CIRCUITS – What are they and how can they help me improve my climbing?
The bouldering circuits are often misinterpreted as grades.
Although they have a “grading system,” the circuits are less based on difficulty and more on your climbing abilities and repertoire combined with your comfort level on different wall angles.
In short, the circuits are just a grouping of boulders that test a diversity of skills and styles in an appropriate range of difficulty.
That being said, it’s often hard for us, as climbers, to move away from grades, or to stop thinking of increasing numbers as improvement.
The true success of the circuits, is that it moves you as far away from grades as possible without necessarily leaving you without a road map for how to navigate the gym.
Most importantly, one of the most underutilized features of the circuit system is that it can be used as a self coaching tool for climbers looking to better round out their climbing skills and styles.
Imagine this:
You’re consistently crushing the green circuit except for those pesky slab boulders that you and your friends have all agreed should belong in the orange circuit – especially since you’ve done some orange tags, and have also made some progress on the red tags out of the cave.
But, for some reason those green tag slabs are just eluding you. In this scenario, the circuits have shown you that you’re good at steep powerful climbing. You’re already making progress on two reds and can do most of the entire green circuits and some oranges. What the circuits are also telling you is that maybe your slab game just isn’t up to par with the rest of your climbing…
This is FINE by the way! There’s no reason why you can’t just accept this and keep on crushing in the steeps.
Some people prefer this. I know I hate slab climbing and it shows because I’m awful at it. But if you’re looking to round out your climbing repertoire and conquer that green circuit, then the circuits are great at being a wake-up call and helping you identify the things you need to work on. Now you have a direction. There’s information that you can use to obtain that goal. It’s time to slap on those soft rubber shoes, the pair you bought specifically for slab climbing because you knew somewhere deep down that this was always going to happen. You were always going to work on your slab game at some point right?
Conclusion: The circuits are a tool to highlight your strengths, expose the holes in your climbing prowess and sometimes shine a light on the techniques/skills you didn’t know you had. All you needed was an opportunity to be challenged.
The circuits system can be just a guide book to the bouldering area that is the gym. But, if you want it to, it can be something more. A coach that can help you improve different aspects of your climbing. Give it a shot one day. Try all of it in a session, it may surprise you what skills you may want to improve, showcase techniques that you already knew were your forte and possibly highlight some abilities you didn’t necessarily think you were good at. Stay psyched and have fun.
Dustin, Head Route Setter