Crank'O'Ween 3

Just spreading the word about a bouldering comp being held at my gym next Tuesday, October 23rd in Columbus, Ohio.  More info can be found at Kinetic's website or Facebook page.  There should be tons of good problems, a bunch of new holds, lots of prizes, and a good group of people.  So if you are in the area and are in the mood to crush or if you just want to hang out, stop on by!  If you have not yet been to the gym and have always wanted to check it out, next Tuesday is a pretty good time to do it.  So mark your calendars, put it in your planners, set reminders on your phone, whatever.  Do it!  Do it now!

As for me, I will be there at some point in the evening, but it would depend on what time I get home from work.  I have not yet decided if I will climb.  I have never really enjoyed climbing in competitions since the large crowds, abundance of noise, and craziness of it all is just way too hectic for me.  But we shall see.  Maybe I will enter and use it as a high volume training day...

Must. Climb. Stronger.

The problem with climbing (well, at least for me) is that I always want to climb stronger.  I can remember thinking to myself several years ago when I first started climbing that I would be perfectly content being a solid 5.12 climber.  After a couple of years I climbed my first 5.12 and then I began knocking out more 12's and harder 12's.  Awesome.  I achieved my goal.  However, I wasn't perfectly content like I thought I would be.  I wanted more.  I wanted to be a solid 5.13a/b climber.  That should be pretty reasonable.  If I could climb hard 5.12, easy 5.13 should be attainable with proper training, right?  Then the 13a's started rolling in, and then the 13b's, and then my first 13c.  Awww snap.  Now 13d and maybe even 5.14 seem attainable somewhere in the future.  When does it end?  Does it?  I am already extremely happy with my level of climbing, but there is a part of me that wants to keep going and wants to see how far I can push my abilities.  I have only climbed one two 5.13c's (just added Kaleidoscope to the list this past Friday, yay!), but that doesn't mean anything.  So I would definitely love to add a few more 13c's under my belt and maybe take it to the next level with a 13d and I have a few in mind that I would love to try this fall at the Red.  The season has only just begun so I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.  Will I send one?  None?  Hopefully the training pays off.

My basement training center: homemade adjustable edge and Metolius Simulator

Training.  Most of my progress is a product of training.  I am not a professional climber nor am I a climbing bum.  I work for a living and having a 9 to 5 job only allows me to climb outside on the weekends (well, it is actually more like 7 to 7 because of my looong commute).  Plus, I live 4 hours away from climbing, making any sort of after work trip impossible.  So the only way for me to improve and climb stronger is by training in the gym or at home.  The first few years that I climbed I didn't train much.  I just went to my university's gym a few times a week.  Then a bouldering co-op called Kinetic opened up in Columbus and I started going there.  The awesome crew and the great facility was very motiviating and after a while I could tell that I was getting stronger, slowly, but still getting stronger.  However, it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized that I would need to actually train and not just boulder around in the gym in order for me to improve faster.  Yes, bouldering a ton would eventually make me stronger, but it was definitely an inconsistent way of training, and inconsistent training methods lead to inconsistent results.  So, I decided to do some research into training for climbing, which led me to articles by Mike Doyle, Mike Anderson, and Kris Hampton on periodization training.

I won't go into too much detail, but periodization basically breaks down training into several phases: first a strength training phase, followed by a power phase, and then an endurance phase.  At first I wasn't really strict with my training as I tagged on exercises after my bouldering sessions, but I did see some improvement as it did help me to climb my first 5.13 and a buunch of others.  I probably continued with this half-assed approach to training for about a year or so and found a good bit of success.  But the cycle continued and I wanted to climb even harder.  So things got a little more serious last winter.  I was a little more strict with my training and began keeping a logbook of my exercises as my approach to training became a little more scientific.  As a result, this past spring and summer I was able to climb more hard routes at my level and redpointed my first 5.13c. 

Then, this past summer I stumbled upon Eva Lopez and her methodology for training.  Being an engineer and biomechanist I loved her scientific approach to training.  Her methods were easy, short in duration, and scientifically/physiologically made sense to me.  So I thought I would give it a shot and made some tweaks to my periodizatoin cycle to incorporate some of her exercises and her ideas (not sure if it can be considered a periodization cycle anymore...). 


Bring it on!


So our training was cut short (I guess we will have to start earlier next time) due to good weather at the Red and we had to skip over a few exercises that were in our schedule.  However, we did manage to get in a couple weeks of power endurance training.  I would like to think that this new training method is working for us.  I just sent my second 5.13c this past Friday, Nadya made 5.12 look easy, and our season has only just begun.  Hopefully it wasn't a fluke.  Only time will tell.