I am very lucky with my work I get to help all sorts of people try and reach their own goals. A few months back I started offering advice to a friend via facebook in the main where we exchanged regular messages and she would ask for help with specific aspects of her climbing. As she lives away from north wales it made facebook and phone conversations some of the most useful.
What was really exciting for me is that she was involved with high level competition and has been getting invloved with the GB team training. When she comes to me I often have to think outside my normal box and find ways for her to focus her training on specific weaknesses. The first was her pressing out a long way to a hold. So I got her using a theraband to work out her shoulders.
I met with her at the beacon today and was glad to hear that the shoulder work has really helped her out with this specific weakness. Her next problem was developing and using power, so after a bit of a warm up we look at ways she can practice powerful moves. In particualr she had to work on the fluidity, turning it into on long flowing movement. I also suggested that she anticipates the next move by getting her to hold a position close to where her foot needs to be on the next move rather than let her body swing out having made the move.
I look forward to hearing back from her in a couple of weeks to see how its gone. It is a very informal coaching relationship but one that is interesting for me and hopefully helpful for her. She also had this finger massage device, although it was more like some medieval object of torture, but it seems to work.
