The Way of the Monkey

Last week began with the first niggling’s of injury, turns out I have a mild case of medial epicondylosis more commonly known as golfers elbow (more on this very soon). This really sucks! Though it has coincided well with three days of top rope guiding and a weekend away in Geelong to see my brother off travelling.

The week-end away in G-Town was great, parties, bonfires delicious food and good friends. Oh man the cook up on Friday night; Reece D’s own line caught Tuna fresh outta Portland pan seared with lemon and saffron. Nicko’s premium lamb cutlets cooked in rosemary and garlic and I smashed out roast potatoes and pumpkin, hummus, yogurt, kalamata olives, pita’s roast almonds and dates. Put away of course with plenty of good xxxx and vino. Sat night was a boys night with three different types of meat (some dumpster swag of-course) and Texas Hold ‘em.

Six days of rest and rehab exercises with no pain meant I felt good to climb again. I needed easy climbing with not too much serious pulling so soloing on the watchtower faces was the name of the game.

Lately I have been all about the science, quantifying my climbing setting measurable bench marks and pushing a little bit more each time. It has been great, but injury takes you a step back from that and today was such a natural days climbing, putting a smile on my face for its simplicity, significance (not all things are measurable) and freeness (new word TM by me).

Solo rock climbing, that is climbing without a rope is complete commitment. A feeling so often taken away from us by laws and rules that govern our society. Literally taking your life into your hands. At times it may be a little scary but more often it is a complete liberation. Engaging yourself with the rock, feeling its texture, warmth and toughness on your hands and allowing yourself to find the positions allowing you to move upwards. There is no pausing for gear, no hassle of ropes, no partners just you and stone.

BULLETS FROM UNDERNEATH WATCHTOWER
FACES, ONCE A SHOOTING RANGE.

When you can remove yourself from the thoughts and chat that usually accompany normal existence and just focus on movement and climbing, everything feels natural and is meant to be. When you can remove conscious decision from you, movement and climbing, and allow yourself to be subconsciously climbing it is a state of meditation. The flow and liquid kinetics of your mind, body and rock are no longer separate but one unit, perhaps just nature itself. Nothing else I have ever done has given me a this feeling, like moving beyond our normal understanding of time and place.

Whilst walking back down after one of these rare moments today I started thinking on it. Our conscious minds are really our only barrier to taking seemingly impossible dreams and making them real. The lizards I saw on the face today, didn’t think about climbing they just did, the rock doesn’t think about forming it just does, and as I released my conscious mind I just climbed. Can and cannot are not realities of the earth but restrictions put in place by our own conscious thought. So often the first and biggest barrier towards reaching our goals is only ourselves. Today Kerryn (she didn’t transcend time and space, she’s not into that) who currently has pneumonia could easily have used this as an excuse to do nothing and feel sorry for herself, despite of her sickness she chose to come climbing. You must willingly allow yourself the opportunity to experience, without engaging into something you are just making excuses.

Like a wondering Buddhist monk seeking enlightenment, perhaps gaining strength and power through knowledge and understanding rather than campusing and dead hangs is the key to climbing like a monkey. After all I doubt a monkey thinks so much about the next move, he just makes it.

Ain't no Sunshine

Nati days and deskbound nights.

Who would have thought living in Nati would produce the busiest days of my life? I guess the business of been the usual full-time climbing bum by day and turning into a caped study nerd by night with a guiding career to boot takes up a few hours!

Things have been pretty hectic since Kez and I put our around Aus trip on hold; I have taken on a full time study load via correspondence, doing a Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science through CQUniversity. After two years of reading texts on training for climbing, training methodology and principles, and sports psychology I decided the only real way of collating all this information, and to get real training smart would be to get a degree in it. I have also put all this theory I have learnt from prior reading into practise and finally written myself and started a proper training program for my climbing, and of course it’s been guiding season these last few months!

I’m pretty pumped after 6 days in Rockhampton, Queensland for Uni practicals to get back to the rock. It was a needed break though after my first, albeit short training cycle. Mind you it was on the back of October-November in the Blue Mountains and December-March in Tasmania, which brings us to Natimuk some time near the start of March. Putting all the training theory together on paper was pretty easy really, and then I set myself some goals. We always have dreams and aspire to do things but this time I wrote them down; began to quantify things. Doing this for climbing has always scared me because I killed my passion for sailing like this when I was in my late teens, I stopped having fun racing and it became a chore. So far so good though, I am more driven than ever before to send!

I began a short periodised training cycle with a rest period to coincide with my residential school, with so much climbing behind me I skipped the base endurance phase and started a 5 week hypertrophy phase (hypertrophy is increases muscle bulk ie growing guns) getting on lots of mid 20s routes been very static with my climbing and fingerboarding quite regularly and of course recording it all, especially the fingerboardsing program so I could consistently increase intensity.

Climbing on plastic has always given me the shits, but I knew when I started studying I would have to sacrifice some rock time and train on a woody as it’s quicker and I don’t get distracted and loose a whole day climbing instead of a short training session! So I started to integrate some woody sessions into my climbing and have climbing study days. It’s pretty easy to isolate and make repetitive movements on plastic which is the way to get strong. As my hypertrophy phase came to a close it coincided very well with 5 days guiding, what better way to taper down a phase than getting paid to climb Arapiles classics all week?!

Then it happened… SERPENTINE! I really have this rad German dude Marcin and this rad Pommy fella Matt to thank for this, they were just so amped to get on it I couldn’t hold off anymore and tried it. I had four goes over two days preceding my taper down, then came back and Bam the send was on. Of course the next day Marcin was psyched for Trojan 25, I have been holding onto this one for ages too, always thinking I’ll get stronger, better, faster so I can onsight it, but I had really run out of excuses. For me to onsight Trojan was a real big dream, 25 Arapiles trad ground up first go that’s where it’s at. The dream came true I was so pleased with this one.

Next came a power phase for 2 weeks, I did a bunch of 1-3 move maximal boulders and some campusing and chipping away at a project Cobwebs. Nothing much came from this until I rested, started a 2 week power endurance phase and then I sent Cobwebs on my last climbing day before going to Queensland. It was a very successful few months for me, feeling stronger and smoother on harder routes than ever before. I managed to smash out:

Trojan 25 Onsight

World Party crux pitch 27 Redpoint

Power, Corruption and Lies 27 Redpoint

Mind Arthritis 27 Redpoint

Cobwebs 28 Redpoint

Serpentine crux pitch 29 Redpoint

Wolfgang Guillich’s words ‘The brain is the most important muscle in climbing’ essentially put together where I’m at right now. Been so busy but learning so much about climbing and from university and of course the latest pines crew and all their collective knowledge have inspired me to keep pushing physically and mentally. So again the trip to Queensland was a welcome rest, physically and mentally from climbing but exciting and demanding for education and the future of guiding and coaching climbing opportunities. I’m mega psyched to get back into training and start a bigger-meaner-harder-longer program for winter!

But really that’s all well and good, climbing is climbing, what has really been keeping me smiling and adding so many more hours onto the day is friends; The Tassie crew, Blue Mountains massif, all the Nati locals, the Pines party and Kezza, all the fun and good times and memories that come along with this rock climbing are the true inspiration.