[remus]

Day 1 of a trip to heco and she's done Terre de Sienne and Diaphanous Sea. Off to a good start.

source: https://www.facebook.com/Evolv/

[slackline]

The Wall Dancer

[Nibile]

Sorry guys, I don't buy the "Ashima" product.
It's a terrible, terrible picture that comes out of that terrible article.

[Wood FT]

Can you expand on that Nibs?

[Nibile]

Yes.
I've always had the feeling that she is an hyperrational adult in the body of a young girl. The way she speaks, and acts, in interviews as well, seems to me very unnatural for a girl of her age.
Years ago there were already videos of her campusing under the omnipresent eye of his father turned coach.
These father/son relationships are, for some reason, often quite suspect to me. How someone completely ignorant of general and specific training principles could want to become his son's coach and mentor is beyond me. We know since ages how dangerous campusing is for youngsters, nonetheless his father makes her campusing, or allows her to do so instead of explaining why she shouldn't.
Briefly, I don't know where Ashima ends and his father starts.
The way she was pushed to climb, the training regimen, everything makes me think that she could be the product of the worst aspects of both cultures, the Asian and American. I know that this may sound harsh, but these are my feelings about her.
It's very dangerous for a young girl to get little sleep, nonetheless she only gets 6 hours because she wants to gets A+'s at school. When she'll be in Uni maybe she'll need to sleep only 2 hours to study even more.
The rational pursuit of perfection in all material aspects of life is a very slippery path even for an adult, let alone for a girl of her age.
If you add to this all the media hype, you have the perfect product to sell.
And this disgusts me because it feels completely fake and artefact, and I don't know whether Ashima may be the maker or the "victim" of this situation, in which a young girl is idealized and idolized to be the model of a perfect individual, whithout factoring in her age and all the desires that she might even ignore because she's only seen a very little part of the picture of herself.
Children must act like children, speak like children and think like children, not like adults. I feel that at her tender age Ashima has already completely lost any relationship with her most profund self, with her unconscious mind, to concentrate only on a life of material and exterior perfection to the pleasure of her parents. And to her own pleasure probably.
These thoughts may well be wrong, and I deeply hope so for her especially, but this is how I feel about her, based on the little knowledge I have, that comes from interviews and videos and articles like the one above.
I don't like the package they're selling, and I'm not buying it.

Edited for grammar.

[Wood FT]

Thanks Nibs

[Nibile]

You're welcome, and thank you for making me reflect over my feelings about her.

[SA Chris]

I agree mostly with what Nibs was saying and in certain aspects it reminds me of (and it took me a while to recall here name) Tori Allen.

Had to google to see what she was up to; interesting article.

http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2012/oct/11/climber-tori-allen-finding-solace-steamboat-spring/

Also racking my brain to remember name of the other lass who was a high profile competition climber, dropped out of the "scene", but made a comeback recently doing some hard trad stuff.

[crazy climbing pete]

Whatever your opinion, this is an article about her that i came across on her Instagram feed. I've only read the first half but it is good (as long as you remember it's written by and for non-climbers)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/the-wall-dancer

And this one came up a while back and was also interesting. First time i'd come across Kai Lightner

[slackline]

Whatever your opinion, this is an article about her that i came across on her Instagram feed. I've only read the first half but it is good (as long as you remember it's written by and for non-climbers)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/the-wall-dancer

If you scrolled up(or down depending on your forum settings) you'd see that is the one that Nibs is responding to that I'd linked the other day.

[jwi]

Sport climbing is like very primitive gymnastics for people with abnormally strong hands. Around 14-15 years is probably the best age for female climbers if they start at a reasonable early age, like 4-5 years old, and you're not afraid to break a few bones.

1968 was the last time someone >20 won the all-around women gold medal for gymnastics in the olympic games. (And you're not allowed to enter if you're <16 nowadays, when it was 15 then 15-year olds won - not taking falsified birth certificates into account)

[crazy climbing pete]

Whatever your opinion, this is an article about her that i came across on her Instagram feed. I've only read the first half but it is good (as long as you remember it's written by and for non-climbers)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/the-wall-dancer

If you scrolled up(or down depending on your forum settings) you'd see that is the one that Nibs is responding to that I'd linked the other day.

I did have a look but obviously missed it. My bad

[Danny]

This is obviously pretty dated, but Obe's sycophantic gushing is astonishing. IMO, she does well to come across so grounded despite being surrounded by a circus of quasi-imbeciles.

https://www.facebook.com/outsidetelevision/videos/vb.189758874031/10153462914089032/?type=2&theater

[Oldmanmatt]

Is it me, or does the Pooch seem, um, chagrined?




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Rocksteady]

First female 8C and youngest ever 8C

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=70344

BEAST!

[Nizza]

She is such a beast, great to see her still crushing as she gets older. She trains at my gym, I've just caught up with the comments on here, can understand the sentiment - but for what its worth she's clearly super focussed and loves to climb. Her father is always there at the gym, but from the limited amount of see since I have been back training, he really seems to be in the background helping guide her training.  I've seen quite a few kids that have been hyped up and pushed too hard, but i think she falls in the category of those that actually do love to climb.

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about the dangers of hyping kids in this sport. If you just look at the physics of it, when kids are light with small fingers holds are often much bigger when scaled than they are for adults. I've watched so many kids throw four fingers a pad deep on holds which would be small for adults. Holds on some problems for kids can be the size of jugs for adults when scaled. The danger in my opinion is that when hyped by the climbing media these kids hit a wall as they get older, grow etc and their strength doesn't match.  Some like Ty and Ashima obviously keep getting stronger and achieve incredible things as they grow but that won't be the case for all of them and many will fail to adjust.

Personally I hate the whole 10 year old has done this etc for the reasons stated, it would be much better to leave them to climb and then when in their mid teens and reaching adulthood start to report on their achievements. Forget the grades and the pressures that come with it, let them be kids and just enjoy climbing. 

[Doylo]

It's pretty hard to ignore it when a 14 year old girl climbs 8C Nizza. Can't see her form tailoring off as she gets older. When you've been that good for that long you tend to stay good even with weight gain. I expect her style will just change a bit. Interesting to see how much harder than this she'll climb in years to come though. 9b is an obvious target.

[shurt]

I've got my 3 yr old on deadhangs and repeaters 3 times a day.  Is that wrong?

[Fultonius]

I've got my 3 yr old on deadhangs and repeaters 3 times a day.  Is that wrong?

Starting a bit late no? 



It's all downhill from there...

[Teaboy]

I've got my 3 yr old on deadhangs and repeaters 3 times a day.  Is that wrong?

I guess that depends on how much weight you are adding to the max hangs, duration of hangs and supplements used

[kelvin]

Does Farley's Rusk count as a supplement?

[Nizza]

It's pretty hard to ignore it when a 14 year old girl climbs 8C Nizza. Can't see her form tailoring off as she gets older. When you've been that good for that long you tend to stay good even with weight gain. I expect her style will just change a bit. Interesting to see how much harder than this she'll climb in years to come though. 9b is an obvious target.

Indeed, that was my point - she's 15 so worth covering. But when younger it can be damaging and frankly the grades mean nothing.

[Duma]

It's pretty hard to ignore it when a 14 year old girl climbs 8C Nizza. Can't see her form tailoring off as she gets older. When you've been that good for that long you tend to stay good even with weight gain. I expect her style will just change a bit. Interesting to see how much harder than this she'll climb in years to come though. 9b is an obvious target.

This 8C is ~ 30 moves isn't it? Can't be far off 9b. How does this compare to the wheel of life?

[r-man]

There's some disagreement on grade and whether the direct finish (a v4 rather than v5) makes much difference, but I think these days WOL is regarded to be somewhere around 8B+/9a.

[Sasquatch]

WOL depends on who you talk to.  Ethan Pringle seemed to think it was closer to 8B....  Route climbers vs boulderers... 

I think at this point though, Ashima has surpassed the "she's a kid and has small finger/wieght/whatever..." caveat's.  She's simply at the leading edge of female climbing, and if she's not already there she will shortly be alongside the boys at the leading edge of all sport/bouldering.

I find it incredibly inspiring that there are girl's/women performing at this level.