Post by lockedoff on Nov 14, 2014 13:05:33 GMT -7
Thought I would share this success story coming out of my first season following the Rock Prodigy training principles:
The story really beings back in February, when my wife gave birth to our (unbearably cute) daughter. She's our first, and climbing took a back seat for a while after she was born while we all ascended the steep learning curve of life with/as a baby. Sometime during that period I came across a review of the RCTM, and it sounded like it was written just for me. I've been climbing for ten-odd years (with a few years off to deal with an injured elbow) and I knew that my weak points were finger strength and power; but I had no real idea how to train improve those traits, so I just hummed along with my usual routine. I’m mainly a single-pitch route climber—my "local" crag is the New River Gorge, even though it's a six-hour drive from my home in D.C.—and over the years I had experimented some with hangboarding and campusing. Whenever I did, though, it seemed like I’d tweak a finger or a shoulder, and I’d stop until the next time my general dissatisfaction with my climbing level built up again.
So I’d been stuck for a few years at the same level: onsighting through 5.11/V4, sending 5.12a/V5 after a few tries, and getting the occasional send on a harder project. But after three months of parenthood with only an occasional climbing session, any last vestige of power had ebbed and there were moves at the 12a/V4 level that I just couldn’t do—which hadn’t been the case for about five years. In June I snuck in a trip to the New and got pummeled on New World Order, a 5.12a that I'd nearly sent the previous fall. Granted, getting pummeled on New World Order is time-honored NRG tradition, but still.
Ready for a change, I picked up the RCTM and mounted up a hangboard that had been gathering dust in my closet for years. I really wasn’t sure how hard I could expect to be climbing by the end of the training season, so I decided to train for the dominant style of the routes at the New and see how things went. If you’ve been to the New, and especially if you’ve been to Endless Wall, then you know the style: slightly-to-moderately overhanging, lots of high-steps and deep lock-offs, and powerful cruxes on small crimps and edges. I picked out a classic or two at each grade between 5.12b and 5.13a as possible targets and started training.
Because this was my first training season, and because my schedule remained less than predictable, I approached things with a loose attitude—I figured that, in the long run, too little would be better than too much, and that I would use the season to just get a sense for how the different parts of the training worked and felt. But even with this loose approach, I was surprised to find that I could feel the progression occurring as I moved through the phases of the training plan. After I finished hangboarding, I wasn’t falling off V4's anymore—but I still couldn’t do powerful V5 and V6 moves. Three weeks into the power phase that changed: suddenly I could put down a crimpy V6 at the end of my pre-campusing warmup, and do it with confidence because I knew my fingers weren’t going to give out halfway through. Two weeks into the power-endurance phase I sent a 12b and a 12c in the gym second go, and I knew things were definitely coming together.
October rolled around and the temps and humidity plummeted right on cue. I had two weekends slotted to get out to the New and lucked out on both—cool and dry each day, so the friction was good to excellent. The first trip was a success: I sent a cruxy 5.12c at the Cirque called Finders Keepers and a steep, juggy 5.12b at Fern Buttress called Fall Line that houses a powerful two-move crux. But I also got booted off the few 5.13a’s I tried, and I didn’t get the chance to sink my teeth into any true Endless-style classics at a lower grade.
I spent the first day of the second trip at Third Buttress at the Meadow River so one of my climbing partners could polish off his long-standing project, a 5.13a called Bittersweet. It starts with a thuggy ten-move boulder problem out a cave to an OK rest, followed by a technical crux involving a deep lock off; higher up, an insecure deadpoint to a mail slot guards the chains. I jumped on it and felt surprisingly good—it only took me two or three tries to figure out each crux, and I thought it might go that day. But from the ground I couldn’t quite stick the last move of the initial boulder problem, so I’ll have to come back for it in the future after doing some more terrain-specific training.
The next day we headed for Beauty Mountain. As guidebook author Mike Williams puts it, Beauty is where Endless Wall goes “out with a bang”—dozens of classic hard face climbs are stacked right next to one another, separated only by a slew of classic hand and finger cracks. We set our sights on Burning Buttress, a chunk of clean gray and orange stone shaped like a capital ‘L’ lying on its side. The long arm of the ‘L’ faces southwest and hosts some of the best 5.10 cracks in the region, making it a worthy destination in its own right. But the southeast-facing short arm of the ‘L’ is the true gem; there, five immaculate hard face climbs ascend perfect orange rock, one after the other, with the New’s best 5.10 crack (the Rod Serling Crack) cleaving the right side of the crag for good measure.
I had my eye on the right-most of the five face climbs, an eighty-foot 5.12b called Grace Note. The guidebook describes it as “technical, sustained, and fingery”—in other words, just what I was looking for. The wall hangs just past vertical for about forty feet before straightening out and running dead vertical to the chains. Looking up, I didn’t see much chalk— either rain had washed it away, or the route just didn't see much traffic. We flaked the rope, stick-clipped the first bolt, and I booted up.
I pulled off the ground right into a tough little boulder problem. From an OK left-hand crimp and a crummy right-hand sidepull, you get a foot up and pop the right hand to a vertical, potato-chip flake. The left hip swivels and a little left hand reach yields a crimp rail, which is OK on the left and right but bad in the center. Luckily, I aimed left and stuck it. Matching the rail, I hiked my feet and headed up right to a decent jug.
Three bolts of fun 5.11-ish lockoffs on flat edges led to the first crux: two stacked crimp pockets, one above a little roof and one below, followed by a long blank section. Starting from a decent jug out right, I dropped my left hand into a little mailbox slot, stepped the left foot up, and latched the first crimp with the left hand. Right foot up and in to a decent edge, and then right hand to the next crimp pocket, which is a little better than the first. I found a good dish out left for the left foot, looked up, and spotted a big flat edge about four feet up and a little right—like the top of a triangular pedestal. One hard pull on the crimps and landed the edge, and I was rewarded with the fifth bolt.
I hung out on the pedestal and tried to catch my breath for a bit, but it was an awkward stance—the only good foot was way down and left, so the balance wasn’t right to shake out. And above lurked the second crux: the rock up and left looked completely blank, but there was a small arête up and right that seemed to have some holds, and I found a little platform out right for the right foot. So I stepped out, stood up, and slapped the first hold on the arête—a bad little undercling. I bumped off that to a weird sideways pinch, but it was no better; so I bumped again to a tiny sharp crimp around the arête. Barely holding on, I tried to throw my left foot up to the pedestal . . . and fell. So much for the onsight.
Pulling up to the bolt, I took a second look at the face up and left from the pedestal. In some dark rock I made out out a ridge that looked like it might work as a right-hand sidepull; and further left was another, fainter feature that might yield a left-hand hold. Finally, high up and right near the arête was a near-vertical edge that looked decent but far away. And then there was that tiny right-hand crimp around the arête: on close inspection, it had a ‘v’ shaped notch in the middle, as though someone had chiseled a tiny shark’s tooth out from it. No wonder it hurt so bad to grab!
With these pieces, I started to puzzle out a sequence. I still wanted to use the little platform foot to the right because the feet directly below the pedestal seemed so bad. But the little platform was tucked behind a slight bend in the wall, so I couldn’t push straight down on it; and if I went that way, I had to use the tiny v-notch crimp when I went to get my left foot up. That really hurt, and it quickly became clear that my index fingertip wouldn’t consent to latching that crimp many times without splitting. So I started to work out the moves to the left. True, the feet were bad—but there was a little knob by the high crimp-pocket from the first crux that I hadn’t noticed before. And by getting the left foot there I could step through with the right foot to the pedestal, which put me in a more balanced position to hold onto that weird sideways pinch by the arête.
It took about twelve tries, but eventually I worked the beta out: with hands matched on the pedestal, I stepped my right foot to the lower crimp pocket from the first crux. Then right hand directly up to the crimp-sidepull in the dark rock. After that, left foot up to the faint knob by the second crimp pocket from the first crux, and then fire the left hand to the top-right part of the faint ridge feature, where there’s a bad slopey crimp. Squeezing the crimps, I could step my right foot up to the big pedestal and sink down a little for balance. Then I grabbed the weird sideways pinch by the arête with the right hand, backflagged the left foot hard, and shot the left hand up and right to the decent near-vertical edge by the top of the arête. It felt like I might peel off to the right, but after fighting off the barn-door I was tenuously balanced and could stand and reach high with the right hand for a gaston-fingerlock in a little roof. (If I wasn’t tall I’m honestly not sure what I’d do here—it’s a long reach.) From the gasto-lock I could clip, breathe, and eventually trend left to some decent horizontals under the little roof.
The hardest climbing was over, but I wasn’t totally out of the woods yet: pulling over the little roof required a tenuous reach to a good right-hand gaston, then a left-hand stab to another not-as good gaston, and a high step to a hard-to-see foot. From there, I slapped a decent flat edge with the left hand, stepped the right foot up, and rocked up high and right for a good jug. Enjoyable long reaches led to the top—the moves took some effort, but the terrain was vertical so there was no real pump factor.
I came down and I rested, and the sun slipped around the corner of the crag while my friends took a crack at the route. The temperature dropped a few degrees and the conditions, which already seemed perfect, somehow got even better. When I was ready, I tied back in, fired the hard start, and cruised up to the rest at the fourth bolt. Sunlight hit the wall at an oblique angle, and the forest around me was still and quiet. There was a little breeze but no one else was around, and one at a time I let my arms hang loose at my sides and listened to the breeze and the air cycling in and out of my lungs. Hanging there, I felt deeply grateful for the day and for the chance to be in this unlikely spot, forty feet off the ground and totally comfortable, slowly shaking out on a rest jug in the shade.
And then it was time to go. From the jug I pulled into the pockets and fired for the pedestal. I came up a little short but hung on and slapped up to the good part. I shook again here and rehearsed the foot sequence in my mind, reminding myself that the little knob was better than it looked. Then it was time to go again: I grabbed the right hand crimp and bore down. My left hand hit the sloper-crimp perfectly, and my right foot moved to the perch; then right hand around the weird pinch and the left hand drive-by to the vertical edge. My fingers hit the edge and my body started to peel off right . . . but my backflagged left foot pressed me back. I wasn't off yet! I squeezed my left fingers around the vertical edge and told myself: Be still! And it worked! Suddenly I was stable in the tenuous perch. Gingerly, I stood up on the right foot and reached for the gasto-lock, clipped, and then relaxed. I knew I could make it now if I took it one move at a time; before long, I was at the chains and the route was in the bag.
For me, Grace Note really typified the challenge posed by 5.12b face climbs at the New—until you’ve got the beta dialed, they often feel much harder than 12b. I fell many more times working the second crux on this route than I did working the whole of Bittersweet, the 5.13a I tried the day before. But Bittersweet is definitely a ‘harder’ climb to send, even though it’s a much easier climb to read.
In any case, it felt great to fire the route second go, and I could tell that my improved finger strength and power were the key—once I figured out how to navigate the crux, I had the power to latch the small holds and the confidence to stick them. So the training works! (I suppose there wouldn’t be a book about it if it didn’t. I’m really grateful to Mike and Mark for their tireless effort in researching and writing the RCTM—it’s a real boon for the climbing community as a whole, and especially for those of us who can’t get out too often but don't want to settle in at a comfortable plateau. Thanks guys!
The story really beings back in February, when my wife gave birth to our (unbearably cute) daughter. She's our first, and climbing took a back seat for a while after she was born while we all ascended the steep learning curve of life with/as a baby. Sometime during that period I came across a review of the RCTM, and it sounded like it was written just for me. I've been climbing for ten-odd years (with a few years off to deal with an injured elbow) and I knew that my weak points were finger strength and power; but I had no real idea how to train improve those traits, so I just hummed along with my usual routine. I’m mainly a single-pitch route climber—my "local" crag is the New River Gorge, even though it's a six-hour drive from my home in D.C.—and over the years I had experimented some with hangboarding and campusing. Whenever I did, though, it seemed like I’d tweak a finger or a shoulder, and I’d stop until the next time my general dissatisfaction with my climbing level built up again.
So I’d been stuck for a few years at the same level: onsighting through 5.11/V4, sending 5.12a/V5 after a few tries, and getting the occasional send on a harder project. But after three months of parenthood with only an occasional climbing session, any last vestige of power had ebbed and there were moves at the 12a/V4 level that I just couldn’t do—which hadn’t been the case for about five years. In June I snuck in a trip to the New and got pummeled on New World Order, a 5.12a that I'd nearly sent the previous fall. Granted, getting pummeled on New World Order is time-honored NRG tradition, but still.
Ready for a change, I picked up the RCTM and mounted up a hangboard that had been gathering dust in my closet for years. I really wasn’t sure how hard I could expect to be climbing by the end of the training season, so I decided to train for the dominant style of the routes at the New and see how things went. If you’ve been to the New, and especially if you’ve been to Endless Wall, then you know the style: slightly-to-moderately overhanging, lots of high-steps and deep lock-offs, and powerful cruxes on small crimps and edges. I picked out a classic or two at each grade between 5.12b and 5.13a as possible targets and started training.
Because this was my first training season, and because my schedule remained less than predictable, I approached things with a loose attitude—I figured that, in the long run, too little would be better than too much, and that I would use the season to just get a sense for how the different parts of the training worked and felt. But even with this loose approach, I was surprised to find that I could feel the progression occurring as I moved through the phases of the training plan. After I finished hangboarding, I wasn’t falling off V4's anymore—but I still couldn’t do powerful V5 and V6 moves. Three weeks into the power phase that changed: suddenly I could put down a crimpy V6 at the end of my pre-campusing warmup, and do it with confidence because I knew my fingers weren’t going to give out halfway through. Two weeks into the power-endurance phase I sent a 12b and a 12c in the gym second go, and I knew things were definitely coming together.
October rolled around and the temps and humidity plummeted right on cue. I had two weekends slotted to get out to the New and lucked out on both—cool and dry each day, so the friction was good to excellent. The first trip was a success: I sent a cruxy 5.12c at the Cirque called Finders Keepers and a steep, juggy 5.12b at Fern Buttress called Fall Line that houses a powerful two-move crux. But I also got booted off the few 5.13a’s I tried, and I didn’t get the chance to sink my teeth into any true Endless-style classics at a lower grade.
I spent the first day of the second trip at Third Buttress at the Meadow River so one of my climbing partners could polish off his long-standing project, a 5.13a called Bittersweet. It starts with a thuggy ten-move boulder problem out a cave to an OK rest, followed by a technical crux involving a deep lock off; higher up, an insecure deadpoint to a mail slot guards the chains. I jumped on it and felt surprisingly good—it only took me two or three tries to figure out each crux, and I thought it might go that day. But from the ground I couldn’t quite stick the last move of the initial boulder problem, so I’ll have to come back for it in the future after doing some more terrain-specific training.
The next day we headed for Beauty Mountain. As guidebook author Mike Williams puts it, Beauty is where Endless Wall goes “out with a bang”—dozens of classic hard face climbs are stacked right next to one another, separated only by a slew of classic hand and finger cracks. We set our sights on Burning Buttress, a chunk of clean gray and orange stone shaped like a capital ‘L’ lying on its side. The long arm of the ‘L’ faces southwest and hosts some of the best 5.10 cracks in the region, making it a worthy destination in its own right. But the southeast-facing short arm of the ‘L’ is the true gem; there, five immaculate hard face climbs ascend perfect orange rock, one after the other, with the New’s best 5.10 crack (the Rod Serling Crack) cleaving the right side of the crag for good measure.
I had my eye on the right-most of the five face climbs, an eighty-foot 5.12b called Grace Note. The guidebook describes it as “technical, sustained, and fingery”—in other words, just what I was looking for. The wall hangs just past vertical for about forty feet before straightening out and running dead vertical to the chains. Looking up, I didn’t see much chalk— either rain had washed it away, or the route just didn't see much traffic. We flaked the rope, stick-clipped the first bolt, and I booted up.
I pulled off the ground right into a tough little boulder problem. From an OK left-hand crimp and a crummy right-hand sidepull, you get a foot up and pop the right hand to a vertical, potato-chip flake. The left hip swivels and a little left hand reach yields a crimp rail, which is OK on the left and right but bad in the center. Luckily, I aimed left and stuck it. Matching the rail, I hiked my feet and headed up right to a decent jug.
Three bolts of fun 5.11-ish lockoffs on flat edges led to the first crux: two stacked crimp pockets, one above a little roof and one below, followed by a long blank section. Starting from a decent jug out right, I dropped my left hand into a little mailbox slot, stepped the left foot up, and latched the first crimp with the left hand. Right foot up and in to a decent edge, and then right hand to the next crimp pocket, which is a little better than the first. I found a good dish out left for the left foot, looked up, and spotted a big flat edge about four feet up and a little right—like the top of a triangular pedestal. One hard pull on the crimps and landed the edge, and I was rewarded with the fifth bolt.
I hung out on the pedestal and tried to catch my breath for a bit, but it was an awkward stance—the only good foot was way down and left, so the balance wasn’t right to shake out. And above lurked the second crux: the rock up and left looked completely blank, but there was a small arête up and right that seemed to have some holds, and I found a little platform out right for the right foot. So I stepped out, stood up, and slapped the first hold on the arête—a bad little undercling. I bumped off that to a weird sideways pinch, but it was no better; so I bumped again to a tiny sharp crimp around the arête. Barely holding on, I tried to throw my left foot up to the pedestal . . . and fell. So much for the onsight.
Pulling up to the bolt, I took a second look at the face up and left from the pedestal. In some dark rock I made out out a ridge that looked like it might work as a right-hand sidepull; and further left was another, fainter feature that might yield a left-hand hold. Finally, high up and right near the arête was a near-vertical edge that looked decent but far away. And then there was that tiny right-hand crimp around the arête: on close inspection, it had a ‘v’ shaped notch in the middle, as though someone had chiseled a tiny shark’s tooth out from it. No wonder it hurt so bad to grab!
With these pieces, I started to puzzle out a sequence. I still wanted to use the little platform foot to the right because the feet directly below the pedestal seemed so bad. But the little platform was tucked behind a slight bend in the wall, so I couldn’t push straight down on it; and if I went that way, I had to use the tiny v-notch crimp when I went to get my left foot up. That really hurt, and it quickly became clear that my index fingertip wouldn’t consent to latching that crimp many times without splitting. So I started to work out the moves to the left. True, the feet were bad—but there was a little knob by the high crimp-pocket from the first crux that I hadn’t noticed before. And by getting the left foot there I could step through with the right foot to the pedestal, which put me in a more balanced position to hold onto that weird sideways pinch by the arête.
It took about twelve tries, but eventually I worked the beta out: with hands matched on the pedestal, I stepped my right foot to the lower crimp pocket from the first crux. Then right hand directly up to the crimp-sidepull in the dark rock. After that, left foot up to the faint knob by the second crimp pocket from the first crux, and then fire the left hand to the top-right part of the faint ridge feature, where there’s a bad slopey crimp. Squeezing the crimps, I could step my right foot up to the big pedestal and sink down a little for balance. Then I grabbed the weird sideways pinch by the arête with the right hand, backflagged the left foot hard, and shot the left hand up and right to the decent near-vertical edge by the top of the arête. It felt like I might peel off to the right, but after fighting off the barn-door I was tenuously balanced and could stand and reach high with the right hand for a gaston-fingerlock in a little roof. (If I wasn’t tall I’m honestly not sure what I’d do here—it’s a long reach.) From the gasto-lock I could clip, breathe, and eventually trend left to some decent horizontals under the little roof.
The hardest climbing was over, but I wasn’t totally out of the woods yet: pulling over the little roof required a tenuous reach to a good right-hand gaston, then a left-hand stab to another not-as good gaston, and a high step to a hard-to-see foot. From there, I slapped a decent flat edge with the left hand, stepped the right foot up, and rocked up high and right for a good jug. Enjoyable long reaches led to the top—the moves took some effort, but the terrain was vertical so there was no real pump factor.
I came down and I rested, and the sun slipped around the corner of the crag while my friends took a crack at the route. The temperature dropped a few degrees and the conditions, which already seemed perfect, somehow got even better. When I was ready, I tied back in, fired the hard start, and cruised up to the rest at the fourth bolt. Sunlight hit the wall at an oblique angle, and the forest around me was still and quiet. There was a little breeze but no one else was around, and one at a time I let my arms hang loose at my sides and listened to the breeze and the air cycling in and out of my lungs. Hanging there, I felt deeply grateful for the day and for the chance to be in this unlikely spot, forty feet off the ground and totally comfortable, slowly shaking out on a rest jug in the shade.
And then it was time to go. From the jug I pulled into the pockets and fired for the pedestal. I came up a little short but hung on and slapped up to the good part. I shook again here and rehearsed the foot sequence in my mind, reminding myself that the little knob was better than it looked. Then it was time to go again: I grabbed the right hand crimp and bore down. My left hand hit the sloper-crimp perfectly, and my right foot moved to the perch; then right hand around the weird pinch and the left hand drive-by to the vertical edge. My fingers hit the edge and my body started to peel off right . . . but my backflagged left foot pressed me back. I wasn't off yet! I squeezed my left fingers around the vertical edge and told myself: Be still! And it worked! Suddenly I was stable in the tenuous perch. Gingerly, I stood up on the right foot and reached for the gasto-lock, clipped, and then relaxed. I knew I could make it now if I took it one move at a time; before long, I was at the chains and the route was in the bag.
For me, Grace Note really typified the challenge posed by 5.12b face climbs at the New—until you’ve got the beta dialed, they often feel much harder than 12b. I fell many more times working the second crux on this route than I did working the whole of Bittersweet, the 5.13a I tried the day before. But Bittersweet is definitely a ‘harder’ climb to send, even though it’s a much easier climb to read.
In any case, it felt great to fire the route second go, and I could tell that my improved finger strength and power were the key—once I figured out how to navigate the crux, I had the power to latch the small holds and the confidence to stick them. So the training works! (I suppose there wouldn’t be a book about it if it didn’t. I’m really grateful to Mike and Mark for their tireless effort in researching and writing the RCTM—it’s a real boon for the climbing community as a whole, and especially for those of us who can’t get out too often but don't want to settle in at a comfortable plateau. Thanks guys!