ABOVE AND BEYOND

In the pic, the new game.

As I texted today to my brother Tom, I am beyond climbing.
In the last weeks, following a totally new (for me) idea of less volume in each session, suggested by The Guru himself, I have trained or climbed nearly everyday. Sometimes with double sessions.
I also had my fire baptism with deadlifting. I am loving all the training, and despite the effort, both mental and physical that it requires, I am having a hell of fun.
My lifting session was a bit strange though, because I didn't manage to do what I preached the others beginner lifters should do: play it safe, master the technique first, technique is everything. Naturally, as I stepped in all I could think in my naive little mind was "I want to lift 100 kg". Going through the sets I adjusted my position to a stance more similar to the Romanian lifts, than to the conventional ones. Hips quite high. It felt better and I got to 110 kg first try, but then I felt the sirens chanting "Go for double bodyweight!". That is for me 130 kg, and despite feeling close, I forced myself into resisting, like Ulysses.
The following day my legs were fine, but my lower back was very very stiff.
Then, on another matter (or training tool, if you prefer), I noticed some unexpected improvement on the Beastmaker. I know that the concept of "unexpected improvement" doesn't go along well with the concept of training almost every day to obtain that improvement, but the last gains have been huge, for me.
To cut a long story short, I suddenly found myself able to hang:
- small pockets, back2, with 6 kg on;
- 45° with 6 kg on;
- one pad monos, ring finger, with 6 kg on;
- one arm dead hang (RH) the 35° and the right eye with 6 kg on;
- one arm dead hang (RH) the 45° with a slight nestle.
I think this is all.
I am very pleased about the back2 (a feat that is still unrepeated) and the ring monos (repeated) a notoriously weak link for me. Also, I noticed big gains in my left arm, being able to dead hang the 35°, and the right eye with some ease.
I've had also a couple of good, enjoyable climbing sessions on my new project, that is close to being climbed. Two years ago I could not do any of the crux moves...
Another source of great fun, has been system training.
Finally, I dedicate a lot of energy to the mental aspect of training, both when simply bouldering and system bouldering.
A few system training videos below.

Finally, I would like to really thank the new followers, and again all the madmen that dedicate part of their time to this blog.

LEARNING

In the pics, my new problem at Amiata.

I'm learning a lot as of late.
I'm learning a lot about training, and about how my body reacts to training.
But I'm learning a lot about myself, mostly. Yesterday, for example, I understood that I am a completely different climber than I thought I was, or at least I have become that in the last months? Years? I don't think so, I think I've always been this way, only I was hiding it, behind a mask from the others and behind a different attitude from myself.
I found out that I am obsessed by grades, basically.
The pleasure of moving effortlessy and gracefully on rock? Bullshit.
Being in contact with mother nature and my soul? Bullshit.
Having fun? Meeting people? Bull. Shit.
I climb for the grades.
Not really, I climb to progress and to always push my limits further, but in climbing, grades are the consequence.
I found out I've always been this way.
When I was a child, in the Summer one of my favourite pastimes was trying to traverse all around my parents' house, without falling off. Whenever I fell, I had to step a few meters back from the wall, then run towards the wall and jump from a line I had previously drawn, to catch the external windowsill of a window and resume the traverse from there.
When I grew up, I used to play basketball, because I already was so tall. Well, I thought "If I'm short I can try and jump more" and I started training in the gym. At 15 I could leg press 135 kg, and I kept training my legs for my entire career, because all I wanted was to become able to slam dunk. I never managed it, but until my ankles and knees gave up, I kept trying.
I used to ski. Getting the first chairlift at 8.00 in the morning, my desire was to draw the first lines in the pristine snow. But they had to be straight lines. I'm a very calm driver, but I was a mental skier, completely addicted to speed. After a bad crash, I came to a different view.
Shall we talk about cycling? I basically grew up on a roadbike. Going around for sure wasn't enough, I had to go to the sea, 110 kms of Tuscan hills, if you please. I was 16 the first time I did it, with just a 0,5 liters flask of water and a phone coin in case of troubles. Then I started wanting to go fast. I started training and training until I could sprint the 2 kms of straight road in front of my parents' house at the sea, and average at least 50 km/hour.
I think you start getting the idea...
I don't like to take it easy.
Then I started climbing.
After a few years, with my best friend Andrea we decided that there was no reason for us not to try the harder routes of our local crag. They weren't for Gods. Their bolts weren't golden. We put ourselves to it and we did them all, up to the magic grade.
Before, my life had been already ruined by Patrick Edlinger and his book "Grimper", which at the end featured a few charts trying to put together training feats and climbed grade. One of the tests was on a 1 cm edge. Patrick said that 28 pull ups on it, meant sport 8a on rock. The fact that he was climbing full time didn't occur to me, and I never rested until I did those damn 28 pull ups.
Then it was one armers, then lock offs: did I ever think that fully locking off for 1 minute on a 1 cm edge could be a bit useless? Never. That was the idea, the aim, and all that mattered. The fact that at that moment I was climbing 6b+ never seemed a contradiction to me.
I think you definitely got the idea. My worst fears are now reality, climbing is not the aim in itself anymore, it's just a way I push my physical - and somehow mental - limits. This saddens me a bit. All poetry is lost. The magic is lost. All that remains is the battle. I can try and make poetry out of the battle, but it seems hard to do...
This is why I am so intrigued by trivial (no offense) challenges, like fingerboarding, or campusing, or deadlifting. Oh, deadlifting. I am so eager to start it. These activities are very simple and very easy to be pushed to the limits. Training has become a goal in itself, and it's not a coincidence that in the last weeks I put so much effort not only in the physical part of training, but also in the mental part. Standing under the Beastmaker, trying to feel the hold before touching it. Or sitting under the board with my weightvest, eyes closed, visualizing my body gliding between holds that in the previous set I was barely able to link together without the vest on. I love this shit.
I have been trying for a lot of time to understand my feelings towards my ex-project. I was very puzzled because I clearly felt no interest in it anymore, after getting a few times to the last holds but not topping it out. Why didn't I care about completing the problem? Because, I know now, the project wasn't the aim; the aim was to try and do something light years beyond my ability. Climbing the problem should have been the consequence and the result of my real goal. I found myself in a Limbo, in a no-man's land. Getting all the hard part done, and not climbing the problem. I got stuck in between, and I still am, because I want to climb the problem, but I don't desire it as I desired it before, because I have already reached my goal, that was to perform at another level, both physically and mentally. The pure will power that I lack now, makes it very hard to keep going there again and again, also because it's still very hard for me. I lack the mental edge.
I keep going there, though. I went today, and I had fun, also because I nearly did it again despite 23°, but that's exactly the difference: I was having fun. I want to be clear: having fun is OK. But battles are not won by having fun. Personal records are not beaten by having fun.
This is also why I lose interest when I quickly do the moves on a problem and then for one reason or the other, can't put it together. I move out from my target and I get lost. I confuse the aim and the climbing and I am clueless.
I really don't know if a single word that I've written makes some sense, or if it's just another self-delusion. I really don't know. I know that I am feeling more and more free, by letting go and accepting to be a prisoner of my own self.
I don't think writing this makes me happy, but I feel that doing what I do makes me happy.
Of course not everything is just black and white as I've put it. I have fun while climbing; I enjoy getting to the top of problems; I love to take it easy and spend a day doing easy things. But then again, just before packing my stuff and heading to the car, a small thought appears in the back of my mind and tells me to go and try something hard. Because it's what I like.
I feel really lucky that I have my small board, the Beastmaker, and all the strange ideas that keep me going and struggling.
Today, for example, I went to Amiata and opened a new problem, that I called "Lore's One Armer". I'm sure you understand...

INVOLUTION

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.