Talking, climbing, practising

This weekend was full of Smart activity :)  On  Friday evening I gave a talk at Plas Y Brenin on psychological skills and climbing, titled Use your Head.  A lot of the talk was about thinking and some of the ways thinking can be both useful and unhelpful to climbers.  It was a small but lively audience, and I was asked lots of interesting questions.  I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!

Saturday I went to practise what I preach when I had an evening bouldering session.  I made an effort to try every problem rather than leaving out the ones I thought I couldnt do.  I also spent a lot of time thinking about how I did the problems I could do, and realised how much power I was putting through my legs to get success.  I was bouldering with my friend Di, and was able to pass this knowledge on to her.  It can be tricky sometimes working out why something is working for you, but knowing what does work means you can repeat it in other scenarios.

On Sunday I worked with Tony, who coincidentally was overusing his top half and neglecting his lower body.  We spent some time indoors in the morning, looking at foot technique and balance, and then how to give yourself time to refocus on the lead, before heading outdoors to the slate quarry.  Tony did a great job of using his feet and balance on a couple of climbs, as well as refocusing when things got tough which was fantastic to see.

I rounded off my weekend with another quick bouldering session, again working on some problems which I think are way beyond me, but hoping that over time I can work out the moves and begin to see them as possible. 

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Indoor climbing session - a bit of training

This evening despite being pretty tired after work, I decided to put Dave McLeod's advice into practice and go try some problems.  I have been reading '9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes', and one of the key messages I got from it was that really good climbers try harder, more often and for longer than other climbers.  This was also a message I picked when listening to Pete Robins run through his talk for the upcoming Llanberis Mountain Film Festival.  Pete's talk was quite inspiring as he spoke about something I think all of us can relate to - how to break out of a performance plateau.  I wont spoil it for you - come to Llamff and listen!

Anyway, returning to my wall session, I tried a variety of problems and resolved to give them just one more go than usual. I also repeated a few that I did manage to do, something I dont normally tend to do.  It was certainly different, and as I keep saying, variety in training is good.  

Tomorrow am biking to work to keep my fitness up for another quick Scottish hit, and I will be back at the wall on Thursday to do some routes.  Monday evening saw me in a yoga class, getting thoroughly stretched and employing intensive concentration and breathing practice.  So a good week fitness wise!