I haven't done much after getting back home.
I went one day bouldering, refusing for once to go to the roof. I went to try an old testpiece from my friend Luca, a compression roof that I go back to every few years, after forgetting that it's too wide for my span. Well, not really. My problem is that I'm too short for a crucial toehook. Not really again. My problem is that I am not strong enough to do it with the sequence that I have to use. I try to use the official sequence but can't, so each time I think "Well it's hard but I can give it another go" and each time I come back home thinking "I'll never do it". We will see. On the plus side, I managed to do the moves of the original traverse, that is without toehooking. I know that unless you are a moron you can't ban toehooks (or heelhooks...), but I originally conceived the problem as a lip trip, then resolved to the toehooks because I couldn't do it otherwise.
I found that with some squeezing and cheating (over the head heelhooks and lame tricks like that) it will go. I only need to find a spotter because on my own I could not committ.
Then I wanted to rest. Well, I couldn't.
I am still very excited by deadlifting, but don't want to play this card at the wrong moment. I can still climb for a few more weeks, despite temps in the 20's already by daytime, so I want to wait for the really hot temps to make a big change and start going to the gym.
I haven't lifted but I have pulled. I've had a couple of very good sessions on my wall, with one system only session that left me really worked, especially my biceps. Note to self: it's not smart to spend 3/4 of a three hours session on underclings, "Hubble" is NOT on the ticklist (for the moment).
I found the pinches particularly hard, maybe for the friction, but finally reached an old goal of mine, wich I haven't particularly trained for, to be honest, but that finally came: deadhanging the small pockets on the Beastmaker, back2. My ring fingers have sustained many injuries in the years, and probably the respective lengths of my back2 aren't perfect for making them strong, but spending a few minutes to find a correct placement, I managed to do 3 hangs with 6 kg on!!!
Success!!! I was feeling tired after the warmup on the wall that day, so after a couple of problems I sacked it and went under the BM, putting in this very rewarding session, doing three sets on each hold type with my weightvest on. I also did 25" on the small pockets front2 half crimped, still with the vest.
Now I am very tired, and I think I have to be smart and take it a bit easier next week.
On a side note, I found out that it's very important to keep records of the training, and also to make videos. In one system session, I did some lock offs, the same exercise I've done so many times, but this time it felt strangely hard and precarious. It took me another session to perform it with satisfaction, but still with some serious effort. Later one day, I watched one of my training videos, about that very same exercise, and I found out that I was using the same starting holds, but I was reaching different holds, that were more than 20 cm further apart. That's why if felt hard!!! Because it was!!!
Lesson: before cry and despair take some time and reflect. And always, always keep records of the training.
All right.
Finally, coming to the post's title.
I am undergoing an involution. One day, it occurred to me that climbing is getting more and more deeply personal for me. It's getting so intimate that somehow my climbing attitude has taken a distance from normal climbing. I realized that often I don't care much about getting a problem done, I care about doing something that I thought I couldn't do, or that seemed that way. I think this is why I am so addicted to deadhanging. It's very simple, and it's easy to set goals and to fight for them. It's less complicated than driving to a boulder for sure!!!
On rock also, I understood that I am addicted to doing something that I want to do, REGARDLESS of climbing a problem. If I am attracted by a move, the move is the goal, and not the boulder it's attached to. I can do the move, and drop the problem, and it's perfectly fine for me. It's hard to explain it, this is what made me want to blog today, but in my mind this thought was much clearer.
I don't know when this involution started, but I'm feeling it. For example, I should be very excited by reclimbing the traverse without the toehooks, because that was my goal years ago: well, I am excited, but not as much as to make me want to drive there at any moment. The other day I did all the moves at the end of the session, and this gave me joy. This was the goal, and not specifically the problem. The goal was doing moves that I could not do a few years ago. So now I have to transfer the specific, real goal, to another goal, the problem. Completing the problem is something to be done, something that I want to do, but more for completeness than for myself.
It's exactly what happened with the roof. Once I found myself on the last hold, my goal was reached. Climbing the direct line coming from my start. I didn't believe I could do it when I saw that line. Now I have. I haven't toped out the problem, but this is completely different from my goal. I will keep going there for sure, for completeness, and for training, but I am fine.
I noticed this involution in other aspects of my climbing. After Michele's videos about Amiata, those areas, and the roof especially, have seen many visits from strong and famous climbers. Well, the more others come, the less I want to be there. I think that they are coming only because they know that now there's a very hard problem there, Michele's 8b+. I seriously doubt that they come for different reasons: after all, in the same boulder there was already an 8a/+. Why noone came for all these years? Because 8b+ attracts more than 8a/+. As simple as that.
So I have spent the greatest part of one climbing year under that roof now, going more and more deeply into myself. I shook hands with the monster in me, and with the hero. I met the fool and the sage. I laughed and I swore there. That is one sacred place for me, it's the place of madness and cure.
I don't want to share it with someone who's there for one number on the internet.
I don't know where this path will lead me. I don't even know if in two days I'll write another entry laughing about this one.
But really, I feel that I am climbing and training more and more for just myself, and so I am very very close to freedom.
In the video, below, back2 on the small pockets, with 6 kg on. Another small, useless goal that made all the difference. For me.
I went one day bouldering, refusing for once to go to the roof. I went to try an old testpiece from my friend Luca, a compression roof that I go back to every few years, after forgetting that it's too wide for my span. Well, not really. My problem is that I'm too short for a crucial toehook. Not really again. My problem is that I am not strong enough to do it with the sequence that I have to use. I try to use the official sequence but can't, so each time I think "Well it's hard but I can give it another go" and each time I come back home thinking "I'll never do it". We will see. On the plus side, I managed to do the moves of the original traverse, that is without toehooking. I know that unless you are a moron you can't ban toehooks (or heelhooks...), but I originally conceived the problem as a lip trip, then resolved to the toehooks because I couldn't do it otherwise.
I found that with some squeezing and cheating (over the head heelhooks and lame tricks like that) it will go. I only need to find a spotter because on my own I could not committ.
Then I wanted to rest. Well, I couldn't.
I am still very excited by deadlifting, but don't want to play this card at the wrong moment. I can still climb for a few more weeks, despite temps in the 20's already by daytime, so I want to wait for the really hot temps to make a big change and start going to the gym.
I haven't lifted but I have pulled. I've had a couple of very good sessions on my wall, with one system only session that left me really worked, especially my biceps. Note to self: it's not smart to spend 3/4 of a three hours session on underclings, "Hubble" is NOT on the ticklist (for the moment).
I found the pinches particularly hard, maybe for the friction, but finally reached an old goal of mine, wich I haven't particularly trained for, to be honest, but that finally came: deadhanging the small pockets on the Beastmaker, back2. My ring fingers have sustained many injuries in the years, and probably the respective lengths of my back2 aren't perfect for making them strong, but spending a few minutes to find a correct placement, I managed to do 3 hangs with 6 kg on!!!
Success!!! I was feeling tired after the warmup on the wall that day, so after a couple of problems I sacked it and went under the BM, putting in this very rewarding session, doing three sets on each hold type with my weightvest on. I also did 25" on the small pockets front2 half crimped, still with the vest.
Now I am very tired, and I think I have to be smart and take it a bit easier next week.
On a side note, I found out that it's very important to keep records of the training, and also to make videos. In one system session, I did some lock offs, the same exercise I've done so many times, but this time it felt strangely hard and precarious. It took me another session to perform it with satisfaction, but still with some serious effort. Later one day, I watched one of my training videos, about that very same exercise, and I found out that I was using the same starting holds, but I was reaching different holds, that were more than 20 cm further apart. That's why if felt hard!!! Because it was!!!
Lesson: before cry and despair take some time and reflect. And always, always keep records of the training.
All right.
Finally, coming to the post's title.
I am undergoing an involution. One day, it occurred to me that climbing is getting more and more deeply personal for me. It's getting so intimate that somehow my climbing attitude has taken a distance from normal climbing. I realized that often I don't care much about getting a problem done, I care about doing something that I thought I couldn't do, or that seemed that way. I think this is why I am so addicted to deadhanging. It's very simple, and it's easy to set goals and to fight for them. It's less complicated than driving to a boulder for sure!!!
On rock also, I understood that I am addicted to doing something that I want to do, REGARDLESS of climbing a problem. If I am attracted by a move, the move is the goal, and not the boulder it's attached to. I can do the move, and drop the problem, and it's perfectly fine for me. It's hard to explain it, this is what made me want to blog today, but in my mind this thought was much clearer.
I don't know when this involution started, but I'm feeling it. For example, I should be very excited by reclimbing the traverse without the toehooks, because that was my goal years ago: well, I am excited, but not as much as to make me want to drive there at any moment. The other day I did all the moves at the end of the session, and this gave me joy. This was the goal, and not specifically the problem. The goal was doing moves that I could not do a few years ago. So now I have to transfer the specific, real goal, to another goal, the problem. Completing the problem is something to be done, something that I want to do, but more for completeness than for myself.
It's exactly what happened with the roof. Once I found myself on the last hold, my goal was reached. Climbing the direct line coming from my start. I didn't believe I could do it when I saw that line. Now I have. I haven't toped out the problem, but this is completely different from my goal. I will keep going there for sure, for completeness, and for training, but I am fine.
I noticed this involution in other aspects of my climbing. After Michele's videos about Amiata, those areas, and the roof especially, have seen many visits from strong and famous climbers. Well, the more others come, the less I want to be there. I think that they are coming only because they know that now there's a very hard problem there, Michele's 8b+. I seriously doubt that they come for different reasons: after all, in the same boulder there was already an 8a/+. Why noone came for all these years? Because 8b+ attracts more than 8a/+. As simple as that.
So I have spent the greatest part of one climbing year under that roof now, going more and more deeply into myself. I shook hands with the monster in me, and with the hero. I met the fool and the sage. I laughed and I swore there. That is one sacred place for me, it's the place of madness and cure.
I don't want to share it with someone who's there for one number on the internet.
I don't know where this path will lead me. I don't even know if in two days I'll write another entry laughing about this one.
But really, I feel that I am climbing and training more and more for just myself, and so I am very very close to freedom.
In the video, below, back2 on the small pockets, with 6 kg on. Another small, useless goal that made all the difference. For me.
2 comments:
Excusa Lore, pero no creo que el post deba titularse Involucion si no Revolucion, o quiza despegue. Es obvio que tus sensaciones no estan a la altura insignificantes contables..............
Un saludo y a muerte con TU escalada !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tienes razon Ben, solo me gusta un poco jugar con los titulos!!! Las sensaciones son lo mas importante, antes y despues. Me parece que ahora dejen de ser un peso o un limite, como presion, autoestima, y empiezen a ser solo un grande ventajo y fuente de gran energia, motivacion y felicidad por lo que hago y como lo hago. Tardé veinte anos en aprender esto!!!
Gracias por comentar, y siempre a muerte con NUESTRA escalada!!!
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