BURSTFoundation’s Edge. The Lion’s Share. Celestite. Emotional Landscapes.
Adam Ondra has recently dominated headlines with an incredible succession of V15 flashes.
These four boulders went down in a span of months.
Oh, and by the way: before flashing Celestite, he also sent Captain Nemo, another V15, that same day.
It’s an incredible series of feats no other climber has come close to accomplishing.
On top of that, Ondra also holds the world’s hardest sport flash at 5.15a, Super Crackinette and the hardest trad flash, having bagged Lexicon E11 7a (approximately 5.14 with a massive fall potential).
Most of us will never be able to attain anything close. But we can all aspire to up our flash game. As a result, Gripped decided to seek out some coaching advice to see how the average climber can make significant gains in their flash grade.
To do so, we decided to catch up with Paradigm Climbing’s Charlie Schreiber, who is perhaps best known for his @paradigm_climbing_coaching videos on Instagram.
Schreiber answered our most pressing questions on the matter, which you can view below.
Gripped: What are the most important skills to develop to push your flash grade?
Schreiber: At a certain point, flashing stops being about whether you’re strong enough and starts being about whether you can accurately apply force in a position you’ve never been in before.
The most important skill is your ability to instantly map body position to hold type and directionality. When you look at a climb, you should already have a rough picture of how your hips need to move, where your center of mass needs to be, and what kind of tension pattern the climb is asking for; before you touch it. That comes from mileage on varied terrain, but more importantly from paying attention to why certain positions work, not just that they do.
The second piece is how you handle uncertainty once you’re on the wall. Flashing at a high grade means you will get something wrong (foot choice, timing, exact position) and your ability to recover without blowing the attempt is everything. Most strong climbers fail flashes not because they can’t do the moves, but because one small error turns into a cascade of over-gripping, rushed decisions, and wasted energy. The best flash climbers stay composed enough to make micro-adjustments without losing the thread.
Gripped: How can I improve my beta-gathering skills before I pull on?
Schreiber: At this level, reading beta is less about identifying individual moves and more about understanding the constraints of the climb. You’re looking for what the climb won’t let you do. Is it forcing you into a specific hip orientation? Is there only one viable foot for the key move? Is the hold directional in a way that limits how you generate force? That’s what actually matters. Anyone can see you’re going left hand to a crimp. The question is what position makes that crimp usable, and how do you arrive there efficiently.
A big upgrade is learning to build sequences from the top down instead of bottom up. The end position usually dictates everything that comes before it. If you know what the last hard move requires (body position, hand orientation, foot pressure), you can reverse engineer the sequence with a lot more accuracy.
And then you simplify. Most people overbuild sequences because they don’t trust simple solutions. I’ve found that at my limit, the best beta usually feels almost obvious once you’ve visualized it deeply enough. If your plan has five contingencies before you’ve even pulled on, you’re probably compensating for a poor read.
Gripped: How can I train my on-the-fly decision-making on a flash attempt?
Schreiber: You don’t get better at this by rehearsing climbs. You get better by putting yourself in situations where you have to make real decisions with real consequences; regularly getting on new boulders, limiting preview time, resisting the urge to overanalyze from the ground.
But the key is what happens after. You need to be brutally honest about where your decisions broke down. Not just “I fell because I was weak,” but what assumption did you make that didn’t hold up?
The other part is reducing your decision-making bandwidth while you’re actually climbing. You don’t have time for full analyses mid-sequence, so you need a few hard rules you trust. Things like: if a move feels directional, fix your feet before pulling harder. If you lose tension, slow down instead of rushing the next move. If you hesitate, commit. These aren’t things you invent on the spot; they’re patterns you’ve validated over time. High-level climbers don’t make more decisions on the wall. They make fewer, better ones, faster.
Gripped: What should my climbing pyramid look like to support a higher flash grade?
Schreiber: It needs to be brutally honest about your depth, not your peak. One V15 doesn’t mean much for flashing if your V10–V12 range is thin or inconsistent. You need a large volume of climbs below your max that you can dispatch quickly and cleanly across different styles. That’s what builds the pattern recognition and execution speed that flashing actually requires.
Two to three grades below your max should feel almost automatic. One to two grades below should be something you can close out in a handful of tries in most styles; not your style, most styles. If your pyramid is skewed toward one movement type, your flash grade will be capped by whatever you’re least comfortable with. Flashing exposes weaknesses immediately. The more balanced and dense your pyramid, the fewer blind spots you have when you walk up to something new.
Gripped: How do I develop an effective pre-climb mental routine for a flash?
Schreiber: A pre-climb routine at this level is about narrowing your focus, not building it up. You don’t need more hype, you need less noise. The goal is to walk up to the climb with a clear, simple plan and a controlled internal state. That usually looks like: observe the climb, identify the two or three positions that actually matter, pick a couple of execution cues, and then stop thinking about it. If you’re still analyzing while you’re chalking up, you’ve already gone too far.
The most important moment is the transition from analysis to commitment. There has to be a clean break where you stop trying to perfect the plan and just execute it. Most blown flashes come from hesitation, not bad beta. People second-guess mid-move, adjust when they shouldn’t, or drift into indecision because they’re still mentally problem-solving on the wall.
Once you leave the ground, the plan is set. You can adjust if something is clearly wrong, but you’re not allowed to drift. The whole point of the routine is to get you to that state: clear, committed, and actually ready to climb.
The post With four V15s, Adam Ondra upped his flash grade. Here’s how you can, too. appeared first on Gripped Magazine.