Training and Motivation

This time it seems that I am sticking to my training a lot better. 

With Alex at the farm three days a week, it gives me a good amount of time to get into the gym and climb.  Yesterday I went in and worked on some stuff with some really strong guys.  I first got to the gym and it was packed, but there was a lot of new stuff up to warm up on so I got straight on the wall.  From V4s to V9s, there was plenty of stuff.  A lot of the stuff went first go, but I got stuck on a V6 that had a pretty tensiony sloper move that went to a pinch around a corner.  After trying to cheat past the move, I conceded to doing it the way it was intended and finally got it.

Then it was time to work the V9.  It was an undercling to two pinches and a large move to a sloper (at this point you should all know how much I love slopers) and then a left hand to another sloper pinch.  I tried and tried, but I couldn't get it.  After giving up on that problem, I started to go catch up on all the other new stuff in the gym.  I did all the V4s and up and went to go see what other stuff was around.  I ran into Josh Larson and began to boulder with him on some stuff he was making up.  It was HARD and Josh is a strong climber; which leads me to a conclusion about my climbing and motivation.

I have always been pretty natural at climbing, however I have never been that strong.  There is something that pushes me within climbing itself that makes me want to get better.  The grading scale helps with that, which is why I think it's a little silly when people say grades don't matter.  You shouldn't be walking around bragging about how hard you climb, but climbers don't get the luxury of beating a best time or score.  All we have to measure progress universally is grades. (and even those are often pretty subjective.)

Part of what pushes me though is people better than me.  Not because I want to be better than them, but because if I see a guy having a hard time with a move I'm working and then I see him get on a much harder problem I see that I'm not as far as I thought.  I may not try those moves in that V13, unless I see a guy I know is a little stronger than me stick them.  This is where I have had issues.  I have always climbed by myself or in pretty obscure locations.  I started at Baylor, where I climbed so often that I quickly became one of the best climbers there.  Then, I climbed at Hueco Tanks, but most of the time alone.  After that, I climbed at Fort Bliss, where most of the other climbers were beginners.  This makes it hard to push yourself; especially when you are doing most of the setting for yourself.

My recommendation for anyone is to find a climbing partner.  The best scenario is someone that is about you same grade, but a totally different climbing style than you.  If you are best at climbing steep crimps, climb with someone that climbs burly compression problems.  Or even mix it up and get with a sport climber, (whoa, crazy).