15 November 2011

Grade inflation vs Muscle recruitment

The consistency of the grade development has been problematic for boulderers due to the phenomena of recruitment, i.e. the muscle memory training.

Let us say you find a new boulder where you can NOT do all the moves after you have just done an established 8A after one week of work. After very hard work you slowly start linking the moves of your new project which logically you feel is much harder than then 8A you just did.

After ten days of hard work you make the FA giving it 8A+. Then you continue to search new harder lines and yet again you find a nice boulder where you can NOT do all the moves. But after another ten days you are standing at the top again thinking of 8B.

Most probably such a quick progress is just based on that all your muscle have just been perfectly adopted to either one of the three challenges. If you after you have done the 8B go back to the 8A you will most probably not be able to do all the moves directly until you have recruited the muscle once again. If you can not cruise the 8A you should be very hesitant towards suggesting 8B or even 8A+ for the two new ones.

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