Climbing goals update 1, 2014

I wrote a large post at the start of this year reviewing my climbing goals over previous years, and laying out my goals for 2014. A key modification for me in 2014 is changing to a strategy where I set goals quarterly, rather than yearly. Let’s review Q1.

Goals for q1 2014

• try at least 12 routes of 6c or harder
  I managed to try exactly 12 routes of 6c in the last 12 weeks, and my last try yielded success. The last time I had led a route of 6c was in Jan 2013. I made it to the climbing wall 10 times, though didn’t manage to do routes on each occasion, due to partner availability. I tried 29 lead routes over that time.

• at least one fingerboard session per week
  I managed 16 fingerboard sessions, and across those did 23 “5 min burn” sets, where I roped up, popped my feed on a chair, and hung from the board for five minutes, while placing gear, clipping, unclipping, removing gear, to give a deep endurance set.

• get to the shoreditch boulder at least 4 times
  I visited the shoreditch boulder for the fourth time this morning, and had a good session, getting in 2 V3’s, and making progress on one of the V4’s that I can’t do. In addition. I also managed to get the [inner city riots][http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/c.php?i=126436] problem, a boulder problem that I’d had as a goal for last year, and only just missed out on towards the end of last year. On the day I did it twice to make sure that it wasn’t a fluke.

So, pretty good progress, I’m pretty happy. It’s time to set goals for the next 12 weeks. Everything I’m building towards is to get a 7a in calendar year 2014. I’m going to divide up the next 12 weeks into three phases - 6, 4 and 2 week phases. In the 6 week phase I’m going to drop the route level, and increase volume. In the second phase I’m going to get back to bouldering and finger boarding for pure power - and bump back to 6c, and in the last phase I’m going to start aiming at 7a.

For the first phase I’m going to set the following goals:

• try 10 routes per wall session, with routes done back to back 2x6a, 2x6a+, 6x6b.
• try one wall session per week.
• fingerboard once per week, again doing 5min burns.

For phase 2 I’m going to:

• try 2 6c routes per week.
• switch to bouldering for power, and return to my bouldering notebook, and get to match all high points that are therein noted for the fingerboard.

For phase 3 I’m going to:

• try 6 7a routes in that two week window.

I’ve noticed in the last 12 weeks that circumstance often gets interestingly entangled with training plans, small colds, busy periods at work, climbing partners not making it to the wall, so I’ll actually do a mini review in 4 weeks to see if the high volume I’ve set as a goal in the first phase is realistic.