In reply to Jon Stewart:
> Between 1992 and say 1995 did you go climbing 3x per week (outdoors and indoors) and progress no further than VS?
OK the 1992 is a bit of an outlier / red herring, as I didn't lead again for another ten years!
Ditched climbing when I went to uni. Picked it up again slowly as a postgrad, using trips as a means to socialise and get out of London occasionally - the climbing was incidental. Circa 1999-2000 I just top roped or seconded stuff without really bothering to even learn the grading system (but - seconding - could sketch my way up wet Tremadog Severes and cold blowy Pembroke HS both in hiking boots, and in climbing shoes it was time for slippery chossy 5a laybacks on Southern Sandstone...). Started going to a wall once every 6 weeks or so in 2000-2001, gradually increasing frequency of visits. This was Mile End and I didn't look at their boulder grading, just used their colour scheme.
Tentative first leads around 2002. 2003 saw me set a goal to start on VS, which I did (three quarters of my first 4 VS leads are now graded HS!). I wasn't going to climbing walls so much by then, as I'd left London and academia and was busy adjusting to new life in new location.
2004 busy buying a house, not so much climbing but I was still getting out when I could. It was a nice sunny summer that year. By 2005 I thought my lead grade had "rusted" so on a Pembroke trip I decided to progress "from the bottom", getting a few basic V Diff and HVD under my belt and was cruising some relatively bold HS just before falling off a silly Severe and busting my ankle.
2006, started at "base level" again after ankle recovery, and found too many off-putting rounded Peak V Diff horrors time and again, a wasted year. Decided to skip all the Severes and go straight onto HS which had been my old comfort grade, and this was fine. Started regular trips to relatively nearby indoor bouldering wall.
Bimbled on trad for a couple more years, out and about more and more regularly, with plenty of opportunity (I can drive to any Peak grit edge in 1h15m and I have a broad circle of climbing friends and acquaintances). But I didn't push my grades. 2010 saw my first two HVS onsights but I still didn't feel rock solid at VS. So I was around VS/HVS through 2010-2012 (and the E2 headpoint happened in 2011) but also becoming more cautious. Dogging my way up P1 of Suicide Wall at Cratcliffe was a good and humbling lesson.
Late 2012, bouldering wall opened up a mere 10 minutes' jog from my front door, so I am quite a regular there.
Yet what did I do last year? A few VS, one HVS.
So, what do you think is medically wrong with me?
btw you hit the nail on the head with this:
"One thing I love about climbing is that you can continue to develop without increasing your grade"
THAT'S exactly the improvement I've seen in myself in this time.