Tuesday 28 June 2011

Its been a while!

For the last 10 weeks I've not really had anything of interest to report; slow and steady healing with intermittent bursts of training, a handful of wild nights out and an ongoing battle against the evil that is boredom! But its been a valuable experience in many ways. The first few steps I walked brought such a feeling of liberation comparable to natural highs like the elation of finishing your last exam or the first time you have sex! But anyway, one of the things that has kept me sane and maintained my psyche for climbing is the endorphin pumping training sessions.

I am now a total advocate of brief but intense periods of training with adequate rests in between; say 2 weeks of '2 days on 1 day off' before a week of rest, and when you return to training your body's adaptations have had a chance to manifest and you can train at a higher intensity once again. I have no idea if this is the most physically efficient way to structure training, but I at least found that it allowed my motivation to be maintained throughout the 10 weeks; I relished the week off, but by the end of the rest-week I was craving training once again, even without having climbing to give me a measurable reward.

But the time has now come... I went to the climbing wall with the intention of taking it nice n steady with a bit of top-roping, but the ankle felt so solid that in my first session back I ended up flashing a 7a and just dropping a 7b flash on the last move, and again failing on the last move of a 7c last week. My levels of power have been hard to gauge; I've been doing some moves in the bouldering room that I don't think I could have done before, one big dynamic move in particular, jumping between two first-joint 2-finger pockets to hold a wild cut-loose!! It felt gnarly, but I'm not sure, my proprioception might be a bit out. But regardless, things are looking promising for my return to proper climbing, which will probably be some point in July.

Until then I'll continue with the training and top-roping until my ankle is totally bomber and ready to start taking some sweet lobs! So to make up for my lack of big sends and for my disappointingly stagnant logbook (the last route I did was on the 3rd of April!) here is a link to a little training video I've been making to keep the psyche going and get used to this new editing software. It will probably end up being an intro to the Majorca/Font film I'm gona be making; lots of DWS, lots of bouldering; lots of climbing with no strings attached. But for now... just training. Hope you enjoy it :-)

http://vimeo.com/25739161

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