Climbing is a very interesting sport and, depending on its type, you can do it alone, in pairs or even go with friends. One of the more popular types of climbing is bouldering, If you’ve been interested in this sport for a while you’ve probably wondered am I still a beginner at bouldering? What is the process of improving your skills, and overcoming difficulties?
Am I still a beginner at bouldering? It depends on the difficulty level of the scale you are climbing. In bouldering, the most common scale is V1 to V7. Each level requires slightly different skills, the higher up you go the harder it is of course.
Am I still a beginner at bouldering?
Bouldering is a type of indoor climbing where we need special shoes to climb and magnesia – a powder that minimizes friction and sweating of our hands. Bouldering does not require any other additional equipment, walls are usually 4 meters high and under them, there are crash pads – mattresses that absorb our falls.
It is also important to wear comfortable clothes which do not restrict your movements while climbing and performing various positions. A beginner is considered to be a person who climbs difficulties V1 and V2, the following ones are for more advanced climbers.
The first two difficulties are very easy or easy levels; they don’t require special skills or a lot of strength from the climber. However, the higher you go, the more challenging the routes become.
What do you need to do to improve your climbing?
If, for example, you’ve been climbing for a few months, and you’re still between levels V1 and V2 and finding it hard to jump to a higher level, maybe these few hints will make the process easier. No matter how long we’ve been climbing, it’s important to improve our strength, fitness, and agility as much as possible:
- Doing other sports, even if you have done them before, it is possible that climbing will allow you to be better at them too. When climbing, it will not only be useful for us to be strong or fit but also to be stretched. For example, you can try stretching, yoga, cardio, and weight training.
- Muscle mass, at the beginning of every training we won’t immediately build muscle mass, that’s obvious. However, in climbing, the ratio of our body mass to our muscle mass has the best influence on difficulty levels.
- A healthy diet, which is important in any other sport, climbing as an extreme and quite straining sport can expose our body and organism to various injuries and calorie losses.
- Appropriate weight, at the beginning it’s easier for lighter people because climbing is mainly training with your weight, many times you’ll have to pull yourself up, lift or hang on your arms to make a move. The higher the level of difficulty, the better the strength and technique. Our weight will regulate at some point, and may even increase under the influence of muscle growth.
- Hand and finger training: the hands are the climber’s “tools”. Thanks to them, we can move mainly on the walls and different kinds of routes. There are also special gripping boards available on which we can train the strength of our fingers and hands.
- Burning calories, every hard training requires replenishment of calories and nutrients. During a climbing session, it is important to replenish fluids, this can be plain water or special drinks with vitamins.
This is some advice for people who would like to jump their level higher in climbing. They are mainly advice from professional climbers, as well as my thoughts, thanks to which I have made progress myself. If you are wondering if am I still a beginner at bouldering, you should try these tips. In this article, you can read about what is the average grade for climbers.
Which is more important – dynamics or strength?
The most important thing in climbing is the ability to adopt an appropriate position, as well as static and dynamic techniques. Static climbing is when we move slowly, carefully checking where to reach or place our leg. The techniques described here will help you answer whether am I still a beginner at bouldering.
Dynamic climbing, as the name suggests, involves making dynamic moves that significantly accelerate our climbing, thanks to which we can cover more distant routes on the wall. Sometimes it’s not possible to make the next more difficult move without getting our body swinging first. Therefore, it is optimal to use a combination of these two techniques, i.e. to climb statically and dynamically.
In Summary – Am I Still A Beginner At Bouldering? – (How To Check)
So whether I am still a beginner at bouldering depends mainly on the difficulty levels I am overcoming. The first two, i.e. V1 and V2, are levels for beginners, they do not require special climbing skills.
However, subsequent levels require correct climbing techniques, and appropriate positions, e.g. flags, or guarding the three fulcrums. To be better at climbing, you need regular training, to practice various sports and some things described in this article. It is quite an unusual and addictive sport where you can go even with the whole family.
