The only thing that I think you missed is that a climbing gym needs to produce an environment where new climbers and intermediate climbers feel a sense of progression quickly to keep them coming back. Imagine if indoor grades and outdoor grades were the same, 80% of people would probably fail on most of even the easiest problems in the gym. Doesn’t sound like a very good business model right? By lowering the standard of each grade, people feel progression and good about themselves when they get that next V or f grade, even on their first go!
Good point! The commercial aspect definitely has an influence. I assume gyms build 80% accessible boulders and 20% harder progressions to cater to people who are new to the sport and keep them coming back, which is amazing if you want to learn stuff quickly, but results in quite the culture shock when being introduced to real rock for the first time!
In the gym, they recycle the same set of hold for different problems, just by looking at a hold, you know how it will feel to grab it, where the best position to hold it will be etc. Outdoors, there are infinite ways a hold can feel. You can't tell how a hold will be like just looking at it from the bottom till you get to it and put your hand on it
I would place this under the same "you just generally need more attempts outdoor to figure out what works for you in terms of body position" which means tactics is more important and you have less time to just do a ton of volume near your limit.
Indeed. I notice I know all the holds in my home gym quite well and I've learned how the setters like to use them. I had a line in the video about "learning your routesetters style" but I cut it while editing for brevity.
you didn't mention this, but since gyms make the plurality of their profit from new climbers, having V0-V5 be easier than V0-3 outdoor is incentivized, as it makes the newer climbers feel like they're progressing faster, and that they can achieve something of note (not that that is at all a bad thing, but it does lead to disparities in grades between indoor and outdoor)
I think it's a good point. higher grades become more realistic. There's no way a vertical jug ladder is a V2. From what I see, it seems 50% of people in gyms will remain lifelong beginners and will keep coming and leaving randomly, bringing new friends sometimes so it's useful for gyms to squeeze a few more entrances from them because the first couples of grades are very close together in difficulty.
Agreed. @ChrisMillsy suggested a similar thought in their comment. Commercial incentives definitely have an impact. Outdoors, the opposite might be true, with grading being especially rough to gatekeep or project a higher quality baseline of a crag through the average difficulty of climbs. Now I'm just spitballing though
Great explanation. I saw another comment about recycling the set of holds, and wanted to support that. The “easy” outdoor climbs usually contain the basic skills one needs to climb in the area, so if you understand the lesson, it usually will carry over to higher grades. I think there can be a frustration issue when people jump to a climb within their wheelhouse and try to climb it with their current skillset and preferences, and not the one that the climbs required, hence the experience feeling different. This is of course neglecting conversations about morphology, which the gym can work around, sometimes.
I appreciate the extra nuance! Expectations, morphology and aspects other people commented totally add to the story. We'll have to bundle all the additional input into a more detailed video some day! Thanks for reaching out.
One possible addition: Indoors and outdoors require very different skills. This becomes very apparent when lead climbing. Old slabs are REALLY hard and scary for modern gym climbers who are used to jugs on overhangs. Before gyms, slabs were done much more commonly and people were better at it. The other way around with overhangs: Old overhangs be pretty easy for the grade. With training in modern gyms and modern shoes they don't feel that hard anymore.
The 5+ in fontainebleau are such a wide range of experiences, haha. Could be very old, polished, obscure, dangerous and sandbagged or pretty easy. I think It gets a bit more streamlined at higher grades where people think a bit more about the actual grade and are a bit less prone to sandbag when it's at their limit. Another factor is that people absolutely REFUSE to increase a grade once it's been firmly established, even after a hold was broken or after decades of thorough hold polishing (see that 6A that Adam couldn't flash)
Definitely! We noticed the same thing on Marie-Rose (the 6a you're referring to), which is not too physically demanding but because of polish your precision needs to be spot on, which is something you get better at with experience and decisiveness so can feel like an unforgiving grade when your max is only a little higher.
One thing I will add is that outdoors, up until v6 the grades could be anywhere because they’re almost purely technique, v3 and v5 are some of the most ambiguous grades I see
I think a good metric for outdoor grade is just how "sloppily" can it be climbed. Since given you have the right holds if the body positions arent really that important the grade will be super low. So someone with lots of climbing experience will feel a route is easy because they climb it with beta/bodypositioning that makes it easy. If you dont it might be hard, and if the grade is low, you might not be kicked out of the route for it. Thus it "feels" harder
I think your first point is one of the biggest contributors to this (perceived) difference in grade. I've tried a few climbs that felt impossible at first, but after giving it more tries, figuring out the beta and eventually sending the thing I was like: Okay yeah, the grade feels about right. Another point imo is the strength required to climb outdoors vs indoors. Indoor climbs at the lower end of the range usually have really good holds while outdoors it often feels like the grade is more about the movement and finger strength isn't really taken into consideration. So an indoor and outdoor problem might take the same amount of skill and technique, but the amount of strength needed is way higher outdoors, making the boulder feel harder.
Its all about what you're accustomed to. For me indoor boulders feel harder (for V6 and up). Also, keep in mind that gyms usually set lower grades (v5 and down) really easy for new comers to motivate. Then at V6 things start to get more real.
Footwork is less obvious outside, besides the texture of true rock (there are real rock holds, but they are only using granite, as Far as I've seen)... From this alone, with my little experience I believe indoor grading should have an "i", which could mean 2 to 3 levels lower when comparing to outdoors... 😂 Makes any Sense?
It's tough because some outdoor climbs actually mimick the gym style fairly well: big powerful moves with good feet, even in Fontainebleau. In that case, the grades would be extremely similar. For instance there are quite a few boulders in Fontainebleau that are variations of rainbow rocket, at different grades where it's more or less just a single dyno move with an easy topout.
I agree. Less obvious in the sense that there's often more options, so you're not automatically putting your feet in the optimal position for balance and creating positive holds. In the gym, foot holds are limited so there's less possible combinations of body positions. Problems are more 'legible' inside is my experience.
When I go and try out a new gym I don't really check out the grading system or methods right away.. I just check out the routesetters style first! And then check out the grades! As for Fontainebleau, last year was my first time there so I didn't know what to expect. So I just climbed easy routes, but this year (as my bouldering experience got better) I did some pretty hard routes by studying the problem first and trying to find other methods to send them! Next month I'm going back to Font and going to try some 7A routes. 💪🏻😁 Keep up the good work! PS: thanks for the small chat at the parking in Cul de chiens guys, really great to know you take some time to do that stuff! 💪🏻😁
