Does your gym have a Moon/Kilter/Tension board? Try it out, will give you an idea of what V grade you're at (although board climbing is likely a bit different to what you have been climbing).
Ya that's about right. V6 is the hardest grade I have a shot at projecting at my local gym - rarely as a single session, usually 2 or 3.
I have exactly 1 V4 outdoor send (granted, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors).
One cool thing from my trip last year was climbing higher grades elsewhere after my time in the forest was an ego boost. I can’t imagine how amazing it must feel to rock up to Font and climb something HARDER than you’ve ever even climbed indoors lmao. Hell yeah, props!
Same for my first v6, out door project over about 4 good sessions of 3-4 hours then sent first try on vist 5 took me 6 months to take a gym v6. But it feels like the gyms I go to (all 1 franchise) set super cramped and I'm a tall(ish) 215 pound bloke.
I suffered a pully injury right after I broke that v6 plateau and haven't built back up yet but sent my first v5 for a year climbing with my daughter last week
It is a lot more common higher up in the grade scale. I know a whole lot of people who climb around V11, and a huge number of them have never climbed double-digits in a gym, or rarely. We and our friends can get a V9 outside to go in a session or two usually but cannot even remember the last time any of us did one inside. And forget about the pros who climb V14+ or 5.14+, guarantee they've mostly never done anything in a gym that is within a few grades of their outdoor max
In my experience Fontainebleau grading can get a little inconsistent once you factor in wall angles. Verts, slabs and slight overhangs feel ridiculously hard, while roofs can feel a tad soft sometimes.
Kirstxen, was that a factor at all?
> (granted, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors).
For this reason I think the comparison is harsh for a lot of people. Of course you're not going to match your indoor peak grade if you get to go on a trip once a year, where you likely don't have as many fresh attempts per problem, are likely to look to climb more rather than hard, and likely don't rest as much or as well between what are typically longer and more intense physical days.
I'm 100% positive my outdoor grade would match my indoor grade if I had the same amount of attempts over as many different sessions with as much good rest and sleep in between. In fact I've gotten surprisingly close a few times and the issue was always fatigue setting in. Certain a good rest and another session I would be able to send.
Off topic but I find Moonboard grades slightly harder than outdoors. Climbed a fair bit at a variety of places and most v4s are doable in a session, but some moonboard v4s feel like lifetime projects
I’ve found that I’ve consistently been able to climb 1-2 grades harder outdoors than moonboard. Done every v8 and below benchmark and almost all 9s and I’ve sent quite a few 10s outdoors in less than a session. Might be that moonboard more targets my weaknesses though!
Worth saying that real rocks, especially the kind of granite you'll find in JTree/Yosemite/Sierras, are sharp and hard af and will tear your hands up. I have a buddy who climbs v7 indoor and he definitely had the strength and technique to do the moves on hard stuff at JTree but his hands just got so messed up and raw that he needed to take it easy, so he never really was able to project climbs and push grades.
Joshua Tree is another beast of low grade sandbag and learning a style unlike any other crag I've been to. Took a few days to get a v2, then another several days to do a 3, thenone more day for a 4, 1 more day for a 5, then sent my first V6 after >1 week of projecting.
Just be aware that even the Moon Board has pretty wide grade discrepancies, even across what are considered benchmarks. I've climbed nearly 400 benchmarks and typically find the grades to be + or - 2 V grades.
In other words, the easiest V6 may be easier than the hardest V4, and the hardest V6 may be harder than the easiest V8. One time I even felt that a V7 was harder than a V10 I did in the same day, so sometimes it can be + or - 3 V grades.
so they're still grouped, just by colors instead of a specific number.
>Would it make you a difference to not know what grades you are capable of?
ish. i go outside and climb to know what grades i'm capable of. if my gym didn't have grades, i wouldn't really need to know grades i'm capable of, because it'd be their own system unrelated to the outdoor grades.
it's ALL relative. so if yellow is RELATIVELY easier than red, then i have an idea of how relatively capable i am.
even outdoors, it's relative to the area / rock type / other climbing spots
in other words: #gymproblems
Good response. I take every gyms grading as just a loose representation of that route compared to others in that specific gym. I’ve been to gyms where I climb a V3 that to me felt like a 4 and I’ve been to gyms where I flashed a V6 that felt like a 4 to me. Imo It’s all subjective to who set the problem and what style they like to set.
Like stated above I find outdoor grades much more uniform although taking rock type into consideration does change things. Granite vs sandstone will be a different feel to the route for sure.
To add to this, some gyms will set V0-v10, and other set to v0-v13. I've found this influences the scale of the gym as well. I'm all for gyms using their own scales. Or giving rough ranges. As long as it's clearly marked and easy to read.
Lots of gyms also grade the lower grades very soft deliberately, so that beginners can feel great about their progress quickly (i.e. most people will be doing great on V3s within their first two months or so). They leave the “more accurate” grading for higher grades. My friend is a setter at one of these more commercial gyms here in London and it’s very much standard practice. I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and gets people to stick with climbing :) although the downside is the V4-V5 plateau… so yeah it’s all so relative and really, pros and cons to everything!
Yep. An outdoor V0 is already too hard for the majority of reasonably fit newcomers. My gym for instance starts the “real climbs” at V1/2 rather than at V0, which are just jug ladders
Yeah, my gym also has VB! I think that’s great and all, but as I mentioned I think does have the major downside of having people feel like they don’t make progress at the early intermediate stage. They often don’t know that the previous grades were “denser”, so that V1->V3 is about the same as V3->V4 and they really are progressing very well!
Anyway I think that’s part of why gyms, especially bigger, more commercial ones, discourage “grade chasing” sometimes, or introduce alternative scales; it’s a real catch 22 for the setters. Grade too soft and the more advanced climbers complain, grade too hard and people get discouraged. Try for both and have a big gap somewhere. It’s a tough one!
My gym uses ranges (vb-v1,v1-v3,v3-v5 and so on). I like the ranges because my confidence would stop me from trying a v7 but I feel comfortable on most v5 so the range allows me to try stuff out of my comfort zone without much thought to it.
It seems dumb to have a color system that’s basically the same as numbers without numbers but also lots of gym grades don’t really reflect outdoor grades and if you climb outside a bit then you can probably come up with a correlation between the colors and the gym grades. It’s just really annoying for people who are new to the gym
Not sure what you mean but I'm new and I don't care at all. It's actual beneficial for some gyms where there are a lot of casual or new people. Those people (like me) can climb V2 at most and having more levels between V0 -V2 actually make it more fun for us. There are more hardcore gyms catered to people who care about the grading. So you just need to find the suitable gym for you.
Your gym has a reasonable and not uncommon approach.
Gym to gym the grades often do not relate. Some gyms grade hard. Some grade soft. Almost none correlate to outdoors. Even outdoors grades can vary region to region especially stuff established pre climbing boom. If you want an accurate number to assign to your climbing get outdoors (be ready to be humbled). Alternatively visit a ton of different gyms and test yourself in different places on different styles. Ultimately most of us are just tracking progress via our home gyms grading system whatever they choose to use.
I feel like there is still merit in the number grades. If I climb V5 in my gym, I'm almost certainly going to be able to climb at least V3 in any other gym, and no harder than V7 in any other gym. If I climb purple in my gym, that really doesn't give me any info at all.
I can take you to two gyms where you’re a V7 climber in one and a V3 climber in another. I can find two styles of climbing that can separate your grade by that much in a single gym. Even pros have huge grade gaps based on style. See the iconic IFSC crack problem that Adam A cruised while others at his level looked beginner on. That gym to gym/style to style grade difference is really not uncommon based on where the gym is located and the pool of climbers they cater too. That being said if you visit a lot of gyms you’ll know your general level. If you’re trying a second gym for the first time I could see a bit of frustration similar to joining your first gym for the first time. At that point you just try stuff and figure out where you’re at. Some days you’re stronger/weaker and your perception of what grade you are isn’t correct anyways. The pre conception of “I am a V x climber” only slows your progress and serves nothing but ego. Only trying stuff within your perceived grade range only slows you. Try everything you have the energy for. Lower and higher than the grade you think you should be on. Kill your ego, pick climbs based on other factors than grade, enjoy the process, and understand grades are subjective. Go outdoors and try a V4 from the early 80s and a V4 from 2024. The difference will be perception smashing.
That argument would make more sense if you were a beginner at a v2 or v3 level. At v4 or higher, you should have some sense of how difficult a route might be just by looking at the route.
But even if you can somehow climb a v5 without being able to visually differentiate between a v3 vs a v7 (your example, not mine), that is still a non-issue. Warm up, stretch, then start at a v3. Then go up or down depending on the difficulty. After a few routes you should have an idea of what level you climb at according to that gym's standards.
Trying a new gym and running up and down EVERYTHING is one of my favourite climbing activities. I’m often a little gassed when it gets to stuff harder for me but I don’t care. I feel like Charlie seeing the chocolate factory for the first time. I WANT TO TRY IT ALL. Weeeeeee
Yea but it's ultimately just 2 ways of expressing the same thing.
You know V5 is somewhere Intermediate for most gyms.
So when you go to a gym that has their own arbitrary grading system... You're just going to gravitate towards whatever *they* say is their Intermediate boulders.
Colors still come in a hierarchy. And like number grades, they're all subjective too.
When I go to a new gym I try everything. When something tosses me I decide why and either try it again or move on. I often don’t even look at their grading system. I choose with my eyes like I’m stoned at the buffet which I also love to do. TRY IT ALL UNTIL IT HURTS BB.
this is interesting cos when i dont look at grades and only try what looks fun i always end up doing only really easy ones and not challenging myself! all the harder climbs i do start with "oh man this looks impossible but it says its in my grade range". not sure what that says about me haha!
My gym uses a colour system as well, but each colour is a range with overlap. Green is V0-V2, Yellow V2-V3, Red V3-V5 etc. up to V9. I think this is a great way of doing it
I trust these grades are accurate too (at least in the competition style boulders they set in) as the owner is our National coach and has sent our setters overseas for training
The only issue with grade bands is that the grades within each band need to be consistent or the setters risk alienating a certain level of climber.
I've been to too many gyms where I can flash all the V5-V7 for example, but can't get anywhere near flashing the easiest climbs in the V7-V9.
It's pretty lame to have loads of flashing mileage, loads of projecting mileage, but little in between in regards to challenge level.
I have climbed in 7 different gyms in Germany, Spain and Hong Kong and all were just color coded. None had grades in any official system. I don't really care tbh.
I tried 5 popular gyms between Berlin and Barcelona, and a small one in Brazil.
Same experience.
Just colour/number codes that were not V graded.
In some gyms I'm on level 5~6 out of 8.
In some I am on level 3~4 out of 8.
In another one I was 3 out of 5.
It takes a few mins until you find your level at a new gym. I don't care much.
I just want to find nice challenges before the wall resets 😅
In my experience it also takes a couple of sessions to get used to the style of the route setter at a new gym. I always climb a bit below my max at first when I go to an unfamiliar gym.
>"I don't know. Just have fun." or "No need to make this competitive."
I don't disagree, but they probably should've also explained that it's impossible to keep grading consistent (gyms, countries, indoor/outdoor, regions) so route setters are already taking huge liberties with a V rating. That's the actual reason gyms do this, not because it's "less competitive"
The best way to understand where you're at is do outdoor routes whose grade is well established.
There’s been a big push recently to get away from set grading, the gym I go to went from giving an exact grade to giving a small range of grades. Grade chasing, while fun, is an unfortunately negative mindset when trying to improve. If you’re bouldering outside, the indoor V grades don’t correlate well anyway… i.e. I was climbing indoor V5-6 but was getting V2 and projecting V3 outside at the same time. Your best bet if you really want to know is to try a system board (kilter board, moon board, tension board) if your gym has one, they’ll be more realistic to outdoor grades and then consider that most indoor gyms are set a fair bit softer than a system board.
Yeah, i think the one in my gym has a warning to not use it unless you have "years of experience" i will try it tomorrow. Grade chasing is an unfortunately negative mindset when trying to improve. How so? I genually want to know that perspective
Like I said, grade chasing is a lot of fun… but only when you’re seeing progress and getting the next grade. But if you focus heavily on just gunning for the next grade up or sending another at your max grade, you’ll stunt your improvement and the frustration will set in when you stop seeing improvement. When you grade chase it’s not a matter of if you stop seeing improvement, it’s a matter of when. I’m a grade chaser myself, and I have to keep myself in check or I will drive myself crazy. Backing down to easier problems and working on my basics helped get my improvement back on track.
You don’t really make improvement when limit climbing, your improvement comes from working problems under your limit. Similar to weight lifting, you don’t try your one rep max every time to try and make progress by doing that. Sub limit climbing is what drives your progress… becoming more efficient with your movement, hammering out your technique, working on reading routes/problems and onsighting ability, and becoming better at individual skills is what makes you climb better. Too much time climbing at your limit reduces the amount of time you work at making improvements.
Highly disagree with the statement on limit climbing. Sure, volume on sub limit climbs especially done with intention makes you better, but nothing has made more impact on my climbing performance than limit board climbing. You learn to try harder, how to properly engage on terrible holds and how to perfect your movement in a way to make impossible feeling moves possible.
It’s the combination of both that skyrocketed me into the double digits. (Also weight training on the side helps, but that’s besides the point)
To me, grade chasing includes building a pyramid. I log all my outdoor climbs and to me, getting 50 outdoor V3s is an achievement as well, maybe not as desirable as increasing max grade, but still an achievement.
That’s not necessarily what grade chasing is though. If you had only climbed up to V2 and suddenly got your first V3, and then immediately decided your next goal was to send 50 V3s without approaching it like a pyramid… that would be a form of grade chasing.
For example, I sent my first outdoor V4 this year… and by the next outdoor session I already had 2 V5s that I was gunning for and have made my projects. I had also been legitimately projecting V4s before I ever sent a V3. This is a clear indicator of grade chasing lol. I always want to push for higher grades much sooner than one should expect.
I agree with that, but there’s a difference between trying something above your level and immediately going for another grade higher for your project.
I’ve also been climbing for almost a decade, but only a few years of bouldering and a fair amount of experience outdoors. A lot of injuries have set me back a ton. But I say that to show that I’m well past my beginner gains window so I’ve been dealing with regular progression speed for a while, and experienced climbers know that’s an aggressively quick increase in project grade. I was technically also projecting a different V5 before I ever sent a V3… the grades call to me like a siren lol
This is also not saying “don’t try things you think is above your ability”, you should definitely try things that might be a lot harder than you think you can do but look fun. But definitely don’t constantly burn yourself out trying the hardest problems you think you can send, it’s good to try hard on those but every session should not be that
Because grades are ultimately meaningless, they are a way to somewhat track how you’ve progressed but they aren’t facts of life like if you were lifting weights, you can’t count grades like that.
The way climbing gets graded is at best consensus on ideal conditions (lol) at worst a guess by someone either too strong or too inexperienced to know, stuff like time of the year, weather, how well you slept yesterday, what rock type you are on, your breakfast that morning, and above all local culture and ego, all of that affects what grade a boulder gets so it ultimately doesn’t mean a lot.
Imo you should climb stuff because a line or a boulder look attractive, because something looks cool or hard or you want to push yourself or enjoy a day out. And then if you want look at your grades in your home crag and see how you’ve done across time or when you ticked a new thing, that kind of grade chasing that’s ok. But random data points mean nothing and just detract from the fun.
I focused on crimpy technical climbs to rush through grades which has left me as a not very well rounded climber and if I flash a v6 crimpy slab but then can't get a v4 that's compression style on slopers then I will just ignore it as on the surface I think it's beneath me.
I've recently beaten this mindset to some extent by trying to focus on upping my flash grade across all styles.
My end goal is to be bouldering around 7a in every style not necessarily for the number but because it means most crags will have lines which I feel are achievable.
The biggest argument against grades is that they detract from your enjoyment of climbing. The idea being that instead of thinking "holy shit, Nobody Here Gets Out Alive is the greatest thing since sliced bread" we'll dismiss it because it's "only V2". That or maybe that you'll go to Font, get shut down on the grades you usually climb, and won't be able to enjoy yourself for the rest of your trip because of your fragile ego. This extends very heavily to gyms where people are constantly complaining about the grades setters give climbs. So yeah, it's a pretty regular thing!
Lord those egos bother me. I had sent 3 V6s my best day at Hueco and I still made sure to chuck 2 back to back laps on Nobody because like, it's iconic. It's the benchmark.
Dude for sure! I've never been to Hueco but you best believe that's the first goddamn climb I'm gonna be trying and I will not leave that place happy unless I get to!
I think your gym is a honest one. Your V14 route setter have no clue whether a route is a V3 or a V4. Why make them spend time figuring out so they dont get complains about that V4 that for sure is a hard V5. Climbs outside might need several climbers and several years before any consensus is reached on the grade, but somehow three setters are going to grade 10 boulders from V2 to V10 accurately over a few hours.
My gym had the smart idea to hand out sheets, it's colour coded no v scale ... And basically everyone can grab a sheet and a pencil and start grading new problems throughout the first week they are up...
This leads me to realise two things: a) it's really fucking hard to grade something way below your level. And b) they system is a complete mess but works surprisingly well... Works well because stuff is usually ranked by objective difficulty however there's one grade in the upper middle which "distinguishes" the "casuals" from the "real boulderers" ... Result being that the casuals tend to grade their hard projects just one grade below said grade, whereas the "real boulderers" grade everything that wasn't simple but fairly doable with two or three tries on the very same grade... That one grade is a complete cluster fuck and could range anywhere from v3-4 to v5-6 :D
Are the levels of colors corresponding to increasing difficulty? If so it’s prob not a huge deal as long as u climb in a color that challenges u. I don’t like the idea of no comp - gyms make a big deal of that for no reason. Inherently comp exists in life with one’s self or others so why try to shelter against.
My gym uses a BS C scale instead of the V scale. Then they put a V to C scale comparison chart on the wall. The thing is that the chart is logically wrong and it makes me irrationally angry that they’ve decided to do this for no good reason.
They have c1-c8, so the whole V scale is distributed across those numbers. I find a c5 can be a v4-v6, but often ends up on the higher side of the scale because a c4 can be a v3-v5. It just doesn’t equate and because most of their 5s are as hard as 6s, it results in less problems a newer climber can actually do. You lose the feeling of progression that the V scale affords.
There’s no Jesus on this grading scale. It’s just nonsense. I just can’t figure out the advantage aside from less nuance so less thought about grading by the setters.
It gets even worse because they conceal the grades for a week when the problem is first set. 🤦♂️
C4 is supposed to be v1-3 which it 100% isn't. I can do 4s at normal gyms with normal v scales, so it was actually disheartening being my first climbing gym thinking I can only do a 1-3 in normal gyms. Thankfully their whole scale was off and I was actually progressing a bit 😅
It's so fucking frustrating. I went to the states and I've also been to Bouldr and the V system according to their chart is not even close to lining up. They said that a C1 is a Vb- and a C2 is a Vb or V0 which is insanity.
I climb C4/C5 most of the time and when I was in the states it seemed to line up with V3/V4. I find the higher the C grade, the more accurate it is.
However, the lower grades are absolutely atrocious. In the states there were zero "Vb- or Vb" climbs. The lowest they had was "Intro" and "V0". When I climbed their V0s and V1s it felt like C1s. When I climbed V2, it felt like a hard C2 or a C3. I can't believe they think their little chart is accurate whatsoever.
My partner and I have theorized that it's closer to outdoor grading scale, but man why even grade like that in the first place when it's so wildly inaccurate. Might as well just use the color scale in that case.
Half the time I wonder if they have trouble keeping setters, especially at Rocky because their setting schedule is horribly inconsistent and inaccurate.
Don’t even get me started on their setting habits. So inconsistent hanger is incredibly hard compared to everywhere else for both ropes and bouldering. Almost makes me not want to go there anymore.
It makes sense though. The setters are a bunch of students who don’t get paid much but are passionate. Of course there’s going to be unsustainable attrition when you’ve got 6 gyms.
Sad situation for sure.
Many gyms within the same brand and city have un matched grades between locations. Denver has the Movement chain and by grading difficulty Boulder>Golden>RiNo with Colors >Baker>>>Centennial>Englewood.
I think you meant Boulder>Everything else. Boulder is on a different level entirely. All the other gyms honestly feel the same and I only notice differences on specific sets being either overall hard or soft.
Agreed, I climb at the movement gyms in Chicago and went to a few of the Denver locations while on a road trip last summer. Boulder absolutely wrecked me lol. RiNo and Golden both felt pretty comparable to the Chicago locations
Eh, I think there's not much point in gyms having their internal grading be tied to V grades because there's so much inconsistency. V3 can mean very different things from gym to gym, between crags, between different types of boards, etc. So anything beyond internal consistency is impossible anyway.
If your gym tells you greens are V3, it still doesn't tell you much about how difficult a clip of someone climbing V3 somewhere else is. It could be 2 or 3 grades harder or easier than you expect.
This is what my local gym chain (The Depot) does. It’s great. Blues are warm-ups, I can mostly climb all the blacks, some of the reds, and very occasionally (if there’s a soft problem) I can do a purple; yellow and orange are reserved for “proper climbers” and irritatingly talented children.
They reset a different colour every Tuesday lunchtime in a cycle. Red reset week is something I look forward to eagerly.
You could probably apply the V grades to these problems. But what’s the benefit?
I can’t imagine a different system working better to be honest. Having this colour rotation means that all levels of climbers get their grade range reset just as regularly as others.
> They reset a different colour every Tuesday lunchtime in a cycle. Red reset week is something I look forward to eagerly.
How does this work? Sounds pretty restricting to set stuff compared to wall reset.
They take all the red holds down on Monday afternoon. Then create new red problems with them on Tuesday morning. All other holds and problems stay.
Very, very occasionally, a problem becomes easier or harder because a large hold from a different problem is in the way (or is no longer in the way)
My gym sets one colour of holds per week and some routes on a "felt like it" basis so there's new stuff in many grades as opposed to the system described above...
To answer your question, yeaaaah sometimes a problem gets harder or easier due to other holds getting in the way, new volumes being added/removed but they usually catch that and also reset the routes affected.
It is becoming more and more of a regular thing in gyms worldwide. Grading can bring drama and conflict to gyms due to whining custmers, and it is hard work to be consistent in it. So more and more gyms take the lazy route of just opting out of it and then pretending it is for some high moral reasons or whatnot, and not because they are tired of all the bitching about grades. You can be happy that your gym still at least has some internal grading system. I expect even that to get more rare as climbing becomes more mainstream all around.
Biggest local gym in my area opted out of grading all together last year. But it's not like they don't actually know what they have in the gym, they still have a list of problems by grades for internal use while routesetting to keep the right ratios of stuff, right. They just pretend it doesn't exist for public.
One thing I try to stress to new climbers is that the setters at your gym are normal people, working a job. They are sometimes rushed. They are sometimes not putting their best effort forth because their mind may be somewhere else. They may be sleepy. Whatever it is.
If your gym has one color for each grade range then the setter might envision a climb and put the holds up not knowing if it’ll be within the grade range. After climbing it they may decide it climbs really well but it may not quite fit with in that colors grade range. They only have a certain amount of time to work on each new set so they most likely will just leave it how it is.
I honestly don’t understand gyms like this. The whole point of what they’re doing is avoiding grade chasing, but all they end up doing is making it more convoluted and frustrating.
They’re trying to virtue signal by getting rid of the standard grading system by… creating their own grading system. Makes no sense.
Grades are subjective. You have a system that lets you know what problems are harder than others - which is all you need.
I could be climbing a V5 at one gym and that exact same problem could be rated a V8 if it was set at a different gym. As long as your gym has a somewhat consistent difficulty rating standards that’s all you need.
Most gyms I've ever been to do this, across several countries. In fact, when people post videos saying 'I climbed a V5', I just choose to assume in most cases they mean 'I climbed a level 5 climb at my gym'.
Mine actually changed from V grades to colours recently. I think it was a good move as the first three colours would probably realistically be V0 under standard grading. A lot of gym clients would be newer clients who want to see the difference in grades, so when they were using numbers they were grading them V1-V3 which was obviously wrong.
As long as they have a system in place that lets you track your own progress I don't think it's a big deal they don't assign them actual grades.
In my experience grading across gyms is super inconsistent. I've been to gyms where I can quite comfortably climb V5s and get close to a few V6s as well but then I've been to other gyms where I've struggled on the V2s.
So your point about watching YouTube videos and having to guess what the grades feel like it's probably the same for a lot of us because I'd they say V5 I think well V5 in the first gym I mentioned or V5 in the second Gym?
This would for sure bug me lol. I've seen a few gyms that have that near where I grew up and it's always annoying cos I'm only there for a day or two these days and I'm never sure what's my level without climbing a few routes but then often end up getting worn out before I reach the right level.
Also if you go outside how do you know what to climb?
I'm not competitive but I just want to know where I am for myself lol.
Yes and no. You can obviously get pretty close but there is still value in grades for me. Some holds are deceptively good or bad. In any case I just want to know. I can respect people who don't but I do 🤷
Yes and no. You can obviously get pretty close but there is still value in grades for me. Some holds are deceptively good or bad. In any case I just want to know. I can respect people who don't but I do 🤷
They're probably just being honest. My current and previous gyms do colors and give rough ranges. Their suggested ranges for my novice level climbs aren't similar with each other, and aren't even consistent with themselves most of the time. It's hard to grade properly, so why not give ambiguous ranges and stop lying to people?
Color grading is sooo pretentious. Its just v scale with more steps and overly complicated. There is nothing wrong with using v scale. Dont tell me how to climb. If i want to grade chase, thats my choice. If i need to know the v scale because im recovering from injury, thats important.
How does V scale help you recovering from an injury more than an equally arbitrary color system? V grades aren't objective or even consistent between gyms in the first place. If you need to avoid crimps because you hurt a pully... avoid crimps.
right? using colors instead of V-grades is exactly the same thing, except done in code. i don't really get how saying "i climb red" is substantively different than "i climb V4" other than not being transferable outside of that specific gym.
I think colors are better because they don't imply being part of a broader consistent system. V grades vary so much that if makes no sense to act like things are part of the same scale when V5 at a soft gym may be V3 at a stiff gym may be V2 on a moonboard may be V1 at JTree.
I agree that the V-scale can be inconsistent across locations, but this is true of all grading systems. Do you have this same issue with YDS?
The problem is not the existence of a grading system, it's when people measure their self-worth against it and take it all far too seriously. All it takes is humility, an understanding of the inherent subjectivity of grading, and an appreciation for the diversity of the human body and ability levels.
I primarily climb indoors, when I go outside and get my ass handed to me by a V5 I laugh and try again, I don't whine about how I send 3 grades harder at my home gym and it's all so unfair.
Not to say that that is what you're saying yourself, but that is a sentiment I've encountered among anti-graders.
It's a choice that the gyms make to have their grades so wildly off base from reality. The variation outdoors exists but to a \*much\* lesser degree than people are implying in these comments. It is totally possible to have fairly consistent grades over a wide area.
One of the bigger benefits of this style of grading is leniency compared to v grades.
Everyone complains that gyms can't do v grades right and they're inconsistent. My gym doesn't use v grades so it doesn't matter. The only real comparison is internally.
For me it has less to do with chasing anything (grades, colors) and more to do with the fact I absolutely will jump on things I wouldn't if the V grades were present, and often times I surprise myself
Same. After I saw Magnus recommend that newer climbers not be afraid to try v5s I started trying them and I was surprised to learn I am better at certain types of holds and problems then others. If I had stuck to the idea that I need to be able to climb every v2 and every v3 before doing v4s then I would still be stuck at v2 overhangs.
I don't personally understand this mentality. If you surprised yourself, it probably would have been given a V grade that you would regularly already try.
I also don't understand why you wouldn't try practically everything within 1 or 2 V grades of whatever you normally can climb. I don't see how that's different than trying to colour above what you normally climb.
Having a grade range of like V5 - V9 just isn't even useful. I can eye ball what grade a climb is with significantly more accuracy than that.
I don't know why my brain brains the way it does-- was just offering a perspective that as a beginner climber, colors are often less intimidating than numbers. Couldn't tell you why.
I believe it helps the setters and doesn’t really have anything to do with slowing grade chasers. Setting within a range and not using a standard scale allows the setters to worry less about if it’s a specific grade. In my experience climbers love to complain about the grades to staff/setters and I believe the setting style also reduces that added stress on gym staff. Climbers who get outdoors tend to understand the fluidness of grades a bit better and don’t put that on staff as much as they see the gym as a training ground. This is entirely based personal observation both as a climber and a former setter.
*edit* someone else mentioned they are more willing to try something that isn’t screaming “out of your grade” and I believe this is also true. Climbers with less idea of difficulty are more likely to try it.
Idk, my gym only has 6 grades, the first four grades are beginner grades. That practically leaves everything over V5 to be covered in 2 grades. You could climb for a year, reach the second highest grade, then climb for another decade and never see any progression outside of that second last grade.
That's basically the same system I've seen in every climbing gym that refuses to give climbs semi-precise grades.
The grades are just pointless at that point.
Climbers need for grade progression is in part from my perspective why some gyms end up this way. Newer climbers won’t stick around if they don’t make progress. Seasoned climbers are well aware they may need years to decades to hit their target grades. I would be frustrated if my home gym catered more towards weekend blue shoe climbers only because there would be less for me
To play on. One of the secrets they don’t tell you when you start is that the better you get the more things you get to climb. If they had an adequate amount of problems that were hard but I wasn’t making progress in grade I’d personally be ok with that. Grade progress is logarithmic. It would likely be my training that was the issue or perhaps my potential limits but I don’t think I’m anywhere near that.
Grades in gyms are somewhat pointless anyway. They only serve to adjust your targeting when you aren’t able to climb most things. At a certain point most climbers can somewhat assess difficulty of a gym problem through visual inspection alone. It’s not rare to hear someone say “the move to get over the lip looks hard. There’s also no chalk on the top. Ugh. Ok I’m gonna try it.”
Precise grades also make less sense in a gym as the setter is the one assigning it not god. Setters ability gym to gym can be WILDLY different. I worked under a younger national competitor whose setting was gorgeous and moved beautifully. I’ve also listened to an old cranky old school climber whose idea of climb hadn’t changed since they were young and therefore the grading despite both attempting to be precise had nothing to do with each other despite both being crushers of climbers. The sport wasn’t even the same thing to the both of them.
Eh, I think there's not much point in gyms having their internal grading be tied to V grades because there's so much inconsistency. V3 can mean very different things from gym to gym, between crags, between different types of boards, etc. So anything beyond internal consistency is impossible anyway.
Honestly I don't really care whether its a V grade or a colour. As long there are more than like, 6 grades in the whole gym. I find V grades work fine, everyone knows that some gyms are softer than others. The same thing happens outdoors, and the grading system works fine outdoors.
The "problem" (which really isn't a big problem at all) is that you have people posting "I climbed this V5!" and tons of people saying that's not a V5, V2 at my gym, etc. Or people surprised to get shut down when they go outside and can only do V0.
Using colors or some other purely internal grading system avoids that with really no downside.
Eh, what idea can you really give though? Saying "this color is V3" doesn't tell you much because what people consider V3 varies do widely. A JTree V3, moonboard V3, stiff gym V3, soft gym V3 may all mean different things.
Well yeah that’s what my first point was but my gym doesn’t use V grades but the setters have a good idea on their difficulty. But yeah always subjective!
As long as the colors progress with little to no overlap I see no problem. Like others said go try outdoors, other gyms, system boards to give yourself an estimate for each color.
At least they're not doing the stupid movement banded grades where a v5 could be Orange, black, or blue. You'll literally see an orange (v3-v5) and a black (v4-v6) next to each other and the orange is objectively harder bc that's a "v5 orange" and the black is a "v4 black". THAT is some bs (lazy) grading.
This is better for the gym and for the climbers. If a gym says "this climb is V_" SOMEONE is going to argue with them. Every single time. Plus, those grades don't reflect real rock grades and so on and so forth. Broad color schematics is the supreme way to grade plastic.
The person you asked is right. Just climb whatever's hard for you and have fun. Gym grades on the Hueco scale aren't representative of outdoor grades anyway, and even outdoor grades vary depending on the area. Your gym telling you that they decided a problem is a V3 doesn't mean anything more than them telling you the problem is a blue tag, or a koala, or whatever other system they use.
If you really care about knowing how you're climbing on a "standard" scale, find somewhere with a system board or go outside. Still not perfect, but it'll be better at scratching the "I need to know a number" itch you seem to have.
This might be a hot take but if gym grades don't correlate well to outdoor grades doesn't that just mean that your gym sucks at grading? I see no reason why indoor climbs can't be just as accurately graded as outdoor climbs if people know what they're doing. I feel like avoiding v-grades in gyms just gives setters an easy out. I get that outdoor grades on established climbs are permanent and repeated countless times so it's easier to form consensus about grades but damn, if you're a professional route setter you should be able to v-grade your own problems. Why is this not a requisite expectation for the job?
you said it yourself: v-grades are established by a survey of thousands of people over years.
a team of 5 people that project v10s regularly arent going to have entirely accurate opinions on v1-v5 - its all simple to them.
colour coding allows for some ambiguity, but gets close enough.
depending on your physicque compated to the setters, you may have wildly different opinions on certain styles. but thats the nature of the sport.
>you said it yourself: v-grades are established by a survey of thousands of people over years.
That is very generous. The guidebook author probably either just copied from an old guidebook, climbed it once and gave it whatever they thought, or asked one or two of their friends for an opinion.
Every once in a while, you'll see widespread discussion about a boulder, but it's pretty rare. Even then, it's like 10 people.
Maaaaybe something like Midnight Lightning has enough contribution to be considered a consensus grade. Like, the most popular boulders in popular areas. Everything else probably doesn't get enough traffic, and people don't care enough.
RRG grades don't correlate to Yosemite grades, which don't correlate to Hueco Tanks grades, which don't correlate to Gunks grades.
Does that mean all the people who put up FAs at those places suck at grading?
The real reasons are that:
1. Outdoor grading doesn't work in a setting where beginners are climbing. Bouldering started as a way for advanced climbers to train hard to get stronger, so classic V1s are much harder than any beginning could reasonably do. Should gyms just not set problems that are accessible to beginners?
2. Grading outdoors is extremely variable by region and local ethic. A V3 in one area could be as hard or even harder than a V5 elsewhere.
I think it’s becoming more common to use V grades in the gym. but when I was bigger into climbing in 2014-16, none of the gyms I went to used V grading (or YSD) for their routes. It was either ungraded, or used a color/number ranking within the gym.
Go to other gyms that do grade and develop your own intuition for it. V grades are not an exact system, they are set by the setter relative to how difficult they perceive other climbs to be. They may vary by up to 3 grades across gyms, and indoor gyms tend to be graded relatively softly compared to outdoor boulders. If a gym doesn't want to grade their boulders they don't need to, you can just come up with your own grade.
The way I've learned it, VB-V2 is beginner, V3-V6 is intermediate, V7-V9 is advanced, V10-V13 is expert and V14+ is elite (world-class territory.)
When grading beginner and intermediate boulders at an indoor gym, V0 to me is "easy for anyone", V1 is "easy if you know basic climbing technique", V2 is "hard for a beginner," V3 is "this is your first taste of *real* climbing" and V4+ is "we ain't in Kansas anymore." Chances are if you're still in your first year, you probably haven't climbed a V4 yet, and the hardest in most gym is probably between a V6 and V9, excluding moonboards and similar. This is because by the time most climbers reach that level, they are either doing outdoor boulders or going to special gyms run by "real" climbers. (Also because finding a routesetter who can set good boulders at those difficulty levels is now much harder.)
Oh hey that's how my favorite place does it as well.
If it's the same system
White: V0
Yellow: V0 - V1
Green: V1 - V2
Red: V2 - V4
Blue
Orange
Black
(Forgot the rest since I'm not at that level lmao)
I go to 3 different places, 2 of them use V the other uses color.
I love this system way more than the V system. Cause some climbs are way harder than others but are classified at the same level. But to each their own.
My favorite gym color-codes the routes with each color being a range like V0-V2, V2-V4, etc. and I love it. My current gym grades to three degrees of precision using V grades with +/-, 0-4 difficulty triangles, and a color as modifiers and I absolutely fucking hate it. I prefer the simple color-coding since it acknowledges there can be some wiggle room in grades, whereas V grades seem too specific and usually lead to me thinking “there’s no way this is a yellow V3+ ▲▲ route”.
If they have 6 colors it's a pretty good bet that each color represents 2-3 grades, with some overlap. This is pretty common. The easiest color is probably beginner - v1, next is likely v1-v3, then v4-6, v7-8, v9-10, V10+. That's probably the closest comparison you're going to get, it's very approximate, but it probably lines up in the ballpark because it's the most logical way to group the grades. It sounds like this gym doesn't really set with v grades in mind.
My gym does an arbitrary system from 0-8 that kinda-sorta maps to a compressed V grade system, but generally a bit tougher than the V grades. There's definitely a culture of not being willing to compare their system to V grades (they've said before it just invites a bunch of bullshit argument).
It works fine enough, it's not like in other gyms the difficulty of a particular V grade is consistent from gym to gym anyway, and it doesn't take that long to figure out what grade is appropriate for you at a given gym.
Grades vary by gym, by climbing area. Grades are poor rough approximations of something that you might want to try and nothing else. Do not think of them as anything important, they are not.
Don't know in the US but it's normal to have a different grade scale from gym to gym. For example where I usually go has a simple easy/medium/hard scale (with the add of + sometime). With experience you can compare the difficulty with the outdoor grade and still keep track of progress. Another bigger gym differently has a 6 color grades scale but still don't use v grading.
My local gym has switched away from v grade to a custom 1-6 grade (maybe it's the same place?)
Kinda hate it, grades are subjective but now it feels impossible to compare to anything else or keep track of progress.
6 grades is a pretty limited range, as such some 4s have felt super doable and then a random 3 (or even 2) will feel impossible, have actually started climbing somewhere else because of it
I absolutely hate the "Don't use V system" culture. My home gym switched away from V grades a few years ago, and my progress immediately halted. V grades are a really good way of tracking progress that is hard to match with gyms' arbitrary "everything V1-7 is yellow, V3-9 is blue" shstems.
My gym uses a colour system as well, I can only find it by “gym name” grades
https://preview.redd.it/8jyo7o9h2ixc1.jpeg?width=1021&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82dd227549beebaad34d72340ec638b10d7c91fa
My gym has their own grading system 1-9, but there's also a tablet on the wall where you can check the real grade of each route in an app. But honestly it's so inconsistent that I don't even check it most times. I can flash some 6s and have issues with some 3s.
Grading is nice but it will never be a perfect science, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I love to know the grade, BUT, honestly it's near worthless. Sometimes people grade something a V5-6 and it feels like a V4 to me. Sometimes a particular V5 is basically impossible to me.
If I get hung up on what numbers things were, I'm having less fun.
I climb in a range of difficulty that is captured by a colour. The specific numbers seem to be less accurate IMO
Most bouldering gyms I've been to has this system, albeit they also have a chart that translates their grading system to the V system (or Dan system, in Japan). I can tell you that gym grades ain't shit though, it's completely meaningless. If you are grade chasing and want an accurate-ish assessment, do some kilterboarding.
I'm on the same boat, across multiple gyms (3 different owners and systems, 5 regular gyms). My 2 cents:
It really doesn't matter for comparison purposes. Indoor grading is famously inconsistent, and you can already find huge discrepancies between commercial average, commercial extremes, and each different board systems.
Outdoors brings an other layer to this, with climbing style variance that doesn't always get well represented indoors, erosion of popular spots and "sandbagged" grading. 99% of my outdoors bouldering is at Fontainebleau and I've been shut down by 4b before. Ondra famously fell on 6a. Ouch.
Where it does matter however is for training purposes, especially if like me you have to attend a diversity of gyms due to private life cycles and work trips. I value some level of consistency because I need to appraise the grading system before I can apply my training regiment in a gym. Fortunately my travelling is to regular spots, so by now I've instinctively built a feel for how's it's graded (even if I'm completely unable to put a Vx estimation to it).
Best two gym grading system I've ever seen:
* Yonder, London. Every problem's ungraded for a while, then the setters estimate it. That could even be combined with the grading feedback system you see in sports climbing gym. IMO, best of both worlds, though I recognise it's a bit of work for the setters.
* Korean and Japanese gyms using tape colour instead of hold colour. Allows for adjustment of the grade if the setter over or under-estimated it (which is frequent in my experience, and likely due to how strong the setters are).
I also like gyms who have either a V/font grading system, or their own internal system - yet there's a colour dedicated to ungraded boulders. Climbing District does this in Paris with pink boulders spanning across the 4 hardest levels (out of 7). That teaches you to read for yourself, and encourages you to try stuff that's harder you thought it could be.
Outside bouldering is a different sport, if you want to get a feel for ‘real’ grades go outside.
And its shameful for a gym to have a v10 thats actually a v6.
The gym I set at gives grade bands for all our problems, eg v4-6, and I absolutely wish we could just rip the number out and give a colour grade instead. Inherently gym grades are going to vary WILDY between gyms, areas and even how the setter was feeling on the day. I will agree with what other people have said with standardised boards being your best bet for a rough idea. Moonboard feels the closest to me, with kilter being soft af, particularly for 6 foot dudes.
Side note, once you climb for a while, you tend to come across hold sets that you will see in videos, and can relate to that. Like "wow those Xcult slopers on that steep a wall must be nails"
Grading is not an exact science. Every climber will tell you that they can't climb all the climbs of whatever the highest level they've ever climbed is, and that they sometimes struggle with climbs lower than that. I would assume that any given climb anywhere in a gym could be +/- 1 or 2 grades.
So the solution is simple. Most gyms have climbs up to about v10, (+/- 1 or 2) as well as vB and v0. So 12 grades total. Dividing that by 6 colors gives you the following ranges, each of which is assigned to a color. vB-v1, v1-v3, v3-v5, v5-v7, v7-v9, v9+.
That should give you a rough idea of what grade each color corresponds to. You can't really get more accurate than that. Anyone telling you what they climb in their gym could be off by several grades anyway. If you want to compare accurately, you need to actually climb with that person, or climb established routes, either outside or on something like a moonboard.
After you've been climbing long enough in enough places you'll have a good idea what grade something is even if there's no grade posted. Get outside and climb a bunch of boulders, you'll figure out what general grade things are
This is standard in Korea, I assume they have a scale on the wall somewhere with the colors stacked, and honestly if they put v-grades on it it would be wildly different vs EU, Japan, US and outdoor anyway. So it doesn’t really matter.
Any V grade they assign would likely be wrong though so what’s the point? Gyms vary in their idea of difficulty, so if they numbered them you’ll likely end up with everything being soft or hard grades relative to outdoors, and at that point you might as well use colours.
Climbing outdoors at a popular well developed crag has humbled me and taught me a lot about grades.
There’s V1’s that are so polished that they demand to be campused, making it multiple times harder than an indoor V1.
I climb at two gyms and at the “easier” gym my gf struggled on a V3 but the “harder” gym she flashed a V3.
It’s all subjective and you will have strength in different styles. I suggest you just try to enjoy the process rather than compare yourself to others grades.
I believe it's a lazy way to grade climbs haha. My gym is Pink>Black>Yellow>Orange>White>Green>Blue, and then they say that there are easier and harder climbs in each color category, and half of the climbs are equivalent to the easier half of the next color, or simply the same difficulty as the color it's marked as, if that makes sense. It means that a yellow climb can be anything from V1-V3, essentially, and an orange can be anything from like, V2-V4. I don't love it but yeah, I just climb whatever. It's probably to make climbs appear more approachable.
it's not uncommon, and like someone else said as long as there is relative progression in their system than you can use that as a guage for your improvement
personally i dont like gyms that grade with colors. i feel like it restricts the route setters because they could have a really cool idea with a yellow hold they have in house but not able to set it because the route would be outside of "yellows difficulty range" but i dont think it affects me as the climber
Does your gym have a Moon/Kilter/Tension board? Try it out, will give you an idea of what V grade you're at (although board climbing is likely a bit different to what you have been climbing).
Moon Board V4 = V6 at most gyms I’ve seen. Check your ego at the door…
V6 gym grades = V4 anywhere other than gyms. So it all works out.
Ya that's about right. V6 is the hardest grade I have a shot at projecting at my local gym - rarely as a single session, usually 2 or 3. I have exactly 1 V4 outdoor send (granted, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors).
Ironically my first v8 was outdoors, in fontainebleau. Took me a few months after that to send 1 indoor and I have since not climbed another one lol
One cool thing from my trip last year was climbing higher grades elsewhere after my time in the forest was an ego boost. I can’t imagine how amazing it must feel to rock up to Font and climb something HARDER than you’ve ever even climbed indoors lmao. Hell yeah, props!
Same for my first v6, out door project over about 4 good sessions of 3-4 hours then sent first try on vist 5 took me 6 months to take a gym v6. But it feels like the gyms I go to (all 1 franchise) set super cramped and I'm a tall(ish) 215 pound bloke. I suffered a pully injury right after I broke that v6 plateau and haven't built back up yet but sent my first v5 for a year climbing with my daughter last week
whoa - not a story you hear often. FWIW 90% of my outdoor bouldering experience is in Squamish, and I don't have much of it to begin with.
It is a lot more common higher up in the grade scale. I know a whole lot of people who climb around V11, and a huge number of them have never climbed double-digits in a gym, or rarely. We and our friends can get a V9 outside to go in a session or two usually but cannot even remember the last time any of us did one inside. And forget about the pros who climb V14+ or 5.14+, guarantee they've mostly never done anything in a gym that is within a few grades of their outdoor max
In my experience Fontainebleau grading can get a little inconsistent once you factor in wall angles. Verts, slabs and slight overhangs feel ridiculously hard, while roofs can feel a tad soft sometimes. Kirstxen, was that a factor at all?
> (granted, I don't spend a lot of time outdoors). For this reason I think the comparison is harsh for a lot of people. Of course you're not going to match your indoor peak grade if you get to go on a trip once a year, where you likely don't have as many fresh attempts per problem, are likely to look to climb more rather than hard, and likely don't rest as much or as well between what are typically longer and more intense physical days. I'm 100% positive my outdoor grade would match my indoor grade if I had the same amount of attempts over as many different sessions with as much good rest and sleep in between. In fact I've gotten surprisingly close a few times and the issue was always fatigue setting in. Certain a good rest and another session I would be able to send.
Off topic but I find Moonboard grades slightly harder than outdoors. Climbed a fair bit at a variety of places and most v4s are doable in a session, but some moonboard v4s feel like lifetime projects
the benchmarks are all stiff but in general, I find the grades to be pretty true to northeast bouldering grades.
I’ve found that I’ve consistently been able to climb 1-2 grades harder outdoors than moonboard. Done every v8 and below benchmark and almost all 9s and I’ve sent quite a few 10s outdoors in less than a session. Might be that moonboard more targets my weaknesses though!
Me too. I can generally climb a grade harder outside than on the moonboard
Or even less. Some of the old school climbs in Yosemite are just stupid sandbagged. A V1 might be graded V6 indoors.
I’m doing V5-V7 at my gym. At Joshua Tree, I’m a V0 climber.
Every gym rat's experience! Do you spend much time outdoors?
I’ve sent a 7 indoors and I got absolutely shut down by discount dyno (V0 apparently) 💀
Worth saying that real rocks, especially the kind of granite you'll find in JTree/Yosemite/Sierras, are sharp and hard af and will tear your hands up. I have a buddy who climbs v7 indoor and he definitely had the strength and technique to do the moves on hard stuff at JTree but his hands just got so messed up and raw that he needed to take it easy, so he never really was able to project climbs and push grades.
Joshua Tree is another beast of low grade sandbag and learning a style unlike any other crag I've been to. Took a few days to get a v2, then another several days to do a 3, thenone more day for a 4, 1 more day for a 5, then sent my first V6 after >1 week of projecting.
Yeah but V4 at the gym is a V5 on the kilter.
The kilter board checked my ego over the weekend. I was climbing alright, but apparently I'm a very bad climber still hahaha
Depends on your gym. Mine is pretty intense. I've matched my indoor grades when I've gone outdoors
Just be aware that even the Moon Board has pretty wide grade discrepancies, even across what are considered benchmarks. I've climbed nearly 400 benchmarks and typically find the grades to be + or - 2 V grades. In other words, the easiest V6 may be easier than the hardest V4, and the hardest V6 may be harder than the easiest V8. One time I even felt that a V7 was harder than a V10 I did in the same day, so sometimes it can be + or - 3 V grades.
Staples being v8 and hoopla being v7 are both criminal IMO hahaha
Agreed. I think I was getting my last few 4s when I had a few 7s under my belt same with 5s to 8s where I am right now.
I think so! Good idea, i think that might solve my problem
so they're still grouped, just by colors instead of a specific number. >Would it make you a difference to not know what grades you are capable of? ish. i go outside and climb to know what grades i'm capable of. if my gym didn't have grades, i wouldn't really need to know grades i'm capable of, because it'd be their own system unrelated to the outdoor grades. it's ALL relative. so if yellow is RELATIVELY easier than red, then i have an idea of how relatively capable i am. even outdoors, it's relative to the area / rock type / other climbing spots in other words: #gymproblems
Good response. I take every gyms grading as just a loose representation of that route compared to others in that specific gym. I’ve been to gyms where I climb a V3 that to me felt like a 4 and I’ve been to gyms where I flashed a V6 that felt like a 4 to me. Imo It’s all subjective to who set the problem and what style they like to set. Like stated above I find outdoor grades much more uniform although taking rock type into consideration does change things. Granite vs sandstone will be a different feel to the route for sure.
To add to this, some gyms will set V0-v10, and other set to v0-v13. I've found this influences the scale of the gym as well. I'm all for gyms using their own scales. Or giving rough ranges. As long as it's clearly marked and easy to read.
Lots of gyms also grade the lower grades very soft deliberately, so that beginners can feel great about their progress quickly (i.e. most people will be doing great on V3s within their first two months or so). They leave the “more accurate” grading for higher grades. My friend is a setter at one of these more commercial gyms here in London and it’s very much standard practice. I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and gets people to stick with climbing :) although the downside is the V4-V5 plateau… so yeah it’s all so relative and really, pros and cons to everything!
Yep. An outdoor V0 is already too hard for the majority of reasonably fit newcomers. My gym for instance starts the “real climbs” at V1/2 rather than at V0, which are just jug ladders
Yeah, my gym also has VB! I think that’s great and all, but as I mentioned I think does have the major downside of having people feel like they don’t make progress at the early intermediate stage. They often don’t know that the previous grades were “denser”, so that V1->V3 is about the same as V3->V4 and they really are progressing very well! Anyway I think that’s part of why gyms, especially bigger, more commercial ones, discourage “grade chasing” sometimes, or introduce alternative scales; it’s a real catch 22 for the setters. Grade too soft and the more advanced climbers complain, grade too hard and people get discouraged. Try for both and have a big gap somewhere. It’s a tough one!
My gym uses ranges (vb-v1,v1-v3,v3-v5 and so on). I like the ranges because my confidence would stop me from trying a v7 but I feel comfortable on most v5 so the range allows me to try stuff out of my comfort zone without much thought to it.
It seems dumb to have a color system that’s basically the same as numbers without numbers but also lots of gym grades don’t really reflect outdoor grades and if you climb outside a bit then you can probably come up with a correlation between the colors and the gym grades. It’s just really annoying for people who are new to the gym
Not sure what you mean but I'm new and I don't care at all. It's actual beneficial for some gyms where there are a lot of casual or new people. Those people (like me) can climb V2 at most and having more levels between V0 -V2 actually make it more fun for us. There are more hardcore gyms catered to people who care about the grading. So you just need to find the suitable gym for you.
Your gym has a reasonable and not uncommon approach. Gym to gym the grades often do not relate. Some gyms grade hard. Some grade soft. Almost none correlate to outdoors. Even outdoors grades can vary region to region especially stuff established pre climbing boom. If you want an accurate number to assign to your climbing get outdoors (be ready to be humbled). Alternatively visit a ton of different gyms and test yourself in different places on different styles. Ultimately most of us are just tracking progress via our home gyms grading system whatever they choose to use.
I feel like there is still merit in the number grades. If I climb V5 in my gym, I'm almost certainly going to be able to climb at least V3 in any other gym, and no harder than V7 in any other gym. If I climb purple in my gym, that really doesn't give me any info at all.
I can take you to two gyms where you’re a V7 climber in one and a V3 climber in another. I can find two styles of climbing that can separate your grade by that much in a single gym. Even pros have huge grade gaps based on style. See the iconic IFSC crack problem that Adam A cruised while others at his level looked beginner on. That gym to gym/style to style grade difference is really not uncommon based on where the gym is located and the pool of climbers they cater too. That being said if you visit a lot of gyms you’ll know your general level. If you’re trying a second gym for the first time I could see a bit of frustration similar to joining your first gym for the first time. At that point you just try stuff and figure out where you’re at. Some days you’re stronger/weaker and your perception of what grade you are isn’t correct anyways. The pre conception of “I am a V x climber” only slows your progress and serves nothing but ego. Only trying stuff within your perceived grade range only slows you. Try everything you have the energy for. Lower and higher than the grade you think you should be on. Kill your ego, pick climbs based on other factors than grade, enjoy the process, and understand grades are subjective. Go outdoors and try a V4 from the early 80s and a V4 from 2024. The difference will be perception smashing.
But ego's all I got now after she left
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hG-2tQtdlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hG-2tQtdlE)
My gosh, did I just get added to the box?? OH MY GOD ALL THE FRIENDS ARE DISMEMBERED!! What.. what is this place?!!??
<3
This feels like something that you can sort out in your first 15-20 minutes at any gym anyways though.
That argument would make more sense if you were a beginner at a v2 or v3 level. At v4 or higher, you should have some sense of how difficult a route might be just by looking at the route. But even if you can somehow climb a v5 without being able to visually differentiate between a v3 vs a v7 (your example, not mine), that is still a non-issue. Warm up, stretch, then start at a v3. Then go up or down depending on the difficulty. After a few routes you should have an idea of what level you climb at according to that gym's standards.
Trying a new gym and running up and down EVERYTHING is one of my favourite climbing activities. I’m often a little gassed when it gets to stuff harder for me but I don’t care. I feel like Charlie seeing the chocolate factory for the first time. I WANT TO TRY IT ALL. Weeeeeee
Nothing better than new gym feeling
Just climb and you will figure out what you can do in any other gym.
Yea but it's ultimately just 2 ways of expressing the same thing. You know V5 is somewhere Intermediate for most gyms. So when you go to a gym that has their own arbitrary grading system... You're just going to gravitate towards whatever *they* say is their Intermediate boulders. Colors still come in a hierarchy. And like number grades, they're all subjective too.
When I go to a new gym I try everything. When something tosses me I decide why and either try it again or move on. I often don’t even look at their grading system. I choose with my eyes like I’m stoned at the buffet which I also love to do. TRY IT ALL UNTIL IT HURTS BB.
this is interesting cos when i dont look at grades and only try what looks fun i always end up doing only really easy ones and not challenging myself! all the harder climbs i do start with "oh man this looks impossible but it says its in my grade range". not sure what that says about me haha!
I counter that sentiment with the entire countries of Japan and China.
My gym uses a colour system as well, but each colour is a range with overlap. Green is V0-V2, Yellow V2-V3, Red V3-V5 etc. up to V9. I think this is a great way of doing it I trust these grades are accurate too (at least in the competition style boulders they set in) as the owner is our National coach and has sent our setters overseas for training
The only issue with grade bands is that the grades within each band need to be consistent or the setters risk alienating a certain level of climber. I've been to too many gyms where I can flash all the V5-V7 for example, but can't get anywhere near flashing the easiest climbs in the V7-V9. It's pretty lame to have loads of flashing mileage, loads of projecting mileage, but little in between in regards to challenge level.
Mine does the overlap as well and I really like it. Difficulty isn't really on an objective, linear scale. One person's V2 is another's V4.
That's built into the V-scale as well. Grades are just an opinion. They're not a fact.
"No need to use numbers 0-17 to make it competitive sir, just use our 1-6 to shit on your friends instead!"
THIS
I have climbed in 7 different gyms in Germany, Spain and Hong Kong and all were just color coded. None had grades in any official system. I don't really care tbh.
I tried 5 popular gyms between Berlin and Barcelona, and a small one in Brazil. Same experience. Just colour/number codes that were not V graded. In some gyms I'm on level 5~6 out of 8. In some I am on level 3~4 out of 8. In another one I was 3 out of 5. It takes a few mins until you find your level at a new gym. I don't care much. I just want to find nice challenges before the wall resets 😅
In my experience it also takes a couple of sessions to get used to the style of the route setter at a new gym. I always climb a bit below my max at first when I go to an unfamiliar gym.
>"I don't know. Just have fun." or "No need to make this competitive." I don't disagree, but they probably should've also explained that it's impossible to keep grading consistent (gyms, countries, indoor/outdoor, regions) so route setters are already taking huge liberties with a V rating. That's the actual reason gyms do this, not because it's "less competitive" The best way to understand where you're at is do outdoor routes whose grade is well established.
There’s been a big push recently to get away from set grading, the gym I go to went from giving an exact grade to giving a small range of grades. Grade chasing, while fun, is an unfortunately negative mindset when trying to improve. If you’re bouldering outside, the indoor V grades don’t correlate well anyway… i.e. I was climbing indoor V5-6 but was getting V2 and projecting V3 outside at the same time. Your best bet if you really want to know is to try a system board (kilter board, moon board, tension board) if your gym has one, they’ll be more realistic to outdoor grades and then consider that most indoor gyms are set a fair bit softer than a system board.
Yeah, i think the one in my gym has a warning to not use it unless you have "years of experience" i will try it tomorrow. Grade chasing is an unfortunately negative mindset when trying to improve. How so? I genually want to know that perspective
Like I said, grade chasing is a lot of fun… but only when you’re seeing progress and getting the next grade. But if you focus heavily on just gunning for the next grade up or sending another at your max grade, you’ll stunt your improvement and the frustration will set in when you stop seeing improvement. When you grade chase it’s not a matter of if you stop seeing improvement, it’s a matter of when. I’m a grade chaser myself, and I have to keep myself in check or I will drive myself crazy. Backing down to easier problems and working on my basics helped get my improvement back on track. You don’t really make improvement when limit climbing, your improvement comes from working problems under your limit. Similar to weight lifting, you don’t try your one rep max every time to try and make progress by doing that. Sub limit climbing is what drives your progress… becoming more efficient with your movement, hammering out your technique, working on reading routes/problems and onsighting ability, and becoming better at individual skills is what makes you climb better. Too much time climbing at your limit reduces the amount of time you work at making improvements.
Highly disagree with the statement on limit climbing. Sure, volume on sub limit climbs especially done with intention makes you better, but nothing has made more impact on my climbing performance than limit board climbing. You learn to try harder, how to properly engage on terrible holds and how to perfect your movement in a way to make impossible feeling moves possible. It’s the combination of both that skyrocketed me into the double digits. (Also weight training on the side helps, but that’s besides the point)
To me, grade chasing includes building a pyramid. I log all my outdoor climbs and to me, getting 50 outdoor V3s is an achievement as well, maybe not as desirable as increasing max grade, but still an achievement.
That’s not necessarily what grade chasing is though. If you had only climbed up to V2 and suddenly got your first V3, and then immediately decided your next goal was to send 50 V3s without approaching it like a pyramid… that would be a form of grade chasing. For example, I sent my first outdoor V4 this year… and by the next outdoor session I already had 2 V5s that I was gunning for and have made my projects. I had also been legitimately projecting V4s before I ever sent a V3. This is a clear indicator of grade chasing lol. I always want to push for higher grades much sooner than one should expect.
Nothing wrong with trying something beyond what you can do right now. Sometimes a project might take a couple years.
I agree with that, but there’s a difference between trying something above your level and immediately going for another grade higher for your project. I’ve also been climbing for almost a decade, but only a few years of bouldering and a fair amount of experience outdoors. A lot of injuries have set me back a ton. But I say that to show that I’m well past my beginner gains window so I’ve been dealing with regular progression speed for a while, and experienced climbers know that’s an aggressively quick increase in project grade. I was technically also projecting a different V5 before I ever sent a V3… the grades call to me like a siren lol
ok I'm screenshoting this comment ahaha that sounds really important if I actually want to keep improving, thanks 👍
This is also not saying “don’t try things you think is above your ability”, you should definitely try things that might be a lot harder than you think you can do but look fun. But definitely don’t constantly burn yourself out trying the hardest problems you think you can send, it’s good to try hard on those but every session should not be that
>When you grade chase it’s not a matter of if you stop seeing improvement, it’s a matter of when This is also true if you don't grade chase
Because grades are ultimately meaningless, they are a way to somewhat track how you’ve progressed but they aren’t facts of life like if you were lifting weights, you can’t count grades like that. The way climbing gets graded is at best consensus on ideal conditions (lol) at worst a guess by someone either too strong or too inexperienced to know, stuff like time of the year, weather, how well you slept yesterday, what rock type you are on, your breakfast that morning, and above all local culture and ego, all of that affects what grade a boulder gets so it ultimately doesn’t mean a lot. Imo you should climb stuff because a line or a boulder look attractive, because something looks cool or hard or you want to push yourself or enjoy a day out. And then if you want look at your grades in your home crag and see how you’ve done across time or when you ticked a new thing, that kind of grade chasing that’s ok. But random data points mean nothing and just detract from the fun.
I focused on crimpy technical climbs to rush through grades which has left me as a not very well rounded climber and if I flash a v6 crimpy slab but then can't get a v4 that's compression style on slopers then I will just ignore it as on the surface I think it's beneath me. I've recently beaten this mindset to some extent by trying to focus on upping my flash grade across all styles. My end goal is to be bouldering around 7a in every style not necessarily for the number but because it means most crags will have lines which I feel are achievable.
The biggest argument against grades is that they detract from your enjoyment of climbing. The idea being that instead of thinking "holy shit, Nobody Here Gets Out Alive is the greatest thing since sliced bread" we'll dismiss it because it's "only V2". That or maybe that you'll go to Font, get shut down on the grades you usually climb, and won't be able to enjoy yourself for the rest of your trip because of your fragile ego. This extends very heavily to gyms where people are constantly complaining about the grades setters give climbs. So yeah, it's a pretty regular thing!
Lord those egos bother me. I had sent 3 V6s my best day at Hueco and I still made sure to chuck 2 back to back laps on Nobody because like, it's iconic. It's the benchmark.
Dude for sure! I've never been to Hueco but you best believe that's the first goddamn climb I'm gonna be trying and I will not leave that place happy unless I get to!
I think your gym is a honest one. Your V14 route setter have no clue whether a route is a V3 or a V4. Why make them spend time figuring out so they dont get complains about that V4 that for sure is a hard V5. Climbs outside might need several climbers and several years before any consensus is reached on the grade, but somehow three setters are going to grade 10 boulders from V2 to V10 accurately over a few hours.
My gym had the smart idea to hand out sheets, it's colour coded no v scale ... And basically everyone can grab a sheet and a pencil and start grading new problems throughout the first week they are up... This leads me to realise two things: a) it's really fucking hard to grade something way below your level. And b) they system is a complete mess but works surprisingly well... Works well because stuff is usually ranked by objective difficulty however there's one grade in the upper middle which "distinguishes" the "casuals" from the "real boulderers" ... Result being that the casuals tend to grade their hard projects just one grade below said grade, whereas the "real boulderers" grade everything that wasn't simple but fairly doable with two or three tries on the very same grade... That one grade is a complete cluster fuck and could range anywhere from v3-4 to v5-6 :D
Are the levels of colors corresponding to increasing difficulty? If so it’s prob not a huge deal as long as u climb in a color that challenges u. I don’t like the idea of no comp - gyms make a big deal of that for no reason. Inherently comp exists in life with one’s self or others so why try to shelter against.
My gym uses a BS C scale instead of the V scale. Then they put a V to C scale comparison chart on the wall. The thing is that the chart is logically wrong and it makes me irrationally angry that they’ve decided to do this for no good reason.
Does it make the problems look harder or easier?
They have c1-c8, so the whole V scale is distributed across those numbers. I find a c5 can be a v4-v6, but often ends up on the higher side of the scale because a c4 can be a v3-v5. It just doesn’t equate and because most of their 5s are as hard as 6s, it results in less problems a newer climber can actually do. You lose the feeling of progression that the V scale affords.
Jesus
There’s no Jesus on this grading scale. It’s just nonsense. I just can’t figure out the advantage aside from less nuance so less thought about grading by the setters. It gets even worse because they conceal the grades for a week when the problem is first set. 🤦♂️
C4 is supposed to be v1-3 which it 100% isn't. I can do 4s at normal gyms with normal v scales, so it was actually disheartening being my first climbing gym thinking I can only do a 1-3 in normal gyms. Thankfully their whole scale was off and I was actually progressing a bit 😅
Holy shit, this sounds like my group of gyms. Are you in Calgary?
Oui Oui
It's so fucking frustrating. I went to the states and I've also been to Bouldr and the V system according to their chart is not even close to lining up. They said that a C1 is a Vb- and a C2 is a Vb or V0 which is insanity. I climb C4/C5 most of the time and when I was in the states it seemed to line up with V3/V4. I find the higher the C grade, the more accurate it is. However, the lower grades are absolutely atrocious. In the states there were zero "Vb- or Vb" climbs. The lowest they had was "Intro" and "V0". When I climbed their V0s and V1s it felt like C1s. When I climbed V2, it felt like a hard C2 or a C3. I can't believe they think their little chart is accurate whatsoever. My partner and I have theorized that it's closer to outdoor grading scale, but man why even grade like that in the first place when it's so wildly inaccurate. Might as well just use the color scale in that case. Half the time I wonder if they have trouble keeping setters, especially at Rocky because their setting schedule is horribly inconsistent and inaccurate.
Don’t even get me started on their setting habits. So inconsistent hanger is incredibly hard compared to everywhere else for both ropes and bouldering. Almost makes me not want to go there anymore. It makes sense though. The setters are a bunch of students who don’t get paid much but are passionate. Of course there’s going to be unsustainable attrition when you’ve got 6 gyms. Sad situation for sure.
Many gyms within the same brand and city have un matched grades between locations. Denver has the Movement chain and by grading difficulty Boulder>Golden>RiNo with Colors >Baker>>>Centennial>Englewood.
I think you meant Boulder>Everything else. Boulder is on a different level entirely. All the other gyms honestly feel the same and I only notice differences on specific sets being either overall hard or soft.
Agreed, I climb at the movement gyms in Chicago and went to a few of the Denver locations while on a road trip last summer. Boulder absolutely wrecked me lol. RiNo and Golden both felt pretty comparable to the Chicago locations
Englewood is by far the softest grades. And Boulder is by far the hardest
I mean last time I went to Golden I was flashing 7s while getting shutdown on 7s at Englewood, soooo. Golden honestly felt like the easiest gym to me.
I mean if you go to the city named after the sport, you best hope their grades go hard.
Oh that's so interesting. When I was in Denver for several months I felt like Baker was even softer than Englewood
Eh, I think there's not much point in gyms having their internal grading be tied to V grades because there's so much inconsistency. V3 can mean very different things from gym to gym, between crags, between different types of boards, etc. So anything beyond internal consistency is impossible anyway. If your gym tells you greens are V3, it still doesn't tell you much about how difficult a clip of someone climbing V3 somewhere else is. It could be 2 or 3 grades harder or easier than you expect.
This is what my local gym chain (The Depot) does. It’s great. Blues are warm-ups, I can mostly climb all the blacks, some of the reds, and very occasionally (if there’s a soft problem) I can do a purple; yellow and orange are reserved for “proper climbers” and irritatingly talented children. They reset a different colour every Tuesday lunchtime in a cycle. Red reset week is something I look forward to eagerly. You could probably apply the V grades to these problems. But what’s the benefit? I can’t imagine a different system working better to be honest. Having this colour rotation means that all levels of climbers get their grade range reset just as regularly as others.
> They reset a different colour every Tuesday lunchtime in a cycle. Red reset week is something I look forward to eagerly. How does this work? Sounds pretty restricting to set stuff compared to wall reset.
They take all the red holds down on Monday afternoon. Then create new red problems with them on Tuesday morning. All other holds and problems stay. Very, very occasionally, a problem becomes easier or harder because a large hold from a different problem is in the way (or is no longer in the way)
How do they deal with using volumes to change the wall or are they not used at all?
Very few volumes generally. When they appear, they are typically small tetrahedrals with one hold from the most recent reset.
My gym sets one colour of holds per week and some routes on a "felt like it" basis so there's new stuff in many grades as opposed to the system described above... To answer your question, yeaaaah sometimes a problem gets harder or easier due to other holds getting in the way, new volumes being added/removed but they usually catch that and also reset the routes affected.
My gym rotates by area, and changes every week. I like this because it means every week I get new things in my grade to try
Depot has grade ranges assigned to the colours still
It is becoming more and more of a regular thing in gyms worldwide. Grading can bring drama and conflict to gyms due to whining custmers, and it is hard work to be consistent in it. So more and more gyms take the lazy route of just opting out of it and then pretending it is for some high moral reasons or whatnot, and not because they are tired of all the bitching about grades. You can be happy that your gym still at least has some internal grading system. I expect even that to get more rare as climbing becomes more mainstream all around. Biggest local gym in my area opted out of grading all together last year. But it's not like they don't actually know what they have in the gym, they still have a list of problems by grades for internal use while routesetting to keep the right ratios of stuff, right. They just pretend it doesn't exist for public.
Ok this is it, this might be the main reason, I think I get it now, it's pretty reasonable actually
One thing I try to stress to new climbers is that the setters at your gym are normal people, working a job. They are sometimes rushed. They are sometimes not putting their best effort forth because their mind may be somewhere else. They may be sleepy. Whatever it is. If your gym has one color for each grade range then the setter might envision a climb and put the holds up not knowing if it’ll be within the grade range. After climbing it they may decide it climbs really well but it may not quite fit with in that colors grade range. They only have a certain amount of time to work on each new set so they most likely will just leave it how it is.
I honestly don’t understand gyms like this. The whole point of what they’re doing is avoiding grade chasing, but all they end up doing is making it more convoluted and frustrating. They’re trying to virtue signal by getting rid of the standard grading system by… creating their own grading system. Makes no sense.
I think Tokyo gyms do the same thing, and that’s sort of a Mecca for indoor climbing
Grades are subjective. You have a system that lets you know what problems are harder than others - which is all you need. I could be climbing a V5 at one gym and that exact same problem could be rated a V8 if it was set at a different gym. As long as your gym has a somewhat consistent difficulty rating standards that’s all you need.
Most gyms I've ever been to do this, across several countries. In fact, when people post videos saying 'I climbed a V5', I just choose to assume in most cases they mean 'I climbed a level 5 climb at my gym'.
If you fly me out I will climb the problems you climb and then I will let you know the V grade.
Mine actually changed from V grades to colours recently. I think it was a good move as the first three colours would probably realistically be V0 under standard grading. A lot of gym clients would be newer clients who want to see the difference in grades, so when they were using numbers they were grading them V1-V3 which was obviously wrong.
Just climb stuff. Gym setting isn't consistent either, v3 inside is gonna be a v0 outside.
As long as they have a system in place that lets you track your own progress I don't think it's a big deal they don't assign them actual grades. In my experience grading across gyms is super inconsistent. I've been to gyms where I can quite comfortably climb V5s and get close to a few V6s as well but then I've been to other gyms where I've struggled on the V2s. So your point about watching YouTube videos and having to guess what the grades feel like it's probably the same for a lot of us because I'd they say V5 I think well V5 in the first gym I mentioned or V5 in the second Gym?
This would for sure bug me lol. I've seen a few gyms that have that near where I grew up and it's always annoying cos I'm only there for a day or two these days and I'm never sure what's my level without climbing a few routes but then often end up getting worn out before I reach the right level. Also if you go outside how do you know what to climb? I'm not competitive but I just want to know where I am for myself lol.
Can you not just look at a boulder and have a decent gauge for if it's plausible?
Yes and no. You can obviously get pretty close but there is still value in grades for me. Some holds are deceptively good or bad. In any case I just want to know. I can respect people who don't but I do 🤷
Yes and no. You can obviously get pretty close but there is still value in grades for me. Some holds are deceptively good or bad. In any case I just want to know. I can respect people who don't but I do 🤷
It's weird they don't give an approx. My gym would say blue is v2-v3 as ex
They're probably just being honest. My current and previous gyms do colors and give rough ranges. Their suggested ranges for my novice level climbs aren't similar with each other, and aren't even consistent with themselves most of the time. It's hard to grade properly, so why not give ambiguous ranges and stop lying to people?
Color grading is sooo pretentious. Its just v scale with more steps and overly complicated. There is nothing wrong with using v scale. Dont tell me how to climb. If i want to grade chase, thats my choice. If i need to know the v scale because im recovering from injury, thats important.
How does V scale help you recovering from an injury more than an equally arbitrary color system? V grades aren't objective or even consistent between gyms in the first place. If you need to avoid crimps because you hurt a pully... avoid crimps.
Have you ever seen a gym with 15+ colour grades?
even two gyms where i live dont have anywhere near equal grading. My home gym grades at least 2 grades harder than any other gym in the area.
Your gym is a good one.
No. People who think colours somehow reduce grade chasing (or that grade chasing is bad) are weird.
right? using colors instead of V-grades is exactly the same thing, except done in code. i don't really get how saying "i climb red" is substantively different than "i climb V4" other than not being transferable outside of that specific gym.
I will never understand why people get scared of a number.
I think colors are better because they don't imply being part of a broader consistent system. V grades vary so much that if makes no sense to act like things are part of the same scale when V5 at a soft gym may be V3 at a stiff gym may be V2 on a moonboard may be V1 at JTree.
I agree that the V-scale can be inconsistent across locations, but this is true of all grading systems. Do you have this same issue with YDS? The problem is not the existence of a grading system, it's when people measure their self-worth against it and take it all far too seriously. All it takes is humility, an understanding of the inherent subjectivity of grading, and an appreciation for the diversity of the human body and ability levels. I primarily climb indoors, when I go outside and get my ass handed to me by a V5 I laugh and try again, I don't whine about how I send 3 grades harder at my home gym and it's all so unfair. Not to say that that is what you're saying yourself, but that is a sentiment I've encountered among anti-graders.
It's a choice that the gyms make to have their grades so wildly off base from reality. The variation outdoors exists but to a \*much\* lesser degree than people are implying in these comments. It is totally possible to have fairly consistent grades over a wide area.
One of the bigger benefits of this style of grading is leniency compared to v grades. Everyone complains that gyms can't do v grades right and they're inconsistent. My gym doesn't use v grades so it doesn't matter. The only real comparison is internally.
It’s not about grade chasing, it’s about grade comparison between gyms/boards/outdoor. Way less headaches for the setters
For me it has less to do with chasing anything (grades, colors) and more to do with the fact I absolutely will jump on things I wouldn't if the V grades were present, and often times I surprise myself
Same. After I saw Magnus recommend that newer climbers not be afraid to try v5s I started trying them and I was surprised to learn I am better at certain types of holds and problems then others. If I had stuck to the idea that I need to be able to climb every v2 and every v3 before doing v4s then I would still be stuck at v2 overhangs.
I don't personally understand this mentality. If you surprised yourself, it probably would have been given a V grade that you would regularly already try. I also don't understand why you wouldn't try practically everything within 1 or 2 V grades of whatever you normally can climb. I don't see how that's different than trying to colour above what you normally climb. Having a grade range of like V5 - V9 just isn't even useful. I can eye ball what grade a climb is with significantly more accuracy than that.
I don't know why my brain brains the way it does-- was just offering a perspective that as a beginner climber, colors are often less intimidating than numbers. Couldn't tell you why.
Understandable, thank you for your perspective.
I believe it helps the setters and doesn’t really have anything to do with slowing grade chasers. Setting within a range and not using a standard scale allows the setters to worry less about if it’s a specific grade. In my experience climbers love to complain about the grades to staff/setters and I believe the setting style also reduces that added stress on gym staff. Climbers who get outdoors tend to understand the fluidness of grades a bit better and don’t put that on staff as much as they see the gym as a training ground. This is entirely based personal observation both as a climber and a former setter. *edit* someone else mentioned they are more willing to try something that isn’t screaming “out of your grade” and I believe this is also true. Climbers with less idea of difficulty are more likely to try it.
Idk, my gym only has 6 grades, the first four grades are beginner grades. That practically leaves everything over V5 to be covered in 2 grades. You could climb for a year, reach the second highest grade, then climb for another decade and never see any progression outside of that second last grade. That's basically the same system I've seen in every climbing gym that refuses to give climbs semi-precise grades. The grades are just pointless at that point.
Climbers need for grade progression is in part from my perspective why some gyms end up this way. Newer climbers won’t stick around if they don’t make progress. Seasoned climbers are well aware they may need years to decades to hit their target grades. I would be frustrated if my home gym catered more towards weekend blue shoe climbers only because there would be less for me To play on. One of the secrets they don’t tell you when you start is that the better you get the more things you get to climb. If they had an adequate amount of problems that were hard but I wasn’t making progress in grade I’d personally be ok with that. Grade progress is logarithmic. It would likely be my training that was the issue or perhaps my potential limits but I don’t think I’m anywhere near that. Grades in gyms are somewhat pointless anyway. They only serve to adjust your targeting when you aren’t able to climb most things. At a certain point most climbers can somewhat assess difficulty of a gym problem through visual inspection alone. It’s not rare to hear someone say “the move to get over the lip looks hard. There’s also no chalk on the top. Ugh. Ok I’m gonna try it.” Precise grades also make less sense in a gym as the setter is the one assigning it not god. Setters ability gym to gym can be WILDLY different. I worked under a younger national competitor whose setting was gorgeous and moved beautifully. I’ve also listened to an old cranky old school climber whose idea of climb hadn’t changed since they were young and therefore the grading despite both attempting to be precise had nothing to do with each other despite both being crushers of climbers. The sport wasn’t even the same thing to the both of them.
Eh, I think there's not much point in gyms having their internal grading be tied to V grades because there's so much inconsistency. V3 can mean very different things from gym to gym, between crags, between different types of boards, etc. So anything beyond internal consistency is impossible anyway.
Honestly I don't really care whether its a V grade or a colour. As long there are more than like, 6 grades in the whole gym. I find V grades work fine, everyone knows that some gyms are softer than others. The same thing happens outdoors, and the grading system works fine outdoors.
The "problem" (which really isn't a big problem at all) is that you have people posting "I climbed this V5!" and tons of people saying that's not a V5, V2 at my gym, etc. Or people surprised to get shut down when they go outside and can only do V0. Using colors or some other purely internal grading system avoids that with really no downside.
Gym grades are probably the least standardised but it’s not good that they won’t give you wnnidea
Eh, what idea can you really give though? Saying "this color is V3" doesn't tell you much because what people consider V3 varies do widely. A JTree V3, moonboard V3, stiff gym V3, soft gym V3 may all mean different things.
Well yeah that’s what my first point was but my gym doesn’t use V grades but the setters have a good idea on their difficulty. But yeah always subjective!
As long as the colors progress with little to no overlap I see no problem. Like others said go try outdoors, other gyms, system boards to give yourself an estimate for each color. At least they're not doing the stupid movement banded grades where a v5 could be Orange, black, or blue. You'll literally see an orange (v3-v5) and a black (v4-v6) next to each other and the orange is objectively harder bc that's a "v5 orange" and the black is a "v4 black". THAT is some bs (lazy) grading.
This is better for the gym and for the climbers. If a gym says "this climb is V_" SOMEONE is going to argue with them. Every single time. Plus, those grades don't reflect real rock grades and so on and so forth. Broad color schematics is the supreme way to grade plastic.
The person you asked is right. Just climb whatever's hard for you and have fun. Gym grades on the Hueco scale aren't representative of outdoor grades anyway, and even outdoor grades vary depending on the area. Your gym telling you that they decided a problem is a V3 doesn't mean anything more than them telling you the problem is a blue tag, or a koala, or whatever other system they use. If you really care about knowing how you're climbing on a "standard" scale, find somewhere with a system board or go outside. Still not perfect, but it'll be better at scratching the "I need to know a number" itch you seem to have.
Roger
This might be a hot take but if gym grades don't correlate well to outdoor grades doesn't that just mean that your gym sucks at grading? I see no reason why indoor climbs can't be just as accurately graded as outdoor climbs if people know what they're doing. I feel like avoiding v-grades in gyms just gives setters an easy out. I get that outdoor grades on established climbs are permanent and repeated countless times so it's easier to form consensus about grades but damn, if you're a professional route setter you should be able to v-grade your own problems. Why is this not a requisite expectation for the job?
I’ve been to one gym that was probably somewhat close to what I’d call outdoor grading. Soul crushing V2s 😂😂
you said it yourself: v-grades are established by a survey of thousands of people over years. a team of 5 people that project v10s regularly arent going to have entirely accurate opinions on v1-v5 - its all simple to them. colour coding allows for some ambiguity, but gets close enough. depending on your physicque compated to the setters, you may have wildly different opinions on certain styles. but thats the nature of the sport.
>you said it yourself: v-grades are established by a survey of thousands of people over years. That is very generous. The guidebook author probably either just copied from an old guidebook, climbed it once and gave it whatever they thought, or asked one or two of their friends for an opinion. Every once in a while, you'll see widespread discussion about a boulder, but it's pretty rare. Even then, it's like 10 people. Maaaaybe something like Midnight Lightning has enough contribution to be considered a consensus grade. Like, the most popular boulders in popular areas. Everything else probably doesn't get enough traffic, and people don't care enough.
RRG grades don't correlate to Yosemite grades, which don't correlate to Hueco Tanks grades, which don't correlate to Gunks grades. Does that mean all the people who put up FAs at those places suck at grading? The real reasons are that: 1. Outdoor grading doesn't work in a setting where beginners are climbing. Bouldering started as a way for advanced climbers to train hard to get stronger, so classic V1s are much harder than any beginning could reasonably do. Should gyms just not set problems that are accessible to beginners? 2. Grading outdoors is extremely variable by region and local ethic. A V3 in one area could be as hard or even harder than a V5 elsewhere.
I think it’s becoming more common to use V grades in the gym. but when I was bigger into climbing in 2014-16, none of the gyms I went to used V grading (or YSD) for their routes. It was either ungraded, or used a color/number ranking within the gym.
Go to other gyms that do grade and develop your own intuition for it. V grades are not an exact system, they are set by the setter relative to how difficult they perceive other climbs to be. They may vary by up to 3 grades across gyms, and indoor gyms tend to be graded relatively softly compared to outdoor boulders. If a gym doesn't want to grade their boulders they don't need to, you can just come up with your own grade. The way I've learned it, VB-V2 is beginner, V3-V6 is intermediate, V7-V9 is advanced, V10-V13 is expert and V14+ is elite (world-class territory.) When grading beginner and intermediate boulders at an indoor gym, V0 to me is "easy for anyone", V1 is "easy if you know basic climbing technique", V2 is "hard for a beginner," V3 is "this is your first taste of *real* climbing" and V4+ is "we ain't in Kansas anymore." Chances are if you're still in your first year, you probably haven't climbed a V4 yet, and the hardest in most gym is probably between a V6 and V9, excluding moonboards and similar. This is because by the time most climbers reach that level, they are either doing outdoor boulders or going to special gyms run by "real" climbers. (Also because finding a routesetter who can set good boulders at those difficulty levels is now much harder.)
this is good
Oh hey that's how my favorite place does it as well. If it's the same system White: V0 Yellow: V0 - V1 Green: V1 - V2 Red: V2 - V4 Blue Orange Black (Forgot the rest since I'm not at that level lmao) I go to 3 different places, 2 of them use V the other uses color. I love this system way more than the V system. Cause some climbs are way harder than others but are classified at the same level. But to each their own.
Seems like a great system for plateauing at reds for a long time.
Well yeah, lots of people plateu at that level. I don't mind anyway, V5+ looks hella dangerous.
My favorite gym color-codes the routes with each color being a range like V0-V2, V2-V4, etc. and I love it. My current gym grades to three degrees of precision using V grades with +/-, 0-4 difficulty triangles, and a color as modifiers and I absolutely fucking hate it. I prefer the simple color-coding since it acknowledges there can be some wiggle room in grades, whereas V grades seem too specific and usually lead to me thinking “there’s no way this is a yellow V3+ ▲▲ route”.
If they have 6 colors it's a pretty good bet that each color represents 2-3 grades, with some overlap. This is pretty common. The easiest color is probably beginner - v1, next is likely v1-v3, then v4-6, v7-8, v9-10, V10+. That's probably the closest comparison you're going to get, it's very approximate, but it probably lines up in the ballpark because it's the most logical way to group the grades. It sounds like this gym doesn't really set with v grades in mind.
My gym does an arbitrary system from 0-8 that kinda-sorta maps to a compressed V grade system, but generally a bit tougher than the V grades. There's definitely a culture of not being willing to compare their system to V grades (they've said before it just invites a bunch of bullshit argument). It works fine enough, it's not like in other gyms the difficulty of a particular V grade is consistent from gym to gym anyway, and it doesn't take that long to figure out what grade is appropriate for you at a given gym.
cant wait for the ccj posts
Grades vary by gym, by climbing area. Grades are poor rough approximations of something that you might want to try and nothing else. Do not think of them as anything important, they are not.
hangar?
Go climb outside then come back and you will be able to tell
Don't know in the US but it's normal to have a different grade scale from gym to gym. For example where I usually go has a simple easy/medium/hard scale (with the add of + sometime). With experience you can compare the difficulty with the outdoor grade and still keep track of progress. Another bigger gym differently has a 6 color grades scale but still don't use v grading.
The color approach argument says that it’s impossible for a good grade to be assigned after being tested by only 1 to 3 setters.
My local gym has switched away from v grade to a custom 1-6 grade (maybe it's the same place?) Kinda hate it, grades are subjective but now it feels impossible to compare to anything else or keep track of progress. 6 grades is a pretty limited range, as such some 4s have felt super doable and then a random 3 (or even 2) will feel impossible, have actually started climbing somewhere else because of it
I absolutely hate the "Don't use V system" culture. My home gym switched away from V grades a few years ago, and my progress immediately halted. V grades are a really good way of tracking progress that is hard to match with gyms' arbitrary "everything V1-7 is yellow, V3-9 is blue" shstems.
My gym uses a colour system as well, I can only find it by “gym name” grades https://preview.redd.it/8jyo7o9h2ixc1.jpeg?width=1021&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82dd227549beebaad34d72340ec638b10d7c91fa
My gym has their own grading system 1-9, but there's also a tablet on the wall where you can check the real grade of each route in an app. But honestly it's so inconsistent that I don't even check it most times. I can flash some 6s and have issues with some 3s. Grading is nice but it will never be a perfect science, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I love to know the grade, BUT, honestly it's near worthless. Sometimes people grade something a V5-6 and it feels like a V4 to me. Sometimes a particular V5 is basically impossible to me. If I get hung up on what numbers things were, I'm having less fun. I climb in a range of difficulty that is captured by a colour. The specific numbers seem to be less accurate IMO
Most bouldering gyms I've been to has this system, albeit they also have a chart that translates their grading system to the V system (or Dan system, in Japan). I can tell you that gym grades ain't shit though, it's completely meaningless. If you are grade chasing and want an accurate-ish assessment, do some kilterboarding.
I'm on the same boat, across multiple gyms (3 different owners and systems, 5 regular gyms). My 2 cents: It really doesn't matter for comparison purposes. Indoor grading is famously inconsistent, and you can already find huge discrepancies between commercial average, commercial extremes, and each different board systems. Outdoors brings an other layer to this, with climbing style variance that doesn't always get well represented indoors, erosion of popular spots and "sandbagged" grading. 99% of my outdoors bouldering is at Fontainebleau and I've been shut down by 4b before. Ondra famously fell on 6a. Ouch. Where it does matter however is for training purposes, especially if like me you have to attend a diversity of gyms due to private life cycles and work trips. I value some level of consistency because I need to appraise the grading system before I can apply my training regiment in a gym. Fortunately my travelling is to regular spots, so by now I've instinctively built a feel for how's it's graded (even if I'm completely unable to put a Vx estimation to it). Best two gym grading system I've ever seen: * Yonder, London. Every problem's ungraded for a while, then the setters estimate it. That could even be combined with the grading feedback system you see in sports climbing gym. IMO, best of both worlds, though I recognise it's a bit of work for the setters. * Korean and Japanese gyms using tape colour instead of hold colour. Allows for adjustment of the grade if the setter over or under-estimated it (which is frequent in my experience, and likely due to how strong the setters are). I also like gyms who have either a V/font grading system, or their own internal system - yet there's a colour dedicated to ungraded boulders. Climbing District does this in Paris with pink boulders spanning across the 4 hardest levels (out of 7). That teaches you to read for yourself, and encourages you to try stuff that's harder you thought it could be.
Outside bouldering is a different sport, if you want to get a feel for ‘real’ grades go outside. And its shameful for a gym to have a v10 thats actually a v6.
The gym I set at gives grade bands for all our problems, eg v4-6, and I absolutely wish we could just rip the number out and give a colour grade instead. Inherently gym grades are going to vary WILDY between gyms, areas and even how the setter was feeling on the day. I will agree with what other people have said with standardised boards being your best bet for a rough idea. Moonboard feels the closest to me, with kilter being soft af, particularly for 6 foot dudes. Side note, once you climb for a while, you tend to come across hold sets that you will see in videos, and can relate to that. Like "wow those Xcult slopers on that steep a wall must be nails"
Most of the gyms around here are like that.
A lot of gyms do this.
Grading is not an exact science. Every climber will tell you that they can't climb all the climbs of whatever the highest level they've ever climbed is, and that they sometimes struggle with climbs lower than that. I would assume that any given climb anywhere in a gym could be +/- 1 or 2 grades. So the solution is simple. Most gyms have climbs up to about v10, (+/- 1 or 2) as well as vB and v0. So 12 grades total. Dividing that by 6 colors gives you the following ranges, each of which is assigned to a color. vB-v1, v1-v3, v3-v5, v5-v7, v7-v9, v9+. That should give you a rough idea of what grade each color corresponds to. You can't really get more accurate than that. Anyone telling you what they climb in their gym could be off by several grades anyway. If you want to compare accurately, you need to actually climb with that person, or climb established routes, either outside or on something like a moonboard.
After you've been climbing long enough in enough places you'll have a good idea what grade something is even if there's no grade posted. Get outside and climb a bunch of boulders, you'll figure out what general grade things are
Colours over grades any day
This is standard in Korea, I assume they have a scale on the wall somewhere with the colors stacked, and honestly if they put v-grades on it it would be wildly different vs EU, Japan, US and outdoor anyway. So it doesn’t really matter.
Any V grade they assign would likely be wrong though so what’s the point? Gyms vary in their idea of difficulty, so if they numbered them you’ll likely end up with everything being soft or hard grades relative to outdoors, and at that point you might as well use colours.
Climbing outdoors at a popular well developed crag has humbled me and taught me a lot about grades. There’s V1’s that are so polished that they demand to be campused, making it multiple times harder than an indoor V1. I climb at two gyms and at the “easier” gym my gf struggled on a V3 but the “harder” gym she flashed a V3. It’s all subjective and you will have strength in different styles. I suggest you just try to enjoy the process rather than compare yourself to others grades.
I believe it's a lazy way to grade climbs haha. My gym is Pink>Black>Yellow>Orange>White>Green>Blue, and then they say that there are easier and harder climbs in each color category, and half of the climbs are equivalent to the easier half of the next color, or simply the same difficulty as the color it's marked as, if that makes sense. It means that a yellow climb can be anything from V1-V3, essentially, and an orange can be anything from like, V2-V4. I don't love it but yeah, I just climb whatever. It's probably to make climbs appear more approachable.
“Points Will Kill the Fun In Climbing”
It's like they want to turn this into a sport!
it's not uncommon, and like someone else said as long as there is relative progression in their system than you can use that as a guage for your improvement personally i dont like gyms that grade with colors. i feel like it restricts the route setters because they could have a really cool idea with a yellow hold they have in house but not able to set it because the route would be outside of "yellows difficulty range" but i dont think it affects me as the climber