Going backwards and Knowing when to train

Due to the weather sucking and having not climbed since my last session on Diesel Power, I decided to try another early session, this time at the cave.

I got there for 9.15am and managed to climb until 12 before shooting back to work.

I think I can safely say it will be the last time I'll bother trying to climb at/past my limits in the morning. It took at least 2 hours for my body to wake up as I was getting shut down on the start of Louis hard. My left heel would keep popping off the R.A. Flake and when I did get the undercut, it felt desperate getting the right hand one.

The end felt shaky but I could still do that bit ok. It was however, slightly depressing that I could no longer stick the crux slap in isolation. It felt like a big step back from last time. Despondent, I sat outside in the sun and read for a bit. This seemed to help, as slightly rejuvenated, I managed to finally climb through the start again, get set up on the undercuts and slapped the lip. Sticking the crux from the start still feels really hard, so I don't know how enthusiastic to get just yet!

I'd love to climb this problem so much and scream the cave down but I don't know if I am over reaching myself and would be better off training indoors for a period of time. I dont even know what to train as its hard to create a replica problem. If I manage to climb it, it will be down to luck and persistence as opposed to any ability/strength. I see so many videos of others making things look piss and always executing and imagine they have put a lot more effort in to getting strong and capable of crushing the big numbers. I would be by far the weakest person to climb 8B if I ever manage to get Louis done.

I guess it's hard to find motivation sometimes when you feel like you are going backwards and forever plateaud but I'll keep plugging away at it and quit the whining for now.

Forever Punting, Never Executing.

Since August I have been on a trip to Magic Wood and out in N Wales a few times.

Magic Wood

The trip to Switzerland was fun in terms of gorging on pastries, refreshing dips in the river, reading and sunbathing but the climbing was frustrating with high temps and humidity. I basically did nothing other than a couple of 7Cs which i got on as consolation ticks after getting Dark Sakai in overlapping halves in the first 2 days and thinking it was on... only to have a combination of poor temps and thin/split skin for the whole week.

Wales

Back in the UK the weather had cooled slightly and I had a great session on Louis Armstrong managing the crux slap twice in a row and keeping my feet on both times. I could climb into the slap and hit the lip every go from the start and just required a bit more power to stick the move on link. It's wired from here to the finish, so maybe it could be achievable by the end of the year?

In order to build some momentum towards the goal of Louis, I was keen to try and tick off some shorter problems in the hills. The obvious one to start with was Diesel Power as it has a great walk in, similar to that of Sellas.  I had tried the first move briefly a year or so ago with some weird heel/toe beta and found it hard. After watching a couple of videos, I went with the left foot, face on method and managed to stick it this way. I managed all the moves in the first session back on it, including a rather fun jump move to the lip as opposed to the walking your feet leftwards to the lip method.

Here is the method:

I returned 3 weeks later and climbed into falling off the match move again and again, until I changed from dragging to crimping on my right hand and locking as hard as possible. I managed to drop the last move a couple of times and my skin was about to split, so decided to come back in better conditions. They arrived a week later (last Tuesday) as I could pull on and do the last move with ease every time but on the link I dropped it 6-7 times until I split my left middle on the horrid crimp.

I returned 3 days later (last Friday) with a gaskins o clock start due to it looking like the only good weather window for a while and had 1 good go before splitting the left index and middle wide open. Frustrated, I packed up and got off annoyed at how my shit skin had been the limiting factor as temps were perfect on Friday morning at 9-11am. I wish for once I could learn the art of executing and stop being a total fucking punter on a problem that doesn't feel that hard anymore and was meant to be a quick tick to build some momentum for the autumn/winter!

Here is a video of Friday's effort just before the bloodshed: