Training for the big Coire link-up project has commenced with furious intent. This is just one type of unusual training tool I've used ever since I can remember, but never really talked about. Meet my old friend, the Rolling Stone, an 50.9 kilo fingertip training aid. What I call a free movement trainer in as much as, apart from being an inhibitor, it challenges you to make a routine of moves under severe strain, placing massive torque not only through the fingers, but also directly through any muscle group working against it, point to point, be that 2 point, 3 or 4, it causes a direct line of torque from your own outside edge to your innermost contact, showing the true balance centre. From the point in the picture the next move is to flip the stone & catch it on the sloper below & drop stance -rh-, swap the left hand & use the momentum to get upright. Moving from stretch positions to upright & so on, teaches superior body tension, balance & grip analysis & strengthens everything, including a better snap in the white & improved duration in red fibres. The point is not be static or at least minimize it. Sure you can use wieghts, dumbells ecetera, but what is your grip doing?...nothing concerned with climbing. With wieghts they are simply wieghts, up, down, up down...yawn, yeah you've got big arms but it's a shame you can't hold onto anything. Bars are predictable in their load, reactions, & repetitions...it's all to controlled. The purpose of training for me is to be on the edge of control & outcome, not to be safely within it's confines. This stone, because of its uneven weight distribution is a beast to work with, unpredictable from move to move, hard to get off the floor, hard to keep off the floor. The best weights are out there in the garden or laying on the beach. This is a piece of Kilta I carried home strapped to my back last year. Couple this with a few hours of circuits on my barn bouldering wall, itself containing a 7 mtr roof, then come back to this before tea, get some 1-5-9 in, & you're gonna be able to push 95 kilos of grip into a steep pinch after a while. Then wake up & do it all again, day after week. The fight is on. To be successful on the project this year, I realize I have to discard the slightest superficial movement, body drag, or arcing, ecetera, & strip it into direct, intentional & furious hits, with a re-defined economy of movement but also a heightened explosiveness... The limitation of human physiology, put in a simplistic way, I tend to think of as having similarities to the speedo in a wagon. Despite there being 150mph in numerals on the dial, the wagon never reaches that edge of possibilty, yet it can get close. Human physiology, even after knowledgable training is hard to lift into, & keep in the outer limitations of what is achievable, & rarely reaches true moments of unfetterred explosiveness because of reserve thresholds, mental conflicts & emotional turbulence, hence there is an accumalitive & often severe loss of economy or strike commitment. The regime I'm putting myself through at the moment, to complete the Coire problem, the F9a bolt project & a new project in 2006 [already being lined up with visualisation], won't if we are realistic, push beyond human limitations & burst through the roof like a genetic freak, but it will allow others, a visual & physical reference of evidence, that the roof of currently acceptable climbing abilities CAN be punched solidly & visibly cracked, in 8 straight moves. And that, quite simply, is the target. To crack the speedo glass with an unchained ferocity, commitment & accuracy. Short 5 to 10 move highly intense sequences, also, to my mind, give a far more truer representation of high end V grades, than long drawn out 30 move sequences that are in effect, a conglomorate of multiple stacked difficulties, incorporating mental & physical lay-byes along their lengths. Keep in mind that the two centre moves of this project, crossing low, left to right under It's Over are worth somewhere in the region of V15 alone, on the static, & you will have some idea the dark art finale that awaits. Life's a toolbox aye, you put in what you need, no more, no less, just enough to get the job done. Simple.
This year the Gabbro is gonna run hiding like a girl. So, if you must declare war on rock, understand, work with, & study your enemy. 8 moves...how hard can it be.. Remember, water yields to the lightest touch yet it bends steel... See you in the Coire