Kids sports are becoming less competitive in Sweden. You are not supposed to say who won a tournament in football or say who won the league before they are around 11 years. Instead it is all about including and let everyone "compete" in as many matches etc as possible. Further more, parents and even coaches are not supposed to interfere shouting out tactical instructions. It is believed that a focus on playing rather than being competitive is better for the kids even in team sports. Climbing being an individual sports, clearly the winning and failure focus could create even more negative pressure. Further more, coaches and parents instructing the kids in a too detailed way replace the fun playing challenge focus, with only aiming for winning. Possibly we should set up competition formats without finals or with finals for everyone. As it stands, often the gyms just copy the IFSC format and just let the Top-6, or so, 10 year old's challenge themselves in the final with great exposure. Sure many young kids like and can deal with the pressure in a competition but what is not fair is that if you are not among the best, you are not allowed to challenge yourself on all climbs.

One big downside with climbing the 12 - 18 m long gym routes, slightly progressively harder, is that most of us get so pumped that we need to rest at least 15 min. In other words, you seldom climb more than 100 m during your normal session. If you instead would divide your training on 6 - 8 m routes you would only need to rest a couple min in between and you could end up with double as much training. Further more, such training could be defined as power-endurance training which normally is the strength we are all looking for outdoors. Surely, it is just up to you and me to stop midways up the route but it is not so easy to be the first to implement such training in the gym. In general, it is the hardest routes in the gym that gets the less traffic but possibly the 7c might just be 7a up to 7 meters etc. From the kids and the beginners perspective, it is just very natural that before you start climbing the 12 m routes, you progress meter by meter.

Stefano Carnati, who did Biographie 9a+ this autumn, has had eight very productive days doing three 8c+. First the FA of Vortex in Gajum which he has tried for few days during the last four years, see picture. More info on his Insta. Then he traveled to Spain and did A Muerte in Siurana and La Ley Innata in Margalef. "Nemesis is over!! 3AM alarm clock made its work! Spent several days last year and it drove me crazy. Today sent straight after a warm-up go."

Here is a draft of which female have the most impressive bouldering tick list. Please comment to add names or change the ranking. 1. Alex Puccio USA 2. Ashima Shiraishi USA 3. Isabelle Faus USA 4. Anna Stöhr AUT 5. Karoline Sinnhuber AUT 6. Oriane Bertone FRA 7. Megan Mascarenas USA 8. Shauna Coxsey GBR 9. Alizee Dufraisse FRA 0. Nina Williams USA Mile Heyden GER

In between day #8 and day #30, Stefano Ghisolfi did not see any physical progress on Perfecto Mundo 9b+ in Margalef as he kept falling on the same move. "I just felt a slow progress on sensations and feelings on the route. I improved on the first part to make it perfect. I did visualization when I was home and try to reproduce the feelings. I trained my legs too because in the rest before the hard section I had to push with my left leg to stay in the position. The process has been very complicated and frustrating, during this year I had a lot of emotions, motivation and sometimes I thought to give up, but I never did. " Stefano won the Italian Speed Championship in 2010 with 7.96 so he has actually not started any Speed training yet. He has deliberately postponed it in order to reduce the months with almost only focusing on indoor training prior to Tokyo 2020. "My plan was to stay in Spain for a month until end of December, bit I did the route at the second day of the trip, so now I have one more month to train. Now I can focus on Olympics 100%. I will continue with some rock project but closer to home, while I can train boulder and speed. Living in Arco will help my outdoor climbing. But maybe not big projects before the Olympics. During 2019, I will do all Lead WCs and maybe 3 or 4 bouldering and Speed WCs."

Michaela Kiersch has had a great trip to Hueco Tanks where she quickly did three 8A+; Rumble in the jungle, Tequila Sunrise and Phantom Limb (c) Brandon Fox - The Foxes Photography In the Combined ranking game, Michaela is #1 among the female and #13 among the male. "I went into this trip with no objectives other than to have fun and enjoy my climbing. The weather has been perfect and I’ve been with amazing friends. Couldn’t have been a better trip! Usually I do have plans, but this trip was more for my mental health and enjoyment than for sending super hard projects. My plan for the winter is to train, get stronger, and enjoy the holidays with my family. 2019 is still open ended for me, I really need to start thinking of some good new year resolutions."