Training diary

Training was going damn great until today. A finger is hurting so hence I am writing instead of training today. In the last week I’ve been starting to experiment with having two sessions a day for the first time in over a year. I’ll need to introduce them gently!

My routine at the moment is a good couple of hours of shoulder and hip flexibility and end-range holding work to kick things off, then my usual injury rehab exercises (various), then get on the board. I’ve not managed to reproduce 100% of my best ever form about two months ago, but then I’ve been going at it quite hard with little rest, so I wouldn’t expect to anyway.

After a full boulder session it’s onto the circuits but I’m still in the early stages of these and not really had any gains to speak of. In six weeks time it should be different!

I’ve had a couple of days off training here and there, going winter climbing and going to some classes (more on that soon).

It’s been interesting last week to try pull-ups again this week. I’ve not really done a complete pull-up in over two years since I injured my elbow. But now they are almost completely better I thought it was safe to see how I was. WEAK! I can still do one complete one-arm on either arm, but well down on my PB of 5 before I got injured. It just shows that it’s not important for rock climbing, but I know I’m certainly weak on ice axes.

My short term priority is to improve my full crimp strength for my boulder project in Glen Nevis. My thumbs have always been really weak. I’ve got another 6 weeks or so until the boulder will be likely to be in condition. Ideally that means 30 sessions of hard crimping on the board between now and then. But things are never ideal as today has proved. I’ve just been writing about the messiness of ‘real life’ training on my training blog here.

I’m not expecting success on the boulder when the spring comes. It’s so hard for me that any progress will be brilliant. But although I’m not expecting success, I’m sure aiming for it! After that I’ll try and ramp up the endurance work to try a sport project I have - hard 9a. I’ve done the moves. F8c+ into a Font 8a/8a+. Maybe too hard? Let’s find out.

All I know is if I get a good run at these projects, the trad lines for summer will finally fall. The key to all this is maintaining that good base of uninterrupted training right now. Roll on tomorrows session..

Posted in: Training