Rock Climbing UK » Training

Is rock climbing giving you back and neck pain?

Jackie Cowie — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:17:50 +0000

Climbing demands a lot of your body and your mind. The mental exertion can be felt as stress in your shoulders and up into your neck.

Belaying

Who would have thought that belaying could lead to back and neck pain?

Belaying, particularly if done one sided, can overload the muscles of the upper back and shoulder of your dominant side. Continuously looking up at your climber also stresses two areas of your neck:

The base of your neck as it meets your upper back. This can cause pain that spreads out to both shoulders and makes you feel like you have a coat hanger in your shirt.
The upper neck, where it meets your skull. Left untreated for long enough this can cause dull headaches, usually at the back of your head.

Climbing

Many rock climbing routes involve movement and extended periods of time on very small footholds. This causes your calves to take a beating and eventually become knotted up and shortened. This tension can lead to problems elsewhere in the body.

Hard pulls with our arms increases the load to the upper back and shoulders. Pulling on small, crimpy holds causes the muscles of your forearms work overtime. When these become tight enough they may refer pain down your arm into your fingers. Ah the fingers! The tendon attachments here are often sprained from over-stretch or over-contraction.

Preventative techniques

The most effective way for you to keep climbing is to look after yourself.

A small warm up before climbing and a stretching routine after will help.

If you have climbed really hard, conquering that route that had been your nemesis, and feel that you might have overdone it, when you get home, apply an ice pack. Put it over the area that aches for 15 minutes, 3 times a day for 3 days. Don’t leave the pack on longer and think it’ll speed things up, in fact the reverse happens! Remember to wrap the ice pack in something as it’ll burn your skin in this time.

Avoid going too hard too fast. You are most prone to injury when you increase grades or learn a new technique. Build up your strength, stamina and power slowly and you will avoid injury and the need to have take time off climbing to recover.

Try and get aches and pains seen to quickly. The sooner you have them treated, the quicker you’ll be back to 100% fitness. When you ignore or or mask a little niggle with painkillers, your body will cleverly compensate without ever leaving you a memo! Before you know it, that little niggle snowballs into a bigger problem that takes much longer to sort out.

The body responds well to manual therapy. Knots in muscles are worked out with deep tissue massage. Joints can be manipulated to free restrictions, to make sure they function well. Tendons and ligaments, (even the small ones of your fingers), can be worked on to improve healing of ruptured or strained fibres. It’s important, particularly in the case of sprains/strains to control the scar formation of the tendon/ligament. It maintains the elasticity of the structure so that it doesn’t become stiff in years to come.

If you respect your body and listen to the messages it gives you, it will enable you to climb for life.

Dr Jackie Cowie MTech (Chiro)
CHIROPRACTOR

Check out Jackie’s web site: Chiropractor Hull

Is rock climbing giving you back and neck pain? is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing book review: 10 mistakes that climbers make by Dave Macloed

Gareth Hanson — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:41:23 +0000

The first thing I did when I finished reading this book was turn back to page one and start reading it again – it really is that good!

In this truly inspirational climbing book, Dave MacLoed embarks on a step by step mission to destroy every excuse that stands between you and your success as a rock climber (or if you think laterally, between you and success in your job, or any other sport).

The book is broken down into 5 chapters:

1. Creatures of habit

Dave really gets to the bottom of some of the psychological reasons that climbers don’t succeed. If you really take it to heart and examine your own climbing, there’s some pretty tough things to come to terms with here. For me this is the most important section in the book. Climbing is such a psychological sport, if you’re not prepared mentally, you’ll never succeed. I loved the stuff about avoiding getting into the habit of only climbing the type of routes that you can look good on, or being afraid to climb in front of strangers who might be better climbers than you. This stuff is solid gold. I think most people will be able to admit that at some point, they have been affected by the issues in this chapter.

2. The big four: movement technique, finger strength, endurance, body mass

In this section Dave gets into the physical aspects of climbing. What’s really nice is that he has a deep understanding of motivation and external factors that might influence your climbing ability. He really takes into account that everyone has a different level of time and emotional commitment that they can give to the sport.

3. Fear of falling: the real problem, probably…

All climbers (humans) have a fear of falling, it’s hard wired into our DNA to keep us alive. However we all have different levels of fear and ways of dealing with it. There’s some really practical advice on dealing with the fear of falling here, complete with some drills to help you to overcome it.

4. The other big four: attitude, lifestyle, circumstances, tactics

This section smashes a few more of the excuses you might have about improving your climbing – think you’re too old? Forget that! There’s some top quality advice on training to be the best you can be whatever age.

5. What’s next coach? Planning your improvement

Here you’ll find a blueprint for planning your training and recovery. As with the other chapters, it’s real, easy-to-follow, practical advice.

I can hand on heart tell you that the advice contained in this book contributed to my improving my climbing performance by a good couple of grades. Those improvements largely came about from mental and attitude changes rather than some kind of physical regime, so they came pretty quickly.

If you feel like you have hit a bit of a plateau in your rock climbing performance and you want to find a way to push to the next level, I defy you to read this book and not find at least a couple of things which will help you to do it.

I’m proudly stocking it in my new, online climbing books shop. Buy Dave MacLoed – 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes for just £15 – bargain!

Climbing book review: 10 mistakes that climbers make by Dave Macloed is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 9 – Guest post from Ignacio Romero

Gareth Hanson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:16:17 +0000

Hi everyone. Here we are at week 9 (out of 16) of my climbing techniques and climbing improvement plan. Here’s where it all starts to get a little bit more difficult as we go into Christmas. For most people it’s going to be pretty difficult to stick to a decent diet and get plenty of training in.

This week is a really special week because this post is from a new friend from Argentina. Please allow me to introduce Ignacio Romero from Mendoza. Ignacio has been kind enough to send me a climbing drill for those of you who don’t use a gym but would like a structured training plan that you can implement at your local wall.

The workout is split into 2 sessions; short endurance and long endurance. You can do them alone or with a climbing partner.

Day 1 – Short endurance

1 – Warmup: “Traverse”
Traverse around the climbing wall for 5 minutes straight. Easy movements.

2 – Warmup: “Five plus five”
With a partner: start traversing, taking turns adding 5 holds each time, partner repeats and adds 5 more, so on, until you reach a maximum of 50 movements each. Challenge each other to tougher and tougher movements.

Without a partner: set an easy traverse, but of 80 movements. Resting is allowed if necessary, but never without hands.

3 – Short endurance:
Set one or two routes of 25 movements, of high intensity, avoiding finger stressing holds.
Do 3 sets of 3 repetitions (a repetition being a full route) resting 5 minutes between repetitions and 10 minutes between sets.

4 - Flexibility: Stretching
Always stretch properly before you head home. I’ll post a full stretching routine soon.

Day 2 – Long endurance

1 – Warmup: “Traverse”
Traverse around the climbing wall for 5 minutes straight. Easy movements.

Without a partner: set an easy traverse, but of 80 movements. Resting is allowed if necessary, but never without hands.

3 – Continuity: Long endurance
Set one or two routes of 40 movements, of medium/high intensity avoiding finger stressing holds.
Do 3 sets of 4 repetitions (a repetition being a full route) resting 6 minutes between repetitions and 10 minutes between sets.

4 - Flexibility: Stretching
Always stretch properly.

I hope you enjoy this routine. I’ll certainly be giving it a go. Thanks Ignacio!

If anyone else out there has a killer climbing workout or even just a single exercise or tip that you want to share, please let me know.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 9 – Guest post from Ignacio Romero is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 8 – Core techniques

Gareth Hanson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:37:05 +0000

Hi everyone. Welcome to week 8 (out of 16) of my climbing techniques and climbing improvement plan. I think I may have missed a week (or two) actually. I got thrown off track a little because I attended a fantastic internet marketing seminar which has hopefully given me some more knowledge to reach a wider audience of fellow climbers. Anyway, here we are.

This week I would like to focus on basic core technique (probably the single most important factor in being a good rock climber).

When I first started rock climbing I was amazed when I watched experienced climbers using impossibly small holds, as they progressed up routes that I could only dream of completing. I thought they must have spent years developing incredible strength in their fingers. Only now, after learning from those people, do I understand how it’s done.

Find your centre of gravity

To climb anything steep, you need to develop an understanding of your body’s centre of gravity. The closer your centre of gravity is to the wall, the easier it will be to hang on. If you’re hanging on with your left hand, turn your right shoulder and hip into the wall, you’ll feel immediately stronger (if you’re hanging from your right hand, turn in your left side). Use your legs as counterweights, if you’re stood on your left foot and you feel like you’re going to fall left, point out your right foot to equalise your body weight. This is called ‘flagging’.

Climb with your feet

Most climbing newbies focus far too much on their hands (especially people who have strong arms and hands). Always get your feet into position before moving your hands, your climbing will immediately improve. Focus on getting them into a position which means you will be balanced when you move up. You will be amazed how much your feet actually come into play, even on really overhanging routes. If you feel like you’re struggling with your grip, push from your feet, forcing your hips towards the wall. It will almost always relieve the pressure on your fingers.

Keep your arms straight

If there is weight on your arms and they are bent, the stress will be on your muscles. In a pretty short space of time they will get pumped up and you’ll be fatigued. Try instead to hang on your skeleton. If the holds are too low when you’re stood on a hold, bend your legs to allow you to keep those arms straight. Your legs are much stronger and less likely to become fatigued.

Breathe

Climbing can put you under pressure (we have all been there, several feet above a suspect piece of gear). When people get stressed they hold their breath. Breathe deeply. Exhale forcefully as you move for best physical performance.

More useful techniques

To have a solid all-round climbing ability, there are some other core techniques you might want to learn (I took this list from Wikipedia to make sure I didn’t miss anything):

Heel hooks and toe hooks
Finger, hand and fist jamming
Arm bar and elbow bar
Rest positions
Holding a grip tendu or arqué
Crimp / crimping
Chimneying
Egyptian / drop knee / lolotte
Mantle shelf / mantleshelfing
Bridging / stemming
Egyptian bridging
Laybacking
Smearing
Gaston
Dyno

I have been thinking of offering a series of pocket sized climbing techniques cards for each of these techniques. They would cost 79p each (about the same as an MP3 download from itunes), and be delivered as pdf downloads. What do you think? Interested? Drop me a comment below. Thanks

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 8 – Core techniques is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 7 – A review

Gareth Hanson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:39:37 +0000

Hi everyone. Here we are, week 7 (out of about 16) of my climbing techniques and climbing improvement plan.

Here’s what my goals were / are, and where I’m at so far:

I would like to lose around 5% body fat – less weight equals less stress on the fingers when climbing.
Hmmm, not so great on this one. If you have been following this series, you’ll know that I started out with a very heavy strength workout. This combined with not really following my own nutrition advice has meant that I actually gained a couple of pounds. I have since cut my calorie intake a little and I’m now about where I was to start with (75kg). But I’m a fair bit stronger. I think some of the extra weight is muscle. I have yet to get onto some fat measuring scales so I can’t be sure. I’m going to be starting a body composition workout in the next week which will cut my weight, hopefully without shedding muscle. I’ll share it with you when I start.

I want to improve my hang times on the fingerboard by 30% – 50%
I have definitely improved here, but only by about 20%. I struggle with crimps and I’m truly dreadful on the campus board. I have very small hands, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse.

I currently lead around 5b (F6A+ / F6B) indoors. Outdoors I consistently lead HS, and have managed VS. My climbing goal is to lead climb at 6a (F6c+ / F7a) indoors, and E1 outdoors.
My last 3 visits to my local climbing gym has seen me nailing 5c lead and top rope routes. I’m going to do a few more before I claim it as solid, but I feel like I’m on the right track. My confidence is improving week on week and I’m thoroughly enjoying every single rock climbing session.

So what’s working?

I feel like my best gains can be attributed to the following:

I have doubled the amount of climbing I’m doing, from one session per week to at least two.
On the nights that I climb on my own I have had to concentrate on bouldering as I have no one to provide a belay. I feel like this is really forcing me to focus on individual moves and technique.
My workouts have been heavily focused on core strength and grip training.

So that’s me. How are you getting along? Drop me a comment below.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 7 – A review is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 6 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 3)

Gareth Hanson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:00:48 +0000

Hello everyone, it’s week 6 of my rock climbing improvement plan. How’s it going? Has anyone made any improvements?

In 5 weeks I have moved up a grade, from 5b to 5c. I have nailed quite a few tricky 5c routes as both top ropes and leads at my local indoor wall, so I’m going to claim it – there! That’s halfway toward my target for my plan to be able to climb 6a sport routes.

Last week I gave you rock climbing workout 2 of 3, here’s number 3.

Split squats with back foot on a bench

4 sets
8 – 12 repetitions per set
Leave 90 seconds between sets

I’m not bad at standard, weighted squats but I found these pretty tough to start with. The balancing aspect is great for building your core strength.

Stand in front of a weight bench and take a stride away from it. Bend your right leg and place your right foot an the bench behind you, toes facing down. You should now be balancing on your left foot with the bench behind you.
Slowly squat down on your left leg, keeping your back straight. Don’t allow your knee to extend further away than the toes of your left foot as it will place too much stress on your knee. Allow your arms to just hang by your sides. Inhales as you go and finish the movement with your left thigh parallel to the floor.
Push back up to the starting position. Exhale as you go.
Repeat for between 8 and 12 repetitions then swap feet and repeat for the other side – that’s one set. *Start with an alternative foot forward for each set.

Variations:
Once you can do this comfortably without weight, start using a dumbell in each hand to add resistance. You can increase this with each set.

Swiss ball leg curls

4 sets
8 – 12 repetitions per set
Leave 90 seconds between sets

Performing these on a Swiss ball instead of using a machine improves your balance and core strength.

Lay on your back with your heels on the swiss ball and your arms by your side (hands about 12 inches from your sides).
Keeping your back straight, lift your buttocks off the floor.
Draw the Swiss ball toward you by bending your legs. You’ll end up with the soles of your feet on the ball, your neck & knees bent and your body pointing upward. Breathe in as you go.
Slowly push the ball away from you to return to the starting position (for a count of 3). Exhale as you go. Try to remain controlled all the way down.

Variations:
You can make the exercise harder by:

Moving your hands closer to your body – this makes it harder to stabilise yourself through the exercise
You can bend one leg so that you only have one foot on the ball to perform a single leg variation of the exercise. Perform an equal number of repetitions for each side.

Single arm dumbell clean and press

4 sets
6 – 10 repetitions per set
Leave 90 seconds between sets

This is a superb power building exercise and will work wonders for your dynamic strength. This comes in useful for those powerful ‘dyno’ moves.

Take a dumbell (keep it light until you have the technique down), stand with your feet about shoulder width apart and place the dumbell between your feet. The bar should be parallel to your body.
Squat down, bending your legs and keeping your back straight, to grab the dumbell in one hand.
In one big movement, drive up through your legs and pull the dumbell up through the centre of your body toward your neck. Keep your elbow out to your side until the dumbell reaches about chest height, then move your elbow forward and flick your wrist so that your hand ends up facing backward, palm up with the dumbell resting in your palm.
Take a breath then press the dumbell above your head, bend your legs slightly as you go to make it easier (this will allow you to be able to press a good weight). Straighten your legs at the top of the movement to lock out.
Reverse the sequence to lower the dumbell to the floor. Repeat for between 8 and 12 repetitions, then swap hands and repeat – that’s one set. *Start with an alternative hand for each set.

Swiss ball crunches and Swiss ball balances

4 supersets
8 – 12 repetitions per set
Leave 90 seconds between supersets

Swiss ball crunches are a great abdominal exercise, and performing them on the Swiss ball builds core strength. Swiss ball balances are fantastic for improving your balance, which is useful for those really delicate routes where it really comes into play.I like to combine the 2 exercises as a superset

Swiss ball crunches

Sit on a Swiss ball with your feet shoulder width apart
Roll forward until the ball is positioned just above your buttocks
Touch your temples with your fingers and roll your rib cage forward to cause your abdominal muscles to contract. Touch your chin to your chest at the top of the movement (I have been taught that you should press your tongue to the roof of your mouth to help to isolate the correct muscles). Exhale as you contract.
Allow your rib cage to roll back then repeat for between 8 and 12 repetitions. Move straight onto the Swiss ball balances.

Swiss ball balances

If you haven’t done these before, start with seated Swiss ball balances. Sit on a Swiss ball and lift your feet off the ground (just a little). Focus on keeping your core tight to maintain your balance. Try for 90 seconds.

Variations:
You can make the exercise harder by:

Kneeling on the Swiss ball. Make sure you have nothing with hard, sharp edges near you, in case you fall off. You can make it harder still by holding a dumbell out to one side, then swapping hands.
Standing on the Swiss ball (yes you can). The advice on hard objects and sharp corners goes double for this. I like to position the ball next to a weight machine so I can hold on with one hand until I’m ready to balance.

I hope you enjoy these workouts. I’m going to move onto a body composition (weight loss) workout soon. I’ll keep you posted.

As always, it would be good to hear from you. Drop me a line below.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 6 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 3) is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 5 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 2)

Gareth Hanson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:42:17 +0000

Hi everyone, it’s week 5 of my rock climbing improvement plan.

Last week I gave you rock climbing workout 1 of 3, here’s workout number 2.

Cable wood chops

4 sets
10 – 12 repetitions per set
Leave 90 seconds between sets

This a great core strength exercise, and is great for building explosive power for those reachy dyno moves.

Stand next to a high cable machine at your gym (use a single handle). The machine should be by your side.
Take hold of the handle and step slightly away from the machine to get some tension in the cable.
Move the hand furthest away from the machine, in front of you, to hold the handle. The other hand needs to rest over it. You should now be holding the handle like an axe at 2 O’Clock, the arm furthest away from the machine stretched across the front of your body.
Now, in one big, explosive movement, move your hands across the front of your body and downwards, finishing at 8 O’Clock. Move your weight away from the machine throughout the movement, bend the leg furthest away from the machine and keep the one nearest the machine straight. When you finish the movement, your hands will be quite close to the floor. Exhale as you go.
Return to the start, following the same movement, in reverse. The return movement needs to be nice and controlled (around a count of 2 – 3).
Repeat for between 10 – 12 reps. Don’t go too heavy with this until you have a few workouts under your belt.

Straight bar curls

3 sets
6 – 10 repetitions
Leave 90 seconds between sets

Yes these are a bit old school, but they are great for building biceps strength. Good climbing technique does dictate that you try to keep your arms as straight as you can and hang on your skeleton, not on your arms. However, this isn’t always possible. Sometimes you need some good old biceps strength.

Stand in front of a straight barbell, loaded with a weight that you can comfortably lift. Feet about shoulder width apart, with your knees slightly bent.
Bend your knees and squat down to pick up the bar, palms facing away from you.
Keeping your upper arms still, bend your arms at the elbow to bring the bar up toward your chin (for around a count of 1). Make sure you keep your legs slightly bent and your back straight. Don’t swing the weight, make sure you control it right through the movement. Exhale as you go.
Lower the weight back down until your arms are completely straight again. The lower should be quite slow (around a count of 3).
Repeat, increasing the weight with each set until your maximum is around 6 repetitions. Be sure to bend your knees and keep your back straight when you put the weight down.

Triceps blasters

3 sets
8 – 12 repetitions (or as many as you can do)
Leave 90 seconds between sets

Powerful triceps will really help you when it comes to moves like mantle-shelfs. You’ll enjoy exercise as it requires a good deal of core strength and balance. If you’re new to strength training I suggest you practice the move on something solid instead of a swiss ball (I don’t want to hear about any accidents).

Get a swiss ball in front of you and a weight bench behind you.
Put one foot on the bench behind you, position the swiss ball under your chest then put your other foot up onto the bench so you are balancing on the swiss ball and the bench.
Place both hands, palms down underneath you on the swiss ball.
Press yourself up, keeping your elbows tucked into your body until your arms are straight. Make sure you keep your back straight. Exhale forcefully as you go (for around a count of 1). You’ll find it really hard to keep the swiss ball still for the first couple of goes – stick with it and you’ll get the hang of it.
Lower back down (for around a count of 3).
Repeat for between 8 – 12 reps (or as many as you can manage)

Reverse curls and wrist curls

3 supersets
8 – 12 repetitions
Leave 90 seconds between superset

These build forearm / grip strength. I have linked them together to keep the workout reasonably short and to make it tougher.

Reverse curls:

Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, holding a straight barbell in front of you. Instead of having your palms facing away from you like with the straight bar curls, have them facing you. You will not be able to curl the same weight as you can with regular straight bar curls.
Curl the bar upward, keeping your upper arms still, until your forearms at about right angles to your body (90º bend). This should take around a count of 1. Breathe out as you go.
I like to hold this for a count of 2 – 3
Slowly lower the weight to the starting position (for a count of around 2 -3)
Repeat for between 8 – 12 repetitions
Move straight onto the next exercise with no rest.

Wrist curls:

Pick up a straight barbell, with your hands about a hand’s width apart, palms facing away from you.
Straddle a weight bench and rest your forearms on it, with your wrists sticking out over the end.
Slowly allow your wrist to bend downwards (away from you), and let the barbell roll almost to your finger ends.
Slowly curl your wrist back up toward you (as far as it will go)
Repeat for between 8 -12 repetitions then rest 90 seconds before performing the next superset

Medicine ball holds

3 – 4 sets
Timed – as long as you can manage
Leave 90 seconds between sets

These are great for developing the open hand strength required for sloper holds.

Pick up a medicine ball (smaller ones are easiest). Hold it in the palm of your hand.
Turn your hands so your palm is facing the floor and let your arm down by your side.
Grip the medicine ball until it falls from your hand.
Repeat for the other hand. Do this for 3 – 4 sets.

Workout 3 to follow in the next few days.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game: Week 5 – strength conditioning and grip (workout 2) is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game (and mine)

Gareth Hanson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Following a really bad climbing session last weekend at my local wall, I have decided to embark on a climbing improvement plan. My under-par performance was probably due to being over-tired and starting to come down with a cold.

It has, however, served as a useful motivator for me to raise my game.

It also occurred to me that there are probably lots of other climbers out there who have hit a wall in their rock climbing progress.

So, if like me, you would like to improve your climbing and scale the higher grades, buckle up and get ready for some serious training (and hopefully some worthwhile improvements).I’ll be breaking this plan up into 4 distinct areas:

Nutrition and weight management
Strength conditioning and grip improvement
Core climbing techniques drills
Psychology / mental strength

Before we embark on our journey to climbing excellence, we need to decide where we want to go. Any athlete, personal trainer or fitness coach will tell you that you need to set goals. Just saying “I want to get better at climbing” is not a goal, we need to ensure our goals are:

1. Specific:

Here’s what I’m going for -

I would like to lose around 5% body fat

I want to improve my hang times on the fingerboard by 30% – 50%

I currently lead around 5b (F6A+ / F6B) indoors. Outdoors I consistently lead HS, and have managed a VS (I have only been climbing around 18 months, so don’t judge me too harshly).

My climbing goal is to lead climb at 6a (F6c+ / F7a) indoors, and E1 outdoors.

2. Realistic

If I had told you that my short term goal was to climb 8a, that would have been completely unrealistic and would have ended in disappointment. I aim to go up by 2 grades which will be tough, but is plausible. If I do reach that goal, I’ll set a new one and work out a strategy to achieve it.

3. Measurable

I plan to keep a training diary to measure my progress. Without measurement, how will you know how you’re doing against your plan? View the improvement plan as a journey, with the goal being your final destination. You need to make continual progress to reach that destination.

4. Timed

Goals need a timescale or they just don’t happen. If you have a deadline you will push harder to try to reach it.

For this challenge, let’s use the winter period as our training timescale. We’ll start the plan next week and aim to have the final “weigh-in” in 3 months (let’s say February 1st 2010). By this point we’ll measure against our goals.

Obviously you can set your own timescales – whatever works for you. Just make sure they’re long enough to be realistic, but not so long that you’ll lose interest.

What’s next?

OK, here’s where the work begins. Next week I’ll post the nutrition and weight management information. Until then, set some goals and get ready to make some gains.

I would love to hear what your personal goals are, and how you do on this plan. Drop me a comment below if you have a spare minute.

Climbing techniques – a plan to raise your game (and mine) is a post from: Rock Climbing UK, an online UK climbing magazine, written BY UK climbers FOR UK climbers.

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