So it’s just over 2 months since I made some sort of vague pact to “get strong or die trying” all whilst maintaining the pretence that I can still get up the odd fitness route. Firstly, I’d taken the brave (no, it’s not that easy trusting your training with another person!) step of giving Ollie Torr my forearms to try and finally turn me from being chronically weak for the grade. Secondly, I turned my back on the usual pattern of a massive volume of climbing and went for quality. No more exhaustive days and more of that “stop when you feel strong” attitude.
Would you trust your forearms with this man? You bet! (c) Pete Kneen
How’s it gone, you’re probably wondering? Have I turned my life around and have I stopped falling off pretty much everything above V8 that’s not a crack? The quick answer is it’s gone great and I’ve ticked more hard boulders than ever before in my life, but the longer answer is slightly more interesting in my opinion…..
- Dropping the volume.
Oh my God. I know this probably sounds obvious to most people out there, but when you’ve lived a life of grinding yourself to a pulp most days of the week then you’re amazed at how much spare energy you have when you’re pulling less than a 1000 moves a day. It felt amazing! Filling the day with just a boulder session, fingerboard, rings and bar work meant I had so much energy. For the first few weeks of following Ollie’s plan, I was getting to 9pm each night and having to go out for long runs and do boring housework to try and burn my hyper-activity off. I was absolutely wired. Even though I was knackered in a specific way from the strength work, the overall body tiredness wasn’t there.
More hangs, fewer moves! (c) Pete Kneen
Lesson: if you want to get some much needed energy back into your life of kids, work, family and climbing then drop the volume.
2. Fingerboarding & Rings
This part was really a revelation to me. I’ve been doing a combination of complimentary rings and fingerboard work that was designed to work on the issues I had in both the shoulders and forearms. I’ve fingerboarded for a number of years now, but never before have I had such quick gains. I very much owe this to the nature of the complimentary work – I think some parts of the chain were so weak that I was held back by them significantly. I further see this now that I can watch Ollie do a session on the rings (he’s a beast – but an ex-gymnast, so I can’t big him up too much) and tie this into his finger strength scores that originally impressed me so much.
Ollie Torr. No messin’ (c) Pete Kneen
Lesson: if you’re very weak in one region, don’t just look for causation at that point.
3. Going to Raven Tor
For years I’ve hated The Tor. It’s exposed every weakness I had and still have. Until last year the hardest problem I’d done there was a V7. I’d tried all of the V8-10s and couldn’t get anywhere near them and in particular Ben’s Roof seemed miles away for me – its basic crimp move midway hit me right where it hurt…. in my spongy fingers. Going to this venue whilst following a new regime of training has been the most beneficial thing I’ve done to my “normal style” climbing (AKA not crack climbing) as I’ve been able to lay the improvements from training straight onto real rock. As I ticked my way through various problems this Autumn I thought it might be worth me going back to the nemesis 15 year project of The Sheep at Burbage, Yup, a lowly V5 that has kicked my ass for over a decade. With a mate Chris in tow (he seems to have been my lucky charm this year) I managed to break the trend and actually did the damn thing. Unbelievable! I’d managed to climb more than one V11 in the previous month but that V5 still felt harder (see video at bottom)
Doing Steve’s V12/8A+ link (c) Chris Fox
Lesson: Go to Raven Tor as it’ll get you up your real projects.
So in summary, it’s gone pretty darn well. For the first year ever, I’ve had people moaning at me that I can’t claim to be weak any more (got to be a good thing?) and a number of route projects I’d written off as being too cruxy are now possible. Working with Ollie has been absolutely brilliant and made me realise that having been a coach for so long I’d forgotten how good it is to have someone who’s watching out for you and who you can moan at when it’s all going wrong. As (mostly) they’ll tell you it’s going to be alright and you will tick The Sheep one day…
Boulders climbed this Autumn below – for those that like to see the numbers. Admittedly I still snuck around doing quite a lot of long problems and link ups, but I couldn’t even do the sections last year as individual V7-9’s. I know it still doesn’t look great, but anyone who know’s me well will tell you it’s very different from the previous year where I did 2 x V8, whatever the length!
1 x V12
4 x V10/11
2 x V9/10
1 x V9
2 x V8
Tom Randall Climbing 