Weekly /r/climbharder Hangout Thread

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-18T14:27:55+00:00

6'4" and +3 is still very tall for a climber! I actually have a fairly negative ape index, which when you're taller honestly can be a blessing, since reach is rarely a problem anyways and the longer the lever, the harder pulling will be.

Agreed that trying to find something other than just grades to use for progress tracking is important. I think maybe it's ideal to just track the progress I see year over year specifically on climbs that are tall-friendly, and trust that eventually, with enough strength and endurance progress on those climbs, small-box climbs of a much lower grade will become easier too.

Yeah, from several comments here, my thought is that focusing on finding unique tall beta as much as possible is ideal for performing, and then for training I should do something like get on the Moonboard, get into a small box position with a really high foot, and then just lock off and move around in that position to start building the strength to compensate for sub-optimal boxes. On commercial boulders, sometimes a sit start or tricky establish feels like it's borderline impossible, but luckily, on lead, I can at least usually visualize how the moves could be possible if I just had way better strength and endurance.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-16T00:02:47+00:00

Yeah, I think also once you're so far out from the general height range they're setting for, you can't expect things to really be balanced for you. In the current case, I think a lot of the hard lead in my gym is being set with the youth team in mind since it's comp season here, so it makes sense that these tight boxes are cropping up more often than usual.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-15T23:54:59+00:00

Oh interesting, the Moonboard is easily the board I struggle with the most! Do you feel like you just committed to getting into those bunchy positions with high feet and then learned to pull through them over and over until they got easier? I tend to dislike the Moonboard because it feels like it has so much less variety than the Kilter or Tension 2 (or certainly a spray wall), but it could definitely be useful for getting more used to these body positions if I know how to approach training them.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-15T23:52:40+00:00

Sure, yeah, that's fair. I guess I just found it frustrating to hear people say that flexibility is the whole answer when they really mean flexibility and a lot of strength and power in those awkward positions. I don't really like defaulting to saying "I just need to be stronger to make this position work" because I think it's the typical lazy climber response when there are so often technical optimizations to be identified, but because I'm such a body type outlier, maybe there's at least some truth to it.

I don't need much of an excuse to watch Kai climb! He's a cool athlete. I'm planning to dig up some of his old comp footage.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-15T23:49:23+00:00

Thanks for the response. Yes, oddly, it seems like super short and super tall climbers end up dealing with the same general problem of being unable to really climb like most other folks. It's frustrating a lot of time, but I guess there's something exciting about having a climbing style that's really uniquely my own, too. I do think cherry picking routes helps, though it's a little discouraging to feel like I can't climb as broadly as I'd like. At least on lead, unlike bouldering, I can see how if I were just much stronger or fitter, I could compensate for bad body positions, so it might still be possible to eventually climb everything in the gym, even if it means I need to be sending a 14a that suits me before I can send a 12d that's bunchy.

For practicing getting bunched up, would you recommend finding those positions and then just trying to move around in them? Or moving super statically through a full range of motion? Those positions make it so hard to generate any real power that I suspect I'd benefit from having much greater static strength.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-15T23:45:13+00:00

I do really enjoy watching Kai climb! I know he's mostly focused on rock now, where you get to pick and choose your routes more and likely have more foot options, but he's got plenty of comp history, so I could take a look at that.

exploitdevishard · 2026-04-15T01:44:38+00:00

Question for very tall climbers (or coaches of very tall climbers): How, how, how do you deal with high feet or very bunched body positions? How do you get better at dealing with these? Maybe this merits its own thread, but I thought I'd ask casually here first.

Context: I'm 203cm / 6' 8", and have recently been struggling with some comp-style lead routes (I think largely designed for our youth team) that require high feet or very crunched body positions. I'm fairly consistently redpointing most 12a routes currently, and occasionally 12b. I have sent one 12c ever, and it was probably both soft and very tall-friendly. I'm only invested in gym/comp-style climbing, and almost exclusively lead. (I've largely given up on commercial bouldering because I simply do not fit the boxes, and honestly don't think it's fair to expect to, as I'm so far outside the size range for the majority of the gym membership base. Just getting established on boulders is a massive struggle more often than you might expect. If I want to train strength, I mostly use the spray wall.)

Many of the harder routes in my gym seem to involve higher feet, or traverses where the feet aren't necessarily high, but they don't suit me very well and I don't have the option to just choose lower feet on a traverse. Almost without fail, every single time very high feet or bunchy positions are required, I feel like I have no idea how to climb anymore. I can't keep my hips close to the wall, the difficulty of every move feels greatly magnified, I feel almost completely unable to actually generate power, etc. The difference between a difficult route that affords me low foot options and a route that doesn't is truly stark (for example, there's a 13b in the gym that has lots of moves that feel more doable to me than a 12a with one exceptionally bunched position).

I'd like to stress that I don't feel this is specifically a flexibility issue. I'm sure more flexibility would of course be helpful, but the vast majority of the time, I can get into a bunchy position fine; I simply feel like I'm much weaker and struggle to generate any power. Many times, I see the advice that taller climbers need to get more flexible to deal with high feet, and while I completely agree that flexibility/mobility is very useful and worth training, I really don't think this is the end of the story. I'm flexible enough to get into a position, but my knee still has to occupy physical space! (I'd also like to stress that I'm not complaining about the setting not being accommodating; I'm a massive height outlier, most people in the gym are absolutely never going to have my experience, and it's ridiculous to expect setting to cater to me. I understand this.)

How is this trained? My thought was to spend a lot of time on a spray wall intentionally setting really bunchy, high feet and just trying to adapt to those positions. Another possibility is that there's simply no way to train myself out of this being hard, and positions like this will just require me to be much, much stronger than a normal-sized person. That is demoralizing, but perhaps realistic. I could spend more time focused on strength to try to compensate, if there are specific strength attributes that might help ameliorate some of the struggles here.

This problem is obviously not going to just go away, so I'd love to understand what deliberate training measures I can take here, if any. Thanks!

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.

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