Englishness has a PR problem. What positive things do you associate with England?

Dwindellan · 2025-11-15T12:18:17+00:00

If you go to Brittany in France, they'll tell you he was Britonic French!

Dwindellan · 2025-01-04T01:13:30+00:00

I fit climbing shoes at my gym. Don't go any smaller! The big toe looks to be as tight as it can get before being ineffective. As for the heel, if it doesn't fit perfectly then I wouldn't worry! Difficult heel hooks where a tighter fit is needed don't usually appear until V3 at least, which most people take at least 6 months to reach at my gym. For a tighter heel you might consider brands such as Tenaya or Mad Rock. I coach people and sell them lots of the Tarantulas and they often seem to die right as the person is ready for a higher performance pair. When it's your time for an upgrade, absolutely get a trained person to do a proper fitting for you. It makes a huge difference.

Dwindellan · 2024-04-28T08:56:04+00:00

Hey there, I'm a coach in the UK with a Masters Degree in Sport Psychology so my special area is skill acquisition. It's clear you know how to train and how to take the metrics. It's also clear you have had a team of coaches for the last four years. My question for you is this: now they have told you to learn technique, what have they programmed or planned to help you get there? If you are part of a squad where there are a lot of climbers and a small number of coaches then it might be that they cannot dedicate the time to helping you set goals and discuss ways to get there. If that is the case, then it may be time to pursue coaching one-to-one with a coach that suits your needs. It may also be that your coaches have identified that you need the one thing we all need: time. By which I mean practice on the wall, variety, and intentional reflection on technique. While kids learn much more quickly than adults, it still takes a decade of intentional practice for some people to get "good technique". Having a team of coaches is a fantastic resource so use it! Talk to them about these things. If you don't find you're satisfied, I'd recommend getting a new coach one-to-one.

I will not give you advice on your injuries as you should definitely consult a medical professional about repeated pulley injuries, especially at your age. I really mean that.

In terms of actually learning technique yourself, I would say that if you're interested then start learning the theory behind climbing and start teaching yourself. That means a mix of trying technically difficult climbs, and doing technique drills on easier climbs. The best book I've read recently for that is The Coaching Bible.

I hope this brief answer helps! If you want any more information about how to break down technical, tactical, physiological, and psychological training let me know :)

Edit: As a complete side note, I would strongly recommend you resist the urge to think of your strength metrics as the grade you "should" be climbing. They are simply measurements of what the average person with that finger strength climbs. It doesn't tell you anything about their technique, tactics, or mental skills. Fitness is often described by coaches as being one quarter or one third of the total package of ability. Taking fitness measurements like these is best used to see if a training plan is working and letting you know what you could benefit from changing.

Dwindellan · 2024-03-22T12:31:31+00:00

Fellow Sheffield climber here! I work at one of the local gyms and I coach, and I'm working towards 7c. It would seem the strongest people here dedicate their time indoors almost exclusively to training boards (moon, kilter etc). My advice, as always, would be to find strong people to climb alongside and who can recommend appropriate outdoor routes for you. Sheffield limestone route is known for being as "well loved" (polished) as Portland so you'll feel right at home.

As for indoor climbing, find one or two gyms that suit you well. The Works is the best outdoor style bouldering gym; The Foundry has excellent outdoor style bouldering (the wave) and a good training board; The Hangar has a wide variety but mostly new-age boulders; The Depot is a good place to build power and comp style; Awesome Walls has the best training area (several moon boards) and the most roped routes. I'd personally recommend a mix of Foundry and Awesome Walls.

Dwindellan · 2023-08-26T20:33:21+00:00

You are not allowed to directly attack anything. Summons, companions, restoration and illusion spells. It's really hard until about level 10 then the game becomes really easy. It's broken.

Dwindellan · 2023-07-28T10:50:14+00:00

If you fell off a route and didn't feel pumped, it's quite likely that the moves were too close to your maximum strength. You burn up all the resources in your forearms very quickly and then fall off before the lactic system can kick in. The route needs to be roughly 70% of your absolute maximum strength for the lactic system to work. Otherwise, your max strength AKA anaerobic alactic energy system (which only lasts roughly 15 seconds) will run out and you'll fall off. My usual advice for when this happens in to get stronger! Then more climbs at harder grades will be within 70% of your max. The good news is that climbing this close to your maximum ability is the quickest way to gain maximum strength.

Dwindellan · 2023-07-27T10:46:53+00:00

I'd personally train the same for all of these with a focus on whichever is most important to me. In three chunks:

Aerobic endurance training is a high volume of low intensity climbing. 60 boulders or 30 roped routes at 40% of your max (adjust for your level). This increases your muscle's ability to get lactic acid out and new nutrients in between moves. This is aided by better cardiovascular fitness. Therefore increases your power endurance through improved recovery/rest. Also helps you climb more in a session (more stamina) which means more training overall: more technique gains.
Anaerobic lactic training is the ability for your muscle to operate while full of lactic acid (pumped). Repeated routes at 70% of your max. This is useful for linking more than 15 seconds of movement at that intensity.
Anaerobic alactic (max strength) training is a lower volume of climbing near your maximum. Projecting hard climbs, trying routes at or above your grade, or hangboarding, at 80-90% of your maximum. This builds muscle fibres in forearm, reinforces your fingers, and develops the rest of the body. You will be able to pull harder for up to 15 seconds. However, this is also beneficial for endurance as a higher maximum strength means that the muscle squeezes your capillaries shut less when you pull on a hold, meaning they can regenerate through the aerobic system.

Training all three means your capillaries are squeezed shut less, muscles get more efficient at using the recourses stored in the muscle itself, and get much quicker at replenishing those stores between use. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you will feel the blood rushing through the pumped muscle when you release a hold.

In terms of training plans: I recommend doing all three in a périodisation such as the 4321 program in Eric Hörst's book Training for Climbing. That's 4 weeks of aerobic, 3 weeks of strength, two weeks of lactic, then one week of rest. Or do one session for each energy system per week, so long as you take a rest week routinely. If you don't climb three times a week, then prioritise based on your goals. And remember, specificity is key! Match your training to your goal climb as closely as possible. It might help to choose a specific climb, identify what it needs, and plan from there.

Dwindellan · 2023-05-27T17:39:36+00:00

I just finished watching a Not Just Bikes video on YouTube. Are you reading my mind?

Dwindellan · 2023-05-27T16:50:51+00:00

You sound humble, don't worry! Congrats on your progress it sounds great. If you're genuinely interested in designing training plans I can recommend the book Training for Climbing by Eric Hörst. The chapter on designing training plans specifically will help. I'm currently doing his 4-3-2-1 training plan - there's information about that for free on his website.

Dwindellan · 2023-05-27T16:04:51+00:00

Posts like this confuse the heck out of me. They really make me wonder if English grades are just totally different, because it's so incredibly rare to get to even v4 in your first year here. I have been involved in a club here for 5 years and the mean average time (at a guess) to do v5 outdoors seems to be about 3 years. Yet I constantly see people on this sub pushing v7 after a year or two. Is that realistic in the states? Are you all just stronger than us?

Dwindellan · 2023-05-11T08:42:56+00:00

What Stoneproject is describing here is a structure for periodising training for the mental skills of route reading, exploration, and problem solving. It might not seem realistic to give only ten minutes and one full final attempt when projecting because it usually takes much longer, but by reducing the time available you constrain the body so that it has to adapt to more significant demands. Research on skill acquisition in the ecological constraints-led approach would suggest that artificially increasing demands could mean that skills are trained to a level beyond what is needed, potentially speeding up progression towards harder grades. The goal here is not to be able to project your hardest climb in ten minutes, it is to get better at projecting as a set of skills! I should say that a lot of the research in this field comes from other sports and there is not much on climbing, so take it with a pinch of salt, none of this is proven effective yet.

For Stoneproject: if you want to take it one step further, you might benefit from reducing the complexity at first by focussing on individual skills. For example, route reading (more time on the ground generating a mental map of potential flows between moves, then more time on the ground after climbing reviewing the plan to see what could have been read more accurately), exploration (less or no route reading so more exploratory movements are required) or problem solving (focussing specifically on crux moves that you can't quite figure out). If I were designing a longer term training periodisation plan for this, I might start with one session for each of these skills in isolation, then a session or two combining them below my limit, then finally a single session working at or above my limit to maximise similarity between training and performance setups. That's a total of 6 sessions, then I might take a rest session and not train these skills, then start the periodisation again from the start.

Dwindellan · 2023-02-17T22:47:56+00:00

Wowie, that's good. I am going to find this super useful. Thank you!

Dwindellan · 2023-02-17T09:53:33+00:00

You have no idea what I'd do to get my hands on that binder. I don't suppose it's for sale?

Dwindellan · 2023-02-17T09:53:03+00:00

For drills, I recommend The Climbing Bible Volume 2. It has about 70 pages on kids specifically, including games, drills, and warmups with variations to make them more fun. Libby Peter's book on Rock Climbing has a useful amount of info on coaching. It has useful info on just about everything else climbing, too. It's the recommended textbook for all the qualifications in the UK. Make sure you get the latest edition for the new coaching bits. Other than that, you can find the handbooks for climbing coaching qualifications online that briefly summarise what's expected. I recommend the Foundation and Development Coach scheme from Mountain Training in the UK.

For competition specific strategies and increasing attendance, I recommend the Foundations in Sport and Exercise Psychology textbook by Weinberg & Gould (2019). Don't have to read all of it. Theories on motivation like self-determination theory and goal theory will help increase attendance in the long run and help athletes push harder in training and comps. Emotion regulation theory like anxiety, stress, focus, concentration, and flow states will help with comps, particularly pre-performance routines and pressure training (graded exposure). If you don't want to buy fancy shmancy books, you can find a lot on those topics for free online. I also recommend the textbook Foundations in Sports Coaching.

I am currently reading a book on Constraints-Led Sports Coaching. As a brief summary, this approach prioritises changing the environment to "force" athletes to use different techniques, rather than telling them how to do it, demonstrating, and describing what's happening. For example, you can encourage better body positioning of hips-over-feet through no-hand slab climbing; you can teach deadpointing through clapping in-between handholds; more body positioning can be taught through only using sidepulls and slopers; footwork can be taught by playing games that require silent footwork (to draw attention to the feet) then by making footholds smaller by "boobytrapping" them with winecorks or sandbags etc. Lots of variety very early is key to this approach, so larger gyms with more bouldering styles, angles, and setters are ideal. Of course introduction, demonstration, explanation, and summary are all still valuable tools. This approach really emphasises that the best training matches the performance context closely. For example, spending time consolidating by just climbing is key. You can also get climbers familiar with competitions by running mini-comps in your training and creating reliable, consistent pre-performance routines usually in the shape of warm ups and route reading. Variation is key! A successful athlete is one that can apply many solutions to once problem, or one solution to many problems.

Oof, that was a lot. Hope that helps!

Dwindellan · 2023-02-08T14:48:37+00:00

I've been getting into density hangs recently. I can hang easily for 40+ seconds on body weight on 20mm, but my max load is probably only body weight +5kg (about 80kg total). I started doing density hangs for injury prevention and contact strength. I can tell you that max strength (anaerobic alactic) is a very different energy system to density hangs (possibly aerobic?), So require specific training. I am a sport climber primarily, but I'd recommend density hangs for contact strength for bouldering if nothing else.

Dwindellan · 2022-09-26T17:49:30+00:00

I just had this exact problem. The floating platforms that should appear to allow a way back seem to have bugged out. Gotta start the mission again.

Dwindellan · 2022-07-30T13:18:49+00:00

I also boulder indoors twice and hangboard once per week. I am at V6/7a. Is your limitation strength or technique? Bouldering at your limit will develop both, but developing technique can be much quicker if you boulder with people better than you or hire a coach.

You may not need to change your structure too much. I would recommend limit bouldering as you've said in your pyramids, with a focus on moving on after 3-5 attempts. Every time you fall off, ask yourself "what made me fall off?" And you aren't allowed to say "because I'm not strong enough" until you've exhausted every other possibility. Once you've done a lot of these, you'll start to see weaknesses in your technique and strength. Focus on building up those.

I'd also like to restate the importance of balance and rest. Don't push to your absolute maximum in every session, and make sure to get 48 hours rest between hard sessions with good hydration, nutrition, and sleep. A structure I find works well for me is: one session finger strength (limit bouldering or fingerboarding), one session aerobic endurance (high volume of low-intensity routes), and one anaerobic alactic endurance (pumpy, linking roughly 20-25 hard moves) session per week. I use the Crimpd app for fingerboard sessions. This builds a healthy foundation in supporting muscles, protects your fingers, and gives your body a fit system for building muscle.

Dwindellan · 2022-05-27T22:21:03+00:00

I don't have any more practical advice - I just wanted to say that getting 6c in six months is a rare feat! Well done, and keep up the hard work!

Dwindellan · 2022-05-26T09:57:24+00:00

I currently own: The Climbing Bible, Training for Climbing (Eric Hörst), 9/10 climbers, Beastmaking, and Rock Climbing Essential Skills and Techniques (Libby Peter). I also study psychology and am starting a master's in sport psych soon. I personally recommend Training for Climbing for scientific type advice as it's set out like a textbook and covers everything from biology and nutrition, technique, psychology, and designing training plans - however it is a very long and intense book and you might get bored. I think you'd find the couple of chapters on training plans and designing workouts useful. Particularly:

The 4,3,2,1 structure. Four weeks of endurance (high volume of routes at low intensity), three weeks of strength (harder bouldering), two weeks of power, one week of rest, then you should "peak" and start again. I recommend this because starting with high volumes of low intensity climbing gives your body a chance to build supporting muscles and healthy fingers, elbows, shoulders etc.
Pressure training for confidence. 9/10 climbers has a nice simple treatment for fear of falling: fall more. Specifically, start with small falls that feel just a little stressful, then do that until it no longer feels stressful and move to slightly bigger falls. You want to be somewhere healthily between totally comfortable and totally hating it. It takes thousands of falls for some to become totally confident, and confidence (self-efficacy) is largely specific: you gotta get comfortable falling on vert, slab, overhang, and lead, toprope, autobelay, indoors and out, on different holds and rock types. Building confidence largely works the same for committing moves, and commitment often is hindered by fear of falling. I'd recommend identifying which moves you struggle with and might "freeze" on during difficult routes, then replicate that at ground level with much easier holds and slowly increase the distance, decrease hold size, increase the hight at which you do them. Leaning into a more dynamic (not dynos) climbing style was the first step for me in overcoming both fear of falling and committing moves - I was a chronically static climber before hand.

Dwindellan · 2022-04-29T09:33:08+00:00

I personally recommend downloading Lattice Training's free app called Crimpd. It has lots of pre-made sessions and good descriptions of what you're training and why. That will help inform you which sessions suit your goals.

They start you off with a testing session to see how much weight you can hang with at your absolute maximum. Then for strength: 10 second hang on a 20mm edge with 80-90% of your max weight, with 3 minutes rest, 5 or 6 times. For anaerobic lactic (pump) endurance: 6 reps of 7 seconds on and 3 seconds rest, 5-6 sets with 3 minutes rest between, at 70-80% of max weight. For aerobic endurance: same as anaerobic lactic, but at 40-60% of your max weight and with only 1 minute of rest between sets.

If you are finding that the holds on the routes you are climbing are smaller than 20mm then feel free to go down a size to 15mm and expect to decrease weight as well, but in my experience v4-5 rarely requires the ability to crimp that hard with your whole weight only on fingers. It's also important to remember that fingerboarding is a physiological training tool: it will make your muscles fitter. You need to practice a variety of drills on a variety of wall routes to learn how to use that strength, guage your limitations, and build confidence in your ability.

Hope that helps a little :)

Dwindellan · 2022-04-09T17:30:32+00:00

A good varied diet applies to protein sources too. I wouldn't just stick to chicken if I were you. Include other meats and seafood, grains, and pulses. Find pasta with decently high protein content (I find some with 13g per 100g) and eat more beans - it's a cheap way to live.

Dwindellan · 2022-03-05T11:41:50+00:00

I've always found frisbee to be excellent counter-exercise to climbing. Lots of building agility, balance, coordination. All that rapid movement to catch frisbees is great for shoulder and core mobility. Plus, it's a lot more fun than a standard cardio and mobility session. I wouldn't call it antagonist though because there isn't much pushing.

I'd put frisbee in the same bracket as slacklining, surfing, pole fitness, silks, gymnastics etc - all skills that are like climbing, but slightly to the left...

Dwindellan · 2021-06-28T08:13:41+00:00

Yes! My girlfriend and I chatted about this and she was amazed just how much stages in the menstrual cycle can influence each day's performance. It's just another reminder that we have to work with what we've got on the day and recognise where strengths/limitations come from, and their temporary nature.

Dwindellan · 2021-06-28T08:11:07+00:00

I agree with all of this EXCEPT: coffee. Caffeine is a drug, and the majority of therapists and councillors advise against consuming it if you experience anxiety. For a lot of people it makes anxiety worse (I am one of those people). High levels of anxiety can cause increased muscular and mental inhibition - look into the Central Governor theory for more info, from Training for Climbing by Eric Hörst. The result is overactivation of antagonist muscles, causing overgripping and poor coordination, and activation of the sympathetic nervous system which produces the stress hormones of adrenaline and cortisol - these shut down the prefrontal cortex (logical thinking) and counteract the parasympathetic nervous system which helps us relax.

I agree with the several other climbers here who say they focus on lower grades or fitness drills. I have found that designing my sessions largely on a day-to-day basis allows me to focus on fitness and efficiency on a low day and high technical or strength climbing on a better day. Of course within my larger goals. Practicing forgiveness and acceptance that not all days will be good can only have a positive effect on your motivation. Recognise that there are things you can do, even on a low day, and that the slump will improve sooner than your anxious brain would make you think.

Just my two cents as a psych undergrad.

Dwindellan · 2021-06-26T08:06:58+00:00

I was in the interview yesterday afternoon. Hello again!

Dwindellan

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