FAO2 Photography: Climbing. An uphill struggle.

So what's happening with my climbing of late, why have I been so quiet about it?

Well mainly because I've not been enjoying it that much, simple as that! I'm bouldering pretty hard, I've ticked in the last month or two problems harder than I've ever ticked before. I'm feeling strong and fierce when it comes to bouldering, this should be good, right?

Except it isn't, I don't care about Bouldering at the moment all I'm thinking about is routes, getting outdoors and climbing high and hard, I'd even be partial to a bit of Sport climbing if necessary, but mainly it's Trad on my mind. And here's where the problem lies, my stamina is shot - it's absolutely minimal, every muscle in my body is tuned to grip hard, pull hard and not let go, great for bouldering, where that's exactly what you want a short, sharp burst of climbing over tough, techy moves. For route climbing, however it's less desirable or at least less of a priority. For routes I need to be able to take it slow, efficiently through the areas of easy climbing, relax as I'm doing it, find time to shake my arms, take the weight off etc. and then have enough energy to fight through the genuinely difficult 'crux' sections.

So what needs to change? Well that's it, right there - I need to change. Change what I'm climbing on and how I'm training for it, for climbing rock routes I need to climb more rock rather than plastic indoors and when I do have to resort to plastic indoors I need to move away from the bouldering and onto stamina training, I need to do a lot of circuit training, a lot of dead hanging (hanging by your fingers til you feel dead ;) ) and complementary exercises on the side.

It started today with a reasonable reintroduction to circuit training, but it was humiliating how feeble I was, struggling to string together a series of easy(ish) moves. But looking on the positive side of things, I wanted to improve and I hung around trying it again and again, until ultimately I gave up because I couldn't try anymore, rather than my usual boredom!

So that's great for indoor training but what about rock time? Well first of all, I've got to get more sociable and climb with more people, more regularly but in the meantime, I've picked up a new toy, a Petzl Shunt, a clever little device that means you can climb clipped to a rope that is attached at the top and if you fall it locks up and you don't plummet to your death below. The advantage of this is that I can go out on my own to Avon Gorge and get time on rock, get my head back in to what it is possible to stand on, what holds look like etc. This may sound silly, but after a winter of putting my feet on bright coloured footholds and holding the same shape resin handholds, I really need to get back to nature and play on some random, real world walls!

All in all it's not too bad at all, it's just my mentality and priorities have changed but my physiology hasn't. Yet!

Source: http://fao2.blogspot.com/2011/05/climbing-uphill-struggle.html

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