A decent discussion of the principles I apply to structure my bouldering sessions, both during lockdown and at any other time.
The warm up for climbing is fairly simple and there's no need to overcomplicate it unless you have poor conditioning or injury. But there are definitely some basics to get right. This episode (Vlog #35) goes through them.
Many of you then asked how I warm up at the crag, especially when there are few options for warming up. In this episode (Vlog 36) I warm up on the crux moves of my 9a project. Just take it step by step!
People ask me over and over 'what's your secret?' to climbing hard, maintaining level into my 40s, balancing climbing with work and family etc etc. So I felt I should address this 'meta question' of secrets of training directly.
In this episode (Vlog #32) I put in a day setting the men's final for the Ice Factor's drytool comp in Kinlochleven. Trying not to impale myself with sharp tools and hopefully getting some fitness together as winter approaches.
Vlog #16 In preparation for my climbing goal for later in the year, I reset my whole board to sharpen my best training tool. In this episode I get into why I did it and what the strategy was.
Vlog #8: Winter is coming. Are you ready? In this episode I go through the fundamentals of what I do to prepare for the mixed climbing season. Dry tooling, cardio training, and some other important points that lead the dry tooling beasts to still fail to achieve their potential on the actual winter routes.
Why is it that some climbers have a badass home training setup and plenty of time to use it, yet they are not improving as fast as some who don't? Set it up and use it sub-optimally and your home wall can be just another source of plateaux in your climbing performance.
We all think wooden hangboards are a no brainer. They are nice to use, they save your skin. They allow you to do more training. More folks are thinking the same about wood holds for the actual climbing. They are not a new invention of course!