Yesterday was a bit of a milestone for me - I made my first attempt at one of those tantalisingly elusive red-tagged 6a routes. (At The Castle, they use blue tags for 4a-4c routes, green tags for 5a-5c, and red tags for 6a+) It was a hilariously inept attempt, it must be said - I only got just over halfway, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes and a couple of disturbing pings in my trapezius muscles to get that far, with several failed attempts at passing the first overhang.
But nevertheless, I felt quite satisfied at making the attempt at all, considering that just six months ago I was feeling similarly proud of nervelessly leading 4c. Nowadays, I'm comfortably solving probably 90% of the 5a routes I attempt, plus maybe 70-75% of 5b's and around 50% of 5c's. It's definitely encouraging, and I put it down to increased confidence just as much as actual technique. IMHO, climbing is as much a mental sport as it is physical. I still get days when I just can't focus, and for some reason the nerves come piling back... usually it's when I haven't been climbing for two or three weeks.
Correspondingly I've found that the more I climb outside - and particularly the more I lead outside, the more confident I become, and the more I consider the adjectival grade (VDiff, Severe, VS, etc) to be the most reliable indicator of a routes "do-ability" for me. I've even taken to trying to train myself to judge a route by walking around The Castle looking for a route that looks like fun, but do-able - and only then looking at the technical grade to determine if my on-sight appraisal was correct. It comes in very handy when you're climbing outside without a guidebook :)
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