Yesterday, following as usual The Guru's command, I went to a comp. Well, it's been horrible. The gym was long and narrow, with overhanging walls on either side and climbers falling on climbers and on the crowd all the time. It was also badly organized: just 1hour and half for the qualifiers (not even enough for a decent warmup), the first round with 50 climbers (chaos!), the second round with 15...
Anyway, the holds were ALL BRAND NEW, so, to me, impossible to hold. I think a hold must be used and chalked a bit to be at its best. Finally, the problems: on every terrain, every problem was the same, easy (compared to the class) moves up to a semi-impossible last move (a dyno). Hmmm...
It's been good because I managed to see old friends though, and because, being unable to climb, always scared by the fall of humans from above, I took my time to watch and learn a whole new bag of tricks to get to a comp final (when there are no problem judges).
There's the good old jump start, you skip the hard task of setting feet on poor smears and do a hard lockoff.
There's the "maybe they don't notice it" stepping start, in which you casually use two holds, one foot hold and the mat to do the first move.
There's the clever "they won't notice it" stepping start, that is like the above but the foot is placed, when possible, on the ground, in the gap between the wall and the mat: pure class.
Another good one is "The ball is mine": users of the gym have tried or set the problems, but then they compete. You are thrown in disbelief as they move effortlessly around holds, reading every move perfectly, and later you hear them talking about "trying that hard 6b route on sunday".
The list is endless, and goes from using other lines' footholds, to the edge of the walls, to bridging in corners and so on, but my favourite is "The Ghost".
"The Ghost" is an art in its own. No one can see him or her top out on a hard line, yet you will find them lines on his scorecard all the time. He (she) is a more than average climber so when confronted he can picture sequences or recall other climbers' ones. Sometimes he steps to the problem to casually do just one demonstrative bit. Being not a crappy climber, when he (she) gets to the finals, a good overall performance can come out, especially when he is 180+ cm tall and the final is a dyno.
Anyway, this is some Guru's footage from "March Madness", stuff that made me schtrongu.
Peace and destruction for you all.
Anyway, the holds were ALL BRAND NEW, so, to me, impossible to hold. I think a hold must be used and chalked a bit to be at its best. Finally, the problems: on every terrain, every problem was the same, easy (compared to the class) moves up to a semi-impossible last move (a dyno). Hmmm...
It's been good because I managed to see old friends though, and because, being unable to climb, always scared by the fall of humans from above, I took my time to watch and learn a whole new bag of tricks to get to a comp final (when there are no problem judges).
There's the good old jump start, you skip the hard task of setting feet on poor smears and do a hard lockoff.
There's the "maybe they don't notice it" stepping start, in which you casually use two holds, one foot hold and the mat to do the first move.
There's the clever "they won't notice it" stepping start, that is like the above but the foot is placed, when possible, on the ground, in the gap between the wall and the mat: pure class.
Another good one is "The ball is mine": users of the gym have tried or set the problems, but then they compete. You are thrown in disbelief as they move effortlessly around holds, reading every move perfectly, and later you hear them talking about "trying that hard 6b route on sunday".
The list is endless, and goes from using other lines' footholds, to the edge of the walls, to bridging in corners and so on, but my favourite is "The Ghost".
"The Ghost" is an art in its own. No one can see him or her top out on a hard line, yet you will find them lines on his scorecard all the time. He (she) is a more than average climber so when confronted he can picture sequences or recall other climbers' ones. Sometimes he steps to the problem to casually do just one demonstrative bit. Being not a crappy climber, when he (she) gets to the finals, a good overall performance can come out, especially when he is 180+ cm tall and the final is a dyno.
Anyway, this is some Guru's footage from "March Madness", stuff that made me schtrongu.
Peace and destruction for you all.
4 comments:
LOL, funny, good bitching :)
Ha ha. Cheating bastards!
I was about to go for a drink. I'm going to the wall now instead. Get the hell over here!
"I was about to go for a drink. I'm going to the wall now instead. Get the hell over here!"
that's what i blog for.
thankyou.
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