How to Boulder Climbing

Veronica: All you need are your shoes, some chalk and a boulder and you are ready to go. Hi! I am Veronica of watchmojo.com and today we are speaking with some experts for some tips and tricks to boulder climbing. Jean-Marc de la Plante: Behind this is a bouldering wall. Bouldering is a sport that was developed initially as training for climbing and it's involved into it's own kind of side sport indoors, because we have limited space. We put a ton of holes on the wall, but when we say you out to do a climb, we'll tell you with tape markings which holes to use. Veronica: And besides the crash mat, what other ways do climbers stay safe? Jean-Marc de la Plante: The other thing you can do is to spot your partner. So basically if you are not climbing, put your hands up, and protect the protection as climbing. Veronica: What are the ethics that people should know before they start boulder climbing? Jean-Marc de la Plante: If you do get serious in to it, there are lot of ethics for example, on most routes, you suppose to start sitting down with your bum on the ground, and the first move has to have you lifting off the ground and then doing the first move. Veronica: What's the difference between bouldering and real climbing? Jean-Marc de la Plante: Bouldering is done without ropes. It's much shorter, if you fall your landing on pads and not on the ground hopefully. It's lesser of an endurance thing I would call it more of a power exercise. So Amanda is going to do a route, here that has a few moves that are more specific to bouldering. So she is going to do move called bicycle, first of all. She is pressing with one foot and pulling with the other. And that's called the heal hook, where instead of hooking with your toe on the hole, you have got your heal on there. It gives you a better grip. Veronica: What muscles are you working specifically when boulder climbing? Amanda Berezowski: It's a lot of core obviously upper body, so your back, your forearms, your biceps. When you get more into bouldering, more experience, you are going to find you are using your hands a lot. So you can practice things that are going to get your hands stronger. Veronica: So what would you say is the scariest part of builder climbing? Amanda Berezowski: I still say it's falling. If your other side is going to be possibly on to rocks or anything like that. Veronica: What's the level of difficulty? Amanda Berezowski: The levels are used by V grades, for most bouldering, V1 will be the easiest or V0 then as you go up it's going to go V1, V2, V3, V4 and so on. Veronica: We know you mastered all the moves, you compete in boulder climbing how do you prepare before a competition? Fred Charron: You could prepare with the team. You can either have a coach or follow some trainings with people. There are few guys out there that have either websites or books that you can follow their training. The main way to train for competition is to focus on strength at first and then your endurance, and so you'll do like three weeks of this and then three weeks of that depending on when the competition is. Veronica: What would you say is the most common mistake made by beginners? Fred Charron: A lot of people will go weight lifting or whatnot, which is completely useless. Muscles heavier than fat so that's the worst thing you could have. Veronica: Can you take us to, what a competition would be like? Fred Charron: There are different formats. Isolation format, you'll usually have four problems, and wherever it makes it to the top in the less attempt, or how far they get, if nobody makes it to the top, or you have other format, which is about 50 problems and if they take let's say your six best problems, often it will happen in bouldering or root climbing where you have to -- your four point, cut lose which is a called the dyno, in other words, you let go both of your feet and your hands everything let's go to jump to the next hole. So that's what I am going to trying to do.