Weak As F......

I found some old videos on the computer the other day taken on a couple of rock climbing trips to the USA (Smith Rocks and Vantage/aka Frenchmans Coulee) with Doug and another climber friend of ours. The videos are circa 2010 and, at the time, my training logs were kept in paper notebooks, not on the computer. When we moved continents I recycled the paper books so all that information is now lost. I would like to know how I was training during those years because it is clear from the videos that I was weak, "weak as f**k" as Andy Kirkpatrick would say.

Climbers these days climb harder than ever and it is surely due, in no small measure, to advancements in training. Among recreational climbers the advancement in grades is certainly not due to low body weight because over-fat climbers are more plentiful than ever.

We, the royal we, Doug, myself, all my climbing friends, climbed a lot, multiple days a week at the crag, rock climbing road trips ranging from a weekend to multiple months, and yet, looking back, we had all pretty much topped out in the mid to upper 5.10's or low 5.11's (Ewbank 20 to 22). It was not lack of will, it just seemed as if none of us had really successful climbing training plans.

The internet was just becoming a thing, youtube did not exist, sponsored climbers were sparse, as were coaches and regimented training programs. The Horst books were THE bibles for training and, at the time, Horst did not really believe in any GPP (General Physical Preparedness) so few people were training foundational human movements like squats, deadlifts and presses. And, of course, Crossfit, controversial as it became in later years, was so fringe it was virtually unknown.

I would be happy to wager, loss of training logs notwithstanding, that I probably could not have done a single push-up or pull-up as I am pretty sure the video years preceded my Crossfit days. Whatever you might think about Crossfit, introducing power lifting and olympic lifts to the masses, including the climbing community, was a positive outcome.

These days, as I close in on 6 decades on the planet, I consider maintaining my current muscle mass and strength a win. But, and here is the weird thing, I think I might be stronger in my late 50's than I was in my late 40's. I credit that to, not only a life long passion for training and performance, but also the intellectual curiosity to keep learning.