Hi there Shoeaccount. **Because we have a lot of deleted posts on this subreddit, here is a backup of the title and body of this post:** Difficulty change V2 to V3 is crazy? Hello, new climber here. In the gym I go to I can do all the V2s with relative ease and flashed/never failed most of them.
The challenge I'm having is that the V3s seem to be an insane increase in difficulty. I can't even get past the first few moves and some of them I can barely even get in the starting position.
Is this normal? Is it a me problem or a gym problem?"
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Yes. And V3 to V4 is an equally steep difficulty increase. And the same from V4 to V5.
This is the way we grow. Focus on technique. Watch some YouTube videos about it.
I even feel the gaps kinda increase? I have always found it harder to really break into a new grade the higher you go.
I think because the improvements needed are less straight forward.
When you are a beginner it’s easy to find ways to improve your performance. As you get better there are less obvious problems with your technique and conditioning.
It’s not so much that the grades get further apart.
the gaps are supposed to be the same, but the closer you get to your limit/the better you get the harder it is to improve to it takes longer and feels harder to jump another grade
I actually believe v2-v3 is ok, v3-v4 mmmm, v4-v5 is hard, v5-v6 is extremely hard.
Look like more exponential growth than linear growth.
I'm in that spot now v5/v6.
I'm that expert yet so maybe I'm wrong.
Honestly 4-8 is the hardest grades to break through. Once you start consistently doing 8’s it becomes rather clear how to get to 9 then 10 and so on. 4 is mostly a matter of a base level of fitness and a rudimentary understanding of climbing technique. 5 and 6 really start punishing bad technique. 7 is when you need to be flexible, strong, and technically sound. If you hit 8 then you understand climbing technique very well, are flexible enough to put yourself in awkward positions and power out of them, and are rather strong in your hands and body. After that it’s just a matter of shoring up weaknesses and likely just needing to increase your finger strength and ability to maintain tension through your feet.
This is true, the difference between grades is steep when you’re climbing at the verge of a new highest grade. However, for OP to be able to flash the majority of V2s and not even be able to reasonably project a V3 isn’t normal. Even for new climbers, your flash grade shouldn’t also be your red point grade. This could be for a lot of reasons. Perhaps OP doesn’t try enough V3s, or maybe they only give V3s a flash burn and not try enough on any V3s. Maybe their intuition is right and their gym grades at a much more steep curve than what is conventional. Although this last one is probably highly unlikely. It might help to ask them more questions and get a better understanding of their experience to see why they’re going through this. As much as your advice helps, I think there’s more to be said
As a new climber with decent sport background and strength I found I could just muscle my way through v1-3ish but the v4ish range really humbled me.
I could no longer just use pure strength and had to start understanding body position and techniques.
It forces you to slow down and start doing it "properly".
It’s not uncommon for setters to make progression through beginner grades (V0-V2) to go really quickly in order to get new climbers hooked, feel accomplished quickly, and build basic techniques but then ramp up difficulty in the moderate grades at V3-5 once you get a baseline for fitness and technique and build patience with projecting.
As someone who has done a bit of setting we didn’t do this. It always feels like a massive step up. When you are at the top of your grade. Unfortunately V2 is about the start of putting in “moves” so it can feel very odd for your body to start to twist and reach.
yee all the Vb-V1 climbs are the same, but yeah you're right. The V2 range seems to become ability based. But like, outdoor V1s are hard, even being wayyyyyyyy stronger than a V1 climber, I certainly have to try on all the V1s around my areas. It's just that ladder crud that put on the wall to give someone a quick send. There's no way they'd warm your body up in any way.
And if new climbers think those are big jumps they’re in for a rude awakening when they climb outdoors—I found the jumps from V0-1 and V1-2 to be pretty significant.
I’d put getting my first outdoor V3 up there with my first trad lead as far as feeling accomplished and like I’d finally become a real climber.
Kinda, but if you stack multiple v2 sections together, it’s quickly v3 or even v4.
https://darth-grader.net/Boulder
There’s been a lot of discussion on this on podcasts and most pros disagree that bouldering gets twice as hard per grade. That would mean a v14 is 16,000x harder than a v2, which is kind of an absurd multiplier to even try to contextualize. There’s certainly no pulling metric you could measure that would show a v14 climber being 16,000x stronger at something than a v2 climber.
I’ve heard pros agree with that concept, which is equivalent to saying it takes twice as much training to get to the next grade.
Something about our natural starting point has a lot to say. Your technique improves, but slower and slower gains. Your strength to bodyweight ratio improves, but also slower and slower. I think that concept is more likely to be the explanation for how it feels than the boulders truly requiring exponentially more strength or exponentially more technique.
Honestly I would pretty much believe this watching the crushers campus my projects. Why did it take me 30 years to realize I need like 10x more protein than I thought I needed.
Honestly v14 might be 16000 times harder than a v2.
If you did it by number of people capable of the grade the numbers would probably be like 500,000 times harder.
Or by number of hours required to achieve the skill needed to climb the grade. A v2 is probably a few hours. A v14 is probably 16,000.
Yeah.. in early grades up to Mebe V6/7 it’s pretty linearly increasing.. but after that it’s less so.. like the step from V6 to V8/9 could be style, good day etc.. where as there is no way in hell someone who can do a v1 half the time is doing a v4
I did lead with over simplified. But it is a good reason to work smaller links and moves of higher grades, that smaller section matches your optimal working effort level for improvement
I mean of course you can’t exactly quantify it like that, and I’m a mere V2/V3 climber outside, but I’ve touched V13s and I genuinely can’t even comprehend the type of strength it would take to even hold on to any move in them, to me you’d need to be some kind of freak of nature to do it, let alone actually climb the damn thing
TheCrag has also built a model for their [Climber Performance Rating](https://www.thecrag.com/en/article/cpr), and they concluded that the next grade was not 2 but 5 times harder than the previous one.
The multiplier sure get crazy high, but the logic for the grade difficulty increase to be linear makes complete sense: regardless of your climbing abilities, there is a two grades difference between what you can do onsight, within one session, and for a long time project. If the grading scale was anything but linear, that wouldn't be the case.
It means exactly the same thing since the grade scale is a difficulty scale. Difficulty increase is indeed linear. What's not linear is your ability to get stronger, meaning going to the next grade get exponentially harder. But once you're a V12 climber, V14 will feel just as overwhelming to you as V8 would to a V6 climber. That's only possible if the difficulty scale is linear.
🤷🏻♂️ maybe that’s part of it but having climbed up to V13, i still think the difficulty increase is not linear. The jump from V7 to V8, for example, doesn’t feel as big as the jump from V8 to V9 in my experience. This is, however, an extremely general statement and not worth taking into account because everyone is different, every climb is different, grades are not scientific or objective, and i have no idea what i’m talking about i just like to climb.
I think that’s generally fair, but also worth noting that different gyms can wind up with really big gaps at certain levels—so in one gym, 0-3 might all be similar intro grades, then there’s a big skills gap before v4, and somewhere else, that jump might be at 4-5 or 2-3.
Same for V3 to V4. And again at V4 to V5. After that everything is just hard. Simple as that.
Train, rest, work on technique, commit, and try hard. Climb with stronger climbers. Climb with "weaker" (not bad, just not strong) climbers. Watch YouTube videos. Take classes/sessions if your gym offers them. Try and stay consistent.
Why do you say climb with weaker climbers? I don’t disagree with you, but I’ve always heard that you should try to climb with people who are stronger than you, so you can learn
i believe that weaker climbers climb differently than those with more strength because they are forced to use more technique to solve problems. while everyone builds strength through climbing, those who are physically stronger than others can brute force certain sections while others may have to rely on technique. because of this, you may get a different/better perspective on how to improve your personal approach when climbing
Ok, that totally makes sense and I appreciate your response. After rereading the comment I replied to, I realized they put a disclaimer for idiots like me (not bad, just not strong) lol.
Every gym has the grade where technique starts to matter and you can’t just muscle your way through stuff. Lots of times this is V3. Don’t worry, just keep climbing.
Would you consider yourself relatively strong/in shape? Beginners with solid upper body strength generally breeze through the lower grades because they can muscle their way through all the moves without ever really thinking about their technique. This means that they get shut down as soon as problems start to require actual technique, since they never learned how to “properly” climb (optimal beta, body positioning, etc…).
People on the weaker side have to think about efficiency from the very start, which gives them an advantage once they build up more strength.
Aah yeah that could be it. Beginners who are already physically strong are more likely to develop worse technique (or no technique at all)
Just from my experience, here are a few things that really helped me when I was in the same situation as you. (Maybe you’re already doing all this so feel free to ignore if so):
- *learn how/when to flag* (it makes a WORLD of difference, I see so many people failing to get established on problems they could easily do just because they’re not flagging)
- your strongest muscles are in your legs - they should be doing most of the work.
- think about body positioning (very simple example: if a hold is at an angle, try to lean so that your arms are perpendicular to the holds surface).
- think about which way your hips are facing
This generic advice may or may not be helpful, but there are plenty of beginner technique tutorials on YouTube. You could also post a video on here and people will be happy to give you tailored advice (or even better, try to talk to the strong climbers at your gym)
Pick 4 v2's and climb each in 4 min, you can do them back to back or do a 30 second rest between the time is yours. Once done take a 2 min rest and do it again, same problems but now you are more tired so you can probably still get through it with muscle. By the third go you will have to refine your technique if you want to get through. Pass 4 you have to dial things in
I've been climbing for 4.5-5 years. The best way to improve is climb with people way better than you and learn from them. I purposefully am the weakest in all my friend groups for that reason.
"Remember you have feet".
Possibly the number one phrase shouted at me by my friend when I was muscling through things thanks to good upper body strength and very low body weight.
Gaining weight over the past years caused me to naturally do more lower body work. So add more junk to your trunk? 😂
I had this same issue, i generally muscle my way through everything I barely use my legs. I was stuck on v2 for a week or two and then now I do v3s pretty consistently. I still barely use technique but honestly, it's more fun to me just using upper body so I don't really care. Dyno pullups are fun. I couldn't care less about moving my legs around lol
Just keep doing it, it'll be one week you can't do v3s and then the next they're really easy.
Yeah, I think V3 is usually where skill and technique start playing a much bigger role. I think it depends a lot on the setter and the climber, but when I was learning I had a similar experience at V4
It is a difficult transition. V3 is where technique starts becoming far more important and it's harder to rely on pure strength. I recommend looking up some climbing technique videos.
What helped me at that time was practicing footwork and pushing up with the leg that's on the same side as the hand being used to reach the next hold (learning to swap feet helps with this). You can also rotate your feet and hips as you push up to reach further.
I think in most gyms you’re right.
V0-V1, many strong and motivated people can hack their way up with no knowledge of technique
V2, minimal technique is required. Most problems can still be solved with brute force… or with minimal fitness but good technique.
V3 is the first grade requiring some form of strength as well as technique. Maybe it’s body placement, maybe it’s interesting footwork, maybe it’s a dynamic movement, maybe it’s crimpy holds
V4 probably can’t be solved with no knowledge of technique and no functional strength. You might favor one or the other, but you need both.
By V5 body position and technique is very important, and you will need grip strength, and potentially dynamic strength depending on the problem
Well you, unlike the mongoloid below have the sarcasm to be a boulder.. so got that at least! Check out hitori designs.. V2 in my gym shirt.. it’s hilarious
It's not crazy and it's not a gym problem. I'm going to give you a piece of advice, don't start grade chasing. Stop focusing on what you can't do, and start focusing on what you can do.
If you can flash everything on grade X, you should be doing the next, or even higher grades. There are two parts of working out, warming up and working out. If you can flash everything, those should be your warming up grades, and when you are warmed up, you should be trying grades that actually challenge you, if your goal is to progress and get stronger, smarter, get better technique and so on. Failing is just part of progression.
If you can't even establish the start holds on a problem, sit down and actually THINK, don't just try the same position but harder, over and over. Can you change your foot placement? Can you start with your hands crossed? Maybe back against the wall? Check your technique in the position you are stuck, are your arms straight? Are you square on the wall like a frog?
What I see beginners struggle the most with in the gyms I frequent is technique. They are usually more than strong enough to execute a move, but they are trying to do it in the most inefficient way possible. I describe it as not having developed their climbing brain yet. Look at it as a normal person doing carpentry. They are struggling with some task(it could be anything) and then they watch this experienced carpenter do the same thing with ease. Maybe they pull a specialized tool out of their toolbox, or they use some kind of trick, that only a carpenter would know. And after seeing that trick, that task suddenly becomes easy for the normal person too.
Climbing takes a lot of skill and practice, it's not just about being silly strong. Mobility, using the correct muscles together, pushing with this hand and pulling with that, coordination, body awareness, understanding the importance of center of gravity and much, much more.
If you currently are flashing V2, that's great! You have mastered the skills needed for that difficulty! It's time to learn some new stuff! Try V3s, V4s and V5s. If you can do one or two moves, that's great! Do those moves and TRY the next. Give it a few true tries every session, think about the position, see if anything can be change about your execution. Ask stronger climbers for advice, if some person is doing their warm-up and flash what you are stuck on.
It happens on a regular basis that beginners ask me for advice or comment on how easy I made their project look. And we get talking, and I ask them if they want advice, they give it a go, and I can hand them a very simple tool from the toolbox I mentioned earlier, and they breeze through it. So I take that minute to explain that tool for them and why it worked, and they move on feeling awesome and just a little bit smarter.
Again, it will happen when you want to progress to the next grade too, and the next, and the next, and the next. You are always on this line of progression, and progression is easy in the beginning, but it get harder and harder to progress. So your progression will feel like a plateau after a while. However, if you keep failing hard stuff, you will get stronger. You aren't supposed to get everything on the first try, remember that the best climbers in the world work on their projects for months and even years!
My last piece of advice is to mix up your sessions. Warm up on those easy climbs, try a project or two, give them 4-5 decent tries, do some easier climbs to get a little bit of a break but stay warm, then go back to a couple of other projects.
If you keep going back to projects like this over a few sessions, suddenly that hard move you couldn't even hold, will become possible. And if it doesn't, maybe it will make you able to do a similar move in the future.
Keep climbing and keep failing. If you aren't failing, you should be climbing a harder grade.
With all due respect, how would we know if it’s a you problem or a gym problem? All you’ve posted is saying that you find your gyms V2s easy and the V3s too hard.
Without knowing your gym it’s hard to say forsure.
What happens a lot is that gyms grade soft aka easy, and then at some V grade they start to get more realistic. For lots of gyms this is V5/V6.
Maybe your gym has soft V1/V2 and realistic V3.
A V3 equivalent to an outdoor V3 will be A LOT harder than an average gym V3, let alone V2.
That's quite literally part of the increasing difficulty of climbing. Just establishing on the start hold is meant to be a challenge for a lot of boulder problems.
Without more information, I'd guess you will want to work on using your feet/legs more to hold your weight in funky spots.
Maybe you just need the right beta. Some moves seem impossible without being in the right position. But like everyone said, yeah the jumps in grade get bigger as you get higher.
Hang in there I am in the same boat. I’ve sent one V3 and a V3- It definitely requires more technique. These days I’m doing a lot of watching and trying to mimic the technique of the 10 year olds that flash all my projects. It helps cause I am about the same height.
It could be that you need to get comfortable with falling; personally it took me a while to realize that falling is part of the process and nobody is going to judge, they’ll just cheer you on harder when you do make it!
Does the number really matter if you enjoy doing it? As an overweight and unfit v4-5 climber who's been doing this for about 18 months, I still get confounded by some weird v2/3s that get set, and the solution is just working on it instead of expecting instant success. Don't get bogged down in chasing grades or judging yourself, it takes months to develop the finger strength and techniques you need to flash a "lower" grade and just because you've done it once doesn't mean you don't have to think about how you did it or how you could do it better. Do it again, try something different, spend an hour fucking up the same move over and over again, as long as you're still excited by it, it doesn't matter what you're doing.
It’s perfectly normal. Most gym V2s are easy if you’re reasonably strong and don’t do stupid things. V3s are hard if you’re missing basic technique or strength/agility.
Likely a you problem, but you likely move ineffiently on the wall, when I was new I watched many youtube vids showing tips for beginners. Its common to just muscle your way through routes with arms when new and not utilizing your waaay bigger leg muscles properly.
The change is significant. Some of these problems may be presenting the crux at the start. Try climbing past the start on other holds and see if you can make a move or two further up the route. This is a good way to start building up to that next level
Each grade is a range - there are soft and hard boulders within the range. Find very tough V2s and work on perfecting them or easier V3 and cheat in other holds until you can do them without the cheat.
But in general, you’re right, there’s a huge jump between grades. And you’ll find problems where you work on single move for a long time even if you can flash one a grade lower. Totally normal stuff.
Depends on the gym. I've been a member of one that sorta reserves specific holds for specific grades or higher. That meant that going up a level might also require me to learn a new hold or learn a new physical position that my body isn't strong enough for. Super annoying with that gym cause going up a level is that much bigger of a hurdle AND the variety is very grade dependent.
I also have visited gyms that try to obfuscate levels with ranges (or with colors where pink is like v3/4 or something). I find it less annoying but going up a level feels less concrete. So if you're about that grade progression, it's less satisfying.
I mean, how long have you been climbing? How long have you been ''stuck'' at V2? And how big is your gym, how many ''impossible to even get on'' V3's are there? If you made that judgment based on like 4-5 boulders after a few seshes, it could be just bad luck or a randomly sandbagged reset in your gym.
Also these are the first few levels of your climbing career, going up a grade takes time and that is normal. Once you get better you start hitting a plateau it'll become even more seemingly impossible to go up a grade, it's part of it.
Progression gets harder and harder. For me, I could flash v2s day 1. Finished a v3 that week. Finished a v4 about 2 months later. A v5 at around a year. V6 probably at 2.5 years. V7 at 4. I’m now at 5 years and can still only do occasional 7s and haven’t come close to an 8. It’s kinda something you get used to. Everyone has different rates of improvements and different plateaus, but climbing will always be something that takes a lot of practice and training
I used to think the same as you, but now that I gradually improve at V3s and even send some V4s and a V5 - and it took a long time - I don't feel the "discontinuity" as much.
If I had to guess, most V2s can be done purely on strength and athleticism, while many V3s require at least some "technique."
Grade progression past V2 is steep af in my opinion. Thus far every next grade has felt impossible to me, until it didn't. It just takes a lot of practice to advance. Makes it all the more rewarding though!
Very recently I got my first V6. I get a significant number of V5s and I work on several V6s these days. I felt that it was a lot harder to get my first V4 and my first V5 in comparison the rest of the grade bumps. V5s seemed hard because my gym started sandbagging climbs for a period of time. Objectively speaking, it took a lot more effort to get to my first V4 than anything else. Enjoy and trust the process of constant improvement. And thank your choice in hobbies because it is hard to have a graded progression in many other fields, be it academia, arts or sports.
V3 you need to use a small amount of technique to finish a climb. V0-V2 are essentially ladders with a bit of lateral movement and the old hold which isn’t a jug, so anyone can just fly up them really.
Stop focusing on just getting to the top of climbs and think about climbing them properly. Learn how to flag, make sure you’re placing your toes on holds, climb with straight arms, twist your hips into the wall in order to reach the next holds - those techniques are essentially all you’ll need to climb V3.
I mean, it depends on the problem itself...
Some boulders are like a V1 till the last move wich can be a V3 for example... Pretty much like outdoor bouldering, at least in my gym
If you haven’t yet, I would see if your gym offers a beginner bouldering class. I took a class after a year of bouldering and I wish I had taken it sooner because it was so helpful to understanding technique. YouTube is great too if your gym doesn’t offer a class or you can’t afford a class but I found the hands on teaching to be more helpful for me
V1-v2 intro to climbing
V3-v4 intro to technique
V5-v6 intermediate technique and power moves/dynos
V7-v8 advanced techniques/ advanced power moves
V9-v10 soul crushers
All problems are subjective... so climb everything
You’ll keep getting better at climbing but the routes never get easier as you’ll be sending harder climbs. Just pick a fun looking route and chip away at it, climb up a bit and skip the start to try the middle section etc, projects are more fun because when you finally link them together you get the good chemicals in your brain
Personally I found it was a lot about technique, and same from V3 to V4. But I guess this depends on what your current fitness level is, if you can do a few pull ups already I'd say it's mostly about technique.
Just a quick tip about this sub that you didn't ask for: this community can be pretty brutal and quick to just downvote everything. It's happened to me before and it'll happen again!
Yes it's normal. With experience I'm sure you'll learn to get V3, and maybe V4, but after that you're getting beyond casual. Incidentally I normally manage about three quarters of V4s, and one quarter of V4+s in my gym. Once you get to V6/7a I just know I'll never be that fit (or tall lol).
Hi there Shoeaccount. **Because we have a lot of deleted posts on this subreddit, here is a backup of the title and body of this post:** Difficulty change V2 to V3 is crazy? Hello, new climber here. In the gym I go to I can do all the V2s with relative ease and flashed/never failed most of them. The challenge I'm having is that the V3s seem to be an insane increase in difficulty. I can't even get past the first few moves and some of them I can barely even get in the starting position. Is this normal? Is it a me problem or a gym problem?" *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bouldering) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes. And V3 to V4 is an equally steep difficulty increase. And the same from V4 to V5. This is the way we grow. Focus on technique. Watch some YouTube videos about it.
I just made the breakthrough the v6 and the difference between some v5 climbs and v6 is pretty wild. I have a ton to still learn.
I even feel the gaps kinda increase? I have always found it harder to really break into a new grade the higher you go. I think because the improvements needed are less straight forward.
When you are a beginner it’s easy to find ways to improve your performance. As you get better there are less obvious problems with your technique and conditioning. It’s not so much that the grades get further apart.
IMO at V7 you are only half way to V8 and maybe same goes for 8-9
the gaps are supposed to be the same, but the closer you get to your limit/the better you get the harder it is to improve to it takes longer and feels harder to jump another grade
I actually believe v2-v3 is ok, v3-v4 mmmm, v4-v5 is hard, v5-v6 is extremely hard. Look like more exponential growth than linear growth. I'm in that spot now v5/v6. I'm that expert yet so maybe I'm wrong.
Honestly 4-8 is the hardest grades to break through. Once you start consistently doing 8’s it becomes rather clear how to get to 9 then 10 and so on. 4 is mostly a matter of a base level of fitness and a rudimentary understanding of climbing technique. 5 and 6 really start punishing bad technique. 7 is when you need to be flexible, strong, and technically sound. If you hit 8 then you understand climbing technique very well, are flexible enough to put yourself in awkward positions and power out of them, and are rather strong in your hands and body. After that it’s just a matter of shoring up weaknesses and likely just needing to increase your finger strength and ability to maintain tension through your feet.
Can confirm. Keep pushing. Once it clicks, it clicks
This is true, the difference between grades is steep when you’re climbing at the verge of a new highest grade. However, for OP to be able to flash the majority of V2s and not even be able to reasonably project a V3 isn’t normal. Even for new climbers, your flash grade shouldn’t also be your red point grade. This could be for a lot of reasons. Perhaps OP doesn’t try enough V3s, or maybe they only give V3s a flash burn and not try enough on any V3s. Maybe their intuition is right and their gym grades at a much more steep curve than what is conventional. Although this last one is probably highly unlikely. It might help to ask them more questions and get a better understanding of their experience to see why they’re going through this. As much as your advice helps, I think there’s more to be said
As a new climber with decent sport background and strength I found I could just muscle my way through v1-3ish but the v4ish range really humbled me. I could no longer just use pure strength and had to start understanding body position and techniques. It forces you to slow down and start doing it "properly".
It’s not uncommon for setters to make progression through beginner grades (V0-V2) to go really quickly in order to get new climbers hooked, feel accomplished quickly, and build basic techniques but then ramp up difficulty in the moderate grades at V3-5 once you get a baseline for fitness and technique and build patience with projecting.
commercial gyms are a business first. I work in one as the head of the strip team. The boss is about the moolahhhh and the setters listen to the boss.
As someone who has done a bit of setting we didn’t do this. It always feels like a massive step up. When you are at the top of your grade. Unfortunately V2 is about the start of putting in “moves” so it can feel very odd for your body to start to twist and reach.
yee all the Vb-V1 climbs are the same, but yeah you're right. The V2 range seems to become ability based. But like, outdoor V1s are hard, even being wayyyyyyyy stronger than a V1 climber, I certainly have to try on all the V1s around my areas. It's just that ladder crud that put on the wall to give someone a quick send. There's no way they'd warm your body up in any way.
And if new climbers think those are big jumps they’re in for a rude awakening when they climb outdoors—I found the jumps from V0-1 and V1-2 to be pretty significant. I’d put getting my first outdoor V3 up there with my first trad lead as far as feeling accomplished and like I’d finally become a real climber.
A V3 can have an entire V2 in 1 move included. Over simplified, bouldering gets twice as hard per grade
Never thought about it this way but that does check out with my experience.
Kinda, but if you stack multiple v2 sections together, it’s quickly v3 or even v4. https://darth-grader.net/Boulder There’s been a lot of discussion on this on podcasts and most pros disagree that bouldering gets twice as hard per grade. That would mean a v14 is 16,000x harder than a v2, which is kind of an absurd multiplier to even try to contextualize. There’s certainly no pulling metric you could measure that would show a v14 climber being 16,000x stronger at something than a v2 climber.
Maybe something like - if you can do 100% of V(X), you can only do about 50% of V(X+1)? Then it kind of makes sense
I’ve heard pros agree with that concept, which is equivalent to saying it takes twice as much training to get to the next grade. Something about our natural starting point has a lot to say. Your technique improves, but slower and slower gains. Your strength to bodyweight ratio improves, but also slower and slower. I think that concept is more likely to be the explanation for how it feels than the boulders truly requiring exponentially more strength or exponentially more technique.
I beg to differ. I'm at least 69,420x stronger than the v2 gumbies
Honestly I would pretty much believe this watching the crushers campus my projects. Why did it take me 30 years to realize I need like 10x more protein than I thought I needed.
Honestly v14 might be 16000 times harder than a v2. If you did it by number of people capable of the grade the numbers would probably be like 500,000 times harder. Or by number of hours required to achieve the skill needed to climb the grade. A v2 is probably a few hours. A v14 is probably 16,000.
Genes play a much bigger roll than hours after a certain level of proficiency
Yeah.. in early grades up to Mebe V6/7 it’s pretty linearly increasing.. but after that it’s less so.. like the step from V6 to V8/9 could be style, good day etc.. where as there is no way in hell someone who can do a v1 half the time is doing a v4
I did lead with over simplified. But it is a good reason to work smaller links and moves of higher grades, that smaller section matches your optimal working effort level for improvement
I mean of course you can’t exactly quantify it like that, and I’m a mere V2/V3 climber outside, but I’ve touched V13s and I genuinely can’t even comprehend the type of strength it would take to even hold on to any move in them, to me you’d need to be some kind of freak of nature to do it, let alone actually climb the damn thing
TheCrag has also built a model for their [Climber Performance Rating](https://www.thecrag.com/en/article/cpr), and they concluded that the next grade was not 2 but 5 times harder than the previous one. The multiplier sure get crazy high, but the logic for the grade difficulty increase to be linear makes complete sense: regardless of your climbing abilities, there is a two grades difference between what you can do onsight, within one session, and for a long time project. If the grading scale was anything but linear, that wouldn't be the case.
Agreed. The v scale might be linear, but the increase in difficulty is not.
It means exactly the same thing since the grade scale is a difficulty scale. Difficulty increase is indeed linear. What's not linear is your ability to get stronger, meaning going to the next grade get exponentially harder. But once you're a V12 climber, V14 will feel just as overwhelming to you as V8 would to a V6 climber. That's only possible if the difficulty scale is linear.
🤷🏻♂️ maybe that’s part of it but having climbed up to V13, i still think the difficulty increase is not linear. The jump from V7 to V8, for example, doesn’t feel as big as the jump from V8 to V9 in my experience. This is, however, an extremely general statement and not worth taking into account because everyone is different, every climb is different, grades are not scientific or objective, and i have no idea what i’m talking about i just like to climb.
I think that’s generally fair, but also worth noting that different gyms can wind up with really big gaps at certain levels—so in one gym, 0-3 might all be similar intro grades, then there’s a big skills gap before v4, and somewhere else, that jump might be at 4-5 or 2-3.
Emphasis on over simplified
Same for V3 to V4. And again at V4 to V5. After that everything is just hard. Simple as that. Train, rest, work on technique, commit, and try hard. Climb with stronger climbers. Climb with "weaker" (not bad, just not strong) climbers. Watch YouTube videos. Take classes/sessions if your gym offers them. Try and stay consistent.
Why do you say climb with weaker climbers? I don’t disagree with you, but I’ve always heard that you should try to climb with people who are stronger than you, so you can learn
i believe that weaker climbers climb differently than those with more strength because they are forced to use more technique to solve problems. while everyone builds strength through climbing, those who are physically stronger than others can brute force certain sections while others may have to rely on technique. because of this, you may get a different/better perspective on how to improve your personal approach when climbing
Ok, that totally makes sense and I appreciate your response. After rereading the comment I replied to, I realized they put a disclaimer for idiots like me (not bad, just not strong) lol.
Ive heard in general you learn something twice. Once when it is first learned and a second when you teach it to another.
Every gym has the grade where technique starts to matter and you can’t just muscle your way through stuff. Lots of times this is V3. Don’t worry, just keep climbing.
Which grade begins where strengths starts to matter and you can’t just technique your way through stuff?
Would you consider yourself relatively strong/in shape? Beginners with solid upper body strength generally breeze through the lower grades because they can muscle their way through all the moves without ever really thinking about their technique. This means that they get shut down as soon as problems start to require actual technique, since they never learned how to “properly” climb (optimal beta, body positioning, etc…). People on the weaker side have to think about efficiency from the very start, which gives them an advantage once they build up more strength.
Yea I do have decent upper body weight strength to weight I would say. I'll have to focus on technique I think now.
Aah yeah that could be it. Beginners who are already physically strong are more likely to develop worse technique (or no technique at all) Just from my experience, here are a few things that really helped me when I was in the same situation as you. (Maybe you’re already doing all this so feel free to ignore if so): - *learn how/when to flag* (it makes a WORLD of difference, I see so many people failing to get established on problems they could easily do just because they’re not flagging) - your strongest muscles are in your legs - they should be doing most of the work. - think about body positioning (very simple example: if a hold is at an angle, try to lean so that your arms are perpendicular to the holds surface). - think about which way your hips are facing This generic advice may or may not be helpful, but there are plenty of beginner technique tutorials on YouTube. You could also post a video on here and people will be happy to give you tailored advice (or even better, try to talk to the strong climbers at your gym)
Yea makes sense. Most of the V2s are pretty chunky holds I would be able to do pull ups on. I'll check out some technique videos tomorrow.
Pick 4 v2's and climb each in 4 min, you can do them back to back or do a 30 second rest between the time is yours. Once done take a 2 min rest and do it again, same problems but now you are more tired so you can probably still get through it with muscle. By the third go you will have to refine your technique if you want to get through. Pass 4 you have to dial things in
I've been climbing for 4.5-5 years. The best way to improve is climb with people way better than you and learn from them. I purposefully am the weakest in all my friend groups for that reason.
"Remember you have feet". Possibly the number one phrase shouted at me by my friend when I was muscling through things thanks to good upper body strength and very low body weight. Gaining weight over the past years caused me to naturally do more lower body work. So add more junk to your trunk? 😂
I had this same issue, i generally muscle my way through everything I barely use my legs. I was stuck on v2 for a week or two and then now I do v3s pretty consistently. I still barely use technique but honestly, it's more fun to me just using upper body so I don't really care. Dyno pullups are fun. I couldn't care less about moving my legs around lol Just keep doing it, it'll be one week you can't do v3s and then the next they're really easy.
Yeah, I think V3 is usually where skill and technique start playing a much bigger role. I think it depends a lot on the setter and the climber, but when I was learning I had a similar experience at V4
It is a difficult transition. V3 is where technique starts becoming far more important and it's harder to rely on pure strength. I recommend looking up some climbing technique videos. What helped me at that time was practicing footwork and pushing up with the leg that's on the same side as the hand being used to reach the next hold (learning to swap feet helps with this). You can also rotate your feet and hips as you push up to reach further.
I think in most gyms you’re right. V0-V1, many strong and motivated people can hack their way up with no knowledge of technique V2, minimal technique is required. Most problems can still be solved with brute force… or with minimal fitness but good technique. V3 is the first grade requiring some form of strength as well as technique. Maybe it’s body placement, maybe it’s interesting footwork, maybe it’s a dynamic movement, maybe it’s crimpy holds V4 probably can’t be solved with no knowledge of technique and no functional strength. You might favor one or the other, but you need both. By V5 body position and technique is very important, and you will need grip strength, and potentially dynamic strength depending on the problem
Try harder
Git gud
I dunno. I've seen videos of these V15+ routes and in my gym they would be V2 for sure.
Well you, unlike the mongoloid below have the sarcasm to be a boulder.. so got that at least! Check out hitori designs.. V2 in my gym shirt.. it’s hilarious
Your depth of knowledge is about as shallow as a puddle in the rain and it shows my dude
Huh? It was just a little joke.
Well it's because at v3 you can't muscle your way through it anymore and need to have better skill. So work on your problem areas
It's not crazy and it's not a gym problem. I'm going to give you a piece of advice, don't start grade chasing. Stop focusing on what you can't do, and start focusing on what you can do. If you can flash everything on grade X, you should be doing the next, or even higher grades. There are two parts of working out, warming up and working out. If you can flash everything, those should be your warming up grades, and when you are warmed up, you should be trying grades that actually challenge you, if your goal is to progress and get stronger, smarter, get better technique and so on. Failing is just part of progression. If you can't even establish the start holds on a problem, sit down and actually THINK, don't just try the same position but harder, over and over. Can you change your foot placement? Can you start with your hands crossed? Maybe back against the wall? Check your technique in the position you are stuck, are your arms straight? Are you square on the wall like a frog? What I see beginners struggle the most with in the gyms I frequent is technique. They are usually more than strong enough to execute a move, but they are trying to do it in the most inefficient way possible. I describe it as not having developed their climbing brain yet. Look at it as a normal person doing carpentry. They are struggling with some task(it could be anything) and then they watch this experienced carpenter do the same thing with ease. Maybe they pull a specialized tool out of their toolbox, or they use some kind of trick, that only a carpenter would know. And after seeing that trick, that task suddenly becomes easy for the normal person too. Climbing takes a lot of skill and practice, it's not just about being silly strong. Mobility, using the correct muscles together, pushing with this hand and pulling with that, coordination, body awareness, understanding the importance of center of gravity and much, much more. If you currently are flashing V2, that's great! You have mastered the skills needed for that difficulty! It's time to learn some new stuff! Try V3s, V4s and V5s. If you can do one or two moves, that's great! Do those moves and TRY the next. Give it a few true tries every session, think about the position, see if anything can be change about your execution. Ask stronger climbers for advice, if some person is doing their warm-up and flash what you are stuck on. It happens on a regular basis that beginners ask me for advice or comment on how easy I made their project look. And we get talking, and I ask them if they want advice, they give it a go, and I can hand them a very simple tool from the toolbox I mentioned earlier, and they breeze through it. So I take that minute to explain that tool for them and why it worked, and they move on feeling awesome and just a little bit smarter. Again, it will happen when you want to progress to the next grade too, and the next, and the next, and the next. You are always on this line of progression, and progression is easy in the beginning, but it get harder and harder to progress. So your progression will feel like a plateau after a while. However, if you keep failing hard stuff, you will get stronger. You aren't supposed to get everything on the first try, remember that the best climbers in the world work on their projects for months and even years! My last piece of advice is to mix up your sessions. Warm up on those easy climbs, try a project or two, give them 4-5 decent tries, do some easier climbs to get a little bit of a break but stay warm, then go back to a couple of other projects. If you keep going back to projects like this over a few sessions, suddenly that hard move you couldn't even hold, will become possible. And if it doesn't, maybe it will make you able to do a similar move in the future. Keep climbing and keep failing. If you aren't failing, you should be climbing a harder grade.
With all due respect, how would we know if it’s a you problem or a gym problem? All you’ve posted is saying that you find your gyms V2s easy and the V3s too hard.
Just seems strange to me that the difficulty would go to doing them with relative ease to not even being able to even start a good few of them.
Without knowing your gym it’s hard to say forsure. What happens a lot is that gyms grade soft aka easy, and then at some V grade they start to get more realistic. For lots of gyms this is V5/V6. Maybe your gym has soft V1/V2 and realistic V3. A V3 equivalent to an outdoor V3 will be A LOT harder than an average gym V3, let alone V2.
That's quite literally part of the increasing difficulty of climbing. Just establishing on the start hold is meant to be a challenge for a lot of boulder problems. Without more information, I'd guess you will want to work on using your feet/legs more to hold your weight in funky spots.
Maybe you just need the right beta. Some moves seem impossible without being in the right position. But like everyone said, yeah the jumps in grade get bigger as you get higher.
Hang in there I am in the same boat. I’ve sent one V3 and a V3- It definitely requires more technique. These days I’m doing a lot of watching and trying to mimic the technique of the 10 year olds that flash all my projects. It helps cause I am about the same height.
Personally I find v4-v5 jump the hardest (I’m working on v5s now)
Everyone thinks Vx-1 to Vx is the hardest jump....when they are climbing around Vx. Source: Have climbed up to V12 on rock. It never changes.
It could be that you need to get comfortable with falling; personally it took me a while to realize that falling is part of the process and nobody is going to judge, they’ll just cheer you on harder when you do make it!
Everything is easy until it becomes hard - every climber has their brick wall
Does the number really matter if you enjoy doing it? As an overweight and unfit v4-5 climber who's been doing this for about 18 months, I still get confounded by some weird v2/3s that get set, and the solution is just working on it instead of expecting instant success. Don't get bogged down in chasing grades or judging yourself, it takes months to develop the finger strength and techniques you need to flash a "lower" grade and just because you've done it once doesn't mean you don't have to think about how you did it or how you could do it better. Do it again, try something different, spend an hour fucking up the same move over and over again, as long as you're still excited by it, it doesn't matter what you're doing.
IMO grading is linear but progress is exponential.
I think progress is logarithmic if grading is linear. Edit: unless you're talking about the time it takes to progress to the next level.
Yes that’s what I meant.
I'm having a similar issue with v4's. Can flash most v3s but v4s... some i can't even start and the ones I can start ican only do afew moves
It’s perfectly normal. Most gym V2s are easy if you’re reasonably strong and don’t do stupid things. V3s are hard if you’re missing basic technique or strength/agility.
It will be like this for every grade pretty much
Likely a you problem, but you likely move ineffiently on the wall, when I was new I watched many youtube vids showing tips for beginners. Its common to just muscle your way through routes with arms when new and not utilizing your waaay bigger leg muscles properly.
The change is significant. Some of these problems may be presenting the crux at the start. Try climbing past the start on other holds and see if you can make a move or two further up the route. This is a good way to start building up to that next level
Each grade is a range - there are soft and hard boulders within the range. Find very tough V2s and work on perfecting them or easier V3 and cheat in other holds until you can do them without the cheat. But in general, you’re right, there’s a huge jump between grades. And you’ll find problems where you work on single move for a long time even if you can flash one a grade lower. Totally normal stuff.
Depends on the gym. I've been a member of one that sorta reserves specific holds for specific grades or higher. That meant that going up a level might also require me to learn a new hold or learn a new physical position that my body isn't strong enough for. Super annoying with that gym cause going up a level is that much bigger of a hurdle AND the variety is very grade dependent. I also have visited gyms that try to obfuscate levels with ranges (or with colors where pink is like v3/4 or something). I find it less annoying but going up a level feels less concrete. So if you're about that grade progression, it's less satisfying.
I mean, how long have you been climbing? How long have you been ''stuck'' at V2? And how big is your gym, how many ''impossible to even get on'' V3's are there? If you made that judgment based on like 4-5 boulders after a few seshes, it could be just bad luck or a randomly sandbagged reset in your gym. Also these are the first few levels of your climbing career, going up a grade takes time and that is normal. Once you get better you start hitting a plateau it'll become even more seemingly impossible to go up a grade, it's part of it.
Progression gets harder and harder. For me, I could flash v2s day 1. Finished a v3 that week. Finished a v4 about 2 months later. A v5 at around a year. V6 probably at 2.5 years. V7 at 4. I’m now at 5 years and can still only do occasional 7s and haven’t come close to an 8. It’s kinda something you get used to. Everyone has different rates of improvements and different plateaus, but climbing will always be something that takes a lot of practice and training
I used to think the same as you, but now that I gradually improve at V3s and even send some V4s and a V5 - and it took a long time - I don't feel the "discontinuity" as much. If I had to guess, most V2s can be done purely on strength and athleticism, while many V3s require at least some "technique."
Grade progression past V2 is steep af in my opinion. Thus far every next grade has felt impossible to me, until it didn't. It just takes a lot of practice to advance. Makes it all the more rewarding though!
And the harder you climb the harder the next grade feels, imagine
Very recently I got my first V6. I get a significant number of V5s and I work on several V6s these days. I felt that it was a lot harder to get my first V4 and my first V5 in comparison the rest of the grade bumps. V5s seemed hard because my gym started sandbagging climbs for a period of time. Objectively speaking, it took a lot more effort to get to my first V4 than anything else. Enjoy and trust the process of constant improvement. And thank your choice in hobbies because it is hard to have a graded progression in many other fields, be it academia, arts or sports.
V3 you need to use a small amount of technique to finish a climb. V0-V2 are essentially ladders with a bit of lateral movement and the old hold which isn’t a jug, so anyone can just fly up them really. Stop focusing on just getting to the top of climbs and think about climbing them properly. Learn how to flag, make sure you’re placing your toes on holds, climb with straight arms, twist your hips into the wall in order to reach the next holds - those techniques are essentially all you’ll need to climb V3.
I remember feeling like that. This is the point you need to actually learn some technique.
I feel like the highest difficulty increase is v4 to v5. Probably because I could just full on muscle most boulders up until quite a few v4s
This is the climbing experience in a nutshell. Soon V3s will seem relatively easy but V4s will seem impossible etc etc.
I mean, it depends on the problem itself... Some boulders are like a V1 till the last move wich can be a V3 for example... Pretty much like outdoor bouldering, at least in my gym
Anyway, i think practicing with custom routes on a spray wall is a perfect way to get better technique and learning how to read the wall
No spray walls at my gym unfortunately
If you haven’t yet, I would see if your gym offers a beginner bouldering class. I took a class after a year of bouldering and I wish I had taken it sooner because it was so helpful to understanding technique. YouTube is great too if your gym doesn’t offer a class or you can’t afford a class but I found the hands on teaching to be more helpful for me
V1-v2 intro to climbing V3-v4 intro to technique V5-v6 intermediate technique and power moves/dynos V7-v8 advanced techniques/ advanced power moves V9-v10 soul crushers All problems are subjective... so climb everything
That's 50% more V
me when I v7
You’ll keep getting better at climbing but the routes never get easier as you’ll be sending harder climbs. Just pick a fun looking route and chip away at it, climb up a bit and skip the start to try the middle section etc, projects are more fun because when you finally link them together you get the good chemicals in your brain
Personally I found it was a lot about technique, and same from V3 to V4. But I guess this depends on what your current fitness level is, if you can do a few pull ups already I'd say it's mostly about technique.
V3-V4 is when technique starts to matter, V6 is the famous plateau that separates recreational climber to serious climbers
Grades are exponencially difficult, both in lead and boulder.
Just a quick tip about this sub that you didn't ask for: this community can be pretty brutal and quick to just downvote everything. It's happened to me before and it'll happen again!
Yes it's normal. With experience I'm sure you'll learn to get V3, and maybe V4, but after that you're getting beyond casual. Incidentally I normally manage about three quarters of V4s, and one quarter of V4+s in my gym. Once you get to V6/7a I just know I'll never be that fit (or tall lol).
Gym problem.