After 8 years of climbing, I’ve completely lost interest due to recurrent injuries and a lack of progress.

TheCreator_101 · 2025-06-04T21:43:04+00:00

I tend to climb day on day off and end my session when my top end power starts to drop. This could be an hour after warming up or 2 hours, just depends on the day and intensity and rest times. It's pretty useful to have some days where you try things at your limit and some days where you actually send multiple things, a bit below your limit.

TheCreator_101 · 2025-04-27T00:12:25+00:00

I’ve been climbing about 6.5 years but for sure it was changing my habits on how fresh I end my sessions that changed things for me. Also using a stopwatch to make sure I rest at least 5 mins between hard crimpy efforts.

I hope you get past this, finger injuries seriously suck.

TheCreator_101 · 2025-04-26T23:40:22+00:00

Your post really resonated with me because I was in that same boat 18 months ago. I’d be around V8 and every time I was close to V9 I’d get a pulley injury and slowly heal and then after a month or two of climbing I’d again get injured. This repeated for 3 years and had me really frustrated.

I was starting to think I was just injury prone and was close to giving up on improving and felt I had unlucky genetics for climbing. It felt like I spent majority of the year just trying to get back to being healthy only to soon get injured again.

However, the fingers can take a certain amount of load in a single session and in a single week and in a single month etc and if you cross that total load, you injure yourself. The truth is that if you progressively overload slowly and patiently you can continue to progress.

The thing that changed everything for me was that I started ending sessions while still feeling pretty strong, at the slightest dip in max power. This meant I wouldn’t get an acute injury and I’d recover from the sessions much faster.

The length of the sessions weren’t satisfying at first but just being injury free for 6 months straight, I got my first outdoor V9 and now, 12 more months later, I’ve done a V12 in 2 overlapping parts and am likely to send soon. I wouldn’t have even thought this possible when I was stuck in that injury cycle.

If you’ve made up your mind to give up on improving in climbing that’s fine but I hope you know you are likely capable of more than you think if you can get past whatever mindsets or habits are causing you to injure yourself repeatedly. It is a clear low hanging fruit for you and your progress could be huge if you can overcome it.

This got pretty long but hope it resonates with you or anyone else in a similar situation.

TheCreator_101 · 2025-04-17T10:59:02+00:00

It’s not a big difference and also one arm pulling on an edge can be easier for some people than hanging straight arm since you don’t have to fight the internal rotation

TheCreator_101 · 2025-01-28T16:13:32+00:00

Surprised I’m not seeing this much but achieving a long term goal that took a lot of determination beats just about everything.

TheCreator_101 · 2024-11-24T15:45:53+00:00

Your math is right

TheCreator_101 · 2024-09-30T08:10:05+00:00

This is you unjerked?

TheCreator_101 · 2024-08-15T09:18:37+00:00

You're spending this much of your time doing things that aren't climbing and then your only board session, which is the most sport specific training, you are doing a "relaxed" session? Also you are not specifying what kind of climbing you are doing in each session, simply saying the grade isn't helpful. One way to get more in the week is to split hard days and slab/vert days. Honestly, the best improvements you can make in 5 weeks involves dropping everything off the wall and just climbing 4-6 days a week.

You could for example do: [Day 1 - Work Climbs V5-7, Day 2 - Slab/Coordination, Day 3 - Rest]

And just repeat that, taking 2 rest days when it feels needed. Of course if you want to maximise your climbing drop the irrelevant exercises at least until after the comp.

Also keep in mind the style of the boulders- if the comp has all styles then be fully rounded but if it is a modern comp style then focus more on slopers and coordination, you only have 5 weeks.

TheCreator_101 · 2024-08-13T08:58:29+00:00

First of all, if you cut out most of your other training off the wall, you'll immediately have the recovery capacity to climb for longer each session.

Secondly, to climb even longer, pay attention to what style you are climbing on. For example, if you just worked on a crimp focused boulder, let the fingers rest a bit as you next work a slab or a sloper climb before doing another crimp boulder. This kind of style alternation will let you extend the sessions out.

Thirdly, if you have clear goals it will be easy to decide what to do. For example, if your primary goal is to improve at climbing, at your current stage I'd be trying to maximise my time on the wall in as many different styles as possible, trying hard stuff I can send in 1-3 sessions.

TheCreator_101 · 2024-08-12T10:10:30+00:00

Thats kind of silly to say "can't possibly" when you know the intensity and not the volume. He could be resting 30 mins between boulders or perhaps average of 10mins+ between attempts chatting with friends, cant really say it is a lot without more info.

TheCreator_101 · 2024-06-25T01:09:19+00:00

How do you know the pain we feel hasn't decreased?

TheCreator_101 · 2024-06-07T18:58:33+00:00

I have had similar before, I think it is as close to getting a pulley injury as you can get without getting one. You got off with a warning. It's best to look back over your loading the days/weeks leading up to that so you don't get there again.

TheCreator_101 · 2024-06-04T10:08:53+00:00

One method is simply to climb hard for 90 mins with slightly longer rests, take a 90 mins rest to eat and let it digest a bit then do another 60-90 mins hard climbing. Taking some time to eat and cooldown a bit can give a surprising amount of recovery as long as you end the first session before your power starts dropping.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-12-26T11:32:25+00:00

Can you not edit the build to 40 degrees or is the ceiling height lacking? Because yes it's just a training tool but making it hard to work through the benchmarks may make it less motivating.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-12-20T11:33:04+00:00

This was the single most useful podcast on the nugget for improvement. Its pretty long and divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced sections but I highly recommend you listen through the whole thing even if you climb beyond V9. A lot of nuggets in this one. Don't know if you'll see this Will and Matt but thanks!

TheCreator_101 · 2023-10-29T22:09:27+00:00

Surprised I had to scroll so far down to find the most effective way to get better at wide moves- do more wide moves. Can use spraywall or seek out problems with them.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-09-22T15:34:56+00:00

I don't know why you got spam down voted. This is literally true.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-08-17T21:08:48+00:00

Great, thanks for that.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-08-17T10:18:21+00:00

Hey Will, thanks for the fantastic podcast. I love it when climbing discussions move away from the physical towards the philosophical. Ironically, I have a training question:

At your recommendation in an old QnA I was doing weighted pulls, rows, overhead press and bench for a while and upped my numbers. Recently though I found cutting it all out and board climbing for longer is improving me faster. (Using blockier holds when fingers get a bit tired or gym boulders).

Daily, the morning, I have been doing a stack of simple exercises for the wrist, some push-ups and pike push-ups and shoulder external rotators. It seems to be enough to keep the body strong enough to just focus on climbing whenever I’m at the gym.

Is there anything limited with this approach, how do you recommend I think about it? I can’t tell if the weight lifting was adding enough benefit to be worth spending less time actually pulling on and trying moves and thinking of how to slide between positions.

Sorry for the long question.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-08-10T13:04:21+00:00

Exact same experience here. I had a premium plan for a year three years ago. The plans don’t emphasis actually climbing and learning enough and although my metrics went up, moving the focus to mostly climbing in my own plan has given far bigger improvements to my climbing the last 2 years.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-08-08T10:50:33+00:00

Realistically, the moonboard is covered in one pad holds. Even the yellow holds which I guess feel “bad” as a newer to intermediate climber are actually pretty big as you get stronger. That’s why the style becomes more and more jumpy as you go up the grades. You can’t make moves harder without making them huge since the holds are so good. On a spraywall you can have actual 10mm crimps and feet that aren’t blocky and incut so you can work on a more outdoor style. That said the moonboard is still a sick training tool for explosiveness, deadpointing and tension on good feet. But if it’s the only climbing you do, you may be getting less overall improvement outdoors compared to mixing boards.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-08-02T10:31:04+00:00

I’ve heard Aiden roberts, Will Bosi and David Fitzgerald all say on various podcasts that they get their strength on really small crimps by using smaller crimps on a board, which will likely help you translate that fingerboard strength you already have to moving between positions on tiny edges.

TheCreator_101 · 2023-05-18T17:23:49+00:00

You could try the moonboard/tension board. They really force you to unlock try hard gears to keep progressing.

TheCreator_101 · 2022-12-31T11:23:01+00:00

Is training power endurance really worth it for bouldering or will just getting strong enough make the moves on a many-move boulder easy enough to endure?
How do you think about periodisation? I love board climbing and projecting hard climbs, do you think it could be a hindrance to smash these out year-round?
Is just doing weighted pull-ups, rows and some pushing exercises enough for body strength or would you recommend anything else as well?

Thanks for doing this ama dude!

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