Climbing Coach

Another great film from the Wide Boyz and Wild Country.

I was chatting to a friend that works for Wild Country a couple of months ago, and we were chatting about marketing and things. I asked whether they were going to get the ‘Wide Boyz’ to make a crack climbing instructional video. I was assured that Wild Country were on the case. I saw this last week on UKC, but did get round to putting it up here until today. Great video! Thanks Wild Country, Pete and Tom. Loads of respect to these guys who after spending years training on the ‘crack machine’ in a cellar, went out and torn a wide hole in the US off-width scene!

A student from Bangor University Sports Science course with Outdoor activities has posted this as part of his course on YouTube. I really liked it and it give a good overview of warming up for either individuals or coaches looking for ideas.

Well, April is nearly over and work has remained slow. Hopefully it will pick up next month. As such if anyone wants to come on a coaching course that is either programmed or some private guiding or climbing coaching then you can contact me here.

At present I have some provisional dates.

How To Climb Harder – 5/6/7 May

Rope Rescue for Climbers – 12/13 May

Sea Cliff Climbing Course – 14/15/16/17/18 May

Other dates and these are also available for private courses.

Well, if you have been trying to use the iCoach facility on my Snowdonia Mountain Guides website, I must apologise, as there has been a problem with the code, that stopped you re-assessing you performance profile and your climbing profile after each month.

Thankfully I have managed to sort this out now, just in time for outdoor climbing season. I have a few more bits and pieces I am working on for the site but they won’t happen till some point later in the year.

During my MSc this was a major question posed to researchers, as much of the characteristics of overtraining or over-reaching, would if left unchecked lead to Over Trainign Syndrome. The difference between overtraining and the over training syndrome, is that it can take days to recover from overtraining, and most people who train will have ‘overtrained’, whereas if you carry on training through a period after overtraining, you may develop the syndrome, which results in a sustain reduction in performance, which can take months to recover from.

Many tests were proposed, some of which included taking blood to measure heat shock proteins, others included taking a profile of moods states, through a daily questionaire, and graphing the results.As such the test were either invasive or took enough time to make them less likely to be adheared to during training.

Then someone came up with the idea of a simple test, one that checks your CNS (Central Nervous System), it is a called the finger tap test. There is a downloadable iPhone app, and basically every day you take under two minutes to tap the screen for less thsan a minute, and the app records your daily average, and outputs it to a graph.

After a hard training session your CNS is busy trying to repair itself, so you will be fatigued and results in a fewer taps in the time. The idea behind the results if is you are tapping lower than normal it is not a good day to be doing a massive workout, instead a light climb might be in order.

Anyway, I though it might be of interest to some people who are training. The website about the app is here.

If like most climbers in the UK (if not further afield) then there is a seasonality to our climbing that if we want to make the most out of our cragging year, then we need to learn to tame and master the ebb and flow of performance.

Thankfully with the development of indoor climbing, the chance are that you are at your strongest around this time of year, all those nights training indoor, are good for strength, and endurance. However when you dare to step outside and feel the warm glow of the sun on your skin, then it can become very apparent that despite being strong, and having better endurance, apparently your actual ‘rock’ climbing ability has plummeted.

In order to make the ‘transition’ from indoor to outdoor climbing as smooth as possible there are many things you can do. The first is be realistic with yourself, drop the grade and accept that you won’t be leading the same grade as you were at the end of the season.

The second step is to put aside 2 to 3 days for a shakedown. By this, I mean a bit like those rich people who own yachts, they store them over winter, and then spend the spring making ready, changing things around, renewing old and tire ropes. So to do we have to have a tidy up and shake down of our climbing vessel.

You probably haven’t seen a wire for the last few months, let alone tried to place one in anger. Similar you have spent the winter standing on massive bolt on holds indoor, outdoors those footholds are not only smaller but also not coloured brightly for you to find them.

As such the first to things you need to focus on are ‘finding your feet’ and ‘getting you eye in’ for gear placements. In order to do this, every year I drop the grade right back and attack cliffs, ticking many classics I have climbed many times before.

Having climbed the routes before, you will have a greater confidence in being successful, it also is great should you find it easier then you expect. It also means you can focus on the processes of looking for and using footholds, and look for and placing gear as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Expect the first route to be much harder than you think it will be, and don’t be dishearten. Slowly increase the grade and you’ll quickly move back to where you were last year.

Another trick I use often on the second or third day of shaking myself back into rock climbing, is to deliberately make routes harder, by not moving off steep section, and hanging about and trying to recover in places where I can easily get out because there is a ledge just above or just below.

Basically, I am getting the body used to hanging out and getting pumped, using my feet properly and getting a eye for gear so I can get as many first time placements as possible.

Early Season Mileage Rules

1. Drop the grade right back.
2. Focus on footwork.
3. Focus on getting an ‘eye’ for gear placements.
4. Increase grade slowly
5. Practice hanging out and recovering when a ledge is close at hand should you get too pump.
6. Think about repeating routes you’ve climbed before to limit any surprise.

Hi All, I have several Easter Rock Climbing Coaching Courses coming up, if anyone is keen to kick start thier climbign season with some guiding or coaching on some of the classic routes in North Wales.

31st March – 1st April – Sea Cliff Climbing Course – £250 pp

A two day course looking at the art of Sea Cliff Climbing, based on from LLanberis we journey out to either Gogarth or the Lleyn Peninsular to enjoy the delights of sea cliff climbing. Suitable for people climbign VS or above. More details of the Sea Cliff Climbing Course on Snowdonia Mountain Guides Website

2nd – 6th April – Lead Climbing Coaching – £500 pp

A 5 day course on lead climbign coaching, designed to help develop your lead climbing skills over the week. You will be spending you time on lead, learning how to place better gear, use tactics to inprove your performance and mental skills to combat negative thoughts and anxiety. More details of Lead Climbing Coaching Course on SnowdoniaMountain Guides Website.

7th – 8th April – Guided Classic Climbs in Snowdonia – £250 pp

This two day course is a whistle stop tour of the best routes in North Wales, we may end up visiting multiple crags each day. You’ll not onyl get to climb the routes of your dreams but improive along the way with top tips from you guide. More details on Guided Classic Rock Climbs Course on Snowdonia Mountain Guides Website

9th – 13th April Intro to Lead Climbing – £500 pp

Have you climbed insode and want to get out on real rock, and learn how to place gear and make belays, before going to to make your first lead climbs. Then this is the course for you. More details on the Intro To Lead Climbing Course on Snowdonia Mountain Guides Website.

14th – 15th Sea Cliff Climbing – £250 pp

A two day course looking at the art of Sea Cliff Climbing, based on from LLanberis we journey out to either Gogarth or the Lleyn Peninsular to enjoy the delights of sea cliff climbing. Suitable for people climbign VS or above. More details of the Sea Cliff Climbing Course on Snowdonia Mountain Guides Website

Full details on all courses can be found in the New Snowdonia Mountain Guides Course Brochure 2012/13, a downloadable PDF.

There have been two great articles published online recently, and I don’t want to go over old ground by repeating them, instead I shall throw you over to the sites. The first is by Dave Macleod, who talks about how young people often learn the hard way about injuries. The second is from Rebecca Williams who runs Smart Climbing, who added a recent blog post on more rounded training based on her experiences of gymnastics.

Last week I met up with Rebecca as she had a whiteboard she didn’t need anymore. I stopped for a quick brew and somehow we both got talking about Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) in climbing. We discuss that far too much time seems to be on climbing rather than the conditioning of a well round general fitness.

Rebecca’s recalls her gymnastic past, whilst during my MSc I went and visited an old school friend who is an elite gymnastic coach, to chat about what she does with the gymnasts that she trains, and having observed a session, I can say that what Rebecca describes appears a common thing in gymnastics. Yet during our discussion I tried to remember times when I had seen a 30 minute warm up or 30 minute stretching session at the climbing wall, and sadly I have yet to come across it, but that doesn’t mean it does not happen.

Similarly I have also done two of the BMC LTAD, and as it has been hard to get involved as a deliverer of these courses, so I decided to do a bit of digging and research and set up a similar course on LTAD.

When looking at the Fundamentals stage of LTAD and how other sports cover this, I found most other sports don’t use their sport as a vehicle when developing the ABC of movement (Agility, Balance and coordination). Instead they use a set of exercises that are aimed at developing these skills, skills which if not learnt by a certain age become harder to master. If they have mastered these ABC then the child can, if they choose to, take them to another sport, but essentially the Agility, Balance and coordination are already hardwired. Try searching Agility, Balance and coordination in Google and you’ll find a lot of resources, some from tennis and other sports are particularly good, and include short videos of what you can do.

Interestingly the BMC and UIAA recently endorsed the notion that ‘campus board’ training was inappropriate for young climbers, as a research paper had linked it damaged of the growth plates in the fingers and subsequent permanent finger deformity. However, I suspect any overtraining of fingers of steep boulders may well have a similar effect.

Another issue for young people, I wrote about a long time ago was weight issues, after reading an article on weight and gymnasts. It attributed weight being made an issue by a coach as making gymnasts be significantly more likely to develop some form of disordered eating. However it also looked at coaches’ thoughts, asking them ‘Do you make weight an issue in training’, to which nearly all coaches denied making it an issue. However when they asked current and ex-gymnasts they found that a much higher percentage felt the coach made weight an issue. I am sure that there would be similar results if that same work was carried out on climbing coaches and the question was of weight, and on ‘protecting children against finger injuries’.

By the look of the two articles I linked to above, neither of them are not alone in thinking that training young climbers is still a delicate and relatively misunderstood thing, with little decent research being available. However conditioning training seems vastly underused, and the issues around the development of young climbers bone structure is still often misinterpreted, and could lead to as Dave puts its young climber learning the hard way about injury.

I draw a parallel to a powerlifting training regime that was tested many years ago as part of some research. The protocol showed that yes it was extremely effective at increasing strength, however the research was cut short, as whilst the strength increase was undeniable, the down side was that it lead to some pretty horrific injuries (Ruptured/detached muscles and tendons if I recall). We are only starting to come into the light from darkness when it comes to training young climbers, and like this protocol we may be making some mistakes.

So whilst the start of the BMC young climbers competition circuit is starting up this weekend. Where competition is growing as more and more people compete (around 2000+ young climbers are involved across the UK), how we train them to do this is still a dark art, and perhaps we should use a precautionary principle when training young people.

Anyway I really just wanted to support the two articles I mentioned and managed instead to go off on yet another tangent

Hi, I have been bust putting together a little brochure with all the courses we are offering over at Snowdonia Mountain Guides. I will put a link on the website soon, but for now you can download the PDF here.

The Brochure covers all the courses we have coming up over the next few months, right through to the Autumn of 2013. If you use social media and have friends who climb or mountaineer who’d be interested in seeing our Brochure please help us market this brochure by re-tweeting this tweet, or sharing the link to the PDF with your friends on Facebook.