“The hardest slab I have ever tried” - Magnus Midtbø

So it's been a while since I did a video in this gym. This is the, I guess the OG gym. I am very excited about today actually. I have so much energy. I had two Red Bulls before coming here and if you guys know me I don't drink that much caffeine but when I do it's very effective. Some of you might think that it's something else. I can promise you it's not something else. I would never touch anything else. So there's a crazy sunset outside now. The sky is like orange completely covered like it's so beautiful and it's 11 p.m but it doesn't get dark in Norway this time of year so it looks like it's like midday but the reason why there's no one in the gym is because the gym is closed. That was yellow. I'm gonna move straight up to red I think. It's one level higher. A little dyno to spice things up. I guess the next grade is black and then after that I'm just gonna go over to the purple ones, the hardest ones. Even though a lot of people have said that the easier grades are interesting too. I don't know. I think that it's more fun to try the harder ones so I think that's what I'm gonna do. Oh that's a bad hold. Almost missed it. Yeah those are cool. It's not too original that boulder but the holds make it really interesting. Oh my god this looks crazy. So black is the second hardest grade. It looks like you could start it like this and then it's red or you do it from here and then it's black and black slabs are always really hard so I expect this to be super hard but I don't even know how you're supposed to do this one to be honest. I think how you're supposed to do it is just I guess jump and land it like this but that just looks crazy so I'm You might have to do it like that. Oh that's sketchy. I think that on this boulder though I'm gonna try the top first because if I get past the beginning I do want to have a plan for the top. Oh my god that is so hard. What? Slab is a little bit humbling. Sometimes I usually say that but I feel like it's humbling when you expect to do well and you don't. On slabs I don't really expect anything so it's almost just more liberating than anything. The thing is you're not allowed to use this. That is a hard push with the leg. I think you just have to do it like that maybe help with the hand on the knee. I don't know probably a lot of you haven't seen that move before but it's actually pretty common to do that. Same thing as if you're not flexible enough sometimes on slab you have to grab your foot and put it there. Sounds kind of crazy if you haven't seen it before but it's used all the time. Oh my god I don't have enough enough power in my legs to do that. I'm gonna try the red one to see if all the boulders are that hard on this wall. That's like night and day. How like this is red and this is red is just crazy to me. Like this to me seems like a 7a and this seems like a 6a. Okay you know what I'm gonna try another one and then come back to this one. I don't want to get stuck too long on one roller but I am coming back to this one this session so stay tuned for that. So this one looks more like my cup of tea but it looks like a big dyno up to that one which I'm actually I'm not that great at dynos. If it's technical it looks like you have to land a toe hook so that's a little bit strange. It's weird to get the direction to get that toe in. I don't know what to do differently to be honest. Okay you actually didn't get you didn't have to get the toe in. The top was a little bit awkward too. I think you were supposed to get that toe hook but this was just too good so you just stick it without that toe. Another thing that's happened since last time too is that I relaunched my book. This was for sale three years ago but I had to pull it off the market because the old publisher couldn't deliver the books on time. But now we transfer the rights to Rungne so now Rungne is selling it. The book is about how I started climbing, my competition days and all the way up until YouTube actually and is written by one of the most famous authors in Norway with me. We also have a lot of new chalk buckets and these are really really cool. The coolest chalk buckets I've ever seen and you can also get a bundle so a book, three bags of mag dust and you get one of those bags for free. So check that out the link is in the description. Thank you guys so much for all the support and I hope you like the book. If you get the book if you're not that's fine too. Okay it's too low. Okay that shouldn't be that hard. I don't know why I'm struggling on that. Oh yeah that was easy but this is not easy though. I kind of touched the orange. I don't know we can do a replay but I think I touched the orange so I want to do it again. That is not a hard move. Why am I why am I falling on that move? I think it's just being scared because if you don't hit it right you could hit your shin again. Complained a lot about that in another video. Yeah there we go. That should have taken me way less tries. I just wasn't like turned on from the start. That is a cool move. I think I can do it like that. Okay yeah it's all about timing. Okay just have to want it a little bit more. Oh my god this might take me a while. I also don't know if it's like the type of move where if I stick it once will I just then just do it easily after that. Oh yeah okay at least I could stick that first move. Oh my god though that is hard. The next part. I wonder if there's another way of doing that move. Let's see if it was a was luck doing the first move. Yeah no I definitely feel better on that move so I think I got that move now from now on. No no no no. But I'm always so surprised though like it's also like with Slab of the Week. Sometimes I really struggle and then I look at the list and there's so many people who do it. Okay oh my god that is gonna be so hard to do. I can't do it like that. I wonder if this was in a World Cup. How many people would do this in five minutes? I don't think anyone would. I'm just gonna do a couple more tries and then take a break because I don't want to use all the memory card on this one bowler. No! Oh that was so close. That is so freaking hard that bowler. Okay I'm gonna take a break. I want to try a nice move. I think I skipped the sequence. I like those holds. The Fontainebleau series. You're supposed to replicate the Fontainebleau rock. It's a very very beautiful type of rock. I really hope that I can make that happen sometime to go to Fontainebleau and make a bunch of youtube videos there. Probably when you're watching this though I'm gonna be in Arco in Italy on vacation just to hang out go down there with my girlfriend. It's so hot during the summer so we're not climbing that much a little bit. I wish I had more time to climb outside, go on trips and all that stuff. But right now I'm just so focused on youtube and all the stuff I have going on like Ungna, the climbing gyms, adrenaline, altitude. Right now it's a little bit too much a little bit maybe too much stuff going on but I think one day I will look back at this and just feel like this was the best part of my life because I do feel privileged to have so many things going on and it's all thanks to this youtube channel. If it wasn't for this channel I wouldn't have any of those things. So it is all thanks to you guys and I don't know I don't feel like I have thanked the people watching enough. This is the hardest grade, purple. It's hard to see from that angle how steep this wall is but it's a 45 degree wall so it's very steep and when you film straight on like this you can't really see it. I didn't want to jump to that intermediate. It's a weird position though. It's like when I when you go for the flash you can't really hesitate so you just have to do something make quick decisions. I don't think that was the right way of doing it. It's a nice knee bar and another knee bar. Yeah that's not too bad probably like a 7b plus or something. The slab though even though it was only black I would grade that like a 7c or something. Yeah that was not bad actually. The grades are not very consistent and that's something to keep in mind for everyone when you go to a gym. No matter if they're actual grades or tape grades, color grades like this. It's individual and what do you call it? I forgot the word. Subjective. It's very subjective and just personal. What suits you, what doesn't suit you. Did I already mention that I have a... I already mentioned it. The book is for sale though. Link is in the description if you didn't know. It's also a real advantage to climb in your own gym because this hold has been on this exact angle before so I kind of know exactly how it's going to feel. There's been a... I think it was way back when it was either the Bouldering Bowbats or Eric Carlson was here. Then we had something on exactly that same hold and I remember that it's not good enough to stick it so you have to just kind of use it to continue the momentum and go. My guess is that you go to this, just barely touch it and then go straight for that. That is super cool though. The top is not that easy either. Oh no! It's like on the way up there I hit my arm and that was enough to just... Because that top hold is so bad. I used to train a lot in the evenings or even nights before because I love training alone in the gym but as I've gotten older I feel like the sleep is so important and when you train that late it's very hard to fall asleep so I stopped doing it. Now I train during the day instead but I think tonight I'm not going to be able to sleep because I feel so high on the caffeine. I only stopped drinking caffeine for a while. Now I only drink it when I really need to. Before the comp in Japan I had caffeine. Just like special occasions because when I used to drink a lot of coffee it wouldn't affect me. I wouldn't feel any different if I had a cup of coffee and that's when I decided to stop drinking so much coffee because now when I drink caffeine like either a Red Bull or a cup of coffee I feel so much better. I just I feel like a superhuman to be honest. I think I even... This was not planned by the way but I think I even write about this in my book. Third plug for the book. It was not intentional I promise. This was not in the script. Not that I have a script but it wouldn't have been in the script if I had a script. Oh my god that is such a cool move. It feels so hard. There we go. Louis is a really good setter. I think yeah for me he's one of the best setters so shout out to him. Oh my god. I can't believe I did that. Honestly when I started trying it I thought there was no way I'm gonna do I was gonna do that. That is the hardest slab I've done in a very very long time. Okay black one or it's green but black tape looks strange. It's also like a feet first one. There we go. All right the slab of the week is not that interesting today so I'm gonna skip it. This was the last problem. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you haven't already seen my book it's also for sale again. You've seen it already? Well if you subscribe with post notifications you'll be notified every time I post. That also really helps out this channel. Please do that and I will see you guys next time.