Wednesday 29 July 2009

Boulder Sesh!

Tonight was my first day back after 3 days of being ill with some unkown virus (maybe light version of the pig plague going around at the mo?). Me and the Barbour Shop Boy (Eddie) crushed the problems on the board. After a good warm up doing stick game and pull ups we set a really nice new board V7 (soft perhaps?) then moved onto some new problems...



After doing some hardish new problems, we moved onto some older ones to see if we are getting any gains. I happily crushed an old problem from before first go including making an even harder variation of it!!! Eddie unfortunately wasn't having the best night training and failed to stick the final dyno move : (

But theres no worries, because its all a learning process (so the rock warrior's way has been preaching to me for the past week) and we know now that Eddie has a particular weakness on this type of move... As for me, I think my main weakness is from the session we've been having seems to be crimping and half-crimps. I have found this through our circuit sessions...

It seems that as soon as I start to get into the final burn of a good circuit or route, as soon as I start to half-crimp or crimp, that is when i really start to flail!!! It seems to bring the pump on harder??? So i have been experimenting with half-crimp position on the beastmaker. Hanging in half-crimp i find is way harder than in open hand position, which i seem to be able to hang forever (that is until i grease off basically). So my idea is that if i can improve full and half-crimp endurance, then when i am on a hard route pushing it, as soon as i transfer into these positions, i will be less likely to get flash pumped immediately... Make sense???

So tomorrow Eddie and I are going to be crusshing the Stamina at Ratho with none other than the man himself... Busby the Boulderboy Buzzard!!! Yay!!!




Oh my god... What have we let ourselves in for...

MORE PHYSICS LESSONS FROM THE BUZ!!!

Friday 24 July 2009

New Book!!!

Hey guys!!!

Bought a new book of Amazon the other day!!! Actually, I bought 3!!! One turns out is not in stock (Eric Horst's Conditioning for Climbing), the other has not arrived (Jerry Moffat's Revelations) and the final one arrived yesterday! I am well psyched! It iS called The Rock Warriors Way by Arno Ilgner. It is a fantastic book based on the authors findings through studying religious, philosophical and psychological books. It is basically about how to better train your mind to improve in the beautiful sport of Climbing. It tackles areas such as fear, anxiety, competition, technique, posture and many more... I am finding it a really fascinating read and I am going to attempt to integrate Arno's teachings into my own climbing...



I advise anyone wanting to improve in their climbing to read this book! I believe that you can always find weaknesses in your performance and most of them can be found in your mind! For example, reading this book today it spoke of overgripping while clipping, simple postures that people take when stressed and even breathing and resting, I notice that i fail in all of these areas a lot of the time and with just a little work on them, imagine the gains without getting physically stronger!!!

People are maybe a little too preoccupied with the physical side of training I think???



maybe...

ROBZ OUT

Thursday 23 July 2009

Training on "The Board"

Yesterday we were training on "The Board".
By we I mean, Eddie "Beastman" Barbour, myself (Robbie Phillips) and Andy "Lank-boy" Latta. The aim of the session was pure bouldering finished off with a maximum strength session on the beastmaker. We warmed up well with a few easy circuits round "The Board", mainly just pulling on jugs throwing some lungy moves to gradually worse holds but still pretty positive. Between circuits I like to warm up doing pull ups on the bar or even doing a few deadhangs on the beastmaker pockets and small rungs. Then after warming up, we got on a few problems (pictures to come). The first problem was relatively easy, throwing between some big orange pinches into an upside down pink pinch which you end up crimping. I almost flashed it but fell of holding the final jug. Eddie and Andy both tried it as well, and after a few attempts Eddie sent it too, soon after that, Andy did the first move... and gave up... ; P
We then madea new problem (this one). I thought it was pretty hard, but Eddie proved that when it comes down to it, an Oxford Degree in Physics is all you need to crush hard problems into the ground... A few goes later, the problem was histroy as Eddie theorised his way to the top and calculated that after the potential exertion of energy expended through the final moves, it still wasn't enough for him to let go... So after our boulder session, we moved onto the "Beastmaker". This training tool is the pride of my room, I love it. I train on it nearly everyday to some extent but hopefully not enough to get injured or overtrain. I feel that between climbing days it is good for me to train on some finger strength on the Beastmaker, it feels a little like active recovery but I don't think its better than doing easy climbing down the wall as it is isolating finger strength and endurance style training in the forearms. Not only that but its great for building up immunity to tweaky holds such as pockets, monos and awkward crimps such as Back 3 crimp position (using the back 3 fingers 1)Pinky 2)Ring 3)Middle) So we tried hanging the 45 slopers for around 5 - 10 repetitions and then moved on to 2 finger dishes (NAILS). I could hang the 45's for roughly 10 seconds nestling my fingers and the 2 finger dishes i failed miserably, but this i think was due to being tired (usually i can hang them now for at least 3 seconds). So the beastmaker session wasn't the best due to the fact that we where absolutely nackered! After Eddie left, Andy and I attempted a 1-Armer session on the BM (Beastmaker) now. Andy achieved a staggering 1/2 a one armer one the large jug edge thingy (-4kg) body weight with the pulley. I think this is a brilliant idea for training on the BM. Build a pulley system where you can detract body weight to further utilise the potential to hang small holds for longer or breaking into new holds. I managed to rak up 4 1/2 one armers on each arm on the same juggy edge with -4kg as well which was ok I guess considering the hardcore session we just had... So if i could only lose 4kg body weight thats what i'd be able to do when i'm tired (the possibilities are endless...), soooooo, how useful are legs in climbing? After the session finished, Andy and I had a 6 o'clock meal (not quite dinner for me yet...) which consisted of tuna, pulses and sweetcorn.... YUM!!! After that we headed to the cinema where we saw Harry Potter and The half Blood Hollows... or was it Deathly Prince??? Canny remember? Which I thought was disapointing compared to the other movies, the only scenes I liked where the ones with Emma Watson ; P After 2 hours torcher sitting next to the most annoying guy ever, 2 hours of elbow battling over the arm rest with Andy, 2 hours of Harry and Ron winking at girls and Dumbledore talking about death, I was ready to head home to some more beastmaker action!!! realising it was about 12 o'clock I figured I'd leave it till tomorrow when i'm going to train at Ratho with Eddie for a hardcore Enduro session...
PSYCHED!!! "Wingardium Leviosa!!!"