Silkroad Online Forums

Anyone here like to go (rock/ice) climbing? I've always thought it was really cool, but it wasn't until earlier this year that I finally got the chance to really try climbing in El Chorro, Spain (really nice climbing there btw).
Ever since then I've been in love with the sport. I go to the closest indoor climbing hall to me (1 hr travel T_T) and climb there with friends. It's a great sport and a great full body workout as well. You get amazing forearms, fingers and back muscles from it.
I haven't climbed that much yet, but I'm hoping to do a (french grade) 6 boulder and climb 7a by the end of this summer. Currently I've climbed 6B on lead and did a 5B boulder.

Here's a really cool movie



and here's me ice climbing in Norway

So crazy as It looks.. lulz

Well, I'm Just wondering what exactly does "climbing grade" number mean?

I really want to try it. Looks awesome. The rec here has a 3 story tall climbing wall, I've never tried it, but I am going hiking on July 12th

That snow climbing looks epic.

these people make it look so easy lol

Well to be honest I'm not completely sure myself either. 1 is the easiest and I've seen it go up to ~9C (which is so hard I'll never even come remotely close).
I think grade 1 is basically walking up an edged hill, that easy. From grade 3 it's actually climbing. At the end of my year in Norway the Norwegian climbing association built some bolted routes near my school which were grade ~3. Everyone who tried there was able to do them. I'd say in regular climbing up to 4 is doable by anyone reasonably fit, 5-6 is still doable with talent (I'd say 6 requires some training already) and from 7 it's definitely advanced.
For whatever reason the climbs on boulders (bouldering) are harder on the same grade. A 6 boulder would be a 7 wall climb (imo). It at least seems like that at my climbing center, where I can climb 6 wall routes, but can't boulder them.
Keep in mind this is the French (=European) grade system. Of course, USA is special and has their own system. God forbid the USA ever has a metric system that corresponds with the rest of the world

I encourage everyone to try climbing at least once. If not for pure fun then for the workout, it's a million times more fun than working out in the gym.

I have such a weak arm/finger

Because I'm sure it's SOOOO simple to grade something like climbing.

Well the difficulty in grading something doesn't really matter here. Americans (and a lot of other countries) just use their own scale. Like Americans grade climbs "5.11C". If they (or we) just adopted our system climbers all around the world would only have to know one scale, and know the difficulty of the climb straight away. Now we have to convert grades, which is annoying and cumbersome.
The difficulty in grading the actual climb is just as hard in either system,

It can be...

Damn that 2nd video is insane evga

Anyway, I can't really do these kind of sports well. One of my legs is a few cm shorter than the other (about 3 or so), and whenever I do something that involves movement for more than 2 hours each day, it starts to **** my back and my left knee (the leg that's slightly longer) pretty badly. I've learned to hate this so much throughout my life, but I'm used to it. I mean I can jog every day for about an hour and otherwise walk the whole day at work etc, but it does start to hurt pretty badly after a week or so.

Loads of people have this in fact, but it bothers some more than others.

I did it before when I was in Florida and I really enjoyed it but I just didn't have the finger strength, I got up like 15 foot before my fingers just wouldn't grip anymore.

But the guy who worked there said I was using my upper body strength and not using my legs enough so I would love to give it another try.

Yeah your legs are much stronger than your arms, gotta use them.

And also keeping your arms as straight as possible at all times will really reduce the strain on your forearms/biceps/fingers or actually everything. If your arms are bent you're using a lot of power, your muscles are tense all the time then. Climbing with only your arms is the most common beginner mistake.