2024 Climbing Reflections

2024 marks my 10th year anniversary of climbing, having started climbing in Dec 2014 back in Kansas. It is an activity that have given me a lot of satisfaction thru the years and I always feel so lucky to have discovered it during my lifetime.

Admittedly the past couple of years definitely felt like I have massively plateaued in my climbing. Although I have climbed consistently for 10 years, many are easily overtaking my grade with much fewer years under their belt. But I really can't expect to perform at the same level when I have never engaged in formal, consistent training or lessons. I am also prioritizing a career that is stressful and time consuming, making it mentally challenging to commit huge amounts of time and energy to climbing.

In 2024 I wanted to see if I could find satisfaction and meaning in climbing beyond increasing my gym grade at my home gym. I explored two ideas: doing competitions and finally dedicating proper sessions to board climbing.

Competitions: I did way too many competitions this year, especially in the second half of 2024. Although I surprised myself with some decent but unexpected results, I also learned that the risky, competition style is really not a style of climbing that I enjoy. There are many aspects of comp climbing that I liked, and I want to continue exploring these (so more comps in 2025) but ultimately comps didn't inspire me as much as I thought it would.

Board climbing: I have many thoughts about board climbing that are discussed in a previous post, but this has been a huge revelation for me personally. It made me realize that relying on commercial sets to provide a sense of progression in my climbing is a poor decision. Over 10 years I have observed how climbing styles and gym sets are like changing fashion fads, highly dependent on things beyond my control like setters and hole shapes. So I need something more permanent. Since real rocks are out of reach here, the board is such a handy solution. It especially helps that board climbing is a style that I really enjoy too. Powerful but still technical, with none of that wild slab or coordination moves that do seem closer to parkour than my conception of climbing which is shaped by all those years at The Strength Lab and with my climbing buddies from the US and UK.

So what to expect for 2025 and the next 10 years? More board climbing, of course. It has given me a lot of motivation to train hard too and I plan to work in some specific training to perform well on the board. A couple more comps to see if I want to stick with them and inject a bit of excitement in the climbing season. I have been lucky with no major injuries and fingers crossed that this can continue. I want to explore climbing outdoors in SEA/Australia too but don't have friends to do this with at the moment. Finally, despite knowing my own climbing preferences, I am still committed to being a gym rat! It is just that I won't use gym grades as true indicators of progression anymore, but commercial sets as opportunities to learn fashionable and interesting climbing moves, and expand and refine my repertoire of climbing movement and technique.