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I need some advice, I know we have some regular rock climbers here. I picked it up about 6 months ago and have been climbing pretty regularly, 2-3 times a week. But I have found myself plateauing on top rope 5.10s, I can do them pretty easily. But am completely unable to do more than a few holds on the 5.11s. Is there a particular technique(s) or muscle(s) that I need to practice to make that dyno?
A bunch of things. I'm assuming you're climbing primarily inside at a gym rather than outdoor.
-- Six months to 5.10 is pretty good, but six months at any level in any activity isn't a plateau. Literally the answer is probably a cold goes away in seven days on its own or if you take antibiotics it'll go away in a week.
-- Grading in indoor rock climbing is mostly fake and gay. In all rock climbing it is purely ordinal, a 5.11 is harder than a 5.10 and easier than a 5.12, but it's not "one grade" harder in any measurable sense. For the most part, grades get broken down in frequently climbed outside areas north of 5.10, so it goes 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.10c, 5.10d then 5.11a etc. Indoors they often don't bother. So it might be that you've gone from 5.10a to 5.10d but don't see it because your measurement tool isn't fine grained enough, or it might be that they set all the 5.10s at a 5.10a and all the 5.11s at a 5.11c. Nobody ever really critiques gym grading hard enough to change them, and when they do there's a social pressure grade things down rather than up. Every guy wants to say "Oh man that wasn't a 12, for me that felt like an easy 11;" no guy wants to say "Hey, uhhhh, that one is really hard, I barely got it, I don't think that's an 11 I think that's a 12." Most grades are decided by the setter, or one manager, looking at it and making a rough guess.
-- What you're seeing might be oddness in your local grading, which frequently is set up in a funny way by staff who have weird social reasons for doing it that way. A lot of times the low grades at gyms are super easy, and set kinda lazy because the setters don't care about them and the higher grades are set to prove a point to each other and the other good climbers at the gym. Grades in gyms are fake, they often reflect more from the marketing angle than they do from the sporting angle. They want people starting out to feel like they are making progress fast, but once they get into the 11s and 12s they're often moving between gyms on occasion, or going outside, and you don't want your grades to be known as too soft or you'll lose the regulars. They might have different people do all of the 10s vs all of the 11s. 11 might just be their jumping off point where they figure the climbers are serious so the climbs can get serious.
-- Try to find a gym that's doing a youth comp, that's going to be the best way to grade yourself. We would set our wall with 60-100 new problems for the comp, all graded ordinally 1-X in terms of difficulty by committee of setters and regulars. That might help you see exactly where you land. Or find a dense outdoor crag, that's the most "peer reviewed" grading, but honestly: I dislike grade chasing in outdoor climbing. I mostly climb as a workout indoors, but on the rare occasions I get outside, I'm just in it for the lulz, grades only matter inasmuch as I pick areas and climbs with stuff I can do.
-- Style. Even when I was really climbing a lot, I basically never did pockets. I'd flash a 12 that was all crimps, and just flat out refuse and jump off if I had to do a 10 that had a lot of pockets. They always make me feel like my fingers are going to fly right off. Insert jokes about disappointed girlfriends here. Can you do ALL the tens? And you can't ANY 11s? Try to do different ones, you might be surprised at the difference. I was always good at dynamic strength based climbs, but not at actual dynos; crimps good pinches good slopers ok pockets absolutely not. If you're climbing outdoor, it's probably this, differences between rock types and crags can be HUGE.
-- If you need more to work on, consider bechtel's strength standards and work on your flexibility. I never got much out of hangboarding, but I'd get on the campus board to show off if I felt like it.
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