Training Success/Breakthough Stories

[tedwelser]

So- I sent my first Moonboard V7 tonight! www.moonboard.com/problems/improvvisazione/  That is a big accomplishment for me, given that MoonBoard problems tend to be all about the power and pull and provide little room for nuance. (I am mainly bouldering indoors this fall, given work and life constraints). That brings me to 7 V7's in a season, which I think is more than I ever managed at Hueco when I was in my 20's. So, now, at 45 I am back at the highest level I got to in the 1990's. I sent a couple V8's then, but I feel very close to sending one now. I hope to go to Chatt before new years, and if so, I am psyched to see how things feel.

[jetjackson]

Woot! I scraped my first '5.12' into 2016, a 25 on the Ewbanks scale called Little Wednesday. I've learned my lesson about getting on long endurance routes at my max, when I haven't trained for them, so I focussed on only getting on short powerful, bouldery routes. Walked past this route on our way to something else but had to get on it and managed to send it on my second attempt.

I'd done a 5 HB rehab cycle on the RPTC in the lead up to leaving the states for Australia, to get the niggles out of a few lingering finger injuries - it's helped a bit. I think I got through this route due to it favoring my strengths - height and power. 25 translates to 5.12a, or 5.12b depending on the chart you look at - I don't have a lot of reference, but I think this would only be 5.12a in the states, and probably soft at that. The crux on this route is the bump from the crimp to the rail. 

Footage of the send here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cDF4iizfPk

[MarkAnderson]

Nice! Your links not working for me. Where is the route? What's it called?

[aikibujin]

Dec 31, 2016 14:42:20 GMT -7 jetjackson said:

Footage of the send here - youtu.be/1cDF4iizfPk 

Nicely done! Australia is a cool country, that video brings back good memories. The link you provided didn't work for me, but I was able to find it by searching the ID of the video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cDF4iizfPk

[jetjackson]

Thanks aikibujin - I also updated the original post with a working link.

The route is called Little Wednesday, it's at a crag called Brooyar in South-East Queensland, Australia - www.thecrag.com/climbing/australia/brooyar/photos - photos of the crag there. I'm come home for Christmas, and so getting stuck into some of the local climbing. Here's another shot from the nearby Mount Coolum, where Robbie Phillips put up a 5.14b called Haggisaurus Rex.  

[MarkAnderson]

I found the grade conversions to be pretty murky below about 26. Then you throw in the variability between crags and styles and gets pretty tough to do a direct comparison that is uniformly accurate. In the end I generally assumed that 21 was 5.10, 22 was 11a and 11b, 23 was llc and lower 11d, 24 was harder 11d and 12a, 25 was 12b and so on. I don't know if that was accurate, I definitely ran into to some pretty easy "12a's" at 24, but it kept me from getting in over my head.

[phil4000]

So thanks to the RCTM and getting some lessons I managed to jump from 5.11a to 5.12a in 2016....getting in my hardest route ever on New Years Eve as the sun was setting. So about as last minute as I could possibly make it! I also managed to improve my UK traditional grade from E2 5b to E4 6a, again doing my hardest lead just days before NYE. I had a couple of rare days when fear of falling and not getting phased by exposure seemed to happen and allowed to try hard, and really enjoy it. Currently rewriting a new program for 2017. Thank you for the great book!

[octopus]

I changed the routine up for my 3rd season of RCTM by adding max hangs to my 3 weeks of base fitness, and dropping the strength phase from 6 grips to 3. I finished my 6th session and have PRs in all 3 grips by 45 lbs, 20 lbs, and 35 lbs. With 2 more sessions still to go, I am already super psyched and hoping that I can translate the new strength onto the rock!

Trying very hard not to overestimate the gains and set myself up for failure on the season.

[daustin]

Half psyche, half bummer...

After about a full year of being relegated to training & climbing indoors, I finally had the chance to get on real rock this past weekend. Went to Red Rock for 3 days of sport climbing (all the snow in the canyons shut down any ideas of getting on any long routes). Since it had been so long since I'd climbed outside, I didn't have super high expectations for performance even though I've been feeling quite strong in my training.

I set a stretch goal to flash Fear & Loathing III, which is a steep, sustained 5.12a at the Wall of Confusion. This would be my hardest flash by 2 letter grades, so it was a bit of a stretch goal. On my flash go, I fell on the last hard move of the climb due to grabbing the wrong side of a rail. After a little rest, I got back on the climb and redpointed it without too much stress. Even though I failed my goal of flashing it, I'm still quite pleased that I RPed on my 2nd go, which is the fastest at the grade for me. And in hindsight, I don't think it was a stretch goal to go for the flash -- I do think that if I hadn't muffed up the beta on that last hard move, I would have had a very good chance of hanging on for the flash. Oh well!

So that's the psyche, now for the bummer. After that first day of climbing, I was totally exhausted. I felt like I'd dug myself into some sort of energy deficit hole. Eating a big dinner and drinking a ton of water helped, so I didn't think too much of it. Then, I woke up the next day with a fever, a bad cough, and a feeling of general malaise. Just my luck to come down with the flu for the first time in years during my first climbing trip in a year! I took some medicine hoping it would knock down the fever enough that I could push through for at least another day of climbing, but to no avail. Day 2 was spent as a belay slave for my buddy. I felt even worse on Day 3, so I got on an earlier flight home where I've been sweating and shivering ever since.

tl;dr - After a year of no outdoor climbing, I achieved a breakthrough on a trip to Red Rock, though not in the way I expected. However, my trip was cut short due to a bad case of the flu

[MarkAnderson]

Normally I would "like" a post on this thread, but I definitely don't like the flu. Congrats on the quick send/near flash, and sorry to hear about the flu. Shit happens, but at least you have the training records to demonstrate how much you've improved, even if you didn't come away with a huge tick list.

[aikibujin]

Yesterday I sent a route I've been working on since the beginning of this year, a 5.12b called Big Dog in Clear Creek Canyon. While the grade itself is not impressive (somebody from this forum walked it as a warm up onsight, AFTER a hard hangboarding session!), it does represent sort of a milestone for me.

The last time I sent a 5.12b was in 2006, a little more than ten years ago. The short story is I got into rock climbing when I moved from Florida to Maryland for my first job out of college. I liked climbing so much, I quit my job after I paid off my student loan and saved up a little bit of cash, and went dirtbagging overseas. By virtue of climbing almost everyday, I was redpointing 5.12s after just a few years of climbing.

Unfortunately, after sending my last 5.12b (China White in Yangshuo, China), circumstances prevented me from climbing very often in the next ten years. I would still climb every few months when I traveled to Yangshuo, but my grade quickly regressed. When I finally started climbing consistently near the end of 2014, after I got a full-time job and (more importantly) health insurance, I was pumping off 5.9s. The agreement I made with my wife in order for me to start climbing again, is that I can climb once a week in the gym, and maybe once on the weekend if the weather is nice. With so little climbing, I was not able to get any improvement. Frustrated, I asked Mark for advice, and he told me I should train on a hangboard at home. So I built a wobbly frame in my garage, mounted a hangboard with a pulley system, and started spending a lot of time on it.

Around the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 was also when I bought RCTM and started reading. I already have both "Performance Climbing" and "Self-Coached Climber". Both are great books, but none laid out a systematic training plan that's easy to understand and easy to follow like the RCTM. I used to think that climbing is the best training for climbing. I still believe that actually, but for an ultimate weekend warrior like myself who cannot get enough time climbing, obviously that's not going to work. When I started climbing again and hanging on the rope more often than climbing on 5.10s, I had a lot of doubts whether I can climb 5.12s again. Afterall I am older, weaker, with much less time to climb. But reading RCTM, and also seeing how hard Mark is climbing when he's just about my age, my height, with a similar job and similar family situation, gave me hope that if I train smart, I may be able to climb hard (for me) again.

So this brought me back to Big Dog. I first got on it on Jan 1 of this year, and dogged bolt to bolt to the top. It felt hard, but eventually I figured out all the moves and felt like it's within my reach. I tried it again two more days in January, right up to the weekend before my wife gave birth to our second child hoping to send, but that didn't happen. After our daughter was born, I couldn't even climb in the gym anymore, so all my training happened on a hangboard. At the beginning of March I gave it another attempt, still no send, but it was getting close. Yesterday I sent it my first go after warming up, on my 10th try overall. This is after two months of training exclusively on a hangboard with no gym time. I'm going to give myself a pat on the back for maintaining endurance, and possibly improving it a little, entirely on a hangboard.

With my first 5.12b in ten years done, I'm very optimistic that I can start working my way toward my goal of eventually sending a 5.13a!

[richb]

In 2016 I started taking training seriously for the first time. I started out in 1998 as a teenager, coasted on talent, and sent 12b within a few years. It took me ten more years to progress to 12d, and then I plateaued for another three years. By the end of 2015 I was on the wrong side of 30, bogged down in my PhD, having my first taste of raising a toddler, and hadn’t climbed in months. I felt like it was time to either start getting serious about improving or kiss some of my lifetime climbing goals (e.g. sending 14a, freeing El Cap) goodbye. I set my sights on the goal of sending Butt Bongo Fiesta, a classic bouldery Rumney 5.13a, which would be my first of the grade. Starting in January, I followed a plan using the RCTM as my guide.

I spent a couple of weeks ARCing on the wall here at my university. In those first six or seven sessions of the year I’m sure I did more moves than I had done in all of 2015. It felt impossible to stave off the pump at first, even on the juggiest traverse, but I could feel slow improvement.

Hangboarding with pulleys and a harness to lessen resistance was kind of a revelation. I never got anything out of hangboarding until I realized you could progressively work your way to smaller holds and more weight. Keeping track of personal bests was very motivating.

During the power phase I split my sessions into roughly half limit bouldering and half campusing. After a few campusing sessions, the limit problems I had set were too easy. I could feel my contact strength improving on the same bouldery moves, which was a new feeling for me. Halfway through this phase I got on Butt Bongo for the first time. My god did it feel hard - powerful lockoffs, dynamic slaps up an arete, heel hooks, and strange body english throughout. All very Rumney. With work I was able to do all the moves, but I couldn't do any of the clips! From experience I knew that Rumney routes feel impossible at first but slowly get beta'd down into reach.

I went into the power endurance phase feeling super springy, which I thought might translate into good route fitness. Linked bouldering circuits cut me down to size pretty quick. Butt Bongo has this continuous 17-move sequence that only offers a quick shake or two, with a heartbreaking lockoff move at the end, so I designed up-down-up circuits in the gym that had about that number of moves on a similar angle, about 15 degrees overhanging.

On the last day of April, my fourth day working the route, I got the one-hang. As I started focusing in on the redpoint, I kept up my linked boulder circuits. I think this was key to improving the quality of my redpoint burns. At the end of my fifth day on the route, my fourth all-out redpoint burn of the day, I got to the big lockoff move and stuck the edge! But as I hiked my feet high I felt the power drain from my right forearm and I flailed for the left hand sidepull that marks the end of the hard climbing. I was bummed but not dejected – after that performance I knew I would send the next time I tied in.

The next opportunity came several days later. It was a perfect spring morning - cool, dry, and sunny though the route was in the shade. I wrote the following in my climbing log when I got home that night: “Felt flawlessly in control, clipped the chains not even pumped. A transcendent climbing experience, one of the best ever in my career.” I remember this odd feeling of certainty that I was going to send, that I was just going to climb the route perfectly and get to the chains.

I don’t ever remember feeling so sure I was going to succeed on any other climb in my life. Is that a dead giveaway that Butt Bongo wasn’t at my limit, or is that a sign of effective training? Either way, I poured more time and effort into it than any other project. The feeling of satisfaction was a huge reward, but I can't say it lasted any longer than other successes I've had. I was onto thinking about the next goal within a week or two.

Later in 2016 I sent my second 13a, had my first finger pulley injury, rehabbed successfully, and started trying my first 13b. It’s been an eventful year and a half to say the least! Life outside of climbing has not slowed down a bit but I am so psyched to be on a path of improvement climbing that works for me. I'll save the rest for another post. Thanks to Mike and Mark for all you guys do!

[MarkAnderson]

Great storytelling, and congrats on your progress! It's such an awesome feeling when you finally figure out how to get better.

[jonfrisby]

Great job!! Happen to have any send footage? I plan to check that rig out next month

[richb]

Mark, thanks a lot. Having the RCTM as a blueprint was a real catalyst for me to get started.

Jon, thanks! I didn't take video. There's a couple of youtube videos that are okay but a little butt-shotty; it's not easy to get a good shooting angle. Happy to spray you down with my beta though. It's a superb route.