Dr_Flash_Amazing

Come to think of it, I could throw a hangboard up over a doorway at work... Any opinions on those things? DFA would say more power to you if you can be a good guy and use the thing. The Doctor's experience with hangboards, home walls, etc. has been that they get used for a little while, and then they get seriously boring. If you're the kind of person who can stick with something like running or weight training, then a hangboard could do you some good. Maybe if you are just miserably bad on slopers or something, it's good to work a specific like that on a hangboard. Otherwise, shit, stick to going to the gym and having fun and climbing. It's hard to get psyched to do pullups, but getting in on a bouldering sesh and pushing yourself to yard on some jingus tweaker holds is far more motivating. Plus, you're not going to pick up much technique on a hangboard.

"What are some strategies for milking reserves? It seems footwork would help, in that it saves energy by keeping your weight off your arms and saves time because you don't have to put your foot back on after it slips off six times. I'm sure speed would help (I think I tend to climb too slow), but not at the expense of good form. And not putting a death-grip on every hold... " DINGDINGDINGDING! You've obviously onto the key elements here. Speed is indeed your friend, especially when you're redpointing and you're getting a strategy dialed in for the route. Indeed, keep your good form, but blitz whatever parts of the route you can. Figuring out if you can skip a bolt or clip two bolts from a higher stance (y'know, if you're climbing some dumb overbolted sport route ), make a couple bigger moves to skip some lousy holds, that type of thing. Combining necessary non-climbing movements is good too, i.e. when you get to a good clip stance, say, hit your chalk, get your quick shake, reach up to clip, and just keep reaching from the clip right to the next hold, rather than clipping, dropping back to the hold, and then moving. One of the Doctor's favorite speed-'em-up strategies is eliminating intermediate foot movements; i.e. if you're making a reach to a handhold and you step up with your foot but for the next move you're going to switch to a backstep, or switch feet or something, try using the 2nd foot placement first so you don't have to move the foot again. Often you can initiate a move with a foot placement that's slightly awkward, but once you're into the move and ready for the next one, you'll have saved yourself some effort overall. A small thing, but it's just one more way to stack the deck in your favor, and with all the other little strategical stuff, it'll add up to mo' sendage. RuMR's beta on shaking between moves is spot-on, too. Every little thing you can do to be a little more efficient.

You could just PAGETOP it all and be done with it. Works for some, tell you what.

Fix it now, you lazy punk. People are counting on you for important shit, and you can't even keep your avatar image up. Hell's the world coming to? Eh?

Fuck you and your bitchassketball. You're probably lucky if you can climb your ass off the couch to get another can of Busch Lite before the game comes back on.

Hey, thissiz a good point that DFA overlooked. While you should of course start easy to get into the swing of doing laps, it doesn't really do you any good or teach you to milk your reserves unless you're having to work at it. You'll find, too, that once you get the hang of it, you can pretty much climb up and down on easy stuff more or less indefinitely. So be sure to keep pushing yourself. As you're mixing in harder stuff, try to add in routes that are just a couple letter grades below your redpoint level, so that you're working on linking moves that are near your limit. This will come in handy, as you'll find as you're advancing through the grades (and that's really what it's all about, right? ) that each progressive level of difficulty involves stringing together stacks of moves of your previous level of difficulty interspersed with evil cruxes. Logically, then, if you're working on breaking into 5.11s, you ought to be able to battle out plenty of mid-hard 5.10 moves to ensure success. Now quit geeking on the internet and go train.

Nice. Those are slab parameters the Doctor could live with!

Fuckin' Barbecue the Pope! You mean, like, a redpoint-level slab route?

Nah. Just that the student has stopped drawing attention to himself with superfluous dweebery. For the most part at least.

You're killing the Doctor here, do you realize that? Oh, the agony. It's Aggro Monkey.

Fortunately, DFA has left behind certain Martin-learned traits such as breathing super-loudly, and working on doing lockoffs up the lead wall on the two-finger pockets with a weight belt on while breathing super-loudly.

Thanks! Most of the mental and endurance stuff was gleaned from Martin Tull, who used to manage the PRG. While public opinion of Martin varied wildly, he was certainly a talented climber, and he was alalytical as fuck, which perhaps is a good strategy in itself. Analyticalasfuckness (fern's onto something with this making up words bidness!). Picking apart and examining every element of a route or a move or whatever, and exploring every possible solution can help you figure out what is important and WHY moving your foot this way or that helps you out, which can cut out a lot of trial and error down the road.

Not only that: On January 31, after 20 days of projecting and a mere week before leaving for a six-week trip to Europe, Adam Stack made the third ascent of Tommy Caldwell's Kryptonite at the Fortress of Solitude near Rifle, Colorado. Originally graded 5.14d by Caldwell, Kryptonite's grade came under scrutiny after François Legrand's aggressive cleaning produced a hold that second ascentionist Yuji Hirayama said makes the route 5.14c. Stack, however, chose to avoid the manufactured hold, calling his redpoint method "Kryptonite au naturel" and confirmed the 5.14d grade. Oh my Gawd!

Oh, not "close" as in "it's a linkup of that route and something else", but "close" as in "you've got the right wall in the right gully." And it's easier than .13d!

Funny thing, Dru, when DFA looked at that pic, he figured that's what he might guess if he didn't know what it was. i.e. you're wrong. Close, though!

For endurance, this Doctor has had great success with doing laps on the lead wall at the gym (something moderately overhanging with plenty of holds to choose from), augmented by running. Yes, that painfully boring, masochistic pastime gets the ol' cardio working nice and efficient-like. Although DFA never made it past the 5 mile mark, and was down around 2-3 most of the time, it beat the shiggles out of being totally unfit in that respect. For laps, get warmed up of course, and then pick a route that's easy for you, or just use all the holds up and down. It's nice if you can lead up one route, then downclimb an adjacent route, clipping yourself back in as you go. Once you're comfortably able to make it up, back down, and up again, you can try mixing things up a bit. Maybe start by going up a route that's moderately hard for you, then go down and back up using all holds. Or go up using all holds, go down using all holds, and back up on something moderately hard once you're kind of pumped. The latter will really help you work on continuing to climb efficiently and keeping your head straight. You can also try using any holds, and making up little crux sequences for yourself along the way, or even just doing one move here and there on some jingus hold for a bit more of a workout. Just take a nice logical progression, mixing and matching difficulty, and adding laps as you feel comfortable. Within a few weeks you'll be up on the wall for half an hour, and SK will be cursing you for her sore neck! With regard to the laps in the gym, the mental component of endurance work is H-U-G-E huge. Your prime enemy, of course, is getting pumped. Soon as you start getting pumped, your brain tries to get you to stop whatever is building up the lactic acid in your forearms, and you start breathing too fast, getting panicky, and being clumsy and inefficient with your movements. You are, quite literally, getting "pumped stupid." The key is to recognize what is happening, and proactively take control of the situation and thus de-pump yourself. DFA will usually verbally tell himself to relax, slow down the breathing, shake it out, and focus. Find a decent rest hold, keep alternating shaking out each hand, all the while reminding yourself to relax, take the deep breaths, and focus. Finding out that you actually have mental control is great; you'll be amazed at how much more climbing you can milk out of yourself once you nail the psychological element. Really focusing on your footwork is helpful, too, as this is usually the first thing to go when you get wicked pumped, and, paradoxically, it's a key way to keep from getting pumped. Obviously, if you're already hating it, dragging your feet around like they're tied to bricks is not going to help your situation. Plus, having something specific and helpful to focus on will keep your mind off being pumped. Bueno! For your footwork, you're on your own. DFA has terrible footwork. Probably forcing yourself to use jibs or little features for your feet at the gym, or climbing "easy" slab routes at Smith that force you to stand on dinky knobs. Sometimes it helps just to build up your confidence in what you can actually stand on, so you can relax and let your feet do more of the work. Although he has been doing the stretches in the new issue of Climbing for better high-stepping and turnout. Seems that if you're going to be doing footwork-intensive stuff, highstepping and good turnout are key. As a bonus, the whole stretching program takes less than 10 minutes. For route reading, just get out and climb a shitload. That's definitely something that will be helped most by sheer volume of experience. The old cliche of having a "library" of moves in your head to choose from is pretty true. The more moves you've done, the more you've got in your library. Possible ways to help that are really obsessing about your projects, so you can visualize and mime out the whole route. Sure, you look like a dweeb when you're doing it, but it helps you keep a good mental image of the rock and how you move at each section of the route. This adds a handy 3-D component to the library, and is also a good way to speed up the redpointing process. When you have every move, clip, rest, shake, etc. totally wired in your head, you can get on your route and flow, without bumbling around trying to remember sequences on the fly. And of course watching other climbers, especially better climbers, doing routes can help you get ideas or different insights into possible ways of moving. Shit, you totally owe DFA a beer!

The fuck?

Piece of cake:

See? Perfect for fussy kids as well!

Awww ... poor angry little man! Did someone in a Dead-sticker-festooned VW bus steal your parking place this morning?

Some tufathon at Rai Lay Beach, perchance?

Quitter. It's Keep Your Powder Dry! Next?

Also, Pet Shop Boy is not a jug haul at all!

No, sexo-choco was to keep moving to the right. You already named it, but you're taking the cheater's shotgun approach, so !

"Not Pet Shop Boys?" Keep moving to the right. And you were thinking of 'Shark Walk', by the way.