general climbing

Before lead climbing, you should at least have some experience in climbing and know the basics. Depending on how and where you want to learn lead climbing, you may be required to have some climbing experience. This experience could be a certain amount of time climbing, climbing to a certain grade, or just being familiar with climbing in general, climbing holds, and how to move on the wall. Some places are stricter than others.

If you really want to start off well, it is recommended that you get used to climbing before. This can either be from top rope, some sort of auto-belay device, or bouldering. The more experience you have with climbing, the better and easier it will be to learn lead climbing.

In terms of what level you should be climbing before you can do lead climbing, there is no rule for this. Even if you are a beginner climber, you can lead climb. Still, it is recommended to have experience in climbing before starting with lead climbing.

Adam Ondra is the one most consider as the best climber in the world.
He started climbing when he was just 3 years old, and onsighted a 7b+ when he was just 8 years old.
His climbing future was just as bright, and at that early age became one of the top names in the climbing community.

Over the course of less than 20 years, he has climbed over 1550 routes that are graded 8a and above, including the world's first ever proposed 9c. Out of those routes, he has onsighted over 720 of them.

He has had enormous success in climbing competitions, and has even competed in the first ever Olympic climbing event. Though he came in at 6th place and did not take home a gold medal, he is still considered to most people as the best climber in the world.

This question has been debated a lot, and will continue to be debated, as there are many other climbers that people consider to be the best, but by far Adam Ondra is the one the majority see as the best in the sport.

There is no definitive amount of times someone can climb per week. It just depends on each person, as each person has their own fitness level and athletic history.

When I started climbing, I climbed around 4 times per week, each session was 4-5 hours long. Needless to say, I injured myself. I toned it down a lot to just 2-3 times per week at most, and also took some time off here and there to give my injuries and muscles more time to recover.

After this, I create a better schedule of climbing 2-3 times per week, for around 2-3 hours each time. I came from a background of weight training for quite a few years. This did help with my climbing as I was able to pretty quickly progress to v6, but, I did overdo it in the beginning. With my new schedule, I was injury free and haven't been injured since.

So even if you have background in something, or you are generally fit, you can still very easily overdo it. Climbing is different from most sports, it uses your muscles differently, so it is just very easy to overdo it.

The best way to know how often you should climb per week is to just listen to your body, pay attention to it, and don't ignore the signs. If you do, the next time you get another sign may be too late.