Good climbing days and bad climbing days

To be honest, last week I was pretty discouraged by how strenuous the level 6 routes felt to me. I thought I would need another 1-2 months to slowly progress back to working on 7's again. Turns out I had a great weekend. I had enough energy to warm up on 2 easy routes, work on a new 7- route on an arête (outer corner), one 7-/7 with scary slopers and bad footholds, one 7 on artificial structures, and finish strongly on a reachy white 7- that I have tried before. I was over the moon.

I don't really know if it's just a high energy day vs. a low energy day. Seems like it's quite important to warm up on a very easy route to let the arms and legs flow a bit and to build confidence. When I get the blood (and chi?) flowing, then the harder routes feel more doable. Also this does wonders for my mood and confidence: finish with a familiar route that has some challenges but is still within my capability. I was on such an endorphins (or dopamine or adrenaline?) high after this last climb that I deluded myself in thinking I could still climb more and that I would have enough energy to go jogging the next day to improve my cardio.

Turns out that in the middle of night I was awake again with pulsing sore arms. My guess is that when I'm on an endorphin high, I can push my body harder than normal. In this case the last climb I pull of some handhold hand switches that were quite strenuous for my hands and arms. I'm glad I can sometimes push my body this way. My guess is that confident people experience this high more commonly. This allows them to speak confidently even when they are not very sure about the subject they are being asked to speak about. I never thought that through climbing I could experience what confidence feels like, and that it is not there on low energy days.

I am hoping to get to the point that I can work on 7s even on low energy days. But then on good days I hope to be able to send the 7 routes and work on 7+s.

Progression in climbing is not linear

In my last post I was making a list of what progress I hoped to make this year. It mostly involved going up in grade difficulty in climbing. But for the past few weeks, I haven't been making much progress in climbing harder routes. In fact, I find 6s (5c's) more strenuous now than before. How is that possible?!?!

Come to think of it, my strength in my arms and fingers have definitely improved compared to, say, 6 months ago. I notice my style of climbing has changed because of this. I would do moves that I couldn't do, back when I had less strength. These moves are more powerful and playful/fun. Also, I am now strong enough to have my arm in a bent position and/or grip a handhold quite strongly/securely when I clip the rope into quick draws. This makes me feel more secure about the climb overall, but it also uses up more energy. There was a period when every time I needed to clip in the rope, my heart rate would accelerate, because I didn't feel secure. Who knew that style of climbing uses up less energy than the secure way that I climb now? I would also try to clip the rope as soon as the quick draw was within the reach of one hand (ie. above my head), instead of the ideal clipping zone, where the quickdraw lies between the chest and waist area of the climber. Now, because of how secure I feel on the wall, I dare to climb to a comfortable position, sometimes until the quickdraw is at waist level, before I clip in. I would definitely call this progress. However, it is not reflected in the grades. I am currently climbing mostly 6s and 6+s, with the occasional 6+/7-.

I finally understand why my boyfriend, who can boulder way harder than I can, was getting more tired/pumped climbing the same routes as me. He definitely also uses more strength than necessary to do the easy routes.

I recently met a new friend, who is very lean, and is super enthusiastic about climbing. Her problem is that she lacks strength. She also had a minor surgery not long ago and could not climb for weeks while in the process of recovery. When I started climbing myself, I also had no strength to hang at all, which means I couldn't boulder very much. I was lucky that I have a boyfriend as a pretty reliable belay partner, who could go sport climbing with me at least twice a week. So I focused mainly on route climbing, which helped me slowly but reliably build arm and back strength, as well as endurance. She doesn't have a regular belay partner, so she has to do more bouldering. Since harder boulders are quite tricky to do, whereas rope climbing routes are less tricky, so one can perform climbing moves for longer, I personally believe that rope climbing is a better way to get used to climbing movements and to build strength for people who have trouble with strength building. But I recently realized not everybody thinks about climbing the same way I do, so I can't force people to do things my way. I have another friend who was also frustrated about her strength. She would go to the gym, not warm up, climb the hardest boulders/routes she could do, get tired in about 30 minutes, get frustrated, then try a bit more, and then be done (physically tired out) in under 1 hour. She had been climbing for longer than I had at the time, and she was really frustrated that she got stuck at a certain level. I tried to suggest some things, but I quickly learned that I shouldn't offer suggestions unless people ask for it, if I want to be able to keep the friendship.

Going forward, I guess I need to focus on relaxing more when doing easy routes. It is not necessary to use the death grips on routes where I could pretty much balance on my two feet. I also need to force myself to try harder routes, and do fall training. I really hope to increase my endurance, and also, I hope to have some spare time to boulder, so I could work on building power as well.