[Will Hunt]

If we're talking about "lines" then I thought magic wood was shockingly short of them, unless crawling into the back of a cave then shuffling out counts as a line!

Unfortunately, Ben won't be able to reply to this comment as he fainted upon reading it.

[Bradders]

Anyway why am I getting flack. The world's best climbers are always on about grades...9c, 9a+ onsight, all the 8s in a day. It's an essential part of climbing.

Didn't mean to give you or anyone else any flack, sorry if it came across that way. Just trying to give a different perspective.

[abarro81]

People should get psyched for whatever they're psyched for... grades, history, movement, lines, difficulty, niceness of holds, doing it because your mates can't, doing it because your mates all can... if it makes you psyched it's all good.

[highrepute]

Anyway why am I getting flack. The world's best climbers are always on about grades...9c, 9a+ onsight, all the 8s in a day. It's an essential part of climbing.

Didn't mean to give you or anyone else any flack, sorry if it came across that way. Just trying to give a different perspective.

No offense caused at all. Enjoying the discussion. Almost all my posts contain an element of satire - for example...

People should get psyched for whatever they're psyched for... grades, history, movement, lines, difficulty, niceness of holds, doing it because your mates can't, doing it because your mates all can... if it makes you psyched it's all good.

If I'm really being honest my short, medium and long term goal is to burn off as many people as possible in what ever way possible. There's no better feeling 

[dunnyg]

word

[Nibile]

Psyche is one thing, benchmarks are another.
Lines are one thing, grades are another.
Without grades we would just argue over who climbs more gracefully or which line is the most beautiful. It would be exactly like athletics without times or distances or kilos.
In terms of training, it's normal to refer to grades. Like a sprinter wanting to go under 10" in the 100 meters. He won't train to run in a better way. He'll train to be faster. Same for climbing.
Lines and grades are different parts of the equation and not always they go hand in hand.
Not every hard line can be beautiful and not every beautiful line can be hard.
Unless they are on my board.

[andy_e]

 

Depends on whether you see climbing as an art or a science. I'm a scientist, so I need exact quantification in my climbing. That way, I know what error margins there are when I declare myself to be weak, and know that it would stand up to peer review.

A friend of mine was once told there are two types of climbers: English climbers and French climbers. French climbers are all about the line, beauty, kinaesthetic, vertical catwalking, even if the climbing is a bit shit. English climbers, however, are the opposite. You could start sitting in a pile of dogshit, doing the most perfect, incredible moves, whilst the M6 rushes past the back of your head and chavs throw bottles at you as you top out at head-height. It's all about the movement, hard, brutal, linking moves without lines. I definitely identify as an English climber, whereas he identifies as French.

[jwi]

eh... that doesn't resemble any actual French climbers that I know...

The idea of sport climbing is to treat climbing as a sport — so continual improvements is inherently a goal. On local crags you don't need to know the grade to understand if a route or boulder would be more difficult than what you've done before in similar style. On non-local crags grades are useful, at least if they are reasonably correct.

[Fiend]

A friend of mine was once told there are two types of climbers: English climbers and French climbers. French climbers are all about the line, beauty, kinaesthetic, vertical catwalking, even if the climbing is a bit shit. English climbers, however, are the opposite. You could start sitting in a pile of dogshit, doing the most perfect, incredible moves, whilst the M6 rushes past the back of your head and chavs throw bottles at you as you top out at head-height. It's all about the movement, hard, brutal, linking moves without lines. I definitely identify as an English climber, whereas he identifies as French.

Cool story bro. But numerical fixation isn't essentially linked to either of those. Both of those perspectives can be about beauty and inspiration - and many different perspectives in between.

[andy_e]

No, I just thought it was an amusing aside on a similar topic.

[shark]

No, I just thought it was an amusing aside on a similar topic.

In a similar vein it's funny that grades are largely irrelevant in competition climbing.

[Steve R]

People should get psyched for whatever they're psyched for... grades, history, movement, lines, difficulty, niceness of holds, doing it because your mates can't, doing it because your mates all can... if it makes you psyched it's all good.

Not so sure.  At least two, probably three, on that list are worth growing out of asap imo.

[Nibile]

No, I just thought it was an amusing aside on a similar topic.

In a similar vein it's funny that grades are largely irrelevant in competition climbing.

That's because competition climbing, at least in bouldering, doesn't resemble real climbing anymore.
And also because grades would be useless. You have all the competitors there. The one who climbs more problems wins.

[user deactivated]

It’s the mix of ‘trying hard’ vs grades and ego / expectations (self - others perception). It’s hard to drop that stuff. These days I try to keep it to ‘trying hard’ and take what comes of that. Not always possible when being burnt off by your mates or at a busy crag where there’s lots of dick swinging. Aiming for a particular grade does seem a bit misery inducing tho

[Johnny Brown]

In a similar vein it's funny that grades are largely irrelevant in competition climbing.

Irrelevant? Not sure that's the word I'd use but I get your drift. I did hear the international route setters are banned from mentioning grades when interviewed, lest they upset anyone's expectations. It's no surprise to me that it's easier to split a field with a hard to read 7b+ than a basic 8a+. Plus the competitors are largely stronger than the setters so they can't really take the arms race approach.

That's because competition climbing, at least in bouldering, doesn't resemble real climbing anymore.

What's real climbing Nibs? The fifty degree board? I think the modern comp style is great, it's much closer to the sort of stuff I've always done at the crag, requiring a broad skill set not just strength. Indoor style was traditionally entwined with training which always limited its scope.

[teestub]

First Brexit, then Trump, now Johnny Brown in defense of modern indoor bouldering; what the fuck is going on...

[Fiend]

END TIMES.

[tomtom]

First Brexit, then Trump, now Johnny Brown in defense of modern indoor bouldering; what the fuck is going on...

This glitch in the system is PROOF that we are all but minor programs in a matrix like existence.

[Nibile]

That's because competition climbing, at least in bouldering, doesn't resemble real climbing anymore.

What's real climbing Nibs? The fifty degree board?

I think real climbing is real climbing, like you know, real rock, real holds, real sunlight, real wind.
I'm sure you know plenty of crags whose problems involve no hands runs on big bulges, or upside down feet jams, or double jumps to pyramid volumes, but unfortunately this is not my experience.
Let's be honest here Adam, you just took a chance to slag strength training for the Nth time, because you don't like it. That's fair but don't tell me that present indoor competition bouldering is close to outdoor climbing.
The kind of setting they do now is due to exactly the opposite reason: current athletes are so strong that a strength based comp would be ten finalists even on the top spot with 6 tops on flash.
And I didn't even say that I don't like current comps, I actually think they're fun to watch.

[Fiend]

Fair response Nibs. I do agree that some modern setting is at one particular extreme end of real climbing. A 4th generation coordination jump is just as distant from the realness of Careless Torque or Angel's Share as a ladder of minging crimps straight out of the School. And generally from a spectator's point of view the best problems are somewhere in between (apart from when some cunning fucker manages to completely bypass the dynos ), where there's elements of pure beastliness and creative technique being tested.

[Nibile]

Cheers Fiend.
I think that, leaving aside what I said before, one of the main problems about the "old school" setting was that the spectators could never tell what sort of holds the climbers were using.
For sure the big volumes thing gives a better idea now. 

[Johnny Brown]

This is why I get annoyed when we've still got folk bleating on about Pinky Perky on the significant repeats thread?

I made the same point about strength Nibs, which is one reason why I was never interested in it. It quickly boils down to bodyweight, not much space for creativity there. Yes we have all those moves on gritstone, double foot jams have been involved on most of the world's hardest offwidths since the seventies. You've not seen best forgotten art? Or Silence for that matter? Johnny was doing all this stuff in the nineties inside and out while the strong crew laughed at him. No doubt we'll be seeing much more dynamic, inventive stuff outdoors in the future.  Glad we are all enjoying it, look forward to seeing more.

[gme]

Parkour bollocks. All of the hardest problems in the world are about strength. Show me one that’s about triple Dyno show pony shit.
Lappnor is about as basic as it gets. Not even a heel.
I get why it’s beingused in comps as it’s entertaining but it’s never going to overtake the cutting edge.

[slab_happy]

I was reminded of this argument when, on the recent Enormocast ep, Adam Ondra started dreaming aloud about finding a futuristic route that would require a double dyno into hand jams ...