“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

People often set very general goals and leave it at that. E.g. ‘I want to improve my climbing’ (for anyone interested, these are known as subjective goals) this is good, as the individual has obviously had a think about roughly what they want to achieve. However, in order for you to use your goal setting effectively and also to give you the best possible chance of achieving them, we need to delve a little deeper. We need to develop objective goals, these are more specific and ‘guided’ goals. These can be broken down into 3 broad categories:

• Outcome Goals – These are goals that focus specifically on the outcome of a task, often a competitive task e.g., Win the the Irish Bouldering League, or as Neal mentioned, become the first Irish climber to climb 8c+.
• Performance Goals – These are goals that are generally measured against previous personal performances e.g., climb my first 5a. And are generally more specific in their outcome e.g. get 5 moves further on your current project route.
• Process Goals – These goals focus on specific tasks, such as certain areas of technique e.g., keep my centre of gravity over my feet.

Next, these goals need to be further refined and so we apply the acronym MASTER
Measurable – Goals need to be measurable, otherwise, how would you know if/when you reach them.
Attainable – The goals need to be challenging but not unrealistic.
Specific – There’s no point in just saying ‘I want to climb harder’.
Timed – A point in time must be applied to each goal as a guide to when it should be achieved by.
Engaging – If the goal doesn’t interest YOU, you’re far less likely to achieve it.
Revisable – If the goal is looking unlikely, it is changeable.
So, now lets take a look at our goal of climbing 8c+ again and apply these few simple principles.

Now our Outcome Goal becomes ‘Become the first Irish Climber to climb 8c+, by climbing XXX route in Rodellar, Spain, by the 30th of June 2008′ ( No pressure Neal )

A Performance Goal on the road to climbing 8c+ may be ‘On-Sight 5 8a+’s of XXX style by the 15th of May 2008′.

A Process Goal may be ‘Keep right leg flagged out on the crux move of said route on every subsequent attempt’. A bit more vague on the ‘Timed’ aspect, but still a good goal.

On top of using MASTER and setting Outcome, Performance and Process goals, what else needs to be considered?

• Develop short, medium and long term goals as required. This is advantageous as the reaching the short-term goals provides a good motivation boost and also helps to keep you on track, however, by setting too many goals, things can become confused and less effective. 3 goals in each category is a good number, but better to start out with fewer until you get used to the goal setting process.

Short terms goals could just be for the current training session/days climbing or for the next week or two, mid term goals could extend from weeks to months and long term goals may extend for a number of months, possibly even years. Think about goals for Olympic athletes, they may realistically extend for 4 or even 8 years!

• Record your goals – this is where keeping a training diary really helps, it allows for later review and it’s there in black and white.
• Making your goals public has been shown to increase commitment to the task in question (Locke, 1996).

So, in summary, without the waffle:
- Define your more general, subjective goals.
- Set Outcome, Performance and Process Goals.
- Use the MASTER acronym to guide your goal setting.
- Develop short, medium and long-term goals, but not too many.
- Record your goals on paper.
- If you’re comfortable, make your goals public.

As an example of some of my own goals for the next while:
For those of you who don’t know me I had surgery on my shoulder recently which I am recovering from and so most of my goals at the moment are focused around this.
My main Outcome goal at the moment is…. To get my shoulder back to full functional strength by the 3rd week of March, it’s not a classic Outcome goal, but it is the overriding one at the moment.

My Performance Goals are:
1) Improve one specific aspect of my shoulder flexibility (External Rotation) to 90% of the ‘good’ shoulder’s range, by my next Physio appointment (4 weeks time).
2) To improve my internal and external rotation strength to 90% of the ‘good’ side by my next physio appointment (4 weeks time). At the moment it’s at 80%.

I consider these to be mid-term goals at the moment.
My process goals are:
1) Maintain good scapular (shoulder blade) position throughout all of my exercises in today’s session.
2) Complete 4 sets of 6 reps of bicep curls with green Theraband (the elastic stuff). 3) Don’t snag and snap this length of Theraband….it’s getting expensive!!

I understand that my current goals may not be the best examples, as there’s a bit of jargon in there, but the information above should point you in the right direction. The bottom line is that goals, whether you acknowledge you’re making them or not, are one of the foundations of success. Get your head around it now and you’ll be well set up.

Reference: Locke, E. (1996). Motivation through conscious goal setting. Applied and Preventative Psychology, 5(2), 117-124.

KILDARE, IRELAND (Irish Climbing Coaching)

Hi all!
Firstly, welcome to the new site and we hope to supply you with some interesting notes while you’re here!

Well to start this site off (and in the interests of people checking in regularly , I thought I’d start off with the concept of goal setting in climbing.
Since it’s early January, and mid-winter, now is a great time to be considering your goals and ambitions in the coming year. And that’s not just in climbing, feel free to adapt this to whatever you do in life!
With a couple of months before the dry(er) seasons arrive, it’s worth getting some thoughts into your head regarding what you aim to get out of this year.

Climb a new style of route? (sport, boulder, trad, ice, aid?)
Visit some new areas? (Europe, USA, etc.)
Climb a new grade?
Become more consistent at a grade?
Climb more routes in a day?
Stop getting panicky and scared above gear?
Climb with more people to improve my technique?

While just thinking about the aims for the year isn’t going to give yourself the results you’ve wished for (if only! , it’s definitely a big step in the right direction towards reaching your ambitions! By just putting them on screen or on paper, you’re making that conscious decision to persue your aims.
If you’re feeling even braver, why not even publish them – we’re interested to hear everyone’s thoughts!

So go on, stick your neck out and throw down the gauntlet to yourself (it’s only going to matter to you) and write down your climbing goals for the year in the comments below. Looking forward to seeing them!

I’ll even add mine in to get the ball rolling. Trust me, I get uncomfortable myself putting these in the public domain!

Note: no, neither myself or Nige are in the photo above , but this is the best example (with a photo) of goal setting. I met John (Canada) while in Siurana in Spain in November. He’s in his early 50’s but had set himself a goal to climb 5.13 (that’s 7c+!). You know what, he pulled it off easily….

Update: Don’t forget to check our continuation on this series, Goal Setting: Ins and Outs