Gareth on Blind Fig, f7c. Yes that white stuff in the background is what you think...
Dave wrote up a great post about his own adventures yesterday but since it's 11pm on Sunday evening and I want to get up and do some fingerboarding before work tomorrow morning, I'll keep this short.
Very short.
Gareth on some random problem.
1. checked out venue number one, soaking wet, with Gareth and Robin.
2. headed in general direction of Burbage, Plantations area. Through a monster rain shower.
3. Decided to have a look at Burbage for the hell of it. Looked do-able.
4. Survived the cold wind, and the snow(?!?!?) for a fun afternoon getting my ass kicked on gritstone slopers. Wonderful being humbled every once in a while!
5. Realized it sucks not having the cash for a down jacket, it sucks even more when you realize you forgot all your thermals, and sucks even more(!!!!) after you forget to bring any food and have an unintentional diet day. Oops.
6. Remember that whatever about getting better/faster/stronger (which is a pretty big reason nowadays), doing whatever activity you love doing is as much about WHO you do it also. Ace!
Have a good week all, got my serious training head on now until the Easter hols......I'll update about the week in Turkey early this week.
My current half-assed version of a one-armer on a 2-finger pocket. Used to be able to do these (fully, and easily) about 3 years ago - wonder why I never applied it to routes properly :) - I considered not posting this but what the hell!
Following on from the lasttwo posts, I thought about talking about variation and strategy first but thought that Paul might get impatient ;) so decided against it!
So, finger strength training. At the end of the day, if you can't hold the holds you can't climb the route. (too many people have stated this over the years for me to give credit :) And if every hold feels huge, you've less reasons to fall off! Dave alluded to this recently on one of his own posts (keep them coming!) about the psychological benefits from feeling strong on a one-arm hold.
I can’t see how that amount of power could fail to improve my climbing and the psychological barrier it would smash would be immense aswell!
And even on HVS's you'll get holds that are only one-joint every once in a while so make the holds pretty small!
A lot of people keep asking me what exactly I'm doing. In short, I unwittingly started training in my first year of climbing by setting a goal, and attempting to do 10 doorframe pull-ups (apologies to my parent's door by the way :) and climbing lots - by lots, I climbed most days of the week in my first few years of uni. So in short, you just have to be motivated! Just trying and trying and trying lots of hard(er problems for your level) will see massive improvements. So many people I see at the Walls just stay within their boundaries and only try stuff that doesn't test them. Believe, keep trying, and you will see gains, it just takes time :)
O.k. after that it's a case of using a bit mote strategy and thought. Fingerboards, campusing, etc.
For a fingerboard, Ive been using one on and off for a few years bit it's becoming much more common now as I start to focus training and after asking advice from some full-time climbers.
How do I use it (note, this is based on my original training experiences on a fingerboard when I used it regularly in 2007-ish)?
7 seconds on, 3 off for 6 repetitions mainly for the past while. I have a list of about 8 hold types I'll use (middle 2-finger pocket, front 2-finger pocket, crimp, sloper, etc) that I'll work through over an hour. I've found by keeping it to an hour, I could do more sessions per week and saw quicker gains than a few long sessions. If you can hang the holds, I then moved on by adding weight. I used to dive so my scuba weight belt got a new use :)
Like on the routes setup, keep adding weight incrementally until you can't finish a full 6 reps. Then keep doing it that weight until you can, and repeat! Sound familiar? Also, for variation, try locking off at different angles - I use almost-straight-arm, 30-degree, 60-degree and almost fully locked (careful at this point with weight, elbow pains ensue if you fully pull in from my own experience).
Note: yes, there is definitely some endurance-based work in this sort of training (as you'll notice you get really really pumped from it too) but I've found it's a pretty good compromise for route fitness. If you're looking for just raw gains, you need to take pure power training methods - hang the hold with maximum intensity (using weight, etc.) - for maybe 3-10 seconds, but then rest for another 40-80 seconds. Remember this is absolute max intensity so be careful as you're pushing tendons/muscles to limits.......I'm not liable (but will be using a bit of this myself for crimp strength soon)!
After a certain point, you'll be able to think about one-arm. Think about it, most moves you do on rock you will pull part of the way using both holds, but really part of every move involves at the least locking on one arm, or pulling on one arm.
To help with this, I use a towel (over a bar below the board) and use that to do offset hangs. I also do them at different angles to simulate different lock-offs. After you can do that, then start dropping fingers on the arm on the towel....see where I'm going with this?
If you don't have access to a fingerboard with a bar below it, you can do this on a steep bouldering wall - just use a hold below the primary one and start to drop fingers as you get stronger. Some people from UCD might remember me doing this a few years ago at the wall - it works brilliantly, you just have to have confidence in the gains you'll get so you can forget about feeling daft about doing this at the wall. I myself currently do this by using holds on the woodie below my fingerboard right now (I just start with four fingers on the lower hold, then work down as I gain the ability to hang the hold) - see the photo below of the wall setup.
As for what strength you'll get from this, how about stuff like the video at the start? It's not full as I'm only back training properly a couple of months but it's not far off it. Note, Dave alluded to this in his post about fingerboarding, there's a huge psychological benefit to knowing you can hang one-arm off a hold - I can vouch for this on a few routes where the supposed crux move is actually a shake-out for me as it's a beautiful sinker pocket with terrible feet.....
On top of that, I always did a few pull-up sets with weight also, lots of weight. Think 50% of bodyweight. And yes, I built up to this. Again think about it, the stronger you are, the less difficult a move will feel which will mean you'll feel more confident in your ability.....
As for campusing, keep the sessions short and aim for steady progress also - don't expect 1-5-9 within a few months :) Dave can vouch for some gammy elbows from these if I remember correctly, although I do remember him being stupidly strong on it too! I also find alternating at least a few weeks on, then a week or two off works with these. I don't do much campusing (and am currently paying for it on some projects!) so won't go on anymore. It is something I need to spend more time at though and is a focus until the Summer.
Note, I'm missing some other strengths that you could work on for power also. Triceps, some other shoulder-y work, but feel others could write more on those than me.
Any questions, feel free to ask. This is a very jumbled post, so I'll aim to break it up properly in the coming week or two.....
Old image of mine from Red Rock National Park, Nevada, USA. Fitness for routes like this!
Following on from my previous post, I thought I'd update a bit more, and clarify, what I'm doing. For anyone who hasn't looked, there's two great responses from Dave and Ian here.
Anyway, as Dave mentioned in the commments, if you do follow a rough plan like this, I should have clarified that it's not entirely about the grade - if anything forget about whatever arbitrary grade your local climbing wall has graded the routes and find two that test YOU. Both of the routes I mentioned in the last post are not accurately graded in comparison to an outdoor route, but the whole point is that they test me enough that when I first started I couldn't do 5 sets of doubles on them. I can now so I'll find two routes to replace them, and obviously they'll be a bit harder. It's a permanent cycle which is what is so fun about it as every 4 - 8 weeks, I usually get to move onto something else.
On a side note, if you only have access to a bouldering wall, that's fine too. I originally started doing this on my local wall's bouldering wall and set it for about 30 moves (maybe 1-half to 2 mins climbing time) in a figure of eight pattern. If anything, I saw quicker improvements from that than doing it by routes, as I could define an exact 3 min rest between each go also. The only trick I made sure on this was to ensure that the downward climbing wasn't that hard, I wanted most gains for an upward manner :)
The other secret sauce is WHO you're climbing with! This routes lapping obviously won't work if you don't have a like-minded partner. Judging by the number of readers of this blog, I can only assume that there's a lot of psyched imbers out there so why not think about hooking up?!?
Any more questions? I know lots of you are saying these are of interest by email, but not giving me directions on what queries you have :)
To start with, I'm asking that this is a two-way discussion - if you think I could be doing something better, harder, less often, whatever, please comment or email me to air your thoughts. I know far from all the knowledge there is on training methods so share with you all so you can feed back in return! And if there's any pro coaches that want to take me under their wing, you know where to find me :)
Secondly, this is transferable to trad, my primary focus right now is for sport routes. Imagine reducing the amount of pump you get while on that trad route?!?!?
Before planning exactly what I was doing each week, I basically take a rough draft of what trips I'd planned for the year:
mid-February: Turkey
mid-April: Spain
Summer: unknown, but multi-week trip somewhere
October: bouldering?
Following on from this, I was able to judge that I had roughly 6 weeks from the beginning of January, then another 7-ish weeks till April, and then another similar time-frame before the summer. There's another trip planned after this, but I'll decide the 2nd half of the year closer to the date once I re-evaluate my performance.
Obviously Christmas was a nice excuse for a break, so I tied onto this that I would start off with a consolidation phase to begin with for my endurance - I've been climbing relatively consistently for the past few months so was happy with by-passing a month of just easy mileage as I essentially did this after my lay-off in October - get a good grounding and prepare for higher-intensity work from the return after the first trip. This has mainly involved two sessions a week of double laps on a grade (not including a warm-up route or two) that I'm relatively solid on, but would push me a bit.
For me, this is a 7a-ish route - a grade I can onsight comfortably more often than not - and mixing it across three different routes at the wall. One slightly overhanging crimpy, one steep and one slightly overhanging pocket-y. I was not getting the full 10 routes immediately, maybe about 7 (especially if I was doing a lot of the crimpy one which pumps me stupid) but fell off the last hold of the last route for the first time on Tuesday (6 steep 7a's and 4 of the crimpy routes). So, I'm seeing progress.
In short, if you can do it all on the first night, you've probably set it soft. If you can barely manage the first route, let alone two back-to-back, you might want to give your ego a kick up the arse and be realistic :) Expect to use one, maybe two, nights just getting the balance right....
These sessions normally fall on a Tuesday and one of the weekend days. Alongside this, I've been bouldering on Thursdays for definite, on the other weekend day (outdoors if the weather is being kind), and using the fingerboard twice a week - 5/6 days (I find one of the fingerboard sessions can be mixed in on an evening of bouldering) in total. I'll elaborate more on this in the next post....
Once this period is up and it's mid-February, i.e. (after next week), I'll then start just projecting hard routes until Siurana. Close to my limit and aim for 3-5 goes on it per night.
And once Siurana is complete, I'll then be hopefully projecting routes outdoors by then so will just continue to consolidate in this fashion, although probably with something similar to my January session, only on harder routes.
Lessons Learned from previous climbing:
- I've tried doing easy 30 min laps (then rest 10, and repeat for 2-3 hours) of a climbing wall (just traversing) as basic arm fitness at the start of a training block and found it quite a nice way to kick off a batch of training, if a little boring if you forget the ipod and a bunch of music and podcasts :) For anyone who does want a nice basic level of fitness, this can be pretty useful - I'm sure it'd transfer to big multi-pitching very well. Many of those who started climbing with me will remember this is vaguely comparable to what we used to do at DCU's climbing wall by attempting a number of traverses back-to-back.... I don't feel I need it right now as I haven't had a long enough lay-off so I skipped this block.
- I used to turn up with just a goal to do as many routes as possible in a night and of any grade. In the end, you spent most of your time chatting, and picking the easier routes cause you flash pumped on the first route of the night :) Nowadays, I always turn up with a set grade range in mind (e.g. currently 6c+ - 7a+).
- Make sure your belayer is keen on the same sort of session, or else just doesn't mind belaying you if they only do single routes - if not, you'll get nothing done either. Having said that, if you DO find someone who's intrested, you'll both feed off each other and see some fab gains by the summer months......
"Planning is an unnatural process - it's much more fun to do something.
The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and desperation"
- Sir John Harvey-Jones 1924 - 2008, Industrialist
I've been meaning to write this one for a while but life and work have gotten in the way so it's been a bit of a long road to getting to it! As mentioned on another interesting blog for those motivated by the sport of climbing, Doylo's Blog had a good personal reflection on his own past year, and the lessons he learned and the forthcoming strategy for 2010. As it happens, Dave seems to have remembered he has a blog ;) and decided to update it also with his own current plans and process he's going through right now - sounds pretty organised!
So, looking back on 2009, I can only say it's been insightful also in so many ways. I've learnt what my natural baseline is now (after going for months of just intermittent climbing and just enjoying new locations) and what many of my strengths were for this reason - patience, enjoying the whole experience of trying hard routes, good technique. I've also learnt of the weaknesses - imbalance of pocket to crimp strength, lack of power for burly moves, a lack of belief for harder routes sometimes. All good experiences and brilliant to reflect on now so that I can improve in the future. I was at a seminar today in relation to my course and one of the quotes was "when you share your learning, it grows instead of getting less" (an old 5th century Tamil poem). Well, to the two top-level climbers who answered my calls for advice, I owe you one and to keep the karma going, I'll continue to share my learning on this blog and a bit on irishclimbingcoaching.ie so hopefully some of it will be of use to someone! LOL Having said that, I've always got a lot to learn myself, most notably in getting strong not just in your fingers so I'll be picking some people's advice
So, in taking another quote from the seminar - "the future belongs to those who prepare for it today" (some bloke called Malcolm X made that one :) - like Dave's post, I have a rough plan to follow for the forthcoming months to prepare for my summer plans (so would probably benefit most people in my hemisphere). And in the interest of sharing, my next couple of posts are going to be my own plans. As part of those posts though, I'm expecting comments and thoughts - this discussion is a two-way thing. Hopefully you'll get ideas of my own plans, and hopefully some can advise on what they think I should really be focusing on......we all get naturally sucked into routines and habits, especially after years of repetition so need a kick from someone looking inwards every once in a while :)
The topics (and I'll update as I finish more)
- overall training plan for 2010
- strength work-outs (fingers, shoulders, etc.)
- fitness
- things that haven't worked and failures
finally, I'm going to cross-post these to IrishClimbingCoaching.ie - mainly cause I'm still paying the annual fee on it, so may as well use it for something for now.
Side note: ideas for the irishclimbingcoaching site, what would you think I could write more on, or what information would you like to be shared?
And are the Amazon links at the bottom of my posts annoying/useful/distracting?
The video was posted on Prana's fantastic new blog (only running properly in the past month or so), this is their latest video (don't forget to turn on the HD option if it doesn't default) with a nice video from Spain. Ever wonder why I'd live in Spain? Look at the weather!
And just seen this posted online about Gil Scott-Heron's new album, check it out here courtesy of the Guardian (who are also seeing the light about where media is going/utilizing and making a great effort with their site):
And if you just can't handle that, check out Alice.......people doing assignments have been known to leave this playing for hours on end in the background....
Pierre wrote up a bit on this already so I won't ramble on only to say how ridiculously psyched they all were! Dave McLeod even compliments this in his own blog post last night where he recognizes that while the Irish scene is 'relatively isolated from the wider climbing spectrum' but that the climbers are 'some of the most hardcore lovers of outdoor, remote adventure climbing around, certainly in the UK.' I'd go with that - some of the people are stupidly motivated back home which is always an inspiration for me to keep going myself!
Now, on that note, I'm off to finish the days work so I can get to the wall - training session awaits before back to assignment work. Have to work out somehow where Al gets his energy and strength from ;)
