Open Inquiry #2 Climbing Progress Jan-Mar
I have been climbing on and off since 2020, when my friend dragged me out to do something that was allowed during covid. Since then I have been climbing every other day and then I have months of no climbing. 2025 was probably the year I’ve climbed the least since 2020, going once every 3 or 4 months. As you may guess, my abilities and strength have drastically decreased over time due to lack of climbing.
This year, 2026, I have been climbing roughly 3 times a week, sometimes one less and sometimes 1 more. Over the past few months I’ve mostly just focused on climbing the hardest route I can that day. Now at the climbing wall in CARSA, grading/difficulty is based on colour. The colours from easiest to hardest are as follows, white, yellow, orange, green, blue, pink, red and purple. When I started up again in January I was climbing whites and the occasional yellow, which were far beyond my reach. As well as my hands would feel like they were on fire from the scratches the rocks would do. Now fast forward to when we are in March and I do not climb white and yellow as my warm up climbs and work on oranges as my main climbs of the session. And my hands have now built up my calluses again so that instead of ending early because my hands hurt, it is now my arms will give out telling me to stop.
Now that I have gotten back to climbing regularly as well as built up my strength back up a bit, the plan is to start looking at my technique and do some specific training to improve specific aspects of my climbing. This will be things such as grip strength, reading a wall for the right way and some basic exercises that target the muscles you use in climbing.
Here is a guide to the grading of the bou;ders at the gym as well as a couple orange rated boulders I managed to complete. The red circles show where your hands start and where they end. All the yellow circles are all the rocks that are in.
For my next blog I will be talking about my experience with badminton the last couple months.