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Is indoor bouldering counterproductive for old climbers? (Read 6076 times)

jwi

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Bear with me, this is far from a well formed hypothesis. More like a bunch of rambling unconnected thoughts and anecdotes.

Anyway.

I am in all likelihood in the best shape I have ever been for climbing, bar a few barely remembered months in 2009. Last spring I did little useful training due to two operations and two full months of confinement in an apartment with but a fingerboard a pullup bar and a handful of weights. After the confinement my shape for climbing was pretty disastrous. The fingers were strong on the fingerboard but I was pretty shit at climbing, and it took three months before I did something reasonably hard (for me). In September - October I did very little climbing. After that, quite a bit.

During the last half year I have been able to climb regularly. Either on rock (mostly) or on a free standing mini board in the apartment. My training cycles on the mini board has been very short, a few weeks as most, but every time I returned to rock I felt as strong or stronger as before (but with less good endurance). I should add that I have not managed to make the board stable enough for really slappy bouldering, so I have mostly done circuits lasting between 45 to 150 seconds. A few rare session of ultra fingery bouldering and a few sessions of long endurance.

I have long been a sceptic about modern indoor bouldering as training for routes. One of the reasons is that it is very far from specific. It certainly feels a lot different from rock climbing, even bouldering. I have also noticed that some people who climb much harder than me in the bouldering gym (like close to elite levels indoors) struggle with moves on routes that are more and less trivial. And there is even a local climber who has been to finals in world cups in lead who is barely do 8b on routes on rock.

This scepticism I feel about indoor bouldering has nothing on the direct hostility that some of the older climbers here feel. I once got a telling off from one of the strong retired climbers of Saint Antonin for bouldering indoors. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was wasting time I no longer have on training that has nothing to do with climbing, and recommended the campus board if I couldn't get out on rock and had to go to a gym. ("At least campusing is vaguely related to climbing" as he put it).

Arnaud Petit's curios book Escalade. Initiation, Plaisir et Progression also has an interdiction against indoor bouldering for climbers of advanced age (45 years+ IIRC) and says in a throwaway sentence that older climbers should stick to strength endurance training indoors, without any explanation.

So. My apparent, but admittedly tiny, progress after many years of climbing at about the same level of course makes me curious why it happened. Maybe it was like Jean-Mi said, that I wasted time and energy on indoor bouldering. Time lost forever. And due to the pandemic I have been forced to do things that have higher transfer to rock.

Indoor jumping between boxes certainly does not seem to hurt some younger climbers. But that is beside the point. I am thinking about climbers way past their prime in terms of recovery potential, in term of learning coordination, and in term of muscle growth.

tomtom

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Provocative title :)

But happy to add my 0.02 euro's worth...

TL;DR Short sessions on steep training boards = gainz, Longer, higher volume modern blob hopping not so much.

I've not been to a bouldering wall (or any climbing wall) since early March 2020. Since then I've climbed outside a fair amount, but mostly trained on a small but steep (53 degree) board and a fingerboard. I'm climbing better than I ever have.

Pre March 2020, I had spent 3-4 months only using the woody/steep boards in the climbing walls (apart from warming up on the usual circuits) and had already felt and maybe seen some gains. My view - is that modern bouldering walls make it easier to do more volume at a lower intensity than a board session.

For example - my 'regular'  session at the Depot in Manchester before I started to just go on the board, would be warm up on V1-3's for about 10-15 min, then get stuck into a circuit of problems where I could do half or so of them and work the rest (usually purples) - these would be at a range of angles (from vertical to roof) but usually cherry pick the ones I was closer to (vert/gently overhanging smaller holds). Then get tired after an hour or so of this and warm down on some easier problems.

Now, I warm up for 10 min doing some gentle fingerboarding, scap shrugs, pull ups and easy short (but steep) problems. Then spend 45 min working hard, very overhanging problems on small hand holds and small feet. Then stop.

In other words lockdown has reduced session volume notably, but increased intensity.

I suspect that gains I'm making are due to the age/recovery issue - that it just takes me a while to recover from volume, but many (5) short sharp sessions a week are leading to benefits. Sustained benefits...

I may of course be cherry picking problems outdoors that work my 'new' strengths and this may just be that I've become more 'specialised' in one type of climbing, but most of my hardest problems have been walls/gently overhanging not 50 degree crimp and lunge fests...   

(BTW, I'm 51 and a half :D)
« Last Edit: April 23, 2021, 11:01:21 am by tomtom »

shark

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Makes sense to me. The training value of getting good on volumes for me is approximately zero when my aspirations are longer boulder problems and routes. That said the Foundry Wave approximates outdoor climbing much more so the training value is I think (and hope) good.

Muenchener

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Interesting topic.

I'm not climbing anywhere near your level - low to mid 7's max - but otoh I do have quite a bit more experience of being old - 60 this year.

I think indoor bouldering is potentially very valuable, and I'll be giving it more priority if lockdown ever ends and walls ever reopen. I have a very frontal and static climbing style derived from spending my youth as a trad punter and on crimpy brick edge bouldering walls, and I'm generally not finger strength limited on the things I try. Where I am weak is efficient & decisive movement when things get steeper, compression, general burl, anything at all dynamic. 

I have no intention of wrecking my already delicate shoulders trying to learn triple coordination dynos, but clichés aside modern bouldering -  at least all the walls I go to - isn't all parkour. There's plenty of body tension-y roofs, valuable lessons about positioning to be learned from slab volume shuffling. And there are moonboards and spray walls. All of which I think can be immensely valuable for me as an average route punter trying to improve my strength and movement repertoire.

On the other hand: I emerged this spring after three months in lockdown with nothing but a beastmaker, and found my lead head no worse than it is in any other normal spring when I would have spent the winter doing routes at the wall. I'm inclining more towards the view that indoor routes might be a waste of time.

Liamhutch89

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Sorry, i'm not yet a 'mature' climber, but could indoor bouldering have injury prevention benefits by helping develop a more balanced strong body? Excluding the jumpy ones which are likely injury inducing, comp style boulders seem abundant in compression/tension moves. It's certainly more fun than doing lots of theraband exercises!

ali k

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I’ve been sceptical of the crossover between indoor / outdoor since I got consistently burnt off at the wall by a friend who could barely redpoint F7a outdoors at a time when I was regularly climbing F8a/+ in a couple of goes.

Personally I think it depends mostly on what type of holds you’re pulling on at the wall as a lot you’d never find outdoors. But doing volume training indoors is much more skin friendly, so useful for people where skin is usually the limiting factor like me, so swings and roundabouts I guess.


Plattsy

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geoffg

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This is all very interesting to me. As an older climber (64) I am seriously thinking of joining a gym as I don't get the returns from indoor bouldering that I used to get.
I think this is due to a variety of reasons eg knackered knees so can't jump off any more etc.
I've always felt that power is lacking as I get older and that I need to shift some heavy weights. Endurance seems to come back quite quickly.

duncan

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Ahem!

Eight years later I'm a bit more nuanced about this and closer to Muenchener's answer. It depends on your weaknesses and goals of course: indoor bouldering is useful if big moves on big holds on steep ground are a weakness (yes) and are specific to the routes I aspire to (no).

As an observation, over the last 10 years I've performed (on sport routes) less poorly after either doing a lot of easy climbing - 40-50 laps on the auto belay or the equivalent on a bouldering circuit - though never as much as jwi advocates. Or after a bunch of fingerboarding. The big advantage of either of these strategies is I'm less likely to get injured doing them which is rule number one for older climbers.

I'd be interested to know why M. Petit thinks this. He has no shortage of great local rock which may be a factor here.

moose

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I've had a vaguely similar experience to Tom.  My winters used to be mainly spent on long, weekend sessions at the Depot, usually playing on whatever reds and purples appealed.  This last winter, with Covid19 and WFH, I fingerboarded and had brief midweek sessions on my woodie (I can't use my board on a weekend).  After a few weeks to readjust to real rock, I've had a really good Spring for bouldering - ticking off loads of problems from my wish list, some of which had eluded me for near a decade.  I think having more brief, targetted sessions has been beneficial - making gains from sessions, working replicas of my goals -specific and intense work but short enough not to destroy my ramshackle body.

holdfast

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50 this year  :icon_beerchug:
Generally agree with original post. Being unable to go to the bouldering wall for the last year, and so instead building and regularly using my 40 board has been a game changer for me. Like TT describes, my routine at the boulder wall was pretty similar and I was beginning to think that I'd reached another , and maybe final plateau. Additionally, most of my injuries over the last 5 years have been as a direct result of persisting with 'age inappropriate' parkour style blob linking problems - great fun (to watch some whipper snapper dance through the moves), but difficult to keep up with an increasingly knackered body. If I'm honest, these type of problems have no bearing for me on outdoor bouldering.
The board, however, has enabled me to work finger strength / tension / footwork / climbing movemen / trying HARD in one very convenient package in my garden. I've only just started venturing outside again regularly, and I can already see very positive improvements. I would say that my indoor wall visits will be greatly reduced as restrictions gradually lift, and that I will continue to concentrate on board climbing and outdoor bouldering, plus running and occasional TRX and weights for general conditioning. When the day comes for me to switch to routes, I feel I'm  more likely to use an indoor wall, just for mileage if anything

Bonjoy

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I've had a vaguely similar experience to Tom.  My winters used to be mainly spent on long, weekend sessions at the Depot, usually playing on whatever reds and purples appealed.  This last winter, with Covid19 and WFH, I fingerboarded and had brief midweek sessions on my woodie (I can't use my board on a weekend).  After a few weeks to readjust to real rock, I've had a really good Spring for bouldering - ticking off loads of problems from my wish list, some of which had eluded me for near a decade.  I think having more brief, targetted sessions has been beneficial - making gains from sessions, working replicas of my goals -specific and intense work but short enough not to destroy my ramshackle body.
How much of your good spring is a factor of consistently good conditions on the crag and the removal of the distraction/temptation to go indoors instead?
It may be that climbing indoors can be very beneficial to outdoor climbing, but in practice often ends up being less so, or even counterproductive. People end up doing less outdoor climbing when walls are open and being generally less fresh as they've probably had an indoor session not long before each outdoor session.
I have friends who routinely use the flimsiest of weather pretexts to go indoors instead of out under normal circumstances. i imagine this is common. I expect focus and number of hours in a given climbing setting count for more than absolute measures of strength or fitness.

Muenchener

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Good point Bonjoy. I've been out in some pretty marginal conditions lately because the alternative was to continue sitting at home going slowly insane, and ended up having some quite good days. If I'd had the option to cop out & go to the wall I probably would have done so.

tomtom

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I've had a vaguely similar experience to Tom.  My winters used to be mainly spent on long, weekend sessions at the Depot, usually playing on whatever reds and purples appealed.  This last winter, with Covid19 and WFH, I fingerboarded and had brief midweek sessions on my woodie (I can't use my board on a weekend).  After a few weeks to readjust to real rock, I've had a really good Spring for bouldering - ticking off loads of problems from my wish list, some of which had eluded me for near a decade.  I think having more brief, targetted sessions has been beneficial - making gains from sessions, working replicas of my goals -specific and intense work but short enough not to destroy my ramshackle body.
How much of your good spring is a factor of consistently good conditions on the crag and the removal of the distraction/temptation to go indoors instead?
It may be that climbing indoors can be very beneficial to outdoor climbing, but in practice often ends up being less so, or even counterproductive. People end up doing less outdoor climbing when walls are open and being generally less fresh as they've probably had an indoor session not long before each outdoor session.
I have friends who routinely use the flimsiest of weather pretexts to go indoors instead of out under normal circumstances. i imagine this is common. I expect focus and number of hours in a given climbing setting count for more than absolute measures of strength or fitness.

Partially addressing this point (I think - and I'm not Moose) - last summer (when we were allowed out) my 'good' form continued for the rest of the year (it wasn't just a 'let out of my box/good conditions' thing - though I do no routes). I also maintained a similar number of training/climbing days a week (at least 5) and substituting a training session for outside if I went (the weather looked good etc...). Though there were days when I would have been better on the crag if I'd taken the day before as rest instead of done some hangs.

Anyway - I've not been to a wall for over a year and feel in great shape! I think climbing on a woody forces you to largely climb in one style - aside from bigger or smaller holds there isnt too much you can change. It is totally uncompromising. Whereas at a modern bouldering wall you can easily cherry pick problems from a circuit that you'd rather do - or are better on. Of course you should really maintain some discipline and spend a day on crimpy roof problems if that is your weakness - but thats not always what I end up doing!! :D

ali k

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I fingerboarded and had brief midweek sessions on my woodie (I can't use my board on a weekend).
Out of interest, how come? Creaky board bothering the neighbours?

webbo

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I don’t go to the wall much these as everything seems to big jumps or hamstring snapping heel hooks. When I didn’t have a board at home last year and ventured to the wall, l would do a few problems then make my own problems up on one of the boards.
At 65 I probably have limited time before I hit a rapid decline but climbing on my home board plus occasionally weights and cycling seems to be holding time at bay. I have now been outside twice this year first time I managed a 7a+ lip traverse and second time I was doing laps on 6c roof. I will decline to mention where these are to avoid fiend or will rushing off to down grade them and destroy my delusion that what I do my board is working.

Stu Littlefair

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It may be that climbing indoors can be very beneficial to outdoor climbing, but in practice often ends up being less so, or even counterproductive.

 :agree:

Young climbers get strong by merely sniffing a crimp, whereas for codgers some genuine high intensity training is important to keep improving.

Most people who "train" indoors use it as just another climbing session. Go round the depot, do a circuit, have a laugh. Basically a day at the crag, but indoors. No surprise that if you compare that to focussed training on hard board problems, it is generally less effective.

Caveats will be for older climbers whose weakness is not weakness, but who lack flexibility, overall body strength and movement skills  :guilty: They may find indoor bouldering more useful than another session working Stuey 5 Bellies.

moose

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I fingerboarded and had brief midweek sessions on my woodie (I can't use my board on a weekend).
Out of interest, how come? Creaky board bothering the neighbours?

Aye - my neighbour has previously reported me to the council for going to the toilet after 10:30pm; hammered at the door screaming about "using machinery", when I have hoovered or briefly switched on my cooker's extraction canopy; and, tried to punch a friend for parking on the road outside his house.  He makes the odd angry visit to accuse me of drilling or hammering when I have spent the last few hours sat motionless on the sofa watching telly.  I live in a terrace with weird acoustics and I think he is often responding to noises from my other next door - who have lots of noisy kids.  Either that or he is just an insane and angry man who is after any excuse, imagined or not, to hassle me (strangely, whenever other neighbours are having noisy parties, he doesn't make a peep).  Such a contrast with his mother, who is really nice and we have some very pleasant chats.

I don't actually know if he could hear my woodie being used (it's well padded) but I don't really want to find out - now he isn't on furlough I can use it midweek (it was hard refraining from it during lockdown last year, when he was seemingly at home 24/7).

abarro81

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I agree with Stu, but also find it funny how everyone is saying they get injured jumping around on blobs but not pulling hard on small holds on a board. Goes to show how individual these things are I guess, it's the opposite for me.

cheque

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I can’t boulder any more because my body can’t take the falls (the same as if I was 20-30 years older I guess) and I haven’t been to the climbing wall at all since March last year.

I’m far from a great control but I think not bouldering has really reduced how dynamic my climbing is and how naturally I climb on steep terrain. There’s a lot to be said for the way you can go “a muerte” on indoor boulder problems that translates to other things even if it’s not very much like rock climbing.

In general I do think that too much indoor climbing isn’t great though.

Wellsy

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I dunno about older climbers (I'm 31). But I do think that the discussion around indoors to outdoors is interesting.

I was purely an indoor boulderer for fitness reasons for what, 12 months? Before I ever touched an outdoor problem. And I am finding that in general there are a few points;

1) Lower grade (sub 6A) indoor stuff and the same grade outdoors tend to be very different. Indoors that means jugs. Outdoors that does not mean jugs at all. This is more the case for grit, but indoors when you are looking at the easy circuits they tend to be big, really easy deep jug handholds, if you then go from the green circuit at the works to say, Burbage South and get on Cobra then it's just another universe (a traverse on slopers with smeary feet!) Which is not to say that Cobra is massively sandbagged, more to say that the kind of climbing is on another planet.

2) Rock type; if you go from purely indoors to grit, it's a huge different and you get massively shut down. I dunno if that gets more true at higher grades, but certainly if (as I did) you are on indoor stuff around 6C/6C+ then when you go out onto the grit where 6As and 6Bs feel really, really hard. Limestone is a bit closer, I think that realistically some indoor climbing emulates lime better. There is an element of indoors being soft but also like, rock type matters. That does change over time (has for me) and I think part of it is just that certain rock types are very knacky but also it is a thing.

3) The kind of problems you see indoors vary from place to place. I would probably say that going to the Depot and doing the Purple circuit (V5 to V7) all day probably gives you big shoulders but doesn't really translate skill-wise to outdoors at all. It's usually really steep with really good handholds and very straightforward problems without a lot of technicality, and also they are pretty soft. If you go to the Works... I think you find more stuff that is closer in difficulty but also closer in style. More technical, worse holds, worse footholds, more sketchy and usually a bit stiffer too. A lot of it doesn't really bear any resemblance, but the other day I was trying a problem in the Red circuit that was a slopey foothold with a sloper and an undercling, going to gaston edge, and then with more slopey footholds... that's not a million miles away from outdoor climbing by any stretch.

4) indoors has nice thick mats, indoors has wooden walls with plastic holds that are not sharp and horrible and don't shred the skin off your legs, when you move on indoor walls they give a little when you hit the holds hard and it absorbs some of the shock, indoors is warm and the falls are not mean and you don't top out. Basically indoors is relatively pleasant by design, and the rock was not put there in that shape to be safely and easily climbed. So I do think that mentally speaking it's a different thing and it was a big shock to me just how much mentally I was not prepared when I first went outdoors and like, topped out a boulder for the first time.

TL;DR my own experience is that rock types vary in terms of indoor skill relevance, that certain indoor venues seem to set stuff that is closer to outdoor climbing, that certain indoor venues seem to set stuff that is vaguely closer in grades, and that lower grades in terms of experience vary massively but as you approach the higher 6s to7A (the limit of my indoor experience and something I am working on outdoors) they can get closer. Headgame is MUCH more of a thing outdoors and indoors... it's hard to train and it doesn't resemble the outdoor experience much.

I will say; I also have a board. And I don't think climbing on a board really resembles outdoor climbing that much either. It does let you do really hard stuff at high intensity and gets your fingers, core and such mad strong so. Yeah.

Bonjoy

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I've no idea how much this differs between walls, but in my experience (mostly of Sheffield walls), lower grade indoor problems tend towards being overgraded  and harder indoor problems are just straight undergraded. Indoor grading seems pretty throwaway at best and usually inaccurate one way the other. Most predominantly outdoor climbers i think tend to just ignore indoor bouldering grades.

Bradders

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Climbing / training history surely plays a large role here. So TT's example, as great as it is to see, isn't all that surprising in that someone who's not done much high intensity training, starts doing high intensity bouldering and improves at...high intensity bouldering.

I'm the opposite, in that I have spent the last few years focusing almost exclusively on high intensity bouldering, and am now discovering that my capacity is really very low. I can occasionally squeak out something hard, but my ability to do it over and over is relatively low.

Point is it's all about training your weaknesses alongside your strengths, regardless of your age, albeit there are some things older climbers need to specifically do to postpone the inevitable decline of age.

cheque

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Indoor grading seems pretty throwaway at best and usually inaccurate one way the other. Most predominantly outdoor climbers i think tend to just ignore indoor bouldering grades.

 :agree: Putting any kind of stock in indoor grades is the path to madness. The best walls are the ones that use an internal system like the “levels” on the Wave that are only comparable between problems at the same wall.

I started climbing indoors at the old Notts wall. It was an amazing day when I realised that their grading system, despite being superficially similar to UK tech grades (I’m not sure if they were meant to be but they didn’t have +s) was completely unrelatable and that while I shouldn’t expect any Severe to have moves as easy as a “4a” that was set there, I also shouldn’t expect an HVS to have a crux as tough as the “5b”s.  :lol:

Lower grade (sub 6A) indoor stuff and the same grade outdoors tend to be very different. Indoors that means jugs. Outdoors that does not mean jugs at all.

It’s almost as if there’s a financial incentive for the walls to provide lots of very friendly climbing and to make it easy to progress steadily through the low to middling grades.  ;)

Ru

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I agree with Stu, but also find it funny how everyone is saying they get injured jumping around on blobs but not pulling hard on small holds on a board. Goes to show how individual these things are I guess, it's the opposite for me.

Different sorts of injuries. Old school boards = finger injuries. Jumping on blobs = shoulder injuries.

 

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