A good trick for climbing v9 that they didn’t mention in this video is to turn upside down any v6 you see in the gym or read the guide book upside down
V6 upside down is 9A, horrible trick wouldnt recommend, suddenly there's Shawn Raboutou smoking a warmup bong on your crashpad while D Woods blast some Diplo in the distance
@@davidhekl747 impressive. I've been climbing for 8 months, 2-3 times a week, at V4 now. I'm told that's quick and I'd like to go quicker but I'm 28 and pretty injury-prone so I can't quite do the intensity I know some people are able to do.
@@davidhekl747 That’s pretty much where I’m at. 19 and been climbing for 10 months and about to get my first v9. It just takes a lot of consistency and working on technique
I climb around this level right now and am trying to bust into V10 climbing, hopefully this upcoming season. The one bit of advice I’d have for anyone trying to move up is that less is more. You’re way better off climbing harder but climbing less, and the same goes with training. Training really hard at your max and then getting good rest will pay off way more than a shit ton of volume at a lower grade.
Absolutely. I've been at a V8 plateau for 3 years and have just started busting through it, a lot of it has been exactly what you're talking about. The moonboard has been a fantastic tool personally, because it works on a ton of my weaknesses right off the bat, and I don't climb on it for more than an hour. I'm putting down V8s in a session or two now and V10 feels really close!!
This is the most useful advice. I've just transitioned from V8 to v9 recently and the biggest impact has been quality rest. That means 48hrs at least between hard sessions. That's how long it normally takes for muscle cells to recover. Good sleep is also very important. And lastly, a good diet. Make sure you're eating within an hour after a hard session that contains enough protein.
I think i remember reading something interesting about grading scales influencing plateaus. Boulderers on the font scale hitting plateaus on whole letters more often: 6C, 7A, 7C, 8A, rather than on the pluses. whereas V-scale boulderers experience plateaus on even numbers V6, V8, V10, etc. This was a while ago on a reddit thread so i'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I believe it anyways. since the mental aspect of climbing is so important for long term progression, and people generally tend to have affinities for cleaner looking numbers, it makes sense that how you frame the difficulty can produce differences in different climbing populations.
I kinda have to agree from my anecdotal personal experience. 6A and 6B have been the plateaus so far, after I hit 6B I hit my first 6B+ rather quickly and 6C seems really far away. And it does feel like plateuing in the sense that there's usually some key specific thing (usually technique, but targeted strength training as well) that unlocks it for me to get farther in progression.
i know that I'm never too bothered by the + after the grade. My max is 7A+ atm but this is just a coincidence because I was actually looking for a nice 7A that turned out to be 7A+. I know my friends are also never to bothered. I my mind the + also doesn't make a huge difference to how difficult the a climb is. I just assume it's a just a tiny bit harder or trickier, but nothing that should be impossible. Having said that, the gap between V6 and V7 (full grade harder) mentally seems much bigger then 7A and 7A+ (tiny bit harder).
This is a great point. I think it can also work in the opposite direction. Especially for sport climbing. People get very psyched for their first say, 13a, but that's 7c+ which is "meh" if you use the French scale. There you want your first 8a. 13b's (8a) in my experience are way harder than 13a since the a's tend to be soft and often 12d's are intentionally sandbagged and harder than 13a. (Just like the infamous 5.9+ is often way harder than 10a in trad climbing.) So in my experience the soft/sandbagged nature of climbs fall on different grades due to the different scales and human psychology as well as how hard people are willing to try/project something if it is their dream grade.
I do not think it's as much of a mental barrier than more of a grading "problem" - so many climbs with a + at the end are super stiff for the grade - and on the other hand you have so many super soft even numbered lines. Feels like when the first ascentionist gives out a super sandbagged grade, the community chooses to just add a simple + to it. On the other hand (and also due to a bit of a grade inflation and 8a scorecards and so on) it seems that not that many people care to downgrade a super soft even number. So then your psychogical aspects comes into play: people search for the softest 7C around (which be honest guys, is mostly just a solid 7B ;) ) and climb it - at of course they plateau after it because they claim themselves a 7C climber now, but in fact they just did one super soft one. And here comes a point of the video into play: build a damn pyramid! And also :dont climb grades, climb lines (i know that ones especially hard for me too) - and in the end: be honest to yourself and have fun :)
Font grades and I’m American. Here’s why tho, if you are climbing on a kilterboard you have 2 v8 options one being 7b and the other being 7b+ hence one being slightly harder than the other and to distinguish a soft v8 from a hard one when you are projecting 8s is quite hard and that’s where I think the font grades come in handy much more for training realistically
I like the simplicity of the Hueco scale, but the Font system offers finer slicing of moderate grades. On the Moonboard Mini I was using the Hueco scale and setting some problems which I graded V4. That defaulted to 6b+ rather than 6b, so folks using the Font scale were nitpicking that half of my V4s were soft in the comments. At first I was skeptical about the difference, but after switching my settings in the Moonboard app I found that my stats supported the finer distinction of 6b & 6b+ as opposed to V4. The same was true for 6c & 6c+ as opposed to V5....Ultimately, the Font scale gave me more nuance when setting and a finer scale for assessing my own progress. It reminds me of weightlifting, realizing how valuable the 2.5 lb / 1kg weights are for constant progress and self-assessment.
I don't know if agree. Grades are very subjective and I don't think they're really comparable to how weight lifters incrementally increase they're weights. On the Moonboard I've found that so many 6bs feel harder than 6b+s and 6cs that feel harder than 6c+s that for me its not worth using the grades to track my progress rather than how difficult I personally felt the boulder was.
@@simonezralandau I think you make a great point, Simon! Resistance training should scale more objectively and consistently since we put the focus on the external value rather than the internal perception. Grading climbs is challenging, and variable in my experience as well. At times I've felt cynical about grades when I look at them on a per-problem basis, but I think they're more reliable when we look at the "population level". For each problem, we might expect a normal distribution of grades assigned by independent climbers. For each climber, we might expect a Poisson distribution of grades climbed - if I'm messing up my stats I hope someone more knowledgeable corrects me 😅. Regardless of the names of the distributions or the mathemagics driving them - I guess what I'm trying to say is that climbing all the 6b+ benchies feels just a bit harder than climbing all the 6b benchies...even though there might have been 3 or 4 grades' worth of difficulties within each bin for me as a climber. Thus, even though the grades are noisy, there may still be value in finer slicing. That said, one could argue that all grading is a waste of time and we should just "be quiet and try it" - I tend to agree with that most of the time 😃
To heck with the Poisson, that was a rabbit hole. What I really meant to say was that one climber's ratings of all of the 6b (or any grade) climbs would also be a normal distribution. In a perfectly objective world that distribution would collapse onto 6b, but it varies widely. That variance is a function of the myriad of factors that drive the difficulty and the myriad of factors that alter how we as climbers perceive that difficulty, it's not a function of how finely we slice the distribution (more grades or fewer). Goodness - I need to take my own advice about being quiet now - I think my overanalysis is complete😅.
If you climb anything below V3 how do you easily differentiate difficulty in V grades? Between V1 and V2 there is 5A, 5A+, 5B and 5B+ on the Font scale! When I fall off 2's and 3's doing a yellow or orange circuit in Font I get to experience the subtle differences in its grading 😂
My gripe with the font system is that as I understand it, uppercase = boulder, lowercase = route. Yet as you can see in the comments on this vid, many use lowercase to refer to a boulder. (And sometimes call a boulder a "route" which makes it even more confusing.) Often you can get it by context (eventually), but it's annoying when someone says, "Half way up the route it feels 7b." When they really mean there is a 7B boulder crux move if you are not used to that system. (I'm sure it's very clear if you use the system all the time as you'd not have a V8 on a 12b route, but if you don't have it memorized you have to go look up a conversion chart.) You don't run into this issue with the V/YDS system. I do like that there are more font grades than V grades (though reading this thread, some feel that leads to more quibbling). I've found that V3's can vary quite widely in difficulty, but I'm more of a sport climber than boulderer, so perhaps that is just unique to my area and experience.
Font grades are more specific for v0-v8 but once you hit 7c/v9 and up they are the exact same anyway since each grade up in font scale is one full v grade. so v8 and below font all the way
I think font grades are more expressive when it comes to setting or bolting a route. When you scale up a number, say from 6c+ to 7a, you have the potential to set this transition as a "different class", where you are going to need technique no matter how strong you are, it's not just pulling on crimps, but toe hooks bad slopers ecc start appearing. Same goes from 7c+ to 8a: the 8s and above are meant for professional climbers, and when you send an 8a you know it doesn't have to mean just "a slightly harder 7c+", it means that the setter thought the level of difficulties in this route is one step further from just being a fit guy. In this way, the french scale is much more eloquent than a linear one
I completely agree! Although the V grade is easier to understand, it does feel like just a bunch of ticks upward rather than encompassing the full picture. Great insight!
@@climbingbeanchomper technically it isn't, and I'm sure that somewhere there must be someone who spent years training 3 hours everyday to get 8a and have another job and never compete, but they are a minority among 8a climbers. In fact, I've hardly ever known any of them personally as far as I recall. (Note that by "professional" I don't mean people who earn their living only with competitions, but rather the athletes who take part in them, stuff like regional championships or above. I consider them professionals because they train in a much more disciplined way than hobbists, and they often end up working in that environment, be it becoming a routesetter/coach in climbing gyms ecc.). You know what I mean, 8a isn't stuff that a fit guy who goes to the gym two/three times a week can ever hope to get
@@lorenzobiondi5727 im not a professional climber and im getting pretty close to 7C+. Only 21 and been climbing 8 years. I feel like ive got alot more progress to make in my 20s. Ive known a few crushers out there who can do 8a tbf. In the uk, regionals isnt really a big deal. Ive been in a bunch of regionals but i certainly wouldnt call myself a pro climber.
Font grades are better because to make climbing accessible in a commercial setting they extend below a 6a in a meaningful way, 4-5 abc etc. V grades dont and many gyms have stretched the scale on the lower end from Vb to V7 to make it easier, this results in a system that isnt very accurate anymore since it doesnt represent the difficulty that it originally did. Ie, V lower grades dont match between indoor and outdoor climbing anymore
Font grades, I do think they better represent the difference between a number. 6 to 7 is a big step and you really feel it, same with 7 to 8. In between the a, b, c do feel equal, obviously getting harder, but a 6c in someone’s style is still a 6 for an average climber. Sadly in our gym’s they have colors for the grades up to 7a, but then putting all above in one color, so you have to decide yourself if you climbed a 7a or 7c
I actually convert between font, hueco and the Japanese Ogawayama grading system. The process typically goes: V scale for general indoor grade bands, convert into font for finer granularity in regards to physical intensity, which then translates nicely into the Japanese system - and puts things into an interestingly different perspective e.g 6b+ to 6c are one whole grade (2級 "Nikyuu") 6c+ and 7a are the grade up from that (1級 "ikkyuu") and so on The Japanese system is pretty wild in that it counts down to 1級"ikkyuu" in increasing difficulty, and then begins to count up from 1 in an inverted difficulty ranking (初段 shodan、二段 nidan、三段 sandan、"first second and third grade" etc)
The Japanese system is interesting. I was bouldering in a gym in Tokyo once and a local guy described attaining shodan (which I is meant to be equivalent to a black belt) as having reached adulthood for climbing. I have no illusions of ever reaching adulthood in this way ;)
im 32 and have now been climbing for 15 mounths. i climbed v4 on my 1st sesh and have now climbed 2 v10 (7c+). i climb 3 times a week. the goal is 8a by the end of the summer. i think its important to try things on every session that are harder than you can climb. i think 80% of my sesh is failing a climb. but with every fail you learn more and your building your strength and techneque. dont be disheartened when you cant get up something just keep going and have fun. it dosent take long before your climbing things with ease that once felt impossible
I feel like the font grades aren't as linear as V grades. Like, you can progress from 2-6A quite fast if you're in decent shape, but it quickly becomes exponentially harder to progress, but when I looked at V grades, it seemed a bit more linear to me. E.g. difference between V2-V3 difference is equivalent to quite a lot of font-grades difference, but V10-V11 isn't. I like the more linear scale (linear in how it seems to relate to difficulty and effort to progress).
You sound a little silly (or snooty) using the font scale in the US but the absence of 7b in the hueco scale is definitely inconvenient. The number of times I’ve tried to grade a boulder (for reference/posterity) and it doesn’t feel true to 7 or 8 in the area, it just feels more accurate to give it 7b.
The V grade fits modern bouldering quite well but in general i prefer the french system it’s wider and gives in the lower ranges a much better oversight. In reality that is what most people climb outdoors.
Font for the highest level, as you would need specificity. V grade range is better for lower level climbing as grading is subjective, and it doesn't really matter as long as you know ish where ur at. Different styles and strengths makes it hard to grade stuff properly anyway.
V grades feel more organized to me. I also just don't see font grades in the US where I climb, so obvious bias. However, I like that with V grades you start at 0 (or B in some gyms), and just go up numerically. The font system is on some weird shit that you have to really try to remember unless you're around it constantly. IDK what number font grades start at.... I think they graduate differently at different numbers too right? The irregularity of the font grading system has always made it seem kind of silly to me. For reference I really dislike the imperial measurement system too. Metric is nice and regular.
It can seem confusing at first but it’s very useful for differentiating between soft and hard V grades, which are more general. If you climb on a board you can be more specific with font grades. I also live somewhere with V grades but use font on the board.
V grades are definitely more useful for the gym seeing as they are a little wider, especially at the lower end, but the smaller Font grades can make it easier to distinguish similarly difficult boulders. I live somewhere with only V grades but I use Font grades on the Moon/Tension Boards because the gaps are smaller and I can be more specific about how hard it might be.
v grades. as someone that lives in font I understand the appeal of tradition, but v grades make more logical sense, 1, 2, 3, etc. Starting roughly at 4 (I realize it goes down to 1, but people don't really "climb" those) and going A, B, C and then stopping with the letters to go to the next number doesn't make any sense as "a system." The numbers make these arbitrary cutoffs that are not meaningful. It's just an old way of doing things that has been adapted (a 6C is as close to a 7B as a 7A but it's at a different "class" even though the distinction is meaningless, whereas this is easy to see comparing a V5 with a V7 or a V9). The V system makes sense.
deffo Font grades, as they are used at the gyms I go to. Otherwise I believe one can get used to every grading system and one should not pay too to much attention to them anyways :)
Font grades, but I wish it was more common to use Capital letters for the bouldering grades. 6A and 6a for the sport climbing grade. It is more accurate Imo.
Bro v grades >>>> just the fact that there's a number and not number with letter just makes it simpler to understand and v grades start at 0 so the scale is nicer whereas the other starts at like 4 or something idk that one
wow this was the almost general video you could’ve made. these tips apply to v4 climbers at best. climbers at this level have been climbing for years they have nothing to gain from this video
I just got my first v8 (definitely a little soft) can nail 2 one arm pull-ups on each arm and can hold a front lever for ~4 seconds so I’m unsure where to focus… I’m thinking more focus on finger specific training? since my muscular strength and endurance is pretty developed? Problem is I’ve only been climbing since April so I don’t want to hangboard my way to an injury… any advice? Just climb more? Or are “no hangs” on the hangboard a safe bet?
You've not been climbing very long and have great deal of strength already. Try to focus heavily on movement skill and practice, you are going to need to be really deliberately in climbing things as efficiently and as well as you can. Its not about just getting to the top, but getting to the top as easily as possible. You want to be doing this practice on V3-V6 boulders i.e. submax. The chances are, if you have that much pulling strength you will find it too easy to pull your way through the easier climbs and may find it hard to notice the difference between an efficient and non-efficient movement, when both are relatively easy for you. Climbing is so heavily skills base, having only climbed since April you most likely have much more to learn form movement. Its a long journey. Imagine you had only stared driving since a car since April and someone gave you in an F1 car to drive around a difficult F1 circuit. You'd probably loose so much time from inefficiencies, maybe even stalling it, compared some someone with the experience of Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton. Don't rush this process, these guys learned in go-carts in their first years!
@@LatticeTraining 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 my god what a response. I 100000% notice what you are saying when it comes to climbs that are too easy to develop correct form. When I got to v5 that really hit home due to how specific the setters want you to approach a problem although sometimes I can muscle through and break a beta on V5/6. Efficiency in movement is key no matter how strong you are at the higher grades, not to mention form can help prevent injury, strength is just a nice to have for the most part. From what you said though It’s clear I’ll probably benefit more from climbing fresh trying to push great form and getting proper rest rather than pushing it on my off days to squeeze in some extra strength/core training… I’ll get enough of that from my climbs to sustain where I’m currently at strength wise🤜🏼🤛🏼
V grades are better because they are intentionally vague. Font grades attempt specificity at something that is always just gonna be a ballpark. I boulder at v3-5 and I can flash most v3 problems butt occasionally I’ll find a rogue 3 that kicks my but or a 6 that I’m uniquely suited to. It’s not that the v3 is actually a v5 or that the 6 is actually a 4 it’s just that the grading is general and unspecific by nature and that’s the way it should be. Too much specificity leads to arguing about grades. Plus v system what most people use where I’m from from so that and the Yosemite decimal system is how we all communicate with each other.
Font grading system is way better. Most beginners at bouldering can (and should ) struggle on a true V1. But they would already be at f5 in Font terms ... it is very depressing to make such SLOW progress in the V system
A good trick for climbing v9 that they didn’t mention in this video is to turn upside down any v6 you see in the gym or read the guide book upside down
Tried this on v8 and it didn't increase the grade at all :(
V6 upside down is 9A, horrible trick wouldnt recommend, suddenly there's Shawn Raboutou smoking a warmup bong on your crashpad while D Woods blast some Diplo in the distance
As a V2/V3 climber I can't wait to apply these tips in 6 years
nah im 17 years old and have been climbin for about a year and am now on V9 level but i trained 6 times a week tho
@@davidhekl747 impressive. I've been climbing for 8 months, 2-3 times a week, at V4 now. I'm told that's quick and I'd like to go quicker but I'm 28 and pretty injury-prone so I can't quite do the intensity I know some people are able to do.
@@davidhekl747 That's my issue, I love climbing but can't climb very often and I haven't trained much at all. I'm trying to change that though!
@@davidhekl747 That’s pretty much where I’m at. 19 and been climbing for 10 months and about to get my first v9. It just takes a lot of consistency and working on technique
@@davidhekl747 Outdoor?
I climb around this level right now and am trying to bust into V10 climbing, hopefully this upcoming season. The one bit of advice I’d have for anyone trying to move up is that less is more. You’re way better off climbing harder but climbing less, and the same goes with training. Training really hard at your max and then getting good rest will pay off way more than a shit ton of volume at a lower grade.
if you don't you end up with the forced rest due to injury which is no fun
Absolutely. I've been at a V8 plateau for 3 years and have just started busting through it, a lot of it has been exactly what you're talking about. The moonboard has been a fantastic tool personally, because it works on a ton of my weaknesses right off the bat, and I don't climb on it for more than an hour. I'm putting down V8s in a session or two now and V10 feels really close!!
Hey ! Did you send the V10 ? :)
This is the most useful advice. I've just transitioned from V8 to v9 recently and the biggest impact has been quality rest. That means 48hrs at least between hard sessions. That's how long it normally takes for muscle cells to recover. Good sleep is also very important. And lastly, a good diet. Make sure you're eating within an hour after a hard session that contains enough protein.
That shot of the shoes on someone's hands is so cursed
glad someone else found it cursed lol
I think i remember reading something interesting about grading scales influencing plateaus. Boulderers on the font scale hitting plateaus on whole letters more often: 6C, 7A, 7C, 8A, rather than on the pluses. whereas V-scale boulderers experience plateaus on even numbers V6, V8, V10, etc.
This was a while ago on a reddit thread so i'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I believe it anyways. since the mental aspect of climbing is so important for long term progression, and people generally tend to have affinities for cleaner looking numbers, it makes sense that how you frame the difficulty can produce differences in different climbing populations.
Wow this is a really interesting thought and theory! Makes sense to us too. Thanks for sharing Jackson.
I kinda have to agree from my anecdotal personal experience. 6A and 6B have been the plateaus so far, after I hit 6B I hit my first 6B+ rather quickly and 6C seems really far away. And it does feel like plateuing in the sense that there's usually some key specific thing (usually technique, but targeted strength training as well) that unlocks it for me to get farther in progression.
i know that I'm never too bothered by the + after the grade. My max is 7A+ atm but this is just a coincidence because I was actually looking for a nice 7A that turned out to be 7A+. I know my friends are also never to bothered. I my mind the + also doesn't make a huge difference to how difficult the a climb is. I just assume it's a just a tiny bit harder or trickier, but nothing that should be impossible.
Having said that, the gap between V6 and V7 (full grade harder) mentally seems much bigger then 7A and 7A+ (tiny bit harder).
This is a great point. I think it can also work in the opposite direction. Especially for sport climbing. People get very psyched for their first say, 13a, but that's 7c+ which is "meh" if you use the French scale. There you want your first 8a. 13b's (8a) in my experience are way harder than 13a since the a's tend to be soft and often 12d's are intentionally sandbagged and harder than 13a. (Just like the infamous 5.9+ is often way harder than 10a in trad climbing.) So in my experience the soft/sandbagged nature of climbs fall on different grades due to the different scales and human psychology as well as how hard people are willing to try/project something if it is their dream grade.
I do not think it's as much of a mental barrier than more of a grading "problem" - so many climbs with a + at the end are super stiff for the grade - and on the other hand you have so many super soft even numbered lines. Feels like when the first ascentionist gives out a super sandbagged grade, the community chooses to just add a simple + to it. On the other hand (and also due to a bit of a grade inflation and 8a scorecards and so on) it seems that not that many people care to downgrade a super soft even number. So then your psychogical aspects comes into play: people search for the softest 7C around (which be honest guys, is mostly just a solid 7B ;) ) and climb it - at of course they plateau after it because they claim themselves a 7C climber now, but in fact they just did one super soft one. And here comes a point of the video into play: build a damn pyramid! And also :dont climb grades, climb lines (i know that ones especially hard for me too) - and in the end: be honest to yourself and have fun :)
Font grades for the win
Nah v
Font grades and I’m American. Here’s why tho, if you are climbing on a kilterboard you have 2 v8 options one being 7b and the other being 7b+ hence one being slightly harder than the other and to distinguish a soft v8 from a hard one when you are projecting 8s is quite hard and that’s where I think the font grades come in handy much more for training realistically
I like the simplicity of the Hueco scale, but the Font system offers finer slicing of moderate grades. On the Moonboard Mini I was using the Hueco scale and setting some problems which I graded V4. That defaulted to 6b+ rather than 6b, so folks using the Font scale were nitpicking that half of my V4s were soft in the comments. At first I was skeptical about the difference, but after switching my settings in the Moonboard app I found that my stats supported the finer distinction of 6b & 6b+ as opposed to V4. The same was true for 6c & 6c+ as opposed to V5....Ultimately, the Font scale gave me more nuance when setting and a finer scale for assessing my own progress. It reminds me of weightlifting, realizing how valuable the 2.5 lb / 1kg weights are for constant progress and self-assessment.
I don't know if agree. Grades are very subjective and I don't think they're really comparable to how weight lifters incrementally increase they're weights. On the Moonboard I've found that so many 6bs feel harder than 6b+s and 6cs that feel harder than 6c+s that for me its not worth using the grades to track my progress rather than how difficult I personally felt the boulder was.
@@simonezralandau I think you make a great point, Simon! Resistance training should scale more objectively and consistently since we put the focus on the external value rather than the internal perception. Grading climbs is challenging, and variable in my experience as well. At times I've felt cynical about grades when I look at them on a per-problem basis, but I think they're more reliable when we look at the "population level". For each problem, we might expect a normal distribution of grades assigned by independent climbers. For each climber, we might expect a Poisson distribution of grades climbed - if I'm messing up my stats I hope someone more knowledgeable corrects me 😅. Regardless of the names of the distributions or the mathemagics driving them - I guess what I'm trying to say is that climbing all the 6b+ benchies feels just a bit harder than climbing all the 6b benchies...even though there might have been 3 or 4 grades' worth of difficulties within each bin for me as a climber. Thus, even though the grades are noisy, there may still be value in finer slicing. That said, one could argue that all grading is a waste of time and we should just "be quiet and try it" - I tend to agree with that most of the time 😃
To heck with the Poisson, that was a rabbit hole. What I really meant to say was that one climber's ratings of all of the 6b (or any grade) climbs would also be a normal distribution. In a perfectly objective world that distribution would collapse onto 6b, but it varies widely. That variance is a function of the myriad of factors that drive the difficulty and the myriad of factors that alter how we as climbers perceive that difficulty, it's not a function of how finely we slice the distribution (more grades or fewer). Goodness - I need to take my own advice about being quiet now - I think my overanalysis is complete😅.
V grades are ok for indoors but outside font grades are much better due to the subtle differences in the lower grades that would otherwise all be v0/1
I’m used to font grades… always have to check up the V ones to know how hard they are…
If you climb anything below V3 how do you easily differentiate difficulty in V grades? Between V1 and V2 there is 5A, 5A+, 5B and 5B+ on the Font scale!
When I fall off 2's and 3's doing a yellow or orange circuit in Font I get to experience the subtle differences in its grading 😂
My gripe with the font system is that as I understand it, uppercase = boulder, lowercase = route. Yet as you can see in the comments on this vid, many use lowercase to refer to a boulder. (And sometimes call a boulder a "route" which makes it even more confusing.) Often you can get it by context (eventually), but it's annoying when someone says, "Half way up the route it feels 7b." When they really mean there is a 7B boulder crux move if you are not used to that system. (I'm sure it's very clear if you use the system all the time as you'd not have a V8 on a 12b route, but if you don't have it memorized you have to go look up a conversion chart.) You don't run into this issue with the V/YDS system. I do like that there are more font grades than V grades (though reading this thread, some feel that leads to more quibbling). I've found that V3's can vary quite widely in difficulty, but I'm more of a sport climber than boulderer, so perhaps that is just unique to my area and experience.
Yo I didn't even know you are supposed to use uppercase or lowercase letters for routes and boulders! that is sick!
V8 feels like such a large range because 7b and 7b+ are both v8
I think font grading makes more sense
ticked my first outdoor V9, 2 years climbing experience 🙏🏽
Love the content guys. Thanks so much.
V grades are much easier. Less confusing. Dunno about better but definitely easier
Font grades are more specific for v0-v8 but once you hit 7c/v9 and up they are the exact same anyway since each grade up in font scale is one full v grade. so v8 and below font all the way
It goes like this: 7b+, 7c, V10*, 8a, 8a+
*yaaay, double digits.
Bro! Are you a mathematician or a quantum physicist???
@@syindrome this is quantum gravity right there
Haha exactly how it is in my head
I think font grades are more expressive when it comes to setting or bolting a route. When you scale up a number, say from 6c+ to 7a, you have the potential to set this transition as a "different class", where you are going to need technique no matter how strong you are, it's not just pulling on crimps, but toe hooks bad slopers ecc start appearing. Same goes from 7c+ to 8a: the 8s and above are meant for professional climbers, and when you send an 8a you know it doesn't have to mean just "a slightly harder 7c+", it means that the setter thought the level of difficulties in this route is one step further from just being a fit guy. In this way, the french scale is much more eloquent than a linear one
I completely agree! Although the V grade is easier to understand, it does feel like just a bunch of ticks upward rather than encompassing the full picture. Great insight!
8A isnt exclusively for professional climbers you know
@@climbingbeanchomper technically it isn't, and I'm sure that somewhere there must be someone who spent years training 3 hours everyday to get 8a and have another job and never compete, but they are a minority among 8a climbers. In fact, I've hardly ever known any of them personally as far as I recall. (Note that by "professional" I don't mean people who earn their living only with competitions, but rather the athletes who take part in them, stuff like regional championships or above. I consider them professionals because they train in a much more disciplined way than hobbists, and they often end up working in that environment, be it becoming a routesetter/coach in climbing gyms ecc.). You know what I mean, 8a isn't stuff that a fit guy who goes to the gym two/three times a week can ever hope to get
@@lorenzobiondi5727 im not a professional climber and im getting pretty close to 7C+. Only 21 and been climbing 8 years. I feel like ive got alot more progress to make in my 20s. Ive known a few crushers out there who can do 8a tbf. In the uk, regionals isnt really a big deal. Ive been in a bunch of regionals but i certainly wouldnt call myself a pro climber.
@@climbingbeanchomperfeel free to update man !
Font grades are better because to make climbing accessible in a commercial setting they extend below a 6a in a meaningful way, 4-5 abc etc. V grades dont and many gyms have stretched the scale on the lower end from Vb to V7 to make it easier, this results in a system that isnt very accurate anymore since it doesnt represent the difficulty that it originally did. Ie, V lower grades dont match between indoor and outdoor climbing anymore
Font grades, I do think they better represent the difference between a number. 6 to 7 is a big step and you really feel it, same with 7 to 8. In between the a, b, c do feel equal, obviously getting harder, but a 6c in someone’s style is still a 6 for an average climber. Sadly in our gym’s they have colors for the grades up to 7a, but then putting all above in one color, so you have to decide yourself if you climbed a 7a or 7c
I actually convert between font, hueco and the Japanese Ogawayama grading system.
The process typically goes: V scale for general indoor grade bands, convert into font for finer granularity in regards to physical intensity, which then translates nicely into the Japanese system - and puts things into an interestingly different perspective e.g 6b+ to 6c are one whole grade (2級 "Nikyuu") 6c+ and 7a are the grade up from that (1級 "ikkyuu") and so on
The Japanese system is pretty wild in that it counts down to 1級"ikkyuu" in increasing difficulty, and then begins to count up from 1 in an inverted difficulty ranking (初段 shodan、二段 nidan、三段 sandan、"first second and third grade" etc)
The Japanese system is interesting. I was bouldering in a gym in Tokyo once and a local guy described attaining shodan (which I is meant to be equivalent to a black belt) as having reached adulthood for climbing. I have no illusions of ever reaching adulthood in this way ;)
im 32 and have now been climbing for 15 mounths. i climbed v4 on my 1st sesh and have now climbed 2 v10 (7c+). i climb 3 times a week. the goal is 8a by the end of the summer. i think its important to try things on every session that are harder than you can climb. i think 80% of my sesh is failing a climb. but with every fail you learn more and your building your strength and techneque. dont be disheartened when you cant get up something just keep going and have fun. it dosent take long before your climbing things with ease that once felt impossible
Font grades
I feel like the font grades aren't as linear as V grades. Like, you can progress from 2-6A quite fast if you're in decent shape, but it quickly becomes exponentially harder to progress, but when I looked at V grades, it seemed a bit more linear to me. E.g. difference between V2-V3 difference is equivalent to quite a lot of font-grades difference, but V10-V11 isn't. I like the more linear scale (linear in how it seems to relate to difficulty and effort to progress).
haha, sneaky hand in the shoe @2:23😂
You sound a little silly (or snooty) using the font scale in the US but the absence of 7b in the hueco scale is definitely inconvenient. The number of times I’ve tried to grade a boulder (for reference/posterity) and it doesn’t feel true to 7 or 8 in the area, it just feels more accurate to give it 7b.
Font personally. I'm from europe, that's one reason, and the other is better separation for lower grades.
Also, those Decoy holds are 🏅
The V grade fits modern bouldering quite well but in general i prefer the french system it’s wider and gives in the lower ranges a much better oversight. In reality that is what most people climb outdoors.
font. grade!
Awesome vid!
Font for the highest level, as you would need specificity. V grade range is better for lower level climbing as grading is subjective, and it doesn't really matter as long as you know ish where ur at. Different styles and strengths makes it hard to grade stuff properly anyway.
The font grades are better
Font grades please!!!
V grades feel more organized to me. I also just don't see font grades in the US where I climb, so obvious bias. However, I like that with V grades you start at 0 (or B in some gyms), and just go up numerically. The font system is on some weird shit that you have to really try to remember unless you're around it constantly. IDK what number font grades start at.... I think they graduate differently at different numbers too right?
The irregularity of the font grading system has always made it seem kind of silly to me.
For reference I really dislike the imperial measurement system too. Metric is nice and regular.
It can seem confusing at first but it’s very useful for differentiating between soft and hard V grades, which are more general. If you climb on a board you can be more specific with font grades. I also live somewhere with V grades but use font on the board.
The guy with his hands in the shoes might be secretly telling us the secret on how to climb v9, climb with your shoes on your hands!
V grades are definitely more useful for the gym seeing as they are a little wider, especially at the lower end, but the smaller Font grades can make it easier to distinguish similarly difficult boulders.
I live somewhere with only V grades but I use Font grades on the Moon/Tension Boards because the gaps are smaller and I can be more specific about how hard it might be.
I feel like if your setters use - and + for V grades there is a pretty fair amount of room for distinguishing difficulty.
Font grades have more detail i.e. 6C and 6C+ in opposition to V5. You can only say something is ''easy'' or ''hard'' V5.
v grades. as someone that lives in font I understand the appeal of tradition, but v grades make more logical sense, 1, 2, 3, etc. Starting roughly at 4 (I realize it goes down to 1, but people don't really "climb" those) and going A, B, C and then stopping with the letters to go to the next number doesn't make any sense as "a system." The numbers make these arbitrary cutoffs that are not meaningful. It's just an old way of doing things that has been adapted (a 6C is as close to a 7B as a 7A but it's at a different "class" even though the distinction is meaningless, whereas this is easy to see comparing a V5 with a V7 or a V9). The V system makes sense.
Right!
Font!!!
Font grades are definitely better.
deffo Font grades, as they are used at the gyms I go to. Otherwise I believe one can get used to every grading system and one should not pay too to much attention to them anyways :)
Font grades, but I wish it was more common to use Capital letters for the bouldering grades. 6A and 6a for the sport climbing grade. It is more accurate Imo.
F yeah! This was dope.
8a is v11?
I'm from the us, font grades for the win.
consciously pulling with your feet is mega
Font grades oc - as Font is the real thing ;)
V grades for sure !!!
Bro v grades >>>> just the fact that there's a number and not number with letter just makes it simpler to understand and v grades start at 0 so the scale is nicer whereas the other starts at like 4 or something idk that one
V grades every time! They are more ubiquitous.
I'm french but font grades are needlessly convoluted. V is simple and works.
7c🤟
**Pam from The Office voice** - "They're The Same Picture"
🤣
wow this was the almost general video you could’ve made. these tips apply to v4 climbers at best. climbers at this level have been climbing for years they have nothing to gain from this video
I didnt know there were grades above V2. According to moonboard comments every boulder is actually a soft V2
As someone that climbs in canada font system is way better v grade doesn't have enough variability
Oh font ofc
I never see V grades so for me font is ofcourse beter
I got a lot of strength in tue upper body but no much power… 🙃
v grade for v10; font for 8A
This is great, but how do I climb V6 lol
Climb with stronger climbers who psych you up, it brings it out of you!
@@joelbeck200 what happens when all your friends are worse than you
@@stephendaedalus7841 make more friends lmao
@@joelbeck200 🤣🤣🤣
I just got my first v8 (definitely a little soft) can nail 2 one arm pull-ups on each arm and can hold a front lever for ~4 seconds so I’m unsure where to focus… I’m thinking more focus on finger specific training? since my muscular strength and endurance is pretty developed? Problem is I’ve only been climbing since April so I don’t want to hangboard my way to an injury… any advice? Just climb more? Or are “no hangs” on the hangboard a safe bet?
Do you climb on a board? If not, start board climbing
Hang boarding is pretty safe if you don’t over do it
You've not been climbing very long and have great deal of strength already. Try to focus heavily on movement skill and practice, you are going to need to be really deliberately in climbing things as efficiently and as well as you can. Its not about just getting to the top, but getting to the top as easily as possible. You want to be doing this practice on V3-V6 boulders i.e. submax. The chances are, if you have that much pulling strength you will find it too easy to pull your way through the easier climbs and may find it hard to notice the difference between an efficient and non-efficient movement, when both are relatively easy for you. Climbing is so heavily skills base, having only climbed since April you most likely have much more to learn form movement. Its a long journey. Imagine you had only stared driving since a car since April and someone gave you in an F1 car to drive around a difficult F1 circuit. You'd probably loose so much time from inefficiencies, maybe even stalling it, compared some someone with the experience of Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton. Don't rush this process, these guys learned in go-carts in their first years!
@@LatticeTraining 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 my god what a response. I 100000% notice what you are saying when it comes to climbs that are too easy to develop correct form. When I got to v5 that really hit home due to how specific the setters want you to approach a problem although sometimes I can muscle through and break a beta on V5/6. Efficiency in movement is key no matter how strong you are at the higher grades, not to mention form can help prevent injury, strength is just a nice to have for the most part. From what you said though It’s clear I’ll probably benefit more from climbing fresh trying to push great form and getting proper rest rather than pushing it on my off days to squeeze in some extra strength/core training… I’ll get enough of that from my climbs to sustain where I’m currently at strength wise🤜🏼🤛🏼
V grades are better because they are intentionally vague. Font grades attempt specificity at something that is always just gonna be a ballpark. I boulder at v3-5 and I can flash most v3 problems butt occasionally I’ll find a rogue 3 that kicks my but or a 6 that I’m uniquely suited to. It’s not that the v3 is actually a v5 or that the 6 is actually a 4 it’s just that the grading is general and unspecific by nature and that’s the way it should be. Too much specificity leads to arguing about grades. Plus v system what most people use where I’m from from so that and the Yosemite decimal system is how we all communicate with each other.
V grades
Font is better because v8 includes 7b and 7b+ lol
Font
V grades are definitely better, less prone to soft or hard grading.
I'm used to font grades, but v grades defo make more sense
V
Cool kids use V grades
font grades always
v grades
V grades are better
Because I live in Europe, I have absolutely no use for the Hueco Scale. Fontainebleau Scale all the way!
V grades are definitely more intuitive than font grades.
V grades are definitely better.
If you speak in font grades in North America, you just come off as incredibly snobby and pretentious.
Font grading system is way better.
Most beginners at bouldering can (and should ) struggle on a true V1.
But they would already be at f5 in Font terms ... it is very depressing to make such SLOW progress in the V system
V grades. 1 2 3 4... it'smore intuitive. sport climbing grades the Oz sytem is the best. trad the E grades.
Font
V grades
V
Font
Font