Cracking Cobra from Eddie Bauer on Vimeo.

Jan Hojer did not make it to the semi in Lead but with 7.38 in Speed, he was #12 and will compete in the final. This is the fastest time a Lead or Boulder specialist have done. Sean McColl who has competed in Speed for many years is normally doing it on 8.50 seconds. Jan's personal best before this comp was 8.40. Ashima Shiraishi was the second big name who tried it out and she was #19 out of 24 with 12.59. Here is the Speed Final where Jan climbs 17:45 and his Speed should put some pressure on other Lead and Boulder specialists. "I maybe climbed on the route 12-15 days. Usually about 4-6 tries each. I tried to copy Danyil's (Boldyrev, the 190 cm world record holder) beta and trained with him one day a couple of weeks ago. He analyzed my mistakes and although I had not much time to work on anything yet, I feel like I know a couple things about speed climbing now.I will start real speed training this winter I guess. In China i might compete but probably won't train speed again before that and focus more on lead training."

Great route setting and livestreaming from the World Cup in Edinburgh but we badly need the official clock and so do the spectators. In practice all the top female struggled with the new six minute rule and not even the commentators did know who won as Janja Garnbret was timed out but continued some moves. Stefano Gisolfi and Jakob Schubert had topped out the first three routes and with identical result also in the final, the faster climber, Ghisolfi, was ranked higher. (C) Eddie Fowke - The Circuit Climbing At the same time the local commentator, did often talk about how long time did remain for the athletes actually helping some more then the other. IFSC need to set some rules, how much time info the commentator should give the athletes. Romain Desgranges and Janja Garnbret won their third and fourth event in 2017 and they have almost already secured the overall title as long as they make it to the final in two out of the three last events. 1. Romain Desgranges FRA 47 : Janja Garnbret SLO 42 2. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA 42+ : Jessica Piltz AUT 42 3. Jakob Schubert AUT 42+ : Jain Kim KOR 41+ Complete results

1. Romain Desgranges 389 - Janja Garnbret 465 2. Stefano Ghisolfi 235 - Jim Kain 365 3. Keiichiro Koenaga 233 - Anak Verhoeven 304 4. Marcello Bombardi 228 - Jessica Pilz 276 5. Domen Skofic 207 - Julia Chanourdie 242 Complete results

Luis Rodriguez Martin claims his maximum redpoint grade with Mangarbo 9a/+ located in Villanueva del Rosario in the famous Chilam Balam cave in southern Spain. Less than a year ago Luis did his first 9a, and he recently has returned from a month long climbing trip in Ceuse. Luis has been training with Patxi Usobiaga for the past three years and recently we published an article about his training.

Cathy Wagner, who has done more than 600 8a and harder, has done two 8b's, Nelson Mandela and Paulololol in Verdon. Checking her scorecard we can see that she is at her peak with 11 routes 8a+ and harder the last 12 months. Cathy did her first 8a in 1994. Here are some previous comments from the 52 year old how she has been able to keep up her level. "I warm up less and less. I have not the patience to deal with and it's an error. My best flash routes have been done completely cold. The few warm up I do it's tai-chi movements, I started lessons a year ago. It permits at the moment for me to keep moving my energy with softness and to focus about the moves of the route I'm trying when I'm at the ground."

Alex Puccio, who just have won Arco Rock Master and Adidas Rockstar, has done her 22nd 8B, Riverbed in Magic Wood. "Psyched! second day on it. Also got to watch Joel (Zerr) smash the boulder first try today! This place is so beautiful, psyched for more boulders in the forest!!! :)" The 28 year old is #1 in the ranking game which she has been more or less for eight straight years in spite of some bad injuries. During her last 23 World Cups her worst result is #10 including taking the silver in the World Championship in 2014. (c) Joel Zerr " I will be taking over @vertical.life.climbing Instagram today! I will be posting some pictures from our climbing day and I'll post a story of our day, make sure to check out @vertical.life.climbing Insta!!!"

Body weight in climbing is a hot topic of discussion and has been for a long time. It’s widely acknowledged that carefully controlled body fat composition can help in some situations, but is lighter always better? We (Lattice Training) have looked at this in the past but it’s always good to have more data, so we’ve teamed up with 8a.nu to have a little look at some of the climbers in their database. As a starting point we’ve looked at the distribution of BMIs for all (non-anonymous) climbers in the top 100 female/boulder/route rankings (183 females and 124 males). The female average is 19.3 and the male average 21.1. The ‘healthy’ BMI range is typically given as 18.5 - 24.9 so, 85% of the women lie within the healthy range and of the remaining 15% of women the majority are only just below the ‘healthy’ mark. For the men, 99% are in the healthy range.

Training Beta has made a great one hour interview with Adam Ondra focusing on what it takes to do 9c; Physical training, physiotherapist, relaxation, speed, kneebars with calf focus, diet, visualization and being happy. This just might the most in-depth training interview ever done with Adam.

Paige Claasen reports on Facebook that she has done Odin's Eye 8c+ in Flatanger, after some ten days of projecting. On the picture from Trainingbeta she is on the, "burly undercling sequence that I struggled to link even from the hang. Paige, who was #14 in the Bouldering World Championship in 2007, has previously done Just do it 8c (+). So it seems she very well knows how to handle both 3D climbing as well wall climbing at crimpers. More info at her website On her Instagram she has added, Now I can move on to my secondary project of trash cleanup around the crag - the global climbing community should be embarrassed by all the trash that is tucked beneath that talus field. We're all to blame, as it's easy to accidentally leave things behind, but c'mon folks. We can definitely do a better job to keep our crags trash free!