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DING DING DING (FINAL ROUND)
16 November 2010, 10:36 pm



Hey Guys!

Guess where I am? Still in Kalymnos! Yep, I have only 6 days left now and I can tell you, I think I am ready to come home now : ) Its been great fun out here, climbing everyday, on perfect rock, in the sun, all day long, but we all miss our homes and I’m ready to get back to Ratho : P My local crag! Being out on rock all the time improves your technique so much, you are always thinking of sequences, looking for your feet and your next hand holds.

Olly showing that stalagmite whose boss! The rock isn’t tagged so you’ve no idea where you’re going, apart from obviously following the bolts if your sport climbing. I feel as a climber, that I have improved massively in my ability to climb on rock, read hard sequences and now have a lot more confidence trying harder routes! On this trip I have had ups and downs, I’ve had to deal with failure, but also seen a lot of success and I believe its good to have a mix of the two. Without failure there is no learning and without success theres no feeling of accomplishment and nothing to use as fuel for attempting your next big project!

Two turning points in this trip where sending ”Gaia” 8b and ”Atlantis” 8b. ”Gaia” was the first route that really challenged my redpointing skills. Although it only took a few days, I really had to dig deep for this one. I had a bit of a mental block in the final moves and although it really wasn’t that hard for me, if you put the pressure on yourself to send, then you will be more likely to see failure on your subsequent attempts. ”Atlantis” was a similar style of ascent, I put a bit more pressure on myself to complete this one, simply because it would be the 2nd Ascent and it had been my friend Neil who had both bolted this route and got the First Ascent! Getting the second ascent of such an amazing route was such an honour for me (not as good as a first ascent, but I haven’t really had any of those yet).

The funny thing about both of these routes was, when i actually did them, I wasn’t putting the pressure on. With ”Gaia”, I was getting frustrated falling on the final move without even being that tired, so instead of going for it on the 3rd day redpointing, I decided to go away and do some onsighting. That day I onsighted a really amazing 7c+ and did another 2nd go, suddenly I was satisfied with a good day and didn’t feel pressured to climb ”Gaia”. So simply on a whim, I thought I might as well go for it, give it my best shot and if nothing comes about from it, then I’ve done a bunch of other good routes : )  First go… CRUSHED!!! No pressure and a successful ascent…

Rest day activity... updating blog! With ”Atlantis”, I had had one day figuring out the moves then attempting to redpoint, with which I was actually really close to doing it! The second day I went for it, however, a thunderstorm struck Kalymnos and I was literally blown of the wall by a torrent of wind and rain! On the third day, the top was soaking wet, including the second crux and I had no expectations to send and figured, might as well give it my best shot aye? As I climbed through the first crux, the dark clouds rolled in and a second storm started, not nearly as bad as the first, but the top was getting wetter! Not feeling at all pressured now simply because I knew it would be a stroke of luck to be able to pull on the sopping wet tufa and half pad crimp when wet, I continued climbing and went for it! I managed to find a bit of a rest before the crux that I hadn’t found before and when I hit the crux holds, I just went for it, stuck every hold and pulled up to the chains! YAAASSSSS!!!

Its funny how even when the body is willing, the mind can hold you back. This is an intriguing area in climbing and probably the contributing factor to most climbers successes and failures!

Olly trying to on-sight a 7b+! Anyway, the end of my trip is nearing, I don’t quite know what I can accomplish in around 4 days climbing but I reckon I will go for another one of Neil’s routes at Iliada sector called ”Valley of the Dolls” 8a+, ”Chameleon” 8a at Spartacus and ”Helios” 8a at North Cape! We will see what the coming days bring : )

Now I have Olly Wheeldon, my Kalymnos climbing partner from the South West (i.e. The Shire) chatting a bit about his trip and how he has benefited from it…

Hi guys!!! Robbie and my time here is almost at an end, and although its sad to leave such an incredible place, its always nice to be back home again after such a long time spent away. During my time here i’ve developed a real soft spot for the island.

Climbing aside, this place has some of the most beautiful scenery i’ve ever encountered, with its crystal clear waters and spectacular coastline overlooking the prominent island of Telendos, which almost every night seems to be silhouetted by the incredible sunsets we’ve seen here. Not only have we had the pleasure of being in this wonderful place but from what i’ve experienced so far and from talking to other climbers out here, it is now quite possibly the most popular climbing destination in the world. In relation to how much rock is on this incredible island, it remains still underdeveloped. I believe that only a small percentage of the rock here has been developed and with the increasing awareness of the island, the amount of routes here is going to go through the roof in the next few years. That aside, for me personally I have learned alot about myself as a climber and the ways in which I think i can progress in the future. Speaking to Robbie over the last few weeks about personal progression has lead me to believe that mileage is one of the most important aspects for moving forward as a climber and this is what I have been trying to do on my trip, mainly by attempting to on-sight as many 7b/+’s as I can. This as well as in the long run making me a better climber is also in my personal opinion where I find the most enjoyment in climbing. Being on a climbing trip, I don’t really want to be under pressure with the weight of a project sitting in the back of my mind. Ideally, I want to go out and climb as many routes as I can and enjoy the huge variety of climbing that is on offer.

A Beautiful Kalymnian Sunset! Before coming out on this trip I was quite possibly in the best shape of my life, training 5 days a week on the woody and fingerboard. However being out here I think ive lost a significant amount of that strength! It was a very similar story in Ceuse, before leaving I could do a 2 finger one armer and on arriving back home could barely do a pull up (Joke), but something ive come to learn over these last couple of trips is that none of this matters. Yes of course having the strength to do a one armer may help you, however in the grander scale of things, being strong is an incredibly small part of what climbing is, and despite becoming weaker, my climbing has developed greatly and my awareness of my footwork and body position has improved dramatically. So as most climbers always do, ill be looking forward to getting home and trying my projects and getting on new routes that were previously out of reach.

And with that, I leave you all to finish my trip off and hopefully get a few more ticks before our times up. Good luck to you all in your climbing endevors and other things you may be aiming to acheive in the future.

Olly Wheeldon



Source: Robbie's Blog

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On my way home : (
22 November 2010, 5:02 am

Hey guys!

I am currently sitting in the empty Kos airport, in the dark, with Olly sleeping to my left and a snoring greek guy behind me. I am finally at the end of my trip, I won’t be seeing the sweet shores of Kalymnos until next October when I am coaching as part of the masterclass coaching holidays, check it out here! During my last week, all I was aiming to do was get as much climbing done as possible! With only a week, starting any big projects was out of the question and there was still a few classic routes I hadn’t done!

I checked out an 8b at Odyssey called “Indi Watana”. This was an absolutely incredible route, slightly sustained until just over halfway, only mildly overhung and on very small crimps! I onsighted straight into the start of the crux and even managed to get to the crux move without falling, however, the crux move was absolutely sick! I have never pulled on a hold so small in all my life. I didn’t have anyone helping me with the sequences, so its hard to tell if I was doing it right, but the way I read it meant that I had to pull of a tiny 1/4 pad edge with my right at full extension, straight into a good pocket, then do some more big moves into slopey pockets and a final crimpy section on blade edges! I am not the best at vertical filth (I have learned that) and I know it is an area that I need to work on, so I am going to leave this one for next year along with Adrian Berry’s “Spartan Wall” 8b that I found very unpleasant after 5 weeks of pulling on jugs (8b slab urghhhhhh)!

On my 3rd to last day, Olly and I went up to Iliada sector to try Neil Greshams new 8a+ “Valley of the Dolls”, unfortunatelty due to a heavy rainstorm the previous week, it had sustained heavy seepage and we had to knock this one back for the time being. This is what lead us to the intimidating and very un-climbed section of rock behind “Iliada” and “Odyssey”, “Olympic Wall”! “Olympic Wall” is a dominating face of long clean pipes (single tufas) running up and down the wall, very impressive and amazing lines (literally). I find myself intrigued by the art of climbing tufas, I imagine it to be the limestone climbers answer to crack climbing, but not : P I suppose its really the opposite of cracks, coming out of the wall rather than into the wall? Anyway, I find the art of climbing tufas a very odd experience… no tufa is identical, but the approach is always the same:

• Pinch!
• Look for knee bars…
• Pinch!
• Heel hooks?
• Pinch!
• More knee bars anywhere???

With this in mind, I have found that I am rather good at climbing them (unlike cracks) and therefore I enjoy them, so “Olympic wall” was going to be good fun for me. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Olly… He has not had the best luck with tufas on this trip. It has become apparent after long discussions and debates, that Olly is perhaps the worst single pipe tufa climber in the world! So when I suggested “Olympic Wall”, I just didn’t tell him that it was primarily single pipe tufas : P

So on arrival, Olly’s face dropped as he stared at the wall (covered in single pipe tufas) which was then followed by me getting a lot of abuse : P In the end though, he couldn’t be bothered walking all the way back down the hill, so opted for the easiest of three single pipe tufa lines on the wall (7b). I however, fancying myself a bit of a single pipe tufa master now and went for the beautiful blue one going straight up the middle of the wall! Weighing in at a sturdy 8a, the route “Hellas Rodeo” flowed elegantly up the clean white face as a single blue pipe, all the way to the top of the wall with the exception of the final clip to the chain which was a techy face climb.

I scoped out the wall in search of potential rest positions, chalk marks, a sequence as such and most importantly, the bolts! What I found was, there was no chalk as it had been raining previously, sequencing tufas is bloody hard and for  a 40m route, there wasn’t that many bolts! This was odd, it couldnt be? Could it? There wasn’t more than 7 or 8 bolts for the entire pitch and most of them seemed to be at the bottom part of the wall securing the easiest climbing. Trying to block this out of my mind and avoid thinking about the guide book comment “VERY SPACED BOLTING!”, I set out for some fun loving tufa action!

As I made my way steadily up the wall, I hadn’t approached any seriously difficult climbing for the first 10-15m. This section was largely on a lay back, single pipe tufa leading into a much bigger tufa which would take me the rest of the way. I got established at the base of the biggest tufa and looked up… 1… 2… bolts… 10m? maybe more! OH MY GOD! I plucked up some courage and went for it! The first part of the tufa was easy, just establishing myself into the groove between the massive feature and the blank face which I was smearing off on the left. I noticed that I had to make my way round to the other side of the tufa to climb it, doing this put me into a very precarious position as my rope was now twisting around the tufa and rubbing against it as I continued to climb! Suddenly the tufa started to get really slopey, the footholds vanished on the face and i was now just laybacking up this thing, smearing all the way up and occasionally bridging out a bit when I could (reminded me of Dean Potter on the ). I must have been a good 4m above the last bolt, so I looked round the corner of the tufa to clip the next one… nothing!!! WHAT? WHERE IS IT??? I looked up and only another 2m higher I could see it glistening in the sun, so shiny and beautiful, never had a bolt looked so attractive! To get there though, how was I to do that? I was already slipping of the tufa with sweaty palms, I was miles above the last bolt and I was properly crapping myself! I rolled my body round to face the tufa head on, and then again to try and get on the left hand side, the holds where even worse on this side, I told myself that it was all ok, sport climbing is safe and everything would be fine… but I was still flippin’ miles above that last bolt!!! I slapped my way up the tufa some more, praying to god at each slap that i would hold something juggy that I could clip from. Looking up, I suddenly saw it, a rugged, spikey slot in the wall, it was the king hold, the jug of wonders! I sketchily dabbed my feet up the smeary tufa and layed one on for the jug… LATCH!!! Never has clipping a bolt felt so good… I will never forget that sound… CLICK (crisp)! Perfect, the sound of safety : )  I suddenly came to terms with what I had done, where I was and what I was doing… After a few minutes, the hyperventilating slowed down and I regained my self. The rest of the route was certainly not a pushover, I moved from the jug into a clean, blank face with very small edges separated by the odd slopey pocket, not to mention the massive runout from here to the chains as well (as big as the tufa runout, except this time I could crimp and rest). What a crazy route! Never have I been so mentally challenged. Even though it was sport, I felt that it really pushed me into the realms of the trad climbing experience, where your decisions count for more than just success, but also safety! I certainly won’t forget this route in a hurry and I am eager for my next trip back here so I can do a bit of bolting myself (closer bolts I think). There is a clean white tufa just to the right of the 8a that looks absolutely immense, so heres hoping no one snatches it before me : P

So I had a succesful on-sight of the 8a, Olly on the other hand had “tufantastic” (waaayyyy I made a joke) a time on the 7b to the right… not really… He had a good burn on the on-sight making it about as far as the second big tufa, however, doing the usual Olly thing when faced with tufas, he missed the key points from the tufa 101 guideline I wrote above, namely numbers 2, 4 and 6… He got in plenty of 1′s, 3′s and 5′s, but without the necessaries… this can’t be sustained! Oh well… its something he needs to work on and gives him a good excuse to come back, more tufa training!

On the second to last day, I also made a repeat ascent of a route called “Polifemo” 7c at Odyssey sector. This was probably my first 7c I ever redpinted, in fact, it was probably my first real project outdoors! I had climbed this route about 3-4 years previously when I was 16 years old, Olly and another friend Jason had been trying it on off throughout the trip, so I thought as a parting goodbye to Kalymnos, that I would do it again for old times sake… in the dark! It was kind of a flash cause I couldn’t really remember that much beta, only that it had a crux in the tufa and the finishing slab. I love climbing in the dark, its such a strange experience. I have climbed a few routes in total darkness before (a 7c in Margalef and 7c+ in Rodellar) with a head torch of course! I always find that I trust my feet more, not sure why, maybe because I can’t see them so I don’t know how bad they are? What is really annoying but again, part of the experience, is thinking your going to a hold when actually your going to a shadow of the hold cast by your head torch, that can be doozy!

The last two days I racked up quite a good wee tick list:

“The beginning at the end” 7b+ (on-sight)

“Polifemo” 7c (Phantom Flash ; P )

“Aegialis” 7c (on-sight)

“The Poison” 7c+ (on-sight)

“Pindaro” 7c+ (on-sight)

“Helios” 8a (2nd go)

“Hellas Rodeo” 8a (on-sight)

Me on upside-down tufa/stalactite land, "Priapos" 7c in Kalymnos Not bad for the last few days and I must say that I am really happy with how I climbed throughout the trip. My training seems to have payed off, I have new goals for 2011, new motivation and nothing to hold me back!

I’ve gotta go now catch a flight to Athens, so I’ll finish with that!

See you guys at Ratho!

ROBZ OUT



Source: Robbie's Blog

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Tooling Series Finale and Snow… Lots and lots of snow!
30 November 2010, 12:06 am

Hey Everyone!

Its looking like its gonna be a white christmas woooohhh!!! Looking out my window right now, and all I see are blankets of pure white snow, its awesome! Unfortunately I haven’t been able to go anywhere today as far as the bus stop, but its been just good just chilling, eating, building igloos and the odd snowball fight. Nat and I attempted to get up to the Braids Golf course for some sledding action, unfortunately after wading through waist deep snow in clothes that double my body weight, carrying the sled and the dog (its too small to make it through the snow), I was properly gubbed by the time I got to the bus stop (15 minutes later) at the end of our driveway… So we headed back, broke out the Disney 1000 piece jugsaw puzzle, and thats what we’ve been doing up until now (23:00), actually Nat is still doing it, I gave up after spending an hour looking for the damn mouth of the ant from “A Bug’s Life”!

I hate this bug... So, on saturday (the day this winter wonder hell started), I was comparing for the biggest event of the year in British Dry Tooling, the Scottish Tooling Series (Could’ve been named better). I had been in regular contact over the past 8 weeks with Neil Silver (organiser or the event) who had asked me if I wanted to compare at the comp. He had heard me comparing for the worlds last September and thought I sounded ok (I don’t think he was listening for very long). Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity, once again will my loud and very cocky voice be heard by the masses!

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see too much of the qualifiers as I was coaching the CCT (EICA: Ratho Competition Climbing Team) for the morning, but I was looking from afar and getting regular updates from my friends competing and working at the event. My good pal Greg Boswell (winter hero and general all-round gimp, I mean wad) had route set for the comp and was giving me the low down for the final (and super final if need be). He reckoned that it would have been hard enough, if the flippin’ euro wads hadn’t shown up! Thats right, the Dutch team decided to take a trip and compete in the event as well. There was only two of them, Marianne Van Der Steen (Senior Female) and Dennis Van Hoek (Senior Male), but they were seriously fierce competitors and have a lot of experience competing in this type of event. Both of them are seasoned competition ice climbers and dry toolers and know all the tricks in the book!

Bill Davidsons questionnaire was rather comical! Anyway, it was awesome to watch these guys in action! I have little to no experience doing this kind of thing, I won one round last year because the routes were burly and only required that you pull hard, but when Greg sets you can bet that there will be trickery involved. I watched as all the Brits in the final attempted the route, first out was junior boys and girls. They all climbed outstanding, I was a little disappointed not to see my tooling hero Stevie Addison amongst them but he was away competing for the British Team at a trials event. Young Ruaridh Macaskill and Rory Cargill gave an impressive performance each for the Junior title, but the winner was Gregor McGilvery in the end with an awesome battle hitting as high as a lot of the senior finalists!

Awesome Event! Competing on her own was young Sophie Harper in the Junior Females, despite this however she put on a good fight and deserved her title for it! Next up was the Veteran category (over 40′s). These were a rowdy bunch of proper lads, tough and ready for action! We had two local lads in the fight for the title, Bill Davidson and Tom Buggy, both who put in good performances, unfotunately for Tom though his axe pick popped off right at the start and lost him a much higher place he certainly deserved, he was left in 4th position. Bill however battled his way up the wall, wildly throwing his axes at hanging logs and powering his way through the crux he showed the category that no one messes with a lad from Kirckaldy!!! Bill left satisfied with 1st place…

Now into the serious competition, the Senior categories. First up was the females, and regualar competitor Karen Mcintyre was eager for a 1st place to see her series champion goal finalised, however Marianne from Holland had qualified strongly in 1st position and showed no sign of backing down. Watching both of them in the final was proper good fun and each of them put in a good fight, but Marianne was just that little bit stronger in the roof and came out on top only by a few moves.

Marianne Van Der Steen showing no weakness! The exciting finale for the Senior male category was next and two men in particular, Malcolm Kent and Dennis Van Hoek were tipped for the top two positions on the podium, but which way round would it be? Malcolm was up first and seemingly cruised most of the route up until the final head wall, he looked a little uneasy at this point but managed to hold it together and top out to the crowds applause! Dennis was up next and being in isolation had no idea what had happened, he had qualified in first place and would have to top the route to win. From my point of view, it was a gamble on who would go home victor now… Malcolm was in the best position he could be (far from qualifying in first), but Dennis was qualified in first and all he had to do was top the route to win! The climb was awesome and Dennis showed no sign of hesitation on any move. Don’t get me wrong here as I don’t claim to be an expert in dry tooling, but I do know comp climbing, and I can say that Dennis was awesome! He wasn’t physically as strong as Malcolm but his technique was flawless and his approach to the competition and the climb was unmistakably that of a pro… he was for sure the climber of the day and the worthy victor! Dennis lowered to the ground, topped out on the final route and the new Senior Male Scottish Tooling Champion!

What a crazy sport! Pete Rhodes competing for the Series! Funnily enough, it wasn’t over here! There was still left, a super-final for the Series Champion in the senior male category! As Malcolm and Dennis had only competed in round 5, they didn’t rack up the cores necessary to be crowned the series champions, so this was battled out over by Steve Johnstone and Pete Rhodes. Following the awesome climbing in the senior male category earlier, I didn’t think I’d see anything as good, how wrong I was! Pete climbed out of his skin and his determination was unmatched by any I had seen yet! Falling only inches from a good rest he was lowered to the ground to much applause from the crowd! Next up was Steve, when I saw this guy win last year event, I was in awe of his skills with an axe and in the year since, i can only say, I hope I never get on his bad side because he could do some pretty serious damage to me with those things! Steve shot up the first part of the route comfortably and showed no sign of any weakness, as he approached the point were Pete fell, he effortlessly made the lock into the rest and continued to a massive eruption from the crowd. Even though he was timed out, he continue climbing to the top and failed short of clipping the chain, broken but happy, Steve was the new Scottish Senior Male Tooling Champion for the series!

The Series Champions (Senior Male) What a day that was. I can only say just how impressed I was with the organisation of the event, Neil Silver and all those involved did so much to see this thing become a reality, I have never witnessed a National event like it and I really hope one day we will start seeing the other disciplines of competition climbing follow with events as good as this one! If BLCC’s were like this, then every bloody climber in the country would compete!

Hats of to you guys, Good comp…

(All Photos courtesy of Will Carroll – Courtesy means me stealing them from his facebook account : P )

Check out Will’s website here!



Source: Robbie's Blog

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New Year, New Training, New PUPPY!!!
13 December 2010, 12:03 pm

Hey guys!

We’ve hit December now, the snow is getting better after that horrible period of permanent whiteness and the dawn of the New Year is slowly rising. This last week for me and my family has been pretty hectic, we’ve been totally snowed in, our cars our stuck and even when we managed to free one, its now broken so my dad is off to the garage. I have been getting stuck into my new training regime as well which has been good fun so far. It comprises highly of strength, power and power endurance training for the next 13 weeks in the build up to Spain in March. As well as that, I also have a new puppy! Her name is LuLu (Not my choice!) and she’s pretty awesome… its certainly made boring days snowed in more fun.

Let sleeping Lulu lie... Anyway, most of my training I’ve been doing at Alien Rock 2. Its good to vary the places you climb at as well as the training you do. I haven’t been climbing at Alien Rock in such a long time and I have certainly seen the benefits of getting back there now. It was such a shock to the system initially as Ratho bouldering in general is more dependant on what you can get out of the features whereas Alien Rock bouldering is a lot more intense! I feel that if I really want to up my game then I am going to have to spend a lot more time climbing at Alien Rock and in general, climbing on their style of boulder problems. Because their boulder problems generally don’t have features to use for feet and their selection of steeper bouldering walls are more abundant, I have to focus on keeping body tension and this also makes the moves a lot more powerful and strength dependant. On my first day back climbing at Alien 2, I was struggling to come to terms with how well I was climbing at the wall. Because I hadn’t climbed there in a while and was still a bit unsure of how their grading system worked I was unsure if I was climbing good or bad? It wasn’t really until I had become aware of how hard the problems where in comparison to stuff I could do before that I realised how badly I was climbing! As each day went by, I seemed to be getting stronger. A recent session I had I was climbing with Eddie Barbour and Sam Clarke (two friends of mine living in Edinburgh). At the beginning of the session I was a total mess, not even being able to touch problems that they where easily flashing or even lapping! By the end of the session it had seemed that my recruitment level had increased tenfold and I was able to pull of doing boulder problems that had seemed impossible at the beginning of the week! Its amazing how your body adapts quickly to what it is doing, this is exactly why its so important to vary the training your doing, keeps the body guessing ; )

Campussing! My last boulder session at Alien 2 saw me despatch three problems that had been giving me a really hard time, not only that, I totally destroyed them! They went down without so much as a sweat and I would probably expect to be able to do problem reps on them soon too! Anyway, I am psyched about my new training program, there are three cycles which take me into the beginning of March, here is cycle 1:

Day 1 (Strength + Power) (After Rest Day)

Morning

• Lock-offs (Static)
• Core Session 1 (Conditioning)
• Stretching

 

Evening

• 5 x Hard Projects (20 mins each problem)
• Campus Board Session 1 (Static)
• Beastmaker (Deadhangs Max)

 Day 2 (Power Endurance) (After Rest Day)

Morning

• Weighted Pull Ups (Cycle 1)
• Core Session 2 (Conditioning)
• Stretching

 

Evening

• 3 x Circuits (40+mvs) x 3
• 1 x Circuit Rep (3 reps max) (25mvs max)
• Campus Board Power Endurance (3 x 50mvs/4fngr, 3 x 40mvs/3fgnr, 2 x 25mvs/2fngr)

 Day 3 (Strength + Power) (After Rest Day)

Morning

• Lock-offs (Static)
• Core Session 1 (Conditioning)
• Stretching

 

Evening

• 5 x Hard Project problems (20 mins each problem)
• Campus Board Session 1 (Static)
• Beastmaker (Deadhangs Max)

 Day 4 (Strength + Power) @ Alien Rock 2 or “The Board” (After Rest Day)

• 5 x Hard Project problems (5 move max) (20 mins each problem)
• Campus Board Session 1 (Static)
• Beastmaker (Deadhangs Max)

In the past I have always spread the training out over the week, including training on potential rest days, however this time round I am assuring that I always get a good 2-3 days rest a week. Because of the intensity of the training, more rest is required to achieve super-compensation (recovery and muscle improvement). Now you may be wondering why I am training so much strength and power and so little endurance for a trip to Spain? The answer is that I have always had a massive supply of endurance, its something that my body seems to acquire very naturally and to to be honest, anymore endurance gains won’t be helping me that much, however, my strength and power gains are something that I have always had trouble acquiring (usually because I’m doing too much endurance work), so I have opted to do the opposite of my usual training regime and with one day endurance based training a week, I am hoping that I can maintain my level of endurance and continue to improve on my strength and power. In theory this should all work, but its going to be a bit of an experiment to see if it works in practice, only time will tell! My trip to Spain is going to last two whole months, of which two weeks I will be coaching in Fontainbleau, it will be interesting to see if my bouldering will be up to much in font after this strength and power training spurt?

Bouldery 8a+ in Ceuse... More of this is what I need! The last two days have been the best so far. Yesterday I had a bouldering session with my mate Andy Latta and Nat, the first problem of the day was a so called grade 8 (V7/8) of which I came very close to flashing, then did it pretty much second go. Next on the send list was a problem which previously had seemed impossible, and I dispatched it second go that day! Third on the tick list was attempting a two move V8+ (Font 7B+), unfortunately I didn’t manage this one but felt super strong doing the moves which was an improvement as usually a problem like this I would be barely able to touch! Today I had a power endurance session and climbed an 8a+ circuit three times, another potential 8a+ circuit three times (falling only on one move at the end) and my third circuit which i had made the other day (which i thought was as hard as the others) I despatched easily three times over, even making the start harder on my third attempt (probably only 7c+/8a). After all that I made a V5/6 problem and did a set of problem reps on it (lapping it 5 x times), and after that I had a good power endurance campus board session as well! What a crazy two days, I am absolutely destroyed now but I’ve never felt so good on circuits and boulders as I did these past couple of days… something is working in my training!

An interesting phenomena that has occurred is the sudden influx of really strong boulderers making their way to Ratho. Two guys in particular, first it was Gary Vincent who got a job here, being a former Alien Rock Junkie I never thought I’d see the transformation but it has happened, and now he is as much a part of the Ratho family as the rest of us. The next big boulder hitter is young Mark McQuade. Mark is a seriously strong boulderer who I always saw down at Alien Rock 2 crushing the problems there, but even he has moved to Ratho now hoping to get more into routes as well as maintaining his boulder strength (I don’t want to see what this creates, 9a monster probably?). Anyway, I think this is a good sign for Ratho’s future, that it is a fantastic wall that appeals to all climbers of all abilities and I am hoping that the more hardcore boulderers coming to the centre will hopefully encourage Ratho to build a new bouldering wall that can stand as an international icon in bouldering (like the old powercave) or at least build a decent 45 board for us to train on!

Anyway, I am off now to do some training, catch up later guys

ROBZ OUT



Source: Robbie's Blog

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Jingle Bells, Calum Smells, Robbie climbed 8b!!!
27 December 2010, 1:17 pm

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Its that time of year again… All of the western world seems to stop, and for a few days all we do is eat, sleep, wrap, unwrap, drink, watch TV and in general become lazy couch potatoes. But we are happy to do it year after year on the clock, because everyone else does it and we get to spend time with our loving families who we 9/10 times only see during this one period of the year. Christmas and New year is a time to think anew about all of what we want in life, to make new decisions or implement old ones that never quite came to fruition in the previous year. These are called the New Years Resolutions, but the type I’m looking at are more climbing related ones than any other : P

Its incredibly important to always have goals or ambitions for anything you want to do well in. For me, climbing is my life and is the only thing I truly want to achieve great things in, climbing and coaching that is. My New Years Resolution is to bite the bullet and focus hard on my weaknesses in 2011, which are my finger strength and power. I have always had plenty of endurance to spare and my training over the years takes all the responsibility for this having been highly concentrated on doing lots of laps of long routes. Also having the worlds biggest climbing wall to train at didn’t make it easy not to train endurance, you might understand that doing tiny boulders isn’t really as satisfying as conquering the huge, monolithic towers that dominate nearly every corner of the climbing gym! So anyway, I am giving up doing laps for a wee bit and will be focussing heavily on the bouldering! For everyone else out there, you could use this opportunity to assess your own climbing and set yourself some new goals and actions in which to achieve them. Goals are so important as they point you in a direction which you will always be aiming for. If you have goals, you will be more likely to see them through and see them being achieved as you have more motivation towards working for them because you can already see the final result looming upon the horizon.

Dreams looming upon the horizon... Next year (2011) I am also wanting to get out climbing a lot more! What I have found out over the years is that no matter how strong you are indoors, the skills needed to climb hard outdoors only come with experience. I have friends who climb well into the high 8′s in both bouldering and routes, some of them are absolute beats, can do multiple one armers on edges, can lap 8b’s, campus 1-5-9, etc… but among them there are also those that can’t do any of this stuff but still climb hard if not harder outdoors! So my aim is to get outside more so I can develop my skills as an outdoor climber rather than just focussing purely on the physical aspect of the sport. To do this I have arranged several trips throughout the year as well as key periods where I will be able to climb more outdoors locally. Here is a list of my plan:

March/April – Spain (Catalunya)

I plan on visiting the north-east region of Spain, Catalunya in March. Catalunya is home to some of the most awe inspiring climbing I have ever seen, massive limestone cliffs piercing out of ever corner of the land, this place is truly blessed as a climbers paradise! Areas I will be visiting include Margalef, Siurana, Santa Linya, Oliana, Monsants and Teradettes! I hope to spend a total of 2 months here with my friends Neil Mcgeachy and Calum Forsyth. Out there we will also be meeting a large group of the kids we coach in April. They are coming out for a short climbing trip and we will be doing our best to make sure their first experiences of outdoor climbing in Europe is one they will never forget!

Mountain Rescue Hero... Calum Forsyth! What would we do without him... April (Fontainebleau)

In the beginning of April I will be heading away from Spain and instead to Northern France (Paris) to the beautiful forest of Fontainebleau! This place is considered to be the worlds most amazing bouldering destination, harbouring thousands upon thousands of established boulder problems! I am going here for a coaching course that I have the pleasure to be taking along side another of the masterclass coaches, Shaun Jansa! We will be there for 2 weeks and I will hopefully get some climbing done in this time, if only it is demonstrating the problems : P

Summer (May/June/July/August)

Obviously the whole summer is a perfect time to be going climbing outdoors, but a well as the odd small trip, Nat and I are wanting to go on a bigger trip focussing on the most popular climbing destinations in the UK. We will visit areas such as Malham, Kilsney, Gordale, Raven Tor, LPT and Ansteys Cove! I have written a small tick list for each area, choosing only the most classic routes at each crag! Even if I don’t get them done, its the experience of trying them that counts and its this that will help develop my climbing. As well as climbing for ourselves, we will also be organising a couple of short coaching holidays for while we are down there. I would like to base them in Yorkshire and have chosen a number of quality crags (with the help of my friend Chris Speakman who lives down there) to visit that will cater for every ability of the group. In the coaching holiday we will include coaching areas such as:

On-sight Skills        Red-point Skills

Footwork               Body Position

Video Analysis         Training to improve

Tactics       Visualisation

And lots more! We will also be inviting my good friend Will Carroll, amateur photographer (but certainly the best I’ve ever seen!) who will be taking awesome action shots of everyone as they are climbing and doing the course, so if you want a nice memento of your time with us in Yorkshire, then just ask Will and he can sort you out : ) Check out his site for previews of his photography (Click on here for his photo stream on flickr).

8a @ Malham Cove... SICK!!! October/November

In the end of October I will be taking my second coaching holiday for Masterclass. This will be held in the beautiful island of Kalymnos (Greece). I will be here with Szymon Dziukiewicz (I don’t know how to pronounce this either) a seasoned climbing coach from Poland originally who now lives in London! I am hoping to spend a bit more time out here so I can get some of my own climbing done too. I am hoping to come back, get some climbs ticked that eluded me on my last trip and potentially go for the monster route, “Jaws” 8c! Whilst climbing with Gaz Parry out in Kalymnos, he also expressed a wish to return for this route, so maybe I won’t be bribing my friends to follow me to the dank hole in the ground of which it resides : P

So as you see, a busy year but no doubt is going to be awesome fun, I am eagerly looking forward to it! Bring on 2011!

BRING ON 2011!!! ARGHHHHHHH!!!  

Source: Robbie's Blog

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BBC’s London
11 January 2011, 1:35 am

Hey everyone!

Happy New Year to you all, hope it was a great day and I wish everyone the best 2011 possible! I am really looking forward to this year, its going to be very busy, full of climbing, coaching, trips and plenty of adventures : ) My first big adventure of 2011 is next weekend in London, where I am going to be competing at the British Bouldering Championships! I haven’t done this since 2005, so it will be quite an experience. As I am not really a boulderer, It will be interesting to see how I compare with the rest. I know quite a lot of guys entering the comp in my category, most of them are strong boulderers, but also a lot of them are like me and favour sport climbing, so its a bit of a mixed basket of climbers thrown in there. Bouldering competitions require very different skills that a lot of your average keen boulderers don’t have, such as the fitness required to climb a lot of mid-grade problems one after another! Also, you get more points if you flash the problem than if you climb it second go, and a lot of climbers find this quite difficult. Many of the problems at the comps tend to be quite funky with lots of weirdness thrown in, generally requiring good balance and flexibility  and very good route reading skills! So its not all about being the strongest!

Dynamic Bouldering : P A good friend of mine, Eddie Barbour, told me that he was shocked after competing in Sheffield that he had actually beaten a lot of really strong boulders (much stronger than him). He put it down to the fact that there was very few really hard problems, and the competition was decided on who could flash the most mid-grade problems. Eddie being primarily a route climber, managed to sustain his level for a lot longer than many of the hard core boulderers (who just got tired) and because of this, he came out on top in the end! I know not every competition will be like this, but it definitely gives competition boulderers a good reason to train their endurance and power endurance, rather than simply focussing on the strength and power aspect of bouldering.

Another good reason to train endurance and power endurance in bouldering is also so you can climb longer problems (traverses or highballs?) and climb more problems in a session e.g. circuits of problems like the font versions?

My favourite pic of Angus : ) Coming down to the BBC’s from Edinburgh is Natalie Berry, Calum Forsyth, Angus Davidson, Jamie Drummond, Fraser Macilwraith and Rachel Carr! This is a strong team of guys and gals and I reckon we will see some stellar performances. All of them have been in full-on boulder mode over the winter (Fraser especially whose been on it all year!) and they are all as strong as I have ever seen them.

Rachel Carr falling in the WYC Rachel Carr has been bouldering bits at A2 and I had a session with her recently their and at Ratho, she is looking like a total machine and certainly climbing like one as well! I simply can’t believe how strong she is getting, I am almost scared of this because if it continues she will be making all the strong male boulderers in Scotland look weak! Angus is climbing simply superb, I have had a few sessions with him at Ratho and A2 over the past couple of months and he’s been ripping it apart! My last session with Angus saw him send a hard grade 7 (Font 7bish) in front of a large crowd of fully grown men who where failing one after another on it. In the same session he cruised a tricky grade 6 (Font 7aish) 2nd go even though each move was at his full span and the holds were all tiny crimps (even for him with his tiny fingers : P). Calum has been back, hitting the boulders hard at Ratho with a stream of V7′s and V8′s under his belt with very short work! Fraser has been doing his usual at Alien Rock 2, everyday looking stronger and shocking all the hardcore boulderers with his finger strength and natural ability. And finally, Nat, for years I thought, she can’t be any good at bouldering, she never does it! How wrong I was… she is the exception to the rule that states “to be a good boulderer, don’t do laps on 30m routes” : P  Nat seems to have insanely strong fingers, despite what I used to think, I reckon its all that initial GCC (Glasgow Climbing Centre) training she did over the years. If there’s a crimp she will hold it, if there’s a desperate reach off a filthy edge, she will static it!

I can’t say how much I am looking forward to next weekend, I don’t really care how I do, I know I am going to have fun regardless and I am really looking forward to watching all my friends compete!

Wish us luck everybody!

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Losing Weight Before Comp/Short Trip?
13 January 2011, 11:58 pm

Hey Guys!

Our body weight is something that directly affects everyone in climbing. Its a pretty obvious factor in our performances, as athletes trying to beat gravity, it only makes sense that the lighter we are, the less gravity will push us down. It was a very obvious thing for me, that after Summer 2005, I went from on-sighting my first 6c to on-sighting my first 7b, the difference between beginning and end of summer was around 2 stone! Its not a coincidence that my grade jumped like that along with my weight and there where certainly other factors involved such as improved technique, endurance and cutting all my crazy hair off : P

The Elvis days... So we can see just how important our weight in climbing is! Over the years, I have seen many climbers (including myself) go on crazy diets to try and lose weight fast and for long periods of time. I have heard stories from friends of when they witnessed dieting taken to the extremes e.g. not being able to walk to the crag because of so little energy and collapsing during class at school! This is obviously extreme cases where it has been taken too far, but the bottom line with weight loss in sport is about being healthy and having enough energy to actively participate in your sport to the highest level.

For the past 5 months or so I have been working with a friend of mine, Rebecca Dent (Performance Nutritionist – registered dietitian, who works with elite athletes at GB/olympic level) has been helping me with my own nutrition and diet. She has agreed to work alongside me writing my blog so as to give the experts opinion on nutrition for optimal performance (she will provide a brief biography of her experience and how she came to become involved with climbing). We will be running regular question and answer pages too so if anyone wants to get in contact with us with a question on training, climbing, nutrition, etc… then please feel free to contact me at robz@robbiephillips.co.uk

Recently I have been discussing with Rebecca, the benefits of certain weight loss tactics close to a big event such as competition or trip (2-3 days). The reason I wanted to ask this was because I am competing at the British Bouldering Championships (BBC’s) this weekend in London and want to engage anything that could possibly give me a boost on the day. I am not going to go on some crazy crash diet that is going to leave me weakened and unfit for an important day such as this, however athletes in competition on one day of the year need to be in a peak state of body and mind, basically a lean mean fighting machine (I think I need to work more on the mean). What she recommended was a 1-2 day diet called a Low Residue Diet. This is basically a low fibre diet which will reduce residue and bulk from your intestine making you feel lighter and have an empty stomach for competition day. The most important thing about this is that it DOES NOT effect muscle glycogen stores and hydration. If it did, this would negate any benefits in weight loss and result in the athlete being low on energy and dehydrated.

So anyway, I decided to give this little diet a test run before the comp. On Monday 10th I weighed myself first thing in the morning at 78kg (before breakfast), I had a normal day of eating and exercise that day, everything as usual… On Tuesday 11th I weighed myself at the same time and weighed in at 77.5kg, half a kilo difference but I hadn’t done anything unusual to expect this and for tuesday I proceeded to follow the low residue diet and ensured I maintained good hydration. On Wednesday 12th I weighed myself at 77.5kg again after one day on the “Low residue diet”, this was unexpected but Becca and I discussed the results and decided to have one more day on the diet (so I followed the low residue diet again on wednesday). Interestingly enough however, I did feel a lot lighter on wednesday and went to Alien Rock 2 that night to try it out… I had one of the best bouldering days of my life, flashing 2 problems in the grade 8 scale (their own grading system, I might flash an 8 once a month) and did a couple of 8′s second go as well as a tricky 7! Today (Thursday 13th) I weighed my self this morning at around 76.5kg, and continued throughout the day eating my normal healthy diet. Tomorrow I am going to do the “Low residue diet” once more before the competition as it did provide good results for me on Wednesday and even today with a 1kg difference from the start, only 2 days ago! The important thing to remember with this diet is that it is very short term lasting only for a maximum of a couple of days because it is not nutritionally sound as it misses out the major foods providing essential vitamins/minerals and fibre for optimal performance, recovery and health.

Low residue diet for weight loss prior to competition

Practice Run

Monday:

• First morning weight      (After going to the toilet)
• Eat normally

Tuesday:

• First morning weight      (After going to the toilet) –

• Low residue diet nutrition plan

• • This is a low fibre       diet which will reduce residue, bulk and the water from your intestine       making you lighter for competition day. This does not effect muscle       glycogen stores and hydration.

• • Foods to Avoid – All       foods containing fibre i.e. branflakes, all bran, muesli, porridge,       brown/wholemeal breads, ALL fruit and vegetables, soup.

Breakfast:

• Rice krispies/Cornflakes and/or white toast +      milk
  
  Snap... Crackle... CRUSH!!!
• Glass of fruit juice is allowed (but make sure it      is smooth with NO bits)

• OR white toast + eggs (no beans, tomatoes,      mushrooms)

Snack:

• Plain yoghurt (not fruit yoghurt) + can add honey      or sugar to taste or glass of milk, slice of white bread + ham/tuna

-       No fruit

Lunch:

• White bread/roll sandwich with      tuna/chicken/ham/cheese/egg as preferred but NO salad

-       No vegetables, salad or fruit

Snack:

• Scone (no fruit), jelly sweets, jaffa cakes,      plain yoghurt (muller lite yoghurts will be fine), glass of milk, white      roll + spread, recovery shake.

-       No Fruit

Yummy! Scones…..     Evening Meal:

• Meat/fish + potatoes (no skin so mashed potato,      baked potato but leave the skin, peeled boiled/roasted potatoes) or white      rice, white pasta.

-       No vegetables, salad or fruit

• You can include a sauce but try to make sure it      is a smooth sauce e.g. tomato pasta sauce, curry sauce, gravy.

• If you are cooked a pasta dish that includes      vegetables just pick the vegetables out.

Supper Snack:

• White toast or bowl of      cereal or hot chocolate made with milk

-       No fruit

Suitable Snacks:

-       White bread sandwich/roll

-       Hot cross bun (I know it includes raisins but not enough to make a difference)

-       Scones with no dried fruit

-       Jelly sweets

-       Jaffa cakes

-       Scotch pancakes

-       Pots of rice pudding/low fat custard

-       Bowl of cereal (rice krispies/cornflakes/special k)

Wednesday:

First morning weight (after going to the toilet)

Friday:

• Low residue diet for comp
• First morning weight
• BUT make sure you eat a carbohydrate meal in the      evening to fuel up e.g. pasta would be best but this isn’t a ticket to      over eat.

• Hydration – Keep up hydration levels for      Thursday/Friday before the event check the colour of the pee it should be      a pale straw colour.

Saturday:

Eat normal breakfast

Snack regularly on easy to digest foods through out the day (white bread sandwich, snacks as above, sports drink, cereal bars, jelly sweets, jaffa cakes)

So as you see, very low in fibre and high in easy to digest foods. This has been an interesting experiment with some intriguing results, lets see if it helps me in the BBC’s. Try this out for yourselves and see if it has the desired effect. After discussions with Rebecca, results may vary depending on your normal diet e.g. from being on this diet, I have discovered that I don’t eat enough fibre in my regular diet however I keep myself very well hydrated, we found this out from the fact that there was very little difference in weight between each day that I did the diet.

Ready to crush for the BBC's! Remember everyone that the most important thing is to be healthy in the long run, always make sure you eat enough everyday to sustain your exercise and that your not running yourself into the ground with a silly fad diet!

All the best!

Robz

Source: Robbie's Blog

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A Competitor/Coach’s Account of the BBC’s
17 January 2011, 10:59 pm

Hey guys!

Nat and I have just returned from the BBC’s (British Bouldering Championships) held down at the Outdoors Show in Excel, London! We travelled down with some fellow Scots from Edinburgh, Jamie Drummond (Junior Boys) and Calum Forsyth (Junior Girls : P Only joking) as well as both their dads and Jamie’s little brother who weren’t competing. The journey was long and tiring, lasting around 7-8 hours from Edinburgh but also we added an extra couple of hours when we had to find our hotel, which was conveniently located deep within the ghettos of London. Its not a good sign when every passer by stares at you with the same burning hot intensity that a lion gives its prey.

Me trying one of the harder qualifier problems (V8ish?) Anyway, the next day we headed to the Outdoors Show, an early start but we where all psyched out our minds to check out what the route setters had been cooking up for us! There was the wall, about 30-35 degrees overhung, littered with volumes of varying sizes and shapes, and hundreds of holds plastered all over the wall! Nat and I have been competing for a while now, Nat (8-9 years) and me (4 years), we have made lots of friends in the competition circuit as well as on our travels round the world climbing, the BBC’s and other competitions offer us the perfect opportunity to meet up with all our friends and go climbing for a day, as well as enabling us to make new friends in the process : )  When we arrived, I met up with all my pals from around the country, climbers from every corner of the UK. It was good to meet up with the South Wales crew (whom I had met in Kalymnos only a few months before), they had a strong team with them this year, 3 guys in the Senior Male category, 1 in the Junior Male and 1 in Senior Female. As well as the Welsh, we met up with Eddie Cooper and his lot from Ireland who the Edinburgh crew have become really good friends with over the past few years, having seen them at nearly every national competition we enter and having them as regular visitors to EICA: Ratho. A little closer to home, we met up with Ed Hamer and his bro Sam from the Peak, Ed I have known for years through the comp scene and his brother Sam who I haven’t seen for years since I first started competing. Its great to meet up with everyone all at once, it makes me wish there where more big events like this throughout the year (COME ON BMC, HOW BOUT A SERIES OF BBC’S and BLCC’s!!!).

Me and Ed watching fellow competitor Nathan Phillips on the first problem (V3ish) The warm up wall was a bit crap unfortunately, it was the same angle as the comp wall, but there wasn’t many decent holds on it for warming up on and we where resorted to just pulling on crimps from the start, this is maybe something that should be improved on for next time (Bigger holds!!!). Ed and I spent this time setting V14′s…  : P

We all headed out together to do the problems after warming up, I was searching for the easiest ones of course, not wanting to jump straight onto the sick hard stuff, but also wanting to watch people on the problems first before I tried them : P The problems ranged from around V4 – V9, and were set by four of the top British route setters, Andy Long, Jamie Cassidy, Ian Vickers and Percy Bishton. It was fun trying them all, there was a lot of different styles of setting and they seemed to split the field well! I was really happy with my result, managing to flash 6/10 of the problems and getting 8 bonus holds, even got the first ascent (Flash) of one of the tricky crimp fest problems : P Me and Nat are gonna really concentrate on building our power and strength for next years BBC and focus quite a bit more on bouldering rather than the usual routes. The main thing we both felt she lacked on was her ability to climb using the funky volumes as well as her shoulder strength, apart from that everything was peachy. My issues lied mainly in finger strength (the usual), apart from that everything was all good, I even surprised myself with my ability to read the problems correct first go! We have big plans for next year, mine lying in hitting the top 10 and Nats are on winning the next comp, in the words of a famous Spanish comp climber:

“The future will be mine”

Nat in 4th place (4... is a magic number!) At the end of the qualification round, I managed to hit 18th position out of 53 competitors! Nat got into the finals and climbed outstanding, a few slip ups due to lack of boulder comp experience dropped her some valuable points which could have put her a place higher, but in the end she was very content with 4th place. Not too shabby for a couple of route climbers : P Also, Calum, Roddy and Anna climbed outstanding in the qualifications! Calum achieved a very respectable 46th position, flashing 2/10 problems and getting 2 Bonus holds! Roddy was his usual beasty self, and despite injury managed to reel out an impressive joint 11th position with crimp meister Ed Hamer!

Angus climbing the tricky red problem (V6ish) The next day was the Junior event. Competing in this for Scotland was Rachel Carr, Angus Davidson, Jamie Drummond and Fraser Mcilwraith! Nat and I were acting a coaches for the day, helping them with reading sequences, talking them through tactics and calming them down if they where having a hard time. I was so impressed by all the kids performances on the day, everyone was taking it really seriously but having fun at the same time. The scariest moment of the day was when the Junior boys had started climbing, however Angus hadn’t shown up even at the warm up wall yet! Apparently Angus and his mum had come in the train, however, when Angus exited the train, his mum had been left behind and ended up having to get another train back! This caused Angus to be 10 minutes late for the competition as well as a lot of stress on both him and his mum, however, when he arrived, he went straight into the warm up area and got ready, then came out with plenty of time left to compete and had an amazing competition! The results where fantastic, with Angus placing 16th, Jamie 25th and Rachel making the final, climbed out of her skin to place 2nd overall in the Junior Female Category! Unfortunately, at the end of the qualification round, disaster occurred with Fraser on one of his final attempts, he fell off the wall landing on his arm, breaking and dislocating it! He was rushed to hospital after being drowned in oxygen and other pain relief medical drugs : P  He was quite literally, out of it. Despite all of this he still placed 9th and I am confident that if he hadn’t broken his arm, he would have qualified for finals and been a contender for a podium place! Lets all wish Fraser a speedy recovery, I am sure this experience won’t hold him back for next years BBC’s!

All in all, a very good competition and I am really looking forward to next years BBC’s!

Low Fibre Diet

In my last blog I was discussing the use of a low fibre diet for competing or for a a short trip. I said I would talk about my experiences with it at the comp, so here it goes:

On the day of the competition, I ate small amounts and often throughout the day to maintain my energy but not add too much weight to my stomach. For breakfast I had cornflakes with milk and from then on ate small amounts of simple carbs throughout the day such as bits of muesli bars, chocolate, fruit, etc… I felt incredibly light during the comp and at no point was I out of energy. I think that the low fibre diet did well for me during this short period and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to be light for a short period e.g. 2-3 days. I think it does require a couple of days preparation (no fibre foods for 2 days) before you notice much of a difference, but the third day is a perfect gravity-free day : P I don’t think this is good for long-term use and I would probably only do it once in a while. I am definitely going to apply this diet to future competitions as well as weekend trips outdoors that I want to be fighting fit for! I will definitely be using this whilst in Spain for when I am trying to red-point a hard project as a last resort.

Anyway, Climb hard guys and look forward to the next installment of my blog soon!

ROBZ OUT!

Nat + Roz with Ben Fogle : P  

Source: Robbie's Blog

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First day back on Routes!
20 January 2011, 1:37 am

Hey guys!

For the regular followers, you will know that I have been focussing more on bouldering over the past 2 months (basically since returning from kalymnos). I felt that a massive weakness in my climbing was my strength and power and that if I wanted to push myself into the upper regions of the f8′s in sport climbing, then I would have to work this weakness. Today was my first day back doing routes, I literally haven’t tied in to a rope for over 2 months! The closest I have done to doing routes is circuits once a week, but to be honest, I have missed these the passed 2-3 weeks since I’ve been focussing more on the BBC’s. At ratho, Neil Mcgeachy, Neill Busby and Gary Vincent set some outstanding new routes for the leading ladder qualifiers ranging from 5+ – 8a, seeing them as I came into work today, I really couldn’t resist it anymore, so tempted by the devil that is sport climbing, I grabbed my harness, a belayer and a rope and set out to try the new routes!

Not that shocking really, but even on the 7a (which to be frank shouldn’t be too hard for me), felt pretty pumpy : ( I don’t think I have been pumped on a 7a in years! The fuorescent green HOLDZ holds, where slopey, bobbly jugs heading straight through a 35 degree overhanging wall into the 60 degree finale. Each hold was massive, but my forearms seemed to dislike holding on for longer than 8 moves, especially when I stopped to clip (when would you stop to clip on a boulder problem?). Even though I was slightly pumped, jugs are jugs and I wasn’t going to fall of this (me fall of a 7a? HA HA HA HA! My ego is too big for that!). I clipped the chain and got lowered to the ground, grinning to my belayer, pretending not to be pumped : P

The second route was a 7b bacon flavoured climb… yes bacon… new holds and we choose bacon colour… yummy! I climbed this one mainly for Ian (a regular at ratho whom I coach) because I wanted him to go for this one flash and seeing me climb it first may give him a better idea of sequences, rests, clipping positions, etc… I actually felt slightly less pumped on this one than I did the 7a, but I reckon this was more due to being warmed up. Its funny though, in some cases, I actually believe that you can be relatively fit, however, be insecure of the feeling of pump and therefore be unwilling to go for moves because you think you are too pumped. I reckon I am still really fit even though I haven’t done routes in a while, however, the feeling of being pumped and having to clip and move on is so alien to me that I actually freeze up a bit an don’t go for moves as hard as I used to. I remember seeing a boulderer I know climbing in Spain, he was complaining of being pumped and not able to go on, yet still managed to hold on to the holds for a further 2 minutes before eventually falling off! In this case I believe he had a case of “The Alien Pump”, when he hasn’t experienced pump in such a long time that even a slight burn in the forearms is enough to throw his mindset of and con him into believing that any subsequent move is impossible!

Anyway, after successfully climbing the Bacon 7b, I decided I needed more of a challenge and opted for Gary’s new green 8a, straight up the central line of the comp wall! I had a quick scope of the route and went for glory! I was rather scared since my belayer was more than likely half my weight and if I was to take a fall, probably end up through the first clip! I smoothly climbed up the first half, not even slightly pumped and managed to sail into a good rest before the main section and obvious crux, THE ROOF!!! I searched the roof for sequences and positive holds from my upside down rest, and once I had psyched myself up, I went for it! Getting into the start of the roof was no bother. I slapped into a positive sloper and re-adjusted my right hand from a good spike into and pinch undercut to put me into position for what I thought was the crux move! Dynamically, I slapped my left hand through and hit a side-pull jug, holding it, I bounced through, cutting loose and catching the next jug with my right hand! With a fighting determination to win this battle, I threw my feet into a ball out right and chucked for an edge of the lip of the roof, LATCHED!!! I had it! Re-adjusting my right foot onto an edge over the lip, I had a last remaining bout of aggression and leapt for the final jug… ARGHHHHHH!!! I held it, gained my balance once more and clipped the chains! Phew… I felt like my friend Eddie Barbour, he always give it 110% and I was psyched by the effort I had put in to reap the glory of a successful onsight!

With under 6 weeks until Spain, this is a very good omen! I am hoping to crush many 8b’s out there and finally despatch an old nemesis from my past, so even after 2 months of no routes, its good to see that I can still on-sight 8a : P I am going to continue my training, however, now I am going to slowly introduce more routes and more circuits to the equation. This year however, I am desperate to focus on getting stronger and boulders are seeming like they are the way for me, even if it is aimed at becoming better at routes.

BRING ON SPAIN!!!

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Alien Rock Boulder Comp + New Holds!!!
25 January 2011, 11:48 pm



Hey guys!!!

On Friday I was competing at the Alien Rock Winter Bouldering Competition, an event that I won (Junior Category) around 4 years ago now, yet have not been back for a single round since! This was the first time competing in the senior category, but I was very happy to take on the competition! The problems where being set with a new set of “Revolution” climbing holds that Alien Rock have just purchased. Soon they should be getting despatched down to Alien Rock 2 which will certainly add some much needed spice to the walls : P  The competition was a great success, there was a good turnout in every category and a number of strong climbers to make me fight for a top place. Chris Miele, Roddy Mackenzie, Tim Cross and Mike Mullins where are number of the Alien Rockers setting for the event and they certainly did a bang up job! The problems where ace, doing a fantastic job of separating the men, woman, girls and boys in their respective categories. In the senior men, it looked like their was four of us tipped for top positions, me, Gary Vincent and two lads from Aberdeen, John and Chris.

Andy looking sketchy on the balancy rock over mantle! Unfortunately, the local hero Andy Latta is recovering from an  injury and was unable to climb particularly well due to his current distaste for pockets. Anyway, I managed to flash all the way up to the final four problems! Number 30 was a 45 degree overhung masterpiece set by Mike Mullins. It was set using a variety of crimps and pinches, all really positive with a basic sequence, but I managed to fluff it on the flash by thinking I could jump straight for a juggy crimp rather than simply doing two extra moves and avoiding a nasty jump : (  Anyway, I did it second go and was happy with that. I also fluffed the flash of number 27, quite a tricky pinchy problem on a 15 degree overhang, but not trusting my heel, I was reluctant to go for a deep rock over and instead just sagged off… Another second go! Only two problems after those that I didn’t flash, a vertical piece of filth which took me a million and one goes and then after I did it, I discovered an easier way of doing it making it about a million and two grades easier! DAMN!!!! : )  Thats what comps are all about aye? Its about being tactical, decisive, clever and not jumping ahead of yourself! The final problem wasn’t too bad, it just had a really awkward last move which I fluffed three times before latching it on my fourth go, missing out on any decent amount of points (only 1 point after 3rd go).

Coaching Andy Latta @ the Comp (He's a lost cause!) All in all a good comp with some good laughs! I got a water bottle for my protein shake and a new boulder bucket by DMM in the raffle (Don’t tell Edelrid shhhhhh!). The only annoying thing was finding out I came 3rd when I clearly got about 10 more points than the guy in 2nd? But he came up to me after the results had been posted and reckoned it had to be a mistake as he hadn’t even completed the last three problems. I think this has happened to me in every single Alien Rock comp I can remember, who does the counting? Maybe they don’t like me : P

Thanks Alien Rock for a wicked evening of blood, sweat and tears : P (Blood on my finger pads, sweat on my palms and crying from pain of the two mixing together)

ROBZ OUT



Source: Robbie's Blog

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A bit of everything…
3 February 2011, 1:09 am

Hey Guys!

I have been mega busy over the past few weeks, lots of coaching work going down right now, writing new articles for Scottish Mountaineer and UKClimbing and been training hard for Spain on top of all this! This doesn’t leave much time for myself, good thing my life is climbing otherwise I’d be a workaholic : P

In amongst all the chaos, I did manage to get out once on the rock! I headed down with Nat and another friend of mine Niall McNair to Kyloe Out the Woods last Sunday. With us came my new puppy, Lulu, who was as keen as us to get some climbing done : P

what are you looking at? Niall was heading down to try and finish of an old project of his, “Northern Territory” 7c+ (V10). The problem has been giving Niall quite a lot of difficulties over the past few weeks, still unrelenting to his persistent sieges! I had been down the previous week with some other friends and had made an awesome link on one of my first attempts, basically from the second move until the last droppable move! So I was well keen to get down and try and sort this bad boy out. After warming up (a bit of traversing, then flashing a 7A+ and repeating another 7B+) we headed down to try out the project! Niall had a few blasts and after watching his sequence, was convinced that that wasn’t the way I was going to try it, simply because it looked more like someone suffering an epileptic fit than attempting a climb, but to be honest, thats what Niall climbs like most of the time anyway : P

Me on "Northern Territory" V10 - Sorry Edelrid for the Mammut t-shirt : P I tried my old beta and felt really strong on it! The only issue I had was that the freezing temps where busting my toes and fingers to bits and I really couldn’t be bothered dealing with it. I had quite a few more attempts but eventually stopped giving it my 100% and eventually sacked it off. Niall however was a different story, he was going all out and in the last round discovered that he could actually use the same technique that I was using and found this to be much better beta (BETA MASTER STRIKES AGAIN!). He then started seeing much better links to the point he was actually falling off the final few moves (you really shouldn’t be falling here!). I was gutted for him, it was increasingly becoming obvious that he was losing the energy and more importantly the skin to keep up with quality attempts, so we decided to sack it for the day and head off to Back Bowden for a final burn.

Training for Spain @ Kyloe (KNEEBARS WOOOOOHHH!) Nat had been climbing her usual beastly self, flashing a 7A+ earlier on and making the 7B+ look like 6B+! Unfortunately the last move was a bit big and Nat like me was getting a bit cold, so she decided to leave it for a warmer day (we’re just softy sport climbers at heart). At Back Bowden, Nat made all the moves of a really tricky 7C and was looking way closer than me to doing it (stupid girly fingers is my excuse : P ), and I flashed (2nd go if you count the stupid foot pop at the first move) a soft 7B. Bouldering is such an odd sport, some grade 6′s I find relentlessy difficult whilst in the mid to upper 7′s they can seem really do-able in comparison? Not at all like sport climbing, at least you know where you stand when your tied in to a rope! Not exactly true if you count some of the insane french slabs at Ceuse or Buoux but lets not get into details shall we…

Lulu had an excellent day out, doing what I reckon was a seriously stiff D2 (Doggy grade 2) slab and flashing a tricky D1 mantle. She was knackered when we got back to the car and slept the entire way home. For her first adventures at the crag, not bad at all little one, not bad at all…

Lulu engaging the mantle move... Lulu completing the mantle : ) Her first D1!!! The day before Kyloe, I was coaching in Aberdeen at the Transition Extreme wall. This was part of a series of coaching events I have been invited to work at as part of the Scottish Team Coaching Events run by the MCofS (Mountaineering Council of Scotland). Up with me at the event was Neil Mcgeachy (British Team Coach and Organiser of the Event) as well as Ruairidh Mackenzie (British Team Coach and Robert/Dylan Mackenzie’s Dad). It was a brilliant day coaching, we had a bunch of really great kids to work with and it ran super smoothly! I am continually being surprised by the standards of these kids nowadays, I wish I had the same opportunities they have now when I was younger. Obviously I started late (15 years old) however, when my girlfriend Nat started her climbing, there was nothing in place like this to help support her, give her confidence, give her experience, teach her valuable training skills and techniques, etc… She basically had hints and tips from lots of different people (McGeek, Gresham, Team Training, etc) but nothing as built up and structured as nowadays. I coach one member of the team on a bi-weekly basis and have regular sessions with other members of the team every month (they also receive bi-weekly sessions with other coaches), this is an amazing opportunity for kids and its great that its available to them now! If Nat had received this when she was a kid, would we have a world champion already? I reckon we wouldn’t be far off it seeing how she has placed top 5 in World Cups before with such little support.

PSYCHED!!! The setup being run in Scotland now is absolutely amazing for bringing up young climbers (aged 5 and onwards), we have so many psyched coaches working with the kids and even the older kids are getting involved. We have myself, Neil Mcgeachy, Neill Busby, Ruairidh Mackenzie and John Brown all offering voluntary service throughout Scotland coaching the kids and climbers such as Natalie Berry, Jonathan Field, Jonathan Stocking, Eleanor Hopkins and Rachel Carr giving back what they themselves received and are still receiving by offering coaching for the kids at local clubs like Quickdraw and through the MCofS Youth Development program. This is only going to grow and get better and better in the years to come, I am psyched out of my mind to see what this dedication to developing young climbers will bring… Anyway, the day was a great success and I had a fantastic time coaching some awesome young climbers! Truly inspiring!

William cruising his way up a 7a+ Onsight from last year! As well as all that, I had my first session with young William Bosi since he’s been given the all clear to get back into hard climbing after a little elbow injury. This is another kid that scares me, he is only 12 years old, he’s still into Pokemon, comic books, video games (heck, so am I come to think of it!) and he’ll run about the bouldering wall playing hide and seek before he’ll do any training, but he can still crank out techy 7b onsights when he feels like it : P We started the session of with a bit of onsight practice on easier routes:

• 6a Onsight
• 6b Onsight
• 6c Onsight
• 6c+ Onsight
• 7a+/b Onsight (Probably solid 7b if you compare with any other routes there)

Mind, this is his first day back doing hard climbing after several months, imagine what he could do if he was fit! SCARY!

Campus Board - Good "Additional" Training Routine Finally, had a triple coaching session with three of my clients, Neil, Alan and Ian. I was preparing them for the first phase of their 25 week cycle training program that all three of them are embarking on! This should be exciting for them, Neil currently climbs 6c+/7a onsight, Ian is at about the same level and Alan is at around 6b+ onsight (Alan started climbing with me in July and could barely climb 5′s at the time).

All of them have good long term goals that they want to achieve and to do this I felt that a periodised program starting of with a high aerobic fitness base moving into more and more anaerobic territory as the plan progresses was needed. I am starting them off with 2 sessions a week of specific Aerobic forearm fitness training, 1 session of mileage bouldering and 1 session of hard routes (anaerobic training) with additional gym and campus board/fingerboard routines. Hopefully they will all be flying at the end of the cycle : )

Anyway, hope everyone else out there is cranking hard

Venga Bichos!

ROBZ OUT!!!

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Lots of work!
16 February 2011, 1:50 am

Hey guys!

Hope everyone is well now… I certainly haven’t been : (  I have come down with a bit of a bad cold, but I was totally expecting it to be frank as I haven’t had much time off over the past 2 months. I was inspired to write a little blog post on my work life of late after reading Gaz Parry’s blog post the other day. I don’t know if I can complain quite as much as him, as he’s done practically no climbing apart from the odd bit of testing routes after setting, but I’ve certainly not had it easy : P

Gaz on a 7b+ when we where in Kalymnos! First of all… after I got back from Kalymnos, I was only thinking about my next trip out i.e. Spain in Spring 2011! So what do I do? I take on lots of work to make some money before heading out to Spain : ) So I take on a load of shifts from then until March 9th. I am happy with this because, basically I need money to go on climbing trips and working is a good way of acquiring said money : P So since then, I have been working around 2 days a week routesetting/otherwork at Ratho, with 1-2 half-days at the weekend coaching the youth clubs at Ratho (possibly the best job in the world!?!?). Now you might say now, shut up Robbie, thats nothing! Well… theres more to come : )

After taking on all these hours… my personal coaching work suddenly goes into overdrive, which I am psyched out my mind about and I love the fact that I am now able to make a living doing my passion! However, the hours of personal coaching on top of my weekly hours at Ratho is taking work to a new level altogether! The concentration required when coaching is immense, therefore several over-caffeinated sugary drink company style beverages are an absolute necessity when working 10:00-22:00 shifts of routesetting/coaching at Ratho. Just ask any of the staff at Tiso’s in Ratho and they will tell you about my “Go Fast” (sweet over-caffeinated sugary drink company) addiction.

On top of all my coaching work, I have also landed a load of new journalism work for several people including my work with “Scottish Mountaineer” and the beast building series, keeping my blog updated and everything else that I am working on right now which you will all see soon enough : )

Of course, with coaching, I am also responsible for several junior climbing athletes training program and structure such as William Bosi and Angus Davidson as well as the work I do outside of 1:1 sessions in building structured programs for climbers to follow! I have been doing a lot of these lately and have found that on top of all the other work I do, the best time to do all this paper work is between the hours of 12:00 (midnight) and 5:00 in the morning. Its just a peaceful time of day/night really when I am not disturbed by anyone but my dog (who likes to bite my computer screen).

And finally… after I have done all of this… I can then relax to some HARDCORE TRAINING SESSIONS!!! I’ve been enjoying my board quite a lot recently as well as the fantastic little bouldering venue of Alien Rock 2! A few hours spent pulling hard and beasting yourself is not exactly a rest, but I’ll be damned if I’m missing any training sessions before Spain!

Nat playing on our new Beastmakers at EICA: Ratho! So yeah… 2 months of this roughly and I am pretty tired… thus the cold, black eyes and grumpiness of late (sorry to anyone who has had MR Grumpy lately, Its probably because I haven’t slept in 3 weeks : P ).

Anyway, I am totally psyched out my mind right now, I have only a few weeks left until I fly off to Spain for 2 months sport climbing with my best mates and Ratho have finally got round to building a stand for the beastmakers! WOOOOH! THANK YOU BUZZ AND GAZ! Now I can have some proper good wee training sessions in between coaching sessions : ) Amazing that it only took 8 years of searching for the biggest climbing wall in the world to find a place to stick a fingerboard!

So training wise – I am feeling good for Spain! I haven’t done a lot of routes, but been keeping up with circuits on my board. I set four new ones the other day around the 8a+ mark I think, did 2/4 of them and thought they where about 2 grades harder than the 8a’s and 8a+’s currently at Ratho so thats a good sign! I had a good burn on the on-sight of Gary’s new 8a+ on the comp wall! Managed to onsight until the main crux, fell off, then did it to the top. Think this would probably be 8b in Spain so thats also a good sign!

Good news on the coaching holiday front – Will Carroll has finished posters for the Yorkshire Climbing Trips in July (9th-12th + 13th – 16th) and we will be sending them out soon to walls around the country. The trips are going to be great, 3 days climbing with me and Nat focussing on on-sight and redpoint tactics at the crag with technical coaching from both of us, video analysis and Will Carroll there to take awesome photos of all the climbers in action! Should be a great team down there and the holidays have already had interest from several climbers at Ratho as well as others who have heard from the grapevine (even before posters have been distributed!). The cost of the holiday is £250 pp which does not include accommodation or food, only one professional coach and an international climbing superstar for 3 da

ys coaching on a 1:2 basis (4 places on each trip!).



Anyway, so far 2011 has been an awesome but very tiring year! Look out for new training articles from myself on-line and in the mags : D

ROBZ OUT!

Source: Robbie's Blog

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EICA: Ratho Competition Setting!
18 February 2011, 11:56 pm

Hey guys!

The new problems for the comp @ the weekend have all been set! We have some spectacular new creations built in the bouldering room, the slab boulder and the 45 feature boulder. The new volumes built have definitely added a new dimension of funkyness to the ratho boulder cave, I was pretty psyched to be setting in there with all the brand new holds and volumes – look out for the pink mantel on the green volume and black slopey arete problem – those are my babies!

Who knew how much a boy could love a volume : P We had a huge crew of psyched setter helping out today including Neil Busby, Neil Mcgeachy, Gary Vincent, Calum Forsyth, Ian Sneddon, Jamie Drummond, Mark Mcgowan and myself of course! This comp has by far the most interesting problems I’ve ever seen at such an event, even funkier than the BBC’s (which in comparison were more like Craig Y Longridge problems).

After the comp, I am going to write up a report on the event and you can see loads of results and some cool pics to go along with!

I am pretty dead now so I’ll leave it at that…

Check up tomorrow for the exciting low-down on the EICA: Ratho Bouldering Championships WOOOOOOHHHH!!!!

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog

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EICA: Ratho Competition
19 February 2011, 11:43 pm

Hey Guys!

I am absolutely knackered now, its been such a crazy day at Ratho. The competition was a massive success and everyone had a great time, especially on our new volumes : P  There was a massive turnout of competitors on the day and very strong competition in every category! In nearly every category there was a draw for top 3 places which shows that the field was obviously very strong. I was hanging about with most of the kids I coach during the day, so didn’t get to see a lot of the senior climbers taking down the hard problems, but from what I did see, there was some stunning performances in every category! One of the best parts of the day in my opinion, was watching little William Bosi (one of my young padawans) cruise up an adult problem after he had done every junior problem, not only flashing it, but skipping out nearly all the holds by mantling on a volume and reaching the last hand holds (missed about 15 moves this way!).

Nat doing the rock over from hell! (Photo by Will Carroll) I was hanging about the slab boulder for 90% of the comp, as this was where all the kids problems where held! I was assisting with all the kids I could, in particular the ones I coach regularly at EICA: Ratho. I was so impressed by the high level of performance of all the kids, but also the attitude each and every one of them had to competing. In my opinion, the most difficult thing about competing is not taking it too seriously, the main goal is to have fun and secondary is to win. If you enjoy yourself at the competitions, you will always win regardless of whether you beat anyone… and if you do actually win the comp, then thats a bonus : P Also, seeing every kid help each other out with problems, solving the puzzles together and working as a team is something else entirely I’ve never seen in any other sport and its a beautiful aspect of climbing that we seem to have. I watched as young Rory Whyte attempted a hard problem in the comp, fell off then as his friend Sam approached to do the problem, Rory’s only thoughts where off giving Sam some beta and encouraging him to top the problem as much as he could, knowing full well that if Sam topped he would be better of in the rankings!

There where three main problems in the junior (U13′s) category that seemed to break up the kids. These where all centered around one part of the wall, a vicious roof with the two hardest problems on it (orange + White) and a Ripple mantle pulling over the lip of the roof! The White was about V5/6 and the Orange definitely not easier than V5 for a kid. I’d say that the ripple was about V3ish, but the mantle was a deep lock and required flexible hips if you were short to reach the jug to which the final VB section of wall was reached i.e. a V3 with one move… a mantle! The ripple saw very few flash sends, only two that I witnessed (one from Sam and another from a young girl I hadn’t seen before).

Rory Whyte powering his way through the orange roof of DOOM! (Photo by Dougie Wood) The Orange roof was very long and sequency (one of my addition to the comp : P ). It was absolutely essential to have the roof sequence perfect to complete the problem, otherwise it was impossible! William Bosi, a super talented climber and technical wizard made the flash look easy and got the sequence perfect, however everyone else struggled immensely with it, the two closest I saw where Rory, Sam and the other girl from Inverness. Rory was throwing himself continuously at the problem, every time looking a bit stronger and every time a bit close… but alas, no cigar! Sam had a solid sequence that was working for him, but over time, tiresome set in and he didn’t have enough left to complete it. The young girl I saw from Inverness was very impressive, making the crux look easy, but did not have the right sequence for the final pull over the lip and blew it right at the end : (

Finally, the white problem only saw one ascent, William Bosi did it 3rd go to raucous applause by the crowd of watching kids and parents. everyone was struggling with the slopey open-handed nature of the holds and the roof was core sapping with powerful moves between small jugs… basically I built this problem to be an anti-child friendly problem. Being good on slopers generally means having big hands, and little kids don’t generally have big hands, hence slopers don’t tend to mix well with kids : p So although we saw some sick effort on the problem, the white was left without a second ascent  : ( Big up to Kirsten Gray though for her awesome heel hooking extravaganza on it!

Paul Williamson contorting his body (Photo by Will Carroll) In the U16′s, both Scott Kerr and Jamie Drummond topped all the problems in the qualifiers securing a joint 1st place each, so in order to split the tie, an exciting final was put on for the crowd where Jamie and Scott had to climb three problems and if one climbed more than the other then they would be the victor, otherwise it would go into a super-final to see who got the furthest on an even harder problem! The first problem to climb was a tricky green crimpy problem up the pillar, both Jamie and Scott misplaced their feet on the first move and slipped off, making them joint equal still! The second problem was a pink mantle (one of my special little additions to the comp!). Jamie was first up, cruising the whole first section of the problem he was looking good for topping out, but the mantle was still to come… Upon reaching the mantle, Jamie started huffing and puffing, getting psyched up for the hard pull! Psyched up, he threw himself over the volume into the mantle position, for a while he was battling against the pull of gravity, then suddenly he fell back off the volume… but to the astonishment of the crowd he was reluctant to let go and maintained contact with the volume! He was still on the wall and went for one last blast to bag the send and with one mighty push, he was over the mantle and matched on the final two holds!

Scott Kerr slapping the crimp to win the U16's (Photo by Will Carroll) A huge roar burst from the crowd and no doubt Scott must have been shaking in his boots in isolation from what he must have heard. Next out, Scott ran over to the problem, chalked up and wasting no time at all got stuck in! Scott walked up the start, straight into the mantle and rolled over the volume straight into a standing position as if it were simply a step on a staircase! I know for a fact though that Scott had been practicing mantles at his local wall (Transition Extreme), he had been showing me the one set a few weeks ago for a local bouldering comp and it was no wonder he cruised this problem! The final problem was Busby’s orange up the v-board! It waved about the wall, moving through three different volumes and made use of the mighty big bertha hold from Holdz which is possibly one of the coolest holds on earth! Jamie came out into the crowd and quickly looked over the problem, chalked up and went for the send… He was looking solid so far, but then straight into Bertha came the tricky sequence! Around the corner of the board was a juggy crimp, only accessible via a subtle toe hook and balancy body maneuver, without the toe hook its hard to keep your feet on once you latch the crimp and generally if your feet cut loose here its all gone! Jamie got Bertha, grabbed the jug undercut to place the toe, but instead, placed a heel… he threw for the crimp but as he latched it his feet cut loose and he was off! Jamie left the wall disappointed and Scott came out looking focussed but nervous. After a quick read of the sequence, he was on the wall. Same as Jamie he approached Bertha cruising, into the same position he went, undercut with his right, Bertha with his left, he moved his foot up to place on Bertha… and it was a toe hook! He balanced himself, threw for the crimp, and he was still on!!! Raucous applause came from the crowd, he slapped up the wall onto the panel corner, squeezing it he eyed the next crimp, SLAP! He latched it!!! Moving on up, the rest wasn’t a problem for him and he topped out, the new EICA: Ratho Bouldering Competition U16 Champion!

Neil Busby (L), Gary Vincent and Neil Mcgeachy (R)... what a bunch of muppets (Photo by Will Carroll) Unfortunately, I don’t have full results as of yet but will make the effort to get them uploaded onto the blog tomorrow! Nat Berry and Will Atkinson were the victors of the senior categories followed closely by Eddie Barbour and Anna Wells in second place!

It was a very busy day for me and I am pretty tired now, but the work doesn’t end yet, I still have to run the British Team Training Event tomorrow which hopefully will be a great success also! I have some cool ideas (one special in particular thanks to Geek) that will make tomorrow a fun and educational day for all the kids involved.

Mark Mcgowan (L), Dougie Wood and myself... 2 x Coaches and a Photographer On a final separate note, I have had a crazy amount of interest for the Yorkshire trips so will probably be having to organise more trips around the same time, if you are keen to join in on them, please get in touch ASAP if you hope to book a place!

All the best guys and happy cranking!

ROBZ OUT

P.s. Check out Will Carroll’s website for more awesome pics as well as his flickr, comp pics should be up soon!

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Results from EICA: Ratho Competition (Revised + Reviewed)
20 February 2011, 10:48 pm

 FULL REVISED RESULTS OF EICA: RATHO FUN BOULDERING COMPETITION

U13 Boys

1 William Bosi 195

2 = Robert Davidson 180

2 = Sam Harlend sendra 180

4 Rory Cargill 177

5 Jamie Pendan 175

6 Rory White 167

7 David Medzybrodzki 163

8 Harry stansfeild 157

9 Ruraidh Middleton 146

10 = Evan Davis 127

10 = Findlay Johnson 126

12 Euan Farmer 122

13 benFindlay 102

14 = Evan Rasmussen 89

14 = Guy Mathison 89

16 Declan Currie 87

U13 girls

1 Rebecca Kinghorn 180

2 Eilalh Vass Payne 177

3 = Emily Eadie 172

3 = Kirsten Grey 172

3 = Gabrialla Stewart 172

6 Keira Farmer 170

7 Morgan rodgers 165

8 Kirsten Taylor 164

9 Ellie Hogarth 156

10 Jodie Brown 154

11 Erili Geddes 107

12 Freya Baxter 99

13- 16 boys

1 scott Keir 200 (Winner in Finals Climb-Off)

2 Jamie Drummond 200

3 Steven Addison 197

4 Angus Davidson 186

5 Malcolm bradley 181

6 Scott donaldson 170

7 Ruaraidh Macaskill 163

8 Alex Bosi 150

9 andrew Hairsworth 93

10 Scott Govens 32

13-16 girls

1 Rachel Carr 197

2 Sophie Harper 147

3 Amy Anderson 146

4 Nikki Addison 145

5 Simla Green 139

6 Christie Macleod 107

7 Lyndsey Forsyth 106

8 Megan Saunders 79

9 Victoria Boyd 44

10 Hannah Dewar 30

Rec. Men

1 Alexei Matveyev 162

2 Gordon McKillop 161

3 John Sharples 147

4= Mike Lewis 145

4= Mitch Figures 145

6 Robbie Carruthers 140

7 David Carruthers 139

8 Grant Saunders 134

9 Colin Mcpherd 120

10 Ian Brown 108

11 Martin Wood 107

12 Lukas Solanka 99

13 Alex Scott 93

14 Mark Hammonds 83

15 Dave Brown 77

16 Tim Squires 70

17 David Wilson 55

18= Tom Jones 50

18= Sean Hiddleston 50

20 John Macleod 45

21 Paul Gowens 40

Rec.Women

1 Nicola Bishop 135

2 Gail Robertson 54

3 Avril Gall 50

4 Dawn Thomson 47

5 Kim Picozzi 45

6 Emily Raemaekers 22

Adv. Men

1 Will Atkinson 197

2 Eddie Barbour 184

3 John Brown 170

4 Andrew Simpson 162

5 Alex Gorham 160

6 Dylan Mackenzie 157

7 Kris Devlin 149

8 Mike Rudden 147

9= Ross Henighen 137

9= Merlin Floate 137

11 Paul Williamson 134

12 James McCartan 121

13 Will Carroll 102

14 David Gudmundsson 101

15= Nick O’Grady 100

15= Fraser Harle 100

17 Paul Raeside 94

18 Fraser Gibson 87

19 Donald Slatter 60

Adv. Women

1 Natalie Berry 125

2 Anna Wells 114

3 Xiao Xian Goh 93

4 Lasma Seitinsone 92

5 Eva Sparreboom 72

Vet. Men

1 Ruairidh Mackenzie 149

2 Neil Shepherd 146

3 Peter Roy 144

4 Robert Durran 137

5 Kevin Gibson 114

6 Dave Hainsworth 90

7 Ed Payne 52

8 Gregor Hannappel 50

9 Sandy Carr 49

Source: Robbie's Blog

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MCofS Team Regional Training Meet (EICA: Ratho)
21 February 2011, 12:16 am

 Hey Guys!

Only the day after our local bouldering competition, we have the British Team Regional Meet! Unfortunately, not all the team attended, in fact, there where only three actual team members present, Jonathan Field, Eleanor Hopkins and Angus Davidson. However, we had a full 10 youth climbers present to make up the numbers that are all 2011+ hopefuls for the British Climbing Team! Among these where EICA: Ratho crew:

Jamie Drummond

William Bosi

Megan Saunders

Gabby Stewart

Eilidh Vas Payne

and also we can’t forget those from outside the Edinburgh scene:

Rebekah Drummond (Dundee)

Rory Cargill (Inverness)

The day was a huge success! We had myself, Natalie Berry, Ross Kirkland, Neil Mcgeachy, Calum Forsyth and a new coach on the block, John Brown all giving a helping hand on the day!

The first part of the day was spent setting problems in pairs on the newly stripped bouldering room walls. Thanks to the competition, the walls had very few holds on them, giving all the kids a massive amount of freedom to let their creative climbing minds thrive amongst different coloured holds, different angles and shapes of the wall as well as all the new funky volumes we have! The reason for getting them to set was to allow them to better undrstand the movements they do on the wall, the mind of a route-setter and to really experience first hand the depths of thought required to set funky boulder problems. This will aid them massively for when they approach route reading on both boulders and routes at competitions and even just at the wall in future! I can say from my own personal experience, that setting has certainly opened my mind to the possibility of different sequences and movements the body can make on a climbing wall and I can say 100% for sure that I wouldn’t be as good a climber today if it wasn’t for my setting experience.

I split the kids into pairs and got them setting on what I thought was their anti-style, so as to force them to think about how to climb on a wall that they aren’t good at. Also, I added an extra challenge… they had to set the problems hard enough that they spit off everyonelse, but easy enough that they can climb them! This means that they have to think about their own strengths and weaknesses, how they can force other climbers into difficult moves and mask the sequence as much as possible. I stuck Angus and William on the back vertical wall to set some filth, Jamie and Rory on the mantle volume, Gabby and Eilidh on the steep prow, Megan and Rebekah on the 45 board and Eleanor and Jonny on the vert board at the back with the cunning arete feature : P

The problems set where all absolutely amazing! Everyone adapted well to the wall they where given and used their time and the support from the coaches wisely. Angus and William succeed in setting a V6 horror show on the vert board, a problem I only “just” flashed by the skin of my finger tips. The funny thing is, the moves they set where actually big for them, but bunched up and tiny for me! Jamie and Rory set the mantle from hell which only got one other ascent apart from themselves. Megan and Rebekah set an awesome power fest on the 45 which everyone flashed but was perfect for a good warm up into the comp. Eilidh and Gabs set another steep power fest on the prow board, again everyone flashed but a tiny slip from Rebekah almost saw her off! And finally Jonny and Eleanor (both unfortunately still injured) set a balancy freak show on the back vert board.

After all the problems where set, we headed for lunch, but where soon back to get stuck into the mock bouldering competition. The format of the comp was that of a BBC Final! Everyone was in isolation and had a total of 3 minutes viewing time together on each problem as well as 3 minutes attempting the problem (we had to cut the times a bit so that we weren’t doing this all night : P ). After viewing everyone went back into isolation and then we would proceed with the individual climbers coming out and giving each problem their best attempt. I’d say highlight of the day was watching Rebekah Drummond top the crazy mantle that Jamie and Rory had set on her final go!

In the end, we had one problem left that we used as a super-final to split the tied boys, Angus and William and tied girls, Gabby and Megan. Fortunately both William and Angus topped the super-final problem which lead to an even more exciting super-super-final!!! Angus lead the way with an impressive flash of the V6 pillar problem (not without a bit of huffing and puffing). Then William came out to a screaming crowd of parents, climbers who started to watch and his fellow competitors. Unfortunately William blew a foot sequence low down on and slipped off, but turned to the crowd, gave the crowd a cheeky William grin and said “I think I need stretchier trousers?”. I love how these kids are such awesome competitors, yet really, they just want to have fun, which in the end of the day is what its all about : ) How can you argue with that? Two of the best climbers in Britain for their age group and top 20 in Europe can compete against each other, but even during the competition, they are still good friends and are just as happy if the other was to win than themselves (well maybe not “as” happy, but still pretty happy : P ).

The day was a success and we finished with a little talk on how we prepare for comps and what we had learned from the day. I would like to give a massive thanks to the MCofS for giving us the support to run these sessions, and for what I think are possibly one of the most valuable assets these young competitors have, as well as to those that helped during the day!

Cheers Neil, Nat, Ross, Calum and John!

ROBZ OUT

P.s. pics of the day to come soon when Neil gets round to sending me some : P



Source: Robbie's Blog

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Trad + Bouldering @ Northumberland!!!
23 February 2011, 1:06 am

Hey guys!

An amazing thing happened today… I went Trad climbing!!! I know many of you have said it would never happen, to actually get Robbie Phillips trad climbing, but today it did : P Actually… I have increasingly become psyched for trad over the last few months (basically since kalymnos). As trad is pretty much all you can do over 5m in Scotland, its the next best thing after sport. So last night I arranged with Andru Mols (Ex-Tiso @ Ratho employee) to head down to Northumberland (more or less Scotland : P ) for some bouldering and trad!

We headed down with two other Edinburgh based climbers/students, Tom Eadie and Robert Taylor. Both nackered after an epic on the ben, but psyched for some real rock (none of this winter garbage : P ). When we finally arrived at Back Bowden (after food shopping at Morrisons and the long slog behind some lorries) we surprisingly met up with two mates of mine from Edinburgh, Tim Cross (Ginger Tim @ Alien) and Sean Bell (Pro-photographer). They were just down for some bouldering and some photos, so I was psyched to get in on some of the action (I was prepared, sporting a fluoro-lime hoody and t-shirt from Edelrid).

Gaining "The Tube"!!! (Photo by Sean Bell) First thing I did of the day was a nice wee 7A flash, it continued into an E2 that topped out of the crag, so I continued up that on solo! There was a really tricky section just after the boulder problem at about 5m up with some tasty monos and a horrible blind step onto a pocket! But all was good and I topped out with no problems : )  After that wee taste of adrenaline, I headed up to try a route called “The Tube”! This has been on my tick list since my first ever trip to Back Bowden with Neill Busby. When I watched him on it all those years ago, I said to myself that one day I would get on it. Its an awesome line, starting of up a pretty easy crack, moving up on some quite slopey features but still probably f6a climbing. After placing a couple of cams, you run it out straight into the break at the top of the crag! As I arrived here, I noticed the crack was wet and was very hesitant to continue, but on I went, I stepped up precariously and gained the upper break. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad, still quite dry on the actual hold, however, there was no gear here that I could find and I had already run it out quite a few metres. After toying with the thought to continue and risk it, the reality of Spain in 3 weeks time shot back into my mind and rather than potential broken bones, I opted for 2 months fun in Spain, so I down-climbed and backed away – it will still be here after Spain and maybe someone will have broken a nice big slot for a cam at the crux : ) Only joking!

After fun on “The Tube”, I headed down to check out some of the problems that Tim and Sean where playing on. Basically, they were all absolute filth and I had no real inclination to climb any of them other than the fact that everyone else seemed psyched… oh well!?!?! So I flashed the 7A, which I think may have ripped about 30 layers of skin of each pad on my fingers and I did the 6C after a few goes… really only because I had to figure out how to climb this problem without using any of the painful, blade crimps! So when I actually did the problem, I did it in 3 moves instead of my initial sequence which was 5 : )

After playing on the chossy, mossy, crimp fests, I headed over to the main cave and began work on a 7C that i had had a wee look at on a previous trip with Niall McNair and Nat. The good news was, it felt a lot easier i.e. I did it from the second move! The bad news was, I still can’t do the first one, however after talking to Andy Latta on the phone about an hour ago, he seems to have some tricky foot beta which makes the first move much easier : ) So thats for the next trip I think?

Into "The Tube"!!! (Photo by Sean Bell) I then headed over to see what Tim was on, a funky arete feature that i had climbed last time with Niall, however, this was more of an eliminate variation i.e. avoiding a crimpy rail out right. It was a really nice problem and I basically flashed it, apart from after mantling the top, my foot popped and I fell… a minor issue with the flash… BUT IM STILL TAKING IT!!! : P  Tim continued to try it a bit more as we left for Bowden, but after returning home I heard that it was to no avail and he had to leave, sacrificing the problem for some questionably deserved Belford cakes : P

Me and the guys headed round to Bowden for some more bouldering action, unfortunately, it started to rain as we got round and everything seemed to be kind of wet : ( I decided that Transformer LH looked like quite a good problem, so went for that! Graded 7C, it seemed like it would kind of be a bit folly going for this in such bad conditions, however after the first actual attempt after figuring out the sequence, it seemed remarkable that it might actually go! A couple of goes later I had ticked it, with wet shoes and in the rain?!?!?!?! The speed of the ascent was enough to doubt the grade, but also I think the conditions where another factor… I don’t like to downgrade, but there’s is no way in Bowden that that is Font 7C! I reckon probably 7B at most, it was tricky for me, but I am a pretty shoddy boulderer to say the least : P An ace problem, very eliminate which i hate, and very over-graded, but definitely worth it anyway, especially if you want to take the 7C tick which is perfectly acceptable in these modern grade hunting days : P

Tim Cross Crushing the V8 (Unfortunately, not crushing hard enough) Photo by Sean Bell With that in the bag, we headed home… Another successful and fun day in the county : )

Also, well done to Tom for ticking his first “real” 7A, so he says and cheers to Robert for belaying me and giving me a crash course in gear placements before “The Tube”!!!

All photos are by Sean Bell as well – cheers man for the awesome pics!

Finally, I also want to say a big thanks to my sponsors Edelrid (DB Outdoor) for supplying me with all my kit for Spain this week, some of which I was using today at northumberland : )

20 x Beautiful Edelrid Quickdraws

2 x 80m Ropes (9.1mm + 10mm)

New Crag Bag

Lots of new clothes

2 x New Pairs of Edelrid Climbing Shoes (Typhoons + Ravens)

Nice one guys!!! Catch ya’s all later!

ROBZ OUT



Source: Robbie's Blog

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Route Setting @ Kendal Wall
28 February 2011, 10:10 am

Hey guys!

For the next 2 days I am going to be based in the lakes, Kendal Wall to be precise. I haven’t actually been here before but have heard its an awesome wall to climb at and am looking forward to putting my creative skills to the test by setting them some totally radical new routes and boulder problems! From what I’ve heard of various people, the Kendal Wall used to be one of, if not the tallest wall in the UK! Obviously this was before Ratho, but still 20m high walls are not to be taken lightly. In my opinion, 20m is the perfect length for sport climbing indoors and out. Its at the stage were you don’t lose out on having hard sustained sequences because the walls/routes are too high/long and its more realistic to what we have in the UK. Don’t get me wrong, having high walls and long routes has its advantages, but when you are forced to climb on shorter panels it definitely makes power endurance training a bit easier, plus I love having consistently difficult and strenuous moves with little or no rest on a route, something I find really difficult to set at Ratho because the routes are so long!

I reckon setting at Kendal Wall is going to be a bit of a challege, since I am so used to working on much higher walls, but I do love a challenge : ) I will be at the wall climbing on Monday and Tuesday night testing out the new problems and routes and will upload pics tonight and tomorrow of what I’ve set, so if you fancy a session climbing or are after some beta on a few of the new classics (hopefully : P ) then feel free to come over and have a chat with me and I’ll go over them with you : ) I’ll probably be the one wearing a lot of green and climbing an absolute shambles because I’m so nackered!

Hope you all enjoy the setting!

Robz

Source: Robbie's Blog

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The Equation of Tiredness…
3 March 2011, 11:19 pm

 Hey Guys…

Birthday + 3(Climbing)(Bowden/Kendal Wall) + 2(Setting @ Kendal) + Coaching(Edinburgh) = Northumberland –> Edinburgh –> Kendal –> Edinburgh = HEADACHE!!!!!

This is the equation of my tiredness right now : P I am pretty exhausted after my recent route setting trip to Kendal Wall. I had an absolutely awesome time hanging out with the Cumbrian crew in Kendal setting and climbing for two days, but I can’t deny it wasn’t hard work! There are now some stunning new lines for the locals to get their fingers stuck into including a windy 6b  and 7a+ on the main wall, a spicy pinchy 7c on the short steep board, a roof tastic 360 degree spinner horror show 7b on the main wall right side as well as 3 sick new circuits, 2 upstairs in the green room and 1 downstairs on the vert boards! I was mainly setting routes on the first day but afterwards, ran up to the green room to check out all the boulder circuits Kendal had to offer (set by Ian Vickers). I managed to flash the entire pro-circuit (the hardest one) apart from one problem (because I missed a volume which I thought wasn’t included). I was pretty chuffed with my bouldering that night because of this as the Circuit was meant to be a V6 – V9 circuit, and for me, flashing all those problems was an awesome acheivement!

Anyway, this gave me quite a good idea of how hard their problems where in each graded circuit, so for my boulder setting day, I would be prepared and ready to set some awesome circuits! The Bouldering room I was setting in first is called the “Green Room”. Its an awesome little wall with lots of character and some pretty cool angles including a mega roof with additional volumes, mantel board with long slab above and a jutting out flake feature which works well for stemming and lay-backing. As I had done most of the problems in the room the night before, I kind of knew the style of problems already set and I wanted to add something new, something of my own that the locals will love! Perhaps they will hate me for it, but I noticed a serious lack of contortion despite the Vickers setting : P I set two circuits in the green room and made sure to have plenty of balancy rock over mantles, lots of high stepping, a couple of weird ass moves such as bat-hangs to match the final hold and 360′s in the roof! A lot of funk-tastic setting if you ask me : P After setting in the green room, I headed downstairs and finished of with the last circuit of my trip, a V4-V6 Green spotty on the vertical boards downstairs. This was a bit more of a challenge and I tried my best to avoid setting total filth, I think I did a good job : )  I set a horrendous slab problem which is probably about V6 in its own right pulling of the ground, but I figured out some cunning beta to balance yourself which involved flagging your foot behind your butt – another interesting and very not-obvious move. My favourite though was the last problem I set, which was on the vert board closest to the main hall. This involved flipping hands several times on nearly every handhold to balance your way to the top! If you can add at least an one extra hand position to every hold in order to allow completion of the problem, then you know you’ve done a good job!

Lulu is spotting me : P Not very well! BAD DOGGY! Anyway, I had such a blast setting down at the Lakeland Climbing Centre i.e. Kendal Wall, and I really hope they ask me back to set. Thanks very much Tom and Liam for all your help during my stay and for genuinely being really cool guys! And cheers to the whole Kendal Wall crew staff and non-staff for all the help and my after-birthday meal : ) Looking forward to next time!

As well as my little trip down to the Lakes, the day before I was also at Kyloe In and Bowden with Nat, Sean and Andy for some boulder action! It was definitely the best trip I’ve had down so far purely due to the weather which was close to perfect, if it hadn’t been for a slight drizzle. First we headed to Kyloe In the Woods, we had a quick we warm up on a few traverses down on the left-hand side and then a really fun highball V1 which Andy was crapping himself on : P

After warming up me and Andy had a little play on “Crouching Tiger” a spicy 7B+! It wasn’t too bad actually, I did it up until the last move on one of my first few attempts, however, the holds where tiny, sharp and painful and my feet weren’t really standing on much, so after a few goes and my skin looking a little like grated cheese, we stopped : P Then we moved onto “Cubby’s Lip” 7B+. I had done this before and managed to repeat it comfortably to the last move (matching the jug) when my foot popped, but I wasn’t too bothered since I had done the problem a while back. Nat however made an almost effortless flash attempt straight to the last hard move, then her heeled popped and she was on the ground again : ( Every attempt after that looked good but her finger was bothering her a bit and so we sacked it off for Bowden, not

Andy Latta on "Playing Rudies" 7B (Photo by Sean Bell) before Andy however got a few glory shots of his attempts on a 7B dyno : P

At Bowden, the temps where absolutely perfect and because we got there a bit later in the day, the sun was right over the crag warming us at the same time when we weren’t climbing : ) Absolutely perfect if you ask me! I had some fun on a 7A dyno which took a number of goes. When I finally did it, Andy and Nat had been looking the other way and neither of them beleived me that I had done it, even though I was matching on the final hold when they turned! Andy claimed I had somehow cheated (Dick!) so I was forced to repeat it on the spot… luckily… I did! Then I moved slightly right and did another 7B+ in a few attempts called “Poverty”, similar to “Transformer” that I did a week or so ago, I reckon this is probably now in the region of 7A+/B? Then I tried my hand at “Working Class” 8A+! I was really surprised at this, managed to do all the first moves and straight to the second last move really, which happens to be the crux and probably 90% of the difficulty of the problem, then I gave up hahaha! I’ll be back though!

After gathering our stuff, we headed back towards the others at “Transformer”, but on the way I spotted the much tried and classic  7B+ “Vienna”! There was no chalk, but its a pretty obvious one when it comes to sequence. I tried it once and slapped the final jug… second go and it was despatched! Probably another 7A+/B in reality for me, especially since I am a bit taller, but I can admit that I reckon it would be tougher if I wasn’t as flexible since I managed to make a high foot that Andy reckons not many get?

Then we headed back to the others who where trying “Tranformer RH” 7A. I managed to bag a quick retro-flash of this and then went for a repeat of “Transformer LH” 7C/B? Which I fell off on the final move (pretty tired now : P ). Nat played a bit on LH which she looked strong on but lacked the height to make the crimp to undercut move as easy as I could and fell of at this point a couple of times. As soon as I can drive, I am forcing Nat to come down with me every week here and I want to see her dispatch everything in the county – I reckon she could with her fingers of steel : P

After a lot of fiddling with strapping getting the mats on the roof of the car, we were back on the road and heading straight back up to Edinburgh for my 21st Birthday meal : P  We were a wee bit late, but it was a good sacrifice for such an awesome day out at county with my friends : )

Sean Bell on "Monty Pythons" 6C+ or 7A+ ss (Photo by Robbie Phillips) What a good weekend! After my two days of Kendal route setting, I then had a coaching session with the young masters of rock, William and Alex Bosi. We spent a good chunk of the session setting a hard project for them (v7ish?). Since I will be gone for 2 months of Williams training, it is essential that I get him kitted out with training to do whilst I am away, so we made a circuit of boulder problems together for him to go at every boulder session and the project is something he can work on every time he comes in for a bouldering session, although it looks like it might go pretty soon? I have been increasingly working with Alex more and more and I can tell you, he is a kid we need to watch out for. He has been ripping up the boulders at Ratho recently making quick ascents of most in the V4-6 region, even flashing his first V5′s last night! BEAST! Lets hope for a YCS final placing this year dude!

And now its only 5 days until Spain, I have all my kit ready and accounted for, my fitness may be a bit crap but I am just hoping to be healthy and well before I get there, no last minute bugs or injuries! Bring on Spain and 2 months of nothing but bolt clipping! PSYCHED!!!

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog

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County Again!!!
6 March 2011, 4:28 pm

Hey Everyone!

I’ve increasingly been getting sucked into this crazy Northumberland climbing thing : P As I live in Edinburgh, I have a choice of either volcanic choss (Dumby) or going to the beach (Northumberland). I remember my days at the seaside fondly and remember how much fun building sandcastles is, then remember better how much more fun tearing them down is… so I opt always for Northumberland : D This is what a day at Bowden is like hahahaha only joking! Today, me, Nat, Busby, Ali Cashman and Tony Stone headed down to the county for some sandstone sliding action! It was looking to be a great day and hopes where high for some sun and sand!

Nat @ Bowden (Photo by Robbie Phillips) On arrival, we encountered a strange creature lurking the crag, Ian Small! He had been in search for some climbing to do on his tod and without a spotter had almost opted to head back up to Edinburgh, however, now that we had arrived he joined in with our merry crew. Nat and I had decided to become loners for the day and sneakily crept off to do some bouldering elsewhere whilst the “old-timers” stuck to their pottering : P

Nat on "Captain Haddock" 7A+ (Photo by Robbie Phillips) I had seen quite a cool little video the previous night of a guy doing a 7B+ at Bowden, so after a quick wander about to try and find the elusive problem, I found what appeared to be a black flat vertical wall with some chalked up pinscars. The problem was in fact “Temptation” and both me and Nat had a little play on it. After about 4 or 5 attempts, I had figured out a good sequence and was slapping the final hold, unfortunately I kept slipping of it and I wasn’t committing enough to the move since we only had one mat (I’m a pansy) and so I eventually sacked it off to save some skin for what I really wanted to do… “V CRIMPS”!!!

Nat and I headed down to the little cave to check out the elusive “V Crimps” 7C. I had heard about this problem from a mate of mine, Chris Miele. It looked absolutely sick and took quite a bit of figuring out to find exactly where it went (including a phone call to Andy Latta to give me beta : P ). After the phone call, I started to make really good progress, now managing to go from the sitter all the way to the double crimps (hence the name “V Crimps”) but failing now on the cut-loose : ( Andy had told me of some trickery that Roddy Mackenzie had done, by sticking his left foot under the roof and toeing down on a foothold to kill the swing? First time I tried this, amazingly my knee fell against the underside of the lip of the roof and I got a good kneebar, enabling me to complete the next crucial foot manouvre (initially the crux for me) and then make the final move to gain the undercut to reach the final jug! After a few more attempts and failing on the final move each time, at last I gained the undercut without my foot popping, stood up and reached the final jug rail! IN THE BAG!!!

Me on "Sprung" 7C (Photo by Natalie Berry) Next up on the agenda was the razor-blades from hell i.e. “Sprung” 7C! Nat and I quickly went over the sequence together, establishing our hand positions then figuring out our foot beta. Two attempts in and I had reached the final hard move, a cross through from a really sharp crimp to a positive edge. On my third attempt I fell after slapping the edge and on my fourth go hit the edge, stuck it and finished the problem off! YAY!!! This was a good day for me doing two 7C’s (V9) in a day. I think “V Crimps” was good for the grade, quite a bit easier for me I think because of my height but still a notch harder than all the 7B+’s at Bowden. “Sprung” however I thought was probably a bit soft? I reckon 7B+ would be more accurate, if you’ve got enough skin and are willing to pull hard then its yours! Both quality problems and I’m psyched I chose them for today : )

Neill Busby on "Transformer" 7C (Photo by Robbie Phillips) After the success on these, I wasn’t too bothered about doing anything else, so me and Nat drifted back along the crag to check up on the other guys. They where throwing themselves at “Transformer” 7A+ and Buz and Tony where after the eliminate left-hand variation given 7C. Unfortunately Buz and Tony, although making good progress, didn’t finish it, however Ali and Ian both successfully climbed there project for the day and where happy with that.

Nat and I moved along the crag to try our hands at “The Crack” 8A! After 5 minutes of failing on the first move over and over again, we gave up and set off back to the car, stopping briefly to do “Captain Haddock” 7A+. Another good day out at the county : ) I’m off again tomorrow to Kyloe Out with Andru Mols so will blog again with some updates on my progression with “Northern Territory” 7C+ (V10)!

PSYCHED!!!

ROBZ OUT

Me on "V Crimps" 7C (Photo by Natalie Berry)

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Northern Territory!
7 March 2011, 10:13 pm

Hey guys!

I’m only one day away from flying off to Spain now : ) Psyched out my mind for some steep spanish limestone, but just as psyched for some steep northumberland sandstone! Today I headed to Kyloe Out the Woods with two mates of mine, Andru Mols and Tom Eadington. Lulu came as well : P

They where up for anything really, a bit of trad and bouldering whilst I was more keen to finish of “Northern Territory” 7C+ (V10) since my feeble attempts before with Niall McNair in the cold. We arrived at the crag early, Tom and Andru headed out to do some trad whilst I took the boulder mats and got warmed up for the project! I started off with a few easy problems then warmed my fingers up on a tricky 7A+ called “Bar Skittles”. I didn’t do it then, but came back later on during the day with Tom and Andru and finished it off. “Bar Skittles” is a really techy and subtle problem, requiring a very precise body position to make the final move to the juggy arete, at one point I had my toe parallel with my head (toe hooking a crack) as I stretched out to reach a tiny little gaston crimper within a crack! : P

Tom bouldering out a spicy crack problem @ Kyloe Out... Lulu is spotting : ) After warming up, I headed down to try “Northern Territory”! I needed to familiarise myself with the moves again, so I looked over the problem, brushed all the holds, then started re-acquainting myself with the sequence. After a few goes, I had already made it to the final hard moves and was only failing to latch a two finger pocket! Then suddenly, on one attempt, I latched the hold I’d been struggling on previously and it felt like the easiest move in the world! It felt so easy now, I moved up statically to grab the next pinch… solid… then statically locked off to grab a two finger pocket… SAFE! After that, I through in a knee bar, reached to the next pinch and the rest was mine : ) SENT! I through in a few power screams for effect : P but the start felt so much easier than ever before. I was so psyched, what a perfect way to end the Bouldering season…

Lulu soloing a Diff slab... too bold for me! Andru and Tom came down from doing trad and attempted “Prime Time” 7B+. Andru was really close but unfortunately left without a tick, maybe next time dude. After getting some pictures of Andru soloing a severe crack, we headed round the corner to check out some bouldering on the other side of Kyloe i.e. the place I warmed up. It was then that I managed to finally do “Bar Skittles” 7A+ and even flash a very tricky 7A mantle problem called “Smooth Operator”. I got shut down on an annoying sandy 7A called “Quarry Arete”. Andru didn’t get much done here, however Tom managed to do the 6C version of the mantle 2nd go!

Andru soloing a Severe crack @ Kyloe Out It was getting late now, but there was still some light left, so we headed to Bowden to finish the day off. We started off playing in the cave, Andru was keen to do “Cave Right Hand” 6B+ so we spent some time on this fun little roof problem. Eventually Andru did it, Tom close but no cigar and we headed across the crag to the further left hand side of the wave. I soloed a nice HVS called “Shiner” and played on “Working Class” 8A+ a little. By now my skin was wrecked, however, I did try “Working Class” a bit last time and it seemed like it could be a good problem for me to work long run, so I am planning on trying it a little every time I come to Bowden. It isn’t too hard until the last move really and its this that you need some guns for, but I think I could do it eventually. PSYCHED!!!

Tom pissed up “Toffs Jump” 7A, being 6’3″ makes it quite easy, then he played some more on the left hand version, a lot harder! Andru threw himself (literally) at “Toffs Jump” 7A for well over half an hour, then when the sun set, gave up despite some very close efforts… maybe next time : )

Another good day out at the county… is it ever not a good day?

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog

[willackers]

Good work Robbie!

You'll be climbing 9a in no time!

Willz out

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SPAIN 2011 (Part 1)
13 March 2011, 9:51 pm

Hey Guys

Its gonna be a quick post today as I don’t have a lot of time, so mainly on how everyone has been doing : )

On the first two days, we all head to the main arena, Santa Linya Cave! This place is home to some of the hardest routes in the world including the monstrous 40-50m long 9b, “Neanderthal”!!! Who else would we see on our very first day at the crag, none other than the very best climber in the world, Adam Ondra! He was taking huge whippers of this crazy route and even bigger tantrums : P

Mcgeek and I got stuck into working the mega classic 8b “Blomu” whilst Ross and Calum got stuck into some of Santa Linyas 7b’s and 7b+’s. Calum came mega close to onsighting the 7b on his warm up go, the came agonisingly close to onsighting another 7b+, yet no cigar for the young gun. Ross then went on to get the same 7b+ on his second try and then moved on to working the 7b+ start to “Airline” 8a.

Mcgeek lost his mind many years ago... It was my first attempt at “Blomu” however Neil had tried it on a previous trip. The main thing I found out was just how of of sync you can be on a trip after such a long time from doing any other sport climbing. To be honest, I was only expecting this first 2-3 weeks to be adjusting to climbing on sport after 3 months of only bouldering. One thing I was finding on the first couple of days was that I was getting mega pumped on nearly everything, however, since then I have found that I am getting better and better and adjusting to climbing on rock more so each day that goes by. We’ve only climbed 3 days so far, but I’ve already got a couple of 7c’s ticked an 8a almost and two 8b projects both of which are looking good so far : ) The route I tried today was called “Preventiva” 8b.

Ross after over-caffeinated sugary drink company! Its an amazing overhanging power fest of jumps of pockets and a thrutchy undercuts traverse to finish with one final lunge to latch the last jug! I thought that this route might very well be the craziest route I have ever tried and am psyched out of my mind to go back tomorrow and have some red-point attempts on it! The cool thing about this route is how every crux has such a low-percentage of sticking. The first crux is a jump to catch a dodgy sloping jug in a crack, the second crux is another jump to catch a sloping pinch and the third crux is a rising traverse on undercuts with no footholds and a heartbreak of a last move which involves a big lunge from undercuts to a jug at the top of a 7c+ line to the right. Also, there is the added option of continuing to the top of the crag and taking 8b/+ (in the guide) which involves a 2 move crux of an 8a, not sure though if it really warrants the extra plus (doubt it)?

Calum soaking in some rays : P Anyway, having a great time so far and hoping to get some cool pics of the climbing over the next week, so stay tuned for more news of our adventures in Spain : D

Robz Out!

Source: Robbie's Blog

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Spain (ROUND 2)
19 March 2011, 9:05 pm

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates on Spain, I will make an effort to do better from now on : ) After tomorrow I will write up a healthy report of the full trip, but for now you will have to do with this. The last few climbing days have been spent at the awesome crag of Disblia, set amidst the rocky outcrops of Sant Llorenc de Montgai. I have been attempting a tricky 8b here which has spat me off the last move a heap load of times : (  all in good time though… I managed to onsight an 8a and flash a 7c+ here as well as ticking a few spicy 7c’s in between 8b attempts.

Ross Kirkland has been on fire, coming pretty darn close to flashing an 8a today and making some impressive ascents of a few 7b’s and a 7c at the cave (Santa Linya).

Calum looking a bit mental : P Calum has been finally getting into the flow and was looking strong on a spicy 8a at Disblia today and even managed to redpoint his very first 7b! Nice on dude! He has come close to onsighting several 7b+’s and i’m sure he will show us a lot more in the next 9 weeks!

Mcgeek has really stepped it up a notch today, achieving his first 8a flash!!!! NICE ONE DUDE!!! This has been Geeks dream for a long time and has certainly taken the pressure of him for the rest of the trip, now its time to get stuck into the projecting and see some more 8b tickage!

Big news for Mark Mcgowan, he flashed his first 7a+ in Spain only two days ago, his first 7b flash since he’s returned to climbing literally only one day ago and today has flashed his first 7c ever!!! It really shows that hard work and determination earn results! Now lets see 8b dude!

An awesome 8a in the cave! Big numbers for all the team out here in Spain and only 10 days into our trip : ) Places we will be spending more time at over the coming 10 weeks are Santa Linya, Disblia, Teradets, Rodellar, Tres Ponts, Siurana, Margalef and Montsant!!!

PSYCHED!

ROBZ OUT

P.s. I also got close on an 8a+ onsight – Its only a matter of time : )

Source: Robbie's Blog

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TEAM ESPANOL!!!
21 March 2011, 8:44 pm

Hey Guys!!!

So I’m out in Spain right now, Catalunya to be precise which is in northern Spain. I am out here with a bunch of my friends from Edinburgh, Neil Mcgeachy, Ross Kirkland, Calum Forsyth and Mark Mcgowan. Myself, Neil Mcgeachy and Mark Mcgowan all coach climbing for a living and Ross and Calum are budding coaches in the making, so it certainly has been an interesting trip so far with many fascinating conversations on training and coaching. Even speaking to Tom and Lynne about how they view training and coaching has been intriguing. Tom is one of the best British Sport climbers, climbing up to an amazing level of 9a/+ and onsighting 8b+, so chatting to him about his views on training and coaching has been good fun.

The area of discussion recently has revolved around the idea of having a team ethic on the trip. Climbing is a very individual sport, where its all about the climber on the wall in his own little bubble of thought. Perhaps trad climbing is the exception where a connection between belayer and lead climber becomes a little closer, but on a sport climbing/bouldering trip, how can a connection open between more than just the climber on the wall and the rock he is climbing on?

Me and the guys have been having on-going chats throughout the trip about what affects our mental game individually. For myself, when attempting hard projects, it definitely comes down massively to how I feel i.e. if I’ve been enjoying myself then I definitely am more likely to send a hard route. I notice that when I get frustrated and begin to doubt myself, I won’t make the same progress than i would normally than if I am confident and surrounded by positive emotion. After discussing what our goals for the trip where and how we planned to complete them, we invented the idea of “The Team”! The idea of the team is that each member has his/her own goals and ambitions for the trip, but are equally as dedicated and motivated to seeing the other members of the team succeed with their own goals. Of course, this concept works in our situation perfectly because we are all already good friends and most of us have been on many trips together, but the idea of the team only reinstates in our minds that every member is behind us on every project and every goal for the trip! When I go for a hard project, every member is at the crag pushing me upwards with positive vibes and if I fall then every member is there to psyche me back up again! Its definitely been working and I can say for sure that I have been enjoying projecting hard routes a lot more than in the past, now it doesn’t feel like a solo mission, but instead like a team effort!

Something else we’ve been chatting about massively, is the nature of mental focus needed when attempting a hard project or onsight route. What type of mental state do we need to be in? Where does our focus need to lie? This is all very individual e.g. Mark likes the quiet so he can concentrate and I like the whole team to be shouting encouragement, but the cool thing about the team ethic is that now we can have confidence to talk to each other as a team and vocalise how we want to approach the route i.e. Mark tells us to shut up and I tell them to turn it up!!! My approach to a hard redpoint or onsight is more aggressive! I like to feel that I’m going to rip the rock apart, of course this needs to be controlled a bit because I don’t want to be burning more energy on easier parts of the route, so learning to pace is also essential! Yesterday, I attempted a project of mine at the end of the day. It was a bit crazy because I was totally knackered after a full days climbing, but after psyching myself up to the max with the help of the team, managed to fire up an awesome fight through each crux until the very last move and got closer than any previous attempt despite being in a far worse state! This just shows the power of the mind and its ability to bring out the best in your performance, but don’t forget, it can also bring out the worst!

In the end of the day, you need to find what works for you, how you tick, and this takes experience at the crag and a conscious effort by you to learn from your mistakes. Its taken me many trips to suss what works for me and its still very far from being perfected! Chatting to Tom about this was intriguing, he says that he, still after years of climbing at a very high level is still learning what works for him. His belief is that guys like Ondra and Sharma have learned what works for them and use this everyday to make climbing at the highest levels easier for them, we can certainly learn from them!

Anyway, theres still plenty to learn about my personal climbing out here so I’m going to leave you with that to ponder on for now : )

Catch ya’s soon!

ROBZ OUT

Source: Robbie's Blog