V-Points – Morgan May

Fitness Mania – Ask any old rock-hound how to get better at climbing, invariably the answer is “climb more”. This is one of the most discouraging things you can hear, especially if you're a new climber. And I’m sorry to say it, but they’re right. Climb more, but I have one thing to add. And, that is this V-Points. Using this app will not guarantee that you will get better, any app that does is lying. What will make you stronger, better, faster, more fluid and more efficient is effort and consistency.

What V-points does though is give you a way to track your progress during your climbing sessions. It then aggregates the session into a few simple numbers, specifically, your total ‘V-Points’, your total number of climbs, and your ‘Average Grade’. With these numbers tracking your progress becomes much simpler. It also graphs your climbs in beautiful (1997-esque bar charts) so that you can easily view your climbs to see where you’re spending your time climbing.

If you’re new to climbing, breaking 100 V-Points in a single session will seem like a monstrous task. You’ll head into the gym and climb everything you can, log all of your climbs, and you’ll get your score. You’ll be exhausted, tired, your fingers will feel shredded and you’ll feel very accomplished that you made it to 60+ points for the day. But keep using this app, consistently trying to one-up yourself and within a few weeks and you’ll be climbing more problems in a session and coming home not all that tired. Within a month, you’ll remember back to your first session on V-Points and chuckle at your score.

Does this directly translate into climbing harder and harder grades? Nope! But what will happen while you’re trying to beat your score is that you’ll end up having to repeat the same ‘easier’ grades over and over. Repeating the same moves over and over again. The skills and technique to complete these problems will become ingrained and second nature to you. The muscles needed to complete these grades will get used to the movements, and strengthen over time (with adequate rest and nutrition of course). After several weeks of consistent use, the grades you struggled with won't seem as difficult, and you’ll begin to try slightly harder problems. You will then instinctively incorporate these climbs to your circuit and the process will repeat.

If you’re already an accomplished climber and you’re looking to break into the next grade range. Logging your sessions is extremely useful, ask any trainer out there. Knowing what you did last time, where you’re putting your effort in and how you’re spending your time in the gym is extremely useful. Say you want to break into V7-V8 grade range. Spending a day working V1’s won’t necessarily be very helpful. But working V5’s and V6’s may be. By logging your warm up and your ‘hard’ climbing session you’ll be able to see where your effort is. You might be surprised to find out that what you thought was an awesome session was really just ten sends on a couple of problems. Looking at the charts of a hard climbing session can be a real eye-opener to what you actually did. You may have thought that you were lacking in strength, but seeing that you only did 10 tries over a three hours ‘training’ session might be an indication that you’re lacking in endurance instead.

Most importantly when someone asks you how do you get better at climbing, you’ll have a better answer. Use V-Points!

I don’t always train for climbing,
But when I do, I use V-Points
Stay chalky my friends.