now + then

If your wondering why things have been a touch quiet it's because 2/3rds of Beastmaker HQ have been studying for university finals, as well as training like monkeys on ritalin and there are also dissertations looming . Whack all these into your day and things get a bit hectic, still if you can't take the pressure get the hell out the kitchen. Dave is now merrily churning out fingerboards ready for post font distribution. This'll be when we really get everything together and start functioning as well as our machine (which functions amazingly well, thankyou!).

If you want to see/ train on a beastmaker in the flesh they are now in the foundry climbing centre in sheffield and should be in the Climbing Works by thursday

On the training front my specific index finger training appears to be working, as a quick strength test the other night gave some impressive results, one arm 1/2 crimping on the bottom RH edge is coming along too with decreased resistance being needed. Ned has been finding training too easy so he's infected his little finger tendon and cracked his skin to add more of a challenge to his day. Despite this he is still crushing lots of stuff, it's just he almost complains about stuff 1/3rd as much as i do now.

Hopefully Font will remain "blue" in the sky department and our weeks of repressed enthusiasm can be released upon a tide of unsuspecting orange circuits, we have hopes of doing the odd red circuit too. We'll be staying at Maisonbleau who shalt be recieving a custom engraved fingerboard for their troubles, so now our board grades will be font official! hopefully their resident 8B boar hunting beast will be on hand to give us a tour too.

Neither of us have climbed outside in weeks due to exams so either way it should be a nice change.

The Beast has risen

2000 series
Originally uploaded by Beastmaker. inc

Thanks for the patience, these shots (there are more on our flickr page) are macro to show the level of finishing, if you want to add texture just use a rougher grade of sand paper than P120 (very fine) as we've sanded these puppies so smooth that you notice a 0.2mm bump

boards galore

The machine works! After battling with it for what seems like years it finally does what it is built to do, and that is producing theses little beauties:

They are being cut as you read this. The engraving is to be added later, as is a wee spot of finishing and drilling. This batch is cured Tulip Wood

Thanks for staying psyched!

Update

The machine is now alive and did a dummy run last night, one slight change to the bed has been made, and the first boards are due to be milled as the next job.

Training wise:
board sessions on the big board are now being succeeded with fingerboarding the day after followed by rest. The board session is used as an all over workout and to identify a weakness on a problem, the fingerboarding sessions work this weakness as a priority in the session interspersed with general exercises such as encores on the 4.3.2 grip types.

For me this seems to be working so i'll stick with it until Fontainbleau.

LH variants badly informed training plan

well after incurring an index finger typing injury i'm left typing with back 3 on my LH (no joke) so i'll keep this frank.

Goals: (all taining needs specific goals)
be able to do 1 arm half crimp repeaters on 10mm rung for both arms with as little assistance (preferably none) as possible.
1 arm repeaters on the 35 degree slopers.
front 2 crimp repeaters on 10mm rung with no assistance.

these goals relate to goals for outdoor projects i have in mind where i think this strength will come in most handy.

this weeks training plan:
yesterday: go on the Black beastmaker board and try do as many of Hutton Magnas hard problems as possible and flash them, whilst making sure i dont insult the board too much. Roughly acheived except for getting shut down on MC Page's undercut horror move. (Tom crushed some steely projects as well whilst whinging about being weak and getting his skirt in a twist)

thursday: get reacquainted with White beastmaker (the one in the vid) and get stuck into the 2 5a/5b projects, depending on how this goes, subsequent training will be affected. ( open to time suggestions if anyone else is keen? 4ish?)
fri: rest
sat: fingerboard, specific goals.
Sun: 16 move circuits to prepare for silly euro problems (which are amazing)
mon:rest

magnum peaeye's training log

I was going to train on Saturday and Sunday but managed to get food poisoning so I spent Saturday being sick and Sunday feeling sick. Anyway by Monday I felt ok and pretty light so I had a quick fingerboard session in the morning which included:

Front 2 encores
Back 2 encores
Front 3 crimp encores
Middle finger mono encores
Assisted middle 2 crimp encores

I felt strong on the first set of each but faded fast as I hadn’t really eaten for 2 days. Pretty average session.

In the evening I went on the board. I wanted to do power endurance but gave it a miss as I felt so weak and P.E training really takes it out of you. Instead I worked body tension and pinches on the 65 degree board. I am very bad at pinching (as you can see from Dan's video!) and have been trying to sort it out by making up lots of steep pinch problems with bad feet. Session went quite well considering how I felt in the morning.

After this we watched ‘half ton son’ which made me feel really light, so I went home and ate a lot.

moving pictures

upgrades are happening in the beastmaker multiplex! the first offering is an old one cobbled together with bits of training footage ranging from font 3-5. She's a real beauty and truly diamond quality in production.


Chairmen of the board from beastmaker.co.uk on Vimeo.

Picking up the pace

Just a few notes on training. Myself and Ned are going to try and keep an upto date training blog until Februaryish when we go to font for a mini holiday after Exams. We'll try and break it down so that its easy for readers (all 2 of them!) to steal ideas from it and apply similar concepts to their own stuff, rather than barrage you with theory which is all very interesting but hard to put into practice and routine.

2 quick amendments also:
If your training things at full lock try to lean out and up (should feel it in thy shoulders) as traditional full lock seems to cause and obscene amount of elbow jip for little practical gain, seems obvious but hopefully it'll help if you've ever had elbow troubles. All the other locks are far better for you elbow-wise.

Ned's been doing full sets of encores 7*(7x3) on the 45 degree slopers with no tricks, try it (or the few of you who have the finished boards anyway)... Its BRICK!

Also St Bees in the winter is really FICKLE, not that its massively popular or anything i just need to vent off a little after all my best geography knowledge was thwarted despite getting everthing right! basically it can be really slow to dry and climbing on soggy rock is a bad idea for it and you. I trained on the fingerboard when i got home after the 2 hour round trip though and am starting to find some winning combos.

Try to take about 3 sessions of fingerboarding to work out exactly how to tap a weakness best before you really go for stuff, its taken me this long to work out how to specifically emphasise index finger training over the rest of my hand whilst still having a full session... more on this later (oh i bet you can't wait for such riveting reads) we'll try and do some interesting stuff too if the weather lets us.


If your waiting for an email response please wait until after Sunday and hopefully you'll see why! its nothing to do with fingerboards honest ;)