Help me break out of the 5.9s please

Hi. Been climbing trad about 3 years. I am mostly comfortable climbing cracks up to 5.9, face climbing more like 5.10.

Got shut down on Reed’s Pinnacle direct yesterday in Yosemite - 10a, and am frustrated that I can’t seem to progress much with climbing cracks in the 5.10 range.

I work M-F, try to hit the gym 2x weekly, run/cardio 2x weekly, and climb outside on weekends.

To those who magically climb 5.10 and above….What training am I missing? I have a hang board but really know how to with it. Considered building a miny crack trainer.

Goal is to climb RNWF Half Dome by the summer, so I want to be very comfortable on 5.10 crack terrain.

Thanks !!

Sport climbing and bouldering

You can have the world’s best crack technique and it’ll all be useless if you don’t have the strength to pull the moves.

But what TaylorP said. I spent several months project bouldering in the gym cave instead of rope climbing, pulling hard moves over and over, and suddenly I found myself sending literally four letter grades harder on trad and five grades harder on sport. :I …and I hate bouldering. As much as I don’t want to admit it, bouldering builds power like no other. 

Ry C wrote:

You can have the world’s best crack technique and it’ll all be useless if you don’t have the strength to pull the moves.

But what TaylorP said. I spent several months project bouldering in the gym cave instead of rope climbing, pulling hard moves over and over, and suddenly I found myself sending literally four letter grades harder on trad and five grades harder on sport. :I …and I hate bouldering. As much as I don’t want to admit it, bouldering builds power like no other. 

Seems counterintuitive. I have been spending most of my time leading routes at the gym to try to build endurance. I try to avoid bouldering because the routes are so short and I don’t ever really get pumped. But I am willing to try to push grades on boulders. 

If you're a guy you almost certainly have enough strength to climb any 5.10 crack without training or bouldering.

Your profile says you have flashed V5. This is 100% technique and you just need to spend a lot of time climbing cracks.

To get better at 5.10 cracks I find it's usually mostly about making big moves and being dynamic to reach past awkward jams.

For longer term growth focusing on the marginal jams is very helpful though. Spend time on TR intentionally using those bad jams, climbing every inch of they crack instead of reaching through the awkward bits.

Also I personally hate that pitch on Reed's and think it feels solid mid 5.10 compared to a lot of other Valley cracks.

You're working endurance when you should be working power/strength.  We all reach a point where doing the same old thing ("climbing hard in the gym") doesn't cut it*, and you need to actually do some real training to see improvement. This becomes inescapably clear as one gets older.

* If you keep doing the same thing, you'll keep getting the same results

Austin Donisan wrote:

If you're a guy you almost certainly have enough strength to climb any 5.10 crack with training or bouldering.

Your profile says you have flashed V5. 

+1 - get good at dogging your way up a route on lead - set a TR - lots of laps - repeat.  

Don’t compare your numbers and progress to wankers headpointing trad routes after top down rehearsal and sport climbing tactics - for-real ground-up trad climbing takes many years to learn - completely different activity.

James W wrote:

+1 - get good at dogging your way up a route on lead - set a TR - lots of laps - repeat.  

Don’t compare your numbers and progress to wankers headpointing trad routes after top down rehearsal and sport climbing tactics - for-real ground-up trad climbing takes many years to learn - completely different activity.

Yeah for me it’s not a numbers thing I just want to be able to open up 5.10 territory because there are so many good climbs to do above 5.9. 

Go to the creek for a couple weeks. It’s an outdoor training ground for crack climbing. Miles and miles of every size. You won’t get the funkiness of Yosemite cracks, but you will gain pure crack technique. 

As mentioned above, the best answer is sport climb and boulder every opportunity you can. You need the contact strength first and foremost, plus the full quiver of movement and balance muscle memory engrams. Cannot be emphasized enough. I'm old enough to have been around when sport climbing first emerged. Those who embraced it skyrocketed their grades. The old traddies typically remained stuck around 5.10 ish. As always, some exceptions.

If you want to be an exclusive trad guy, like lots of younger folks seem to want to do, then plan on the same slow rate of development we had in the 70s. If it weren't for EBs, dynamic ropes and Ray Jardine grades would've been really stagnant.

Additionally, try to set aside a full week minimum (2 is way better) to go and camp at Fremont Canyon in Wyoming. Every route there is accessible from the top down. You can rig up a static line as a fail safe, huge mental unlocking. Then, either top rope or lead everything you can. Lots of crack technique to work on. And, you will be enabled to expand your ropecraft. Sometimes you might decide to jumar out, or rappell down to the river but in non extreme conditions.

The rock is beautiful and bomber too.

Nobody has asked: why are you failing on the 10s you've tried? Hard crux moves? Pump? Off-size jams? You need to know your weakness to work on it.

He’s in Fresno, near Yos, and is interested in long trad routes - he’s not going to Indian Creek, sure as fuk not Fremont Canyon.  IC “sprad” skills aren’t going to get you up Half Dome anyway.

The current wave of social media driven, mindless hear-say podcast crowd-sourced bro-science bullshit everyone can recite but nobody understands should be mostly ignored for 10’s.  

The number one thing you need is mileage on real rock.  If you want to boulder - great - do that mid-week in the gym for a few mins before leading routes.  For the entire wknd, you should be outside leading cracks.  If you fail on a crack, set a TR and get some laps in, don’t just walk away.  For something like Half Dome, you need to be very good at french free - so practice that by putting a TR on routes a letter or two over your onsight level.

When you get into the mid 11’s - a few 1000 pitches from now - and want to progress up into the 12’s - then you might want to think more about “training”.

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

No need to climb 5.10 when 5.9 is just as fun.

And you can pull on gear at the occasional 10 move.

Appreciate the suggestions and discussion everyone. 

To add a little more color - I feel like I do better on thin cracks. My issue on Reed's P2 - Felt like they were burly moves, gear was finicky, and I just didn't have the stamina to keep going. Obviously getting shut down on one route is not a reason to go home and cry, but I feel like I keep hitting a wall while trying to break in to 5.10 territory. I am consistently pretty "gripped" and shaky on 5.9 terrain - climbs like Whodunit, Open Book, Sour Mash, Commitment, to name a few.  

Seems like the resounding suggestion is boulder / sport climb more. While I would love to get out to Indian Creek or Fremont - I can't fit that into the next few months unfortunately. I will be in Joshua Tree this coming weekend and will plan on leading some harder routes and then running laps on TR. 

If anyone has home workout suggestions I am open to that as well - stuff to build arm / grip strength. Thanks again everyone for the input. I am picking up a copy of Rock Climber's Training Manual as well so hopefully that helps. 

Old Prospector wrote:

Appreciate the suggestions and discussion everyone. 

Felt like they were burly moves, gear was finicky, and I just didn't have the stamina to keep going.

If anyone has home workout suggestions I am open to that as well - stuff to build arm / grip strength. Thanks again everyone for the input. I am picking up a copy of Rock Climber's Training Manual as well so hopefully that helps. 

I'm absolutely not a trainer, nor do I even have a training program that I follow. But here are some suggestions for exercises I felt translated well, and helped me get tangible results that are fun and can be mixed up with just climbing casually in the gym.

Burly moves: I mentioned it before, but project bouldering. If you go to the gym 2x a week, spend one day project bouldering (or half projecting/half whatever else). Pick routes that have dynamic, powerful moves, usually in the cave or overhang and try to send it. Working on the same hard moves over and over will build strength. It's fun (as I have discovered), it's rewarding when you actually send, and you wake up the next morning with a sore body and realize that you did get a workout in. 

Burly + Stamina: Other bouldering workouts that I like doing are 4x4s. A quick google search will tell you what it is. Done right, it will destroy your body and you'll definitely feel the pump. Power is required to stick one hard move. Endurance helps with climbing easier routes for a long time. But power-endurance is needed to do repeated and continuous hard moves (so if you're climbing a burly crack with like 8 hard moves in a row, working on power-endurance is where you'll build stamina to keep going at it).

Stamina: **My favorite rope exercise that I found helps REALLY well, especially with trad, is moving and stopping. I have no idea if there's an actual name but this is what I do: Pick a route that is hard, but not so hard that you can't send it. So if you're climbing 5.11 in the gym and that's decently difficult but you still can get to the top, that's a great route. Pull one move, then place your hand behind your back for 10-15 seconds. Yeah, that's a long time, but I find it works better because forces you to find a good rest and work on your footwork so you don't blow off. Pull one more move with the opposite hand, put the other hand behind your back for 10-15 seconds. Repeat until you've climbed the whole route. Now downclimb it the same way, with pauses. Now climb it like you normally would, then downclimb it normally. That's four laps including downclimbs and at this point, you should feel like your arms are about to explode. But, pick a route you wouldn't be able to actually complete to keep the intensity up. I usually pick routes where I will fall on the first pausing downclimb, and as soon as I'm lowered to the ground, pumped out of my wits, I will immediately start climbing the "normal lap" before I lose the that pump from the first go -- see how far you get before you blow off. The 10-15 second wait time before every move helps with endurance, lock-off strength, technique, finding rests, footwork, and translates to placing gear because finicky gear placements will take a long time and you'll have to lock-off or find a decent rest to do so.

**This exercise is the one that has personally helped me the most with outdoor climbing.

One other rope exercise I like doing for endurance/stamina is suicides, but on a rope. Climb to the first clip. Clip it. Then immediately unclip it. Downclimb to the ground. Climb to the first then second clip. Clip those, unclip them, downclimb to the ground. Repeat for the whole route. You'll be on lead the entire time because you have to unclip, so it helps endurance and the head game. If hitting the deck is something you're worried about, keep the first or second clip in, and unclip only the upper bolts.

Three last things I find useful are the:

• "7-day reset" aka take a massive whip every 7 days to keep your head in shape (not an actual thing; my friends and I made it up because we yank each other off the wall to keep ourselves unafraid of falling -- and it helps lol).
• "If you on-sight it, you must downclimb it".
• And lastly, don't say "take", climb to failure and just take the ride.

Best of luck.

Old Prospector wrote:

... I just didn't have the stamina to keep going. .... I am consistently pretty "gripped" and shaky on 5.9 terrain

There's your problems. I don't think bouldering addresses these weaknesses. Sounds like you can work on stamina for burly climbing and your leading headgame. No amount of strength training is going to help when your strength is nulled by over-gripping and climbing scared.

+1 for bouldering and sport climbing NOT being the solution to feeling comfy on whodunnit and reeds pitch 2.

They absolutely are the solution for being comfy on sustained 10+ and sustained 11+ And above, but 5.9, 10- and 11-, seems like those are more about mileage, technique, and your trad tactics game.

Reeds 2 is tricky. Having a good amount of 3s and 4s, spacing the placements well, and most of all, technique at that size are probably the issues. There are passive and active hand / fist jams all over that thing. Would be a great one to TRS / run laps on in the off hours / weekdays.

Plenty for you to get after at josh! Another thing that would be great is indoor vertical crack routes. If you can run laps on those, as a workout, that will help. If you can’t get to those, do that outside in the park whenever you can. Or build a crack woody.

edit to add; also find a grade you feel more comfortable at, and climb those pitches really really well. 5.6 / 5.7 / 5.8 

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't fully trust your feet. Like really trust your feet.

It doesn't feel like it when you're up there, but Reeds is a bit less than vertical. It also leans slightly to the right. So there are a lot of good resting/placing stances with your left foot in a bomber-can't-fall-out-kinda-painful-jam and your right foot standing on a little crystal or edge or good smear on the face. As with many leaning cracks, the movement pattern is based on using what you can to get that left foot high, standing up, and then resetting your hands and right foot. 

This is a lot easier if you really trust your right foot. So I recommend not only working on crack technique, but spending some time on slabs and stemming corners. The best Valley climbers I know are relaxed and confident on absolutely tiny, miserable little feet. As you learn to trust your feet, you will get better recovery at each stance so stamina is less of an issue. Then the pitch becomes a series of boulder problems separated by rests.

....which is why bouldering is, in fact, the answer to getting stronger and more confident on crack climbs. Bouldering builds the explosive power to reach through the big gaps between good jams off of poor or awkward feet on a climb like Reeds. But it takes years, not weeks, to build that strength and apply it to crack climbs. Technique and footwork gains can come very quickly. So do both! But I do worry that training endurance given the issues you identified might not be the best of use of time. "If you can't pull the moves, there's nothing to endure." - Tony Yaniro.

Lots of good advice above on strength and technique. I'm going to try to suggest a way to think about training and why power is more important to train than endurance. If you train power and your strength goes up by 10%, all the endurance training that you had been doing at your previous strength level that you were doing at a level of say 80% of your full strength is now at only 70% of your full strength and you could do it way longer. i.e. when your strength goes up what was a moderately hard endurance workout before, is now too easy and kind of was a waste of time. If your strength goes up you are also using a smaller % of your strength for a given climb or work out. So increase your strength and your endurance automatically improves because you are stronger so you are using less of your capacity. But its not the other way around, you can do lots of endurance training which helps endurance but it doesn't help you get much stronger. So bouldering and hangboard training are way more important than routes if you want to get better. The nice thing about a hangboard is you can put one anywhere and use it anytime so it doesn't take long to get a workout and you won't miss workouts if you can't get to a gym/crag.

James W wrote:

He’s in Fresno, near Yos, and is interested in long trad routes - he’s not going to Indian Creek, sure as fuk not Fremont Canyon.  

When you are in the Chuffer zone, almost nothing ups your game better than road trips. Why the toxic response?