Full Send: A Breakdown of a Boulder Problem
Indoor climbing is a strange sport. We pull ourselves up plastic walls, just to fall back down and do it all over again until we’re too tired to continue. And yet, there’s something so rewarding about taking on the challenge and reaching new heights (ha) that makes climbing so addicting.
Ever since I started bouldering a year ago, I’ve enjoyed uploading videos of my successful climbs to social media to share the best moments of my hobby. However, there’s a lot of thought and effort that goes into tackling a bouldering route that a video of a completed climb, or “send”, won’t show you. After all, bouldering routes are called “problems” for a reason! In this post, I want to break down each decision that goes through my mind in order to send a problem.
The Problem
To set the stage, we need to go all the way back to January of 2022. I’m near the end of my climbing session at Momentum Silver Street in Houston, Texas, when I stumble across this pink problem (pictured below).
The yellow tag indicates its difficulty level is V2, right in the middle of my comfort range. My first look at this problem gives me a lot of confidence — there’s a lot of handholds and footholds on the wall, and the path pretty clearly snakes up and to the right to the massive “Finish” hold at the top. Without further thought, I get on the wall.
…and I immediately fall. How did things go wrong so quickly?
Obstacle #1: Slopers
It’s hard to see from the camera angle, but the handholds are actually a type of hold known as “slopers”. Looking up from the ground, I had expected the holds to be “jugs”, a type of hold that’s as easy to hold onto as the rungs of a ladder. Unfortunately, I had completely underestimated the difficulty of the holds, causing my hand to slip off.
Slopers are one of the most annoying holds a climber can face. They don’t offer a strong positive edge like a jug, which means I can’t use the hold to pull myself into the wall, increasing my likelihood of falling off. I’ve found that the best approach to slopers is to keep my body close to the wall and spread out my fingers on the hold in order to gain as much leverage as possible. With this knowledge in mind, I stepped up to the wall again.
With bent elbows, pulling myself into the wall allowed me to successfully navigate past the slopers. I quickly shot my right hand up to the next hold, eager to finish the problem, but gravity was not on my side.
Obstacle #2: The Barn Door Effect
In this position, my only solid points of contact were my right hand and foot. My center of gravity (CG) was all the way out left, causing my body to rotate to the right due to a mechanic known in climbing terms as “barndooring” or the barn door effect. The constant pull of gravity wants to bring my CG as low as possible, which is contradictory to the goal of climbing, so it’s best to spread my points of contact (i.e. your hands and feet) across both sides of my CG to prevent that from happening. In the event that I don’t, gravity will take advantage — my CG will swing out uncontrollably from the wall like a barn door on its hinges. On the climbing wall, lack of control is the last thing I want, as just like in the video, it usually leads to me falling off.
To prevent the barn door effect, I need to plan the placement of my points of contact in advance so my CG won’t end up all the way out to one side. After I fell, I noticed there were a few more footholds that I hadn’t used during the barn door — if I could spread my feet out on those, maybe I could control my CG more easily.
With the solutions for the slopers and the barn door in mind, I approached the problem for yet another try.
It worked! The slower, more methodical approach helped me stop my body from swinging where I had barndoored on the previous attempt. After stopping on the wall briefly due to fatigue, I was greeted with a few slopers right under the Finish hold. Luckily, the same approach to the slopers in the beginning also applied here — spread fingers maximized friction on the holds, and keeping my body close to the wall prevented me from falling off. Finally, the end was within reach. I placed two hands on the Finish hold, and threw my head back in relief. I sent the problem!
Final Thoughts
I mentioned in the beginning that climbing is a strange sport, yet some mysterious appeal still keeps me hooked. This is it — the satisfaction of a send, the payoff of all the analytical breakdowns mixed with a touch of athleticism, just to fulfill an instinctive urge to climb higher. The sense of progress that comes with each mistake and each send is such a gratifying feeling. Even writing this now, looking back on old climbing videos from months ago, I realize how much I’ve improved in the time since. I get the urge to nitpick all my mistakes, like grabbing the holds too tightly and wasting energy. Just like with any other sport, I push to better myself. It’s the perpetual journey of self-improvement in both mind and body that encourages me to keep climbing.
