Neil Hart comes with most extraordinary Boulder news: both James Webb and Charles "Mowgli" Albert have repeated Guillaume Glairon-Mondet's Le pied à coulisse 8C+ in Fontainebleau. Mowgli did it barefoot saying he did a direct version, "It's easier than the original method, but maybe only possible without climbing shoes". You have to wrap your toe around a small spike in a pocket which is not possible with shoes and thus eliminate six moves! Both guys credit Gui-Gui's vision. James think it is more 8C and Charles says his version is 8B+. (c) Clement Perotti/Sandstone media Scorecard comment from James, "First of all major props to Gui Gui for having the vision to create this line! Its a very nice problem hosting both technical and powerful movement. Regarding the grade I personally feel 8C is more appropriate though it is definitely one of the hardest in the forest. Today Charles and I climbed it using VERY different methods. Charles created a direct sequence that eliminates around 6 moves off Gui's line and honestly might only be doable if you're barefoot. For me I decided to repeat Gui's line because I wanted to climb what he thought could be that next level. Nonetheless I'm keen to have it done and really psyched to move forward on other projects! 2nd ascent. 3 days"

Women's Open 1) Alex Puccio - 6510 pts. 2) Jule Wurm - 5005 pts. 3) Akiyo Noguchi - 3160 pts. Men's Open 1) Jakob Schubert - 7710 pts. 2) Jan Hojer - 7290 pts 3) Sam Davis - 6960 pts. More info and pictures

Drew Ruana comes with great news on Facebook and a picture by his mother, Christine."Perfect first day back! I'm beyond psyched to say that I got the FA of 'The Assassin', proposed grade 5.14d/9a. The route revolves around three sections: First section- Repeat Offender. Giant moves on bad holds with poor feet. Very hard to stay composed at the end of the crux.... I'd say it's like v11ish. Maybe harder? It's hard to say. Second section- Villain. The second crux is the crux of Villain. It's a cool transition to go from the first powerful crux to the techy finesse crux. There are 4 moves, and they clock in at around v10/11. The holds are atrocious and he feet are very bad. Third section-White Wedding. After getting pumped silly from the first two cruxes, there is an easy section to recover on. The last crux is around v9."

Jakob Schubert reports on Facebook, "Had lots of fun competing at the Hueco Rock Rodeo yesterday! By repeatind Desperanza in my 1st go of the day I started the day perfectly and was able to win the event."The picture by Ingo Filzwieser was taken last week, when the Austrian did Neon Desert 8B+.

Who are the sport climbers that have had most impact on the development in the history? Here is a draft and feel free to give your comments. 1. Adam Ondra 2. Wolfgang Güllich 3. Chris Sharma 4. Dani Andrada 5. Alexander Huber 6. Fred Rouhling, Ben Moon, Bernabe Fernandez, Yuji Hirayama, Tommy Caldwell, Markus Bock, Kurt Albert

Tendon reports that Adam Ondra has done a couple of 9a's. More info to come. Photo: Definicion de resistencia democrata 9a, Terradets, Les Bruixes, Spain (V. Vrzba).

During the last few years, the use of a stopwatch has increased in order to follow strict training regimes. What is not so known is the fact that resting periods are flexible since everyone is different and the exact perceived load varies. The reason why we rest is that the muscles should recover in between the tries and sets. In practice, you should opt not to lose your maximum capacity during the session, meaning that the longer a session is, the longer resting time should become. During the first exercises, you do not need to rest the full 1 - 3 minutes period, as long as you feel you do not drop in your maximum capacity. Do not look like a robot with the eyes just focused on your smartphone. Instead be smart and learn to adjust your maximum personal resting time in between your schedule exercises.

Last night we switched 8a.nu over to https, which means that you can find 8a.nu on https://www.8a.nu from now on. All http:// links will be redirected to https://. We do our best to keep all the site's resources including images on https but sometimes you might not see a green padlock in your browser address bar. This is probably caused by some embedded images in the forum and the news loaded from http:// instead of https://. Please report any such issues in the forum. We moved 8a to https for several reasons, but the most important ones are privacy and security. A lot of our users login to 8a on open WiFi hotspots. With https other people on the same network won't be able to capture your password and session tokens. Firefox announced that they are going to phase out none secure http. Google also checks if a site is using https as a part of their search ranking algorithms. If you are interested, here is a nice article from the NY Times giving more details about the benefits of https. -------------- We're fixing the last bits of the migration process while I'm writing this. Bear with us before while we try to fix the last things :)

Talking to the different rope manufactures at ISPO 2016, the trend for more different types of ropes for specific segments increases. At the time Beal has the thinnest and lightest rope at the market at 8.5 mm. Singing Rock, on the other hand, has made one GYM 10.1 mm ultra durable with braided core which can be used in climbing schools and clubs as hanging up ropes for multi top roping. Also Sterling Rope has thought about the top roping trend of 30 meters routes where one of their stiffer gym ropes will do the trick. ​