Scar Tissue

phew! we've been busy this past fortnight with lots of beastmaker's whisking their way off to be alongside a fellow tree. Except hopefully our boards won't be thrown away after xmas. I thought about a few posts to do today, yearly reviews etc. But i thought this might be useful, especially to people who get a bit keen on the training over christmas (unlikely i know)

the above figure is (click, then click all sizes to enlarge). Is a heavily abridged version of my 2009 year . Instead of grades (still a useful reference). I roughly judged my performance using my intrinsic knowledge of when i feel like i'm going well and when the wheels are off the wagon. This year has been a constant battle against the latter. And it is mostly due to over indulgence in the thirst for power. Too much too soon both mentally and physically pushed my previously sturdy body which had only had the odd severe niggle into a state of malfunction. It was hard to pick myself up in August as "fool me twice shame on me" was telling me i had learnt and knew nothing about climbing hard and looking after myself. In a way this is more of an exposé to draw attention to the fact that training is symbiotic with injury and that both should be payed attention to in equal measure. Credence should be given to the idea that when your going well, the extra session or those tender pulleys aren't worth pushing on for that extra percentile.

Then again if you are an all out training junkie (as in chalk you hands when you get up for a piss in the night/regularly scrape through endless sites looking for the secret to endless power) and don't mind losing the odd 1/4 year to injury then it is definitely possible to train round injuries if you are smart with what you do. That is not to say you will come out stronger, you will just come out stronger in different areas. But getting back what is lost in the injured area takes time and painful dedication. That said, on paper (and paper alone) this has probably been close to my best year ever. Where as the above chart shows that performance wise it has been atrociously inconsistent.

If i may say so, (speaking as a keen boulderer, not as a PR machine) i am genuinely very glad to have had my (finger)board and system holds (we don't sell these yet, so at least i'm not plugging things that badly) whilst injured, as it was easy, just a few days after being injured to isolate the injured finger and train the others. Without this ease of training i would have been far less motivated to get back on my wheelless bandwagon and steer things back to something resembling a course.

Anyway someone shouted at me on my last post for not being punctual with video posting, so here is something i made earlier:

Ned vs schnee from beastmaker.co.uk on Vimeo.