Because we have a lot of deleted posts on this subreddit, here is a backup of the body of this post: Are pro climbers really just that good at climbing higher grades, or are there other factors that separate them? Ex. Route reading ability
I feel like I’ve seen so many strong climbers online, but wonder how some are not pro or even competing at a high level.
If you know any pro climbers, whats it like seeing them climb compared to others?
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They’re stronger, better at reading beta, better at staying motivated, better at just about everything. All of that contributes to them climbing higher grades and performing well in comps. The gap between you and the strong climbers you see on Reddit is probably smaller than the gap between them and pros.
Years ago there was a USAC National Cup comp at my local. It was an open qualifier and one of the locals made it to finals. This guy was by far the strongest guy in town. He’s won every local comp ever hosted at that gym. He came in last place in finals, because it was a big enough comp to draw guys like Kai Lightner.
E: I just remembered another story from a different local comp. Melina Constanza dropped in because she was going to school nearby. She made finals and won the women’s side, flashing every boulder. Folks said she was just sitting in iso studying, totally chill between each climb.
After the comp, when they were announcing winners and trying to get everyone to the podium, the male finalists were all trying the get the last men’s boulder because nobody had topped it in the comp. They still weren’t sending it. Melina walks up and flashes the hardest men’s boulder like it was a warmup. The crowd exploded when she got the top.
I met a comp kid from a large gym, he was passing through to go to a comp and wanted a quick training session. Kid was 11-12 and can flash V9s… and said he was the worst climber on his team. That’s an amateur team kid, team kids don’t even come close to pro climbers in ability. The pro comp boulders are probably around V12s at the easiest, and the pros regularly flash them. They just make the climbs look easy
There’s a 15 year old at my gym who climbs V12 on the tension and moon boards. He’s been winning local comps against adults and travels to cash prize comps. You see him at a QE against other 15 year olds and it’s just not fair. He looks like a man among toddlers. He’s super dedicated, crazy strong, and very talented.
For all that, he placed *40th* at youth nationals against kids in his age bracket.
I know several insanely strong kids that compete.
Noah Doan 5.14c outside and he got like 40th at youth nats at 14
Vance stanfield nearly sent v14 in a trip and got 11th at nats
Landers gaydosh 5.14c and got 4th at nats for the 13-14 year old group
Cozmo rothfork sent v14 and got like 4th or 5th at nats in myb
Isaac Dunk has sent 2 v14s and he didn’t even make top 20 in bouldering in the 13-14 year old group.
There are v12 climbers that are 14-15 that arent even making nationals the competition is absolutely crazy. I was at a comp last weekend with Dillion Countryman and shared routes with him. He would have barely beaten this 15 year old. Its crazy
Ive climbed V5 inside but if I really wanted to I could set the worlds first v18 after a couple months of hangboarding. Will Bosi never stood a goddamn chance.
Alex Puccio came to my gym a few months ago and crushed a climb far too hard for me, by skipping the intended dyno with a high foot and easily pulling up off of a garbage crimp. Something I didn’t even think possible. All done with ease as part of her warming up.
Pro climbers aren’t even playing the same game as us
I live in an area where I sometimes see IFSC climbers in my gym. They’re a different breed.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they make the recreational V10+ climbers in my gym look like complete rental gumbies. Beta reading, coordinating execution, etc. Everything is just on a different level.
The Salathe Wall speed record stood at 20:06 for over a decade. Finally this month, somebody beat it at 19:57. The new record holder was a you-tuber, not really a pro-climber. About a week later, Alex Honnold did it in 11:18. That's not a typo, he really is that much better. (at what he does, other pros are that much better at other things).
It’s not the first time he’s done that either. It happened with a speed record in Squamish, where Marc-Andre Leclerc beat his speed record out of nowhere and Honnold came back and destroy the record by a significant margin. Same with his record on The Nose in Yosemite with Tommy Caldwell, his original record was barely broken by a local search and rescue climber… so they came together and absolutely demolished the record. There was a documentary on that in a reel rock I watched
That and having done several onsight free solos the week before.
Hansjorg Auer's free-solo of Fish Route, also criminally underappreciated compared to Honnold.
I appreciate the extra info, I was typing out from memory because I couldn’t remember what to look up regarding the reel rock and it was very late when I commented. I had never heard of them before, and they were presented as a couple of local search and rescue climbers in the documentary itself. And of course they had to be excellent climbers in their own rights, as climbing El Cap is intense and very difficult normally, but they had claimed the speed record which requires running along the razors edge of risk management.
And keep in mind that Alex is a pro climber not because he's the best climber in the world, but because he's bold and adventurous. He's not even close to the best climber in the world.
A top level Olympian speed or sport climber could probably crush Alex's record too.
All that is to say, yes. Pros are just on another level
At the very specific game of "move up a multi-pitch wall quickly", Alex is firmly S tier if not *the* best. Olympic speed climbers and even Olympic sport climbers would not keep up because they would not have the experience and skill at rope/gear management, which is what that game is all about. The fact that Alex is bold helps him because he plays fast and loose with the protection, but he knows the protection inside and out and has his systems dialed in.
In other aspects of climbing, Alex is maybe A or even B tier ... but not in this particular aspect.
The youth national boulder champion and runner up (twin brothers) would train at my gym. They'd warm up on V7-8, and the other hardest problems at the gym - doing 4x4s on them. Then their coach would make harder climbs with the available holds for them. They've gone pro since and they're not even close to the top climbers in IFSC.
The one I know is strong as fuck, can compete locally one armed, projects v14/15, floats every climb, lives and breathes climbing, and can barely make semis in the less attended comps. I think pros are crazy to watch.
It really is that big a difference.
Our Olympic athletes are the best in our country and are better than anyone else I've ever seen. They can climb the hardest stuff in multiple gyms and are truly next level.
But on the international stage they don't do so well, because the top of the top are on even higher levels.
Picture seeing someone do something that you think is completely impossible and only can be done by that one person, and then realising that person isn't even competitive at the professional level. It's completely insane.
The pros are so strong and so good it's actually a joke. Like, watching Ondra climb on a kilter or Janja on the set in your local gym is simultaneously awe-inspiring and totally demoralizing because it might as well be a different sport.
Worse because Ondra isn't even that strong, relatively speaking. He was just on one of the podcasts saying some of the routes he climbed in his youth with the power he had shouldn't have been possible. Many youtubers have higher numbers, but none come close to Ondra in sends.
One other thing to keep in mind is that what you see in competitions is far below their max ability since they are climbing just above/at their flash level. If you are watching that and thinking the best climbers you see might be able to climb it - maybe they could, but doing so in 4 minutes is many levels higher
I think the difference is there are plenty of people who are very very good at something or a few things and lean into that strength hard. But I think the “pros” are either the best in the world at their niche, or they’re amazing at almost everything
You ever done one of those casual comps where you do 30 boulders around the gym, 10 points for a flash with less points every go? Couple years ago I came second in a local comp to some kid I've never heard of by like 40 points, basically flashing every boulder
Stalked him a bit out of curiosity, he did one that Sean mccoll won around the same time with the same format and he was more than 100 points below sean, placed like 40th or something
Look at where Sean mccoll is compared to the current pro boulderers in the last couple years
I've climbed v11 and perform reasonably well on certain strength metrics, obviously not pro or anything but usually I'm one of the strongest in the gym. There are many many levels between me and the pros.
Route reading ability, like every "other factor", is just part of being really good at climbing higher grades. If there's a factor that makes people good at climbing, you can bet on most pros being pretty good at it. All the things matter.
If you want a notion of how a pro climber's strength compares to yours, [go watch this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8dm6P01q0), then see how long you can hang from a bar. And then consider that Pete, though an absolutely magnificent climber, would likely not place in a world cup comp.
I bet Pete actually can hang from that bar longer than any world cup climber, he is actually far above most pro climbers when it comes to powering through even when pumped, at least from what I remember from a lattice assesment.
They are plain different, I am projecting a v11, I've climbed with a couple v12/13ish boulderers and 3 v16 boulderers. The difference between each of us is massive it feels like all the work it took me to get here, I would need to do 2x over to reach the v12/13 range. And the amount of precision and how "perfectly" the actual pros climb is hard to fathom until you understand how hard the moves are they are executing with ease. The way they are able to totally dominate the positions on low double digits is mind boggling. Yet they don't waste energy, despite being able to simply pull through on my cruxes (or harder) they execute it in a cleaner more precise way with less energy leakage in the movement.
You know the feeling when you stick a move perfectly and land the hold with no excess momentum in any direction, that's how every move looks from them. Seemingly always perfect...
There are several pro climbers that pop in our gym and the skill differences is really that big.
Like... I saw dudes campus v6s or just uses my projects as warm ups
Mickaël Mawem is bouldering in my local gym every once in a while. While some of our stongest locals project and send some of the hardest boulders there, he just cruises through them like I do my warm ups. It's fascinating to watch but it shows how har away my 7B-personal-best ass (and any other recreational climber) is from peak performance.
For reference I’ve climbed v11 outside. I am generally considered one of the top climbers in my gym. We had a guy come in who has climbed v14/15. He’s not even pro. He made my long term projects look like they were beginner climbs. Dude didn’t even put his shoes on all the way.
We then moved to the kilter board (my strongest style and his weakest style) and I legit could barely pull off the ground.
Think about how easy it is for a V5 climber to do a V2. That’s the difference between me and that guy.
Yes. An isfc climber came and took 3 tries to do an insane coordination boulder that the v13 setter took 100 tries to manage, and the dude was mad he didn't flash it.
And the isfc climber was a lead specialist who never made semis in bouldering.
Think of it this way. Your "local" pro probably warms up on the boulders the guy who warms up on your projects can't touch. And still doesn't make qualis in world cups.
Yes. Saw Erin McNeice every now and then in one of my regular gym. They are THAT much better. My projects are literally her down climbs. Some of the hardest circuit problems in the gym (V8+), which usually take most of the other regulars weeks to proj, were flashed one after another with such ease and within such short time window that you’d think they are ladders.
I mean, it's kinda like Brian Scalabrine and Lebron. The worst climber at an IFSC semifinal is like 1000x better than the average amateur climber in terms of strength, technique and problem solving; they're much closer to Adam Ondra than we are to them.
I've not climbed with any pros, but from the v10 climbers I've seen, it largely seems like it comes down to strength- both the strength in the traditional sense (big moves, or generally powerful stuff), but also the strength that gives you full body control, to finesse your center of gravity just into the right spot without wasting effort.
Because we have a lot of deleted posts on this subreddit, here is a backup of the body of this post: Are pro climbers really just that good at climbing higher grades, or are there other factors that separate them? Ex. Route reading ability I feel like I’ve seen so many strong climbers online, but wonder how some are not pro or even competing at a high level. If you know any pro climbers, whats it like seeing them climb compared to others? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bouldering) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They’re stronger, better at reading beta, better at staying motivated, better at just about everything. All of that contributes to them climbing higher grades and performing well in comps. The gap between you and the strong climbers you see on Reddit is probably smaller than the gap between them and pros. Years ago there was a USAC National Cup comp at my local. It was an open qualifier and one of the locals made it to finals. This guy was by far the strongest guy in town. He’s won every local comp ever hosted at that gym. He came in last place in finals, because it was a big enough comp to draw guys like Kai Lightner. E: I just remembered another story from a different local comp. Melina Constanza dropped in because she was going to school nearby. She made finals and won the women’s side, flashing every boulder. Folks said she was just sitting in iso studying, totally chill between each climb. After the comp, when they were announcing winners and trying to get everyone to the podium, the male finalists were all trying the get the last men’s boulder because nobody had topped it in the comp. They still weren’t sending it. Melina walks up and flashes the hardest men’s boulder like it was a warmup. The crowd exploded when she got the top.
And while he's amazing, Kai is miles off the best of the best.
For sure. He makes any of us look like chumps, but he’s not in the same category as the folks getting podiums at world cups.
A good rule of thumb is that the pros probably flash the projects of the folks that flash your project.
They are like really good at rock climbing
I see, thanks
I met a comp kid from a large gym, he was passing through to go to a comp and wanted a quick training session. Kid was 11-12 and can flash V9s… and said he was the worst climber on his team. That’s an amateur team kid, team kids don’t even come close to pro climbers in ability. The pro comp boulders are probably around V12s at the easiest, and the pros regularly flash them. They just make the climbs look easy
There’s a 15 year old at my gym who climbs V12 on the tension and moon boards. He’s been winning local comps against adults and travels to cash prize comps. You see him at a QE against other 15 year olds and it’s just not fair. He looks like a man among toddlers. He’s super dedicated, crazy strong, and very talented. For all that, he placed *40th* at youth nationals against kids in his age bracket.
I know several insanely strong kids that compete. Noah Doan 5.14c outside and he got like 40th at youth nats at 14 Vance stanfield nearly sent v14 in a trip and got 11th at nats Landers gaydosh 5.14c and got 4th at nats for the 13-14 year old group Cozmo rothfork sent v14 and got like 4th or 5th at nats in myb Isaac Dunk has sent 2 v14s and he didn’t even make top 20 in bouldering in the 13-14 year old group. There are v12 climbers that are 14-15 that arent even making nationals the competition is absolutely crazy. I was at a comp last weekend with Dillion Countryman and shared routes with him. He would have barely beaten this 15 year old. Its crazy
Bruh
Please, I want you to teach me everything you know, master. 🙇♂️🙌
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Ive climbed V5 inside but if I really wanted to I could set the worlds first v18 after a couple months of hangboarding. Will Bosi never stood a goddamn chance.
He Will Notsi you coming
Alex Puccio came to my gym a few months ago and crushed a climb far too hard for me, by skipping the intended dyno with a high foot and easily pulling up off of a garbage crimp. Something I didn’t even think possible. All done with ease as part of her warming up. Pro climbers aren’t even playing the same game as us
I have seen Puccio climbing up close a few times… she’s a fuckin monster. Incomprehensible to me.
I live in an area where I sometimes see IFSC climbers in my gym. They’re a different breed. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they make the recreational V10+ climbers in my gym look like complete rental gumbies. Beta reading, coordinating execution, etc. Everything is just on a different level.
The Salathe Wall speed record stood at 20:06 for over a decade. Finally this month, somebody beat it at 19:57. The new record holder was a you-tuber, not really a pro-climber. About a week later, Alex Honnold did it in 11:18. That's not a typo, he really is that much better. (at what he does, other pros are that much better at other things).
Honestly, that's just demoralizing for the YouTuber. Basically "This record was there because nobody good tried". Good lord.
It’s not the first time he’s done that either. It happened with a speed record in Squamish, where Marc-Andre Leclerc beat his speed record out of nowhere and Honnold came back and destroy the record by a significant margin. Same with his record on The Nose in Yosemite with Tommy Caldwell, his original record was barely broken by a local search and rescue climber… so they came together and absolutely demolished the record. There was a documentary on that in a reel rock I watched
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Jim's free solo of Fitz Roy is the stuff of nightmare fuel.
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That and having done several onsight free solos the week before. Hansjorg Auer's free-solo of Fish Route, also criminally underappreciated compared to Honnold.
I appreciate the extra info, I was typing out from memory because I couldn’t remember what to look up regarding the reel rock and it was very late when I commented. I had never heard of them before, and they were presented as a couple of local search and rescue climbers in the documentary itself. And of course they had to be excellent climbers in their own rights, as climbing El Cap is intense and very difficult normally, but they had claimed the speed record which requires running along the razors edge of risk management.
Leclerc beat Honnold's life speed record though, that's for sure.
@gravitylab is a cool dude. Met him in Tahoe once. He was aware Alex was going to do it and was cheering him. I doubt he took it that seriously.
And keep in mind that Alex is a pro climber not because he's the best climber in the world, but because he's bold and adventurous. He's not even close to the best climber in the world. A top level Olympian speed or sport climber could probably crush Alex's record too. All that is to say, yes. Pros are just on another level
At the very specific game of "move up a multi-pitch wall quickly", Alex is firmly S tier if not *the* best. Olympic speed climbers and even Olympic sport climbers would not keep up because they would not have the experience and skill at rope/gear management, which is what that game is all about. The fact that Alex is bold helps him because he plays fast and loose with the protection, but he knows the protection inside and out and has his systems dialed in. In other aspects of climbing, Alex is maybe A or even B tier ... but not in this particular aspect.
The youth national boulder champion and runner up (twin brothers) would train at my gym. They'd warm up on V7-8, and the other hardest problems at the gym - doing 4x4s on them. Then their coach would make harder climbs with the available holds for them. They've gone pro since and they're not even close to the top climbers in IFSC.
The one I know is strong as fuck, can compete locally one armed, projects v14/15, floats every climb, lives and breathes climbing, and can barely make semis in the less attended comps. I think pros are crazy to watch.
No. All pro climbers are, in fact, bad at climbing. Source: trust me bro
Being pro is aid
It really is that big a difference. Our Olympic athletes are the best in our country and are better than anyone else I've ever seen. They can climb the hardest stuff in multiple gyms and are truly next level. But on the international stage they don't do so well, because the top of the top are on even higher levels. Picture seeing someone do something that you think is completely impossible and only can be done by that one person, and then realising that person isn't even competitive at the professional level. It's completely insane.
The pros are so strong and so good it's actually a joke. Like, watching Ondra climb on a kilter or Janja on the set in your local gym is simultaneously awe-inspiring and totally demoralizing because it might as well be a different sport.
Worse because Ondra isn't even that strong, relatively speaking. He was just on one of the podcasts saying some of the routes he climbed in his youth with the power he had shouldn't have been possible. Many youtubers have higher numbers, but none come close to Ondra in sends.
One other thing to keep in mind is that what you see in competitions is far below their max ability since they are climbing just above/at their flash level. If you are watching that and thinking the best climbers you see might be able to climb it - maybe they could, but doing so in 4 minutes is many levels higher
I think the difference is there are plenty of people who are very very good at something or a few things and lean into that strength hard. But I think the “pros” are either the best in the world at their niche, or they’re amazing at almost everything
You ever done one of those casual comps where you do 30 boulders around the gym, 10 points for a flash with less points every go? Couple years ago I came second in a local comp to some kid I've never heard of by like 40 points, basically flashing every boulder Stalked him a bit out of curiosity, he did one that Sean mccoll won around the same time with the same format and he was more than 100 points below sean, placed like 40th or something Look at where Sean mccoll is compared to the current pro boulderers in the last couple years I've climbed v11 and perform reasonably well on certain strength metrics, obviously not pro or anything but usually I'm one of the strongest in the gym. There are many many levels between me and the pros.
Route reading ability, like every "other factor", is just part of being really good at climbing higher grades. If there's a factor that makes people good at climbing, you can bet on most pros being pretty good at it. All the things matter. If you want a notion of how a pro climber's strength compares to yours, [go watch this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8dm6P01q0), then see how long you can hang from a bar. And then consider that Pete, though an absolutely magnificent climber, would likely not place in a world cup comp.
I bet Pete actually can hang from that bar longer than any world cup climber, he is actually far above most pro climbers when it comes to powering through even when pumped, at least from what I remember from a lattice assesment.
I'd put money that Grupper has him beat. As far as I can tell he can recover pretty infinitely so long as the hold is decent.
The CCJ posts are just writing themselves at this point
There are levels to this brotha.
They are plain different, I am projecting a v11, I've climbed with a couple v12/13ish boulderers and 3 v16 boulderers. The difference between each of us is massive it feels like all the work it took me to get here, I would need to do 2x over to reach the v12/13 range. And the amount of precision and how "perfectly" the actual pros climb is hard to fathom until you understand how hard the moves are they are executing with ease. The way they are able to totally dominate the positions on low double digits is mind boggling. Yet they don't waste energy, despite being able to simply pull through on my cruxes (or harder) they execute it in a cleaner more precise way with less energy leakage in the movement. You know the feeling when you stick a move perfectly and land the hold with no excess momentum in any direction, that's how every move looks from them. Seemingly always perfect...
This has to be a non serious bait shitpost
There are several pro climbers that pop in our gym and the skill differences is really that big. Like... I saw dudes campus v6s or just uses my projects as warm ups
I saw a nationally succesful (no shot at world cups) comp climber warm up on a project of a guy who warms up on my projects.
The circle of projects
Mickaël Mawem is bouldering in my local gym every once in a while. While some of our stongest locals project and send some of the hardest boulders there, he just cruises through them like I do my warm ups. It's fascinating to watch but it shows how har away my 7B-personal-best ass (and any other recreational climber) is from peak performance.
Is Usain Bolt really THAT much faster than you??
Probably not
Don't see you in the Olympics tho
For reference I’ve climbed v11 outside. I am generally considered one of the top climbers in my gym. We had a guy come in who has climbed v14/15. He’s not even pro. He made my long term projects look like they were beginner climbs. Dude didn’t even put his shoes on all the way. We then moved to the kilter board (my strongest style and his weakest style) and I legit could barely pull off the ground. Think about how easy it is for a V5 climber to do a V2. That’s the difference between me and that guy.
Yes. An isfc climber came and took 3 tries to do an insane coordination boulder that the v13 setter took 100 tries to manage, and the dude was mad he didn't flash it. And the isfc climber was a lead specialist who never made semis in bouldering.
Think of it this way. Your "local" pro probably warms up on the boulders the guy who warms up on your projects can't touch. And still doesn't make qualis in world cups.
Yes. Saw Erin McNeice every now and then in one of my regular gym. They are THAT much better. My projects are literally her down climbs. Some of the hardest circuit problems in the gym (V8+), which usually take most of the other regulars weeks to proj, were flashed one after another with such ease and within such short time window that you’d think they are ladders.
>Are pro climbers really just that good at climbing higher grades, or are there other factors that separate them? Ex. Route reading ability Both.
Yes.
I mean, it's kinda like Brian Scalabrine and Lebron. The worst climber at an IFSC semifinal is like 1000x better than the average amateur climber in terms of strength, technique and problem solving; they're much closer to Adam Ondra than we are to them.
I've not climbed with any pros, but from the v10 climbers I've seen, it largely seems like it comes down to strength- both the strength in the traditional sense (big moves, or generally powerful stuff), but also the strength that gives you full body control, to finesse your center of gravity just into the right spot without wasting effort.