The Climbing Project

I've decided that I've gotten sloppy with my climbing and so I'm getting worse at it, rather than better. So, I'm embarking on The Climbing Project (which I came up with after reading the book The Rosie Project) which will be designed to improve my climbing technique, and lead to me getting more joy out of climbing. I was listening to this podcast on climbing, climbing beta, and they interviewed this climber John Kettle, who went from climbing V7 to V9 in like 9 weeks by improving his technique, and then wrote a book about it. Which I bought, and am going to follow.

Step one was to work on climbing with your legs more and your arms less. Yup, really need to do that. My first exercise was only moving a hand when I had two feet on the wall. Which was really hard!  But, as I practiced it today, I noticed was really helpful, and something that I hadn't been doing well. I also practiced keeping the arm that was still holding the wall straight, keeping the weight on the bigger muscles of my back, instead of using the smaller muscles in my arms. That got especially hard when I was in a scary place, and it was hard. Third thing that I practiced was not just doing slab, but also climbing overhang.

I climbed only 5.8 and 5.9, with a 5.7 at the end. My best climbs were one 5.9 that I did a good job with moving my feet up before moving an arm, and an overhung 5.8 - same thing.

My friend Lynne decided that she wants to go with me sailing in Myanmar!  I'm psyched because it's a small boat, and it will be nice to have a friend on board. She was looking at tickets today, and got overwhelmed and didn't get one. When I looked this evening, the trip was gone. I was so upset because I thought it was sold out, but then it turned out that there was something weird with the website, and now it's back. OK, now we both know that this is the plan that we want :)

Also, even though when I booked the trip they told me it absolutely wouldn't go on sale, it went on sale. I contacted the company and was like "WTF?" and they gave me the sale price!  Go me - I negotiated something!!