Okies, so I spent the weekend at St. Bees and it was a truly inspiring place with some quality bits of rock. By the end of the weekend I was approaching my grit grades (V4/5) but was getting totally spanked by the sit starts, which it seems most of the problems are!
The thing I find is that with the sitters I can't seem to 'cheat' my way up with technique. I'm really constrained to body positions (especially at 6' 3") so it seems to be all thuggery, which I'm not the best at. Is it just a case of stronger fingers arms to get myself into the vertical or are there any tricks I can use to stay sneaky and weak?
Ta
I'm 6'3" and sit starts are the bane of my life (well they're not reallly - but I do find them hard..). Height is against you often here as you have to tuck and wrap those legs/knees/elbows into all sorts of odd positions. Say you have one problem, crimp and two footholds spaced evenly about 2-3ft below the hand hold. Shorter (and more flexible people) can simply frogs leg with a foot on each and pull on. Often I find myself having to start things like this side on - maybe with the outside and inside edge - or even just using onefoot and flagging wildly... Its all about loosing those inches.
Also sit starts are often shouldery (in my experience) and creatures of lank often are not as powerful in the shoulders as we can lank through things - and muscles/levers ratios etc....
I've found that trying simple sit starts at climbing walls (where its obvious what you have to do as there are only 2-3 holds etc..) is a good way of finding your own sneaky way of doing it. I was looking at Middle Earth at Kentmere on Tuesday, and afterwards had a look at a couple of vids doing it, and our own GCW (who is also blessed with lank) did the start in a very different way to the regular/obvious way....
