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General Climbing Discussion

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Training Regimes 9-Apr-2015 At 3:09:51 PM Wendy

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And mental hooha. Mental hooha has long been the thing holding me back (not the lack of a beastmaker in my life). So I have taken up the opportunity of a finger injury which put all my projects on hold to do some serious fall training. Having promised myself I was going to take 10 falls every day out, I must be well over 100 falls onto trad gear in the last month. I suppose it has helped a bit. Now I can jump off with gear at my knees (yeah, I know, I really was coming from a wussy place), and most of the time I don't even scream. But I am still terrified when it comes to doing moves I could potentially come off above gear. One must need to take a shit load of falls to overcome 25 years of being a wussbag. I'll let you know if it ever actually pays off or if I return resigned to placing gear every 50cm. The other bit of mental hooha I think people can benefit from work is working out where their limits really are. What can we push through and what is us just deciding it's all a bit hard. What's safe to push through, and what's risking injury. Lots of people let go. There is a lot to be said for just committing to one more move. Then one more. And so on until you actually come off trying or find yourself in a place where continuing on is actually quite feasible. Top ropes are great for feeling safe whilst pushing yourself. Trying to hold your head together and think about climbing well rather than flailing when pumped and scared is also good practice. Because we will all end up pumped and scared above gear at some point.

I know, I have a lifestyle that lets me actually climb lots on readily accessible real rock (and it's a great lifestyle choice, I highly recommend it!). However, I reckon even going to the gym or a bouldering wall is far more relevant to climbing training than hangboard or campus training. You get the same finger/forearm/cranking benefits of the hangboard but you are using the muscles in climbing relevant situations. Like having your feet on. Who does anything foot free on the rock except when showing off or having lost control? Muscles need to know what you actually want to do with them. And you need to be able to put the whole picture together.