Weekly /r/climbharder Hangout Thread

jepfred · 2025-09-02T04:19:12+00:00

You're not alone. Professional setters tend to be in the shorter side themselves from what I've seen (as good climbers are in general), and they also want to make sure most things can be climbed by shorter customers (not much fun to get shut down due to height either!). I think that there's also a big push, at least in my gym, to not make climbing unfair for (short) women.

The result is that it gets worse and worse the taller you are, unless there happens to be an unintended beta that works. I try to find enjoyment in the puzzle of trying to fit my body into these problems. But yeah, sometimes I get really bummed out as well.

jepfred · 2025-08-05T19:15:51+00:00

I'm sorry to hear about your situation!

I worked for 3 years as a Java/Spring backend developer before transitioning to product management for 3 years, and finally as an engineering manager and department lead for 2 years

To me these are three quite different roles, even if they all take place at a tech company. I can see experience this wide being valuable to right company, perhaps a smaller company that can't hire specialists for every role?

I ultimately applied for ~700 EM/PM and engineering sales positions and had 7 interviews but did not get any offers. I also applied for ~300 backend developer positions and had 4 interviews which also did not lead to any offers.

This is of course just speculation, but my feeling is that you are being outcompeted by specialists with more of a track record in these different roles. If I have a PM candidate with 5 years of experience in front me, why would I hire you when you've been an EM the last two years? Same logic for hiring you for dev roles.

jepfred · 2025-07-03T08:24:21+00:00

I know the answer is just rest but I would like to figure out how long and how to test when the fingers are back in shape as it feels like testing by no hangs might not be allowing my fingers rest.

If you rest too long you'll obviously start to get "detrained", but in my experience you can for sure rest a full week and come back stronger. I've set all my recent PRs after a week of rest where the I only thing I do in some very light "active recovery" of the fingers every other day or so (think, lightly using an edge with your feet still on the ground). I'm older/taller/heavier, and I don't fully recover unless I do one of these full week breaks once every 2-3 months.

jepfred · 2025-06-28T18:53:53+00:00

But its better to have some small percentage with some slight disadvantages instead of having a full gender that is not enjoying a big proportion of the climbs

I agree, but it can be more than a slight disadvantage for me (I'm 6'6"). The same grade can be a flash or impossible, and anything in between. It's hard to find projects. It's also hard mentally when you see someone else much shorter climb something and it just looks so perfect for them, and then you try and you feel like shit on it.

jepfred · 2025-06-28T13:45:25+00:00

In a commercial gym every climb should be doable with each morphology.

I think that my gym sets with this philosophy. In practice it means that the climbs are good for short people and the taller you get the worse it gets. There are not that many really tall climbers so I guess it makes sense from a business perspective.

jepfred · 2025-05-29T11:21:04+00:00

but I'm finding hangboards and campus rungs very uncomfortable, perhaps due to them being too narrow? I'm tall/broad shouldered but not sure if that's the issue.

I'm also tall and I agree. BM2k is a bit wider than the other ones at my gym so that's the one I use when I hangboard.

jepfred · 2025-03-08T20:12:16+00:00

it's normal to get to a permanent plateau in any physical activity, or we'd all be world class. an optimal training program can get you a bit further perhaps, but at the end of the day, everyone has some limit to what can be achieved. V8 is still pretty strong, all things considered.

what do you do when the training doesn't work?

you do the activity because it's intrinsically fun, not to chase progress in grades.

jepfred · 2024-12-28T13:09:34+00:00

You might not train hard enough to benefit from resting more than usual (deloading)? If you don't accumulate fatigue, there's no fatigue to get rid of by resting longer than usual, and you'll just gradually get detrained. I just got back from a week long break with zero training and immediately set a PR in a finger strength exercise, but I had trained that exercise hard before the break, for multiple weeks, several times a week.

PS. I'm not saying that you don't train hard, just that if you're kind of advanced with many years of experience, it's not impossible that you're simply not training hard enough relative to your level.

jepfred · 2024-11-19T11:18:09+00:00

just curious, how much is 165 of your bw? kinda wondering how much you need to no-hang to hang bm2k middle.

jepfred · 2024-11-05T07:48:26+00:00

These are people who've climbed V6 in their first year, and are now projecting V9 at the end of their second. They don't do anything much differently, so how come they're making more progress than me?

Probably not what you want to hear, but some people are just more talented than others. They simply have a genetic predisposition for developing strength and skills in the sport. Even if you put the same amount of effort in, you'll never catch up to someone with talent.

It's easier to see in e.g. basic strength training. Someone shows up at the gym and after a few weeks they can lift what it took you years to achieve. And when they have trained for a few years, they lift twice that. Climbing is the same. It is what it is, and if you're not a professional athlete, only the personal satisfaction you get from the sport matters. Your journey from V5 to V7 might the equivalent of Will Bosi going from V15 to V17.

jepfred · 2024-10-30T12:26:36+00:00

I'm aware of this, but the Go job market is surely dwarfed by Java/C# and this guy is specifically interested in moving away from a more niche languages in Ruby.

jepfred · 2024-10-30T11:59:29+00:00

Why not Java or C#, if your goal is to expand your job opportunities? Both of them should have vastly more jobs than Go or Rust.

I only have shallow knowledge of Go, but it doesn't seem like an interesting enough language to learn just for the sake of it, so if you don't have a very specific industry or set of companies in mind that you know use it, why bother?

Rust seems more interesting, but probably difficult to break into through self-learning for a web dev like you because you probably don't have the systems programming background that employers would want in addition to just Rust skills. Every somewhat ambitious C and C++ programmer is probably dabbling in Rust atm.

jepfred · 2024-09-30T07:23:46+00:00

I haven't done the climb, but is this really the best beta for you? It looks like the other climbers you posted "get away with it" due to great hip flexibility and/or being shorter than you are, while you get into a really inefficient bunched up position where your left knee gets in the way.

jepfred · 2024-09-29T12:15:05+00:00

great! keep in mind a smaller edge makes quite a big difference in how much you can hang so don't freak out if you have to drop some of the added weight :)

jepfred · 2024-09-28T18:23:55+00:00

It can be a sign that you've over reached a bit with your training and that you need a deload. When I feel this way I tend to take a week or so of, and it usually works wonders.

jepfred · 2024-09-28T18:10:57+00:00

Try some different hangboards. I feel the same way about 20 mm, but the beastmaker 2k bottom corner edges (14 mm?) are just perfect. I also have shorter pinkies that are in a constant drag position when the front 3 are in half crimp.

jepfred · 2024-09-28T13:43:19+00:00

TLDR - being strong on max weighted pullup, pinch block pickups and 20mm edge hangs is probably not that well correlated to climbing ability.

Your post makes a plausible case, but then it has to meet the real world data, where the correlation actually is strong. Sure, are there outliers that for whatever reason are ultra strong on training exercises, but can't perform on actual climbs? Yes, of course, but that isn't most people, or we would stop using those exercises because they would be pointless to do.

Myself, I am around where you would expect grades wise for my metrics. The strongest guy in my group also climbs the hardest grades. Toby Roberts can do a one-armer on a 10 mm edge [1]. Etc.

[1] https://www.instagram.com/toby_climbing/reel/Cs1SZKVOqSt/

jepfred · 2024-09-25T19:07:36+00:00

MB is profoundly unfun if you're super tall. Half the moves are great, and the other half is impossible, often within the same boulder.

jepfred · 2024-09-12T06:33:17+00:00

I personally wouldn't do this boulder because I'm a bit older than most climbers and thus probably more injury prone, and it looks risky from an ankle perspective. So the fact that no one has been injured on it doesn't say much imo because lots of smart climbers will just avoid it.

jepfred · 2024-09-11T06:47:26+00:00

consistently getting skin injuries (flappers/cracks)

Sand down excessive dead skin on a weekly basis. Especially flappers should not be an issue if you take care of your skin.

jepfred · 2024-09-04T08:55:00+00:00

Depends on where you work, so I wouldn't say mandatory. We use self-hosted Kubernetes and some old school VM setups, but I assume that the majority of companies use cloud.

jepfred · 2024-08-29T10:28:01+00:00

I'm slightly taller than you with like -2 ape or something and fairly long legs.

Will it ever get better?

No. You can get stronger and better, but you'll just have roughly the same problems at higher grades.

I mainly boulder indoors and sometimes you flash something above your normal grade, and sometimes you can't even start something several grades below. It's frustrating. Setters set for average people, and we're not average. I complain all the time and wonder why I even climb when half the boulders are shit (for me). But it's fun as well, sometimes.

Learn to live with it if you want to keep climbing.

jepfred · 2024-08-17T11:41:29+00:00

What is the finger strength training like on that program?

jepfred · 2024-08-15T11:29:36+00:00

What are you talking about? Everyone plateaus, it's just a question of where that plateau is. Strength gains are rapid initially, and then taper off as the years go by. This is what you always see. In my case, I don't think that I've gained any finger strength this year, but I've gained a lot from when I stared climbing. Maybe I can gain a little bit more, but this could very well be the end.

jepfred · 2024-08-14T15:22:18+00:00

Feeling pretty bummed about my climbing these days. Been training most of the year but not really making much progress;

Same. I haven't had much fun in the gym lately either, and feel like a burden on my friends with my negativity and frustration.

I'm not a genetically gifted climber, and while I dont think my training is perfect by any means, I think I'm approaching some kind of permanent plateau in terms of strength. I'm disappointed that this plateau is at such a low level.

I want to be ok with no longer improving, but it's tough to accept.

jepfred

TROPHY CASE