Motivation

Despite the awfully hot weather over the past weeks I have started to become motivated again. I am tired of feeling tired all the time and I am not getting anywhere near my target of 7b this year, so it's time to do something about it. Perhaps writing it down will help, perhaps someone will see it and say Oi Stocker! stop being a lardy arse.

My body feels more relaxed, my joints don't feel stiff and my fingers don't hurt. In fact I have started jogging again, with the odd bit of stretching here and there, and I am feeling so much better for it. Great, so what's the problem? Well I haven't actually climbed for a few of weeks! Perhaps when you are getting fed up with climbing it is good just to stop and do something else instead.

The recent competitions have also been quite inspirational and I suspect sometime soon I will start climbing again. So what can I do differently this time that I have not done before, how can I raise my level? Well I have to start by thinking that there is absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to climb to 8a, (which is what I would like to do). I have no injuries or disabilities, I am not overweight or technically incompetent. I see other people in the gym who apparently have made that grade and I think well if they can do it why not me?

I sit in front of a computer all day long, my blood drains into my feet, my wrists and shoulders ache and my eyes get tired. Hardly a good start, so I put some of my time in front of the small screen to good to use and pulled up some articles on nutrition. My diet is not awful but is a touch basic basic, could this be the cause of my tiredness?. Being vegetarian I was especially interested to see if i could be lacking vitamins. It seems so, although in a well balanced diet no supplements are needed. It does not seem that croissant and coffee for breakfast, pasta pomodoro for lunch and pasta formaggio for dinner everyday is the diet of champions. Well of course all this I already knew, everything in moderation. So for my vitamins and proteins I have now added to my shopping list more fruit, beans & pulses, juice and the occasional egg. My carbohydrate intake I would assume is already sufficient, which brings me to the next area as unfortunately I failed to find 8a on my supermarket shelf.

Physical exercise. Eating the right stuff but is a good start but if you don't use what happens?. Will I explode as a result of too much potential energy stored inside me? Ok so I am running now, but I have run before and I still struggle to shift my mass up 7a so there must be something else. Motivation, that's it. Now I am never particularly committed when I arrive at a crag, occasionally if I see a route I really like the look of I will give it a good go, but then that's it and I'm off home. I started looking around the internet and found the site of Martina Cufar. She had her route list online. More than 100 routes over 7c, hmmm perhaps this is why she is so good, I doubt I have even done 100 6a's. Ron Fawcett did 100 extreme routes in a day at Stanage and recently in the peak district John Arran and Shane Ohly did over 1000 routes between them. These are surely just a few examples but the point is clear. These people climb, and they climb lots.