Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it

Is what the Dalai Lama once said and working on that logic I must be succeeding right now; I have had to give up a lot of my free time because of the addiction I have developed, through a University module, for climbing training.

I'm now into the fifth week of training and there have been some amazing improvements in my overall climbing strength, power and fitness, but this has come at a price. I have spent little time in a boat or on the fells, but on reflection this has not been an annoyance. What has been an annoyance is the fact that I don't have enough free time to fit everything in: training, paddling and walking.

The theory behing a lot of my training has come from Eric J. Horst's book Training for Climbing, which has been a great help, and through reading this, experimenting with my own ideas and chatting with other climbers I have now found the ideal session structure:

• 20 minutes of continuous climbing as a warm up followed by a 20 minute rest
• 20 minutes of movement skills followed by a 20 minute rest
• 20 minutes of performance climbing followed by a 10 minute rest
• Some form of strength or power exercises broken up by five minutes rest
• A final 10 minute rest before ten minutes of continuous climbing as a cool down.

Most of these sessions are implemented whilst wearing a weight belt weighing in at roughly 5kg. This idea came from Horst's book and it is quite a basic principle really: if I develop my strength and power whilst wearing an additional 5kg I'll be stronger and more powerful when I remove the extra weight as my body will have come accustomed to pulling an extra 5kg.

I suppose all this training is in preparation for next year's summer project, but I am looking at getting out in the Christmas holidays to tick off a lot of the preparatory routes and problems I highlighted the other week before starting another phase of training so don't worry, there will be some interesting pictures and posts coming at some point. In fact there could be some next weekend as I've eventually got round to sitting my 5* Assessment. It's with Wild River so it is bound to be one good weekend of grade 3/4 boating.

Good lines, stay safe and see you on the wet stuff...
Iain