Gym Rating Soft?

Anyone else feel like the gym ratings are far softer than outdoor - by like 2 grades?

I'm climbing 12s in the gym, but in Boulder Canyon I get spit off easy 11s. I know there's a difference between new school and old school ratings, so maybe that's it. I'm guessing that many folks who are voting on the ratings in the gym don't get outside, so that's probably part of it as well.

I feel like I've been on enough routes to tell it's not just exposure and protection differences getting in my head. It's actually movement and hold type/availability. I lead an 8 the other day that felt harder than any 10 in our gym.

This isn't meant to be a complaint - I can always just take the grade down two steps in my mind while training - just wondering if you all experience this as well, and if so how you deal with it.

Mason Roberts wrote:Anyone else feel like the gym ratings are far softer than outdoor - .

I thought it was universally accepted that outdoor grades are harder.

Then what's the point of having the standard? I know it's a subjective guide, but shouldn't it at least be close?

Depends on the gym. I've climbed at gyms where the rating were extremely soft. OTOH, I've (more rarely) climbed at gyms where the ratings seemed harder than outdoor climbs.

The few gyms I've climbed in ( Duluth MN and Grand Junction CO) had grades that were very similar to the local outdoor climbing. I never really noticed much diffrence between the outdoor and gym grades. Then again I don't climb hard ( mid 10's).

Mason Roberts wrote:Anyone else feel like the gym ratings are far softer than outdoor - by like 2 grades? I'm climbing 12s in the gym, but in Boulder Canyon I get spit off easy 11s.

Unless you were at Castle Rock, Bell Buttress or some of the other fringe old school crags/routes, it just means you suck at outdoor climbing (at least Boulder Canyon).

Yes and in Boulder Canyon as well.

Gym climbing is usually more physically difficult and sustained than the same grades in the front range.

The reason that it feels easier to you is that you probably lack crimp strength, have bad footwork, and generally can't read routes (unless they are bright plastic with bright tape).

Once you get more mileage and get your technique settled down a bit, you'll probably find the opposite to be true. Of course this requires time outdoors.

+1^^ High altitude nailed it

Depends on your gym. I once climbed with a friend of a friend, who fell several times on a classic 5.7, hitting his ankle on a ledge. My friend couldn't believe this because "he leads 5.12 in the gym."

I now completely support my gyms decision to go with easy/mod/hard ratings. Soft gym ratings that inflate the ego do a pretty big disservice to the inexperienced climber. Especially when they start heading outside on the sharp end.

I have climbed at most of the gyms in the Denver/Boulder area and I'm primarily a boulderer. I find that in general the graded problems (as opposed to easy/medium/hard) at a couple of the big gyms tend to be a little soft. I prefer easy/medium/hard in the gym because I find gym climbing to be so different that I don't think it's appropriate to give real grades.

I've seen them all over the map. Generally the ratings are only comparable to the rest of the gym that you're in. I've seen a crazy roof pull as a 5.7 in the gym and never seen anything like it outside rated anywhere that low.

"Vanity Grading" is a real concept. It's defined as the tendency for gyms to over-inflate their grades in order to make their customers feel like they're climbing stronger. Stronger climbers usually equal happier climbers when it comes to plastic pulling. Most gyms I've been to follow this idea, be it anything from a letter grade high to a full number grade off.

I do agree that an inability to read outdoor climbs widens this grade gap. However unless you're climbing at the Red (grades are accepted to be quite soft), or your gym bases its grading off the nearest "respectable" crag, you can expect the pink .11a in the corner to be an easier tick than a pitch on the Naked Edge

The gym I frequent grades routes much harder than local outside climbs. They don't want people to get sandbagged when they transition to real rock.

It's my opinion that we expect too much from the YDS. I think sometimes we expect the YDS to be a ruler when it's more like a color wheel because the other colors on the wheel help give an individual color more context and meaning.

In my experience, the YDS does a pretty good job at telling you how hard routes are relative to other routes in a particular area and of a particular style. For instance, in the Wasatch Range, where I've done did most of my climbing, the YDS did a good job of telling me how hard trad cracks were going to be relative to each other in Little Cottonwood (EX. I could lead The Green Adjective 5.9, so I knew I could hop on The Coffin 5.9 and be fine), but the YDS did a bad job of equating those crack routes to slab routes in Little Cottonwood (EX. I did 10.d slab in LCC, but I could never do more than a 5.9 crack).

The YDS also worked pretty well at equating routes that were geographically close to each other in the Wasatch Range, provided they were of similar styles. (EX. 5.9 sport in Rock Canyon felt pretty comparable to 5.9 sport in American Fork, 30 miles away). I assume this is because, presumably, guys who were climbing in Rock Canyon also climbed in American Fork, Little Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood, and Maple Canyon, given that they were all close to each other.

Turning to the gym, it's a different style than outdoor sport, trad or crack, so the scale loses some of its accuracy. In addition, though a gym may be geographically close to an outdoor crag, I'm not sure how many people are climbing at both, creating the same effect as geographic distance and further diminishing the accuracy of the scale. But is 5.12 harder than 5.11 in your gym? I'll bet it is. And 5.12 will be harder than 5.11 at a particular crag.

Another analogy could be that we expect the YDS to be a universal language when it's better to think of it as a bunch of regional dialects that derive from a common mother tongue.

Someone earlier in the thread asked what's the point of having a scale if it can't accurately grade every single route, independent of style and location.

I think there is still value in the YDS scale because it gives you an idea of how much harder routes are in a particular area and in a particular style, so you can push yourself and measure progress with decent accuracy in the area that you spend most of your time. But I'd agree that the YDS scale isn't very useful for climbers visiting a new crag, climbers entering a new style, or even climbers visiting a new gym.

I find it also has more to do with style. I have had memberships in all of the Boulder gyms, and in GJ, and have climbed in tons of gyms in other places. My hardest gym send is 12b, yet I have 7 12c's and 5 12d's outside. For bouldering I got V8 outside before getting it in any gym. I just climb better on real rock when I am not dictated the movement by the setter.

But in reality, I feel that gym grades are super soft, and so is Boulder Canyon.

Eric LaRoche wrote:I've seen them all over the map. Generally the ratings are only comparable to the rest of the gym that you're in. I've seen a crazy roof pull as a 5.7 in the gym and never seen anything like it outside rated anywhere that low.

Try climbing in the Gunks...

To TS: this is normally the case, but as others have mentioned, there are some exceptions. A major part of the difficulty comes down to route finding and other inherent challenges of the outdoors, which is why you might also find less drastic differences between climb difficulties outdoors. E.g, a 9 will feel significantly harder outdoors than indoors, but a 10 or even 11 might not feel proportionally that much more difficult. A common mistake is to get on a sandbagged low grade climb and think "if that was a 5.7, there's no way I'm getting on a 5.10!" The difficulty you experienced might not have actually come from the movement itself; a well trodden, clearly chalked 5.10 can often feel easier than a wandering, dirty 5.9. Just because there are 5.7 holds there doesn't mean that you'll see them...

I agree with Ted Pinson.. Having thought about it way too much, I'm of the opinion that the YDS shouldn't be used in the gym at all. Gym climbing trains about 20% (IMHO) of the skills required for outside climbing. While an experienced climber can relate a particular gym's ratings to their own skill, a new climber can be seriously misinformed.

Victor K wrote:While an experienced climber can relate a particular gym's ratings to their own skill, a new climber can be seriously misinformed.

Oh the horror!

"Oh the horror!"
I guess. It's not like you could get killed or anything...

Mason Roberts wrote:Then what's the point of having the standard? I know it's a subjective guide, but shouldn't it at least be close?

You climb considerably harder than I do, but yeah they are different animals. Many gym only climbers go outside and can barely scratch up the wall.

The gym is a batting cage and outside is the game.