In a previous post I mentioned that I had been working on my posture, which has proved to be not only the key to looking "a bit of a dick" as I strut around, but has had a massive impact on my ability to lock.
I had mainly been doing exercises on the wall to address this whilst warming up, but have also taken to doing some basic campus board exercises to really try and hit the associated muscle groups hard. It is clear that my left hand side is progressing faster than my right, but it is hard to ascertain why the right hand side is lagging behind, since it could be one of so many factors, like tightness in pecs, tightness in upper traps, instability in rotator cuff, slightly weaker lower traps, poorer grip strength etc.
Attempting to get Fred Nicole style lock. Must try harder.
We had planned to go to the Peak District at the weekend to sample some peak limestone, but the rock gods conspired against us and we were left with a Sunday day trip instead. I'm not complaining about this, since Saturday was to be sunny and hot, whereas Sunday was to be hazy and hot, so looked to be the better of the two days.
Since we had visited the Lakes limestone the previous weekend, climbing at a limestone venue was not going to be an option, so we decided to head to Shaftoe, since we both had projects to put to bed there.
When we got there it was hot and muggy, with barely a breath of air to be had (without breathing in flying ants) and the friction on the rock was as expected, exceptionally greasy. Although the rock appeared to be dry, the moisture in the air just seemed to continually condense on it, which meant repeated pointless chalking and whacking of key holds.
Anna did well managing to do "Viagra Plus sit start" for the first time, despite the crux holds being ridiculously slick, before moving on to try "Timmy Tip Toes".
I got shut down on "The Boss" which was partly due to the conditions and partly due to my head, which left me only one realistic prospect for the day which was to attempt "Purely Belter" on the Font Boulder. Despite not having tried it at all before, I had all of the beta I needed, which was that Sam believed that I would find it easy. Purely belter is a lovely (if lowball) line and I'm chuffed to have done it.
Have had a couple of great trips down to the lakes this month, getting fully shut down on many a classic and not-so-classic line. Used the lakesbloc website which is a work of absolute genius.
Ten years ago I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Marius Morstad at the Boulder World Cup in Brum. During the talk, he stated that the Malc had perfect technique, which caused a sharp intake of air by many who attended, which was then followed by laughter from many who had assumed that it was a joke. Marius went on to explain how we could all achieve this same technique of being able to stay face on to the wall whilst performing burly moves between bad holds.
The long and short of it was that he believed you did not need steely fingers to perform hard moves, you needed steely core and posture (lower traps) muscles. The way to achieve this was either through simple floor exercises, or through climbing in Font. Most of the others in attendance weren't really interested in listening and started arguing with him to some extent or other and just asked him how to get stronger fingers (information that he was not interested in providing).
Anyway, I listened and acted, well, sort of. I went to Font for a while and came back climbing harder, so I had assumed that it had worked, although I was aware that I was still struggling with "open" moves, but put that down to them just not suiting me.
Some ten years later (in Feb this year) I decided to sort out my posture, since it would have positive benefits even if it did not make me any better on the wall. The catalyst that drove me to act was that in the BBC's this year I seemed to be the only competitor struggling with the big rockover moves that seemed to dominate the last move of many of the problems. I meant to blog at the time stating that I was going to start a new course of training to correct my posture and hopefully improve my deep lock/rockovers, but was not convinced that it would work, so I didn't. The thing is, is that it really has worked, indoors at the very least. My fingers are nowhere near as strong as they used to be a few years back, but my body (shoulders, lats, traps, core) feel good and strong. This new found strength is definitely getting me up harder problems than ever before and is making me feel worked in a very different way to how I used to at the end of a session.
I'm lucky I guess, since I have been able to find and exploit a major weakness. I suppose I should have listened more attentively 10 years ago so that I could have done something proper about this at the time, but hay ho, I had strong fingers then so didn't care.
The posture exercises are not a golden bullet and would certainly not work for those climbers who already display beautiful posture on the wall, or massive lower traps.
It's been a long time since I posted, since I have had very little to write about climbing wise in the last six months.
last summer I damaged my hook-of-hamate during the BBCs, got some physio treatment and rehab exercises and have been doing these almost religiously ever since. The damage has resulted in a massively reduced grip strength in my right hand, which I'm told will never get back to normal. For the first couple of months after the comp I couldn't manage to hold on to a small campus rung even with two hands (in fact I couldn't even hang from a jug one-handed), which is a strange experience for me. This also meant that I couldn't really play on problems down the wall or fingerboard.
Thankfully after a couple of months I could play a bit, start building up to front levers and could comfortably hold a bar, to allow me to do some cross training. I did venture outside just once during this period, but it was massively depressing, you can definitely get away with a lot more indoors than you can outside. I've had a few positive breakthroughs since then though, managing to take part in the Durham Climbing Centre's birthday Party Comp, The Battle of Britain at The Depot and the BBCs last month, none of which aggravated my hand.
Best of all, last Thursday at the wall, a strange thing happened. I had a tiny shot on the campus board at A2 and nothing exploded in my hand..........Happy days.
On the drive back up from the BBCs, Gary and I were discussing how the biggest shame about not quite performing as well as we would like, is that this event is only once a year, and that's a very long time to wait. Sure there are local comps during the winter (and obviously the CWIF and Plywood Masters, which are normally in the spring), but it is only feasible to do the ones local to us, as these comps are almost always held on a Friday evening. The Alien Rock comps are fun, but the terrain, the format, the style and the competition (ie the competitors) are all at odds with the likes of a National or International event. The setting in the Scottish walls in general bears no resemblance to this style (although I believe the EICA bouldering is in the process of being "fixed"), but is good for getting steely fingered.
I'm jealous of the guys in Sheffield (and other well equiped northern towns), they get to boulder on the correct style of problems all year round, get to take part in a fun winter bouldering series and the CWIF, and there is a really strong group of guys there to burn each other off. I appreciate that I could just increase my carbon footprint and commute to Sheffield, Leeds or Newcastle to train, but I think I'll wait for the TCA Glasgow to open and hope that the setting there bears some resemblance to modern competition climbing. Who knows, maybe they'll even hold the odd open climbing competition.
Rudden was right of course, I should definately not be bouldering down Alien Two whilst wearing a weight belt with an ever-so-slightly tweaky pulley. But, who can tell me what to do, after all I was going to Hueco in just three weeks time and wasn't quite in the condition I wanted to be in.
I was already looking at my hand as I squeezed a little too hard on a hold, as the required grip meant really engaging my ring finger (bad pun), when I heard the snapping sound (which was too reminiscent of the noise made when separating a chicken leg into drumstick and thigh portions). My ring finger immediately straightened even though my forearm had not let go one little bit. I immediately felt sick, partly due to my stupidity, partly due to the pain, but mostly because I knew that I would be doing very little climbing in Hueco.
With my finger really sore, and with our inability to book a single reservation for North Mountain, we were both starting to think that the trip might be a bad idea.
Well, three weeks later Anna and I finally arrived in El Paso after a rather arduous series of connecting flights, security gates, biometric data collection and finally reporting our crash-pad as missing at the baggage desk. The next morning (17th December) we were able to head to Walmart to stock up on provisions, then to the airport as our mondo had arrived safely, before finally driving out East to Hueco Tanks.
Hueco in the Snow
We got to the park office at midday and managed to sort ourselves out for camping inside the park (this is a necessity if you don't have reservations, as it allows you to be among the first in line for any walk-in spots or cancellations). Without even having to ask, Gary (the office manager) asked if we wanted to get out climbing on North mountain that day. We immediately said "yes, but we don't have any reservations", to which he kind of laughed and said it was no problem. It would seem that our concerns about getting out climbing might have been for nothing.
Our Camping Spot (with free boulder)
After setting up camp we wanted our first taste of the bouldering at Hueco, so we headed up to the first boulders that you come to (the upper lost boulders). To our dismay, we couldn't even manage some of the V1s on these boulders and we weren't flashing the V0s. Still, at least we had a nice warm tent to sleep in that night.
Spending the entire 12 hours of darknes trying to sleep, whilst both fully clothed and shivering, makes it a lot easier to get up in the morning. Campers in the park are allowed to start their engines at 6am to drive to the park office and queue (the office opens at 8am). We were still trying to sleep when we heard the first cars roll past so we leapt into action (well, kinda crawled a bit), scraping the ice from the car and setting off, hoping that we hadn't left it too late to get in. It was totally fine, we were the third vehicle there and were within the first ten people so were given our back-country permit so that we could go out climbing. We headed back to camp to have our breakfast and wait for the sun to restore some heat to us. At about 10am, washed and fed and warming in the sun we headed up again to explore the boulders and hopefully get up something. This day went a little better, we found more aesthetic lines to climb, got up a V2 or two and actually felt a litle bit like we were climbing.
This pretty much formed the pattern for the trip. Always thinking that we had got up to late, racing to the office, always actually getting one of the first ten place, then breakfasting, showering and finally climbing. After a few more days, we really started to get a feel for both the place and for the style of the bouldering. Hueco really is a fantastic and unique place.
We finally started to seek out the classic problems at the grades and hiked for a very long way (we got lost a bit) to find Ghetto Simulator, which looked (from the photograph in the guidebook at least) to be a long roof problem. I was completely wrong, it is in fact a very safe 10ish meter highball (see photo below), where another boulder follows you at your back so that you (okay me) can step off if you get too gripped or too pumped. I like to think that I got too pumped, but that's just not true. I actually ended up having to work the crux (which is the top few moves on small crimps) after blowing the flash. Anna had an almost identical experience on this problem and thankfully put herself through it enough to successfully redpoint it (redpoint genuinely feels the correct term on this occasion).
After Bailing out on Ghetto Simulator
On Christmas Eve (one week in to the trip), I managed to do a low roof problem called El Techo de los Tres B (made famous by Dave Graham in Dosage IV, but actually a Fred Nicole problem), the footage for this is very bad and is at the bottom of the page. I believe that it has beenm a bit of a trade-route this season (pardon the pun), due to the non-aggresive holds and it being distinctively low-ball. The main reason for me trying it was that not only had a hold improved (not by chipping, just a little piece fell out), but that hold didn't hurt my injured finger. Oh yeah, and the fact that it was a V11/12 and I'm a grade-whore.
El Techo de los Tres B
This was just a blip though, as up to this point I had managed nothing harder than V7. It took another full week before we both got the hang of the style properly and felt like we were starting to get a workout.
To cut this long story a little shorter, we took a couple of commercial tours out to East Mountain and East Spur, took the odd reat day due to snow or general broken-ness and then suddenly felt like we were running out of time.
We only had a couple of days left, so went out on North again where Anna managed to despatch King Cobra, which was not her first V6 in Hueco, but was the one that I was most proud of her for doing, due to the convoluted nature of the problem.
Anna on King Cobra
The very next day (our last proper day out climbing), Anna managed her first Hueco V7 by doing Daily Dick Dose. She had been close on several other days so I had always expected that she would get it done. I hoped that this would pave the way for me to do my final project for the trip.
Anna on Daily Dick Dose
All I had left to try (that wasn't either too hard, or too tweaky, or too technical, or.......) was a problem called Anal Intruder #10. It climbs way better than its name. Anyway, here's the failure footage (needless to say, I didn't do it).
Anal Intruder #10
To sum up, Hueco is an amazing place that exudes a very similar energy as Fontainebleau does for me and was well worth all the hassle. I would absolutely love to return in shape, but geography always makes it a little bit difficult to go somewhere so far away regularly.
Here is the bad (due in the most part to me being a wimp and needing the pad moved) El Techo footage
