July Climbing updates

I have hit and been stuck in the V5 climbing plateau for years now and have decided to finally make a push to advance. The V5 wall is a very common plateau hit by nearly all climbers, where before you just climbed unstructured and for fun, the need for advancement to counter burn out is real. Being limited on time, as I have a 6 month old son, the option to just climb more is no longer there. To try and overcome this in limited time I am trying to introduce structure to increase my training effinciency. Making my time on the wall count. For the last month I have been climbing 2x a week and spiralling down the climbing YouTube rabbit hole. Over this period I've formalised a plan on how to get me over the wall and into the promised land of 7a's. Climbing, as a movement-based sport, has a lot of bottlenecks. A lot of the terminally-online backseat climbers like to boil everything down to a lack of technique. But each climb demands a different mix of key skills before you can even start to apply good technique properly..

The five key areas I've identified are:

• Finger strength - The foundation of holding any grip
• Strength - Overall body power and stability
• Flexibility - Range of motion for complex positions
• Creativity - Problem-solving and route reading
• Balls - Mental commitment and confidence

Finger Strength

If you can't hold on, how are you supposed to apply any technique? Yeah, getting your hips in and placing your feet better definitely helps make holds feel easier — but sometimes, you're just not strong enough to hold it, and that's the end of it. I've found a few drills to help with this. These days I do Abrahangs 2–3 times a week, and always before every climb. I'm trying to get to once a day — but somehow those 10 minutes keep slipping away. I'm alternating between hangboard and moonboard to start my sessions. For now, my approach is to try and keep things simple — just starting with the basics and can refactor to my taste later.

Strength Training

For the last 6 months I have been going to the gym Monday and Fridays. Over these days I am trying to work a compound full body split.

Flexibility

Flexibility is one of the big areas I'm making a push in. I have noticed it is my largest limiting factor for progression, particularly in my hips. Flexibility allows you to get your body into positions and shapes that make the holds much easier to grab and pull on. Because my hip mobility is so bad it means I am pretty much always further from the wall making anything not juggy hard, crimps and slopers are almost impossible or require me to max out my raw strength to muscle through climbs. To resolve this I have started doing daily stretching routines based upon my activities, hips and back are going to be involved every day as a focus due to sitting in a chair all day. I have a simple 10 minute routine that I do at the end of every single day.

Daily Routine

This is to help with general recovery and aid some flexibility progress.

Heres what my weekly breakdown looks like:

🗓️ Weekly Mobility Plan

Sport-Specific Warm-ups

Creativity

Route reading techniques and movement problem solving can only really be trained doing movement - this has some crossover from my days in-line rollerblading. Positioning your body so that you are maintaining balance while grinding along a pipe has very similar micro tweaks that make all the difference.

I'm currently looking to improve my creativity by implementing a few different routines in each session. I try to pick projects for each general climbing area (loosely: Cave, Slab, Overhang, auto-belay) when the routes are reset. These projects are V5 or V6 and generally feel doable but will take many full effort attempts which requires multiple sessions.

Training Drills

Balls (Mental Game)

Confidence and commitment has very large crossover from my in-line rollerblading days. You will never jump a 10 or 15 set without committing and having the confidence that you will land it.

This can be somewhat built up by starting small and building up, but at some point you are going to end up looking down a large gap and having to run full speed off it. The only way to improve at this is to try big jumps with tricky landings or to learn to trust your feet while lower down so that you can do the same moves at the top of the wall.

I didn't go from the 2 foot ramp to the 25 foot ramp in a single day - it took me years to progress and climbing is the same. I honestly find dyno's the funnest part of climbing and so I will try them whenever I can. A good training tool that I like to use for dyno's is to try and see who can complete a climb using the fewest number of holds. This is always won with sick jumps. The harder part for me is the trusting of small feet, specifically on slab climbs.

Just watch Janja here:

To practice this I am using the traverse wall a lot, all of the traverses are grouped up which
means I can attempt them all with the smallest foot holds cms off the floor.

Helpful Training Videos

Here are some essential videos that have shaped my training approach and provide excellent guidance for breaking through climbing plateaus.