Pen and Rock

I live in the Washington D.C. metro area, which is not exactly mountainous. One of the things we climbers love about our sport is the chance to be outdoors in amazing places. So naturally, a major challenge of being a rock climber in a not so rocky area is finding opportunities to get outside. Now, even in this urbanized and not-so-mountainous area small, local crags exist. I have climbed at Carderock and Great Falls, but if you want world-class routes, you are looking at roughly a five-hour drive each direction, which is not something most of us can do very often. Occasionally I heard about local bouldering spots, but I never really gave them much thought, focusing instead on the famous places I wished I could go. Recently I was on quite the streak of complaining about the lack of real rock in the DC Metro Area. But after chatting with a few friends at the gym I started to think maybe I had been too quick to dismiss the local options, and I gained hope. There were at least three crags...

When I decided to make a serious commitment to rock climbing, one of my first steps was to devise a training plan. These are the steps I took – and continue to take, since this an ongoing process. Over time I came to understand how much this process connected me to my climbing community.   Now, it is worth noting that climbing is still a developing sport, and the “best” way to train for climbing has not been researched as extensively as for other sports. It is also true that different exercises and methods of training work for different people. In fact, this was the first thing I learned – one should not copy or imitate someone else’s training plan just because they can climb the hardest grades. My approach was to go around and ask lots of different people about the exercises they found helpful in their development as a climber. I like to pick and choose the activities and protocols I find beneficial rather than following any particular plan. In this way, over time, I built a ...