Name: Casually Explained: Rock Climbing
Uploaded: 2026-01-19T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 6 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Hey guys, just remember the answer to my password recovery question.

I've been working on a bit of a longer project that should be done in a couple months, but

in the meantime, I have lots more content that's coming out soon.

While rock climbing might seem like a pretty self-explanatory concept,

like a lot of sports, if you've never rock climbed before,

it can be intimidating going to a gym for the first time and not being able to even hold the first jug on the easiest climb.

This is why it's important to know the what's what and the do's and don'ts of how climbing is supposed to be done to t.

so you can check yourself and avoid feeling attacked by onlookers giving you unsolicited yet polite encouragement.

Now, to start with the most famous type of rock climbing, we of course have free soloing,

which is climbing outdoor rock faces with no gear at all except your shoes, pants, no shirt obviously, and

maybe your chalk bag if you happen to remember it that day.

When anyone talks about free soloing, they all talk about Alex Honnold, who climbed this bad boy without a rope.

Most people don't know why you would feel compelled to do that, but

if you ever climb to the top of the playground with no help,

you know you've been chasing that dragon for decades.

Free soloing is one of the most fulfilling types of rock climbing because you're basically guaranteed to die doing what you love,

which is avoiding all social responsibility.

Free soling is of course respected as one of the coolest forms of rock climbing,

because when we see a guy who repeatedly risks his own life for what he's deeply passionate about, we all think the same thing,

For this reason, any variation on free soling that incorporates outside assistance is known in the community as aid.

For example, if you use a harness with an ascender and ladder system to help you up the climb,

this is such aid, it is literally known as aid climbing.

It must be avoided at all costs if you're truly committed to becoming one with the wall.

Some people do what's called trad or traditional climbing,

which is climbing those same big cliff faces but using a harness and rope in case they fall,

where they typically place anchors on the route on the way up and their trailing partner takes them out as they follow behind them.

This, however, isn't real climbing of course, because having a friend to go climbing with is clearly aid.

In the words of Alex Honnold, I started free soling in part because I was too anxious to ask other climbers to belay me.

Then we have bouldering, which is one of the most popular types of climbing and my personal favorite,

consisting of short technical climbs that are done with nothing but chalk, climbing shoes and a beanie.

Bouldering, along with free soloing, is the only type of outdoor climbing where climbers don't usually wear helmets,

because a helmet obviously isn't going to help much if you're falling off El Capitan.

But if a boulderer falls, they only fall a few feet,

meaning when you bonk your head without a helmet onto the forest floor,

your memory will be completely erased, so every attempt can be considered an on-site.

At the end of the day, the two disciplines are pretty similar because free soloing is just one really big boulder problem.

If you've ever done indoor low ascent free soloing and a girl sees you find a knee bar on the overhang V5,

you and Alex Honnold are practically the same person.

which is where climbers continually ascend frozen waterfalls by repeatedly pressing up beat and throwing their partner 10 to 15ft ahead of them until they summit.

In fact, there aren't any jugs, pinches, slopers, or even cracks.

There's just one big sheet of ice and you get an ice pick to make your own holds.

And I know you're thinking what I'm thinking.

Being able to afford to go ice climbing is clearly aid you at least get cool spiky crampons that are designed to stick into the wall when you lose your grip.

So when you fall, you immediately break both your ankles and have to call the helicopter to rescue you again.

It is extremely important that everyone tries ice climbing once, so you can then tell everyone you've been ice climbing.

We also have competition speed climbing, which is a very niche form of climbing where you climb an internationally standardized route as fast as possible.

A lot of criticism has been brought to speed climbing because of its inclusion in the Olympics, where you have to compete in speed climbing, bouldering and lead climbing.

And then your combined score is what puts you on the podium, because almost no climbers actually train speed climbing normally.

It's a bit like if javelin included a cheeky pint and a leg of darts, or if the Olympics didn't just count how many gold medals each country won, but

also showed the body count each country's athletes racked up in the Olympic village.

One of the best known facts in rock climbing is that taking your shirt off increases your power level by two boulder grades.

This is why I climb with a baseball cap instead of a beanie, so I can turn it backwards if I need an extra boost.

This is often combined with a technique called camposing, which is when you climb a route using only your hands and upper body.

It's usually done around new climbers and your casual friends to suggest you could still out climb them even if you were a paraplegic.

Now, the big difference between a beginner climber and an advanced climber is that beginners train their fingers so they can improve their grip strength and climb harder grades of climbs.

Whereas advanced climbers make sure they train all their fingers because two of them are always injured, but

they refuse to take time off from climbing.

One of the great upsides of rock climbing is that if you do it long enough, you gain the power to easily take toast out of the toaster without feeling anything.

Because your fingers almost completely callous over, a lot of people suggest using a pumice stone to file them down.

But the last time I did that, someone asked me if I was projecting my V3, and

If you've ever been to a rock climbing gym with a lot of top roping, you'll notice they're often really popular date spots.

But one of the things to keep in mind is that you'll really mess up your nails if they're not filed down.

That means if you meet a girl and want to ask if she'd like to come and be your ballet partner, you have to remember my golden rule.

Long nails means her day would be ruined, and short nails means she's probably just a thoughtful lesbian.

So better to keep your eyes peeled for a better opportunity and stick to the auto belay instead.

If you make it out to a climbing gym, you need to keep in mind there are three types of people the entire gym stops to watch.

Fitness influencers in leggings who have just discovered the synergy between yoga pants and a harness.

The guy who's easily three times heavier than his five foot tall girlfriend, who didn't tie into the floor anchor, and

the shredded shirtless guy who's about to flash the hardest problem in the gym, then wander off aimlessly to do some Wing Chun shadow jutsu and grab the kilter board a couple times before leaving and never being seen again.

If you do decide to try yourself, it's also important to look the part.

Because if you just assume, well, I guess I'll just dress like everyone else and wear a beanie Patagonia shirt, nylon cargo pants, North Face fleece, and

a Gore Tex soft shell, you couldn't be walking a more dangerous line.

Because although to you it would appear you're simply another zebra in the Pacific Northwestern herd, you're literally one fatal mistake away from an overly friendly 30 year old with form tattoos and a mustache buying you an IPA and telling you about Whistler.

So pay very close attention to the crucial details of the outfit.

Slap on some tiny, colorful shoes that turn your feet into croissants and equip your ballet glasses to catch anyone on the ceiling checking you out.

But remember, if you're looking to become a lifelong climber, there's an ultimate price you'll have to pay.

And that price is the ludicrous annual gym membership.

Don't be surprised if you need a second job just to fund the climbing fees in your cocaine bag alone.

The last golden rule of rock climbing that you must remember at all times is that there is no injury that can't be solved with climbing tape.

Torn tendon, peeled callus, broken finger, sunburn.

All you have to do is wrap it around the affected area and never let a doctor look at it.

If James Franco had some climbing tape in 127 hours, he could have just taped his arm back on and climbed out.

Well, that would have saved him from having to go to the hospital.

I should point out that the ascent obviously wouldn't have counted as having two arms is clearly aid.