Climbed last night at the works with Nat, my forearms were still sore (a rarity) and it took a little while to get going, after that I was climbing pretty well even dispatching the red problem from the groin tearing sit start, first go. It didn't last long and I soon started to fade however due to having paid for entry (my membership is now dead) I was unwilling to quite. A tonne of black problems later and I felt both wrecked and stupid. Stop strong. Always stop strong.
Today I went to the gym to justify a forthcoming rest by tiring out all of the other parts of my body. The gym was heaving, I got lucky and as I walked in someone stepped away from a smith machine. Decline, flat and incline bench followed by behind the neck and in front of the next press. One arm push downs and then tricep split rope. It didn't take long and I felt reasonably strong (i've had a little while off), however the gym was far too busy. I thought the sunshine biceps brigade would of been put off by now but they seem pretty resolved to block the place up.
Climbing wise I'm still unsure as what to do: Enjoy the remainder of the summer being weak and failing on things I've done before? or train and do a bit (not great for motivation), the thing is I want to book a holiday for the end of the summer, it seems pretty pointless to do that if i'm weak as I hate failing on easy things.
I'm still unwilling to join the works mind you, the problems just aren't that hard and it gets depseratelly hot in there as soon as one ray of sunshine hits the building. The foundry suffers from the same and lazy route setting during the summer months but its close to me and DOES offer a training board, Nat has a membership down the works though and it seems utter madness for me to disappear to one wall as she crosses town to another. Oh I don't know.
It turns out my dissertation supervisor is a perfectionist and clearly, i'm not. Her latest comments on my report have annoyed me somewhat, I put a lot of effort in to get all the additional pieces of analysis that she wanted and it comes back with nit picking comments on it, less than 12 hours after!!! Completely unnecessary.
This weekend will be the first in four that we've had no plans, which should be nice. Maybe I should strive to tag along for some climbing somewhere?
Oh some news: Newman dispatched Urgent Action (F8a+ at kilnsey if you didn't know) and Bloodsport (Fnt 8a+ Shaftoe) this week. He's going well.
I spoke to Keith briefly about what I should do to regain some of my previous strength, the answer was (sensibly) that he couldn't give any advice before knowing exactly where I'm at and recommended a full strength test which seemed a bit heavy for this week. Maybe next week, the results should be interesting. I still wish we had the school, one session up there and I'd know straight away...
3 comments:
Whats happend to the school Paul?
I think what you need most after your prolonged and repeated injury layoffs is to get out and do some climbing. Get some rock miles in, re-acquaint yourself with real climbing, do some good climbs and enjoy the summer.
Don’t bother getting a membership to either wall until autumn. Go to Dan or Nige’s board if you feel the need, or just pay full price for occasional visits to walls.
Taking the long view, you have loads of time to get strong, but it’s realistically too late to be your absolute best this summer. Have a good summer and then knuckle down to training in Autumn/Winter. You have half of summer left, get out and about, go places you haven’t been, get on the hard routes you aspire to (if only to see how strong you need to get), do some onsighting. Don’t waste your time endlessly going on routes you have done already, you will only feel depressed when they feel harder then you remember/ think they should feel.
In my experience, if you get out on the crags you will quickly develop realistic and inspiring goals for what you can do within a season. Don’t get hung up if this isn’t breaking new ground, you’ve just been broken and re-built for god sake! Pick an inspiring destination for the end of summer, but with a wide range of objectives so you will have something to go at regardless of how strong you end up. Preferably somewhere new which will feel fresh and where you won’t end up falling into the trap of trying things you have already been on (which may end in frustrated disappointment).
The last thing you want to do is go in too hard too soon and end up injured yet again without even a brief window of pleasurable climbing.
Don’t forget, being psyched and having fun does wonders for your climbing, ask Dobbin!
word.
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