I injured my finger last year for the first time ever in 11 years because of climbing on
the MoonBoard. The C13 hold that injured my left ring finger is actually a pretty good
hold by MoonBoard's standard, so what happened? Last year, I came up with a video idea of doing
MoonBoard competitions between YouTubers. I reached out to rockentry, and he agreed to
come down to San Diego to shoot it with me, but it wouldn't make sense for him to drive all the way
down if he couldn't get a video out of it, so we agreed to shoot a video to put on his channel and
it's about him teaching me how to climb the routes that I couldn't finish during the competition. The
route I couldn't finish is a V4 benchmark called "far from the madding crowd." rockentry taught me
how to do it but I failed to finish it on the spot. That means I had to finish it afterwards
in order to complete his video. We agreed that both videos should be uploaded at the same time.
That means if I couldn't finish "far from the madding crowd," I couldn't upload our MoonBoard
competition. At that time, I thought MoonBoard competitions between YouTubers would be a hit, so
I was very anxious to push out this video. I tried way too hard and way too often to climb "far from
the madding crowd" for the next few weeks because I thought a semi-viral video was on the line, and
you know what happened if you watched my videos last year. My finger popped and it took me months
to recover. I also want to make it very clear that I don't blame rockentry a single bit. The fault
is all on me. In fact, he was very nice and let me upload the MoonBoard competition video alone after
he learned that I injured my finger, and I feel bad for essentially making him driving all the
way down to shoot this video with me for free. Because of this experience, I actually have a
new-found respect for professional rock climbers. As we all know, there is very little money in rock
climbing but a lot of climbers want to go pro, which means they are competing for very limited
resources, so they are under constant pressure to send that V15 or send that 5.15 in order to
get sponsorships. They have to risk getting injured and push hard because their primary
source of income is on the line. However, I am just a YouTuber and I don't even make much
money from this channel. My primary source of income is from being a software engineer,
and not going to lie, the pay is not bad and the work is not too hard. All it takes
to become a software engineer is just simply make studying hard at school, a priority
for the first 20 years of one's life. Yea, so very little was on the line for me, but I still
made the mistake of trying too hard and injuring myself. What's even worse is that the MoonBoard
competition video ends up getting very few views. I literally injured my finger for no good reason.
Anyways, after going through this myself, I am very impressed with how the pro climbers deal with
balancing the risk of injuries and the pressure of showcasing difficult sends to sponsors. 0:02:59.600,0:03:04.160 After I cleared my mind, I told myself: I am not going to run away from "far from
the madding crowd." I have nothing on the line, so I am going to take it really slow,
and eventually come back to beat this thing at my own pace. After 440 days, this happened.
Yes. Ho! 0:03:51.360,0:03:55.520 Thanks for watching. I've been training on the MoonBoard for quite a while, and there are pretty
noticeable improvements. I have a lot to share about it so definitely stay tuned for that.
I learned a lot of techniques on the MoonBoard from my strong friends, and there are videos of it
in the making, so also stay tuned for that. I also had a chance to be trained by a strength coach,
John, to improve my power. Without his training, the last move of "far from the madding crowd"
wouldn't have been possible. There's a video of it in the making, so again, stay tuned for that. As
always, like, subscribe, and check out my website geekclimber.com. See you in the next video.