The Japanese show that Power and Endurance are less important

It seems like the new route setting mainly on volumes goes hand-in-hand with the recent extreme progress for the Japanese national teams. Previously, route setting with smaller holds and more obvious solutions, seems to more have favored power in Bouldering and endurance in Lead. Climbing on volumes means instead that your technical, tactical and mental skills are challenged more. It is not good enough to be the strongest any longer. If there are volumes ahead of you, you need a bigger repertoire of moves and to be able to make intuitive decisions how to find rests and clip in strange positions. It is about going for the next unknown hold dynamically, losing balance and just keep going, rather than doing an obvious hard lock-of static cross over closed crimp move and then rest for 30 seconds on some jugs. In fact, the Japanese coaches have said that power and endurance are what they focus on least. Instead, they just to go for as many challenges as possible, having fun jumping around above the madras. This also goes along with the Japanese culture focusing on improvements and continuous cooperation. If the coaches see that an athlete lack a particular strength, they just build and recommend doing such moves rather than start lifting weights. The sweet thing is of course that once all gyms around the world have more volumes and walls with more different angles, climbing will become even more fun to watch, we might see less closed crimp finger injuries for the youth and it will be more fun to train in order to become the Olympic Champion. We are back to the roots - Monkey swinging climbing! (c) Eddie Fowke