Lately I haven't updated my blog or given much notice on what I've been up to. The reality of it all is that I've been just busy with training and school, but from now I'll make it a point to continue this blog.

Since the disappointment at the 2012 SCS Youth National Championship, I have been motivated more than ever to get strong. With sport climbing being my favorite type of climbing, I wanted to continue my season as long as I could before bouldering began. I trained with my own type of circuit routines, which in my opinion got me stronger within a month than I was at Nationals with 3 months of training. I created an 80-move boulder circuit (40 moves pure endurance, 40 moves hard power endurance), that i would do laps on without getting off the ground, and resting at one hold after each lap. I entered many local competitions I had won in the open category. For that series there was a final competition that included a cash reward for $700. The route couldn't have been harder than 7C+, and was easily onsight-able. To my disappointment I couldn't compete for the cash prize because I had to have gone to only one more competition of that series to qualify. I was sad, but at least I found a new effective training routine!

My extended sport climbing season was over, and it was time to start bouldering training. My style of climbing is more pointed toward small holds and less powerful moves. Because of this, bouldering became perfect training for sport climbing, to help with my weak points. I had planned a trip to Bishop, which I needed to train power for to keep up with the gymnastic style of many of the routes. More on the trip in the next blog post. 

For my entire climbing career I have noticed a lack of power in my climbing style. To help with this, I began doing more conditioning than ever. My plan was to be able to pull myself up like it was nothing from the bar, and then start doing the same on smaller holds down to about a quarter pad of my fingers, until I could do around 25-30 pull ups on those holds. I've noticed I had been focusing too much on purely climbing than my own physical condition. Climbing's a never ended learning experience it seems.