1 Hour 1 Route
In this video you can see me climbing up and down the same route in different ways.
I actually spend a full hour on this route without touching the floor in between, continuously climbing.
I don’t know how many times I climbed the route within this hour, but it was often.
I did this simply because I was interested in what was going to happen. I forgot about the idea of reaching the top and got more into research mode about the way getting there.
This is something I like to experiment a lot with right now. Yes, I also climb the hard routes that are at my limit and to push myself there, but it’s also a big pleasure for me to work on something very easy and play with the movements. Climbing with different qualities and emphases. There is a lot to explore.
I see a problem in the way many people approach the wall. Common behavior is to try something and if it doesn’t work after two or three tries, they move on. Common behavior for beginners. Yes, it doesn’t make too much sense to spend time on a route that is way too hard for you, but many people seriously lack any persistence here.
The general problem is that people don’t think about „Training“ climbing, but more about „performing" climbing.
This is also connected to the next problem: many people, that are more advanced, now learned how to stick to a route and work on it, but the moment they reach the top, they jump down or top out and then walk away to the next route, not even looking back.
This is why we made a rule here for ourselves, to protect ourselves from this behavior:
climbing each route at least 3 times.
Why? Because the good stuff is not happening the first time. Once is never. This is something I adopted from the old school Parkour mentality. In my experience, it takes at least 3 successful attempts to figure out what actually makes sense and what doesn't so much.
Bouldering can be more than just reaching the top, there is a lot in between.
Music: El Carretero - Buena Vista Social Club
2014-12-11
Joseph Bartz