UKC

Gracie Martin speaks to industry professionals to find out what's hot and what's next in the world of route setting...

Route setting is undeniably one of the most essential elements of the climbing industry, but where do concepts for holds and climbs come from? With the ever-evolving capabilities of athletes, an increased appetite for quality setting from commercial walls and endless creativity from shapers, I wanted to try and understand how the development of setting trends occur. Where can we expect to see route setting go next?

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Just about to start reading this. I really hope it says they're about to knock it off with the sideways dyno parkour crap. I'm looking forward to that being the bottom line...

It wasn't 😒

I appreciate that for competitions anything goes to split up the field. But does anyone actually enjoy this at their local wall?

Yeah. Loads of people do. Just not people who climb rocks, people who are training for climbing rocks or people who aspire to climb rocks.

Probably the people who never actually go climbing. It's all bollocks.

Yes, depressingly, it gives the impression that it is all pretty much driven by trends in competitions rather than the training needs of actual climbers.

I've just looked up what "no-tex" is. Sounds like simulated polished limestone. Lovely🙁

Admittedly I rarely visit a bouldering wall nowadays, but if I do I love having fun combination moves to play on. It's really just an extension of play but in a very climbingy context.

Perhaps not of interest to the 'leader must not fall', 'three points of contact at all times' crowd, but definitely an aspect of climbing that has its place.

It's an aspect of indoor bouldering, and only of indoor bouldering. 

True, but that makes it an aspect of climbing.

Yep. Just as much as kids doing handstands and UV paint is an aspect of climbing.

Humorous maybe, but that really doesn't follow.

no it sucks

There isn’t much difference between an individual establishing/bolting a line outdoors and a routesetter.

The “local wall” should have the capabilities and facilities for everyone. If one wants to train to go on rock then they probably shouldn’t be spending much time on big coordination dynos.

Perfect for the training needs of polished UK limestone climbers then?

Useful article. Whenever I go nowadays I’m astonished at how shit walls have become. Now I understand better why.

jcm

Those rose tinted specs must be about an inch thick! Last time I went to the wall:

• There was a big range of regularly reset problems on a wide variety of holds
• A massive training area with a range of boards, fingerboards, circuit boards, weights etc. (a good place to start if you want to use the indoor wall as training for outdoors)
• All set in a nice large building with plenty of space so you're not going to land on anyone
• Changing facilities
• A cafe with some good coffee options

As much as we quibble about the details, modern indoor walls are significantly better than they were in the past.

It's not even that popular! BoulderUK in Preston is a good example of this. About 2/3rds of their wall is set with traditional boulder problems, then there's one big section which is all compy style dynos, parkour, big slappy volume compression stuff. Both times I've been I reckon 90-95% of climbers have been on the traditional problems, with a handful of people in the comp section.

I've also heard rumours of higher injury rates on these style of problems, though I don't know if that's true. Intuitively it seems likely but that might just be because I could imagine myself getting injured if I tried to launch myself across a paddle dyno...

People always say this about modern style bouldering but then the people who are winning top level bouldering competitions are also usually pretty handy on rock.

Personally as some one who mainly climbs on rock, I enjoy the really wide variety of problems that you now get at modern indoor bouldering walls. Its particularly helpful when trying to continue climbing through injury that not all bouldering involves pulling hard on tiny crimps and there are plenty of options for pressing for example as well.

Also I think that although some of the moves seen on bouldering indoors like double paddle dynos are unlikely to be seen outdoors, some of the more general skills developed through trying these types of moves probably are helpful for improving climbing outdoors like better proprioception and use of momentum in climbing and balance. 

Same with the Depot in Sheffield where there is one long wall dedicated to the volume/compression stuff which sees lower footfall than the rest of the centre.

However, pick up any training book, say Dave McCloud, and the prime message is to train your weaknesses, and that we naturally gravitate to what we are good at rather than what’s good for us. I’m rubbish at those dynamic problems, but definitely get as much out of it as a session boning down on crimps😂

Training also needs to be specific. And there aren't that many routes / boulders that require dynos or running starts (other than in competitions)

If these are skills involved in real climbing (they are), then good setting ought to be able to incorporate them in to moves like one is actually going to come across when doing real climbing.

One of my weaknesses is climbing down one handed and head first. But there really doesn't seem much point in training it any more than double paddle dynos between blobs.

Whatever a double paddle dyno is.

Surely a bit of simulated polished limestone will be of great assistance on my projects at  Dinas Rock ?!

In all honesty I do feel that the distinction between showy, jumpy, dynamic problems at the wall and your old fashioned crimp-fest is somewhat overblown. I love doing both, but the people who are really good at the jumping stuff always wipe the floor on the crimpy stuff too in my experience. 

I guess I'm lucky that my local walls tend to set a bit of both (although less so in comp settings).

I think I'm getting less injuries on modern boulder problems rather than hammering away at crimps and getting back to back finger injuries,  And climbing on big blobby, sloping holds is absolutely transferring to greater open hand strengh so outdoors slopers are getting easier.

It's easy to reminesce about going to a wall with lots of crimp ladders, but they're samey, and I like a bit of variety in my climbing

I would say 90% of the type of moves you get in modern climbing walls are a good replica of moves you'd find outside, particularly if you are including bouldering outside as well as routes. Yes I have done the odd dyno outside as well as one run and jump style boulder. 

There are only a very small proportion of problems like double dynos that don't really relate directly to outside and if you aren't interested in doing them it's usually perfectly possible to find some that are more translatable. 

Also I totally get the principle of specifity but equally that doesn't mean that you never benefit from broadening your training. Look at Adam Ondra taking ballet lessons. That is far from specific to climbing but he thought it would spruce up his training and help him climb better. 

I agree that modern walls are probably more geared to boulderers than to people who just want to climb routes.

Yes, but dynos or not there do seem to be an awful lot of blobby holds; this just doesn't reflect reality.

Wasn't that revealed as a joke? But if it wasn't, I think there is a big difference between the best climber in the world looking for the tiniest marginal gains and the vast majority with limited time which is best used on real rock, or, when that is not available, climbing indoors on stuff which best simulates it.

I was watching the last Olympic qualification comp and Shauna Coxey made some interesting comments basically saying she really disliked the Parcour style problems (as did a lot of other competitors) and after giving up comp climbing she was glad she'd never have to do them again! So I'm not really sure what drives the popularity of these, certainly not from the top climbers. 

But I would say that, I'm very much on the boning down on sh*t crimps camp and currently nursing various skinned knees and elbows from clattering down off big volumes at my local wall.

I have to confess that I initially read that as 'chimps' and thought it sounded somewhat unsavoury - as well as a bit of a gamble.

If you want to just train for rock, you can pull on a system board all winter. Not like any gyms are exclusively paddle dynos.

Outdoor climbing is my passion, I'm a static crimp and pull climber, but indoor bouldering is what got me into climbing and working all kinds of different styles is a) fun and b) works my weaknesses. I used to curse dynos, but I worked at them and got better.

My main motivation for working on dynos in the gym, is to send Deliverance, outdoors, on rock, so....hmm.

FFS 😂😂😂😂😂

Probably better off working on standing on those volumes tbh

Tomoa Narasaki, perhaps the poster boy for modern 'parkour' style comp climbing, has recently gone outside and flashed an 8B+ boulder (previously was given 8C+, but Tomoa suggested 8B+) https://www.instagram.com/p/C1GGUEsPL3U/. He's flashed another 8B+ previously.

What an absolute waste of time all that indoor jumping around was

I'm fine with the slab footwork, just don't have the explosive power to latch the dyno (yet). 

The "dyno" is also mainly footwork IMO. Best of luck with it!

Indeed. I think there's even an app for that sort of thing these days - CHIMPD, or somesuch....

I wonder whether all the slopey blobbiness will lead to an epidemic of wrist issues rather than finger ones. I've never had any finger problems (I've always used crimps open handed), but have recently had wrist problems and been advised to go easy on slopers.

I don't think anybody would claim you can't be good at both styles.

It maybe depends what type of rock you want to climb? Blobby holds and volumes seem much more like climbing on gritstone than a long line of crimpy holds. 

I think equally you could say that climbing at ratho doesn't translate particularly well to a lot of the style of climbing you get in the UK, which is often shorter, more bouldery and less steep. 

I guess I don't really see bringing in broader learning from other stuff as just marginal gains for elite climbers. I think if you've been climbing a long time then a change of training stimulus tends to be really good for waking up your body physically and mentally and breaking up plateaus. Plus for me it's kept my interest and motivation going through lots of injuries. 

In reply to 

This is a creation of yet another sub genre to exploit the gullible.

I used to go climbing, I can't do that any more, now it has to be trad, sport, boulder, gym. Each with it's specific gear to use, don't you dare go trad climbing wearing that sport harness, the universe will collapse.

I used to got to the wall, I can't do that anymore, now it's the lead gym, the boulder gym, the traditional style boulder gym, the comp style boulder gym. Again with it's specific gear, don't you dare use lead chalk at a comp boulder gym.

It is a good job climbing is so enjoyable because all this stuff does nothing but deter me.

Sounds like you need to find some new friends. I’ve never come across the faintest whiff of criticism for saying I’m going climbing or to the wall, nor for having the wrong harness or whatever.  

My point is more just that it seems clear that jumping around on blobs (or whatever you want to call it) clearly hasn't been disastrous for his normal climbing. Flashing 8B+ is the top level outside, no-one has yet flashed 8C (maybe this one will settle at 8C and then Tomoa would be the first). Obviously we can never truly know what impact the comp style training has had on Tomoa's outside abilities compared with if he trained exclusively for outdoors, but at the very least, his comp style training has clearly not been bad training for outdoors (or maybe it has and actually he'd be flashing 9A+ if he trained differently, seems unlikely though).

Oh gosh no, you have misunderstood. It is the industry that drives these factions not the climbers. Certainly there are some climbers who buy in to this, happily not those who started climbing and continue climbing.

I am happy doing what I do, I just despair at some of the turns the industry takes to make a few more bucks.

It is not uncommon, cycling has a much more developed model. I used to go mountain biking,...

Yes, it worked for your sample size of one at the top end of our sport.

I doubt "jumping around in the blobs" is of any great benefit to the average wall user, driven indoors by the weather.

Ah come on, this is ridiculous!

Having different words to differentiate different types of climbing is hardly a mortal sin. They are clearly quite different from each other (obviously with some room for overlap).  I don't think anyone cares what sort of harness you use for different sorts of climbing. If you want a light harness for sport climbing and a harness with loads of gear loops for trad climbing, that's fine, if you just want one harness that works for everything, that's fine too.

I still call it the wall, so do all the other climbers I know, mostly under 30. Really though, what's wrong with the word gym? Obviously the chalk thing is just an absurdity you've made up.

I do despair at the cycling industry, so I'll happily agree with you there  

An absurdity that I have made up for sure but watch this space, it is on the horizon. With the plethora of superchalks now available, we are only half a step away.

Have you seen the boulder in question? It's small crimps, not dynos.

So just ignore it.

Companies are there to make money (OK, take your money in most cases). You don't have to pander to their needs. Buy (or even 'buy into') what you need, not what they want to sell to you.

You're halfway there......

The 'average wall user' is not driven indoors by the weather, they go there because they enjoy it.

I'm enjoying the irony and the sense of entitlement of the argument being advanced by some in this thread: "It's outrageous that walls don't cater primarily to my wants, and others like me who only reluctantly go there when we can't find any alternative."

The fact that we are climbing a wall, not wall bars.

Eh?  You mean the Comp Wall?

Perhaps Ennerdaleblonde has been asked not to use his Whillans harness in the gym*, and doesn't realise it's not the design they object to so much as it being visibly over 40 years old.

*(I call it the wall too, but find it funny when people get upset about this.)

boning down on chimps!?!

that’s the one, I made myself love it after writing it off for ages. I know it’s a comp wall.

Then you know why it has 'lower footfall than the rest of the centre' and that it doesn't necessarily have anything whatever to do with the style of the setting being slightly more compy.  It also has fewer problems on it than other areas, which are not included in any of the circuits and most of which are generally too hard for most of the punters most of the time.

I was not aware of the phrase "no tex". Not quite as catchy, but an appropriate moniker could also be: "Do you fancy knocking your own front teeth out mate?" . Climbed outside last night for the first time for a while and I can safely confirm that the macro-hold-fridge-lifting bollocks I fail to achieve on plastic is zero help for crimping some nasty edge on a 30° overhang. Horses for courses. 

Just go climbing my reactionary friend.  You've got something here upside down  Reread the comments here and the only people telling other people what to do is pretty obvious

Climbing involves starting at the bottom, finishing at the top, via a variety of styles.

It's funny: The same people seem to moan that (a) indoor wall are named more appropriately for a gymnastic event and (b) they they are more like gymnastic venues than climbing venues. The correlation seems eminently logical to me.

I'm not an indoor boulderer by any reasonable stretch of the imagination (even less outdoors), but I still quite enjoy the style of problems they provide. Yes, I hate it when you get a rash of problems set with a dyno as the last move since I don't like jumping/falling from the top of the wall (joints are just too old and fragile now), but I find a lot of the lower options to dyno - particularly around volumes - are also amenable to a more agile smear-n-balancy-falling-over approach. It's not 'climbing' (perhaps) but it's still good fun. Which is really the point isn't it?

Sorry, you've completely lost me there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun

It is quite a tricky concept to get your head around to be fair.

Having taken many climbers through the indoor to outdoor transition, the first thing they say is words to the effect of "good grief, where are all the actual holds, it's all just featureless blobs". 

You need more blobby compression routes indoor if you want to train for grit!

Or to answer the headline question: Cracks!

NWF in Warrington has always had a nice slightly overhanging crack line (finger-locks to not-quite-hand-jams, for me anyway) that provided years of entertainment. And pain.

I'm not sure that's really true. I'm not sure any wall is really geared towards off-vertical or slabbly climbing,  but, apart from the rather niche gritstone thing (and other exceptions), British climbing typically involves hanging around for ages getting slowly pumped and I think Ratho is about as good for that as you are going to get indoors for that (and at about 20m it's not really big by crag standards).

They do go climbing, just not climbing rocks. They climb plastic 

Bring back Bendcrete

You are right. I should have said rock climbing (though I'm sure most people probably assumed that is what I meant).

The first wall I ever went to was made by embedding actual pieces of rock into a brick wall. I wince at the memory! I wonder if there's any around like that any more?

Not exactly embedded, but one of the climbs on the legendary Berlin Bunker (one of the only two major venues we had to climb on before the mid-90s) comprised of fragments of porphyry from the East German quarry of the same name glued to the concrete wall : Löbejün (VII+). It´s still there today, the glue has held, and it´s still a good sandbag for aspirant UIAA VII+ leaders

This?

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/the_berlin_bunker-3501

Can't say I'm drawn to it!

On the other hand it probably (wild guess) has the highest ratio of total stars to total UKC logged ascents so how bad can it be?

Because it looks good on tv/online? Rather than some holds someone balancing on some holds so small the camera is just showing a blank wall?

Yes, but that picture´s from 1948, before the victorious Allies tried (unsuccessfully) to blow it up. Now it looks like this (the climbing face is hidden by the trees):

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Berlin_Humboldthain_Aussichtspunkte_B...

Rubble from the war was used to create an enormous engulfing hill behind it, which is now a wooded (and steep) park, great for running hill intervals; the one remaining climbing face (facing the camera, hidden by the trees) is north facing and very pleasant in Summer. Ok, it has sentimental value for me, but the adage still holds true: if you can climb grade x on the Bunker, you can climb it anywhere. Well worth a visit if you happen to be in Berlin!

PS anyone visiting and wanting a tour of pre-1989 climbing in old West Berlin: pack shoes and a harness and mail me!

Aren't many moves on plastic holds either.......

The future of route setting is clearly Obstacle Golf