With a rather soggy weekend up here in Snowdonia, it was an interesting time to be running a Lead Climb Coaching weekend for Plas Y Brenin. There were a couple of options, a. Take the group out in the rain or b. Be inventive in a climbing wall.
On saturday I went for option a. hoping that the forecast would bring a dry Sunday, when we could put all the wall work together. So headed for the Beacon, as there were a few climbing courses and group bookings using the Brenin Wall. My plan was to cover balance, body position, footwork, finding rest and climbing various features.
It went really well, and I used several things I have develop for my book as well as a few things that I have picked up on the various coaching courses I have attended, as well as a few of the more psychological tricks of developing confidence and choosing an appropriate goal. The day went really well, and it was great to see the clients starting to apply some of the movement stuff on the lead in the wall.
It was interesting to have two people, and a blank sheet to see what they wanted to learn, and what it was possible to cover in an indoor wall. The two clients seemed to revel in all these new skills and techniques. What was really interesting was many of the exercises you can do for yourself once you have been shown them.
What it meant was the next day, when it was dry at Tremadog I could get them both on the lead on a nice easy route, and getting them to put into context the lessons we had learnt from the wall. My clients climbed Bobo and Oberon, whilst I jumared alongside them coaching there gear placements and tactical approach to the climb.
After those rotues we only had a couple of hours left, which wouldn’t leave enough time for them to climb another route, so I took over leading and went down to Yogi, which had about 6 people spread all over it. Backup plan b was the slab of Rio, so I ran up it thinking we could probably get up Yogi afterwards. In the five mintues I took to get from the bottom to the top of the route, a wall of hate had appeared behind me, and the rock was rapidly getting wet, so we abseiled off and headed to Eric’s for Tea and Medals.
I have another Lead Climb Coaching for the Brenin in a couple of weeks time I just hope that the weather improves, by then, in fact i hope it improve very quickly as I am off all week!