Does bouldering help develop climbing ability?

[tomdarch]

Assuming that you're putting some effort into gym bouldering, it will help you as an all-around climber.

Building strength will help you a few different ways. We're talking about the Red, so endurnace is (almost) everything. There's a common perception that power and endurnace are contradictory - from personal experience, I don't buy it. Just to frame this, I know that I should do some aerobic workouts for a variety of reasons, but in reality I do zero aerobic - no running, no biking, no swimming, etc. Also, for the last year or two, I've been predominantly training by climbing at a bouldering gym. During that time, I've moved up several letter grades in my onsights and redpoints at the Red.

The most obvious thing to me is that you can make moves you couldn't before and be more efficient. I've gotten on climbs that used to be at my limit and hiked them, in part because I could (for instance) make one 10b move that skipped a bunch of 9ish moves, which meant that I had used less energy overall.

The less obvious thing has to do with muscle physiology. If I understand things corrrectly, muscle fatigue is a function of the percentage of maximum strength. You can make thousands of repetitions of very low percentage moves without getting fatigued (like typing), but it only takes one or two moves at, say, 80% of your maximum strength to totally tap out those muscles. So if you increase your maximum strength (through bouldering) you will notice an improvement in your endurnace because every move becomes that much less fatiguing.

[Alan Evil]

I'm with tom on this. If you work your muscles and you do some cardio stuff you're better off than sitting waiting for it to be warm enough to get up a 5.8 trad line without frostbite. Better you hang from a doorframe that sit in front of the comptuer, y'know?

[marathonmedic]

Building strength will help you a few different ways. We're talking about the Red, so endurnace is (almost) everything. There's a common perception that power and endurnace are contradictory - from personal experience, I don't buy it. Just to frame this, I know that I should do some aerobic workouts for a variety of reasons, but in reality I do zero aerobic - no running, no biking, no swimming, etc.

About the only cardio I get these days is from climbing. Ever notice how your heart rate goes up when you're climbing hard? It's not quite running, but it's better than the couch olympics.

As for power and endurance, keep this in mind. Strength training will build endurance but endurance training won't necessarily build strength. Your muscles work by triggering different fibers to contract. They actually rotate which ones are firing at any given time so at some point some fire while others rest then they switch, unless you're doing a maximal contraction. If you're "stronger" (which means you have more muscle mass cross-sectional area) those fibers will be able to relax more and recover from their contraction, i.e. they will work longer before they fatigue. As much as it sucks, strength training will give you the most bang for your buck but endurance training still has it's place.

[J-Rock]

Bouldering = climbing. Therefore it will help develop climbing ability. After spending a few months bouldering each winter I can usually onsight routes at a higher level when I return to route climbing. Most often my best onsights are on my first route climbing trips after a couple months of bouldering. Many of the RRG 5.12's will probably feel like a long V0-V1 with a couple of V2-V4 boulder problems along the way. Just make sure to take advantage of the rests or shake-outs or fight the pump.