Are Routesetters in the Entertainment or Fitness Industry?
This article originally appeared on Climbing
Professional routesetting is like being a chef. You want to serve a dish customers want to order again and again, even if there are newer items on the menu. The dish can range from simple to complex or from sweet to bitter. It may be easily digested or require a more refined palate. When the time comes to strip a climb and there's so much chalk on a hold its color is completely obscured, the routesetter has done their job well--the dish has been devoured.
I had always been interested in routesetting, but got my first glimpse of the craft in 2018 when a small gym almost 80 miles from my house was looking for a (very) part-time setter. The hours were odd and the commute was unreal, but I learned an important lesson through that experience: routesetting was my passion, much to the chagrin of my unused teaching degree.
In August of last year, at my local park in Pasadena, California, my 4-year-old son brought a new friend over, his father in tow. We shook hands and greeted each other. “What do you do?” his father asked. Since becoming a routesetter, I’ve felt uncertain about how to adequately describe what I do. To non-climbers, “routesetter” doesn’t explain much. For simplicity, I'd often state that I'm in the fitness industry. But is that true?
When I used to coach I often heard people say that climbing was a good way to exercise because "it doesn't feel like exercising" despite it being an effective full-body workout. People like getting a workout in that doesn't involve hopping on the treadmill or taking a class. Of course, modern gyms offer those fitness outlets, too. They have squat racks, rows of dumbbells, cardio equipment, and offer various fitness classes, like yoga and high-intensity interval training. For that reason climbing gyms are, in fact, unmistakably fitness facilities.
But how do you feel physically after a long day of climbing? Tired, maybe even exhausted, but ultimately satiated and happy. Although the aforementioned phrase about exercising is commonly heard, I'd more often hear people say climbing is "so addicting." This was the case for many of my climbing friends, who tried the sport once and suddenly the flame was lit. Neither my clients, my friends, nor myself got into climbing because of-or for-the physical exertion. The reason is deeper than that.
When I'm setting, I'm not creating routes or boulders purely to push people to their physical limits. I'm integrating emotions and aesthetics to create a unique experience. Through movement, I'm telling a lived story, in which the climber may undergo myriad feelings such as joy and fear, hope and doubt, success and failure; every climb is an emotional and physical journey. At the end of the day, one of the highest compliments I receive is praise for how much fun a climb is, not how fit someone needed to be to climb it.
In my early, ego-filled times of routesetting, so much of what I did was built around the mindset of "this grade is difficult." I was too fixated on the physical dimension of climbing. I remember being disappointed watching people climb these early sets. I'd see someone start, approach a difficult move, fall. Try again. Fall. Repeat the cycle and then surrender and move on. In one instance I remember watching a member falter on an overhung V7 that I'd set, give up, and then proceed to climb a V2 the headsetter had set. I should have realized then that people weren't necessarily climbing for the grade.
Throughout the years I've come to define fun, in terms of setting climbs, as a balance between the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of the sport. If a climb errs too much on one side, the overall fun, or repeatability, diminishes. On the lower end of the grade scale, "balance" might mean that, if a climb is fairly physical, it should not be complex or invoke emotion. A V4 dyno, for example, should trend towards being fairly simple and not too scary. As grades become more advanced, the concept of fun becomes more refined, more subtle. A V7 climber will likely crave a dyno that isn't just physically hard, but also more complex, requiring a unique trajectory or technique. Across the grade scale, it's generally true that if a climb is sandbagged, climbers tend to give up, discouraged, wishing they were stronger. If a climb is too weird or inconsistent, people move on frustrated that holds aren't oriented the correct way or that sequences don’t make sense. If a climb is too emotional, only inciting fear or doubt, such as on an exposed ledge or on a sketchy foot, a member may choose not to continue for fear of injury or simply fear itself.
[Also Read: Inside the Pressure Cooker: World Cup Routesetting]
One of the most notable areas of climbing in which routesetters can be seen as entertainers is in competitions. I've been involved in competitions as a competitor, spectator, and setter, and an underlying theme between competitions is a certain element of showiness. When setting for competitions, a large part of the challenge is pushing the athletes to their physical limit and creating a separated field of competitors. But a large, if not equal part, is creating an entertaining competition for the audience. As setters, we are creating a shared experience between the spectators and the athletes. If competitions were boring; the moves repetitive, the body positioning never risky, the volumes not aesthetic, I don't believe climbing would be as popular as it is today.
"So how do you know if it's a good climb?" the parent asked me.
"If the climber comes down smiling," I replied.
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