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.
No comments:
Post a Comment