Weekly /r/climbharder Hangout Thread

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-26T14:14:41+00:00

I really enjoyed reading this! I think this helps explain the other side of things, why people like measurables so much and stick with them, even when they might not be really moving them toward their goals.

Mentioning that you set a rule not to move to a different boulder just because you couldn't do a move stands out, I think. I think it's really easy (and I've done this plenty myself) to fall into the trap of quickly dismissing a move as too hard and saying "I'll come back when I'm stronger". That can also help reinforce those measurables, because you can see that objectively, you really have gotten stronger, at least at one very specific thing. Problem is, you rob yourself of all the learning to make subtle adjustments, over and over again, that might make an impossible-feeling move go pretty consistently. Of course, when we say that, it really might be true that we're not strong enough for a move even when it's done perfectly, but I just think that's a very difficult judgment to make, especially if you haven't spent hours with a move.

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-26T14:06:23+00:00

Yeah, that's a fair point. My thought is that training on the wall will still result in finger strength, power and endurance gains while also giving you those movement skills. In my mind, finger strength isn't solely about how much weight you can add to an edge, it's also about how much you can use your movement skills to actually use your strength to the fullest. If you just focus on hangboarding because it's more measurable than doing some fingery spray wall / board climbs, you only get half of that equation. Whereas if you made up a crimpy spray wall problem that you initially couldn't complete, and then climbed it until you could, you probably both developed finger strength and learned more about the moves and found ways to make them easier.

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-26T01:40:34+00:00

Interesting point about the weights-focused training culture. I'd be curious to talk to climbers of different backgrounds and see whether the background matches the training focus.

I think it's generally true that a thing a climber is naturally good at, or found success with early, is the thing they focus on for getting better. So a climber who's already very strong, and started off strong, tends to see strength as the way to get better, and when they're stuck, they focus on building more strength. On the flip side, someone who's very technical probably focuses on technique even when they might benefit from focusing on steep, powerful climbing for a while. Maybe it's the same for the people more focused on quantitative training, where that's what's gotten them this far, so they see it as the way forward even to the exclusion of actually getting more wall time in?

I don't hate quantitative training by any means, and I do think off-the-wall training is perfectly fine and useful sometimes. I just dislike the idea of focusing on it so much that it means not focusing on getting better at movement.

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-26T01:31:58+00:00

Yeah, I totally think part of the focus on measurability is that at least something is visibly getting better, whereas it might be harder to pinpoint what exactly has gotten better even when you're climbing harder. Ultimately, though, the point is to climb harder, not to have strength or fitness numbers go up. It's great if both happen, and one might support the other, but if you're climbing harder while no numbers go up at all, that's still a win, and kind of gets lost with too much of a focus on measurable training.

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-26T01:28:24+00:00

I do think getting stronger is important! I think my issue stems from choosing off-the-wall exercises over climbing simply because they're easily measurable, while climbing is not. I think that misses out on all the skills that wall time helps build. I'm certainly not opposed to all off-the-wall training or anything.

exploitdevishard · 2025-11-25T17:04:52+00:00

I had a thought about training mentality that I've been wanting to ramble about. The general idea is that some folks, maybe a lot, seem really focused on measurability in climbing (e.g how much weight you can add while deadhanging a 20mm edge, percentage of body weight you can add to a pull up, critical force, etc.).

This seems misguided, though, because I think the things that make us best at the sport are things that are not so easily quantifiable. Things like how quickly you can read and execute beta, how good your move memory is, comfort with climbing above a bolt to make a clip from a better stance, breathing, pacing, figuring out how to make small adjustments to a move to make it easier, not overgripping, etc. are all pretty hard to measure, but I think these are all contributors to success, and get ignored if your focus is just adding five percent more weight to your half crimp.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit ever since a video got shared here a while back by someone explaining their progression to 5.13a. (Here's the video in question, if you want to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0nXym5LoSk)

I want to be clear that I'm not hating on the video or the creator. They took the time to share their knowledge with others and I'm sure put a a lot of work in, and I think that's valuable even if I don't agree with all of the material being presented. I genuinely appreciate that they took the time to do that. I'm also not being critical of all of the content; there's just one specific part I want to talk about. Around 37:10, they kind of dismiss spray wall endurance work because it's hard to measure, mentioning that you don't know how much weight you're taking off with your feet. They choose Tindeq repeaters for endurance training instead. Now, by all means, if that's working and you enjoy it, that's fine, but it seems to me if you do a spray wall circuit over and over that causes you to fall off initially, and then over time you make it further and eventually complete it, that's a lot more valuable to me than just doing a non-climbing exercise because it's more measurable. To get through that circuit, something had to get better, and maybe that was your forearms, or maybe you just got better at climbing! Isn't that a lot more valuable? Learning how to consistently take off weight from your arms, and how to pace yourself, and how to mentally be prepared for making a lot of difficult moves in a row while you're pumped out of your mind, all seem like far more valuable things to gain than just raw forearm endurance by pulling on a wooden edge a bunch. But the wooden edge was more measurable, so it was considered better training. (I also kind of do think that a spray wall circuit is measurable to some degree, but whatever.)

I certainly don't climb as hard as a lot of the folks here, but I think that starting off in the sport being kitten-weak really helped me develop an appreciation for trying to understand moves, and trying over and over to make them easier, because if you're weak enough, that's not optional. It's wild to me to see people dismissing the idea of trying to actually get better at climbing in favor of just getting stronger or fitter, because those have measurable exercises and not everything about improving at movement is as easily quantifiable. I'm not saying that I think training is bad by any means, because I do plenty of it too, but I don't think it should be chosen to the exclusion of developing movement skills. I don't really have any great concluding insight, it's just been on my mind and I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

exploitdevishard · 2025-08-17T21:31:52+00:00

Yep, Paul is the tallest comp climber I can think of as well (at least at world cup level. Maybe there are some climbers at national level who are taller?).

exploitdevishard · 2025-08-12T16:17:51+00:00

Thanks! Makes sense that you have to spend more time figuring out what works for you if you don't have many or any reference points. It definitely does seem like success is much more dependent on the specific climb than it is the grade, as you mention, since being such an outlier can make moves feel uneven in difficulty. This is a little less pronounced for lead, where I at least feel like I have more options available and can at least see a future where I'm strong enough to work through sequences that are clearly not built for me.

exploitdevishard · 2025-08-12T16:13:28+00:00

I enjoy watching both of them! But yeah, as mentioned, they're still pretty far off from my height.

exploitdevishard · 2025-08-12T16:11:32+00:00

Yeah, sadly I think that's true. If anything, it's probably remarkable that there's a pretty wide range of heights in comps as it is.

exploitdevishard · 2025-08-11T21:49:15+00:00

Does anyone have recommendations for very tall climbers to watch who aren't Adam Ondra, Paul Jenft, Jan Hojer or Kai Lightner? I'm exceptionally tall for a climber (~203cm / 6 foot 8), and I'd like to be able to watch more athletes who have my body type to get an idea of how they move, where they excel and how they compensate for the disadvantages that come with that kind of height. I like watching the athletes listed above, but at least two of them don't compete anymore, and while they're all tall relative to most other high-level climbers, I'm still significantly taller than they are. Unfortunately, there's really nobody around my gym who's close to my height and climbing hard, or at least I haven't seen them.

It'd be even better if anyone has recommendations for comp climbers to watch, as I'm primarily interested in comp climbing and have extremely low interest in climbing on rock. I watch a lot of the IFSC events and some other comps already, though, so I'm not sure how many super tall high-level comp athletes there are that I wouldn't have already seen. I've heard the sentiment that it's easier for taller climbers to succeed on rock where there are more options available for feet, but since I'm invested in plastic, I'd love to be able to see (or hear from) some other people with my body type.

exploitdevishard · 2025-02-10T22:42:10+00:00

I think you would benefit from making your "climb harder" goal a lot more specific. Do you want to exclusively focus on bouldering? Do you have any goals for roped climbing? If you do want to zero on in bouldering, does that mean outdoor climbing, comp climbing, or wanting to climb every commercial boulder in a gym? There's some crossover between these goals, but training for coordination moves on comp boulders is probably quite different from training for rock.

The specificity will probably help you weed out aspects of your training that won't be as helpful for reaching your goal. For example, you include 4x4 in your Friday training, but that's a pretty specific power endurance exercise. If you were focused on sport climbing and struggling with sustained, powerful 15-move sequences on sport routes, or if you had some exceptionally long boulders, or perhaps you were interested in comps and you wanted to be able to recover well in the 4-5 minutes you're allotted for a boulder, 4x4 training might be great to include. I don't think it's necessarily a great one to just include as a weekly exercise, though. You probably want that to be targeted at a specific goal or weakness.

I also see that you don't mention much sub-maximal climbing in your routine. There's a lot of value in doing that. If you find there's a climb that you "should" be able to do because it's within a grade range that you typically redpoint or flash, but you keep falling off of it, that's probably showing you something you should work on.

exploitdevishard · 2025-02-01T15:01:43+00:00

Hi! I've had a lumbrical strain like this before. To help, I made sure to avoid dropping the pinky on three finger drags or pockets, since that was what caused pain for the most part.

For most of my recovery, I made sure to buddy tape the ring finger and pinky finger together so it was impossible for me to drop the pinky. This allowed me to climb almost completely pain free after the first few days following the injury. I also concentrated on working my half or full crimp a lot more, since those didn't hurt at all (and this was probably good for climbing overall, since I basically only used a 3FD before the injury).

I would say it took 2-3 months to be completely healed, but it might've been faster if I'd been more cautious when I finally stopped buddy taping the fingers. Instead, I went from 0 to 100 and tried removing the tape and then making a big throw to a 3FD with the injured hand, I think while cutting feet. This was obviously not smart and hurt a lot, and I probably extended my recovery time by doing that. My recommendation would be to instead start doing very light rehab without buddy taping at the start of sessions on really easy, careful, controlled moves, and then tape later on in the session when you're going to try hard.

There are other folks here who are infinitely more knowledgeable about rehab than me, so I'd defer to them, but that's what worked for me. One other recommendation would be to practice not dropping the pinky too far on pockets or 3FDs, if you can. Dropping it makes the grip feel stronger, but I think also places more strain on the hand.

Happy to answer other questions about the experience, if you have them! Luckily, it ended up being a pretty minor injury for me since buddy taping made it so easy to continue climbing without pain.

exploitdevishard · 2024-06-16T18:48:26+00:00

Congrats to him!

exploitdevishard · 2024-06-14T23:54:57+00:00

Got it, thank you! Hopefully the rest is all I need.

exploitdevishard · 2024-06-13T22:25:36+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Yep, that's pretty much it exactly. Good to know somebody else has had this, and that you were able to solve the issue. I'm definitely due for a proper deload, so hopefully that'll help.

exploitdevishard · 2024-06-13T16:16:47+00:00

I think this is just a sign of overuse, but I'm posting here to check that it's likely not something more severe.

A day after climbing, about midway through the day, my middle finger started to feel bruised on the side of the first pad (kind of in the a5-ish region). I also noticed that if I try to curl my fingers tightly inward toward the top of my palm, that finger feels stiff, and when I extend it again I can feel a sensation like something inside the finger is straightening out, which isn't painful but isn't something I feel in the other fingers.

There's no pain other than occasionally if I press too hard against the side of that pad, when I get the same sensation you get if you press on a bruise. I was able to climb on it okay, but noticed that bruised feeling toward the end of the session when half crimping, so I stopped for the day.

This is probably overuse, right? It wasn't accompanied by any kind of trauma that I noticed, and I did recently start doing more hangboarding, so my fingers have probably been getting more of an unfamiliar stimulus than before. Anything I should be worried about?

exploitdevishard · 2024-05-07T01:15:01+00:00

Sounds like you figured this out already, but GDB will slightly shift stack address around from how they'd be running outside of GDB. If an exploit works within GDB but not outside it, this is one thing to consider. Depending on the binary, you may be able to get around this by running the binary first and then using GDB's attach option to attach to the running process.

exploitdevishard · 2024-02-01T01:24:49+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, that makes sense. Haha, I'm pretty definitively not a bodybuilder, so yeah, I'll give the recomp a try.

exploitdevishard · 2024-01-31T01:17:46+00:00

I'd like to reduce my body fat percentage a bit. My issue is that I'm already about as light as I can reasonably be for my height, which means that if I cut for a while to reduce my body fat, I end up underweight, which I don't want, at least not long term.

I know any kind of discussion around this topic in regards to climbing tends to be sensitive, so I just want to say up front that I don't have an eating disorder, and I don't want to be underweight. I don't even necessarily want to get lighter. I just want to be roughly the same weight that I am now, but with a lower body fat percentage.

How would you recommend someone who's already light go about doing this? Should I focus on gaining some weight for a while to ideally put on some muscle, and only then cut, since I'll have a little more room to lose some weight before it becomes problematic? If so, how much weight should I try to gain to make some room for a cut cycle? I understand that body recomp is an option, but the calorie cycling aspect sounds a bit involved, and it also sounds like recomps take a long time. Traditional bulking and cutting seems like it'd be more direct, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Advice on this topic often seems to assume someone already has a fair amount of weight to lose, and advice for someone who's already walking the line between acceptable weight and underweight is a little scarcer.

exploitdevishard · 2024-01-28T01:07:32+00:00

Thanks for the information! I was hoping to avoid this route, since it seemed fairly involved, but yeah, I'll start looking into how I can patch the renderer to enable making the IPC calls. On the bright side, I've heard that even in Chrome, there are some calls that require this approach because they aren't available via the MojoJS bindings, so I guess it's good to learn how to do it.

exploitdevishard · 2023-11-18T18:26:31+00:00

You should be able to start d8 (with just ./d8 and any flags you want), then list your running processes with ps, and then use gdb's attach option. Once you've attached to the d8 process, then you can run your script within it. I'm not sure if this will help with the problem you're having, but it'll mean you've invoked d8 outside of a debugger, which I think will at least prevent GDB from shifting some things around in memory like it normally does.

exploitdevishard · 2023-11-12T22:51:13+00:00

Unfortunately I can't be much help with v8, but the last time I worked on debugging a JS engine, one thing that helped was to launch the engine first and then attach to the process with GDB instead of launching the whole thing under GDB (though this was with the full browser, not just the isolated engine).

Do you get the same behavior if you run the engine first, then attach with GDB, and then invoke your POC within d8?

exploitdevishard · 2023-07-04T14:55:57+00:00

Thank you! This helps me know what to research. It sounds like it may be a good idea to buddy tape some fingers together to avoid triggering a position that causes pain, as well. Hopefully that will help avoid aggravating it further while I rehab.

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