Analyze that !

When you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses you hope to find something you can work on to make a big improvement. I wanted to look at my climbing + body this week and see what my baselines are.

Inspired by talk of power/weight ratios and the recommendation of a particular brand of body fat scales i bought some to look at the damage i've done during my lay off + Xmas.

Did i find what i hoped for ?

Oh yes - and no.

I am officially a chubster with 25.5 % body fat. I don't look/feel that fat but another reading shows i hold my chub around my organs rather than under my skin. This may explain why i've always been quite 'square' in shape and my stomach has always stuck out a bit. I always thought it was my over developed abs pushing out ;0)

On the plus side in the last two weeks i've lost over 2 kgs just from dieting, yes i was even fatter, and since the thaw i can now start running again. Dieting is driving me nuts so i can now relax that, a bit, and get pounding the trails again.

I also got some one to film me climbing at Kendal. It was my warm down climb and either a 6a or 6a+, despite what the commentator says, and it is weird to watch myself like that. I was really conscious of being filmed and the pressure of trying to get everything perfect meant i probably made more mistakes than normal - but not that many more.

Anyway here it is in all it's glory:






So many mistakes i wasn't aware of. I was trying to take my time but my god it's slow. 4 minutes !I am missing footholds, flagging/twisting the wrong way, clipping in the wrong places and not looking at my clipping. I'd worked on that last one as well but i seem to have forgotten it again. Serious thought needs to go into steep wall technique. If you don't know Kendal wall it gets steeper the higher it gets and the top half is probably about 25 degrees overhanging.

So in summary my analysis has revealed a bit too much ( literally regarding the weight) but i know the basics i need to correct now.

Going to film myself on a climb that's at my on-sight limit next time and see the horrors that reveals.

The truth hurts sometimes i guess but some good work + discipline over the next few weeks should have massive effects.

For posterity my baselines are:

Big wall on-sight - Fr6b
12 mtr wall on-sight - Fr 6c
Outdoor boulder on-sight - V2
Weight: 73.6 kgs
Body fat: 25.5%
BMI: 26.1
Muscle: 36.5%