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+.

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."

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 :)

Finger boards, Systematic training, Running, Nutrition, Weight lifting and 10 weeks programs etc, run by a trainer with a calendar and a stop watch. Why is it that almost all the best rock climbers and boulderers in the world have not followed a specific training regime, and yet, the coaches and the media say that this is the trick? Now even Chris Sharma has said that he might try it. Could this take him to 9c and would he already have done a 9c+ if he had started as a teenager? Surely, there is no downside for Sharma to start experimenting and most people who achieved World Cup podiums, apart from Adam Ondra, have earned it through systematic training. Furthermore, many of us live in poor climate and rock conditions and for some personalities structured training is the only right thing to do. The best way, however, to become the #1 rock climber or boulderer in the world is to climb outside as much as possible, "training" technically, tactically, physically and always going "a muerte". It does not matter how much indoor physical capacity you have gained, following strict systematic schedules. Doing the hardest ascents comes down to having challenged yourself mentally sticking "impossible" moves millions of times and just keep going... This has been my training philosophy for 25 years and I am writing it again, to counter-balance all the coaches and media who claim the opposite. Go for an holistic approach guided by adrenaline, beauty, community and training knowledge, like the best guys out there and the ones having most fun. (c)

During the last ten years we have seen an extreme development when it comes to the number of boulderers, Boulder problems, gyms, training facilities and training theories. At the same time, the female and the youngsters have pushed several grades up and in fact getting closer to the male, who show limited progress. Why do we not see more progress in male Bouldering with all these improved preconditions including videos, chalk, shoes and crash pads? Bouldering did become a sport about 20 years ago with great development during the first ten years but then it more or less stopped. Could one of the possible explanations be that some 8C's actually deserve the 8C+ grade?

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. ​