What Climbers Get Wrong About Grades and Plateaus
As a climbing coach, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard,
“I’m plateaued and don’t know what to do.”
Nearly every time, I begin my response with a question.
How long have you been on this plateau?
The most common answer is somewhere between a season and a year. But I’ve talked with people who have been at the same grade for a decade or more, and I’ve talked with people who have been “plateaued” for a month. Yes, a month. A month-long plateau and they are in full panic mode that they will never see progress again. Do I even have to tell you how ridiculous that is?
But what if I told you that the vast majority of people I’ve talked to – not just the ones who think a month is forever – are all getting it wrong? They’ve all made the same mistake in calculating their supposed plateau.
Let’s discuss what a plateau is and what it isn’t, and why that grade you’ve been “stuck” at for over a year might not be a plateau at all.
The first thing we need to do is look at grades. Many people believe grades to get exponentially more difficult as they go up. I entirely disagree with this. The grades are closer to linear than most of us want to give credit to – we can see that because some climbers take the same amount of time to go from 5.11 to 5.12 as they did to go from 5.10 to 5.11. Some take the same time to go from 5.13 to 5.14 as they did to go from 5.12 to 5.13. Fewer climbers, sure, but the reason for that isn’t the grades themselves, it’s the climbers and their situations.
Going from 5.8 to 5.9 feels really easy, much easier than 5.13 to 5.14, but that’s because the skills you need to gain are all in plain sight and you’re starting from nearly zero. Any skill you pick up is going to help.
It’s not unlike a video game. At first the new attributes are in plain sight, and everything is helpful, so you get better fast. As you go from level to level – each of which might be exactly the same length – the skills you need for the final boss of each level become more specific and harder to locate. And the final boss takes more attempts to get past. Once you know the pattern or find the attribute, that boss isn’t necessarily harder, it just takes you more time to figure it out.
The way I see it is that we each have a ceiling that is created by our genetics, our available time, our life situation, and more.
Each step we take toward that ceiling requires that we learn new skills and gain new attributes. But as we get closer and closer to that ceiling, the correct attributes are harder to pinpoint, setbacks can be more devastating, and even if we can pinpoint the correct attribute, it’s going to take longer to cultivate to the degree required. Partly because you also have to keep all of the other attributes topped off to some degree, which takes time. And you have to have the correct climbs available to be able to express your ability. And climbing hard is about putting a lot of time and effort into a project, with some of the hardest climbs taking hundreds of attempts.
For most of us who don’t get to climb full-time, the next grade might just mean more time. Not due to the grade itself, but due to our available resources to put toward it.
Let’s take a look at a climber who’s been “stuck” for a short time, one that is in the mid-term, and one that has been at the same grade for years.
The Month-long Plateau
If you’re that person, then it’s likely you’ve been seeing fast growth, which means you’re probably still fairly new to this. You might be climbing V10, but you haven’t had much time in the game. So your understanding of how progressing through the grades works is very, very limited. Which means there is still a lot of growth you have in store just by having the next grade take longer. If there is obvious growth in front of you – an understanding that you gain a little more of each day – it’s hard to call it a plateau.
And here’s the thing about the majority of people at this sticking point: they are usually gym climbers. Gyms turn over climbs quickly and people climb the new sets. As soon as they are done with that set, there’s a new one, again and again. There is very little time put into trying something harder for more than a session or two. If that sounds familiar, the easy solution is to stick to the hardest thing on the old set for a bit, or pick a board project of the next grade up so that you can try it repeatedly for a few weeks. Change your approach. Because if you stick to the same approach, you’ll get the same results. Then it is a plateau, but one created by you and your bad choices, reached in spite of your ability to climb harder.
Not to mention, if a month is a scary plateau for you, then the coming years are going to be tough.
The Mid-term Plateau
This might be a season, a year, two years. The vast majority of people I talk to at this spot are weekend warriors or people who have gotten really comfortable in their local area. We’ve already discussed how the next grade will just require more time, and often the weekend warrior doesn’t have more time to give. They’ve maxed out their time efficiency. If that’s you, you might just have to be patient, but there’s a question you should ask yourself that might change your perspective:
What was the first of that grade you did? Have you climbed that same grade since then?
Did it feel like a harder version of that grade? Yes? Well, then at least up to that route, it wasn’t a plateau. You did something harder. You made progress.
Grades aren’t this narrow little window. Grades have an extremely wide latitude, much wider than we want to admit. For example, I’d say that the 13b grade can be anywhere from 12d to 13d. I know that sounds crazy at first, but if we take into account height and arm span and first ascensionists with bad beta, grades can feel less than accurate. Just off the top of my head, I can look at two 13b’s that I’ve done that feel like wildly different grades. That’s just how grades work. So a supposed plateau at a grade can actually be more like a gentle incline of small progressions within the same grade construct.
The climbers who have gotten comfortable in their local area are a whole different thing. You have to ask yourself how often you’re pushing toward the next grade. In most cases, there is a lot of “because I can” comfort holding you back. Your choices, not the grades.
How often do you say, “I’ll just wait for better conditions,” because you can?
How often do you say, “I’ll just wait to try again when I’m fresh,” because you can?
How often do you say, “Let’s go somewhere else. I’m sick of going to that thing and I can go there whenever,” just because you can?
If we look at our progression in terms of time put into intentional work rather than just days and months and years…
Are you actually putting in enough intentional work to consider this a plateau?
When we break that down, the answer is usually no.
But in the case that the answer is yes, and you’ve been plateaued for much longer, then it’s possible that you’ve gotten close to that ceiling and things are going to have to go really right for you to break through. But it’s also possible that you’re still missing some things.
You’ve likely gotten comfortable in your approach as well. You’ve likely been looking in the same old places for new skills, doubling down on what worked in the past. Interrogate all of that. You’ll find somewhere you can see progress. Have you put more time into trying to progress? Because we’ve already established that it’s likely going to require more time than your previous hardest route. Do you have that kind of time? It’s ok not to. Just accepting that you aren’t willing to make that sacrifice can be liberating, and in my opinion is a form of progress in itself.
And let’s look at this: Adam Ondra climbed Silence in 2017. He hasn’t done a harder graded sport route in eight years. But what he has done is progressed in other areas. He’s learned new climbing styles for competing at the highest levels. He’s progressed his bouldering. He climbed maybe the hardest trad route in the world. He’s onsighted and flashed hard things. He’s done more hard routes in a single day. Ultimately, it’s hard to say he’s plateaued. He also got married and started a family, and has really built a business around himself. There’s definitely not a stagnation there.
We can do the same.
The absolute hardest grade doesn’t need to be – and shouldn’t be – the only measure of your progress.
As you get older, there will come a time when you’ve climbed your last 5.13 or your last V10 or whatever grade. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to get out for more days, or learn new skills, or try new styles, or do new routes, or go to new places, or share days out with new people, or just have more fun.
All of those things are better versions of you.
And that’s progress.
We’ve got more videos for you if you aren’t at that final plateau yet, and you want to avoid it for as long as possible or break through where you’re currently stuck.
EXPLORE FURTHER
You might enjoy these related articles, episodes, and other resources:
Adapt: Lessons Learned Climbing 100 5.13’s
Climb Your Project Sooner | The Art of Execution
Lee Cujes | Is It Really A Plateau?
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Despite being constantly present and often the reason we fail, Rhythm is the most underrated of the Atomic Elements of Climbing Movement.