end of silence

Well both Ned and I have handed in our last ever coursework and we're now a few exams shy of freedom, some say its like a warm wave of happiness hitting you, but they're probably overly emotional philosophy student. All i know is that i expect to undo months of training in a few days and i'm praying to wake up in a nice gutter (the leafy kind rather than the bottly hyperdermic kind).
Only joking, we've got a few trips planned but mainly we'll be helping Dave upgrade our factory from a garden shed to a proper industrial unit. That way beastmaker hq will be able to create our superplanks at a pace fast enough to supply everyone. whoop whoop.

We haven't been upto much except training. Ned came 2nd in the plywood masters to
Dave 'so solid' Barrans.
Training for me has consisted of a day of pocket power on the board followed by a session on the fingerboard ruining anything which was fresh from the day before.
My finger injury (ring finger crimp) was getting better rapidly with some targeted exercises until i got sucked into some wide pinching exercises and ruined a good weeks progress. Being antisocial is probably a good recovery plan from injury, but it isn't much fun.
both Ned and I have picked up more injuries since starting this type of training, but we have also got alot stronger too, and the trend has always ended up being upwards.
over the last 2 years though the only 2 proper injuries i've had are the current one and a broken pinky last year, but there have been quite a few niggles along the way.

A new batch of boards including the elusive 1000 series should be arriving this weekend, which is rather handy.

Taking stock of the situation

Well lets start with the good news, we've now got enough beastmaker 2000series in stock to make a throne out of.The bad news is that the code on the 1000series still needs some tweaking inorder to make it more amazing, we'd rather people had to wait another fortnight in order to receive a superior product.

Myself and Ned are still mostly training and its been weeks since i went outside, uni work is going well though and i might treat myself to a trip on the lime somewhere. I'll try and do a mini training video next time we both have a good session.

For now the FA video of a little arete i did over easter will have to suffice, by popular demand the final dyno is now 'optional' rather than part of the problem, still i got mine :)

Arc Royal from beastmaker.co.uk on Vimeo.

a big thanks to Chris and Andy at www.climbnewcastle.com for the Vid and it looks like they are both set to crank up the quality on this arete, with Chris dropping the top on ground up efforts, and Andy is now trying the sitter in between the fierce conditions (queens is a royal faff to get the conditions right)

all quiet on the beastin' front

I have been training alot lately, partly due to the increased workload at Uni and partly due to a niggle i picked up over easter. Alot of people stress over injuries wondering what to do. Personally (and this is purely my mis-informed opinion) i prefer to start an icing regime within a week of the niggle emerging, i then try to train round it as best as possible depending on severity. Currently i am attempting to increase the strength of my index finger so that it can take more load. This appears to be working at the moment via a combination of front 2 encores & board problems, index monos and devil hangs (along with plain stubbornness). I intend to keep this regime up for another 4 weeks whilst gradually transitioning back into a crimp phase. All being well i might actually be able to get strong at crimping then.

Ned too is heading back to basics and targeting the fingers after an annoyingly set world cup round found weaknesses in the on the porky pinches (wide ones).
It's been a good while since i trained this specifically and the main battle is avoiding over training and cumulative niggleitis (when everything starts tweaking).

I find looking at goals over months or longer help to prevent the "must train everything in one session mentality" which only leads to problems.

sticking a 500ml coke bottle of water in the freezer and holding it for long durations as part of cold treatment helps, it also avoids 'bath skin' which you get from prolonged cold treatment by sticking your hand in icy water. You can also make free ice/gel packs from washing up liquid or alcohol (the latter being good for post icing relaxing) and high quality freezer packs.

Ned's started work on the 2000elite (the holds are so small the writing would look too big next to them otherwise) and i've started to root out some good psyche mixes to train to. The prototype boards will also be made out of a few experimental hardwoods (recycled/sustainable of course) which should be amazing, like really amazing, stick it on a mantle piece and frame it amazing.

that's all for now.