There’s no fixed answer to how long it takes to climb V5 (around 6C on the Font scale), and anyone who gives you one number is guessing. Climbers who boulder two or three times a week, climb every style and keep at it for a year or two often get there. Plenty of climbers who go once a week and stick to the problems they like are still short of it years in. How long you’ve climbed matters less than what those years were made of.
That’s more useful than it sounds, because most of what decides it is in your hands.
What the data actually says
Nobody has followed a large group of climbers from their first session and recorded when each one ticked V5. What exists is survey data from climbers at different grades, and it says two things.
First, years on their own don’t get you there. In Lattice Training’s dataset, drawn from around 65,000 climbers, those climbing V1–V4 reported an average of 5.8 years of climbing, and those climbing V5–V7 reported 8.6. Lattice’s own coach suspects the lower group over-reports its experience, and these are self-selected climbers who chose to test with a training company, so don’t read the numbers as a timeline. Read them as a warning: a lot of people climb for years without reaching V5.
Second, how often you climb tracks with how well you climb. An analysis of a survey of 473 climbers, mostly from a training-focused online forum, found that better climbers climbed more often and that ability rose with experience, at least across the first six years or so where most respondents sat. Climbers who climbed both indoors and outdoors also tended to be better than indoor-only climbers. The author is clear that it’s correlational and self-reported, and only 13% of respondents were women, so treat it as a pattern, not a law.
Put together: time helps, but only if it’s regular time spent on varied climbing.
What speeds it up and what slows it down
Frequency you keep up
Two or three sessions a week, kept up for months, is the single biggest lever. Movement skill is built by repetition, and V5 asks for a lot of movement skill. Once a week can still get you there; it just takes longer, because each session spends part of its time relearning what the last one taught.
The catch is “kept up”. A six-week burst of four sessions a week, followed by a month off with sore fingers, is slower than steady twice-weekly climbing.
Variety
V5 is where setters start asking for specific movement: heel hooks that take weight, drop knees, toe hooks on steep ground, small crimps, committing dynamic moves. If all your V3s and V4s are one style, you’ll reach V5 in that style and stall everywhere else. The three gaps that cap climbers at V4 are almost always styles someone has avoided.
Your starting point
People who come from gymnastics, other climbing-adjacent sports, or physical jobs often move through the early grades fast because the body tension and grip are already there. None of that decides whether you get to V5, only how much of the early work is already done.
Recovery
Strength and skill consolidate between sessions. If you climb on tired fingers every time, you never try hard while fresh, and trying hard while fresh is how the hardest moves get learnt. Most climbers find recovery takes longer as they get older, and climbers with jobs, kids and short sleep usually need more rest days than a student does.
Where you climb
Gym grades vary. A V5 at one wall can feel like a V4 at another, and a single generous problem doesn’t mean you climb V5. Judge your level by the problems you can and can’t do across a few sessions, and ideally at more than one wall.
A realistic path to V5, in stages
Rather than months, judge where you are by what’s happening on the wall. The time each stage takes varies hugely between people, which is the point.
| Stage | What’s happening | Signs you’re on track | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learning to move (roughly V0–V2) | Most of each session is new movement. Grades come fast. | You’re ticking new grades most months. | Climb often, climb everything, rest between sessions |
| Styles appear (roughly V2–V3) | Some walls and hold types feel natural, others don’t. | You can name your strong and weak styles. | One problem outside your style every session |
| First real plateau (roughly V3–V4) | Pulling hard stops being enough. Progress slows. | Hard problems go in more attempts, not fewer sessions. | Footwork on steep ground, full-effort attempts while fresh |
| The V5 jump | Smaller holds, specific moves, more commitment. | Individual V5 moves go, even if the whole problem doesn’t. | Find your gap, train it on purpose, retest |
Two honest notes on this. Progress isn’t steady: most climbers move in jumps, with months at one grade and then several problems going in a few weeks. And the slowing down between V3 and V5 is normal, not a sign you’ve hit your ceiling. The early grades come from learning to climb at all. The later ones come from closing specific gaps, which takes longer.
How to tell if you’re moving
“I don’t feel any better” is easy to believe and often wrong, because your max grade is the last thing to move. Track the signals that move first:
- Benchmark problems. Pick three problems at your limit that you haven’t done. Try them once a month. A move that wouldn’t go in March going in April is progress, even if the problem doesn’t.
- Attempts to send. If your hardest V4s took ten sessions last spring and take two now, you’ve improved, whatever your top grade says.
- Styles ticked. Count how many different styles you’ve done at your max grade. Going from one style to three is how V5 becomes possible.
- Flash grade. The grade you can do first try often rises before your max does.
If none of these has moved in three months of regular climbing, you’re probably on a plateau rather than on a slow path. The four-week plateau approach is built for exactly that.
What not to do to rush it
Don’t hangboard or campus in your first year. Tendons and pulleys adapt more slowly than muscle, so your fingers can feel ready long before the connective tissue is. Climbing is already training your fingers. If you’re past your first year and the V5 problems you fall off are all small crimps, start with finger work on the gym wall rather than a board: short, sub-maximal holds, with plenty of rest. Sharp pain in a finger means stop, and pain still there the next day means see a physiotherapist.
Don’t chase one soft problem. Ticking the easiest V5 in the gym by grinding it for weeks feels good and teaches you one problem. Three V5s in different styles mean you climb V5.
Don’t copy a strong climber’s programme. Their sessions solve problems you don’t have yet.
Don’t compare your timeline to anyone’s. The climber who got to V5 in a year may have been a gymnast. The one who took five may have climbed once a fortnight. Neither tells you about you.
If you’re still in your first year
Most of what gets you to V5 is the unglamorous stuff: two or three sessions a week, every wall angle, rest days you actually take. What matters in your first year covers that in detail, and it’s worth getting right before you worry about protocols.
Once you’re past that and the progress has slowed, the question changes from “how long?” to “what’s missing?”. That’s the point where it pays to log your sessions, retest your benchmarks and train the gap on purpose, by hand or with Mantle, which plans your training week by week from what you log and builds in retests so you can see whether you’re getting closer.