Learning how to climb

And getting really good at it! 

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The last weeks I have been longing for the climbing gym. This video is from yesterday, when I made a technical problem that people really liked. Here is a buddy climbing it.

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ClimbCoach

Tried out this app today. Started off with some finger strength and it felt like a very good work out! More on this later when I have tried it out more.

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A short video of one of the routes I made last weekend. Climbed by one of the gyms best young climbers.

The route was graded a 6 (on a scale from 1 to 6) for the climbing competition. I don’t know enough about grades to place it on some scale that isn’t local to the climbing gym. Only three competitors in the competition managed to climb the problem.

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Joining in on the boulder competition

Even though I made some routes for the boulder comp, I still wanted to join in and compete to check my skills. The skills of the other climbers weren’t that high though, and that was mainly because the people from the boulder club didn’t join in.

After deducting me for the points I made on the routes I had made myself I ended up in second place just two points behind the winner.

I am actually very happy with my placement, and if it hadn’t been for the deducted points I would have won. The most important thing I have figured out from this competition though is that I really now have work on my finger strength and start using the moon board.

Maybe I’ll film some moon board stuff?

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Making a boulder competition

Today my club is having a friendly boulder competition for all the climbers in the area. The last two days have been spent inside the gym, trying to make as many problems as possible. After two days of building I managed to make eight routes in the all types of difficulties.

Since this is a local and fun boulder competition I am also allowed to compete, and I am really looking forward to it. We managed to build as many as 42 boulder routes, so I am really looking forward to climbing today!

Hopefully I’ll be able to film some people climbing the routes I have made.

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Easter, travel and literally no climbing!

After lasts months climbing competition, my time has been spent doing other activities. Firstly I went to Rome on a family holiday, then headed over to Norway for a week to visit a brother who had injured himself cycling.

I have also received a challenge to finish a triathlon in Norway in August. So a lot of my spare time goes to working out, especially with swimming. Volleyball has also taken a lot of my time lately, as I have been helping out my old team during the playoffs. Luckily these activities are not taking too much of my time anymore. Triathlon will of course take some time, but that is mainly when the climbing gym isn’t open.

Now back to climbing! I finally managed to sneak in two sessions last week, and I am very happy with how they turned out. Both sessions were spend building new problems with existing holds, and some really good problems were built and sent. Hopefully that will be the case today as well when I go climb.

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Fun times bouldering!

The bouldering competition took place in a very small building where over 30 people came to fight it out. This made for a couple of situations where you had to wait, but since we had 2 hours to complete at least 10 problems out of 26 we had plenty of time. The boulders were ranked according to their difficulty. 1 being easiest and 26 being the hardest, and the points you got was according to what number the boulder had. 

I started off with some extra warm ups in the very low range to see how the level of the competition was. And it was way to easy. My problem though was that I was climbing these boulders very inefficient, and wasted a lot of energy that I could have been using on the harder boulders later. Especially boulders nr. 16, nr. 17, nr. 19 and nr. 22, which was totally within my reach, but when my grip strength failed I didn’t stand a chance.

I finished the competition off with having done boulders 6 to 15, leaving me with a score of 105 for my ten best completions. The other results are not in yet, but I liked to think I came in the top half of the rankings.

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My first boulder comp!

The last weeks I have been very busy moving, and trying to get used to a new way of living, as well as trying to get as many workouts done every day. Some of these workouts are swimming, but a lot of them are also climbing.

I can at this time only manage two days in a row with hard climbing. A third day will then not give me anything, and I usually won’t have anything better to do then build new problems on the bouldering platform.

This weekend has been spent back in Norway with an injured brother, and I really look forward to climbing again tonight, having waited almost a week since last Wednesday. It will also be a special occasion tonight, as it is my first bouldering competition ever.

The competition is more related to having fun among friends, and the local bouldering club is calling it the “good times boulder comp” where the focus is mostly on have fun, and meeting new friends over crappy coffee. And that might be why I think it’s a good first entry to a competition environment that I would like to enter at some point later in time.

Because I really would like to become good enough in a few years period to be able to compete at a national level. Meaning that I would like to join in on, and actually show that I deserve to be there. And the first chance for me is this comp tonight.

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1 One arm pull-up before the summer!

I made this little deal with a buddy of mine from back home that I'm not sure I will be able to do. I am basically going to try to do a single one arm pull-up before the summer break. This is to me incredibly hard, and I will have to invest a lot to get a structured training regime where this could be made possible.

My first try on this sort of regime was today, and I must say I am pretty pleased on how it went. After working for an hour and sending a technical problem I made last Wednesday, I finished my session doing lots of different pull-ups. Normal pull-ups. Square movement with two hands (up on on my left arm, and down on my right, other way back). Pull-ups with one hand lower then the other. Eccentric one handed pull-ups with a foot on a hold. And between all these sets I decided to hang on a wooden plank trying to enhance my finger strength, as it is my achilles heal at the moment.

At the end I got really tired. So hopefully this could be the way to do it in the start. I also have the choice of using an elastic band which I will be trying to use on the really hard exercises. 

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Climbing in magazines

I fill my everyday life with a lot of climbing, but my fingers and muscles seem to show me that there are limits to how much I could do before I get strained and injured. My fingers especially had problems adjusting to the amount of climbing I do, but they are slowly getting healed week by week.  My first finger injury is almost completely healed, and I have figured out the way to climb to get better.

The problem is still though that I would like to climb more, but end up struggling the day after a climbing session. Maybe it's because of the low temperature in the gym, or because my back and shoulder muscles have problems with the continuously straining practice. Anyway, more then two days in a row is super hard, and to be able to climb that often I really need to start climbing smarter, having different types of days with various levels of muscle exhaustion. 

Even though i would say that my body's incapable of doing this, the real source of my problems is that in my spare time I read too many climbing magazines and articles online, which have the effect of getting me even more psyched to climb than before. Just writing this little post here has changed my perception of how much I want to climb today. Even though I climbed yesterday, and can feel my left shoulder not being able to cope with the different problems, I still need to go to the climbing gym doing something that can settle my urges in some way.

I recently bought a years worth of Climbing Magazines on my iPad, making sure that I will be going to the gym as often as possible in the next twelve months. I just cross my fingers, hoping that I will be able to cope with all the training in some way or another.

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A new era in my climbing

Even though I still have an injured finger, my climbing has been going along pretty well lately. This has a lot to do with my climbing partner coming back from the dead (finished with his bachelor paper). He has made it all a bit more structured, and besides that I am also more psyched then ever. Our training regime is based on a lot of technique training on our gyms chessboard - where we test our problem solving skills - followed by a lot of easy climbing to get our stamina up again and ready for climbing lead in some time. At the end we finish up with a lot of strength exercises both there to improve our stability and core as well as improve our muscles dynamically.

So far this week I have had one of these sessions, as well as one pure bouldering session. Most likely I will alternate these regimes as long as the climbing gym is as cold as it is at the moment. When the warm weather comes I will be climbing more lead and top rope.

Todays session will be at the local bouldering club. It's been at least a year since the last time I was there to climb, and I can't wait to have a blank slate to work out new problems on!

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The blank walls have now been filled with a lot of new problems. This is the problem I built yesterday, and that I managed to climb today.  The moves a very unique and challenging in a completely different way then the problems that other people have built.

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Blank walls

Yesterday was my first climbing session in at least a week. This is because I had to help my old volleyball team with a big tournament they were competing in and had to travel abroad. Now though I am back again, and I had a very nice time on the bouldering platform yesterday.

The reason why is that all the holds were taken down, and new routes have been established that are both refreshing in they way they are built, and inventive. Yesterdays session went down with a goal in mind. To complete as many of the problems as possible. And with the limited time of 2 hours I tried to finish them all as fast as possible.  I didn't get finished though. And had troubles with some problems that required a lot of fingers strength on my right hand. My finger isn't healed yet, and I can't seem to compensate in other ways on these kinds of problems. They are because of that put in the pile of problems I want to do at a later time, when I'm injury free.

Todays goals when arriving at the climbing gym will therefor be to finish the uncompleted problems then doesn't hurt my finger and build some more on the blank walls.

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A lot of you have probably seen this video before, but I came across it for the first time today. It shows Galina Parfenov doing many different training exercises that give benefits to climbers. Most of the focus on pull-up strength and finger strength. The thing I liked most about seeing this kind of video is to see how structured she is, and how much she puts into it. I learned a lot from this video, and will try to focus on strength training a lot more during the next weeks. My finger has improved drastically, but still hurt during everyday activities. I squeeze a ball regularly and hope that my finger's strength will remain the same as it was before the injury.

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Good news!

Tuesday I went to a physiotherapist for a consultation on what has happened to my finger. Apparently I have been lucky enough that only the outer joint on my finger is damaged, and not badly enough that I really have to rest to much.

Right now I climb without using the finger, and even though I struggle with some boulder problems, I still get a chance to improve even though I am injured.

Last night my climbing partner and I made a couple of new problems. He finished them all, while I was only able to climb one out of three. I'll post a video of one of my problems later.  We were happy with creating three very different problems where different physical attributes are important to solve them all. One is technical, one favours high finger strength and one has more explosive moves.

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Not again!

Well, it's safe to say that I didn't reach my goal for the day in the climbing gym last night. Only 20 minutes into the work out, somebody showed med a "warm up" problem that I could work on. The guy I started warming up with, did it quite easily, and apart from a couple of crimpers there really wasn't any hard moves. After he was finished I checked over the holds and started my climb.

Just two moves in I was thinking that this was a lot of crimping for a warm up problem, but then again it wasn't that hard so I made one more move before I heard a guitar string kind of sound. Nothing hurt, but I felt something move in my finger. I wanted to climb more, but all my friends told me quickly to ice it down, and not take any chances. I am really glad I listened to them.

It seems something has partially been ripped inside my finger. I haven't had any health care professionals take a look at it yet, and I am not sure I really have to yet. My finger now hurts a tiny bit, but haven't swollen that much during the night. I am trying to get a hold of a physiotherapist who can diagnose the injury.

Hopefully it isn't too bad..... 

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Yesterday, I made a route in the bouldering cave that was both challenging on the vertical wall as well as in the roof. We have figured out all the moves that have to be made, and were close to sending it. The end move though is very hard for me. I need to hold a two finger pocket and move to a pretty good grip at the end. The movement is just a little bit too long resulting in me ending up 10 cm away from the hold with my right hand on my best tries. In this clip I didn't get that far. I was really pumped and ready, but after several hours of hard climbing I just didn't have the strength left in my two fingers to even start the movement. This is my goal for the day.