8 Levels of Indoor Rock Climbing Difficulty | Easy to Expert

Hello, Jake here, Head Setter at Yonder and Hang. Today I'm here with Hannah. We're going to take you through the eight levels of climbing difficulty. Really positive juggy handholds, quite a prescribed hand sequence. In the next difficulty level we can challenge the climber by finger strength and complexity. With rock climbing's meteoric rise from niche pursuit to mainstream olympic score, it's no longer only like recited devotees debating what separates a difficulty and one bouldering move from another. But now a broad audience of recreational sports fans, curious friends and family and just about anyone who has seen Free Solo, who find themselves asking how difficult is that climb? And show surprise that the technical finger intensive move you spent years training for is somehow harder than the overhanging jug ladder that you posted on Instagram when you first started climbing. You see, rock climbing has a unique problem. We do have several difficulty grading systems including the American V scale from VB to V17 and the French scale from 3 to 9a, but no concrete explanation of exactly what it is that separates V3 from V5. We're about to examine exactly how the people responsible for grading climbs decide the level of each boulder problem and separate climbing into eight different levels of difficulty. First level of difficulty, what are we calling it? Entry level. So entry level I guess to me would be, if you walk into any bouldering gym, the easiest boulders in the gym that you might be able to expect, generally speaking, someone that maybe doesn't have any climbing experience or very little climbing experience could expect to get to the top of. That's pretty much our aim. So at Yonda we have a circuit of yellows, we give all the yellows VB and yeah like you said the aim is to make sure everyone who comes in off the street is able to climb it. What are the hallmarks of a VB climb? VB's almost always, pretty much always, really positive juggy handholds, really big positive comfy feet, small moves and not complicated in any way. Pretty much like a ladder. Moving on to our next level of difficulty we've got novice which you ascribed what grades? Yeah for the purposes of this video we're going to say novice is V0 to V1, something in that territory. Okay so what would it be about if you've got a climb that you cannot make any easier, what's the next step up to make a climb not VB, novice? So the first thing I like to introduce into V0 VB, really obvious things you can add in like a hand sequence, like a cross move or maybe you can give them an undercut. There are like infinite ways to make a VB into a V0 or V1 but the obvious ones are introducing a hand sequence, making the handholds less positive, making the footholds less good, making the moves larger. Yeah let's just talk about this white blobby, I think we gave it V1 on the top out, you'll see there's halfway up the boulders like a big move so to counteract the size of the move I've given them a really large foot to push off. Okay so we climbed like we climbed V0 and we they're kind of casual, they're down pulling, the moves between the holds are quite small and the handholds and footholds themselves are both big, positive, comfy. This V1 for example, big comfy handholds but there's some tech in there, there's a side pull, there's a roll move, there's an undercut. V1 is sort of that level where you can start introducing a bit of sequence, a bit of rolling, a bit of undercut. This one is a V2 so another slight step up from V1. The moves between holds again, they're kind of short moves but the handholds are starting to get worse now so we have some slopers and we have undercuts. Slopers and undercuts, cool combination, you have to start understanding what to do now. It's actually more of a guest zone. Oh and a smear, just a bit more going on. So we're talking about beginner now, which we're saying is V2 to V3, something like two to three. I think at this level you can really start introducing new techniques to challenge the climber. In this instance we have crack, crack is kind of like marmite isn't it, you either love it or hate it. If you can do it, it's easy, if you can't do it, it's hard. A good introduction of a new technique, can you handjam? It seems to me that a lot of what makes a boulder feel difficult can be down to what your personal style is, so even though I generally speaking across a lot of different styles of boulder at V2 would feel quite comfortable, I might not feel so comfortable on a crack boulder but that doesn't mean that it's not a V2, it just means that it's a V2 that's not in my style. For sure and if you can climb crack, if you're like kind of okay at crack climbing, that is the easiest possible crack boulder you could set. What immediately becomes apparent in introducing new climbing techniques in the beginner bracket is the challenge that comes with identifying the difficulty of a climb given our individual technique preferences. Unlike many artistic sports where the difficulty of a skill can be set and recorded in a neat handbook, climbing is a form with infinite possibilities. A boulder might involve a handjam, a rock over, a small pop or a campus move or any combination of these and what feels easy for me might feel hard for you. Unlike a triple backflip in gymnastics or a kickflip in skateboarding, no two climbs are ever created the same. The same move might never appear again, so how might we reference the difficulty of one climb against another? I asked Jake how route setters identify and categorize the difficulty of so many different and unique types of climbing move. There is no official guideline to say this is a V1 because so and so, this is a V2 because so and so, it's just based on past experience and feel how much exertion you're using and then sometimes you know you get like a beginner climber to test the boulder and if they can do it and you know the level you can say for sure we'll give this V2. We're kind of working from past experience to grade all these boulders. Usually we sit with a team of three or four people who have been climbing for you know 10 years each you know so there's like often 40 years worth of experience climbed indoors and outdoors and that's usually a fairly reliable way of agreeing upon a difficulty level and with that in mind we turned our attention to the hallmarks of a steep V3 boulder problem and how one particular move like a heel hook could be transformed to level up in difficulty. Oh yeah this is probably V3 and it's got a heel hook on it this is probably a harder heel hook yeah yeah lots of things going on here slightly longer boulder much steeper than we've seen so to counteract it being steep there are very positive juggy hand holds in there there's quite a prescribed hand sequence lots of like rolls crossing moves and there's a heel hook so this is the harder heel hook smaller heel you can't just plonk it on you have to think you have to think like where your hand is positioned heel to heel to hand extra complicated um and then there are some pockets. Pockets is something we've not spoken about yet. Pockets and Marmite as well right. Pockets like Marmite are a bit of a love-hate affair for many climbers which is why I wanted to ask Jake his opinion on this controversial hold type it's just the question didn't quite formulate fully in my mind before I started to ask it. In that pink we've used pockets which is like oh should we use pockets of V2 V3 no it's probably V3 um pockets are a really good way of prescribing a sequence for a start because it's really hard to match a pocket and the other thing it's like an introduction to strength like you have to have a certain amount of strength to put two or only three or only two fingers in a hold um really simple way of doing it you can also do it with small crimps you can do it with slopers but pockets are another good another good way of introducing that strength element. Yeah this is a really cool boulder um so we're moving on to intermediate something like V4 to V5 for this video um this blue boulder you have no feet to start off with um however the starting hold is like kind of positive um it's a campus sort of a an exercise in whether you can do a pull-up and and by V4 V5 we can start challenging people on this on this skill you're campusing to from a good hold to two other good holds they're kind of like the difficulty here is in the strength requirement for sure for the pull-up for sure yeah and then with a boulder like this would you kind of like offset if the difficulty is in that first move might you yeah offset the rest of the climb to make it really centered on that first move well we want to try and set consistent difficult difficulty throughout the boulder but in this case what we've done is you've had your power aspect and the rest of the boulder isn't very complicated it's just kind of physical still so overall it's just physical you don't have to do too much thinking and as the grade as the difficulty ramps up we would ask the climber to do two or three things at the same time so you know you're going off worse holds and maybe instead of going from down pulling hold to another down pulling hold you have to go down pulling to like a shoulder or down pulling to like an undercut you just it's just a combination of different skills and different different quality handholds for many years indoor bouldering has subscribed to the same grading system but recent developments have been shaking things up in the climbing world and might be signaling the end of climbing grading as we know it a magnesium carbonate compound named mag dust has been shaking things up in the climbing community and suggesting that indoor bouldering might not be as difficult as we once believed and many climbers are unsure how to respond to the changes and at first we didn't know what it was and then i spoke to my friend kevin and we realized there's only one thing that's changed it's the chalk maybe about two weeks ago my friend put me on to mag dust and at the time he did warn me about how it might affect my climbing but i didn't really pay much attention until i started climbing with it and then i really realized just how strong the effect is this uh it says v3 but not with this stuff it's um it's v1 now if you would like to try some for yourself reports suggest that you can get 15 off your next order using cotanna 15 a magnesium carbonate compound known as mag dust this one we can talk about size of handhold so this is a super thin boulder um by thin i mean crimping um but none of these holds are thicker than maybe three centimeters from the wall so you're really relying you're starting to rely on finger strength now the the complexity is not very high but we're challenging the climber purely by finger strength so another another intermediate ish level boulder this one i think hits the v4 v5 mark quite well um another way of introducing difficulty is dynamic movement so that first move is like a super popular right now slab stand up sort of thing and then it's not super obvious what you're supposed to do for the rest of the boulder there's a large orange hold just looks like a foothold to most people you're actually supposed to palm on it as you can see um there's a small crimp in there there's a there's a weird side pull you really have to start thinking about how to move now and that's sort of combined with finger strength and dynamic ability there's a lot going on in this boulder yeah and then you've got like the the next iteration of the heel hook again at the top where that heel hook to me looks quite it doesn't look super super difficult but it's very off balance like you're leaning quite far to the side it's quite a tenuous heel hook it's quite quite thin and you have to place it quite precisely um and uh and even even if you place it quite well you can go over to try and match and it still might pop out when i was thinking about what it is that makes like gives a boulder its grade i was thinking one of the ways you could categorize it and i've seen this sometimes done in comps is by how many of the climbing population could climb that boulder yeah so for example with vbs we talked about anyone could walk in off the street generally speaking and climb that boulder whereas as you're getting into kind of like the advanced are we in advanced level as you get closer towards advanced level you might expect that the percentage of climbers that climb in that gym that would be able to climb that boulder would be a lot less yeah and then as we move towards like the the hardest bolts in the world only a handful of people are able to climb those boulders have climbed those boulders before is how often a boulder is climbed part of what gives it as difficulty if that makes any sense at all yeah i think it's a good way of measuring it um we in indoors we don't have the luxury of a consensus over like 25 years we have six weeks that's all we have so it for sure that that is a good measure but it only works outside okay so now we're in deep enough questions like we could we could we could tally the number of people that climb each boulder in the building over six weeks but it would be kind of a pointless kind of a pointless exercise yeah we'll talk about the next level advanced what are we talking now what we've given it six to something we've given it roughly six v6 to v8 cool so what's going on with this boulder crimps really thin crimps and actually quite large moves between them you can see the foothold is good to counteract the fact that the handholds are bad there's always a bit of a balance there this this boulder is actually relatively basic but but now it's like a true test of finger strength and can you move between these awful awful holds sure and all the they're really they're all really similar yeah uh repeated yeah i guess in indoor bouldering maybe not but is is endurance like the ability to hold on to the same holder over and over would that be something that would factor in when you're resetting certainly a consideration i mean generally the the longer the boulder the harder the boulder um this is this boulder is probably like what was it eight moves long or something so it's not much of a consideration here but certainly if we have a cave some of the routes some of the boulders in there are like 16 moves long so at some point you have to consider how that affects the grades yeah once you go over like nine moves in a cave you can start adding a number here and there i just wanted to talk a bit about another way to add difficulty um endurance more moves harder boulder essentially so in the cave i'm not going to do any climbing because it's super dark in here but like this white that goes across me is probably 16 moves long but it's all handlebars it's all like super big jugs so we've given it a v2 right you know what i mean um and if it was half the length if it was maybe half the length it might be like v0 and that like endurance thing is consistent throughout all the climbs in the in the in the cave like this black again is probably over 10 moves long you know it's really complicated i think we gave it a v7 but if it was just if it was just to here out there you know it'd be like v5 but then you have to cave climbing eh we have another heel hook to talk about so we've got we've got a combination of a heel hook and sort of a a dead point to a left hand crimp you see that left hand crimp is slotted so you have to you have to know how to heel hook and you have to be able to control the speed of your movement using your heel because of because the edge is slotted sure and then you've got the combination of dual texture and blocked yeah in the advanced bracket i challenged jake to talk us through a complete change of styles firstly on a jump boulder problem that yonder had created on their dedicated competition wall and then a delicate slab without many handholds at all so this boulder we've given we've put it in the advanced bracket i think that's probably fair so this move this move just so while we're here on this boulder this move is a lache or a lambada really really popular at the moment this one in particular is relatively difficult you can't you can't land and stop just on that first black macro you have to keep moving to the third black macro so the there's like a position of security at the start and then there's a position of security at the third black macro and massive insecurity in the so it's super challenging totally warranting that advanced level talk about that black slab i think ah okay so this is a similar move to the yeah orange that we looked at a few times ago yeah what sets this aside why is this more difficult it looks like a really to the layman it's the same move yeah well spotted it is really similar um that that angle of wall is actually much steeper and the the handhold and both feet are significantly worse so although it's yeah although it looks the same it's like a it's a totally different challenge um three three like v grades harder um you have a section of no hands okay she also had a section of no hands on the orange border we saw before by this at this point in your your climbing life your climbing career you have to start thinking about what shoes you're wearing so pockets yeah so here we have another advanced boulder um it's a good example of forcing a sequence and harking back to that blue there's a campus section so the old campus 180 move we've pulled it out the bag this time it's a it's a prescribed sequence because you have pockets and it's combined with compassing unfortunately i couldn't do the top for some reason so advanced sure because you've got that kind of like compounding of all of the different elements that can make stacked on top of one another yeah and that's difficult that's essentially that's the theme you'll start to see certain things like complexity and strength all these things stacking up stacking up stacking up until you have a harder thing we're moving on to expert we're moving on so this is probably we've given this v9 to v12 so black's like maybe v10 maybe harder this is the the sloper to the slot super hard move i'm not sure if anyone's done it yet wow i need a session on it you know i need a proper session maybe i'll just do four and a half minutes i'll just do the next bit i'm curious to know why like what what is it that makes this one of the hardest what what combination of all of the things we've talked about has this got yeah that gives it it's got it's got the whole collection it's got incredible complexity it's got awful handholds and it's got in this case it has a large move large move is not the only way to make things hard hard but it does and it's just it's simply the combination of those three things yeah it makes it hard and then so we have a we have a toe hook that's kind of hard to put in to start off with that allows you to do a actually not very big move to a very very poor sloper and then you have to flick so you have a precision move to a slot and then after that you have even more complexity so the first two moves alone incredibly hard i don't know if anyone's done this boulder yet it's really it's really hard to put your body in the right position if you're underpowered for the boulder if you're strong then you can you can move with um decisiveness and uh you know you have more of a chance in of doing the boulder quickly but me i'm like unfit at the minute so i couldn't do it probably the hardest boulder we have in yonder at the moment is this blue um it's got like a combination things awful holds really hard moves and it's super long it's probably probably 15 moves coming out of the cave it's quite quite a hot spot for really hard boulders because you can come out of the cave and then go into the headwall sometimes we tag the boulders halfway so maybe the top section is just v9 and then you add in the start it could be v11 something like that those boulders that are right at the top end do you have to be on an overhang to get that that level of uh no no you can set you can set incredibly hard on slab and vert i i'd be a bit concerned giving a number okay like maybe you can set v8 on slab v9 on slab yeah but it has to be really specific it's just it's easier to set hard on a steep overhang so now we'll talk about the elite level we've given this v13 to v16 there are no boulders here graded v13 to v16 we could try we would have to get someone in who is elite to set them because only only really those people know what that grade feels like with with this elite level we've reached the point where we're not really able to test those people um at that at that v13 v16 bracket the the people that are climbing those boulders maybe they'll train on a board like that or they'll try to train on a board like this but we can't test them as setters it's super hard um and then those boulders outside there they're a collection of everything we've already talked about so hand hold size uh quality of hold is it really slopey size of move um how perfect you have to be with your your toe placement or your heel placement how much attention to detail you give to the the amount of rubber that's worn on your toe maybe this this shoe is no good for that particular move there's it's just infinite it and this is why our sport is so fantastic like the difficulty level is so incredibly infinite and the style level they're just infinite styles it's so cool i don't know what more to say on that so i guess elite level boulders we can't really give uh an example because they generally speaking don't really exist in the indoor gym because only such a tiny percentage of climbers yeah can will climb them what's also super cool is that that limit is being pushed very cool more and more into our kind of i guess our last category on nod to the god tier difficulty in climbing which would be boulders so difficult that only is it six seven six i don't know how many v17s there are in the i think it's five or six now for sure um but how many people have climbed v17 like eight eight people maybe not very many um and it's so far beyond the realms of what we can all climb like it's incredibly hard to even discuss it but all you need to know as the viewer v17 is currently the hardest grade 9a french 9a um we'll probably see a v18 in our lifetime but i don't think it's going to be for five years that's my guess yeah um is there a takeaway what's the takeaway there are eight levels yeah those were our eight levels that we this was our interpretation of that challenge and i think we've kind of said throughout what's really cool about climbing is that climbing grading is that it is so subjective i really feel like it's that subjectivity that makes this conversation potentially endless but we are gonna stop it there so thanks very much for joining me great job guys v0 my gym don't forget come to hang check out boba i don't even know what channel this is make sure you give bouldering boba a follow thanks to jake for his time today pleasure hope you enjoyed it we'll see you in the next video