Sunday, 6 July 2008

When Stewart met Dave

For my birthday my parents gave me a session with mr Dave MacLeod down in the fort. After waiting for the summer months to arrive and for uni to finish, myself and my sister headed down for the session. Dave had conveniently found a new boulder and we decided to visit it for the start of the session.

We did a short warm up on a slab and then got to it with some new problems which I think Dave will add to his website when he returns from America. The first of the problems was a nice wee roof, no idea what the grade is maybe V2 to V3 nothing to difficult but good fun. We followed this with another two problems, one of which I will return to finish off at some point.

From this boulder we moved to skelton boulder to try a route there and after failing at the sit start I gave the standing start a bash. I managed to get a couple of holds from the top but started to get tired and got a bit psyched with the exposure and the drop off down the slope so whimped out. At this point I was nailed and after a couple more attempts we headed indoors to kimbers wall to cover the basic movement techniques dave had covered early in the day.

At this point I thought I should probably cover some of the actual coaching dave did.

The main points to come out of the session where movement, foot work and reading the rock. All things I needed serious help with lol. He showed me some really good techniques with such excellent names as the head butt and discus. I have been putting them into practice and they are really good. I think some people are lucky and can do them naturally, unfortunately I cant so it was nice to be taught them. All in all it was a cracking day that I have taken a lot from and I am actually trying to put into practice. This includes me even doing proper training sessions down the wall (shock horror I know).

Anyway thats enough of my ramblings, I will add photos once I get them from my sisters camera.

Stewart

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