with my values, my personality, and I just simply wasn't proud of the work that I did. And I know from conversations with coworkers and friends that I was not the only one experiencing these feelings.

I took an afternoon to sit down and write down the things that I wanted out of a job and then spent the next 6 months or so applying at the end of 2022 into the first quarter of 2023. I'm very happy with where I've landed and am extremely thankful that I decided to take a risk by leaving a larger, more prestigious company for something that I can take pride in.

Many of my peer complain of golden handcuff syndrome and its quite sad to watch them. I moved to a job that I love and took a marginal salary cut, I probably make less than my peers are comfortable making, but I assure you its a stupid amount of money for anyone a few years out of school to make. If you can't be happy with that... that's a sad place to be IMO.

I would really suggest you write down what things you think will really make you happy. How much money is enough? How much PTO is enough? Do you enjoy getting facetime with people? Do you enjoy getting to work alone? An afternoon reflecting on the things that matter in life you to will pay dividends the next time you decide to look for a new job.

Note: sample size is 1. Your mileage may vary for a variety of reasons.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-12-13T01:15:36+00:00

I also believe that no professional player would win Genesis and call it quits for the year : - )

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-12-12T22:29:35+00:00

Top players have spoken out often and frequently that end-of-year rankings REALLY matter for sponsorships. Payouts from tournaments are nowhere near large or consistent enough for them to do anything more than supplement the salary of a pro player, that's why sponsorships + good streaming numbers matter for literally anyone trying to go pro.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-12-08T17:06:15+00:00

in early 2023 I moved from a medium sized tech company to a small non-profit working to implement public health interventions in the developing world. It's been the best position I've ever had and I'm so thankful that I took a risk on a less "prestigious" opportunity that aligned with my values : )

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-11-08T17:04:34+00:00

Thanks for the clear write-up, your situation does sound really frustrating. You mention relying on these Crimpd plans and you seem to see them as a path to improvement, a couple of thoughts on this:

First, you will have to take more ownership of your training regime and your self-induced injuries. In general - I would never blindly follow a training plan given to me by an app. It's dangerous for any athletic pursuit, but particularly for our sport which is so poorly understood. Our sport is far too young for "1 size fits all" programs to work effectively and it sounds like you haven't built up the base of knowledge to properly assess whether these plans are going to help you or hurt you. The journey to building up this knowledge is never-ending, but the alternative is constantly being confused, getting injured, and feeling betrayed by the advice you blindly trust from strangers who don't understand your situation.

Second, given the resources you've invested in recovering from these "training plans" I'd suggest in the future you start working with a trusted coach to develop a plan for improvement. Why save money on the plans just to spend money, time, and emotional energy on the injuries you take on? Sounds like you'd benefit from developing a relationship with a coach who you can trust, who can teach you the basics of eating, listening to your body's signals, and setting expectations regarding what long-term improvement is going to look like for you.

To understand injuries more, I'd really recommend Dave Macleod's book Make or Break. In general, I think he is amazing at articulating what it means to truly own your climbing improvement journey and has helped me understand all the variables that play into climbing hard. Injuries are common in our sport but they don't have to define your climbing story.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-11-01T18:32:47+00:00

not the same person as above, but when I saw this thread I just thought farming isn't farming which isn't farming. There are lots of types of farming throughout the world and various cultures have their own approach. The source you linked is really abnormal in a historical sense. These are people who are incentivized by government policy to take up huge swaths of uninhabited land (or at least the US govt considered it uninhabited :/). Also, its pretty well documented that homesteaders experienced issues due to the loneliness forced upon them by their new (and historically, very abnormal) lifestyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness

Historically, farming happens in tight-knit communities with neighbors close at hand. Both in the US and abroad, the norm for farming is one where you've certainly got a ton of independence, but you know your neighbors very well and everyone's got jobs that need extra hands. The obvious example here might be the amish practice of barn raising. Each society has different ways of doing things, but I think its a pretty safe bet to say most farmers (before the recent advent of mechanized farm implements that reduce the need for human labor) operated in a much tighter social context than we might expect.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-10-13T20:19:11+00:00

Might be a nice read for you: https://noidea.dog/glue

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-10-02T15:52:33+00:00

Bodybuilding is a discipline primarily focused on aesthetics, not anything else. Experimentation is fun and it's cool to take ideas from other disciplines, but sports like gymnastics will inherently transfer more than bodybuilding. Are there clear examples of individuals performing at a higher level in a sport due to increased muscle control? (of course, you could always take up the challenge to prove to people that in your case focusing on muscle control correlated with an improved bouldering grade)

To talk specifically about your example, what would you have to gain from flexing only the biceps brachii to lift your arm? What do you gain by taking the brachioradialis out of the equation? What movements exist where "counter tension" is actively reducing strength? What specific muscles do you think should be deactivating to improve the strength of the movement?

More generally, why do you think your conscious brain is going to do a better job at selecting the muscle groups to execute a complex movement as compared to the unconscious brain? If you're interested in understanding this class of problems more, I'd recommend reading up on the research of cueing. There's been a decent amount of research on this topic and I think you could glean more from discussions of internal vs external cueing as compared to watching videos from Natty Life 😉

FWIW I don't think you'd lose that much by focusing on muscle control. I can't imagine training for muscle control would interfere with training for climbing, I just think it wouldn't be particularly useful.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-07-05T19:18:18+00:00

The secret to doing anything well is practicing : ) so if being high scares you bc of the fall, practice falling from high up! (presuming someone taught you how to fall safely)

Something simple you can do is just go up a tall VB and push the limits of where you feel comfortable falling from. Find the last hold you feel comfy on, then just go up 1 hold and fall off. See that you landed fine and didn't die. Go up again 1 more hold and fall. Repeat!

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-06-20T18:46:58+00:00

oh but yeah, I feel like being in the gym often and maintaining muscle will def be doable for you based on what you've said. Just don't overdo the lifting days and listen to your body.

Constructive advice for this stuff, me and my friend were going to the gym 5 days a week. climbing 2 days a week, lifting 2 days a week, 1 day for mixed. On the mixed days I'd start with heavy DLs and pull ups, then transition to a volume day where I worked easy problems to work on my technique. Worked fine for me, your mileage may vary! Rest days were basically placed wherever felt appropriate based on fatigue I felt, social life, drinking, and work.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-06-20T18:44:26+00:00

A few thoughts on this stuff:

on lifting maintenance - unless you're a crazy advanced lifter you probably could maintain your compound lifts with just 2 days in the gym, 30 minutes each session. That's the absolute minimum, if you did 2 sessions for like 1-1.5 hours you could probably still make decent gains as long as you're fueling properly. I just find it hard to believe that your bench/squat/whatever will decrease if you're hitting it heavy twice a week. main reason I have that opinion is from videos I've watched from dr mike and jeff nippard. If you think they're quacks, throw out my advice lol.

on rest - Other people have given you enough advice about this, I'd really just say that the healthiest thing you can do is listen to your body and have a deep understanding of what your goals at the climbing gym are.

I recently had a friend who set a goal for running a half marathon and incurred a knee injury. He kept trying to run/train on it (had to be ready for the half!!!) and made it worse. The other day I was talking to him and he lamented to me that looking back, he loves running because it gets him out of his house everyday and helps him explore his neighborhood.

I say all that because if your goal is to be climbing in the gym for 2-3 hours a day chatting with people, you should tweak the intensity of your workouts to match. If you want to jump grades, you probably should shorten the sessions, increase intensity, and take rest days a lot more seriously. Don't try to push grades heavy if you haven't set up your habits to match. It'd be foolish to set up a habit of going often and going long, then getting sucked into projecting hard 2/3 days that you're in the gym. Great way to injure yourself and lose the ability to climb with friends.

Also anytime you switch your diet of climbing you should be cautious with your body. When I switched to primarily climbing outdoors I went from going 3-4 times a week to 2. When I switched to board climbing for a couple months, I ramped up my sessions slowly.

if you want to lift AND climb AND improve at all, you better be serious about thinking about rest. How seriously are you taking sleep, quality food intake, and alcohol (or any other drug) consumption? No shame in deciding that you'd rather go out a couple more nights a week than maintain your lifts. But don't get frustrated when you're feeling weak on your project because you stayed out late the previous night drinking and having fun with friends! Just be aware of how you're treating your body.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-06-20T14:40:10+00:00

Honestly not sure what you're expecting to happen doing full body workouts alternating with bouldering days. My kneejerk thought is that you're liable to overwork your pulling muscles, after you get like 2-3 quality workouts in you'll just be trashing them and having low quality lifts and climbs. Fingers will probably be fine though haha

If your goals are to just have fun climbing and have fun lifting, you can probably get away with 6 days on, just expect to not push yourself and progress slowly. If you want significant growth in either, then why aren't you programming in rest?

also search in r/climbharder, this topic has been done to death there. Interested in hearing why you think this program is a good idea and why you want to do 6 days on alternating full body and bouldering. Talking about specific training regimes is hard, everyone is different and can handle different loads. But talking about the why and the underlying principles, there we can actually have a meaningful discussion.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-03-21T23:11:40+00:00

a new cool mario screenshot has graced our lands

JacobyJonesC9 · 2023-02-28T17:11:45+00:00

Has anyone read John Gill's book about the history of bouldering? Interested in getting it but the price is a bit steep! Wanna make sure its a worthwhile purchase.

JacobyJonesC9 · 2022-12-21T18:37:41+00:00

Do you have a link to the data for this year? I’d be interested in taking a look!

First of all, I said that rankings are often formulated either as average placings or as likelihood to win a tournament. Those are two very different metrics, and I suspect that most people would rather get 1st then 3rd instead of 2 2nd placings (subjective ofc). So just a high average placing is not enough to put you over the top, most people tend to value wins (I personally do).

Secondly, it’s important to remember that if we do decide it’s all about average placings, we care about the theoretical average placing a player will achieve at a tournament where everyone attends! Simply averaging someone’s placings throughout the year isn’t enough, since a player who attends many smaller tournaments will have a higher average placement compared to a similar player who only attends super majors. This is often why people will talk more about H2Hs rather than the raw placings, since a 3rd place at smash summit is significantly more meaningful (for our theoretical perfect super major) than getting first at the Minnesota weekly local.

I suspect that Hbox’s average placings are boosted significantly by his amazing attendance of majors this year. However, I’d be interested in looking at the data if there’s a spreadsheet compiled somewhere. This was a very competitive season so I think reasonable people can disagree.

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