When There Is No Where To Hide

There is a certain simplicity to “do or not do” sports. Like rolling a kayak, the outcome is clear. Either the kayak is upright, or you are still underwater gurgling away your last gasp of air. Climbing is like that, it’s do or not do, either you climbed the route or you didn’t. Endurance sports, like long distance kayaking or trail running, I always feel I can manage the distance even if the managing is slow, tedious and running becomes walking. Climbing, as a strength and power sport, is a different beast.

PC: DB

The last few climbing days have featured a lot of “not doing.” One route, a dozen tries, a dozen falls, and I could not get more than a metre or three off the ground. Another route, my second day on, I climbed it clean; although facing up to it first thing in the morning, I remembered the half dozen falls I took on my previous attempts and it took some mental acrobatics to push those out of my head. If you think you can’t, you can’t.

I went back to look at my training log: What was going wrong? How did a promising winter season take such a downward turn? August, it turns out, was a strange month. Over the first 23 days, I only climbed outdoors three times and twice on our home training wall. There was a three day sea kayaking trip, and quite a few mountain biking days (our local new trails finally opened) and some work days on the local trails, and just like that, it was the last week of August and I had not improved over the month.

I believe that climbing is a skill sport. Because of this, my training recommendations always follow the 75/25 rule: 75% of your training time should be spent “practising” climbing, and 25% is where everything else fits in. This is reflected in many of my other programs and will show up in this one, too. A good rule of thumb: If you’re wearing climbing shoes (bouldering, capacity workouts, outdoor climbing) then it is “practice”. If you’re in street shoes or barefoot, it falls in the “training” category. Steve Bechtel. Full Tilt Program.

Inadvertently, I’d flipped the 75/25 rule to 25/75. Time to put away the running shoes and bicycle shorts and get back to serious climbing, because the goal is always to keep the goal the goal.