Just back home after another session dry tooling. What with the dark nights and the fact that the Scottish winter season is just around the corner I’ve been concentrating on my winter fitness rather than worrying about not getting much rock climbing done.
In previous years my winter training hasn’t amounted to much, some calf raises, a few pull up’s but last year was a bit of a personal break though. Some dry tooling on a granite barn at home and some assisted pull up routines gave me the confidence to push the boat out a bit on the Scottish mixed climbs and jump a few grades.
This year I’ve got a new training aid – Alp Kit Fig fours. They are a training aid for indoor climbing walls. You can hook the rubber loop over the holds and hold on via the ice axe style handle and achieve a mega pump after a fairly short time.
Here’s Gavin Kelly giving them a quick burn.
I’ve been training quite a bit with Nick whose also got a pair, so we’ve been doing pumpy circuits, about 3mins on followed by 3mins off and then repeat. It certainly gives you a proper work out, I’ve never sweated so much bouldering! You can end up hanging on some pretty unlikely terrain for a few minutes at a time, when you’d normally only be on for a few seconds bouldering conventionally.
The only downside so far is that they trash my hands after a little while, blisters and a couple of fingers get slightly numb, but perhaps I’m doing too much? Gloves or tape haven’t helped so far but I will continue to experiment.
So I can’t wait to get up to Scotland and start using my (hopefully) improved fitness on some Cairngorm, and Ben Nevis mixed routes.
Nick on another lap with the tools.
Here’s a link to the Alpkit website with the fig fours for sale: Fig Fours
