I recently heard Alex Honnold’s discussion with Bill Ramsey about knee-bars and the perennial question of their legitimacy on the Climbing Gold podcast. I thought this was an interesting conversation, following on the heels of some discourse I’ve hosted here on Evening Sends. (Note: this story was originally paywalled but I just opened it to the public; if you like this site, please support my work with a subscription!)

Kneebar discourse has a peculiar tendency to circle the crux while rarely making contact with it. The use of the technology (knee pads) and the technique itself (kneebarring) often get conflated and mashed up into straw-man disparagements about their “legitimacy.” To be clear, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone who literally believes that using knee pads and kneebarring invalidate an ascent. No one actually cares how you climb. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting on knee pads and there’s nothing wrong with using kneebars. Also, you are not a noble badass if you choose not to use either.

To me, the only reason kneebar discourse remains a perennial hobby horse for sport climbers to argue about in a friendly way is because the grade of the rock climb is actually what’s at stake. That’s it. It’s not about the knees, or the pads. Both are fair game. It’s all about the grade.

At one level, kneebarring is a technique no different than hand jamming or back-stepping. The grade of any rock climb often presumes a baseline of perfect—or, at the very least, competent—technique and its execution during a redpoint. A 5.10 hand crack presumes that you know how to hand jam well in order for the climb to feel like 5.10. Kneebarring is similar … but it’s also different on a couple of fronts. Notably, you are adding an extra piece of equipment, a rubber knee pad, which can drastically change just how good that kneebar feels. There is also the fact that kneebars can really make a climb much easier—which is fine, but that discrepancy in difficulty often goes unacknowledged.

The “two sides” of this arguments each have their own motivated reasons that make it difficult for them to accept that kneebars, in particular, can change the grade of the climb. (I put “two sides” in quotes to recognize that most climbers are quite provisional in terms of which kneebars they take issue with and which ones they don’t.)

But to illustrate the motivations underpinning each “side,” let’s begin by considering Climber A, who did a 5.14a crux as all others before him have done: by climbing it without using a kneebar. Meanwhile, Climber B comes along one day and, lo and behold, finds a very tricky and dubious kneebar sequence through the 5.14a crux, turning what was formerly a dynamic sequence between decent holds into a static and rather awkward, if ultimately easier sequence.

In this example, Climber B might view their kneebar as an example of good technique and pride themselves for having the ingenuity to solve a crux in a way that suits their climbing style. Climber A, on the other hand, might see Climber B’s ascent and come to the rational conclusion that the method B used to do the crux moves is clearly easier. But Climber A is invested in this route staying at 5.14a because he already did it. Thus, he might begin a campaign of disparaging that kneebar, making, in my opinion, often poor arguments against its use; e.g., ”It’s a ‘weak’ way to do it,”etc. (You know these are poor arguments—or, rather, that there is no real principle behind them—because as soon as Climber A gets on a 5.14c and he can’t do the crux, out come those dandy little knee pads.)

Climber B is also invested in keeping the route at 5.14a because, after all, why should he be the only person to take a lower grade just because he used different beta? He climbed the route too, and like everyone else, he did so by using beta that worked best for him.

In this example, we can see how neither climber is particularly motivated to concede the point, which is that this 5.14a might actually only be 5.13d, assuming this new kneebar beta actually does make the crux easier. (And for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it indeed does.)

Though the debate / discussion between Climber A and B might take on the valence of arguing over which method is “better / cooler style” or if this is simply a matter of “strength vs. technique,” what I think is actually at stake here is an inability of both climbers to come to terms with what the route is now rated.

Both Climber A and Climber B are wrong insofar as they’re reluctant to acknowledge that the kneebar in this hypothetical example actually may turn their 5.14a into merely 5.13d.

At this point, climbers will jump in with the following concern: Should routes really be downgraded just because one climber, Climber B—who is also an exceptionally, even freakishly great kneebar climber, by the way—found a way around the “normal” beta with this kneebar?

To answer that, I want to introduce the concept of The Overton Window.

The Overton Window of Beta and Grades

A metaphor borrowed from politics, the Overton Window basically describes what is broadly understood across society to be the norm. When discourse, ideas, and behaviors are considered palatable to most people, they can be said to be inside the Overton Window. The Overton Window can widen as norms become looser and more tolerant, just as it can become narrow under authoritarian conditions. And it can shift to the left or right as society and culture move in one direction or the other.

I think this concept is a useful metaphor for how we should start thinking about climbing grades and beta. Let me assert that there is an Overton window for a route’s grade, and there is also a second Overton window for that route’s beta (which, of course, influences what the grade is). When these two windows more or less perfectly overlap, that means that the beta matches the difficulty rating, and vice versa, and hence all is well and right with the world.

I think the problem occurs when the Overton window of a route’s beta shifts way to the left, but the window of the route’s grade stays the same. That beta window could shift for any number of reasons, from the discovery of new knee-bars that weren’t used before, to the development of better knee-pad technology that makes marginal knee-scums more secure, or even to something like the fact that people are now climbing “off route” to cop a new rest that predecessors didn’t use. Whenever this misalignment occurs—i.e., the beta window shifts, but the grade window stays exactly where it once was—I think people are right to notice it and call it out.

Rather than seeing grades as these things that are literally set in stone, as if there is some objective reality to climbing difficulty that emerges out of the very architecture of the rock itself, we should actually think of grades as fluid, as a function of how techniques and beta change over time, and also the degree to which people begin to accept those changes as “normal.”

I admit that this is perhaps just a fancy way of describing “consensus,” which is the term we normally use to describe how we arrive at grades for rock climbs. But what I like about the Overton Window metaphor that “consensus” doesn’t quite capture is the idea that, sometimes, beta can be outside of the Overton Window. The fact that beta can sometimes fall outside the Overton Window of what most climbers believe to be the “normal beta” on a route is where this kneebar discourse finds its fuel.

Going back to our hypothetical, if Climber B is the one and only climber who uses the 5.13d kneebar beta to send the 5.14a rock climb, then perhaps it makes sense for the route to stay 5.14a. Yes, Climber B may have gotten a bargain, ticking a 5.14a at a 5.13d discount … but who cares? Unless and until some critical mass of people begin to adopt this new kneebar beta as The Way—in other words, until the Overton Window shifts—it makes sense to keep the route at 5.14a.

But once that Overton Window shifts, and now everyone is padding up to use this kneebar beta to do the crux, then the route should, in fact, be downgraded to 5.13d. Problem is, few people actually want to take that last step.

Really good kneebar climbers don’t like to hear that they may be getting some of their harder redpoints at a discount, but I think they should just embrace it rather than try to pass off a style that utilizes more crawling than climbing as simply a matter of “great technique.” The fact that these same folks don’t put knee pads on to do their warm-ups, and turn that 5.11a into a 5.10d, says a lot. It says that they’re only going to use their “great technique” when they’re not strong enough to use the beta that is understood to be within the Overton Window that corresponds with the climb’s grade. (Again, who cares, so what, etc. and so on.)

And on the other side, the really strong climbers who disparage those who are ticking the same routes as them but with the kneebar discount often just sound like assholes trying to take something away from people. And besides, like I already said, you know that as soon as they get on a route that’s actually really hard for them, those knee pads will come out. They’re not any different, they’re just not trying hard enough yet!

In general, maybe we should all just be a little less attached to grades and more open to the idea that they shift over time.