Bring in the New Years with Jeremy Blumel’s final article via The Squamish Chief.
Photo by Luke Zimmerman ©
For climbers, 2015 has been a year of holding still and trusting where patience will lead us, of the Dawn Wall and its effect on climbing and how it is seen by the rest of the world, of sad departures in the likes of Dean Potter, Graham Hunt, Justin Griffin and Kayah Gaydish.
It has also been the year of new beginnings with the Ground Up Climbing Centre in Squamish and clean break ups with the Stawamus Chief’s calving off of 1,600 cubic metres of rock on April 19.
Yet, here we sit, overfed, eyes glazed over and stomach aching from an overabundance of wealth and opportunity, watching as a white winter season descends upon us these last December days.
How will you approach 2016? My mind is constantly swimming in climbing goals, destinations, ideas, training, routes, features, boulders, faces – possibilities. How will you change your life for the better? Will you approach it from a diet angle, curbing your drinking to help recovery, no more sweets or refined sugar, and shrinking your portions to hone in on when you’re satisfied but not stuffed? Will you take this a step further and experiment with a more rigid diet scheme like the Paleo concept, a scale in one hand for portion measuring and a protein shake in the other?
Maybe you’ve climbed for decades but you’re feeling a new push to improve your climbing technique, like foot work or sequencing? It could be the mental game in climbing, where balancing perceived fear with real risk in falling terms is on your agenda? Maybe it’s a physical goal where you want to structure your climbing into more focused bouts of training, instead of just doing what you’ve always done during the winter to stay fit?
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re climbing already or at least interested in climbing. With a new gym in town and a bouldering co-op as well, you’re poised at the edge of your seat, about to commit dollars, blood, sweat, muscle tissue, skin cells and many endorphins to the cause of improving your life by getting into climbing by whatever means available, whether professional or ad hoc.
For the full article, please visit The Squamish Chief.
