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James
Gym climber
City by the Bay
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 8, 2004 - 02:28am PT
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Difficult trad climbing is the pinnacle of climbing because it involves both mental and physical fortitude. An examination of the best trad climbers in the world-Caldwell, The Huberbaum, and Yuji, show that some of the best training for trad climbing is sport wanking-an often frowned open activity. I fully believe that in order to become rad at trad one must immerse him or herself in the tighest and shinest lycra on the planet. Is it really possible to become good at trad climbing without doing extensive amounts of other types of climbing? Is sport wanking a frivolous activity for giznels or does it have applicable value?
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Ca
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It is only too obvious that you are not a trad climber and have no clue. Next time you have a question try asking it without answering it in the same post. And you probably should not try to answer questions you don't understand.
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macgyver
Social climber
Oregon
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Yes. But you need larger than average metaphorical balls.
My metaphorical balls are of average size which corresponds to my average trad abilities.
Did I just say that?
M
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yo
climber
NOT Fresno
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Dearest James,
Your astute examination of rad tradsters is correctomundo. In order to be one with hard trad you must be just like them. Remove one of your least useful digits with a band saw in order to drop weight. Whilst cavorting around the Valley you should wear black leather pants and nothing else, ja? Let your flaxen locks grow. Lube down your brother before hard sends to get the jitters out. Special consideration must be given to ze pectoral muscles. Finally, wanking of all sorts is a must, not only sport wanking.
Keep up the faith! It is well known that Walter Bonatti and Fritz Wiessner cranked hard at Rifle and American Fork to train. Peace out.
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James
Gym climber
City by the Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 8, 2004 - 04:27pm PT
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ShorTimer-You shouldn't attempt to denigerate people you don't know. One of the prominent difficulties in the internet world is that one is unaware of another's credibility. If you need me to substantiate my claim that I am a trad climber I will but I would rather not spray endlessly on this forum. Suffice to say that I am a Yosemite valley "local" and that this claim can be backed.
Yo-I appreciate your sarcasm but examine the history of some of the best trad climbers in the world and you will find that most of them are also exemplary sport climbers. While Walter Bonatti and Fritz Wiesnner haven't spent much time at Rifle-rad trad climbers like "Platnium" Rob Miller, Dean Potter, Steph Davis, Tommy Caldwell, and Adam Stack have. I think people forget this part because the converse of the initial statement is false. People who predominately sport wank do not always make good trad climbers-they mostly make good posers.
Despite the somewhat asinine remarks made I firmly believe that this is a legitimate question. There is an emeriging population of neo-stonemasters known as the "Monkeys" They are the young dirtbags who are seeking to exile in climbing-Thad Friday, Renan Ozturk, Jens Holsten, Lucho Rivera...etc. A number of different theories have been presented by members of the group as to how to progress to higher levels of trad climbing. One of the prominent ideas is that having a strong sport climbing/bouldering background will allow you to use your sporty technigue on difficult trad climbers. Charlie of the Toulumne Grill's ascent of Cosmic Debris shows how having a background in steep and difficult climbing allows one to climb hard trad. Charlie is a strong boulderer with a number of difficult boulder problems and sport routes in his portfolio. The other camp says it is unnecessary to focus so much on sport and that all that is required is a vast amount of experience. Mike Schaffer's spring ascent of the Phoneix supports this theory. He is predominately a trad climber and spends little time "sport wanking."
I am currently training to become a better trad climber and have implemented an increasing amount of sport climbing and bouldering into my regime. I feel as though it's a worthwhile endeavor. I would like to hear other opinions though as I am not totally committed to a view.
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Donny Quijote
Sport climber
Boulder F'n CO
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Trad is for homoz anyway
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Skinner
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Trad is for those who want to protect themselves from dying in case they fall....sport is for those on the other side of the spectrum (small nuts, obsessive compulsive about they're new rash guards and yellow tinted sunglasses that they thought might have scratched when a few pebbles flaked off the wall...this in turn would lead them to believe the climb is pretty chossy and gritty and only worth 1 star instead of 3 stars), soloing is for those who aren't going to fall, or don't care so much. I personally subscribe to the school of carrying much more gear than is needed so as to build my endurance and overall power (when I'm 50 and overweight I will still be climbing) and placing less, spritzy spritz
see you in a 5pc tupperware
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Clayman
Trad climber
CA
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So how do you get strong when you can only boulder and sport on the weekends and the only form of climbing specific trainign is a hangboard. Can you really get stronger for next season on a hangboard alone? I too want to climb hard trad and the only thing that i have availiabe right now is hangboard ive been using almost everyday. Any ideas? thanks.
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dufas
Trad climber
san francisco
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Since I can't get out all that often, I train so that when I do get out I can climb at a decent (for me) level. I have a campus board, different widths of cracks and some steep wall holds set up. Yeah, it would be better to be out there placing pro much more often, but its better than flabbin out and struggling up Munginella and Pine Line.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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hey Skinner, 50 and overweight sounds like me! and I am still climbing and I'm better every year...
James, if you want to climb hard, climb hard... often, and partake of all of the climbing disciplines. Bouldering, sport, gym, trad, ice climb, mixed, mountaineering... do it obsessively, do it every waking moment, never stop thinking about it, or preparing for it, or doing it... set goals, work them, accomplish them, set the next round of goals, repeat.
Give it your all. Then see where you end up. If you aren't interested in committing to it then be content to climb below your potential. There is no magic bullet training regime. Your mother was right: "practice makes perfect".... get on with it.
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Apocalypsenow
Trad climber
Cali
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Drink a lot of beer. Wake up the next morn and drink a lot of coffee.
Go to a boulder with a lot of features. Place gear/remove it...
Sell your cheap TV and go buy hexes and nuts.
Climb a 5.6
Sport and Trad are very different. Time spent placing gear vs. clipping a bolt are as you say...mental and physical. The "rewards" are much higher.
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Ca
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James, I am sorry if you were personnally insulted by my response. I supposed that your question was pure troll and responded in kind.
If you want a real answer, it is that everything helps everything else. If you can get stronger doing some sport routes, go for it. But learning to sport climb will not make you a trad climber. Only time on the rock with your ass hanging over the void with only your own skills at pro placements to save said ass if you fall, will do that. I have 31 of those years behind me and I still trad, sport, gym and boulder climb every chance I get.
It's about passion after all, either you got it or you don't!
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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James, simply put trad climbing involves more skill than boulering or sport. It doesn't necesarily hone the strength and endurance aspects though. And if you're in a mindset of training those areas, with less planning and knowledge of any particular climbing crag sport or boulding may suite you better in most cases. I've gotten "in shape" for killer trad climbing trips by doing sport and gym climbs simply because the skill I needed was already there. The choice I made was not that I prefered sport and plastic, but how to maximise my limited time. Trad climbing rules over all the rest though.
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nature
climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Nov 10, 2004 - 01:34am PT
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James, you are pretty right on. I will say that shorttimer is sort of correct - you did answer your own question.
The best crack (I guess that is trad) climbers I know are also very excellent sport climbers. "The Doctor" and Rodman are on fire right now. You might know them as the party that freed Shangri-la (III 5.12+) in Sedona. Rodman very soon should send a project in Winslow - if he sissies out and stops it at the last bolt (lowering the anchor) it will only be 5.14a (Karate kick) (and it would be done). He's linked to the chaines and when he sends will call it 14c (Big Karate Kick). "The Doctor" (Bloom) has sent (establishing some) dozens and dozens of 5.12 Indian creek climbs. I need no further proof that to be good at any one aspect of climbing you need to be open minded to all. Oh, I also have another friend that is a pretty good trad climb - Matt Childers. I video taped him doing the second ascent of The Equalizer (5.13-) [a crack] at the Forks. A few weeks later (or was it before) he sent Caligula and French Kissing the Cobra (both 5.13b at Winslow Wall) [all bolts]. Oh, and before he left town he also made sure to free "Your Mother" (which is right next to Shangri-la in Sedona and went at a sandbagged 5.12+ something).
If you are a trad climber than placing gear is old hat. It is for me. I've done enough walls to know what gear is good and what is marginal. Move beyond that and start training physically. By sport climbing you can take lead falls that are safe and it teaches you how to fall (and how not to be scared of falling!). It increases finger strength. The longer you can hang on, the less you care about what gear is below you. That's a huge part of the mental game that dicking with gear will never get you.
I trained for my trip to the Vamps by sport climbing. I was physically in great shape because of it. The limiting factors had little to do with my training program (the environment kicked our asses).
Just blow off anyone that cops the attitude that to be a trad climber you can only climb trad. You are in to training mode and that rules.
I guess my advice would be on how you "should" be climbing sport routes for training purposes. If you do it for the conditionaing and use it as a way to build mental and physical strenght than you will help with your trad training. If it's about the numbers (and I can tell it isn't)....
Sooo.. what are you training for? Any specific routes in mind?
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Melissa
Big Wall climber
oakland, ca
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Nov 10, 2004 - 01:31pm PT
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"Just blow off anyone that cops the attitude that to be a trad climber you can only climb trad. You are in to training mode and that rules"
...Especially if that person is yourself. (You called it "sport wanking".) You're in good shape and already climb pretty hard, so if you don't enjoy yourself while "training", really what's the point? I bet that most of the sponsored studmuffins got good just loving it before they started training to send for fame and fortune. I see a lot of people at all kinds of levels get so hung up on insisting that gym/sport/bouldering sucks that they can't let themselves enjoy it or get as much out of it once they decide to go do it anyway. I'm kind of one of them too. I was a lot stronger and got more out of going to they gym when it just was climbing, first order, for me rather than not-really-climbing and training for something else.
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James
Gym climber
City by the Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 10, 2004 - 02:25pm PT
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I have recently developed a quiet liking for the sport world. The guilt keeps me up at night for images of backstepping and flagging are pure blasphemy in the traditional world I was born into. I throughly enjoy sport climbing. It isn't that much different from hard trad climbing in actuality. On some of the harder trad climbs I've done I've had to do specific sequences to place gear just like in sport climbing to clip a bolt. My general concern is that I want to become a better trad climber. I aspire to a high level of mastery in the game and am seeking to excel at it through any accessible reasonable means. I believe that I have reached a plateau in my trad ability and that to break through into the next level I must "train"-aka sport climb-to break through. I am curious if anyone knows people who have climbed 5.13 trad without doing a fair amount of bouldering/sportclimbing. Indian creek routes don't count as they are merely tests of fitness and hand size.
Melissa-has Shaggy done much sport climbing/bouldering?
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Melissa
Big Wall climber
oakland, ca
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Nov 10, 2004 - 02:35pm PT
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James..fwiw, J has only gone sport climbing one or two times to my knowledge and never climbed in a gym until he met me. Take this all w/ a grain of salt as I am speaking for him and might not have it all quite right, but he has rarely if ever even "worked" a route on gear. Even the really long ones...He'd rather just give it his best ground up. Not because he's stuck on some ethic, but because that's the style of climbing that he enjoys. The game he likes to play is staying on the rock and not falling (and sometimes it really, really counts to do this), so climbing in a way that has falling as part of the learning process isn't really what trains him the way that he wants to train or gives him what he enjoys. He has improved plenty over the years, obviously. Maybe he'd climb harder grades if he sport climbed, but since the rent isn't riding on his next big send, he gets to pick whatever path he enjoys the most instead of which has the highest numbered pay off, although it's totally understandable that for some people doing the hardest physical thing possible is where it's at independent of other things.
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James
Gym climber
City by the Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 10, 2004 - 05:24pm PT
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Melissa
Let J know he's my hero. He's probably one of the best climbers I have ever met not only for his ability but his approach to climbing and the way he sticks to his high moral ground without being prentitious and still being supportive of others.
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Rhodo-Router
Trad climber
Otto, NC
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Nov 10, 2004 - 06:04pm PT
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I just want to know if he still sleeps on a piece of plywood with a beat-out old chunk of ensolite on top, or has having a GF changed all that??
;) Rob
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Rhodo-Router
Trad climber
Otto, NC
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Nov 10, 2004 - 06:29pm PT
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More relevantly, James, (and I don't climb 5.13 on any kind of gear),
I think I personally learned more about hard climbing and movement by bouldering than I ever did climbing over gear. People talk about bouldering and sport climbing like they're the same thing, but I think that's just cuz similar-looking people like 'em both-- it's a social distinction. As Sherman pointed out long ago, every fall bouldering is a ground fall.
Anyhow, I can I.D. with the plateau feeling, so this interests me. Right now I live in a place where the best local climbing entails clipping bolts, and I'm getting to where I dig it. It's cool to climb really hard things, and to practice them over and over learning the subtleties and truth of every single move. I felt before like I wasn't learning much climbing 5.10 routes on gear, except maybe how to do more and more pitches in a day. I still hate falling, but at least I can sort of take a little whip every once in a while instead of whimpering, down-sketching, and hesitating until a fall (or a hang) is inevitable.
Somebody told me once that climbing hard is a trade-off. You have to give something up in order to get better. You have to give up feeling like a hero for climbing 5.K when all your friends can only pull 5.J. You have to give up ideas like you're gonna die if you fall, or that you can't flag or backstep in the vicinity of self-placed protection, or that placing that gear makes you a better person than that kid in the knit cap whom you resent because he's way stronger than you and has only been climbing for 2 of his 19 years.
So maybe you need to give up on calling it 'sport-wanking'. Wanking is as wanking does, if you ask me. I was starting to feel like a wanker after umpteen years of climbing at the same grade. There's nothing really bold about getting on things you're pretty damn sure you can climb without falling, day after day (as long as you're wearing a rope etc). Wanking is when you're not pushing yourself, but pretending that you are. I don't think I'm alone in asserting that I've learned plenty from various forms of safe climbing-- sport, TR, little boulders-- that I never could have while sticking in pro. Topropes, bolts, crashpads-- training wheels, water wings, spotters. To keep yourself basically safe while you're learning new skills requires that you scale back on certain other things, like physical risk, commitment, or ego protection. Someone is going to catch you clipping bolts. Don't sweat it. As long as you're enjoying yourself, and you've got this goal of increased difficulty in mind, you're on the right track. Think for yourself and have fun.
Rob
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