mclay
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by mclay on Oct 16, 2017 5:40:07 GMT -7
Last month I climbed with a kid who was super strong and worked as a route setter. He was by far the strongest climber I've climbed with, but the thing I really took away from it was how clued-in he was to movement and beta. He would shout out things to me on the wall that at the moment seemed improbable, and then I tried it and had an epiphany.
Maybe that just comes with the territory of being a "good climber", but as I picked his brain I began to get curious about the connection between setting and climbing movement. I've been thinking of getting into route setting in the future, but I am interested to hear if others have found a correlation to improvement in climbing due to time spent setting.
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Post by tetrault on Oct 16, 2017 16:45:42 GMT -7
Not that this proves anything or helps to answer your question, but my route setting and climbing skills are in line as well; both quite rudimentary.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Oct 17, 2017 8:46:10 GMT -7
I think it definitely helps. The best route setter I know (Lee Brinkerhoff) is also one of the very best onsight/flash climbers I've ever seen in action. He's really good and read body positioning based on a set of holds, and I think route-setting is a big contributor to that. After doing it for a bit, you start to see pretty easily how a certain type/orientation of holds will force cert hip/shoulder positions and so forth.
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Post by willblack on Oct 17, 2017 13:05:22 GMT -7
I worked as a routesetter for several years and saw lots of folks come and go. The gym I worked for mostly used volunteer setters, which is a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE mistake, but it did let me see a variety of new setters and I noticed that in terms of people setting for the first time (or with minimal experience), quality of setting tended to be influenced by climbing ability whereas speed and ability to set good routes with minimal tweaking in a variety of styles were related more to onsight ability and variety in a climber's movement library. We had one occasional volunteer who bouldered double digits but had never climbed .12a sport or .10 trad. He set really good routes in the narrow style he was comfortable with but it literally took him three ours to set an 8 move boulder problem. On the other hand, we had setters who didn't climb as hard with a similar routesetting experience level who were better at quickly setting fun climbs that required minimal tweaking, but they weren't quite as good at setting routes that were difficult for them. I could see how setting could help "round out" a climber in terms of technique. Setting definitely helps make you a better onsight climber, especially in the gym (at this point I can look at most commercial gym routes and know exactly how to climb it and how hard it's going to feel), but I think it's important to set with other people and forerun routes set by someone with a different style than you. Really really good setters don't generally have a style, but starting out everyone more or less sets movement they are good at and if you're never climbing routes set by other setters and critically thinking about what should change, most people will largely stay within their comfort zone. You also need a more experienced setter to help teach you how to tweak your routes and get the movement you want. A lot of new setters start out with a specific goal like forcing a knee bar. When they don't force the knee bar on their first attempt they always see it as a failure or convince themselves that it's not possible to set their desired movement within the confines of the grade, wall, and holds. I think some basic setting experience is probably helpful in terms of climbing, but honestly working as a routesetter is super detrimental to physical training for climbing due to the unpredictable physical strain, so it's a lot of different considerations to balance.
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