Panorama(s) - Portrane and slacklining in Glendalough

After all the writing last week, some nice photos to mix it up today. If anyone discusses over whether to get an iPhone or not, my default answer is for the camera alone, an iPhone every time (the Panaroma feature works automagically, no extra apps/gimmicks required.

Enjoy.

Portrane last week on a beautiful day. Fond memories of my first forays bouldering outdoors here!

Naomi, of ElementsYoga (and provider of the climbing yoga classes at Awesome Walls and near Gravity) making the most of a nice platform up the path. Main bouldering area in Glendalough all below and to the left.

First time I'd ever seen this happening in Glendalough! Theo walking a slackline across the river yesterday. Super inspiring to watch!

....and thinking about the return journey. Which turned out to be much harder as the line was downhill so requires more preparation. Next time Theo!!!!!

La Sportiva's Training Video(s)

so the Internet is abuzz with information, knowledge, new training methods, etc - countless websites/blogs/etc to hit for more ideas.

One of the latest ones has been a La Sportiva-sponsored video of Sean McColl's training methods while on the World Cup circuit. See below.





Of course, there's new ideas in there and the general concept of the video and it's generating awareness of specific training actions that other climbers do is fantastic. Getting a glimpse into other high level participants activities and methods is only a good thing, even if at the very least it gets you thinking about ways to improve yourself.
I'd be willing to bet that you'll have seen people out there trying various methods they've seen in videos or on the 'net. I've done it myself!

The positive aspect of these is I find that they are great stimulants, sometimes (or often) giving motivation to keep progressing, staying open to new ideas. It even stimulates the mind to keep making small steps in progress.

But the only thing is that this is just one little element of the above climber's training, and with no other information. If you're looking for a good discussion (warning: it'll take time to read), head over to the excellent discussion ongoing on ClimbingNarc.com. Dan Hague, writer of Self-Coached Climber: The Guide to Movement, Training, Performance, and another experienced coach from the States are giving a great write-up of training in general, why just looking at individual videos such as this is not perfectly beneficial, and little nuggets such as "for any athlete their performance level can be described in terms of the amount of time they spend doing effective vs. ineffective training." Of course, many will look at this (and many will probably have stopped reading by now ;), as only relevant to elite climbers but it's the complete opposite - this is probably more relevance to the intermeidate climber (i.e. climbing a couple of years so basic development work and capable of improving). 

Climbing and performance is in very early stages, realistically only kicking off in the last 30-odd years (with the obvious exceptions such as John Gill back in the 60's and 70's), so we'd all do well to continue to learn, stay open, and speak to any climbing coaches you know (and not just the ones that are coaches for climbing a high level - as mentioned in the ClimbingNarc thread:

.....well established in sport science that top performers in all sports do not understand very well what contributes to their high level of performance. This is counter intuitive to us because we see their skill and conclude that their superior performance must arise from a superior knowledge. The research shows that this is not the case. Really Its the job of sport scientists and coaches to be able to quantify which activities contribute to high level performance and which do not. Its actually asking a great deal of any athlete to not only be a top performer but to also know why he or she is a top performer.

The other one to appear was also through La Sportiva's account, of Courtney Sanders training while injured. It was a fantastic demonstration of work that can be done for strengthening, and tied in nicely with my own experimentation with Personal Trainers.


Thoughts?

Winter of Training......and the next steps

Note: anyone looking for ideas on a home fingerboard setup, see the bottom of the post....

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Looking for ideas on how to improve, grab some of these excellent books for inspiration - you'll get more out of many of them than reading some email forum.......

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After the progress over the winter, it's time for an update on training methods. Firstly, if anyone is looking for exact information/ideas/notes/advice, let me know and I can probably prepare something slightly more detailed.

I had some experimentation with some Personal Trainers since last summer. Not the usual method of training for climbers in Ireland!
It all came about through a wish to learn some extra skills for passing onto others, a belief that fingerboarding/campusing/climbing were not the only tools for training in climbing, and a recommendation from a physio to go to a personal trainer after injuring a hip flexor last summer. I guess this came about a bit over years of thoughts/ideas. I remember even trying to drag some of my fellow DCU climbers into the gym back in 2001 (I think) - although I'm fairly certain they weren't sold on it :) Over intervening years, stories from other people crossed my path, and a couple of years ago I came across GymJones. Set up by Mark Twight, a very hardcore climber, it has been known to have been involved in a couple of top-end climber's performances, not to mention a pretty hardcore training methodology.

After keeping an eye on some exceptional top-end performers in their respective fields (always keen to learn from other sports) -Aisling Coppinger, Rob Cummins, John O'Reagan - I took the opportunity to do some work last August with John Belton of No17 Personal Training (they're all his clients). It says a lot of the guy that he went out and bought a Beastmaker for his training suite...... He'd never worked with a climber before so this was going to be a proper experiment! Six weeks later (with some sessions being experimentation, some seriously hard workouts), I was feeling stronger, more powerful. I never really got the opportunity to try it out on rock (doubling up on jobs meant that free time was seriously curtailed in September), but I do know I was able to knock off problems that had completely shut me down with ease at the end of the block. I know I also picked up a bunch of excellent training methods of use to working with other people..... By the way, if anyone is wondering, John is excellent, highly recommended if you've got the spare cash (or sacrifice other pleasures to save the cash).

Anyway, as mentioned, That New Wall was opening and I was also working my job for Mountaineering Ireland (albeit part-time now). 60-70 hour work week were the normal until about February....... I hear a lot of stories from people of all walks of life that there's no time to train, they can't justify it as they'd rather go climbing (followed up in the same sentence by "but I really want to climb xyz..."?!?!?!?), work/family/life commitments. Even with my own commitments, I was very keen to make the most of the available time I had and see what progress I could make......there's always an excuse if you want one!

We were lucky enough to have access to two of the new Eva Lopez-designed Transgression and Progression fingerboards at the wall. With Eva's list of clients, or guinea pigs as she called them :):

Andrea Cartas Barrera (8b+), Ander Lasagabaster (9a), Dafnis Fernández (9a), Dani Moreno (9a), Eric López (8B Fb, 9a), Iris Matamoros (9a), Jairo Pandiella (8b+ on sport routes; 8A on boulder), Jose Luis Palao "Primo" (8c+), Luis Alfonso FélixPérez (9a+), Luis Muñoz (8A+ Fb), Mikel Ziarrusta (9a), Nacho Sánchez (2x8C Fb), Pablo Barbero (9a), part of the Belmez Face Brigade...

....it was pretty evident that she was onto something. So I committed to the training program supplied with the fingerboards. I also aimed for regular Yoga classes with Naomi (who runs the climbing-specific ones around the city), some light sessions at the wall, and in the final run-up the trip I added in some attempts on harder routes at the wall to integrate the fingerboarding.
Slightly more detailed, it revolved around two fingerboard sessions per week, one yoga class, recently two sessions with another Trainer, and some limited other climbing. Perhaps about 6-8 hours per week I'd guess? Not impossible for most people.
I'm not going to post Eva's plan here (as to be honest the plan is worth as much as the fingerboards in my own opinion), or a full version of my own, as it's specific to me. But with it's well thought out plan (and ties in with all the other comments from coaches I've discussed with that strength work should only be twice a week to ensure good recovery time), good rest periods and excellent variation, I found myself in the position of the trip a couple of weeks ago. I was obviously very rusty while climbing, explained by the very limited time climbing, but also explains that I was strong. Like really really really strong. Who says you have to get weaker with less time to train?

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Looking for ideas on how to improve, grab some of these excellent books for inspiration (from Amazon) - you'll get more out of many of them than reading some email forum.......

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So, what's the plan now? I talk regularly to people to give them ideas/advice on climbing improvements, helped write a large part of the in-time Climbing Coaching Awards for Ireland (time has limited me in finishing it) and after my experiments with John at No17PT and Fitness Performance Systems (more recently as a double session per week for about five weeks prior to the trip), I'm hooking up for some work with a coach myself. Not one from the climbing scene directly (although he does have a good climbing cv), but one with a very good track record in other sports. The goal is two-fold:

• Demonstrate what can/will hope to happen when getting fresh perspective from an outside observer (climbers are excellent at trawling the inter-webs independently for training advice which has it's benefits and downfalls! Not the same as dedicated coaching advice)
• Eat my own dog-food of recommending such a method (i.e. coaching), and to see what I can do in Red River Gorge in October. 5-1/2 months away leads a decent amount of time to work with so exciting times!

What are your targets for the summer months? What are you planning?

My original setup of a home fingerboard. A pull-up bar, Petzl pulley tied to the bar, rope through the pulley with a snaplink for holding onto (the weights get attached to the other end of the rope, and a Metolius fingerboard. Climbing more than two years and want to improve your finger strength, especially if you have limited time for rock - these are pretty useful......

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Looking for ideas on how to improve, grab some of these excellent books for inspiration (From Amazon) - you'll get more out of many of them than reading some email forum.......

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Margalef Part 2: steeeep....and self-benchmarking

Part 1 is here

The beautiful, and steep, line of the 'test' route last week

The important part was of feeling rusty on the routes this week (i.e. not feeling 'smooth'), was that this was o.k! I had come away with the awareness that all of my climbing in the past months (I'd only touched real rock for about 30 minutes since the El Chorro trip at the end of December) had been indoors. And with a hectic work schedule, I wasn't sure how good anything really was. So, swallowing pride and lowering off the route was the right thing to do on the day, even if I wasn't overly thrilled about it at the time. Sense (i.e. saving my skin and arms for the following days of climbing) comes with experience......

As it happened, the weather was to largely dictate the rest of the week. Leaving only four days left before the flight home, it meant that we were largely left with the choice of climbing only some of those days or climbing all four back-to-back. I'm a big believer in a maximum of two days in a row (especially when pushing it and even then one-on, one-off is better at times too) so it wasn't ideal but in the end, I ended up knocking out 3 and a bit days in a row. Destroyed arms ensued.

Anyway, the short story of the rest of the week. All of it was Margalef. Naomi was working a route herself, and I was keen to play on a couple of things. I knew that there wasn't much incentive in getting flow back as I don't expect to be climbing outdoors much for the next while either so my main goal had been to try a range of routes to benchmark, and to give some motivation to train for the Red River Gorge in October. (Venga venga venga!!!!!)

So, digging around between the drips, I had some fun by trying a nice short vertical 7c+ (lots of positives as all holds felt huge even if didn't send due to wet pockets), laps on some 7c's, and playing on a fun 8b (photo below). The 8b was a good tester of strength and climbing form.

One session to work out the moves and put in the quickdraws went well (only one move causing some issues - a small dyno off a one-and-a-half-joint mono, frickin' awesome!!!!! - that had to be worked out). Leaving it at that, the target was then to just have one or two possible burns on the route to see how my red-pointing memory/skills were working (i.e. remembering sequences, pacing, etc. - another component of climbing well other than just strength and fitness). A nice pleasant surprise meant only four rests (and if I'd been moving perfectly, two would have been removed immediately) required to the chains and that was with forgetting significant sections, out-of-sync pacing, etc. Boooo-ya, the training I've been doing is working - and an excellent base for October. As it happened, I only got the extra go on the route in the blazing sunshine (see photo) so it was largely just a recovery mission to get my quickdraws back, but even still all moves were easy (too easy?), and hugely positive.

Of course, it wasn't the perfect-in-theory trip, rocking up and sending routes all over but I never expected that so I'm happy. I'd jokingly said to GreatOutdoors Brian that I wanted to watch the Extras footage of Echo Wall [DVD] (Amazon link) to get the beta for a go at flashing the 8a in it (Sativa Pratica, a classic 8a in Margalef). As it happened, I never did get the go to try it, partly as I realized from my early-week experiences that I wouldn't be doing it in good style, but after watching people on it, I now know it would've been possible, and I would've only need another week of climbing to get back into tune. Some may think that I was daft to not do it, even if I may have gotten up it with a battle, but I've always been particular that I like to do climbs in good style, without sieging, etc.

I subscribe to what many would relate to as the Ondra-approach: Try and onsight the route, but if you have to spend more than a few days on a route, you're not strong enough, go away do more climbs below the grade to bring you up or even train, and then come back and send the route. For many, they've a different approach and that's cool with me. Whatever works for you. 

So I'm now back home, missing the Spanish lifestyle, but game for a steady push through the summer to October and Red River Gorge. A new location is fantastic for stoking motivation :) What's your motivations/goals/targets for the summer?

A nice day to return to Ireland - the Bank Holiday Monday up on Three Rock, Co. Dublin

Margalef [Part 1] - sun! social! climbing! and the weathest days in Spain this winter?!

When in Spain.......

Not the predicted weather conditions of Spain. Still though, it does give a good visual image of how the tufas form.......

If you travel enough (and even if you don't), you're going to get unlucky the odd time even if it's late April in Spain! The two wettest days of the Spanish winter arrived last Sunday. I arrived into Spain last Sunday, the day after the YCS event, to heavy rain and winds. Not exactly my planned start to the trip, but still though, I was complaining and it just left some time to dig into some books, and sample the local delights, err, coffee and cake. 

The plan was for a 7 day long trip out to Spain to have a bit of a holiday, hopefully catch up with some friends, and get some climbing on real rock! For me personally, I didn't have any goals (I'm not one for going on trips with specific routes I want to project - with the exception of last summer's idea - but I usually have an idea of the level I want to be solid/consistent at) but purely just to benchmark myself after the winter of training and all the busy-ness of working two jobs! I've been training quite specifically also so was interested to see what benefits it had brought.

Once the weather had sorted itself out and crags began to dry (enough rain came down that it ended up taking the rest of the week for the seepage lines to fully disappear), we headed off to Siurana for the first day of climbing with the logic that, a) the cafe in Cornudella serves awesome cakes (see above) and b) it's not conglomerate limestone pockets such as Margalef so the crimps were more likely to dry out. Our theory proved to be successful overall even if large areas of crags were still out the of the question (also see above photo). A side benefit was getting to hang out with our now-regular-friend-to-meet-while-abroad Hazel Findlay (who we randomly bumped into at the base of the crag) who was preparing for a forth-coming expedition with climbing partner, Emily Harrington. Emily nicely summed up my own experience in her post of the trip with these comments:

For me, it doesn’t matter that I’ve been doing this sport for over half my life; there’s a certain confidence and rhythm that fades from my climbing the longer I go without touching real rock, or challenging myself to onsight routes that may or may not be within my perception of what’s “hard”.  We climbed loads of 12a’s and b’s on this trip that I found incredibly puzzling and difficult to read.  It’s something I need to do more often if I want to progress as a climber, even if I have to swallow my ego step down in the grades. This was a really fun conclusion for me to come to because I honestly had more fun than I’ve had in a long time just trying to climb every route at the crag, not worrying about the grade and focusing on reading it properly and moving confidently.  By the end of our 7 climbing days, I began to develop a bit more of a flow and confidence in my movement.  Hopefully that learning curve continues in Morocco.

[Side note: I know an awful lot of strong climbers based in Ireland that could learn from those comments also - capable of climbing stunningly-hard routes based on their strength (and also considering how much stronger they are than me) but need to get all the other components of climbing dialled in. Anyone want to answer the question I've posed when you get to the end of this post?]

For me, it's not necessarily the case that I focus on 'training' but it was evident on the first day at Siurana that I was just very rusty on rock. The first warm-up (7a) was jittery, not reading well, and getting pumped fast! Another quick 7a warm-up smoothed out some of the climbing wrinkles, but after watching Hazel cruise up a 7c onsight (with poise, precision, relaxed movement, confidence, excellent route-reading) that I'd done before I decided to jump on this for a burn. It became very quickly evident that I was not in any shape for this sort of climbing (technical, thin) and as Emily relates to above, some stepping back in grades to fix this climbing 'rhythm' was potentially required...... Trying to give a crude analogy, break climbing down into components: strength, fitness, mental, pacing, fear of falling, flow/rhythm (there's many others but use these as an example). Then rate them all out of 10 (on your own personal perceived scale). For me I was happy to say that strength was high, fitness was potentially high (althogh all trained on an indoor wall so not as long as outdoor routes), but mental and rhythm was lower. If any of these components are off-balance and not relatively equal across the board, it has an effect on everything else.

For anyone reading this, looking at your own personal assessment, what do you think is highlighted? Be honest with yourself!!!!!

Part 2 will be all about the actual climbing for the rest of the week :)