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Online Climbing Coach

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comPiler:
For those into a few sports
4 May 2010, 9:23 pm

Been talking to Tim Emmett over the past couple of days and sharing ideas about training when you are into a lot of different sports. The same points apply if you work a lot and generally have limited time to climb. If routes are ‘your thing’, you’ll want to do mostly routes in your limited time of going climbing. And if you have any time in the year when you’ll be training indoors, it’s likely that endurance will be an immediate high priority. This presents a problem for longer term development of strength to move to the next level in climbing. There simply isn’t enough time in the year spent pulling super hard on small holds to get really strong fingers. As always, there are workarounds and they are basic stuff when it comes down to it:1 - Use brief fingerboard sessions to effectively ‘concentrate’ the strength training into the most time efficient hit. Think of it as the ‘espresso’ of finger strength training. You can get away with it because your time on the routes is keeping your technique sharp. For example, if you are an expedition climber, hang that wee fingerboard rung you packed at basecamp and camp near those lovely granite boulders.2 - When you do find yourself with enough time to get some bouldering in between routes sessions, you really need to make the most of that time. If you are frequently visiting unfamiliar climbing walls/crags. It’s easy to waste precious time finding the good problems at the right intensity or making some up. Try extra hard to eliminate this by tagging onto locals who can show you what’s what. Don’t be shy, they really wont bite. And if they sandbag you, so what? You wanted a hard session didn’t you. Try not to be put off when you can’t complete many problems. It’s normal if its an unfamiliar situation. Just try hard and you’ve done well.Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Online Climbing Coach

comPiler:
New look site!
4 May 2010, 9:25 pm

As you can see the site looks rather different. I’ve just spent a good while reorganising and redesigning it. Hopefully it should all be a bit more user friendly now. But I’m eager to hear your feedback. If you like or dislike anything or find any problems I should know about. Please do leave me a comment. I don’t get much time to go through everything with my site very often so sometimes I don’t always spot problems. Thanks for your help!Apart from the structural and style changes to the site I’ve substantially reorganised my shop, adding more products and shopping in the Euro and US dollar currencies for those whom that will help. These days you are ordering your training books and DVDs from all over the planet. Thanks so much for the support of our shop - it really helps us.Below I’ve re-posted some really old extended articles I wrote on research and finger injuries that used to live in a different place on my old site. Sorry if you’ve seen them before. I just didn’t want them to disappear altogether.Now that I’m (hopefully) over the task of site redesign, I can get back to writing posts…Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Online Climbing Coach

comPiler:
Repoint tactics: pacing
7 May 2010, 12:12 pm

Finding the most efficient pace in repointing is huge area and isn’t as simple as climbers might hope. The basics of pacing are that it’s a good idea to climb fast; as fast as possible without sacrificing accuracy. But even this isn’t so simple as occasionally on steep burly climbs with big positive holds, it can be better to err more on the side of speed even if accuracy is sacrificed a little bit.Climbing fast comes from being good at climbing. And being good at climbing comes from having a lot of routes under your belt. So if you realise you are climbing too slowly on a redpoint, but can’t seem to go faster without making mistakes, there’s no shortcut unfortunately - if you clock up more routes, you’ll slowly be able to make movement decisions quicker. The only short term fix for the route you are trying right now is to learn the moves better. A lot of the time there is some mileage to be gained out of this. The technique is two-fold: First it’s to have a clear separation between ‘working’ mode and ‘linking’ mode. Often, climbers are too busy trying to make better links and forget to remember all the little movement tweaks they are learning. So progress is much slower than it needs to be. Stop linking for a bit, and just do shorter sections or single moves until you are super slick before moving on.Apart from overall climbing speed, the amount of resting during the climb is a big variable that could make the difference between success and failure. The main point of this post is that the correct amount of stopping/resting time depends on the character of the climb as much as the length or number of moves. Here is a video of yesterday’e efforts of mine on a long project (estimated grade V14). It’s about V12 to just before my failure point and the next few moves are the crux, so I need to have plenty left in the tank to make any more progress.

You can see this is an all out sprint with no rests. But I’m climbing for nearly two minutes straight on very steep ground. 120 seconds for just over 30 hand moves. The climbing is pretty technical and there is a lot of footwork to be done for every hand move. It contrasts with a 9a I did in spain a while back which is 30 moves in 30 seconds. Massive difference. On the 9a, the correct strategy (after much trial and error) was to go as fast as possible. I skipped clips, didn’t chalk up once - just continuous sprinting to get to the end before the anaerobic system started to falter.On other projects I’ve tried for a long enough time, I’ve experienced through trial and error that many different strategies for resting worked - sometimes stopping only enough to chalk up, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes longer. In general, the trend has been that resting less has been better.However, On this cave project, I’ve just realised that my previous strategy of no rest might not be the best. I started with this strategy partly because there’s no obvious place to rest, and partly because its only 35 moves to the crux. But once the climbing time starts to creep above 60-90 seconds, the need to stop and rest, at least briefly becomes more and more important. It’s a moving target though depending on the nature of the climbing. Last thing in the session (after this attempt I lay down and slept for half an hour!!) I worked out a rather unreasonable rest from two toe hooks just at the point I fell. My plan is to get the climbing time to here down 25% to 90 seconds, and rest for about 2 chalk-ups each hand. Ill let you know how it goes…Summary: experiment with different resting times and pacing on your redpoints, the character of the individual climb often confounds expectations.Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Online Climbing Coach

comPiler:
The middle way of rock movement
23 May 2010, 4:58 pm



Cubby throws in another drop knee, Glen Etive

A session with Mr Cuthbertson got me thinking of changes in movement fashions in climbing since I started. Where Cubby dotted his feet around miniscule smears on blankness, I tended to swing and heelhook. Cubby was obviously leading world trad climbing in the early 80’s, often on routes that were hard because they were completely suicidal. When he got into sport climbing at it’s birth at venues like Malham in the mid eighties, the fashion was for precision. Climbing like a gymnasitc performance, with effortless grace. I have this idea that even grimacing and grunting was not really ‘in’.Fast forward, and watch a modern climbing film like Progression. Quite a difference - Ondra is racing up the rock before you can blink. The American boulderers are leaping with feet off and one hand as you reach the for the remote control to turn down all the yelling.The popularity of bouldering and the influence of famous climbers has tended to make climbers move faster and more aggressively, with less foot moves per hand move. What does this mean? It adds efficiency because you get through the moves quicker and more momentum is used and more aggression is good for realising the maximum force you can produce. But it loses efficiency by getting less weight on your feet throughout the whole move or sequence and adding a lot of swings into disadvantageous positions that must be countered with muscle power.You might have guessed the punchline already - somewhere in between is best. Race up the rock or leap wildy for holds if your technique is quick enough or you have shoulders like Daniel Woods. But if you are more average in your build, background and climbing ability, someone like Fred Nicole or the female climbers in the world cup competitions would be better movement role models.One other thing… One positive trend in modern rock climbing is that crimping everything is much less in fashion than it used to be. Thats definitely a good thing for all out tendons.Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Online Climbing Coach

comPiler:
Don’t do what they do
25 May 2010, 11:02 am

Remember that being a successful athlete, not matter which arena you compare yourself in (peers, amateur, professional) by definition means doing what other people wouldn’t.Lots of people model their technique, training and tactics on what their peers are doing. But if you want to get better than them, they are exactly the wrong people to look at. The modelling can be conscious and deliberate, but most of the time you actually do it subconsciously. So wake up! The greatest success you can hope for by doing what everyone else (in YOUR world of peers) does is to assimilate the same level of mediocrity they have. More about all this in my book.While we’re on the subject of role models, an important point about them. Yes they are useful, even essential to help you get more out of yourself, so long as you chose the right role models. But keep in mind it’s the approach they have that you’re copying, not the exact actions. Their life, physiology, schedule, resources etc can never fit with yours. So don’t try. So the question is “What would they do if they had this (my) circumstance right now?”.And one other thing… Good role models in sport are ones you can actually find some details about - someone you can feel you know through seeing them, reading about them or even better, being coached by them! If it’s someone who never speaks, blogs, writes coaches, it’s pretty hard to ask the question above and get near a useful answer.You have two choices, pick a better role model, or ask them to keep in touch more. Interview them for your blog or your favourite website and ask them all the questions you want in one go. Just an idea.

Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Online Climbing Coach

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