ch-ch-ch-changes!

fyi i owe every single friend i have an email EXCEPT bubbles and LSD so to all of you i apologise.

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wow i hurt

like wow.

there are whole new levels of fitness that i have to find if i'm going to keep letting hcg change how i move. he's basically slowing me down and speeding me up at the same time. that is really fucking hard to explain to a non climber but the gist of it is that if you can't do it slowly you actually can't do it.

added to that is this idea that if you never quite stop moving, if instead you place something on a hold and something else starts at the same time to pull or to push that you will develop fluidity and flow to your movements.

it's definetely working because i sent something that i had been working on for months and it wasn't even hard. wasn't even HARD!

so mostly i practise this movement thingy when i'm traversing [going sideways along a long wall to warm up the muscles but never being more than a few feet off the ground and not being roped in. good for endurance and practising moves or just for warming up or to blow all the energy you have at the end of the session] at the beginning of my day. but in addition to that i've changed the holds that i used and been going for things with more pinch and crimp.

i've gone from being able to do a triple traverse (there and back again thrice) to being able to go in one direction only and then collapse in a boneless heap at the end of it. but it feels SO pretty. sooo pretty i can't even explain.

after i start to dial into this whole never stop moving and always know what you're doing next thingy i'll find that my hip will lead sometimes or that my weight will shift without my trying to get it to or that my leg will just flag (uh be hanging out and not on a hold) or smear (stuck to a wall where there isn't a hold) at exactly the right spot.

without even trying.

dudes that problem was easy. i blew through the move that i couldn't do and the three after it and sent the bitch and i wasn't even winded.

interestingly when we do routes he tends to stick us on beginner things like 5.7s or 5.8s and just push this idea of slowness. also he suggests not skipping holds. do the route as the route setter intended and damm it often toughens it right up.

there's one handed climbing too... that shit sucks it's so hard.

anyway the point is i seem to have discovered that i am totally out of shape again. there are whole new levels of fitness that i just do not have yet and the second i started moving with fluidity i realised just how far i still had to go.

[this did NOT precipitate the i feel shitty post by the way... i noticed the fitness thing on sunday]

the thing that's neat is that i can also feel that when i get that extra fitness? when the fluidity isn't devastatingly difficult? when i'm not a boneless pile of panting sass after half a traverse? it will get SO easy to move on the walls.

unfortunately my moves are changing faster than my body is because i'm in some kind of intensive training camp or something and i hurt all fucking over. i went climbing (in reverse order) sunday, friday, wednesday, monday, friday, wednesday, monday in the last two weeks... that's a lot. at least some part of every one of those sessions involved climbing with hcg and whether there was a verbal lesson or not just watching that guy move is an advanced class in climbing.

but.

but?

yeah but ... it fucking HURTS in a few really surprising places. my abs are working harder than they were, the backs of my shoulders are pissed and strangely enough my quads really hurt. no dudes really hurt.

i'm starting to wonder what i'm training for because this is the fitness regime of someone with goals... and i have a sneaking suspicion that i want to compete. i'm a bit old for it though....

top all that off with a class with the goddess [damm i hate that nickname too] on saturday and a visit to my osteopath today and there isn't a piece of me that doesn't feel ripped open and reassembled. in fact i have acupuncture pins left all over my back so my body can 'continue to process' AND i should feel shifts and corrections for TWO OR THREE weeks!!

the good news is that she did *not* tell me that i was climbing too much. in fact she said that in spite of some aches and niggles (A LOT of which are accident leftovers) that climbing has clearly done wonders for me. she also said to just use my instincts and to not let my desire to go to the gym colour my read on those same instincts.

damn it's annoying when they tell you to use your own judgement.

because then you actually do.