Hi! Old school user of this subreddit here with a meditation on what I’ve observed over my last decade and a half of climbing.

When I started climbing (only 15 years ago) the sport had already experienced big changes. There were already gyms in a lot of major cities and, although climbing was about to boom, it was still genuinely an unusual thing to do in most places.

As a result, there was a real sense of community around climbing. Lots of us were weirdos. The somewhat makeshift climbing gyms of the time were filled with very motley crews of very different people making friendships that would have been unlikely to develop elsewhere because of differences in age, interests, income, whatever. People talked with each other, joked, gave each other shit, tried hard, fell and laughed. This seems to have been lost, at least where I live.

It’s partly true that climbing just a victim of its own popularity. (A massive, loose community isn’t a very meaningful community.) But there are other things going on that are equally important

Architectural changes in the gyms themselves undermined sociality and made gyms less friendly places. The infusion of money from the sports growing popularity permitted bigger gyms and the emergence of “comp style” setting necessitated lower route density. You are no longer forced to sit six inches from someone who might (as a result) become your friend.

There was a moment when board climbing & training seemed like it would save climbing for some people. Only a small portion of clientele were interested and, if you wanted to climb on the board, you had to sit right next to other people and watch them climb. What were you gonna do? Pretend like you didn’t see the person right next to you? It didn’t matter that you were climbing v10 and they were climbing v3.

But by this time the black hole of Instagram was already beginning to swallow climbing. The kilter board (in retrospect) was seemingly designed to be posted and soon all the board makers integrated Instagram into to their apps and their marketing strategy. This is the real bad part.

Some board companies more than others have learned from Edward Bernays and started selling us a climbing & insta posting identity where being strong and always sending hard is the highest (and only?) good in climbing.

So it’s great that we have all these training tools and knowledge but it strikes me that people are enjoying climbing a lot less than they used to. When I go to the gym and sit under my local TB2, I am usually the only one making conversation and the only one smiling. One time recently I asked someone what boulder they were climbing and someone else leaned in and told me I could look at the name under “recently displayed” in the app. 😐

Partly it’s the phones, doing what they do, sucking people in with beta vids, rankings, and the possibility of recognition via content creation but it’s also the obsession with sending hard that business-generated social media content has engendered by linking the climber’s identity not just to climbing, adventuring, nature, or to a group of friends, but to climbing hard.

There’s no more chuckling when someone dry fires: the stakes of failure are too high. There’s no room for casual conversation: everyone is too busy optimizing and aspiring to Board Lordship. People don’t experiment, set climbs together, or play games: there are Benchmarks or Classics to send.

If you made it this far I’m honored. Hopefully I don’t sound too old. Say hi next time we’re at the board together.

I'm a V11 climber who's primarily trained on the TB2 for quite a while. Recently, I picked up a pair of gymnastics rings for home training, and I'm interested in using them to improve body tension, core strength, and power on steep overhangs.

Currently, I can do a muscle-up, L-sit, and front lever on rings. I'm considering progressing toward skills like the back lever/iron cross, but I'm not sure how much these movements actually transfer to climbing performance.

I've tried adding JUST progressions to positions like the front lever for around a month, but I haven't seen a big jump in my body tension.

For those who have incorporated rings into their climbing training:

• Which ring exercises have you found most beneficial for steep climbing?
• Have you noticed meaningful improvements in body tension over a longer period?
• Are skills like the back lever worth pursuing, or would simpler strength exercises be better for climbing?

I'm particularly interested in incorporating rings as supplemental training without taking too much away from my regular climbing sessions.

I'd be psyched to hear opinions on this.

Thanks!

Hello, I want to start focusing on increasing my finger and grip strength and also lower my injury risk.

I've only been climbing for about a month and I know the best way to improve is to keep going but I also want to work on my fingers for calisthenics reasons and thought this would be a good place for insight on these tools.

I've narrowed it down to 5 tools and was wondering if any of you guys had any experience with them and which you'd recommend. Recommendations outside of these are also appreciated.

1. Nature Climbing Stone Hanger

2. Hand of God Micro

3. Frictitious unlevel edge 2

4. Frictitious Port-A-Board

5. Hoopers Beta MODEDGE: Adjustable Finger Trainer

I will mostly be using these tools with a lifting/loading pin if that makes any difference.