UKC

Just a placeholder for the moment. Im not going to be able to get stats done until miniAJM is in bed so if anyone else is itching for a go between now and about 8 then please feel free, just let me know you're going to so we don't both do it!

A new thread is posted each week on Sunday for anyone to jot down their previous week's activity. UKC fit club is a rich community with posters sharing their goals, noting successes and failures and offering support to those struggling to maintain motivation. Anyone interested in starting is very welcome to join, but to get the most of UKC fit club you should aim to post each week, every week, however little or much you have done. By making such a regular public record of your activities and by restating your goals every week this new habit will hopefully improve your training habits and drive you towards achieving your goals whatever the level of your chosen activity.

For those wanting to find out more about training for climbing a number of physical training articles are linked here: http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=274502

Last week’s thread can be found here:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/walls+training/ukc_fitclub_week_618-69909...

Posters:

AJM - now that the worst of the busy is nearing its end, maybe time to knuckle down, train harder, and lose a few Christmas lbs?

SFrancis - paragliding has always been one of those things on my todo list, one day. I had a friend who did it and the conditions did seem to soak up a lot of time, just like you say. What are you up to in the Ecrins? I feel your pain re very busy work, but if I look at your week and mine you seem to have coped with it far better!

Cyan - how did boat shopping go? And Blokfest, for that matter - did you suffer from having trashed yourself the day before? Hope you managed to get back on top of things after what sounds like a bit of a crazy Sunday...

Somerset Swede Basher - how’s that elbow holding up? Impressed that your week of taking it easy involves multiple 7c laps - how the other half live!

Tom Green - love your description of the run - the mental map and compass Have you got anything in mind for your various Q1 mountaineering goals, in terms of specific routes?

the sheep - good consistency of exercise going on there. How much of a ramp up in speed is your 20m/5k section, and did you manage to start extending it this week?

Ally Smith - is the strength vs aero focus part of the plan, or a drift away into the more convenient/available of the current opportunities?

AlanLittle - the “zing” for indoor bouldering comes back again pretty quick, I find. Training double day endurance sounds like a sensible plan...

biscuit - that green - I assumed the label was wrong - V3 max! Sounds like a solid effort. Your walking with skis on Saturday, did it involve any actual ski wearing, or was this just an extended hunt for sufficient snow?

Powderpuff - which is the smallest slot? Are you talking about the central “eyes” ? Like a good detailed fingerboard geekout... how’s the finger?

alexm198 - hope you’ve been feeling better this week, eventually? As with Tom, do you have any names in the frame for the winter goals? And I was intrigued by your summer goals -personally, to be able to chew up 700m+ of rock to beyond 6b in a day I’d probably need to be onsighting 7a on single pitch anyway just to be able to move fast enough to avoid the faff. But then I do like a good faff.

Dandan - will we see you, will we not! Totally get the low training psyche - these things come and go, and from the sounds of things your training load even when you’re not really training will be about 5x mine!

guy127917 - go on, geek out fingerboard benchmarks! Blokfest sounds a solid effort. Any takeaways? (I was intrigued that you had such a hard line between what you could and couldn’t do, flashing things but thinking you couldn’t ultimately do any more of the set even with time)

ianstevens - how do you find repeat days on the fingerboard? I definitely used to be a bit creaky second day, took a lot longer to warm up.

climbthatpitch - sounds like a great week, well done!

Bones - illness is a common thing at the minute isn’t it. Hope you’re fully recovered now, and again nice work on Blokfest -plans to work on the dynamism?

planetmarshall - an update of two halves! Fingers crossed for a solid recovery... and as with others, be interested in your blog once you put it together

Ardo - doesn’t sounds the best of weeks, always annoying being let down when you think you’ve got things planned, but fingers crossed this one was better?

mattrm - chopping firewood can be good exercise can’t it. Although I split some a little while ago and now I get miniAJM keep harping on about that time I was very noisy whilst I was banging wood for the fire!

Thanks for the stats AJM, elbow still a bit tweaks so no finger boarding or campussing again this week but enjoying endurance instead.

Mon. Rest

Tues. Decided to try a new circuit on the circuit board, took me half a session but managed to do the 7c+, then did half the Orange/blue problem circuit.

Wed. Mission! Parked in Hayfield after work. Fell shoes and micro spikes on, big boots crampons and tools in the bag, ran in to red brook through the snow, shoe change, climbed red brook grade I, shoe change again, ran along the plateau then over the knoll and back to the car. 10km in snow in about 90mins including a climb!

Thurs. Awesome wall routes session, nothing harder than 7a, pretty tired from yesterday .

Fri. Rest.

Sat. Mostly spent doing the work i should have done during the week, sneaked out for 13km on the mtn bike with the kids.

Sun. Back on the circuit board, decided to try the 8a, managed in 2 very overlapping sections. Hopefully go next session. Hoping for a peak in fitness in a couple of weeks time when it's light til 5 and I can get outside after work again. 

Thanks Andy. Not much zinging on my part just now though unfortunately.

STG: Get over flu

MTG (2019): Double digit 7's including Frankenjura 7b+ project 

LTG (2021): Redpoint 8a before I hit 60 

M: 

T: Wall, Thalkirchen. Routes session cut short by having cunningly forgotten stuff in the office that I had to go back & pick up on the way home. Overcrowding on weekday evenings is getting ridiculous.

W: Having only done a short session yesterday, experimented today with the lattice boys' new aerocap protocol: "low load assisted repeaters till you pass out from boredom". Not something I think I'll be adopting on a regular basis.

T: 

F-S: Feel like I have a full-on dose of flu coming on. Definitely worse than the persistent semi-cold that was troubling me up to a couple of weeks ago. Bother.

Having got through Luther, Happy Valley and The Bodyguard during recent bouts of sitting in front of the telly with a large whisky'n'lemsip, is there any other good binge watching material I should be catching up on?  

I shall consider myself nagged, even if it is by me!

Another manic work week, although the worst is now over. Fighting off the grot from Weds to Sat which combined with feeling pretty knackered from work means a low achievement week.

Tuesday - wall. Went around a bunch of the ex comp problems that were new up, plus a few others. Nice for keeping the styles varied.

Sunday - out with team Ting. Sunshine helped replenish the soul .The wind was getting in more than I'd hoped so it was cold at times which with usual sharp boulder field rock meant my skin suffered a bit. Did a few new things including a heinous mantel I had failed on previously and repeated or nearly repeated some old favourites.

Goals for the week - mount new beastmaker micros and see which of them I can pull on. Make more back-3 progress. Go to the wall. 

Cheers Andy.

Saturday was carrying skis and walking in ski (touring) boots all day. One of those days where at the end of it you say 'Well it was better than being in work.....'

I've not had any reports downgrading the V6 in the last week so i'm definitely taking the tick!

As so often happens just as you're feeling strong and performing well something goes wrong. The something was losing body tension on smears as I grabbed the finishing hold of long vert/slabby problem in the Kendal boulder league. I thought I was off about 3 times before and was so happy to grab the hold (with my newly recovered left arm) I relaxed, feet popped off and full weight shock loaded onto my shoulder. A lovely sucking/tearing/wrenching sound came from my shoulder (yes I did match before I let go) and a bit of pain. Initial fear seemed an overreaction as the pain settled quickly and it felt not too bad. Loose and clunky but not painful. The next day it was really sore (and still loose and clunky) so dosed up and kept it moving, Next day was supposed to be finishing off the hard problems in the Depot Winter league but not a chance. Lots of easy shoulder exercises through various ranges and it started to improve. Kept hammering them and it's kept improving. Tomorrow is my last chance to try the Depot problems and it's feeling good. I feel like I could have climbed earlier, but I haven't.

Had a great day with the squad on Saturday at YCS as they all managed to get on the podium and all had some personal challenges/learning going on. Some great moments for them - and us proud coaches.    

I managed to catch the worse of two days of snow in the Lakes and got a tour in up the Dodds. The first day was supposed to be legendary. An inversion/thaw meant it was grassy and wet/heavy snow the day I went out. I only fell over 3 times on the way down so i'm taking that as an improvement. All gone the day after. 

Sleep/diet are still going well. I'm allowing myself to fall off the waggon a bit at weekends diet wise but 25 DQS score is now the norm rather than a rarity. Getting 8hrs sleep a night is proving a bit trickier but i'm not far off.

This week:

DQS 25+ EVERY day

Sleep - 8 hrs EVERY night

Climbing - Depot WBL problems. Probably only the one session this week.

Biking - 2 commuting days. Roughly 50 miles. 

Skiing - Chill Factore if possible

Thanks for taking over Andy. It's been a week of ignoring how exhausted I am... In retrospect it feels almost like I've ground myself down so that I'm forced to have some time out. A bit dysfunctional! :-/

Mon: Rest.

Tues: Wall. Super social. Good to see lots of old faces in the same place at the same time.

Wedns: Wall. Again, more social than anything.

Thurs: So went back Thursday and pushed myself quite hard working through new problems on the 45.

Fri: Wall. Routes up to 6c, got about 7 or 8 pitches in and then everything just stopped working. 

Sat: Disgusting cold. Slept and felt sorry for myself. Barely moved.

Sun: A lot like Saturday.

Hi All. Thanks for statting AJM.

Yep -last week's run was pretty entertaining! So foggy that it was good training for a Cairngorm white-out! I haven't stated any specific route goals for Scottish winter or Chamonix, as they are all so conditions dependent it seems a bit fruitless! However, I have got big hit lists to draw from (the alpine ones are geekily spreadsheeted to allow rapid filtering by conditions/weather/aspect/descent/style/length/etc!)

Week 4:

Working away and forgetting to take trainers meant a shocking, complete fail on Z1. Its the first week in ages that I haven't done any aerobic work. Otherwise a reasonable week though!

M: Indoor bouldering. Good session including complete V2-3 circuit and 2xV4 problems.

T: Working away

W: Alpine start for 20h work day

T: Shoulder prehab.

F: Core & General Strength. Upping the weights again.

S: Shoulder strength sesh and prehab.

S: Drytooling White Goods. Solid workout with good progress on my nemesis, Jaz.

Week 5 Targets:

Off to Scotland Wed-Sun, so climbing and Z1 goals should look after themselves!

Running goal will take a(nother!) hit, but this is an arbitrary goal and will be more than compensated for by the walk-ins!

Just plan to do one core session in addition to the climbing.

STG/Q1:

Scottish Tech 7

3+ classic Cham mixed routes.

1+ SkiMo summit.

Average 300m vertical on weekly runs. (Nooo! -rolling avg: 260m/wk)

MTG/Q2:

Lancs Aretes (666 goal)

6C in Font 

Average 300m vert running per week

Bowland run/climbathon

Welsh 3000s

LTG/Q3:

Cuillin ridge traverse

Lancs aretes (666 goal)

Average 300m vert running per week

Some of: Salbit Westgrat, Piz Badile Cassin, Grand Montets ridge, Innominata, Cordier Pillar, etc...

Thanks Andy - gallant of you to do stats whilst busy busy busy.

My current strength focus is semi-deliberate; I certainly need to be stronger for my route aspirations, but the lack of any capacity training is more laziness than anything else. Hopefully my new woody co-op membership will get me out of this funk? However, last week wasn't the best due to business travel obliterating most of the week. Onwards and upwards from here...

Week 4

M – Fly to Hamburg. Evening gym & crimpd core session.

T – All day Hamburgering. No exercise beyond a tipsy stroll back to the hotel after dinner.

W – All day Hamburgering. Evening gym & fingerboard widget session. Concentrating on front3 crimp (40kg repeaters) and middle2 drag (25kg repeaters)

T – Fly home from Hamburg. No time for any exercise.

F – Chapel. Much bouldering and trying circuits to work out options for strength/an-/aero-cap sessions in the future. Disappointingly, LI aero-cap is going to be the hardest to sort. C&J power singles max 52kg. Some way off pressing a sport climber (Moose has raised the bar; 60kg is probably the minimum I can claim for this 666 goal?)

S – Shopping & DIY club.

S – Much faff and holiday admin.

If Hamburg is going to be a regular stop of your schedule there are a couple of bouldering walls there. I went to Flashh and it was pretty decent, certainly better than an evening in a hotel gym.

http://www.flashh.de

Cheers, its a good 1 minute per km faster than my pb so going to take a lot of work!

Had a steady week gone by

Monday, 400m sprint in the pool to establish where i am pace wise after just doing distance for a while. Smidge over 6 minute so happy with that. Took my youngest out for a 3km interval run in the evening

Tuesday, 2km lunchtime swim

Wednesday, 5km run then 1km swim. 22km ride home

Thursday, 2km lunchtime swim then stretch class

Friday, 2km lunchtime swim and 26km ride home

Saturday, 5km hilly trail run

Sunday, rest day, took the kids round the zoo   

Cheers Alan - Hamburg is a fairly regular business destination for me. I'll try and fit in some bouldering next time around

Hi AJM, thanks for stepping into the stats cockpit.

Glad to report I am feeling better. Amazing what a few gentle runs can do for recovery actually.

The thing with alpine lines is that it might be 700m, ED1 6b or whatever but only have one or two pitches at 6b. I can usually keep an average pace of ~30min per pitch up to that difficulty which buys slightly more time for flailing on crux pitches. I guess I'm pretty good at not faffing, too, so that helps.

As far as specific routes go, I have a few ideas. For the two Scottish VIIs I'm eyeing up either The Magic Crack (VII 7) or its variation, White Magic (VII 7) and then potentially Darth Vader (VII 7). We'll see.

Got a trip to the Alps/Dolomites planned in two weeks, so have started to think about routes for that. My knowledge of routes in the Brenta Dolomites is limited to the mad number of first ascents on Planetmountain recently, so I think if they're still in condition we'll just try and repeat a few of those (shorter 250-500m routes, around M5/M6 AI5/6). And if the weather's good I'd love to dash up the Northwest Face - Bertolone Route (D) on the Gran Paradiso on the way over and put in an enduro-lap on the Ortler north face on the way back.

Thanks for making me say this out loud... now I have to go and do it!

Last Week (Base Week 13/30):

M: Lurgy

T: Lurgy 

W: Lurgy

T: 55min Z1 run

F: 65min Z1 run

S: 45min Z1 run

S: Mellow wall session. Warm up followed by V2/3 circuit and then finished with some circuitboard work. Endurance definitely improving, slowly.

Last week's goals:

[x] Shake the lurgy

[x - solution to the equation was n=4] n easy aerobic sessions where n is the number of training days missed due to lurgy.

[x] Foam roll every evening

Goals:

This week

• 320min Z1 (I'm spending Fri-Sun in Scotland so anticipate most of this being walk-ins)
• 1 ice/mixed muscular endurance workout
• 1 ice/mixed max-strength maintenance session
• 35min Z3
• 3 Scottish winter routes

STG (March 2019)

• [3/20] 20x Scottish winter routes (inc. 2 VIIs)
• 3x WI6 O/S in Dolomites
• 3x Alpine routes

MTG (July 2019)

• 3x alpine rock lines >700m >6b in preparation for Bugaboos 
• Push rock climbing grade, aim for 7a O/S

LTG (End 2019)

• All Along the Watchtower, North Howser Tower
• 5x5000m peaks on the Bezengi wall, Caucasus.

Thanks AJM, I just saw the message for you in last weeks intro about front lever progression. I will get some images/videos up this week or next week, currently not recognisable as anything close to a front lever but will add some accountability.

Last week I was still recovering from illness, I went for a long boulder session on Thursday but it knocked it out of me quite a lot and I felt exhausted on Friday. No pull-up sessions last week. Today I am off to have a look at joining the gym again for some front lever/core strengthening exercises.

This week I have planned 2 climbing sessions, 2 runs and 3 pull-up sessions plus possibly re-joining a gym. Still trying to manage a finger issue. It currently isn't a problem until after a climbing session and then it feels tender for a few days. As it doesn't seem to affect my climbing I am just carrying on as usual and making sure I warm up my fingers well to try to prevent any further injury.

Cheers Andy,

Well i'm here but i'm not officially reporting for duty, mostly because I have nothing to report! It's been a very lazy week which has left me feeling a bit aimless. I need to make sure I don't fall into a habit of sitting on my ass too much, it seems to me that laziness is a vicious circle as much as activity is a virtuous circle, despite my lack of ongoing training plan I want to ensure I keep myself active.

I've decided that I will step out of FitClub for a while, i'll no doubt still be lurking but will probably not post until sometime in the middle of the year, or when I get back on the training bandwagon, whichever comes sooner.

Have a nice spring!

If it gets to DWS season before you come back and you fancy a trip out somewhere, then just give us a shout!

Absolutely, i'm super keen for this after our little foray last year!

STG - 14st

MTG - Goblin Girl (6b) 6c at Navigation, then WFD

LTG - Definitely bouldering, bearing in mind Trad will be hard for the next few years...

Weight - 14st 8lbs

M - 4 miles walk

T - Rest

W - Rest

T - 2 mile run

F  - 4 mile walk

S - Firewood

S - Rest

Sorry Andy, didn't see that you'd said you'd do the stats.  Didn't manage any 'hiit' this week, but did do a wodge of walking and went for a run.  Went for a walk up the road to the hill behind my house with the little one.  Sadly there's a bit of it that's quite narrow and didn't fancy meeting a car on that with the baby in the backpack.  But there is a footpath a bit lower that is worth exploring and while it's steeper, ends up in the same place.  The run pretty much killed me.  But it's a good start.  I'll try and bash something out this week as well.  Unsurprisingly the diet is pretty awful, it's hard to maintain something sensible when you spend most of the day commuting.

Hi AJM, 

Sorry I'm a bit out of practice with  beastmaker lingo!....by smallest slot I mean the bottom right and left corner holds, more commonly crimped. 

Finger is ok thanks, was lucky to get away with it though.

Last week just bouldered the once, on Thursday. Ran to the wall, climbed v4 x4, v5 x2, v6x1....first v6 of the year. ..get in you beauty! 3 sets of 20 sit ups and press ups. 3 sets of 10 eccentric wrist curls and leg raises. Theraband for shoulders. 

Overall feel tired at the moment, I don't see alot getting done this week either as a result . Work getting busy again and diet has drifted a touch (had 2 beers last week , too much sugar and too much carbs)

I think it will have to be a maintenance week

Pull hard people!!!

Anyone got any benchmarks on the beastmaker micros to share? Dandan, one arm at bodyweight, or anything like that?

Got the 10mm and 8mm mounted now and having a go at benchmarking, miniAJM was so upset by the drill that I didn't get the 6mm up but judging on performance so far I don't know that will matter too much!

Forces a more aggressive crimp position than a lot of other holds so may highlight a weakness/differential versus holds I can use a slightly more relaxed crimp on.

Imagine they'll be quite good for recruitment style hangs since they're so small!

Back 2 plus 40kg...

No i've not got a set i'm afraid, I have made my own 10mm and 8mm ones, if I put them up i'll try some hangs and report back what happens.

Fair enough! My best in the end (@77kg) was about 10s on the 10mm and 5s on the 8mm.

Given the bm2k bottom outside rails are supposed to be 14mm, a far bigger step down than I'd expected, but I was forced into a more aggressive crimp than I'd usually use, so there's probably a grip differential there too.

I'm not sure you can call it a benchmark but just before doing the Bulge last year (i.e. at my fittest) I managed to take my weight on the 8mm holds for about 2-3 seconds. Normally I can't hold them. 

I've done sets of repeaters (at bodyweight) on the BUK 10mm's and 10 sec hangs on the 8mm's when I was feeling excited to train a couple of months ago.

I couldn't (and still can't) climb The Bulge.

Not much of an update this week but hopefully will have made a small amount of progress next week. Still a bit too early as I'm still supposed to have my feet up, but have been eyeing up the Beastmaker... 

Main takeaway was to get the slab problems done early, you have to queue but still less than near the end! I took my time with watching other people before trying problems to get the beta and that paid off a few times. The other thing that helped was just doing a few comps in a row- has helped me relax and not get stressed by the scoring etc. Other than that... need to get stronger and more flexible (my power and endurance seem ok for bouldering). 

Monday: FB benchmarks

Tuesday: Morning pullups/pushups, Z5 run, think I took the evening off?

Wednesday: Morning pullups/pushups

Thursday: Good session on the new wave set, until I landed a bit funny and strained something in my lower back.

Friday: Rest

Saturday: BM1000 6A session, 3x6sets

Sunday: rest (would have climbed/run both days but resting back)

Benchmarks:

This was the first time I've been on the hang board for quite a while, so expect some instant activation gains.

Weight approx 84kg

BM2K 33mm 4 fingers both arms, +40kg was easy, 1 arm -12kg

BM2K 15mm (?) 4 fingers both arms +25kg 

BM2K Offset pockets middle 2 both arms +20kg

BM2K Offset pockets back 2 both arms - couldn't do 10s unweighted! (I could yesterday though)

BM2K 33mm front 3 both arms + 30kg

BM2K 33mm back 3 both arms +10kg

BM2K 35 deg slopers both arms - couldn't do 10s unweighted! (I could yesterday though)

My best ever BM2K 33mm 4 fingers one arm hang was -10kg so I've maintained strength fairly well. I unknowingly beat my previous best for the 15mm edges (previous 2 arm best +20kg). All the pocket holds were slightly worse, but I feel that is a bit of 'technique', a bit of activation required, and a bit mental (they hurt a lot more).

So a fairly positive result, something to build upon. Will rebenchmark in 4 weeks to see how I'm getting on. My plan is to do 3x10s on/1 minute off for roughly each of the above holds at about 90-90% max weight at least once a week, and maybe a repeaters session as well. Will accept thoughts on that plan, but the main goal is to keep it simple, see it through and measure progress.

Thanks for the stats AJM, you definitely need a fair bit of time for paragliding which may be an issue in the future.

In ecrins on an ice climbing trip, so will do a double post on Sunday. Haven’t got my note book with me for last weeks training. 

Hey AJM, thanks for stepping up to the stat-ting. Wasn't a great week, though worse things happen at sea. Probably good to properly rest the back, so it's all gravy.

Mo: General walking, 6.7 miles. 12 probs, MH, (4*12/180), IDH, (5*4*10:10/60).

Tu: Commuting walking, 8.5 miles. Physio.

We: General walking, 10.2 miles. Curry night.

Th: General walking, 8.9 miles.

Fr: General walking, 8.4 miles.

Sa: Urban walking, 9.1 miles. BBQ night.

Su: General walking, 7.5 miles. Track cycling day out.

Physio on Tuesday: change of alignment stretches/exercises and review at appointment next week. Curry night with mate, BBQ meat consumption with bro and watched the national track cycle racing in Manchester: God, life's hectic when you've no training plan.

Weather, ennui and life got in the way of training or climbing, so a rest week really. Might have another one next, (this), week to rest the back and recharge the batteries.

Thanks for doing the stats AJM

Just a quick one off me so I can get the stats in

M - Rest

T -  Run, 6.9km, 127m accent, 05:42 min per km

W - AM - Run, 10km, 262m accent, 06:21 min per km

       PM - Indoor climbing routes up to 6b+

T - Indoor climbing routes up to 6B+

F - Run 9km, 154m accent, 06:09 min per km. Felt the dreaded fit club lergy coming on so spent all day in work drinking lemsip

S - Lurgy more lemsip

S - Run, 10.2km, 345m accent, 06:36 min per km

Lee