Session duration: 1 hour
This session is designed to improve your slab climbing skills but could easily adjust to fit any type of climbing.
The point is to start simple, build confidence and then test your limits by the end of the session
When the going gets tough, small margins make a big difference and projecting will help you to improve your skills one little bit at a time.
To work on our slab skills, we’re going to select 3 increasingly difficult slab problems:
- Problem #1 must be something within your flashing ability: it might not be easy, but you could send it first time. For this first problem you want to attempt to flash it, but if you can't you have up to 3 tries.
- Problem #2 has to be harder, you cannot flash it, but you could get it done within 5 tries. 5 tries should be enough to work out all the subtleties and micro beta to have a good chance to send. You can try the moves in isolation if you need to, but you only get up to 5 'redpoint' attempts eg. Performing the bloc from start to finish.
- Problem #3 is hard. You cannot flash it; you cannot climb it within 5 attempts and it's going to potentially take up most of your session. There is also a good chance that you cannot send it at all! But you’ll be getting some really good work.
New climbers might have a tendency to beat themselves up for failing to complete a certain climb. But working at our limits and improving the finer details of our skill set is part of the fun.
Anyone can get to the top of the wall. Sometimes, the real fun happens when you’re stuck in the middle.
Warm up thoroughly for this session as you are going to be working with limit climbs. These problems will require maximum physical effort, so our body needs to be ready.
Ideally you want to do this on new which you haven’t worked on before, however you can also try this on an older set as long as you’re working in the difficulty range described earlier.
Cris Fontano is Head Coach at The Climbing Hangar London
Avoid beating yourself up when a climb isn’t going your way. Finding that limit is literally the aim of the game. So let’s make this session a judgement free zone.
Simply try hard and have a good session.
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