UKC

I managed a 7a+ warmup the other day which I have never done before. I know the route quite well but still refined some moves on it to make it more efficient. Was quite pleasing as it's basically my current flash/onsight grade once I have a few easier routes under the belt.

So over to the great and the good of UKC, post your best warmup vs normal onsight grade.

This also got me thinking, what is the hardest warm up ever done? Do the pro's even bother or just get on the route?

In reply to Morgan Woods:

It seems like 8c warm ups are fairly standard for the Ondras and Megos's of the world, not sure about 8c+ it's kind of hard to find info as it's often a throw away comment when they're reporting a 9a flash...

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

Watched Stevie Haston warming up on an 8a a few years ago, really impressive!

In reply to Morgan Woods:

I think if I warmed up an a couple of diffs, then I think I'd be ready to have a shot at a Severe.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

This seems like a bit of a non-nonsensical question. If you're actually talking about warming up in terms of preparing your body for climbing and preventing injury, this is not going to help. Surely you wouldn't choose something that you don't know you're going to succeed on to actually try and warm up your body?

If you're simply talking about doing a hard route straight off, then that's fairly irrelevant, you've just chosen to repeat a route you know well.

The fact that you've managed to do this route first try may well be an achievement for you (it'd be a miracle for me), and if so, congratulations, but I think this is a strange way to go about saying this.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

My favourite warm up is the Easy Way Down at Wintour's Leap, I know the route quite well and have refined some moves on it to make it more efficient. I always find it quite pleasing.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

I recall on Dave MacLeod's blog a while ago he had been trying an 8c in Spain but without redpoint success. The next day he started up the route to do the first few clips for a warm up but then ended up continuing to the top! So sort of an 8c warm up?

In reply to Morgan Woods:

The only time I've climbed with Seb Grieve, he suggested a 7a+ as a warm-up. I didn't like to spoil things by admitting that this was barely an onsight grade (at the time; with age, things have got markedly worse!) Lowering off, one could hardly fail to notice my trusty belayer convulsed with laughter. "What the f*ck do you think you're laughing at?" I testily enquired. "Are you simple or what... you missed out a jug, a kneebar and a hands off rest." Ouch! Naturally I tried to retain the tattered shreds of dignity; sadly I failed.

Mick

In reply to Morgan Woods:
Depends how well you know the route, what the climbing is like on it and whether there are any rests. I warmed up on Yosemite Wall (7a+) at Malham and it was fine, just got a mild warm up pump which is what you need. That's despite only doing it first redpoint two weeks earlier. Knowing the route and where the good holds and tests were made all the difference.

In reply to The Ivanator:


I only went that way once, "easy" is a relative term - found it's quicker just to walk down through the quarry instead (perhaps not as much fun).

In reply to Morgan Woods:

So the other day you climbed but didn't warm up. Was that part of your training plan and did it produce the desired results ?

In reply to Morgan Woods:

it's all very cool to brag about 7a warm ups, but give it few years and a few finger pulley injuries, that never quite heal the same etc.. you might wish it was a few routes at 6a first.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

'Best warm-up vs normal onsight grade' would imply you're onsighting the warm-up route. If you know the route well then that can makes things a lot easier so not much difference between grades is perhaps not surprising. Comparing it to best redpoint grade would make more sense; either that or make the 'best warm-up' a route you hadn't previously done.

In reply to Michael Gordon:


Wouldn't you have to do something harder afterwards for it to count as a warm-up?

In reply to Morgan Woods:

Not sure, but this could be the hardest Warm Up:

Warm Up (7b)

In reply to Morgan Woods:

It always amazed me that Mark Leach said he used New Dawn as a warm up when trying Cry Freedom.

Probably misguided too. No one uses it as a warm up now.

Currently finding that a stout walk with too many clothes and bearing down on random holds at the base of a crag are working well as part of a warm-up or re-warm up between redpoints

I have used Sardine as a warm up in the past as there is a good shake before and after the hard bit

In reply to Michael Gordon:
That's a good point.

In reply to shark:

Isn't the easiest route at the tor a 7a? And the first move a jump to pulley pulling crimps?
when I've been there, I've warmed up and then tried redpointing sardine.... funnily enough failed too.... guess I need to get a bit better.

In reply to shark:


Thanks, Simon. That sounds like a good tip. Warming up's a bugger for me these days; it seems to require several mini-warm-ups, at different levels of physicality. And, if I do a crap overall warm-up, well you can guess the result!

So incorporating this sounds like a good idea. Thanks again.

Mick

In reply to shark:

And i've noticed people staring to bring fingerboards to some crags and hanging them off a bolt. Whatever works i guess.

In reply to Morgan Woods:
Out of curiosity, how was the rest of your day's climbing? Did you feel like you had less power or stamina than usual, when warming up on easier routes? It's always a hard all to know how much to warm-up when attempting a hard redpoint the same day?

Edit: in this piece with Ondra he states he did one 8a to warm up then got on his 9b project to clean the holds and try a few moves.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/videos/play.php?i=3127

In reply to Morgan Woods:

What was the route a warm up for? If I'm projecting something hard for me I'll just warm up on the easier sections of the route and pull on the quickdraws for the hard sections until I'm warm.

Obviously you can jump straight onto something near your limit to warm up but you're risking flash pump and injury. When you've got a route perfected then it's possible to warm up it but I'd only do this if there weren't any tweaky holds or any strange moves that could cause injury and I'd definitely give up if I was starting to feel severely pumped!

In reply to Mick Ward:

Hi Mick,

There are two aspects to a warm-up. One is to have your overall body at a decent temperature so the muscles are working effectively and the second is having your fingers recruited so that they can apply near maximum force (and it helps to alleviate mid redpoint cold fingers).

If you stand on a set of bathroom scales whilst holding an edge on a fingerboard you can bear down on the edges and watch the needle move as you apply force though there is no visible evidence to an observer that you are doing anything. It has advantages to hanging free as you can gradually apply force up and down. The same applies at the crag and there are more holds available to work this way (ie with both feet on the ground) compared to hanging free and you can do it one hand at a time.

I have in the past experimented with giving myself hot aches by dunking my hands in a stream or snow to stimulate flow of blood to the tips but I don't think the advantages were obvious enough to justify the pain.

In reply to shark:


Haydn once put his hands in plastic bags and then into the river at Cheedale to cool his skin down. Worked apparently. Slightly irrelevant but this reminded me of it...

In reply to Morgan Woods:

At Raven Tor the standard warm up for years was/is Sardine which is a solid 7b. It's pumpy, mostly on decent sized holds so not tweaky and its almost always dry. But mostly its because there's nothing much else to warm up on at that crag, part of a problem with British sport climbing in general. For me that was above my normal onsight grade, certainly for Peak limestone at least, where the bouldery and often blind nature of the climbing makes onsighting pretty hard.

If you go abroad or somewhere with more routes then its far more usual to do multiple warm ups of gradually increasing the difficulty. It's quite common to warm up on one's project as a final warm up, doing all the moves but with rests to optimize recruitment and familiarity (and maybe to put the quickdraws in).

In reply to shark:

Simon, again many thanks. Where I train, there are few warm-ups, and it's easy to get bored with them. So I've been experimenting with hanging off various combinations of holds with poor feet, in trainers. And this seems to work pretty well. Outside, on Portland, it's harder to do this but, certainly on my current project, having a warm-up which will give adequate recruitment is vital. And I think I've found one. For me now, the quality of the warm-up is fundamental to success.

I remember Pete Oxley saying that, when he was younger, he could do a big drive, get out of the car, climb E7 straight off, if need be, and get back in the car again. No warm-up needed!

Re the hand dunking, as a sprog, I used to hold snowballs until they melted (Hermann Buhl fashion). The pain was excruciating. Not sure it did much good apart from a bit of character building.

Mick

In reply to Fraser and Cha1n:



I wasn't feeling particularly strong or motivated but it went okay......ticked one my 7b projects afterwards. Mainly felt that I wasn't pumped which normally takes 1 or 2 easy routes to achieve.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

I find burpees pretty hard

In reply to Yanis Nayu:


Not sure. If something gets the blood flowing and makes you feel warmer, it's probably a 'warm up' - this is where the term comes from.

In reply to Michael Gordon:


But surely the term implies warming up "for something"? if it's your hardest of the day it's not really a "warm up" is it?

I had a mate who consistently chose his hardest target for the day as his first route, on the basis that his arms would be freshest at the beginning. He would then complain that his arms were knackered and he couldn't do another route that hard, which of course confirmed to him that his approach was correct.

It took a year to convince him of the benefits of warming up but he didn't climb any harder, just reduced his chances of injury and did more routes before getting knackered.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I often think of warming up as similar to getting the 'primary pump' (as opposed to flash pump which you get when you've got on something too strenuous too quickly). If that's the main reason for a warm up, then warming up is more necessary to prepare for a steep route - it's often barely required for something slabby, even if hard.

In reply to Michael Gordon:


Yup, but I think my point is that you could climb your hardest route first, get a flash pump, but complete it. The problem would be that you couldn't do much afterwards. Or am I wrong?

In reply to Postmanpat:

I think you are correct. My point was technically you're hardest route, done first, would almost certainly be a warm up (it could not fail to do so). Whether that would be sensible is another matter!

In reply to Michael Gordon:
Although on a hard slabby route you are likely to be pulling on very small holds, which surely would result in a high likelihood of finger injuries if not sufficiently 'warm'.

Obviously a climbing specific warm up should contain many different aspects, including the recruitment of fingers and the wrist flexor muscles.

In reply to Michael Gordon:


That's interesting, could you explain the term flash pump a bit more for naïve old me please. If climbing indoors I'll tend to do one route at half a grade or so lower than the rest. I'll then normally try something more difficult and end up with really pumped up popeye style forearms, sometimes an anchor tattoo appears too. Is this flash pump? I do find I can't then climb very well much after that.

Think I'll try doing a few more easier routes first perhaps?

In reply to Morgan Woods:

Several years ago I went to the Manifold valley to try Thormans Moth. As there are not many warm ups at the Crag and I hadn't been climbing for a while I decided to blow the on-site and warm up on the route and sit on the bolts if things go too much.
With my belayer shouting up the beta and a large crowd of tourists gathering I ended up at the chain.
A rubbish warm up. I was now incapable of climbing anything else for the rest of the day.
At least I didn't get any Red Point nerves. Just embarrassment in front of the applauding crowd.

There was another climber that did the same thing on the same route and ended up vomiting and bursting a blood vessel in the eye. It's always best to warm up!

In reply to Morgan Woods:
Back when I was fit and uninjured, Comedy at Kilnsey was a good warm up/warm down. Steep, good holds, a decent rest and not long enough to get massively pumped.

Andy F

In reply to Steve-J-E:

For some reason I'm sure others can explain, it seems beneficial to get a SLIGHT pump on a different route prior to the main event. Obviously too much is no good as you'll likely fail on the main route, and too little won't have any real effect.

For me personally it's more relevant to onsight trad climbing on steep stamina routes where you can be hanging on for quite a long time placing gear and working out the next bit above - many indoor walls you can get up much quicker than you would outdoors so there tends to be less of an issue and it's more a case of fatigue at the end of the session.

An example I guess might be that if you're hardest grade was E1 and a steep route of that grade was your target for the day, doing an HVS beforehand (perhaps even seconding so you don't get too pumped) might get the arms going a bit, then you can run round and get on the main route while you're still nicely warmed up. But just doing a Hard Severe beforehand would likely not be sufficient physical preparation to really make any difference. And just getting straight on the E1 (or leading a gnarly HVS) might simply make you too pumped too quickly (flash pump) to get a lot more out of the day. Of course it won't be an exact science; much is down to personal preferences and different strategies will work for different climbers.

In reply to Steve-J-E:

For sport routes a 'pyramid style' approach seems to be a proven method of warming up sufficiently and getting a decent length session. For example at your 6b+ grade you may decide to do a 5+ then 6a+ then depending how you're feeling, going for 6b/6b+. I can't see any advantage in just starting at 6b; it basically won't be a sufficient warm-up and might well explain getting useless bulging fore-arms.