Štěpán Volf has done his first 9a, Estado Critico in Siurana. The route is famous for Alex Megos onsight back in 2013. The picture is from a no-hands rest after having climbed the first 7c section. He stayed there for a minute and interestingly he had to take the knee pad off higher up in order to have the full flexibility bending his knee sitting while doing a move.

"Estado was a big challenge for me. For the past 3 years, I've been almost exclusively been bouldering, or done short bouldery routes, because the feeling of trying something for more time than three days was driving me crazy. I was really impatient. This year I've decided to change that and I wanted to choose the most challenging route for me (endurance based).

After five days of trying I knew that every attempt could be the ONE, but then the weather changed a lot. Strong freezing wind was making not the best conditions for climbing. So I've spent about two weeks of falling basically in the same move over and over again because my fingers were freezing really fast in these conditions, which started to effect my mindset. Fortunately, I've put myself together and climbed the route on the second day after the conditions improved. I was so happy so I even cried a bit. Funny thing is, that after my ascent it actually started to snow!"

4sport.ua has put together some interesting 9a+ to 9c diagrams showing that the climbers are getting better. Although the Covid-19 restrictions, 2020 is, in fact, yet another new record year. Until 2013, there were only max eleven different climbers who had done 9a+ and harder annually. Since then, the progress has been dramatic and last year there were 43 different climbers. In total, these 43 climbers made 63 ascents 9a+ and harder.

In the individual statistics, Adam Ondra has done 67 followed by Seb Bouin 23, Chris Sharma and Alex Megos 22. Fifth on that list is Stefano Ghisolfi with 21 ascents 9a+ and harder.

Natalia Grossman has done Burnt 8A+ and Wet Dream 8A+ during a one week trip to Red Rock. More pics on her Insta. In the 8a Top-50 ascents ranking game, the 19-year-old is #3.

For the last five years, Natalia has been training and hanging out together with Brooke Raboutou. Mellow just published their summer video "For the first eight months of the year like four times a week but then once school started we didn’t train together because we were living in different states. Brooke has been the best climbing partner I could ever ask for. She always believes in me and motivates me to be the best climber I can be!"

Onsight and Flash are the most impressive ascents as they explain a climb was done in the first try. A 2nd Go ascent means that for routes you did it after having worked it to the top once. In other words, you possibly spend 5 - 20 minutes trying different beta to find the best solutions. In regards to boulders, there is no clear definition of what second go means and it is not so often used beside when somebody actually does it on their second attempt directly after having failed to flash it. Quick boulder ascents are more often reported to have been done within 10 minutes or so.

Ascents can also be reported to have been done during a certain number of sessions, i.e. projecting a climb for one or several hours. It should be mentioned that whenever talking about how long time it took to do a climb, also the time spent on the shared part should be included. If you first do the stand start of a 7A boulder, you can never claim to have flashed the sit start of it. If you first did a 7c after several sessions and then later did another 7c exit of it during your first session, in reality also the second 7c took several sessions to do. The same thinking relates to that you should not claim an onsight or flash if you have benefitted from climbing part of the climbs before.

In the 8a Ethics and Practice, we have, however, said that you can claim an onsight or flash, "When the shared part of the climb is more than a full grade lower, i.e. a 6c start is divided into two 7c+'s." There are furthermore examples when climbers and the media have reported about semi-onsight when let us say, somebody onsighted an 8c which shared a 7c+ sequence in the start.

Remember there are no fixed set of rules or referees in climbing like in all other sports. It is the climbing community that has created the "rules" and as a matter of a fact, they sometimes change. At the beginning of the sport climbing era, you were supposed to place your own quickdraws in order to claim an onsight. Some say you are not allowed to touch the holds on a boulder you can reach from the ground and then call it a flash meanwhile others think you can do so and then actually onsight a boulder.

Nicolas Collin, who was #2 in Lead in Moscow last months, has done The Big Island 8C in Fontainebleau. In total, it took him nine sessions but that was also because of bad weather and conditions during his Christmas holiday. (c) Nicolas Vancayzeele

"The weather was not so good so it was hard to climb on the boulder but we took those sessions with bad weather as a training. Every session I was doing better on the boulder so there were any real downs in the process😅 I knew that it was my last day in Fontainebleau today so I had a little pressure to send it😀"

Amazingly, his previous boulder best was 8A so the Belgian must have set some new kind of record jumping four grades.

"I didn't climb so much outdoor before as I was much more in the competition and studies. Now I take little more time to climb outdoor but it's still not so much The only boulder I climb during this trip was the Big Island. It was a big project."

Many of us have trained 10+ hours a week for several years. This means you are rather close to your muscular maximum performance. At the same time, only minutes are spent on stretching, suggesting that you relatively easy can make good progress here. The best climber in the world, Adam Ondra is probably also the most flexible out of all male top climbers, which is a result of having stretched several hours a week since he was a teenager, pictured. The Japanese, who have developed to the best competition climbers in the world, are known for stretching a couple of hours a day.

Here is what Klaus Isele, MSc D.O. Physiotherapeutic and Osteopath and who has been the trainer for the Austria National Climbing Team and Adam Ondra, told us in 2018. "What I still monitor is that some climbers believe that it is enough to stretch for 40 seconds in order to get “longer” = forget it. You need to hold a stretching position for two minutes (I often recommend three times the same position with that holding time). That works! To really gain length you have to repeat it every day. Your results will be visible after approximately 14 days. Afterwards depending on what you want to achieve keep going. If you’ve forgotten to stretch one day, you are thrown back for about four days, especially at the beginning. The so-called hysteresis phenomenon is the base of this if you want you can say that it is the “supercompensation” of stretching.

Conclusion: There is no wrong or right stretching, it just depends on what you wanna achieve with it. If you prepare yourself for climbing it might be sufficient for you to stretch for 30 seconds. But if you are really interested in gaining length in some muscular areas then you need to work on every section for two minutes in every stretching position."

The most limiting factor for the majority of climbers is that when the uncertainty kicks in, you actually give up, trying the full 100 %. Dani Andrada has made a trademark about, "A Muerte", i.e. To the Death. Most climbers would immediately gain two or three grades on onsight if they had the mentality to walk the fine line and push as hard as the best.

The dilemma is that going A Muerte is mainly about which personality you have and it is very hard to make any big gains after having left your teens. In other words, we do not want kids going into the long-term redpointing game as this might cause almost irrecuperable damage to their future onsight possibilities.

Furthermore, the more you say - Take! and hang as you are projecting your route, the less you learn how to climb, A Muerte! In the short run, it is often smarter to hang, rest and work the route rather than to give it all and fall super pumped just under the anchor. At the same time, developing as the best climber you can be, means most probably that you should try to get as much A Muerte! experience as possible. This you will need once you are setting also a new personal redpoint best and climb out of your comfort zone.

Adam Ondra has onsighted two 8b+ in Grotte de l'ours; Bleu and Les Massey Ferguson. "World's first 8b+ onsight by Elie Chevieux in 1995! I do not think it had been onsighted again." Two days later he opened 2021 by onsighted D1 in Blavet. "Clipping the draws. Felt pretty soft to me, but I don't my level at the moment."

Ondra is the superior best redpoint climber in the year but what is not so well known is that he is much more dominant in onsight. In total, the 27-year-old has onsighted 88 routes 8c and harder including three 9a's. The runner up in this list is Alex Megos with some ten 8c and harder onsights. It should be noted that Adam actually was the first to onsight a 9a but this did not make it to the history books as he downgraded is it as he also has done with several other hard insights.

Noteworthy is also that as a matter of a fact, the general onsight level of the best climbers has gone down the last years, especially for the male. Jorge Diaz-Rullo is #2 in the 8a annual onsight ranking game and he has onsighted his first two 8c's in 2020.

Nicolai Užnik, who won a Bouldering Euro Youth Cup in 2019, has done the FA of Witchcraft 8C in Villach and he has a video on Insta.

"Actually this boulder has been a project for many years but after nobody could find a way to climb it, it was kind of forgotten. At the beginning of this year, a friend of mine told me about this line and asked me if I wanted to try it, so I started working on it. After a few sessions, I got quite close for the first time but then a key hold broke off which made the second and third move even harder. Since then I struggled to even do those two single moves and a few days ago when I finally sent it, it was actually also the first time I even stuck the single moves after the hold broke off. I wasn‘t sure if it was possible for me to climb it, so I really surprised myself when I did. I never worked so long on a boulder before, which makes this whole process even more special for me."