Things change

My initial impression of the the Chris Webb Parsons fingerboard programme that seems to be in vogue at present. It's brutally good, but also brutally vague and those hard to assess properly unless you're already very strong. I'm going to stick it out until mid-April but will return to using weights - i.e. measurable - after that.

As standards improve, it's great to look back every once in a while at what has gone before. Irish climbing upper standards are exploding right now, it's fab! Now, there's access to better route-setters, better climbing walls(!), more climbers to benchmark and motivate off, and better training tools. 

For all the talk of good methods now, it's great to look back at training in an earlier time (you're going to have to register to read it):

“I never did any warm up, just a couple of leg stretches (short runs) across the arena…I trained only one evening per week, winter and summer, spending about thirty minutes on each workout. My training would not be understood today. It was always light.”

Englishman Joe Binks who set a world record of 4:16.8 for the mile in 1902

Most people would barely regard 30 minutes as a warm-up these days, let along a full workout. How times change :) Having said that, after listening to Adam Ondra's recent podcast interview and his twice-daily 1-hour sessions, maybe some things don't change much after all......