UKC

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.

The following training article by Alex Barrows gives an excellent breakdown on training the four main "energy systems" specific to climbing:- http://alexbarrowsclimbing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/training-for-sport-climbi...

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 weeks post - https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/walls+training/ukc_fit_club_week_690-7204...

Psyche video - https://www.ukclimbing.com/videos/play.php?i=5065

mattrm - At least the slide thing is finished.

AJM - St Aldhelms sounds lovely.  Fingerboard progression sounds great.  Good job.

the sheep - Really glad to hear that.  Hope the niggles are good now.  Hope you had a good week?

Si dH - Massively impressed you get that much done with your lad.  Lots of good board sessions.

Somerset swede basher - Lots of nice hard routes there.  Well done on the E5 and the f7A+.

AlanLittle - I'm sure it'll all come back quickly enough.

Ally Smith - Congrats on the 8b FA, deeply impressive stuff as always.  Good job on DIY club as well.

Tom Green - Good job on being on point for the running.

Bones - If you think you're tired now, then I have some bad news for you.  Seriously tho, it's amazing, so treasure it as the first few weeks and months just fly by.

Thanks Matt. Another pretty good week - an excellent morning of easy DWS to kick the season off, and got a reasonable offset pull-ups and fingerboard session in. Hopefully back to St Aldhelms tomorrow. Given the way the tides work currently I suspect I may end up oscillating between bouldering weeks and DWS weeks since one week there’s a really good morning spring tide on the Monday and Tuesday and the other week it’s a low neap which is a bit rubbish for Portland, Lulworth currently out still, and I need to find the people to make Swanage viable.

Monday - climbing! Big spring tide so down to Cave Hole. Lovely sunshine, lots of water and flat seas. Didn’t do anything hard - a couple of familiar friends, a few things I’d done maybe once before and a few new things too, taking advantage of the high water. Went up to about 6b and didn’t get wet, so not a proper DWS session really, but good to get a reasonable amount of movement on rock in. Hopefully that should leave me in a decent place to push onwards onto bigger things next time..... https://www.instagram.com/p/CBLRdZujYhX/?igshid=5lrwkd0415b0

Tuesday - went for a lovely socially distanced walk out on Purbeck with MrsAJM and microAJM and a friend of ours from Swanage. Not enormously strenuous in terms of length and whatever but I was carrying 10-15kg of baby rucksack plus clutter. Active rest I guess, or something like that.

Wednesday - offset pull-ups - I tried bw+10 (85kg) doing sets of 5, so 3x5 each side or 30 pull-ups total. Lower arm was about 10 inches down - a sling folded over to get to a “12 inch” length of sling minus a bit for it not being a completely straight fold. This feels a little messy and feels like it predominantly hits my upper arms but an obvious STG is therefore to get to a clean and neat set at this weight. Then moved onto some dips, did 10, 10, 8 (which is a lot more numbers although I wonder a bit if I was just going quicker at the start, I felt like I was a bit slower the last time and it felt harder - but that could be tiredness). I did a single set of archer rows each side as well and then played around with some options for progression - I think though that where I am is probably ok for the minute, one arm rows I couldn’t do enough of and they probably require too much twist in and I can’t do reverse flies at the right angle for where the rings are set up, but good to check.

Thursday - my work day, so rest.

Friday - I got sidetracked by writing a blog article and sorting out some old photos, and the day slipped away from me a bit. Happy with the blog article - https://travelswithrockboots.blogspot.com/2020/06/portland-dws.html - but I really should have done some training!

Saturday - couple of hours at the beach in the morning. Fingerboard after lunch. Decided to do 10s hangs on the 10mm micros, which are probably a bit more friendly to use than the 8mm. Hadn’t really worked these too much so a p.b. was unsurprising if also not enormously meaningful, but got to 92.5kg. Then tried some knee to bar pulls, 10, 9, 7 - shoulders feeling tired from the longer duration weighted hangs so this felt tough.

Sunday - planning to be out bouldering, probably St Aldhelms, tomorrow so decided to rest.

STG: 

- do some climbing [tick]

- get back on top of life [plodding away]

- figure out some sensible benchmarks/stgs for offset pull-ups and get back on the fingerboard [got a STG for offsets sorted I think. Good fingerboard session]

MTG:

- 70kg one arm assist on the 20mm edge [68kg]

- 90kg on 8mm; try to hang 6mm [86.5kg]

- 5x5 @95kg [5, 5, 5, 4, 4 @91.5]

- solidify 1-3-5, 1-2-5, 1-4-5 campus despite bunched positions [got on ok with some 1.5-x-5 moves but not enough mileage to say solidified]

- ladder the 15mm extra small rungs

Thanks Matt, and thank you for continued statting. This week has mostly involved pulling hard interspersed with eating industrial quantities of cake! 

Mon. Rest, our wedding anniversary so going climbing would be an unwise choice!

Tues. Ticked Cordless Madness (7c) which felt much easier with fresh arms on the sequence I'd worked last week. Also managed Mandy (7b+) in the same session which, being cruxy not pumpy, felt much easier.

Wed. Rest 

Thurs. Had a 2nd session on The Dark Room. Worked out how to do the crux slap today and shuffled into the next knee bar. Just a couple of moves I've not tried yet and need to sort a foot swap just before the crux that isn't working well but it's coming on nicely. Also had a quick play on some other stuff.

Fri. Rest. 

Sat. Rest, Mrs. Swede's birthday - also an unwise time to go climbing! 

Sun. Managed the purest of lines Weedkiller footless (f7C) at the Tor! Tried the Undercut to Crimp problem and still can't to it but closer than previously. 

STG: Return alive from Munich DAV Elbsandstein Expedition: Rain Stopped Play
MTG: Autumn Kalymnos trip? Do a beginner ski tour in spring 2021
LTG: Be a confident, well rounded low to mid 7's sport climber by 2021. For measurable definition see Fit Club 658

M:
T: Wall, Boulderwelt. Circuits
W: Did not drive to Saxony, where the weather forecast for the weekend is heavy thunder and hail storms.
T: Instead drove optimistically to the Frankenjura. Turned out to be a little too optimistic. Walked around forest looking at soaking wet rocks; sat in cafe & planned summer trip to Dolomites; ended up bouldering at the inevitable Cafe Kraft. 
F:    Visit to the emergency barber. A significant contribution to the post-lockdown weight loss programme.
S: Leonhardstein alpine foothills multipitch. Lead head on slabs above bolts surprisingly ok considering.
S: Yesterday would have been pretty light by pre lockdown standards: nevertheless slept late & woke feeling shattered. Rest day. Spent a couple of hours at my desk studying Dolomites maps, topos & trip reports.

Thanks again Matt!

It really helps that my training area in the garage faces on to our back garden and beyond that his playroom, so I can sometimes train at the same time as watching him or in between playing games, if my wife needs to work. Sometimes it doesn't work so well. I also do some early morning sessions at the weekends as I'm always up early. Or evenings after bedtime obvs.

Bit of a weird week this week - started off badly with a new injury but improved a lot, I had a really good morning out today.

M-W: nothing. Sunday night I started feeling a weird pain deep in my chest and back whenever I moved my head/neck. It got progressively worse until Tuesday morning, such that on Monday night I hardly slept at all. It was impossible to even turn my head without a sharp pain. Then from Tuesday lunchtime it gradually improved and by Thursday morning seemed 90% better. Weird. I think from a magic internet self diagnosis, it was probably a strain of either my semispinalis capitis or splenius capitis. Most likely caused by toddler wrestling but possibly exacerbated by board climbing and/or bad work posture.

T: I tried some hangs in the evening and the neck/back/chest pain didn't recur so I tried some board climbing. This went well and I was feeling strong until, when trying the project I had been on last weekend again, something went in my left ring finger. It felt more substantial than my previous recent niggles in that finger, I was worried I had done something serious. It was still ok on pinches but I couldn't crimp at all.

F: rest

S: in the morning I did a few gentle hangs to see how everything felt, with an eye on Sunday. To my surprise the answer was that everything felt good, so I did a short board session avoiding small left hand crimps and actually got close to doing my other hard on-going project (which is all on pinches.)

S: trip up to Woodwell today to finish off Whistler (f7A+). I did it first go, which was cool, the holds felt really good. Then did Kiss of the Dragon (f7B), which also went reasonably quickly. I'm a bit confused about the correct start position for this but I think what I did was worth a soft 7B or 7A+ tick and it was a good problem. After that I went "o'ert road" and tried Angel Deelite (f7A), but it had got pretty hot and I was too tired out to do the crux move. No injury niggles, go figure.

Today was the strongest I have felt outside for ages. Maybe for 18 months? Hopefully none of this week's earlier injuries come back to spoil it! The 7C just right of Kiss the Dragon looked like a really good project for me but I want to keep visiting different places and try to tick some more problems for now.

Si

Cheers Matt. Yes been a good week here, hope you are good too 

Its been a little low on exercise. Work really ramping up now as we have the first batch of researchers returning to lab work. The logistics of which is both technical and demanding. However, with the weather round here being pants it didnt feel like too much of a hardship. Another plus is that through all of this I must have impressed the folks higher up as I have been asked to manage another research department as well as taking on the safety role for my building as a whole! 5 storey research facility built in the early 70's so no end of issues to deal with. Still if it gives some level of job security moving forward for what is going to be a very torrid time for universities then im all for it.

Anyway, went out for a short run on Tuesday just to see how the shoulder recovery was going. Only 3.5km but all felt ok.

Saturday went out for a 8.5km run. Sunday, out for a 13km run with the wife exploring some new trails. Lovely run and longest for a while 

Excellent stat support again Matt - much appreciated.

Kilnsey FA got a write up here: https://www.climber.co.uk/news/news/ally-smith-conquers-lockdown-fatigue/

Not much occurring this week - dealing with some tweaks/niggles at the moment so didn't go out at all. It sounded like the majority of peak lime condensed out on Friday/Saturday, so didn’t miss out too much by the looks of things?

Week 24: 

M – Rings were unsurprisingly hard work after a month off; 3 rounds of: Reverse T’s x10; Prone T’s x10; Prone Y/press-up x20.

DL: sets of 4reps at 45, 65, 85, 105kg. Kept it low volume to (hopefully) limit DOMS.

T – Rushed 30min session to get warmed up, do some finger rehab (very gentle, bodyweight hangs) and set a PB/"WR" with the Lattice pinch-block at 21.2kg. Fairly certain I can pull more myself, and that when someone who is actually strong comes along, 30kg will be the real benchmark…

My wife rightly interrupted this “world record” BS https://www.instagram.com/p/CBOKj6_jpvj/ and temped me out on the bike instead. 70min/23km flat. 

The lattice pinch-block “WR” has already been beaten twice since then e.g. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBTlxyHA_4m/

I'm not sure I have much come back on that effort (just yet…)

W – Split combo of 1-arm exercises to train right-hand whilst rehab’ing left (which got tweaked working K5 last Sunday).

Crimpd 1-arm max-hangs; 15kg assist for R (6x10s); bodyweight 2-arm for L

Lattice pinch block Crimpd max (6x10s); 18.5kg for R, 15kg for L.

Dinner, then Crimpd “hypertrophy” wrist flexor session at 12kg(+bar).

T – Got on the Moonboard after work, hoping it would help me feel energised and ease off niggles. Pec & shoulder DOMS still there from rings session on Monday. Not the greatest plan – felt clunky on the board and took many, many goes to do a pair of 7A+ benchmarks. Stretching and core (300 crunchies in blocks of 50) after dinner.

F –Thoracic niggle returned with a vengeance; would have gone for a professional pummelling by now if lockdown hadn’t of eliminated options for hands on physio. Tried some different stretches and using TENS function of Compex to little avail.

S – Final coat of paint and touch ups of downstairs WC. Gardened. Fast n’ flat 23km road bike loop; 47min. 65kg bench triples x5.

S – Majorly lazy. Lunchtime/afternoon BBQ with midday vino to relax the thoracic tweak

Hi Team! Thanks for keeping the good ship Fit Club afloat, Matt.

A half decent week, although life stole a couple of days from training. Slightly off target for Z1, binned of Z3 run (as per usual!) and missed a core sesh. Loads of time on the board though!

Week 24: 

M: Board Sesh. Max Hangs, Shoulder Shrugs, Limit Bouldering, Circuits (min-on/min-off x10).

T: Rest/nowt.

W: Core & Strength. Pull-up 3RM at 92kg (+17.5 plus clothes and shoes!) STG TICK!

T: Board Sesh. Max Hangs, Shoulder Shrugs, Circuits.

F: Rest/v long work day.

S: Hill Run. 10.4km, 448m vert, 6:05/km. Board Sesh. Boulder Pyramids. Circuits.

S: Hill run. 16.2km, 669m vert gain, 6:52/km. Felt longer than 16km -I guess that's the effect of back to back days.

Week 25:

A deload week.

120 min Z1

20min Z3

2 Core sessions

2 Strength sessions

2 Climbing sessions (2 Aerocap; 2 Strength or Ancap)

2 Prehab sessions

STG (End July):

Max Hangs 78kg total (TICK: 79.5kg)

Weighted Pull-Ups 90kg total 3RM (TICK: 92kg)

Squat 70kg 3RM 

Deadlift 85kg 3RM 

3 sets of core circuit. 

Cheshire Cat, Stigarete.

Curfew, Gaza Strippers.

Clean shunt/TR of Marlene in the Corner (E5 6a)  Imagination (E3 6a) 

Run the Stretton Skyline

MTG (End Sept):

Eliminator, Yates' Layaway.

Grid Iron, Traction Control.

Black Wall Direct, Red Square, Digitron.

Cheshire Gritstone Trail

Nice blog post. 

Although I’ve got to be honest... I’ve never been keen on the idea of DWS, so I’ll probably never use all that good beta!
 

(I feel about DWS the same way that a lot of people seem to feel about Drytooling... a weird mix of fascination and revulsion!)

Great article and great photo. Nice work!

Thanks!

Thanks so much for the continuing stats each week Matt. Have you just joined Instagram or is it an imposter?

haha ... I've always complained about being tired. I just love sleep. It seems like a ridiculous idea to have a child but it's done now. Can't give it back eh. I will do my best to treasure every moment and practice napping.

Monday: walked the 8-mile round trip to the birth centre to see the midwife. Counting this as I walked fast enough to overtake most people and when I came home I was too tired to move for an hour!

Tues-Sun: think mainly rest.

Didn't do my planned runs mainly because I have had so much work to do and didn't actually plan them in but will get back on it this week. Today is week 37/40 so it's not considered early if the baby arrives now. So excited about doing my first pull up once my abs are ready after birth!!!

Having a kid does change things.  The first one seem like such a massive change. However you get used to a new way of doing things and the joy on your life is immeasurable. So much so we have 3 girls who I couldn’t imagine my life without. 

We have found a way for us all to exercise and as they get older it’s a pleasure to be outdoors with them. My 10 year old is already a far better runner than me and the 16 year old thrashes me in the pool which is my strong point. Both of which I think are awesome. Middle daughter is the brains of the bunch but an absolute tenacious swimmer who never gives up  

Thank you I had never considered having kids until we talked about having one last year so it's been a quick turnaround for me.

It does make me feel more confident to hear that people still get out there and fit exercise etc in. Especially good to hear that your kids like doing all those things too. Your girls sound awesome! I hope that we can get out of London enough, or at least have enough nature around us to bring ours up to enjoy the outdoors too. I say I hope, it's something we actively need to make happen but I am excited about all those things.

You're not the only one.  I have plenty of friends who'd never considered kids, even some who'd been totally against it, who suddenly got to a point and then had kids.  Also I know quite a few folk who have also left London just before or just after having kids.  There's definitely a lot of people around here, who've come home after living in London for 10 years.  Heck we didn't move far, but we did move to where we live cause it's near Grandparents.

You can definitely keep the fitness.  I recommend getting a good trike with a great brake and a fixable front wheel.  That'll keep you running no worries.  Just do your research about making sure the baby is ok while you run.  We did loads of walking when our toddler was small.  Slings and baby carriers are your friends.

It is great I have to say.  All the stereotypes are true, it does change you so much, but it's utterly amazing.  I do really love parenthood.

Yes! Excellent, another vote for parenthood  I'm looking forward to the challenge now and the almost perfect timing of some of the climbing walls opening up again early July. haha, sort of kidding, not kidding. I have had so many climbing dreams!

I would be in the former category and had zero interest but Guy is very persuasive! To be honest, after 36 years of having absolutely no inclination to having them to suddenly deciding to has taken a little adjustment. I am looking forward to it now but it has been a big turnaround for me.

Our parents live in very inconvenient places for climbing so I think when we move they are still going to be a while away but hopefully we can get out more wherever we go. I have one sling for walks and we have been looking at various running buggies but haven't purchased one yet. 

Once they grow out of you wanting to carry them in a sling I can thoroughly recommend the big child carrying rucksacks - we got an old macpac one second hand off UKC and we used it between maybe 6 months and 3 years and miniAJM was generally pretty happy to sleep in it and stuff. 

Seconded. I had a Deuter one that I bought used on ebay then sold on a few years later to a colleague at not much of a loss.

Would definitely recommend trekking poles with them on anything other than flat footpaths though - a toddler is a high up, compact and highly mobile load compared to a normal rucksack and can affect your balance considerably.

If you've not bought a buggy yet I'd recommend an Out n About Nipper.  We thought it was so good we had two!  At least 3 friends of ours have seen how good ours is off road and replaced their buggy with one.  You can go pretty much anywhere with them.  We also used them as running buggies although they aren't marketed as this (they are missing a trick there!).  Don't buy the Nipper Sport though unless you just want to run in straight lines on tarmac as it doesn't turn or corner well.  

Is that the one you had when we saw you on Portland? That looked pretty handy. I will look at them when it gets a little bigger.

I used the full body harness the other week for the first time when we went to southern sandstone and it was very comfortable. It was worth having just for that day to be honest, probably the best day of lockdown! Hoping to get out again before the baby is born but running out of time.

That's not a bad shout, I am pretty clumsy anyway on so walking poles might be a plan. We did have a pair but pretty sure one of them either broke or fell off a mountain somewhere. I'll definitely look at getting a bag second hand, doesn't seem an awful lot of point getting anything new apart from perhaps the car seat. 99% of our stuff has been donated.

I've heard a few people say they are good, and you reckon they're fine for running? That's mainly what I want a buggy for. I can't imagine using one for much else at the moment but I might be very wrong!

In my current situation, living in London, I will be mainly running around the park on smooth tarmac. But I would like the buggy to be good for all sorts of terrain as I can see that being very useful for us when we are away or in the future if we ever move. I have visions of just carrying the baby when not running but I imagine it probably won't work out in any way how I imagined!

Yes, that's the one. They're expensive new but lots of them second hand as they last for ages...

It’s only a proper dws day if the dressing gown gets a day out...

STG - 14st / 30 minute 5k

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

LTG - ???

Weight - 15st 3lbs

M - Shifting 13 bags of postcrete and digging big holes.
T - S

Finshed off the massive slide of doom.  Had to dig out a load of large holes and fill them full of concrete.  I'm going to count that.  It was suitably tiring.  Other than that it's been a fairly normal week of work and childcare.  Thankfully lockdown is still in force here in Wales.  Still eating and drinking too much.  The weight is pretty bad.