[Rocksteady]

I guess what I mean is, are the years where people are making their best improvements the years where they are climbing the most (which would seem to be logical) or are some people very efficient with their climbing and making better progress with less time spent?

[Schnell]

Great way to compare ourselves against the wads.

A mix of sport and boulder grades reflecting what I was doing most in a given year:
2010: start climbing, mostly indoors and bits of easy trad
2011: first sport climbing trip, 6b
2012: 6c, 7a and 7b (though probably more like 7a+)
2013: basically no sport climbing this year. font 7A and 7A+
2014: 7b and 7b+, 7B (good going given I was injury free for a total of 3 months)
2015: 7injuries

[moose]

Note to self, next time I am re-incarnated, try to start climbing before almost 30 y.o; and, start trying hard to climb routes before aged 35!

[36chambers]

good thread.

6B    06/2012
7A    04/2013
7A+  09/2013   moved to Leeds (stopped wasting time with trad and sport climbing )
7B    10/2013
7B+  06/2014
7C+  04/2015
7C    05/2015
(8A   12/2015  )

What I think shouldn't be overlooked is the number of sessions required to tick the first of the grade.

6B = 1
7A = 1
7A+ = 1
7B = 2
7B+ = ~7
7C+ = ~6/7
7C = 2
(8A = n^2)  (where n = preliminary prediction)

Or psyche levels

2012 fun
2013 keen
2014 super psyched
2015 super super psyched

[SA Chris]

2015: 7injuries

I note we are climbing more or less the same grade at present!

[moose]

I guess what I mean is, are the years where people are making their best improvements the years where they are climbing the most (which would seem to be logical) or are some people very efficient with their climbing and making better progress with less time spent?

My own modest progress was most rapid when I had two 6-9 month periods of unemployment within around 2 years.  I was bouldering 3-4 days a week on the grit and ticked off a fair few F7B+/7C classics.  Main benefit of unemployment was choosing my days - not being restricted to weekends - I only ever climbed outdoors, when feeling healthy.  Despite climbing a lot more back then, I had no injuries.  These days, I often end up forcing myself to climb at weekends whatever the circumstances - indoors, in crap conditions, injured.  Probably no coincidence that I have a host of elbow and shoulder problems (mainly exacerbated by work and indoor walls).  That said, I think my recent sport climbing focus has led to me climbing a lot better and smarter these days... I'm just a wee bit broken!

[Schnell]

2015: 7injuries

I note we are climbing more or less the same grade at present!

Perhaps one day, with poor enough technique, pigheadedness and silly training practices, we'll tick 8injuries.

[Eddies]

2005 - 6A
2006 - 7A
2007 - 7B
2008 - 7B+
2011 - 7C (on the grit & lime)

To date I've climbed 12 x 7B+ and 5 x 7C's so 7C+ shouldn't be far off 

[Footwork]

Main benefit of unemployment was choosing my days - not being restricted to weekends - I only ever climbed outdoors, when feeling healthy.  Despite climbing a lot more back then, I had no injuries.  These days, I often end up forcing myself to climb at weekends whatever the circumstances - indoors, in crap conditions, injured.

Same goes to being a student. Having the choice to climb when healthy and the weather is good makes a massive difference. I stopped dragging my exhausted self back up to demon wall roof, alone and in the dark after work because I climbed like shit. Proper rest and good mates at the crag makes a big difference.

Anyway my bouldering figures are:

7a - 2010
7a+ - 2011
7b - 2013
7b+ - 2012
7c - 2012
7c+ 2014 (Jan)

I found that I could just break into a new grade when it fitted my style and then spent ages building the pyramid back up. My first 7b slab was in 2014!

[moose]

Same goes to being a student. Having the choice to climb when healthy and the weather is good makes a massive difference. I stopped dragging my exhausted self back up to demon wall roof, alone and in the dark after work because I climbed like shit. Proper rest and good mates at the crag makes a big difference.

Aye, unfortunately, I only started climbing after my student days were behind me!  Still, on balance, I tend to feel any climbing is better than none - enjoy the progress not the goal. 

[SA Chris]

2015: 7injuries

I note we are climbing more or less the same grade at present!

Perhaps one day, with poor enough technique, pigheadedness and silly training practices, we'll tick 8injuries.

We can but dream, maybe even the low 9injuries! The sky is the limit, to break free the bond of gravity and to punch the face of God!

[ghisino]

a slow improver by nature, i've definitely had my best year in terms of improvement as a university student, back to living at my parent's place after 4 years in milan.

What made the difference was :
-having a very cheap bouldering wall and a crag within 15 minutes from home. Both not of the best quality, but fingery and hard. Good choice of weekend venues.
-quite a lot of spare time, but limited occasions to use it for other leisure activities (such as partying, booze and weed).
-Good climbing partners/mentors. Strong, positive, motivating, giving good advice.
-training quite hard and systematically for the first time in my life, while having already lots of outdoor moderate climbing experience.
-being able to spend 3 weeks straight in céuse

one thing i've noticed when looking at my numbers is that they don't necessairly tell all the story.
For instance, in theory i've been plateauing the last 2 or three years, yet i feel an improvement : i comfortably onsight one grade harder, i'm stronger indoors than i've ever been, i became a half decent crack climber from scrap, had my best season so far on font slabs, i've reached all time hights in 8a.nu points  etc...

[andy popp]

1978 - V.diff to H.Severe
1979 - VS
1980 - E1
1982 - E2
1983 - E5 (I think, definitely E4). in Sept 82 I'd moved to Stoke and met Nick Dixon, the effect was almost immediate.
1984 - E6 (ground up)
1985 - E6 (OS)
1986-8 - E5 & E6 OS with very high consistency
1990 - E7 headpoint and ground up
1992 - E8 HP, E7 OS
mid-90s - few more E8s
2001 - after something of a gap E8 again, perhaps my last?

Bouldering and sport climbing are hard to tell because for a long time we did these without having distinct grading systems for them but a few benchmarks:

7a+ - 83 or 84
7c+ - 1989
8a - 1990

83 - flashed Pebble Wall (edit: 84)
early 90s - 7B+
mid 90s - 7C
c.2000 - 7C+

[andy_e]

 

[Johnny Brown]

83 - flashed Pebble Wall

Stop, we have a winner!

[SA Chris]

83 - flashed Pebble Wall

Stop, we have a winner!

I thought the same thing!

[andy popp]

Ooops, just gone and checked, Pebble Wall (Almscliff) was 84. Also the step up to E7 was 90. I'm obviously very old and the memory is fading. Equally obviously I have been in a decline for a long time now, though I think I climbed 7B+ in 2013 and 7B last year. Also, one of the E7s I did GU in 90 is now graded E8, albeit after slight breakage but now with an extra peg and presumably normally pads too.

[iain]

I have a poor memory and an incomplete logbook but the only entries that matter are:

First one-armer 2005
First front lever 2005

Never been sure how to progress from that pinnacle. What's a pebble wall?

Edit: I should add that whilst I was climbing from 95 real training didn't start till 2001 so 4 years from zero to hero 

[duncan]

Some of these are great stories.

1976 - April - V.Diff
1978 - January - Severe
.................................................................(moved to Sheffield late Sept 78)
1978 - September, last week - VS
1978 - October, first week - HVS
1978 - October, third week - E1
1978 - October, fourth week - E2
1979 - E3
1980 - E4 (7a on gear)
1981 - E5 (in the guise of 5.12a/7a+ on gear)
1982 - E5 in the UK
1984 - E6 (and 7b/+ on gear)
1985 - injury

Brief comeback in ‘88, otherwise nothing until...

1994 - E4
1995 - E5
1996 - E6 (~7b on gear)
1997 - injury

1998 - 2010 - pootling along at HVS-E2 - mostly injured. I’m astonished at the volume of easy climbing I logged over this time. A real missed opportunity, why wasn’t I trying harder things?

2010 - present. E3/4 (7a) on a good day.

Pretty much all onsight. One of these days I'll get into the redpointing.

[Palomides]

From what I can remember (and not counting years of trad thrashing about)

Uni and postgrad years:
1990 - HVS
1991 - E1
1992 - E2
1993 - E4
1994 - E5  F7a
1995 - E5  F7b+
1996 - E5  F7c
<10 years without real records - did a few E3s/E4s, occasional F7bs, moved to France so no subsequent trad climbing apart from 2012>
2006 F6c
2007 F7a+
2008 F7a
2009 F7c
2010 F6c
2011 F6c
2012 F7c  (plus one E5 ground up with a fall and an E3 onsight)
2013 F7b+
2014 F7b+
2015 F7c

No progress for 20 years...

[Fiend]

I'm still not sure what conclusions Shark is going to draw from this, but anyway:

Trad:

1993 - E1 (something at Baggy I think), started climbing - 0 years
1994 - E2 (I'm guessing here but pretty sure it happened) - 1 year
1995 - E3 (Great Slab, Long John's Slab), year is a rough guess - 2 years
.
1997 - gave up climbing
.
.
.
2001 - restarted climbing
.
.
2004 - E4 (Ten Years After), year is a rough guess - 7 years, I don't count the missing years as they really were missing.
.
2006 - E4/5 (Poetry Pink, The Knock) - 9 years
.
.
.
.
.
.
2013 - E5 (various) - 16 years

Sport onsight:

No idea.

Sport redpoint:

2006 - 7a+ (first redpointed route) - 0 years
2009 - 7c (second route) - 3 years*
2010 - 7c+ (third route) - 4 years*

*progress made by actually redpointing routes.

Boulder worked:

No idea.

...

Hope that is as useful as it looks 

[chris j]

Note to self, next time I am re-incarnated, try to start climbing before almost 30 y.o; and, start trying hard to climb routes before aged 35!

+1 If i hadn't spent 15 years bumbling around onsighting Easy Trad and grit slabs and tried getting strong in my early 20s instead...

[Oldmanmatt]

Note to self, next time I am re-incarnated, try to start climbing before almost 30 y.o; and, start trying hard to climb routes before aged 35!

+1 If i hadn't spent 15 years bumbling around onsighting Easy Trad and grit slabs and tried getting strong in my early 20s instead...

I did.

Still crap.

I have so much respect for those who manage to keep up the pace into their 40's and beyond (looking at you Shark). I seem to be a mass of injuries, aches, tweaks and enforced rests.

I've been training hard recently, but not climbing, because it's plain demoralising. Need to shed 10kg and actually rediscover the mythical superpower known as "finger strength".

Some of the progress above is impressive!


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[honroid]

Bouldering
2007: 7A
2008: 7A+
2012: 7B
2014: 7B+ and 7C
Sport
2009: 7b
2013: 7b+
2015: 7c

[Oldmanmatt]

My own modest progress was most rapid when I had two 6-9 month periods of unemployment within around 2 years.  I was bouldering 3-4 days a week on the grit and ticked off a fair few F7B+/7C classics.  Main benefit of unemployment was choosing my days - not being restricted to weekends - I only ever climbed outdoors, when feeling healthy.  Despite climbing a lot more back then, I had no injuries.  These days, I often end up forcing myself to climb at weekends whatever the circumstances - indoors, in crap conditions, injured.  Probably no coincidence that I have a host of elbow and shoulder problems (mainly exacerbated by work and indoor walls).  That said, I think my recent sport climbing focus has led to me climbing a lot better and smarter these days... I'm just a wee bit broken!

If I look at my own progression, two factors - proximity to real rock and free time - explain all my "performance". I have spent almost all my life living in places remote from climbing, like London and other parts of the South-East. I got into climbing because my parents eccentrically bought and renovated a stone ruin in the west of Ireland as a holiday home when I was 6, which was surrounded by small sandstone outcrops and ocean, and nothing else to do. But otherwise I couldn't climb frequently until I was at Bristol as a student, with the Avon Gorge on the doorstep. In a way that was a mixed blessing as Avon is a pretty weird venue with a very specific climbing style but I did advance from VS to low E3. E3 to E5ish then came from a year off, in particular 6 months climbing full-time in Australia. My long period in London was essentially characterised by sideways drift, especially as leaving town for full weekends started to become too much fuss, and I began limiting myself to daytrips to either Portland or the Peak ... though even those were at least 2 hours drive each way. The only period when my climbing improved at all in London was when I was working freelance/ studying for an MBA, and could organise my time more freely. My very recent small surge in grades is 100% explained by living in a climbing town and not working.

Yep.

I grew up 6 miles from Pentire and Doyden and close to loads of Trad.

My real progress only began after moving to Portsmouth to study, access to (by the standards of the late 80s) good walls and sport in Swanage. Bouldering on Pompey sea walls was superb for finger strength.

My real progress began after moving to the Ardeche in 95.

My decline really set in living in Dubai and driving a desk...


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