Magnus Midtbø tries Australia's national comp boulders (crazy hard)

Jordan, this is the first boulder, right? Yep. Men's one? Men's one. And how many people topped this? It was topped by three athletes. Three athletes, okay. And three athletes, they had four minutes? Four minutes, yep. And there were six in total. So half of the field topped this. Yeah, 50%. Half of Australia's best climbers. But I get unlimited time, so it's a lot easier for me. And I also have Bera here from the man himself, the main route setter, Jordan. All right, like this? Yep. All right, is this? Maybe your left foot there. I didn't see it. That's it. It's gonna be a hard foot match. A little more, keep going. Down, down, down, straight down, that's you. And then a very, yeah, very, very delicate move to bring the left back through the body. Okay, the last move looks pretty spicy too. Absolutely, yeah. You definitely need to get all the way around the corner. Is this a boulder where you recommend climbing with the chalk bag? I think so, because it's so slow and static. You can definitely have some very stable positions where you can chalk up, and your ruts can get pretty slimy if you don't have chalk. Right, so in a competition, would you be allowed to put a tick mark here? No, so no tick marks. No tick marks. Given that it's on a start hold, it's kind of an interesting one. So I think that it's probably technically allowed to tick on a start hold, as long as it's got a start tape. But anything on the wall, and anything that isn't taped for your start is an attempt. So I would have to throw the tick mark then, to not touch the hold, right? A little more, yeah. A little to the left, yeah, that's good. Nice. Just rushing for the zone. For this move, I'd definitely like some stiffer shoes. Yes, yeah. But I guess most competitors have two pairs, right? Yeah, most of them do. Some only take one, which seems crazy to me. What is the most popular choice of shoes? That's a great question. There's a lot of Scarpa in Australia, so many athletes wear Drago's. Other than that, theories are very popular. Theories? Yeah, the La Sportiva. A lot of athletes wearing the low volume version of that, the red and black. I personally wear that as well. But yeah, I would say dominant would be Scarpa and La Sportiva. Which is the same in the World Cup, I think. Same in the World Cup, yeah. Nice, nice. Delicate foot match. All right. This is where we lost most of our athletes. Yeah. On this foot match. A lot of them wanted to step their foot through around the arete, but you can't fix it. You can't un-contortion that body position. What would you grade this? I know that's a tricky question, but... So I think for the male finals round, they were all approximately the same grade. So about B9 for every single climb. I would have said some ended up a lot harder, some ended up a lot easier. And it's essentially a ballpark grade. So it needs to be more of a vibe than like an actual, I want exactly this. Because a lot of these competition styles, you can't really grade them. Right. So it's variety first and approximately this hard second. Are you doing the IFSC sandbag? No, I don't think so. There's no sandbags. Maybe M4 is a bit of a sandbag for B9. Because usually, not to brag, but when I go into the gym, I usually flash B9s. Maybe not on the slab. Not on the slab. But like physical B9s, I can usually flash. Well, M2. Yeah. Maybe we'll see some action. That's for you guys at home. Like normally when you talk to roosters for comps and they say a number, you can add like two grades to that number. Maybe, maybe. Nice. Very good. Slow and steady here. Keep slapping the arete. Very good. Come on. Nice little glory jug. Good one. Yeah, thanks. That took me about 20 minutes. So how big was your team that you set with for this comp? So we had six. Six. Wow, that's a pretty big team. Yeah, it was really good. So it was my first time chiefing a nationals. So I was being assessed by one of our best setters in the country, Yossi. And then we also had a really great team, super diverse from across the whole country. So every state was represented. And you've competed yourself too, right? I have, yeah. Because that's a question I get a lot. Like the route setters, they have to be pretty good climbers themselves. Yeah. Just to try these boulders and make sure that they're accurate. Absolutely, yeah. You need to be at quite a high level. I would say that climbing ability is very good to have as a route setter. It's not absolutely necessary because there's always going to be ex-athletes and very strong climbers on the setting team. And having people who aren't as strong is also a great benefit. All right, okay. Oh man, you can see my sweaty hands. Immediately. For me, the plan was to go again, but matching felt easier. What do you suggest? I definitely went again. You went again. Because I find that this hold is maybe a little more secure than trying to move your hand around on this. Right. I also feel that with slopers, it's often best to make as few hand moves as possible. Yeah. Because your first grab is always going to be the best conditions. Right. The least sweaty. And the more you move around, the less chalk you have. Yeah. So did everyone get a zone on this? No. Not everyone zoned. And only one top, you said, right? That's right, yeah. Come on. That is difficult. And you still say this is V9? So this is what I meant when I said that that is the ballpark. Right, okay. So the plan might say V9, but we always just adjust everything to the people who are competing. So what happens to be on the whiteboard at the beginning of the route setting process might not be what happens at the end. Because if I were to grade this... Maybe 8A? No, I think 8A plus 8B. Yeah, it's quite hard, yeah. Come on. Definitely not the greatest climb if you're a little bit shorter. Yeah. But that probably evens out though, right? Yeah. So at the top, there's quite a crunched body position. Yeah. And so I always like to think with setting, if you have a really extended position in the same climb, you ought to have a really boxy position. Yeah. So that you're not disenfranchising one body type. Do you think you could set for a specific person to win? Like any of the guys? I think for the guys, it would be really challenging because they're all so equal. Yeah, okay. In terms of their skill and physicality, they're all like quite on the same level. Yeah. But that being said, all of them have their own style. So if you really wanted to like select an athlete, I believe that you could do it. Yeah, so you have a lot of power as a route setter. And that's why variety is key. Yeah. So making sure you have lots of different setters from all over who understand different styles and they understand the other athletes. Yeah, yeah. And making sure that we're prioritising the board as being different. I guess it's hard if you have your best friend competing. It is hard, yeah. Come on. I don't know. I feel a little bit better on the going. A little bit less desperate, but still feel like I would need a lot of tries and perfect conditions and everything to even stick that move. Maybe we should try the dyno. Yeah, move on to the slab. Yeah. So this is a very different style again, right? Yeah. So this one is something that we were testing them a lot on through the course of the competition. So in qualifications and semi-finals, we had this style of faster foot-based coordination. Yeah. And that was all leading up to this moment where we maybe selected the right athletes to get on these boulders. Yeah. So definitely through the course of the competition, we try and select people based on what we have in finals. So if you have a challenging foot coordination move in finals, you might set some foot coordination just to make sure and see the level. Okay. And how many people top this? Only one. Only one? Yeah. That's weird. Okay. There's so much to think about at once. I think maybe a little bit slower is good. But again, this is a testament to the athletes. This is incredibly hard to learn in four minutes. Yeah. There's a lot of tiny little micro-adjustments you need to make in your body. Yeah. And it is definitely a challenging one in four minutes. Also, when you're full of adrenaline and you just want to pull really hard, and it's not really about pulling hard this one. Yeah. It's about feeling. Come on. You have to trust the foot, but it's very slippery. It's so tricky, that one. Do you usually try to cheat it? Always. Especially with slabs, you have to try every single break. Yeah. I think the only break we didn't try was what one of our athletes tried to do in the final, which was he'd like rainbow rocket up onto the start hold, and he tried to jump all the way across to the third triangle end zone. Okay. He's quite tall, but that is a big jump. Yeah. And it's a huge risk to take as an athlete as well. Right. But certainly on a slab like this, mainly the risk is that you can crimp the edge of the volumes. It's legal in a competition. Yeah. And often athletes know this, and if they think they have a better chance of going slowly and really crimping those volumes, they're quite risk averse. Yeah. The converse of that is that the athletes, they also know what the intention is in their viewing. They can see what we want as route setters, and sometimes they just want to put on a show. Right. So this is the last one. At the end, they've tried all these before, and then they come to this. This is the last one. No one did this, you said? No one did this one, no. So we did have one zone. There's a couple of ways through this climb, but this is right at the end of the round, and it's also after a day of doing semifinals in the morning. Athletes are pretty tired. And qualified the day before. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I guess you grab this first, or... Come on. That was... You're supposed to go... Some of the setting team liked this method more, to go match, match, match, match, match, match. Yeah. So it's definitely got some options. Because the zone is, it is jug. Yeah. So once you hit it, you can definitely reel it in, and... But you need the foot though, to stay on the... Exactly, yeah. Because of the angle of the side pole, you definitely need to kick. I think to begin with, it's enough for me with a jump start, and then kind of learn the move. Yeah, I think so. That was far out. Oh, okay. Close. And for all you guys wondering, no, this is not a V9. There's no way this is a V9. No, this is definitely one where we push the boat out. This is the most futuristic moment of the comp, I would say. This we knew was going to be either one top, really unlikely for one top, or no tops. Right. So this was an assumed risk. Okay. Nice. Come on. That's a hard move. Yeah. How nervous are you when you watch the competitors? Are you afraid that no one's going to do anything, or everyone's going to top everything for a try? Yes, every single one of those feelings. As a setter, it's just, when the round is starting, you're convinced that every boulder is way too easy. Okay. And then maybe you know some are too hard. Yeah. But you're just always so stressed. Right. For me. And I think that's a good thing. If you were watching the round and you didn't care, it means that you don't care about the outcome. Yeah. And then why are you doing it? Exactly. Yeah. Come on. There's just so much swing. Yeah. Come on. Yep, that's it. Kind of stuck there, but... Yeah, it's really hard to get out of that position once you're in it. Yeah. Okay. So while I'm climbing the women's problems, I thought I would talk to you guys like I have done in the past with a voiceover, because I'm not really sure what this channel is going to turn into. I've done a few reaction videos, and I'm planning to make a few vlog videos. And basically, it's up to you guys what you want to see. So please comment below what you want to see from this channel. I'm planning to keep it more climbing intensive, like the main channel now has a lot of non-climbing videos in it. So I'm hoping to keep this more personal than the other channel. You know, the female problems, they can be almost as hard as the men's problems, especially when it comes to technical stuff like this. They're not easy, not in any way. Almost slipped off the last match there. And as you can see, you need to start with four limbs, like the route setter will set where you need to start with your legs and with your hands. So sometimes just finding the right start position can be really, really tricky. And then the purple bowler, I mean, this is a dual text bowler. As you can see, it's shiny, very tricky. When you start leaning over to that right side, you think that you're not going to make it. It feels like you're out of balance. But then you just go centimeter by centimeter, and then you realize, oh, it's actually possible. But when you first start moving to the right, it feels like it's impossible. And then the top was actually pretty easy. All right, orange problem. This was a weird start, I thought. I don't know if you're supposed to cross under like that, or if you're supposed to go again. That's what I initially thought when looking at the bowler. But as I started, I felt like it was easier just doing it that way. And then a jump to finish off, which was just really easy. I think it was more for the show, a crowd pleaser. This also was weird. When I looked at it, it looked really, really hard. But then, I don't know, it was way more comfortable than I thought it would be. And I think it's mainly because of that big volume or those big footholds. You hardly need to put any pressure on your hands. So yeah, that was it. Please leave a comment down below what you want to see from this channel in the future. See you next time.