On the 21st and the 22nd of April, the vertical walls of Garda Trentino will be the scene of the third edition of the Arco Rock Star, the international contest of climbing photography. Two days during which athletes and photographers will go in search of the photo that describes the athletic gesture, but also the landscape and everything that revolves around climbing - from the fatigue to the smiles, from the sunsets to the beers. In short, a story of passion for climbing and for photography. Two categories, Pro, who are selected by invitation among the leading names in the outdoor photography all around Europe and beyond; and Open, where people can soon register in our website Arco Rock Star or directly at Arco, before the event. For each team, a photographer and maximum three athletes that will try to achieve the coveted prize. Celebrating the La Sportiva 90th anniversary, Arco Rock Star will run a special contest dedicated to the History of climbing and alpinism “La Sportiva Anniversary”.

In a Combined competitions, the guys who perform well in all disciplines are normally the ones who qualify to the final or who win. This is actually not the case in the Combined World Champion qualification in Innsbruck as the results in the three disciplines are not summed together but multiplied. Let us say there are 100 athletes in all three disciplines, the following calculations show that if you are not Top-3 in at least one discipline it almost does not matter if you actually perform well in all three disciplines. In brackets the summed results which is used in most Combined competitions. 1 * 5 * 100 = 500 points (106) 3 * 3 * 57 = 513 points (63) 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 points (30) If the qualification results were summed, the guy who performed well in all three disciplines would have been the superior winner. However with the multiplication formula, he/she will not have any chance to make it to the Top-6 final. As the Top-30 or so best positions in Speed are occupied by the specialists, it has relatively low impact if you are the best of the non-specialist or dead last. What matters is scoring Top-3 in at least one discipline. It should be mentioned that in the final, good results in all three disciplines are relatively more valuable. Further more, with the Speed specialist out of the game, the importance of a good speed performance is equally important as doing well in Lead and Bouldering two disciplines. 1 * 1 * 6 = 6 (8) 2 * 2 * 2 = 8 (6) 3 * 3 * 1 = 9 (7)

The results will be compared with an identical poll from 2015.

Physical training recipes you find all over and this seems to be the prioritized way of training for almost every dedicated climber. It is easy to follow a physical program and it is easy to measure progress. In practice, this means that most of us have trained hard to optimize our physical strength. At the same time, you might be close to get injured if you just continue that physical focus. In other words, it might most productive to add a couple of hours with technical training instead of a continuation with sub-optimization physical training. Looking at the best climber in the world, Adam Ondra, we can see that what most differate him to other climbers are actually his fast climbing as well as knee-dropping and flexibility. As simple as it sounds, the fastest way to progress for the dedicated climber is probably just to try to copy the master. During every other training session, spend an hour climbing very fast and also practice on your knee-dropping technic as well as doing some flexibility training. Within a month, you have probably made a solid base to take the next step in your progress.

In the Ticklist, the percentage of the ascent added the last year is measured. Using the %, here are the big trendy crags/boulder areas as well as the Not trendy. 54 % Leonidio, Lofoten 21 % Chulilla 20 % San Vito Lo Capo, Mallorca, Black Mountain, 19 % Brione 16 % Rocklands 15 % Cuenca, Albenga 3 % Railay Beach, HP 40 4 % Terradetts, Orpierre, Freyr, Hueco Tanks, Cresciano 5 % Rumney, Chateauvert, Tres Ponts, Peak District, Zillertal, Targassonne

Christof Rauch, #1 in the 8a boulder ranking game, has tied in and done Bucking Bronco 8c+ and Sid Lives 9a in Arco. "Ohhhh my god! Sooo happy! Checked the moves two times yesterday, one more time today and then did it on my 5 try from the start after an epic fail the try before. Awesome bouldery route with some of the coolest pinches around. Syked! I've not really prepared for routes but I like pretty long boulders and the routes I've climbed are quite short. @2018, I have no special goals at the moment, I just want to climb some cool boulders and maybe some old projects." The last year, Christof has done 125 boulders 8A and harder and he is probably the one having done most hard boulders in the world during the last four years, almost 500. Amazingly, he is working full time as an engine building technician in a water plant and got his first sponsors last year but just products.

Here are the active 8a top climbers with most recorded ascents that through their star rating of their routes and boulders help the community to find the best crags and climbs. It might not be a coincidence that some of the best also have the widest grade pyramid, also relatively easier climbs are interesting to remember. 2 529 Moritz Perwitzschky 2 268 Jose Agustí 1 964 Adam Ondra 1 854 Christof Rauch 1 837 Rafa Fanega 1 671 James Webb 1 644 Paul Robinson 1 484 Daniel Fuertes 1 452 Mathieu Bouyoud 1 243 Jernej Kruder 1 146 Ramón Julian Puigblanque 1 089 Jan Hojer 935 Alex Honnold

As many of our regular users already know, the 8a.nu platform has been run by Vertical-Life since recently. It is our common aim to improve the service, design and usability of the page. We provide the world’s most extensive database of crags, routes and information on ascents. It is our intention to make sure all this information is easily accessible to climbers around the world. We appreciate the collaboration of a broad network of climbers, who love to use 8a.nu for tracking and sharing their personal achievements and for celebrating those of friends and of the community. Our editorial focus is on news reports and analysis of outdoor climbing and competitions. The thorough redesign of the website will require a few months, because we need to ensure that contents and functionalities are maintained. We hope you are as excited as we are! Stay tuned :-) About Vertical-Life: specializing in software and media for climbing, operating on an international level. With the Vertical-Life app, the Smart Climbing Gym system and the Smart Scorecard for comps we offer digital products for climbers and professionals in the climbing industry.

Based on almost 3 000 unique votes, here are the result for - Best Climbing Shoes? La Sportiva continues their domination and Scarpa gets an improved result. 44 % La Sportiva 20 % Scarpa 14 % Five Ten 06 % Tenaya 05 % Boreal 04 % Ocun 07 % Other (Most mentioned: Evolve, Wild Climb and Mad Rock)