On Friday, 27th June, I packed up my office desk,
said good-bye to work for six months and embarked on a six month career break
with a simple goal in mind: to climb as much as possible, to find a new level
in my climbing, to strive to red point 8a!
Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will
recall I had a heavy motorbike accident at the end of 2013, which left me
uninjured but pretty shaken and surprisingly weak for a month or so. Then, I
over extended my training from a not-so-fit place resulting in a bicep tendon
injury that rendered me unable to train meaningfully for another 8 weeks. Thus,
it was only in April or so that I could start training towards my goal.
First up was getting some power back as I was heading to
Magic Wood in July. I’ve always felt that finger strength is a weak point
compared to my back and core, and have never followed a structured finger
boarding programme for an extended period. I adopted Chris Webb Parsons programme and managed
to fit in a solid 10-week cycle before travelling to Switzerland, doing two
sessions a week.
That made a significant impact on my climbing, where I have
gone from feeling like I was a sometimes 7A boulderer to feeling like I can do
most 7As in one or two goes, and definitely surprising myself with what I could
do in Magic Wood. On the down-side, by
the end of 10 weeks my finger joints were definitely feeling the strain and I
was hot-cold treating my hands most nights to try to reduce inflammation and
speed recovery. They felt fine again about 10 days after completing the
programme, but if you plan to complete a programme like this I suggest
monitoring yourself closely and taking appropriate breaks or I suspect it will
end in tears.
Next up on the training regime was getting together a
programme to build the endurance I will need to climb 8a. For this I turned to
a training programme developed by Andre
Hedger as most of my knowledge is focussed on building power. We met at a
climbing gym where we spent a couple of hours talking about my goals, looking
at training methods and working through my current climbing strengths. Andre’s
hands-on coaching is fantastic: eagle-eyed attention to technique, encouraging
and constantly evaluating how hard his students should work to make gains.
Along with a fully developed training plan, one of the most
useful things for me was getting a sense of the intensity and volume of work I
need in my training sessions in order to get to the kind of level to which I
aspire. I’ve got that from watching Andre and Adrian Baxter train – the intensity and
focus with which they tackle each training session is really inspiring. I have
a long road ahead of me to reach a fraction of their ability and strength, but
for now all I’m going to do is think about their training effort every time I
fall off ... and get back on and try to do a few more moves.
I’ll do my best to chronicle my climbing journey over the
coming months... hopefully I will get a post out in the next couple of days about
my trip to Magic Wood. Check out a short video of my Magic Wood and Fontainebleau trip.
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