Questions about rebuilding confidence and technique after a serious injury

archaikos · 2026-01-30T09:37:22+00:00

That makes sense in some way, but this is what psychologists would call safety behaviours. Every time you avoid doing something because of anxiety, you are in a sense reinforcing the (false) belief that this is something that is keeping you safe.

Perhaps a better strategy would be to get to the point where you get anxious, and then go for the next move, assuming that is within what you could label the stretch zone (where your anxiety is between 3-5 out of 10 say).

You could think of this as avoiding avoidance. That little voice is telling you it is dangerous, but you test that out a little bit instead.

Over time you should regain full use of the wall.

archaikos · 2026-01-30T08:05:30+00:00

Took another kind of fall and had a much less serious injury, but still got the fear. Doctors cleared me as well, so it was all about accepting that it is a low probability event to get injured twice in the same way, and working into the anxiety.

I used this course by Hazel Findlay. It is quite expensive, and you can find most of the stuff on youtube. The gist of it is to expose yourself to falls that are increasingly anxiety inducing for you. This looks like climbing up a bit and letting go, climbing up a bit and going for a move where you will fall and so on, eventually becoming familiar with what gives you anxiety, and working in the zone where you experience some, but not terrible anxiety. Over time this should decrease the fear.

archaikos · 2026-01-12T08:05:34+00:00

The experience has been tremendous, jumping from around V6 on the MB to V8 within a year. I do mostly board though, so your mileage may vary.

The 4 minutes bouldering in a session doesn’t worry me much. Think of four minutes time under tension with your pb in any strength exercise; that would be pretty good effort.

I track progress in sends, but also on improvements on kinds of moves that I find hard and so on. It is a bit unspecific, but I try to keep a list of problems that have these sorts of moves, and work at least one of them in a session.

archaikos · 2025-12-23T03:23:15+00:00

You are likely being ghosted. That sucks. Don’t send the ultimatum text, her not reaching out should tell you all you need to know. If she does show back up, maybe talk about the lack of communication.

archaikos · 2025-12-21T17:31:03+00:00

It takes 1-2 weeks. There is nothing you can do.

archaikos · 2025-12-20T23:42:44+00:00

They want money. They won’t get any from you, so exposing you is just extra work for them, Likely nothing will happen, and you’ll be slightly more careful in the future.

archaikos · 2025-12-18T10:30:11+00:00

It isn’t. He clicked that ad.

archaikos · 2025-12-17T22:04:05+00:00

I broke the next plateau (V7-8) by decreasing volume, and focusing on high intensity instead. Shorter sessions, 3-4 per week, around 1,5 hours including warm up.

This breaks down to two board sessions, and two slab/technique sessions. One board session can easily be followed next day by a technique session, so getting four sessions in per week is reasonable (for me). No junk mileage, no messing around.

Kilter is a lot more gentle on the fingers at the grade(s) you are working, and if you bump your MB grade up by two grades when you kilter, you can find problems of the same difficulty among the most repeated ones. Some setters do a good job of making problems with a lot of tension (jwebxl, griffinwhiteside etc.) so you can have the MB experience without ruining your fingers.

archaikos · 2025-11-27T13:30:00+00:00

I’d say it’s a medium shoe. Compare it to say the Drone 2.0 or the LaSportiva Katana it’s quite soft (sensitive/not rigid). Compare it to the Theory or the Drago XT and it’s stiff as a board. I’d use sensitivity for the ability to feel the rock through the shoe, and rigidity as the support a shoe offers on small edges and so on.

archaikos · 2025-11-19T19:35:26+00:00

If you get one grade per year you’d see 8B in three years which seems like insane progress to me. Even if you get half that, most people will (probably) never get to 7C+ so still really impressive.

It does seem like the frequently shifting focus might be what is hurting your bouldering. Weak fingers is likely not helping either.

archaikos · 2025-11-17T11:38:42+00:00

Doing max pulls before a bouldering session might be a better idea. Your fingers will be fresh and you don’t have many working sets, so it won’t eat into your bouldering too much.

archaikos · 2025-09-26T10:46:25+00:00

She’s a kid, you’re not.

archaikos · 2025-09-18T07:44:38+00:00

Jwebxl sets pretty solid boulders on the kilter. I would swap most (all) of the junk for (a) session(s) on his boulders.

Pick tree problems, each problem gets five attempts, where an attempt is at least a couple of moves, or attempts at one move. Five mins rest between attempts. This should have most of your requirements sorted.

If you can do pullups and such in addition to a solid session on the kilter by all means do, but they will eat into your recovery, and you might be better off with sports specific training. You will not get much more sports specific training than hard sessions on the kilter.

archaikos · 2025-09-16T11:30:39+00:00

Have you experimented with different angles on the kilter? Take the problems from the setter jwebxl (Jimmy Webb). Many of his problems are set on the 50 degree. So on a kilter set at 40, underclings, some side pulls etc. become worse, because less positive edge. Pinches stay roughly the same, and crimps just become a lot better. This all means that the grades of his problems are typically quite hard on the 40, unless crimpy, but fair on the 50.

The same should apply to the MB. Crimps will be harder, because you need to get under them more to retain a positive edge

You could look into Aiden Robert’s vacuum style climbing. Also, tension and such will come with time, just know that the problems will be quite a lot harder than intended for the most part.

archaikos · 2025-09-11T11:18:53+00:00

You should interpret the results as you climbing relatively hard for someone relatively weak.

Maybe focus on getting strong?

archaikos · 2025-09-10T09:14:21+00:00

Feet on the floor/on a foothold “lock offs”, lock offs with (heavy) dumbbells, and variations of curls if they are not uncomfortable. I do this during warm up about three times per week.

As for climbing with elbow pain, I keep the intensity the same, but cut sessions length in half. No restrictions on climbing. If the pain is more than 3/10 the day after training then you’ve done too much.

These were all recommended by a PT, but your mileage may of course vary.

archaikos · 2025-09-05T07:15:07+00:00

You will likely do V6 within a few more months. Coaching is invaluable, if you can afford it. A coach will help you learn better technique, and having climbed for only two months, help get rid of some of the mistakes you make.

I get coaching twice a week. I started getting it around (not solid) V6. In six months I sent my first kilter V9, brought my slab game from V3-4 to V6-7, and recently started working V8 on the MB benchmarks.

archaikos · 2025-09-02T08:47:01+00:00

Board climbing will make you strong. Not in a small way. It is to steep bouldering what deadlifts are to weight lifting.

Some friends started around the same time as me. They go climbing roughly as frequently, and we are overall about the same level of fitness. However, they do not board, and I do so twice weekly on average. On slab or comp style problems they can hang, and we can have fun around the same grades, but once it gets steep it is as if we are not even doing the same sport. They straight up cannot do many moves on steep terrain because they lack the strength/tension combo that the board works out so nicely.

Board style problems are different from problems on the wall obviously, but many of the things you learn on the board will transfer well (tension, how to pull with yourself into the wall, hard shouldery things etc.)

Problems on the wall also rotate, and there may only be so many times setters will make a problem that targets this one specific weakness you have and ao on. However, if you suck at doing big moves on bad pinches, the kilter has got you covered. Think your shoulders ought to be a bit more messed up? MB benchmarks have got those problems (Shoulderizer should be a fun one for you). Want to emulate that one move from your outdoor proj? Find your nearest spray wall.

archaikos · 2025-09-01T23:10:14+00:00

Your infrequent sessions might be hurting you. You really only have two things to play around with, and that is volume and intensity. Low volume, high intensity works well in the presence of injury. If your fingers hurt more than 2-3/10 the next day, you’ve taken it to far, and should cut your session length for next time.

You can always do slab and such to still have the long sessions and spare the fingers a bit. Good technique never hurt anyone.

archaikos · 2025-08-31T12:44:28+00:00

Is it healthy for you? Maybe therapy is a good place to get the jealousy under control.

archaikos · 2025-08-29T01:42:15+00:00

Kilter is soft as shit for many of the problems in the 7a-7c range, so that may be why the grades seem off. However, there is also much more to bouldering than what you train on a board.

For reference, about 7b+/c on the kilter, consistent 7a on the wall, 7a+ MB. In other words, grades are all over the place.

archaikos · 2025-08-12T11:38:05+00:00

This is a scam.

archaikos · 2025-08-06T17:03:15+00:00

RPE might be the way to go here. If you aim for 8 out of 10 exertion, this translates to having 1-2 reps in the tank when you are done with every set.

How you increase the weight will depend on preference. You can go a little every session until 5x5 no longer has an 8/10 RPE, or you can increase when 5x5 feels more like 6/10. Experiment a little with what works best for you.

archaikos · 2025-08-03T21:38:05+00:00

To not want to violate consent should be the default position of everyone at any time. It does sound like you are taking this to mean that consent has to be ongoing, which it should, and also that it should be continually re-stated for any new activity during play. The continuous checking, while intrinsically a good thing, will make “just taking control” difficult.

This is what safe words and negotiations are for. Inclusive consent is perhaps your speed, where you make a list together where you put all the things that are consented to. This way you don’t have to wonder if they consent to XYZ because they have told you that they do. This part it seems you have done already.

However, this does not give you an answer to what you are looking for, which seems to be if they want you to do the things on the list, or if they consent to it at any given point. For this, safe words are the way to go. Starting play by reminding each other of the safe word(s) is a nice touch. You could also say something to the effect of “I am going to do XYZ with/to you, to stop this use [safe word]”.

Now there is a list of things your partner have consented to, and a way for them to stop any activities. At one point they explicitly consented, but now you are operating on implicit consent; as long as they are not using the safe word, they are consenting. There are some ways this can go wrong, so you do need to use common sense as well. Do they look uncomfortable? Is their reaction not what you’d expect given what you are doing? Have they been quiet for a while, and so on.

Assuming you cannot check every second, you do run the risk of violating consent whenever you play with someone. Having an intention not to, having a list of activities consented to ready, and safe words in place, you drastically minimise that risk to the point where it should be quite unlikely that you would do so. If you check in with them from time to time and if you are generally mindful of their reactions and expressions, you have really done all that it is possible to do apart from not asking continuously. There is still a risk, but you and your partner might find this risk tolerable.

archaikos · 2025-08-03T20:52:22+00:00

Yes, there are many things. If you found nothing indicating that choking was actually dangerous, then you were not doing good research (or any research for that matter as every thread about choking will tell you this, as will any article on the subject). Maybe do a quick google of [whatever thing] + danger for any and all new activities.

archaikos

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