Getting strong

I can't even remember where I saw the article above, (obviously a climbing mag!), but it pretty much says it all - no strong fingers, means no strong routes. It's a no-brainer but I forget it once in a while. I'm more of an endurance sports person so always get sucked into doing routes - lots of routes. But I keep hitting invisible barriers, and more often than not, it's cause I don't have the strength/power.
Yeah, my fingers are relatively strong, but can I hang one-armed from a crimp - barely as it turns out. A 2-finger pocket - used to be, not so easily anymore?
The strongest people can (and more - this guy doesn't look like a climber!).
Of course it's not all in the fingers, don't forget about those upper arms and shoulders, that core that keeps your whole body working together, and some good technique - proper bouldering will help with that :) But if you can't grip the holds like you want to pull them off the wall, you aren't going anywhere..... And on that note, back to the board :)

People's thoughts?

Bring on the psyche!!!

Another week over and training is progressively getting it on. Interval laps back in Ireland on Saturday at UCD (man, someone needs to build a proper wall in Dublin - if you are, get in touch cause I want involvement :), Monday on the fingerboard, Tuesday for Intervals at the Foundry (finally seeing progress there), Wednesday for a light fingerboard and stretching session, Thursday for a bouldering session on the new problems at the wall (more progress, flashed some problem grades which were unachievable before). So, Friday evening and it's a rest day before Team Ireland arrives in tomorrow for some hopeful grit stone action if the weather holds. Not to mention my skin needs it. I've been campusing a bit again (1-3-5's and aiming to get 1-4-7 properly which I've never really achieved with ease, and jumps to hang a rung one-handed), and with the added intensity, I'm losing skin proportionally to how effort I'm putting in. Always a good sign then :)
I'm still stoked from watching all the stronger crew at the Foundry, there's some seriously strong folk floating around. And the more I see of some climbing videos, I realize there's so much potential for strength improvements. Goal to be reached by 2011 is a one-armer on a door-frame edge. So, first I need to get to point of dead-hangs - I'm predicting that sorted by summer. Stay tuned. Got to see some improvements in grade if I can do that....

But never mind that, it's Friday evening and I hurt in too many places so stretching, some work and some chillin'. Over and out......

Gizmos

There's a bit of a major transition going on right now. Pretty much everything we consume: news, music, video, education is going digital. It's easy to show too, pretty much everyone I know reads a large amount of news online. How many people have gotten music from the 'net (either legally or illegally), it's now possible to watch many of the tv shows/movies online (again, both legally and illegally!) and you can now get pretty decent education online (check out iTunes U or Youtube Edu for obvious examples).
And the stalwart, books is now transitioning to digital - my sister got a Sony ebook reader for Christmas and I can see how that's going to change the book and newspaper market. Not that some aren't complaining - amazingly, taking one example, The New York Times annual printing and staff costs are an estimated Billion dollars (search businessweek for the article)! There argument is that they could actually GIVE every one of their customers a free ebook reader and it would still be cheaper than printing. And think about the daft amounts of paper/tree wastage from all these papers that get read once......

So, the question is, what's being lost? Obviously, there's a massive changeover in jobs as businesses are forced to adapt (to something they should have had the vision to expand to anyway), and in many ways digital media just isn't the same as physical items. But is anything else? Cultural (hard to imagine, if anything more/everythingis preserved nowadays)? And while there will be lots of complaints about the benefits of paper, I'm sure there was moans from the changeover from stone carvings to new methods of recording also.

Don't get me wrong, it's not going to happen overnight, but now that the newspaper companies are offering their own subscriptions to ebooks, how long do you think it'll take before most content is receivied this way?

And just to show that it's a time of major change, this whole post, and the photo editing (including all special effects) was completed on an iPhone while traveling at 70 miles an hour on a motorway (on a bus).....when else did we have the opportunity to write complete drivel and post it to the whole world (in many ways that's a bad point of all this :) instantaneously?!?!
And yes, I'm bored. On a bus.

Review: FiveTen Team 5.10

IN BRIEF: An exceptional steep rock performance shoe. Feels like a second skin, and that rumour of down-turned shoes being worth half a grade on steeper terrain is valid with these....
I'm posting this after only a few wears. Firstly, I bought these months ago (first pair in the UK I believe) but after bringing them to Font for their first test, I decided that they needed to be kept for when I got back on real rock so have been hiding out in my wardrobe until a week or so ago, when I took them out to break in for a forthcoming trip.
Firstly, the usual blurb. I'm coming from a major preference for FiveTen shoes - they just fit my feet. Of those models, I'm an Anazazi Velcro and Dragon-user. The Dragons fit me perfectly and are my recommended shoe usually. I ended up in the Team's purely as an experiment for new shoes.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
They're slightly (if that's possible) more agressive feeling than the Dragons, and feel like they wouldn't transfer as much to less steep terrain as them. They're also much harder to put on, having the narrow elasticated area across the top.
I purchased these in my Dragon size, one size below shoe size and half a size larger than what I wear in Anazazi's. Seems to be the standard practice for a lot of people in these types of shoes. The fit is exceptional, with no slack areas anywhere. I'm even more impressed that with the large quantity of rubber across the top of the toe-box, that they aren't very uncomfortable or loose. They genuinely are moulded to my foot.
I'm actually finding them a little different to climb in than I found the Dragons (which I could put on and forget about). The toe is slightly more pointed (or that's my impression at least), and almost feels more like a La Sportiva to me, where I find that there's not as much focused pressure on the big toe. That's not a bad thing, just taking a bit of getting used to.
the heel is fantastic also, and almost feels like a slightly larger area of rubber that comes in contact with the hold (again, in comparison to the Dragons which feel like they are resting on a narrower ridge up the heel). No slippage at all.
I've only used them about 8 times so far so can't comment on rubber wear, but going by how my FiveTen's usually wear, I don't see them wearing out anytime soon.
CONCLUSION
I'll post a proper update on these in the coming months after they're more worn in.
Honestly, I'm not completely sold on these shoes as when I first put on the Dragons. But that could be just because they don't feel like the leap in performance that I felt from them (granted it was hard to see a significant leap from 'standard' rockshoes to a down-turned pair). They are exceptionally good, and I can see how well they'll perform on steep terrain.
Having said that, I'm not sure how easily they'll transfer to less steep rock (even vertical). I wear Dragons more most uses now, bar vertical or slabby, and I'm not sure if the Team's are that all-rounder. They seem very very focused. That's not a bad thing, but just be aware that you'll probably require other shoes also.

What's your rock shoe of choice?

Short post today folks (it is 1am on  Monday night).

My current shoes for training - crap Boldrini's (although might just be a bad batch) and new Team 5.10's (outrageously good). No, they don't make be any stronger but perhaps the rumours that down-turned shoes might be worth half a grade are true after all........

Image: Taken after day two of the train-myself-till-my-arms-fall-off campus and bouldering sessions this week, routes on Tuesday and Wednesday to go :)

Ice-tastic

I have to say that if I was into snow for walking/etc. right now, it's a pretty awesome time of year. But since I don't see any Alpine mountains right now it's just really beautiful to see, and long may the snow last. As one friend commented recently though, pretty funny that it takes only 2cms of snow to shut down some countries!

Anyway, it's 2010 and only the warm-up to the year so I've done my reflections on last year and what a year. I've been so lucky to have gotten to a bunch of countries (Thailand, New Zealand, States, Spain, France) with my fab girlfriend, attended a great wedding (and somehow became the wedding photographer!?!?), moved careers in a new country, ticked some routes I'd always wanted to do, and the only (not really significant but) major incident was getting some sort of tendinitis after only three days of climbing at Indian Creek which put me out of action for over two months. Turns out I was born to climb faces, not splitters :)

And even amongst all that it was a good year for sport but unsurprisingly, I'm thinking ahead as always. Do I set new years resolutions? Not really, but I do keep a few goals in mind at all times. Some have come about after this years experiences (namely get good at crimping again, I've been shut down on three routes I should have completed from the strength imbalance to pockets) and as ever, there's the natural ones of improving in grade on the perpetual improvement cycle.
I actually had some fun as you can see from the scale above (this was chucked together briefly using Google Docs) I've had a pretty steady improvement throughout the years.
Note, I've converted the equivalent grade to the Australian grading system as it's numberical and easier to scale on a graph. 25 = 7b, 27 = 7c, 29 = 8a, etc.
Other than the initial shock of realizing, I'm climbing more than 10 years (jeebus!), it was pretty cool to see. And even more of an incentive to up the ante this year as a I notice a bit of a plateau that needs to be resolved :) I've always promised myself to climb my equivalent age in the Australian grading system for the foreseeable future and since I'm still a year ahead of that, it's a good incentive to keep improving. Of course, who knows how long this will go on for, but hearing of 52-year olds climbing 9a and above, it's good to know I've loads of room to improve in me! Of course, taking a super intense course right now is causing some challenges for time but no point worrying about that - just believe!
I've still got that bit of a focus to improve my bouldering this year and after the first session back at the Foundry last night, things are looking up. O.k. so Christmas had taken it's toll, but I managed two problems that I hadn't been able to do before so obviously the rest has helped some muscles adjust to the strain I'm putting them under. Of course, this was offset by the fact that I've got the endurance of a a panda (rests for 17 hours a day) so managed to climb for about 90 minutes before I was burnt out so now all I need to do is not forget how to climb for more than 10 holds without getting pumped ;)

Hopefully everyone else is looking forward to an awesome year, hopefully get to climb with a lot of ye! The nature of the beast is to want to improve so better get to it then :)