Another awesome lesson. Tonight was rope drills.
First, we did a full gym traverse with straight arms. I made it most of the way. A few sections I can’t do yet. Hand strengh just isn’t there.
For the rope drills we chose a rope and did all the climbs on that rope within our abilities back to back, 3 times! Yup, 9 climbs back to back, no rest. I started with a 5.7, 5.8, and a 5.10. Couldn’t do the 5.10 well so Mattie had me just ram thru the other two. I am so knackered!
After that we did mat excercises. More core work, with 3 cycles of planks, bicycles, pushups, toe-taps, obliques, leg lifts, side planks. Whew!
I love climbing. That’s all there is to it. Hooked.
First day of x-team training at Vertical World Seattle was great! Started with a traverse of the gym to warm up, then a try at the footwork puzzle. Didn’t get all the way thru but got farther than I thought I would. The puzzle involves placing your feet on particular holds, following a numeric sequence. Wild!
Main training today centered on weight distribution but morphed into climbing without bending the arms, without doing pullups the whole route. So lots of swinging of the hips and rotating. Very cool! Did two 5.6 to warm up then moved on to 5.7 and 5.8 climbs, all with straight arms! Brutal!
Class ended with a nice 20 min abs workout.
I’m psyched for Thursday now!
Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we’re not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.
Pema Chödrön
Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don’t mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we’re feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.
Pema Chödrön
