I’m giving a slideshow in the Great Outdoors this Wednesday, about my recent adventure climbing and new routing trip to Oman. It starts at 7pm, and is free, though you have to call Great Outdoors to let them know numbers.

IBL promo picture

As posted on climbing.ie:

“We’re delighted to announce that after a gap of several years that the IBL is heading north again!

Tollymore Mountain Centre (www.tollymore.com), on the edge of the Mournes, is Northern Ireland ’s National Centre for Mountaineering and Canoeing Activities. The centre is ideally located for mountain biking, hillwalking, climbing and bouldering so there’s plenty to do in the area after the competition.

The routesetters are:
Michael Duffy, Ricky Bell & Jose Argudo

The competition will be split into two sessions (like we ran in Galway) with a limit of 50 entrants per session.

The schedule for the day is:
Registration: 9am
Session 1: 9.30am – 1pm
Session 2: 1pm – 4.30pm
Prize Giving: 5pm

There will be approximately 10-12 problems to be completed.

There is a system in place which will allow OPTIONAL pre-registration via the Internet so entrants can guarantee their spot in advance. Please go to the IBL page at:

http://www.climbing.ie/index.php/ibl

* You will notice “IBL Tollymore Round 5 Fee” and an Add To Cart button. This will allow payment of the IBL entry fee by PayPal. You don’t need a PayPal account but you do need a credit card.

* In the Confirm Payment page you can add special instructions to the Merchant. Put in here whether you would like morning or afternoon.

* Please email ibl@climbing.ie to let us know that you’ve paid and whether you would prefer a morning/afternoon slot.

* Keep a printout of your receipt and bring it to the comp.

Entry fees on the day are:
Full fee: £12 (€15)
MI members/students/unwaged: £8 (€10)
Juniors: £4 (€5)

Please note that due to renovations there will be no accommodation available at Tollymore itself unfortunately.
There will be plenty of parking space available at the centre.

“Planning is an unnatural process – it’s much more fun to do something.
The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and desperation”
- Sir John Harvey-Jones 1924 – 2008, Industrialist

I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while but life and work have gotten in the way so it’s been a bit of a long road to getting to it! As mentioned on another interesting blog for those motivated by the sport of climbing, Doylo’s Blog had a good personal reflection on his own past year, and the lessons he learned and the forthcoming strategy for 2010. As it happens, Dave seems to have remembered he has a blog and decided to update it also with his own current plans and process he’s going through right now – sounds pretty organised!

I mentioned it a bit here when I took a longer-term view of my own progression from when I started climbing all of 11/12? years ago – sheesh! – and even on reflecting about my experiences so far in Sheffield and the potential for increases.

so, looking back on 2009, I can only say it’s been insightful also in so many ways. I’ve learnt what my natural baseline is now (after going for months of just intermittent climbing) and what many of my strengths were for this reason. I’ve also learnt of the weaknesses – imbalance of pocket to crimp strength, lack of power for burly moves, a lack of belief for harder routes sometimes. All good experiences and brilliant to reflect on now so that I can improve in the future. I was at a seminar today in relation to my course and one of the quotes was “when you share your learning, it grows instead of getting less” (an old 5th century Tamil poem). Well, to the two top-level climbers who answered my calls for advice, I owe you one and to keep the karma going, I’ll continue to share my learning on this blog and a bit on irishclimbingcoaching.ie so hopefully some of it will be of use to someone! LOL Having said that, I’ve always got a lot to learn myself, most notably in getting strong not just in your fingers so I’ll be picking some people’s advice

So, in taking another quote from the seminar – “the future belongs to those who prepare for it today” (some bloke called Malcolm X made that one – like Dave’s post, I have a rough plan to follow for the forthcoming months to prepare for my summer plans (so would probably benefit most people in my hemisphere). And in the interest of sharing, my next couple of posts are going to be my own plans. As part of those posts though, I’m expecting comments and thoughts – this discussion is a two-way thing. Hopefully you’ll get ideas of my own plans, and hopefully some can advise on what they think I should really be focusing on……

The topics (and I’ll update as I finish more)
- overall training plan for 2010
- strength work-outs (fingers, shoulders, etc.)
- fitness
- things that haven’t worked and failures

Are the Amazon links at the bottom of my posts annoying/useful/distracting?

Good training books from Amazon:
9 Out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes: Navigation Through the Maze of Advice for the Self-coached Climber

Performance Rockclimbing

Self-Coached Climber: The Guide to Movement, Training, Performance

Jerry Moffatt: Revelations

The first National Lead Climbing Competition in Ireland (in many years) is being held at the new wall, PlayAtHeight, in Dingle, Co. Kerry.

Categories are male/ female senior (update: 9/9/9: male is now full) and male/ female junior. Entry costs €20 for Seniors, €15 for Juniors, payable on the day. The event is organised by Mountaineering Ireland in Conjunction with Play-at-Height and is sponsored by La Sportiva.
It’ll be a great event for anyone interested in having fun, and trying their hand at some professionally set routes!

For more information on the National Lead Climbing Comp, make sure to check out PlayAtHeight’s website or the Irish climbing forums here with any questions.

- Neal -

Over the weekend of the 28th-30th of March 2008 the 1st Irish Performance Climbing and Coaching Seminar took place in Tollymore Mountain Centre. The event was hugely successful both from a numbers point of view and also (though it will take a few months) for permanently changing the face of the Irish Climbing Community. The weekend succeeded in raising the levels of available knowledge and increasing the drive towards the availability of high-quality coaching and mentoring as well as high level climbing and mountaineering.

A series of workshops and presentations from internationally respected coaches, medics and sports scientists provided participants with the background knowledge required to form a deeper understanding of how to improve both their own climbing and that of others.

Certain anecdotal research was undertaken over the course of the weekend that was extremely useful in guiding a number larger research projects that will help to shape the future of not only Irish climbing, but the global climbing community. I know for many of you attending you may not have seen the larger plan behind it, but you will in the future.

I want to express my huge thanks to Tollymore Mountain Centre, Sport NI and Outsider Magazine for being progressive enough to be able to see the benefits of an event like this happening and being willing to provide so much support – thanks guys.

I also want to extend thanks on behalf of everyone attending to the presenters – it was you that that enabled the high-standards anticipated for this event to be achieved and could not possibly have been as successful in your absence.

As a final note to all of you that attended – share the knowledge that you gained over the weekend. The event was held in order to raise standards within the community as a whole and to help change the less progressive attitudes that are unfortunately shared by some individuals and organisations, often deeply associated with the sport.

We have a very unique and close scene in Ireland (something that many people don’t realise until they’ve experienced those of other nations) and it is one that I am very proud to be a part of. It is this closeness that will help to make the knowledge generated from the seminar more sustainable and further reaching than just those that attended. Don’t keep it to yourself!!

Nigel Callender

Watch out for more info on the even on Climbing.ie, Outsider Magazine, Climber Magazine (UK), teamgearedup.com, irishclimbingcoaching.ie and the seminar webpage over the next few weeks. Also watch this space for more happenings related to the event.

- “Cheers, great course lads”

- “Brilliant course to learn about technique as I had just been [using a] trail & error method which is only good to a point. Thanks!”

- “Explained and demonstrated well, patience was shown by the instructors”

The course was led by our two Coaches, Neal McQuaid and Nigel Callender and was a mixture of 1 to 1 and small group coaching, coupled with video analysis and feedback. Each session was tailored to the requirements of the group and improvements were instantly apparent and were retained by the participants.

Thanks for the feedback guys…..
Nigel & Neal

LIMERICK, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching) – We all know one…. Little Jimmy who does endless laps of the bouldering wall, hogging it for the evening and not stepping off once. He just cruises around on big holds fighting the ‘pump’ for ages at a time, all the while muttering something about ‘trying to get strong’. Though he does have this strange ability to be able to stay in the same spot (usually stuck just below the crux moves on a route) for a short eternity, Little Jimmy never does get any stronger. Why is this? For all the ‘training’ he puts in to ‘get strong’ why isn’t he some well muscled mutant cranking out one-armers every time there’s a female in the room?

Following on in our series on the basic principles of training (see No. 1: Periodisation) we’ll deal with another major factor in making your training successful, Specificity.

Specificity means that a certain type of training is specific to a certain system/muscle group/type of muscle fibre. If you wanted to improve your cycling, you wouldn’t go out and do a load of pull-ups as training would you? This is a very stark example, but the same principle applies to every aspect of training. If you want to develop your finger pocket strength, you don’t train on big slopers, or if you want to develop your power, you don’t try and do a high volume of moves in a really static manner.

So why is Little Jimmy’s training program ineffective? Maybe he wants to ‘get strong’ on big holds… True, he may only want to improve his strength on bigger holds, but the intensity at which he’s climbing (i.e. easy moves and loads of them) is wrong. It’s not specific to what he wants to achieve. His muscles are operating far below their maximum and so are not in the ideal ‘zone’ for developing strength, if he was in this ‘zone’ he’d probably only be able to string 4/5 moves together, never mind the few hundred he does during his usual sessions. Basically, Little Jimmy is working far below his maximum and at too low an intensity. So, what he’s actually training is his longer term endurance, hence his ability to hang below the crux on a route for an eternity – now if only he had the strength to do the harder moves….

This is a very general overview/taster on specificity, it can be as simple as this or considerably more complicated, depending on your goals in mind. Take a step back and have a think about what you’re currently trying to achieve and what way you’re actually going about it. If you find that you’re doing circuits on a bouldering wall, but actually want to improve your one-move lock-off strength, you need a rethink. This will become a bit clearer over the next few weeks as a few more principles are introduced. Don’t think we’re going to give everything away though – and it’s far easier to just get someone else to plan all this for you

Photo: John Harrison gets specific on steep, 2 finger pockets on a Sardinian 7c.

LIMERICK, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching) – On the 8th of July 1998, a car was stopped by police on the border between France and Belgium. Inside, lay coolers containing an array of performance enhancing drugs. Their destination – Dublin and the start of the 1998 Tour de France (Voet, 2001).

This came as just another blow to a sport already marred by a long, dark history of such incidents and certainly wasn’t the last. You may ask; what has this got to do with climbing? The appropriate response is something along the lines of ‘don’t be so naive’. The history of drugs in climbing goes back many years although, in most cases it hasn’t made the headlines, except in the the arena of World Championship Competiton. But presently, it is an issue far closer to home than most people realise. This isn’t particularly my area of knowledge, but I know it will be of interest to many people, so I’ll try and provide a bit of an overview of a few common ergogenic aids.
Ergogenic aids is the heading under which performance enhancing drugs fall, these are any substances that aid physical or mental performance. They range on a continuum of both safety and ethical/moral correctness from energy drinks to anabolic steroids and gene doping.

Caffine:
Makes the world go round (or in my case give you palpitations and makes you feel like passing out). Caffine is a stimulant that acts on the central nervous system to increase alertness, decrease reaction time and encourage the release of fatty acids as fuel for energy production, thus increasing endurance performance (Tarnoplosky, 1994). It has various effects that may be undesired such as peripheral vasoconstriction and an increase in blood pressure. Caffine is currently removed from the present (2008) WADA list of banned substances but may be subject to change again in the future.

Creatine:
Another common substance often considered by climbers is Creatine Monohydrate. The phosphocreatine system is the main source of ATP (think of ATP as the basic unit of energy) for the first ~6-10 seconds of high intensity exercise. Providing an increased store of creatine phosphate (by ingesting creatine monohydrate) may be a potential mechanism for increasing short, high intensity exercise performance and decreasing recovery time. Studies in accomplished climbers have shown no significant increase in performance whilst using Creatine (Doran & Godfrey, 1999) but further research is warranted to provide a conclusion. A potential adverse side effect for performance associated with this ergogenic aid may be the increase in body mass reported in some studies. Other side effects may include gastrointestinal distress and impaired renal function (Graham & Hatton, 1999). Also, as the production of creatine does not follow the same controls as pharmaceuticals, questions as to its purity and safety, especially in the long term have to be considered (Graham & Hatton, 1999) – More on this in part II.

Sympathomimetics/Beta-2 Agonists:
Sympathomimetics act on the sympathetic nervous system to stimulate increases in heart rate, constrict blood vessels, dilate bronchioles etc. Many of these are available as over the counter cold and flu remedies (e.g. psuedoephedrine). Sympathomimetics have recently, as in the case of caffine, been removed from the WADA banned list. However in the case of beta-2 agonists (e.g. salbutamol) some require a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) while others are banned outright during competiton. Check the list carefully if you use an Inhaler!

Check in for Part II to follow shortly – How all this and more relates to climbing and you!

LIMERICK, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching) – Continuing on from our theme on ‘Motivation and Goal Setting’, we’ll move and deal with something that ties the psychological side of climbing and training (i.e. the preparation and mental side of things) with the physiological side (i.e. physical exercise). Though the two are very firmly intertwined in reality, it is far beyond the scope of these articles to go into it (guess you’ll have to come on one of our Coaching Workshops!!) As the step in developing your goals and maintaining your motivation, we are going to deal with the Periodisation. Periodisation is the method of varying your training periodically to prevent ’stagnation’ of the exercises and ensure the body is always having to adjust. It can be used to help maintain motivation levels and stave off boredom by changing things around every now and then. This is achieved by breaking your training into different phases, depending on the goals in mind. There are a number of different periodisation models and though all effectively achieve the same goal, research is conflicting as to which is best at eliciting gains (e.g. Buford, Rossi, Smith & Warren, 2007; Rhea, Ball, Phillips & Burkett, 2002). For the sake of simplicity, here we will deal with the most basic model, a Linear Model of Periodisation.

Macro, Meso and Micro-Cycles
In order to periodise your training, you need to break it down into ‘Blocks’. These blocks or cycles are targeted towards a specific goal and will contain the relevant training / exercises to realise your goal. A macro-cycle is a long cycle which may for example, last an entire season. This will contain a number of meso-cycles, shorter blocks of training which may last a few weeks and will each have a specific focus e.g. endurance, power-endurance, finger strength, slopers etc. Micro-cycles are then the shortest cycles and for this example will last a day/a few days.

Linear Periodisation
In a linear periodisation model, within a full macro-cycle, each meso-cycle builds on the foundations of the previous one. In climbing terms this may start with a 4-6 week stint of general whole-body conditioning, micro-cycles within this may only last one/a few days and may involve running/other cardio. activity or general low-intensity strength work. Each micro-cycle would vary slightly in activity, though still maintain the focus of generally conditioning the body for later training. This is a good time to start correcting any potential sources of injury that may strike later on. The next meso-cycle would then focus on long-term stamina training i.e. for long routes that generally don’t ‘pump’ you out too much. Building on this may be a meso-cycle of arm/shoulder strength whilst maintaining a few sessions to keep the stamina levels ‘topped-up’. So the basic concept is to start out with high-volume, low intensity activities and generally progress to lower-volume, higher intensity exercise. This all depends on the goal you are training for though, so again, must be directed towards your goals!

The Benefits of Periodisation

As well as keeping you ‘interested’ and maintaining your motivation levels, periodising your training keeps you more focused on your goals, makes your training more effective as your body is constantly having to adapt to changes and helps prevent injury and burnout as you’re not working the same thing all the time. This may seem complicated and may take a short time to get your head around it, the easier option is to just get a Climbing Coach to do do it for you…. Also it isn’t just something for elite climbers who train, it is very applicable to climbing itself and all levels of ability.

References:

Buford, T.W., Rossi, S.J., Smith, D.B. & Warren, A.J. (2007). A comparison of periodisation models during nine weeks with equated volume and intensity for strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 21(4), 1245 – 50.

Rhea, M.R., Ball, S.D., Phillips, W.T. & Burkett, L.N. (2002). A comparison of daily linear and undulating periodised programs with equated volume and intensity for strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 16(2), 250 – 55.

KILDARE, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching) – Following on from the previous theme, hopefully you’ll have been thinking about what keeps you motivated.
For most people, what keeps them motivated is the aim or desire to climb a new, harder grade.
Obviously, if you’re going to put some time in on a discipline, it makes sense that you actually enjoy what you’re doing as it’ll help keep you going when you’re busy, the weather is crap, you’re tired, etc. – i.e. what keeps you motivated?

So, now that you’ve an idea of what keeps you ticking, relate this to your aims goals for the year. This all links to what we’ve been talking about regarding goal setting. Most importantly, what you practice at, you’ll get better at. So if you’re hoping to improve your traditional climbing level, it makes sense that you’re going to have to focus on this type of climbing. Same goes for bouldering, sport climbing, etc.
What we mean here is that if you’re going to focus on trad climbing (taking this as the primary example as it’ll relate to many of the climbers in Ireland), you’re going to have to make sure your stamina is emphasized while training. Likewise for bouldering, it’s largely bouldering and strength/fingerboarding work that ye should be thinking about. Makes sense?
Having said that, I am going to contradict myself here a bit by saying that don’t completely disregard the other disciplines. While stamina is absolutely critical for trad climbing, if you’re not strong enough to do the moves it doesn’t matter how long you can stay on the wall. Trad climbers need to focus on some bouldering or strength training more than boulderers need to practise for some stamina!

Another idea to consider, and only slightly off-topic , is that of the motivations that come from those around you. If you’re looking for a catalyst for improving your climbing and staying motivated, make it an idea to climb with new people/strangers every once in a while. Just taking the effort to meet and climb with new people will help keep you on the path that you’re aiming for!

O.k., I’m not going to elaborate on this more today – it’ll take a few blog entries to get you thinking about this! We’ll start giving you an idea on the concepts of making up training plans in the coming days and weeks (although a climbing coach will be required to properly explain it all!).

Set yourself some time today and take 10 or 15 minutes to write down your goals for the year. Keep it short – don’t try to over-extend yourself! It might just help you realize what you need to think about to improve this year.

Image Credit: Unknown climber spitting off a project in Rodellar, Spain. Photo by Keith Ladzinzki – one of the best climbers in the states at present.

- Neal -