I’ve been a setter for about seven years, a climber for 11, and an extrovert for 33. I love getting to know people and climbing, and when those two worlds collide, I can convince myself that everything will be alright.

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to apply these two strengths and make some observations. I’m not saying these observations are scientific, but they might just explain why you keep picking problems that look suspiciously similar week after week. When you step towards a problem, what really matters isn’t what the setters intended, but whether they gave you holds you like. Your favorites reveal a lot about you —not just as a climber, but as a person navigating life.

Here’s what your favorite hold reveals about you and your Enneagram type—a personality framework with nine different archetypes based on insights dating back millennia. (If you’re not sure what your actual Enneagram type is, you can take a free test here.)

Crimps → Enneagram 1

The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

If crimps are your favorite hold, you live on the edge—literally. You’re either (a) a shortie with fingers of steel, or (b) a masochist. As a crimp lover, you tend to be detail-oriented, disciplined, and, for some reason, have the most hip flexibility in the group. You’re not too sure why everyone is scared of that slab climb (why do their legs keep shaking?), and you might be too familiar with how an 8mm edge feels digging into your finger pads. Whenever the beta is too convoluted, you are the one to remember that no crimp is too small to piano match.

Your friends hate when you downplay how hard a climb is: “It’s just tiny crimps—super straightforward.” Meanwhile, their tendons are screaming. But hey, someone has to inspire fear and admiration simultaneously.

Jugs → Enneagram 2, The Helper

The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

You like security. You’re the type of person who reads Yelp reviews before picking a restaurant and always carries an extra snack “just in case.” In the gym, you’re always down for a campus board sesh or campus move on a boulder. Your folly is that you often misjudge climbs based on jug placement (“There’s no way a jug would be on a V8,” you say, looking at the start hold).

Outside, you’re the climber who says, “I climb for fun, not grades,” but also somehow ends up being the one logging every send on Kaya. Everyone loves you because you offer an encouraging “Yeah! Nice!” on every attempt. You’re basically the golden retriever of climbers.

Pinches → Enneagram 3, The Achiever

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

Pinch lovers are ambitious and unfazed about sketchy clips. “Pump” and “lactic acid” are not words in your vocabulary (or cardiovascular system). Whether you’re latching a hold despite it being “wristy,” biking a roof hold with your toes, or coconut-squeezing a plastic sphere like your sponsorship depends on it, you know how to adapt.

Pinch lovers are easy to spot in the wild because of their unnecessary urge to pinch almost everything. Common examples of prey include 2x4s at Home Depot, a stack of folding chairs, or sides of open doors.

Slopers → Enneagram 4, The Individualist

The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Congratulations: you thrive in chaos and the unknown. Temperamental, like you, slopers can go from “solid” to dry firing at the drop of a hat. You’re the kind of person who believes in “trusting the process” even when the process is clearly failing.

In the gym, you brush the holds so often the setters wonder if they have a new dual-tex hold (see related personality below).  In your friend group, you’re the one insisting the next sloper is “good” even though everyone can see its entire grabbable surface from the ground—and boy, is it slick.

Underclings→ Enneagram 5, The Investigator

The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

Underclings lovers are strong, focused, and can be a bit unhinged at times. You roll up and show everyone that sometimes finger strength means nothing when the hold is flipped upside down. Your betas can be seen as visionary, as you start underclinging holds no one thinks about. Eventually, this leads to more enigmatic moves like thumb-der clings.

Dual-Tex → Enneagram 6, The Loyalist

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

You chalk your hands every 10 seconds, even though everyone knows it doesn’t help. You crave suffering and attention in equal measure. You love dual-tex holds because they’re cruel puzzles disguised as plastic. If dual-tex is your thing, you’re the kind of person who laughs when your friends slip and then immediately posts the video on Instagram. You find that stepping on the no-tex surface of a hold (or the half-inch-sized part of texture that’s exposed) perfectly encapsulates to others how close you are to an anxiety attack.

Volumes → Enneagram 7, The Enthusiast

The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractable, and Scattered

Volumes aren’t just holds, they’re the future. If you love them, you’re artsy, experimental, and maybe just a little dramatic (or at least enjoy climbing with flair). You don’t climb problems—you perform them. Every climb has the potential to become a dynamic run-across-jump-double-clutch-gaston. The monochromatic setting in gyms is great, but you’d rather be spontaneous (or is it distracted?) in your movement. Many of your sessions feature either the phrase, “It goes,” or your attempt to climb a problem facing out, because why not? You find yourself trying random laches while your friends are resting by their projects.

You’re the most likely to be spotted lying on the pads, staring at the wall. Your spotters can’t decide if you’re seeing the next project or if you’ve finally sprained your ankle. Regardless, whenever you see a visionary move, your friends roll their eyes because they know that to you, “just one more try” actually means eight.

Pockets → Enneagram 8, The Challenger

The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

If pockets are your favorite hold, you’ve accepted that every move is a gamble for your tendons, and you like it that way. In climbing and in life, you’re confident, decisive, and powerful. You’ve gotten really good at deadpoints, and blocked holds don’t intimidate you at all. What most people see as potentially tendon-popping holds, you see as holds without the fluff.

Unbeknownst to you, your friends have started a betting pool on when you’ll finally blow a pulley.

A common tell-tale sign that someone likes pockets is if they carry bags of groceries with a sub-optimal number of fingers per bag.

Mini-Jugs  → Enneagram 9, The Peacemaker

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

Mini-jug fans are pragmatic realists. You like holds that look friendly but require focus (is that hold upside down and blocked?). Like the ever faithful mini-jug, you’re probably the glue of your climbing crew—the one who reminds everyone to hydrate, warm up, and double-checks anchors. Sure, people want to get to the volume-cluster at the middle of the wall, but to get there, they first have to climb through the mini-jugs.

In life, you’re dependable and steady. Without you, everyone knows the session falls apart.

Holds and personalities: In conclusion

At the end of the day, your favorite hold might say more about you than you think. Maybe none of this is true, or maybe the setters really do know you better than your therapist. Regardless, it’s always such a joy seeing all the quirks and betas that different climbers bring to the wall. And that’s what makes this sport so special. It’s a place where diverse personalities can meet under a common complaint: “What were the setters thinking?”

The post What Does Your Favorite Climbing Hold Say About You? appeared first 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.

Also Read

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• Gripped van Winkle’s Return to Climbing

The post Are Routesetters in the Entertainment or Fitness Industry? appeared first on Climbing.