Winter Leagues

Training started in earnest in October with 3 team training sessions and the Rock Over comp. After having a month of rest I did some general conditioning to let my body know it was time to work again, before working on strength.

The Rock Over comp was good, but came as a bit of a shock to my body as I hadn't done that quantity of climbing for quite a while. My back tied itself in more knots than usual. I suffered a frustrating final, throwing away last moves by being static. I was really enjoying the problems - mainly my sort of thing with little crimps. I ripped 2 holes in my fingers on the last, dyno, problem. Helpful spectators provided some tape and I continued, but missed a knee bar and tiredly missed the moves (maybe a little distracted by the blood oozing from my fingers, sorry about that!). No excuse, time to man up and get fitter, stronger and bouncier.

It's now winter league season again. Fun weekly battles, typically at the end of the working week. I find that I leave my brain behind somewhere in the office. I may be able to pull, but coordinating my limbs and reading the problems is a big ask. It leads to a little frustration at times, but makes me pull harder as my technique goes out the window. This has it's benefits as I'm in a strength training phase at the moment. Pulling hard, locking, staying square helps your strength even if you drop the problem.

Time to get stronger

We're working on getting strong at the moment. This article gives an idea of what we've been up to.

The pulling hard fits in well with the winter bouldering leagues. Good fun and good for getting strong. So far I've been to the Climbing Works, City Bloc and the Foundry. All very different styles of climbing. I won some Scarpa shoes for winning the City Bloc event which is good :-)