British Team Training Weekend.

This weekend I was down in Leeds, for the EYS tryouts. We were climbing at the Leeds climbing wall which is spectacular. These tryouts were important because it gave the British team's, management team an idea of who should be climbing at the Europeans this year.

On Sunday we went to the Depot boulder wall and had a training session. This was the first time I had been to the Depot wall and it was massive, my favorite part of the boulder wall was the overhanging roof. After about an hour of warming up/hard problems we had to do two hard training sessions.

• One of the sessions was on the campus board and we had to do 1-3-5 with feet on the screw-ons for three minutes, then 6 minutes rest. We had to do five sets of that (That was a awesome and solid session!)


• The second session was with Tom Randall and we were giving a hard boulder circuit, and we had to figure out 15 moves from the start of the problem then complete that 15 moves five times with 15 seconds rest in between. This training session was to help complete a hard boulder circuit, where you had to break the problem down into smaller sections to help complete the circuit.

After lunch we were told who was going to compete in three of the Europeans and the worlds this year. I was chosen to climb in the first European in Edinburgh. :) After that we got given our new team kit which is well smart and awesome! Thanks to Mountain Hardwear and The Epiecentre The British Team have a new website here is the link. The website keeps you up to date with what the Team are up to.

British Team Training

Friday I travelled down to Sheffield, England for the first British Team event of the year.

Saturday we were at the Climbing Works, a bouldering venue in Sheffield. The bouldering wall was massive and awesome with loads of circuits and boulder problems. The first thing we had to do was complete 40 problem circuit, then we could get lunch followed by doing an easy circuit as fast as we could then a fitness assessment. In the assessment we had to do several different exercises:

• Tap downs, for two minutes
• Sit-ups, as many as we could complete in one minute.
• Lock-offs, For 15 seconds on each arm.
• Pulups, 20 continuous.
  Type writers, 15
• Dead hang on the campus board, for one minute.
• Dead hang on 45 sloapers, for one minute.

Day Two

Sunday we went to the Foundry climbing centre which is also in Sheffield. Sunday morning started with a 30 minute jog around the Foundry climbing wall. The run killed me as I don't have much aerobic endurance which I need to work on. After the jog we were straight into training. Ian Dunn and Tom Randle set two training sessions which each lasted an hour.

The first training session I done was anaerobic capacity, which is when you find a 13-16 move boulder problem 80% of your maximum and do it 10 times with 3 minutes rest in between each attempt, you should not manage to complete all 10 reps, you should be failing around the 8Th rep if the grade is right.

The second training session I done was a core session. We were giving 8 different core exercises to do each lasting 1 minute, we had to complete all 8 of the exercises three times. This core session lasted 30 minutes.

For the last 30 minute of the session we were giving 8 climbing pacific movements we had to complete on a overhanging board.

After a morning of climbing we headed over to Sheffield university to get a lecture on sports nutrition from Audrey Morrison and some stretching exercises with Ian Dunn.

This weekend I have learnt a lot of different and new training methods which i can now use. My next event is next month in Leeds which is a semi competition and it decided who will be competing in the European competitions this year.

British Team Trials

At the start of December was the British team trials in Liverpool. So that involved me travelling 9 hours down to Liverpool. I was feeling fit for this comp because i was pretty phyched and had done weeks of training. Also this comp would help decide for the 2011 British Junior Team.

I had two qualifying routes to climb and then a final all to do in one day, all grade about 7c+. I have moved up a age group and now in youth A so the competition is harder. The team trials are also a open youth competition, so on the day i need to have my competition head on.

My first qualifying climb was a sustained pumpy route, over the overhanging section. I was pleased with my self, when i came off I felt I had climbed well. My second climb was on a vertical wall, which made the route pretty easy (7A ish) I topped out in that climb.

I had managed to climb well enough to get put into the final. The isolation zone was the boulder wall under the main climbing area, it was pretty big but was very over crowded and hard to warm up in. I was in isolation for like 3 hours before I got called out to climb.

My final route was a steep route up the corner of the main wall, it was very twisty and awkward to climb. I finished in 5Th place.

On the following Monday we were all told if we had made it onto the British team or not. I made it onto the team.