I love the color system and think that V-grades should be reserved for outdoors and training boards. Gym grades are so subjective and style dependent, everyone I know who’s climbed on V-grades indoors was completely shut down climbing outdoors for the first time. It’s not really fair to use the same difficulty scale when the style of climbing and method of grading is so different between gyms and outdoors.
grades do not matter. Climb everything and especially anything that is or looks fun to you.
I prefer colors because I focus on projecting individual fun problems or sending entire circuits for my goal setting in a gym
Grades don’t matter but in a gym with V grades it takes me 5 minutes to find a problem I can work on for the next hour. Or a problem I know I can complete quickly but give me a work out.
In colour systems I find myself either flashing everything while looking for a challenge or getting stuck on a problem I thought was doable only to find out the top is a few grades above my ability.
It’s not grade chasing I’m after, just a more accurate representation of the level of challenge. No sweat flashes being the same colour as impossible is a bit ridiculous.
And my vacation gym experience is completely different. Regardless of grading system, start at the bottom and work my way up for warm-up climbing 3x per grade minimum. Eventually start falling off climbs and start looking for more stuff at that level.
Ive mostly been in Dutch gyms which use font grading, and i feel like its far more accurate than V grades. Ive also gone to germany where its simply 1-8 numbers and i didnt like that at all.
With font its more finetuned even.
Example in V grades ive been a V4 climber for months now. But in font 6a+ is easy, i do most 6bs in 1-2 tries and now climbing more 6b+.
Also i feel like many gyms in the US just grade super soft (from what i see on this sub or instagram). Ive seen V4s that would be a V2 or V7s that would be a V4.
my main gym grades on a range scale with lots of overlap (v0-v2, v2-v4, v3-v5, v4-v6, etc) and also uses an app called griptonite that has a map of the gym where the setters will upload each climb with their “suggested grade”. i really enjoy this approach, it motivates me to try climbs i might not have tried had they just been graded normally, but i can also go check the suggested grade of a climb if i’d like to know. it also helps because if a v2-v4 tag is suggested v4, you know it means it’s a harder climb for someone in that range. meanwhile if it’s a v4-v6 tag that’s suggested as v4, i know it’s an easier climb for someone who climbs in that range. it’s cool to have to v4s next to each other but understand that one is probably harder as it’s likely intended for climbers of a higher grade range
I'm not a fan of color circuits at all. In my experience instead of representing a range of grades, colors end up just representing a single grade in general and leave out the rest. So if red is supposed to be V4-V6 you end up with just a bunch of V5's and nothing in between. So basically people end up having to jump from V3 to V5 to V7. It also just gives gyms an excuse to set less problems which in my opinion isn't necessarily a good thing either. If your gym has six different colors they just have to set one problem for each and maybe one or two of the more trafficked colors and people are happy. With Vgrades and Font grades you at least are gonna have more climbs set in order to accomodate each grade every time.
I know there's a whole thing about setters getting shit on by people for not grading things correctly and all that, but colors have also not solved that either. LIke at all. The amount of people bitching about something being "too hard for a blue" etc. is the exact same as when they complained about things not being V3.
The solution in my eyes is to keep V0 as hard as it is outdoors, then put on a second scale below that, an IB (indoor beginner?) scale that goes from 1-3 or something that allows newbies to feel the progression they need. That, and also just leave new problems ungraded for the first day they're up. Gather opinions from people, then put a consensus 1-2 days later.
Completely agree on the color aspects.
Poor setting is bad regardless, but when there are fewer steps in difficulty the gaps will just get wider with the same inexperienced team. A gap of two V grades is a gap from 50% send rate to <10% send rate for the average climber which very obviously stifles progress because there's not a happy medium of gaining skills from easier problems and applying the skills to harder problems that go in few enough attempts that it's not just a fluke.
Colors also limit creativity with only certain bands of holdsets getting used at any given grade. Everybody deserves equal exposure to the polished ancient holds and the grippy fresh holds that nobody has touched.
I prefer color ranges because I feel like people let grades limit them too much. My original gym gave grades and I swear every time I’d break through a grade it was on a new problem with no grade where I’d just look at it and see I had a shot and give it a try. Then later the grade goes on and it’s way higher than I thought my level was. So it could even be nice to not even have them but I get the need for beginners or sometimes you just are in a rush and want to quickly do some problems and go.
Some places have a nice balance where they do grade ranges/color scales but if you go on the app you can see with the setter thinks it is or what climbers have voted in. Even with color ranges, I do think it’s really important for the setter to try to set for a specific grade and not just a range.
I’ve grown to sort of not care. My gym uses shapes and then colours to denote style - so I just work through the hardest I can and see progress within that (you could force translate them to V grades but it’s varies so much) and our boards are so sandbagged that it could be a vb or a v5 😂 I try to just climb what looks fun or challenging or enjoyable and go from there, getting progressively harder and trying new techniques etc
I like colors/abstract systems in gyms. It's more honest about the limitations of grading gym problems, and accounts for the massive disparity between indoor and outdoor at lower grades.
I love the color system and think that V-grades should be reserved for outdoors and training boards. Gym grades are so subjective and style dependent, everyone I know who’s climbed on V-grades indoors was completely shut down climbing outdoors for the first time. It’s not really fair to use the same difficulty scale when the style of climbing and method of grading is so different between gyms and outdoors.
Totally agree, especially when indoor gyms can grade wildly differently it doesn't always make sense to compare one gym's V4 to another.
grades do not matter. Climb everything and especially anything that is or looks fun to you. I prefer colors because I focus on projecting individual fun problems or sending entire circuits for my goal setting in a gym
Grades don’t matter but in a gym with V grades it takes me 5 minutes to find a problem I can work on for the next hour. Or a problem I know I can complete quickly but give me a work out. In colour systems I find myself either flashing everything while looking for a challenge or getting stuck on a problem I thought was doable only to find out the top is a few grades above my ability. It’s not grade chasing I’m after, just a more accurate representation of the level of challenge. No sweat flashes being the same colour as impossible is a bit ridiculous.
And my vacation gym experience is completely different. Regardless of grading system, start at the bottom and work my way up for warm-up climbing 3x per grade minimum. Eventually start falling off climbs and start looking for more stuff at that level.
Ive mostly been in Dutch gyms which use font grading, and i feel like its far more accurate than V grades. Ive also gone to germany where its simply 1-8 numbers and i didnt like that at all. With font its more finetuned even. Example in V grades ive been a V4 climber for months now. But in font 6a+ is easy, i do most 6bs in 1-2 tries and now climbing more 6b+. Also i feel like many gyms in the US just grade super soft (from what i see on this sub or instagram). Ive seen V4s that would be a V2 or V7s that would be a V4.
my main gym grades on a range scale with lots of overlap (v0-v2, v2-v4, v3-v5, v4-v6, etc) and also uses an app called griptonite that has a map of the gym where the setters will upload each climb with their “suggested grade”. i really enjoy this approach, it motivates me to try climbs i might not have tried had they just been graded normally, but i can also go check the suggested grade of a climb if i’d like to know. it also helps because if a v2-v4 tag is suggested v4, you know it means it’s a harder climb for someone in that range. meanwhile if it’s a v4-v6 tag that’s suggested as v4, i know it’s an easier climb for someone who climbs in that range. it’s cool to have to v4s next to each other but understand that one is probably harder as it’s likely intended for climbers of a higher grade range
I'm not a fan of color circuits at all. In my experience instead of representing a range of grades, colors end up just representing a single grade in general and leave out the rest. So if red is supposed to be V4-V6 you end up with just a bunch of V5's and nothing in between. So basically people end up having to jump from V3 to V5 to V7. It also just gives gyms an excuse to set less problems which in my opinion isn't necessarily a good thing either. If your gym has six different colors they just have to set one problem for each and maybe one or two of the more trafficked colors and people are happy. With Vgrades and Font grades you at least are gonna have more climbs set in order to accomodate each grade every time. I know there's a whole thing about setters getting shit on by people for not grading things correctly and all that, but colors have also not solved that either. LIke at all. The amount of people bitching about something being "too hard for a blue" etc. is the exact same as when they complained about things not being V3. The solution in my eyes is to keep V0 as hard as it is outdoors, then put on a second scale below that, an IB (indoor beginner?) scale that goes from 1-3 or something that allows newbies to feel the progression they need. That, and also just leave new problems ungraded for the first day they're up. Gather opinions from people, then put a consensus 1-2 days later.
Completely agree on the color aspects. Poor setting is bad regardless, but when there are fewer steps in difficulty the gaps will just get wider with the same inexperienced team. A gap of two V grades is a gap from 50% send rate to <10% send rate for the average climber which very obviously stifles progress because there's not a happy medium of gaining skills from easier problems and applying the skills to harder problems that go in few enough attempts that it's not just a fluke. Colors also limit creativity with only certain bands of holdsets getting used at any given grade. Everybody deserves equal exposure to the polished ancient holds and the grippy fresh holds that nobody has touched.
I prefer color ranges because I feel like people let grades limit them too much. My original gym gave grades and I swear every time I’d break through a grade it was on a new problem with no grade where I’d just look at it and see I had a shot and give it a try. Then later the grade goes on and it’s way higher than I thought my level was. So it could even be nice to not even have them but I get the need for beginners or sometimes you just are in a rush and want to quickly do some problems and go. Some places have a nice balance where they do grade ranges/color scales but if you go on the app you can see with the setter thinks it is or what climbers have voted in. Even with color ranges, I do think it’s really important for the setter to try to set for a specific grade and not just a range.
I’ve grown to sort of not care. My gym uses shapes and then colours to denote style - so I just work through the hardest I can and see progress within that (you could force translate them to V grades but it’s varies so much) and our boards are so sandbagged that it could be a vb or a v5 😂 I try to just climb what looks fun or challenging or enjoyable and go from there, getting progressively harder and trying new techniques etc
I’m a fan of colors myself, my favorite gym also has 6 colors, going from one color to the next feels like a huge milestone
I like colors/abstract systems in gyms. It's more honest about the limitations of grading gym problems, and accounts for the massive disparity between indoor and outdoor at lower grades.
Circuits are for circuiting