Educating your body to climb harder and pushing through a plateau...

This is one of the most difficult elements of sport and training and the reason for that is simple to me:

It is difficult...

Finding ways to shock your body into change from where it is, to where you are trying to take it, can be confusing but I suppose the simple aim is to teach it what you want it to do:

If you want it to climb 8a, then you must introduce it to 8a... If not, your body (& mind) cant really prepare for the intensity and this shock to the system begins to shut down your normal skills and strengths that have seen you in good stead on 7b+. It's the same in training...

Training for 8a from 7b+ requires more than one training push and various steps/plateaus have to be over come. To change  like this, you need to introduce change that can position you for the next step in being capable of accepting the next level of training.

When I was training to climb 8a again, I new I had to get my body and mind to variouse levels that were not performance inclines but steps and plataeus that needed to be broken and stepped up to. To get from 7b+ to 8a there are probably 3 key phases:

1. Increasing core finger strength from a capacity to do v4 to v7
2. Increasing capacity to recover on F6c/F7a (route dependant) by driving endurance
3. Increasing Power Endurance to cope with going from F7a ground into font 6c to finsih on F7b ground. Thats an 8a!

The body struggles more to maintain a capacity to climb hard sequences in the middle or at the end of a route. Having the capacity to power up and deliver a power endurance sequence then recover on route and fininsh up a pumpy 7b wall is so much harder than firing out a harder 5 move PE blast ground up.

You need to educate your body that it can climb 7b in a mildy pumped state after powering up on a lower section. You need to educate your body that it can recover from the initial 7a entry wall and power up into a bloc crux sequence and how different it feels from doing it at ground level. You need to educate your mind to climb the route in managable sections (or even moves) maintaining a concentrated high level of effort to maintain success for the whole route.

Sometimes to break through a plataeu, you have to be radical to make that step up. I recall last year going onto Requiem in the morning ( a spooky hanging crack line) then driving 90 miles up to Glen Coe that afternoon then walking up to Fated Path in the evening to try and get myself to relax above gear and bolts again.

I had been struggling  badly to climb relaxed above gear and after that day of scary exposure to an E8 6b and a big hanging 7c+ wall, I suitablably shocked myself into relaxing above the gear again. But it was a difficult task with my head wondering what the hell I was doing to myself, trying to get up Requiem in the morning then fininshing with an evening attempt above the bolts on a spooky hanging wall in Glen Coe... It worked and I found myself moving more freely above gear in slightly less daunting environments... shocking? not really...Difficult? Definately...



Will & I on Requiem (E8 6b, 8a+) at Dumbarton Rock in the morning
(Photo: Ben Lister)



Me working Fated Path (7c+) in the early evening in Glencoe
(Photo Graham Harrison)