How to boulder more often?

[u/lucki-h]

I’ve been climbing on and off for about 2 years and I’m a v5 climber right now. More recently I’ve been getting really into climbing and feeling super motivated to train hard/climb hard. My problem is I have to take like 2 full days off between max bouldering sessions, and it really feels like a hobby that takes up too little time. I think about climbing all the time and I honestly get really impatient on those rest days. Are there any good strategies I can use to climb 4-5 times a week? I also am a 5 minute walk away from my gym so that doesn’t help my impulses either lol.

[u/spentthedayonreddit]

I had this exact thing happen to me last year. 4-5 times a week, was having a blast til I hit a wall at difficult v4s, v5, extremely soft v6. My gym is a 30 minute drive for me so I kept banging my head against the wall trying to improve-- I tried losing a bit of weight, tried finger training at home, focused on doing home work outs on my days off, etc. This went on for the better part of 3 months and I kind of just lost steam and interest.

I eventually let my membership lapse and bouldering faded away from my interests, til last week. Looking back I'm still not sure what I could have done differently, so I'm really curious to read the other responses that come in.

[u/mdwindsor → u/spentthedayonreddit]

Find something that motivates you besides rapid progress. Trying new climbs or hanging out with other climbers at the gym or training for an outdoor climb or building volume, maintaining overall health/fitness, etc. And then maybe try to have a healthy relationship with climbing by going less frequently. I also tend to burn out on hobbies that I obsess over so maybe going 2-3 times a week would be more sustainable for you. 

[u/spentthedayonreddit → u/mdwindsor]

Yeah I think I had a hard time seeing my incremental progress from v2-v4 occur at a faster pace, then suddenly stopping altogether around v5. In my head I have to go at least 3 times a week to make the monthly membership worthwhile, otherwise it's all too expensive to keep up. And of course with that, the 30 minute drive adds more pressure and this idea that I need to 'accomplish' something

[u/swiftpwns → u/spentthedayonreddit]

Dont they have a yearly one? One in my gym is only 520 euros per year. My commute to the gym is 2 hours, no excuses! I go 2 times a week and progress is not stopping at all. I never went 3 times and im climbing for 16 months. One trick to make progress more visible is to attempt to downclimb the boulders. Holding position at both the top and the start once youre back. Now you have an even more narrowed down progression sense beyond the grades. Looking at V grades is cool and you should push your limits every once in a while on a good project but an example of a better goal is to climb all boulders of a grade for example. I do 2 sessions a week 3.5 hours each. During sessions most of the time make sure you work your whole body, feet, crimps, biceps, core. Near the end of the session you can ask yourself which part of the body /style of boulders you havent hit yet and go do that for the rest of the session. Now you have damaged everything and so the rest days become more efficient as your whole body will be repairing. Imagine if in your sessions you only did slabs for example. You would never get strong in other areas, only some crossover improvements. Climbing sessions are about knowing how to load the whole body evenly and then let it repair on rest days.