The Dream Machine

I can't remember which training sessions i last 'blogged' about so i'll start from Friday. Nobody else wanted to train, I went up the board feeling less than psyched. After warming up I seemed to summon some motivation from somewhere and went to have the best rings session yet. Lots of shouting was involved as there was nobody to laugh at me, it was still nowhere near as good as keith's ranting when he fails on things.
My family visited on Saturday (Dad's Birthday), Natalie and I finished off our Christmas shopping and then we went to Thyme, the place is amazing, all of the alcohol from the rising sun and the pre-meal mulled wine went straight to my head.
Sunday: Ned, Dave and I did rings.
Monday: I did the blue circuit down the works (whoever set this obviously has a heel fetish!). My finger felt as though it might react badly to climbing again for the first five problems but after that I didn't really feel it at all. The next day there was zero swelling which is a relief, i'm going to make sure to get back to it gently and not cause myself some other injury in the process.
Tues: Very sore....Visit B&Q and the Foundry for odds n sods
Wed: Rings with a difference... My odds n sod's were tied together to create a 'Dream Machine' (it gives weighted assistance to you in the rings! Referred to as a dream machine by gymnasts as you can do exercises that you can only dream of). Said contraption is in the bag with the rings, simply chuck it all out, slip the 2nd pulley over the beam at the other end of the roof and your ready to go!
After warming up Dave and I tried the iron cross with a fair amount of assistance (20 kg, which is 30% for dave and 35% for me)...
It's worth noting at this stage we are only trying to learn the correct form!
Dave:

Myself:

All in all not a bad effort, I think the rings needed to be higher for dave and my elbows needed to start of straighter although I was happy with the end result.
Finished the session well with 2 sets of 2 non left biased muscle ups.
Works again tonight....

Mini Mini

So did it work or does it just look sh*t?

I forgot one important part of the previous post: I touched my toes after 5 minutes of stretching, properly as well no bent legs or any cheating. It's still dull!

My turn for Man Flu!

Last night it was once again time for the rings, I was feeling pretty ropey but didn't really realise how ill I was until I started doing skin the cats, being inverted with blocked sinuses and unable to breath through my mouth (too much gurning going on) I felt like I was about to explode. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the evening. I cut the number of sets after about midway through the workout and failed on muscle ups. After this I went home and sulked. I reckon I caught it from dobbins bright yellow cod piece ('Banana Guard') that I currently have kicking around the flat.
Natalie was away the other night for work. I was pretty bored so started mucking around with tutorials on the Gimp (photshop alternative), I started mucking around with tilt shift effects that make real things look like models (maybe the gimp is an appropriate name?), anway I think I did a pretty good job with a picture of my mini, will post at a later date. Here's an example:

Rounds 2 & 3

Wednesday came and it was time for round 2 of the rings, Dave Mason was psyched as well so that made 3 of us. Round 2 started wasn't looking good right from the off, my lower back was still absolutely trashed and my form was all over the place. I got majorly mocked my Vicky for my lack of core and my efforts at doing L-sits, and then later for my inflexibility. Dave and I dispatched our first muscle ups after a long discussion about what constitutes the 'false grip', everyone believing that they knew best until I produced a video of some beast from crossfit.com .
Friday came and i still wasn't ready to go back to climbing, dave lee and I however were all psyched for rings. At this stage my body was starting to react slightly better to the rings, it didn't ache anywhere near as much and my form was improving with each exercise. 2 minutes of stretching vastly improved my flexibility and hence the length of time I could do L-sits for. Dave crushed a load of muscle ups.
During the weekend I visited my family up north, we had a meal out on the saturday somewhere posh that gave Nat a chance to wear a stupidly priced dress she recently acquired. Hatton lost, didn't watch it. This morning (the day of round 4) I awoke with a headache, snuffly nose and a sore throat, bugger. I am no supping masses of lemsip whilst cursing my computer that froze about 15minutes after I left it working away on Friday night. My supervisor is still away.

Core Meltdown

I've had a bit of a negative outlook on climbing since returning from Font, I said to myself after my leg that if I struggled to get back into climbing, I'd just accept it and take it easy until my body could cope with it. I've obviously rushed things a little because my fingers are on strike! Someone famous in the climbing world once said that its easy to get strong, its just hard to get strong without getting injured and he hit the nail right on the head. Its evident in a number of people.
Anyway, now I have an A2 injury, these really aren't good for someone who climbs in the manner I do, I crimp everything even jugs. I've been working on open handing and have seen some improvements but these are slow and the collateral ligament sprain on my left hand stops me doing dead hangs anyway.
After reading Ned's blog and reading some other stuff I realized that above doing some sit ups and leg raises i've never really targeted my core. Something else made me remember that Dobbin has been at the board a number of times doing crazy things with gym rings. A quick text to Dobbin and he, Dave and I were all lined up for a rings session early this afternoon. Unfortunately dobbin called in sick early on and the work mounted on me during the day so it was called off.
Just as I was leaving the office/research group room or whatever I should call it, Leeroy rang and he had the necessary knowledge and devotion to show me the way of the rings.
The workout entirely crushed me, highlighting extreme weakness in my stomach and lower back although all the pulling bits of my upper body seemed to be fairly strong. Muscle ups were left until the end but neither of us really understood all this false grip stuff and hence failed miserably. I came home psyched and sore and did some digging on the Internet looking for Dob's workout (I didn't find it), instead i found:



surely if the woman at the end manages one (despite it being very shaky) dense and I can too?

Pictures like this:


make me think that there can be absolutely no harm in doing the kind of workouts that he would have done (even if he was stronger when he was 6 than I am now!)...

Whilst digging I also found this:



how crazy is that? granted some of it isn't that strength related but they prove their strength further on in the video. Plus any man that will lunge his leg through a metal ring at high speed is brave beyond words. I imagine muscle beach to be a strange place, very odd too that it has spawned two very strange cultures, bodybuilding being one and the other being dangerous surfing through abandoned amusement piers that evolved into modern day skateboarding.

I'm going to ache tomorrow...

The one and only...

...photo that the camera allowed us to take:



I reckon the bleaustone boys copied the sloper I have my rh on for one of their holds, its identical I swear.

Not climbed this weekend, after reading ned's blog I think i'll do a load of core stuff for a couple of weeks, maybe some ring training as well. My experience with A2 injuries is that I cannot help but make them worse by trying to climb (even easy stuff).