Friday glee is concentrating on training

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: there's been some noise and discussion about Daniel Woods completing a long-standing project -- in the gym.

To show that this is not altogether new, here's legend Malcolm Smith repeating one of the indoor problems that he used while training for his second ascent of Hubble at the age of 18.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I have surprising amounts of glee because my pull-ups and fingerboard work actually seem to be progressing. I'm fairly sure it's all neural recruitment at this stage, but it'd be really nice to return to climbing with stronger fingers and shoulders.

(I just need to make sure I don't trash my elbows ...)

[wpadmirer]

Whoo-hoo!

Yes, be careful of those elbows. When I first started climbing I developed terrible tendenitis in my left elbow. I would come out of the gym with my elbow hot to the touch! OW! But lots of icing and working on the finger boards in the gym slowly and regularly to strengthen my forearms has made the problem virtually disappear.

You might try icing your elbows after you work on the boards, as a preventative. Maybe it would help?

[rydra_wong]

Yes, I got elbow tendonitis a few months after I first started climbing, which is when I learned that eccentric exercises are magic and that Dodgy Elbows is the manual.

(And a home-made wrist roller, and some Zottman curls, and knuckling out any trigger points I could find ....)

I've had a few twinges in recent days, so I decided it was time to haul out my trusty sledgehammer and get some prehab in.

[wpadmirer]

Thanks for the link! I've never seen eccentric exercises for the elbow. I found some for my hip, back when I having huge problems. Those do work well.

[rydra_wong]

Yes, I think they ought to hand out that pdf to every climbing gym newbie. It worked like magic for me.