Naismith's rule. A basic planner for figuring out how much distance a
reasonably fit person on reasonably friendly terrain can cover. Then a
guy named Tranter added a bunch of corrections for age, etc. This all
came up in a conversation with Kevin McLane, surely one of Canada's most
prolific climbers, writers, and general "give 'er" kind of individuals.
I have a few rules like this as well. General rules (with ...
I'm chipping (wait, bad word!) away at the Lama/Patagonia cluster and
slowly learning some new information. Lama and I will hopefully Skype
tomorrow, bits and pieces of other info coming in but not enough to have
a real understanding of what's going on. The comments on the last post
have been lively, thanks for those. One misconception I'd like to clear
up is that Red Bull (or any sponsor) somehow tells Lama, me or any of
their athletes what to d ...
Last winter a 19-year old Austrian youth, David Lama, went to Patagonia
to try to free the Compressor Route. The actions of his film team and
their guides have caused an
international furor
. For those not in the know, the Compressor Route was the scene of a
complete debacle when Cesare Maestri bolted (bad style) his way up a big
face on Cerro Torre, an amaz ...
It's been a really good spring for interviews with top rock climbers.
Climbing's
"The Low Down"
just did an OK one with Dai Koyamada, surely one of the all-time best
boulderers on the planet. He is repeating cutting-edge problems in short
order, while living in a country without very many high-end technical
rock climbers (Yuji and a few o ...
There's a lot of information on the web and in print about how to
get stronger for rock climbing, but very little on how to actually get
better at climbing. Those two aren't the same thing. Being
stronger will help, but really you need to climb a lot to get better
at climbing. Anybody promising that doing any form of non-climbing
training will make you a better (better means climbing harder) climber
is flat-out missing the ...
Floyd
Landis finally admits he WAS doping
. I had a conversation with a friend about this just last week; I
thought it likely that Landis was doping, but still had some doubts
based on Landis' exhaustive defense. My friend said the lab screwed up,
and he had a whole list of rationalizations and conspiracy theories ...
As most who follow Alpinism know, Steve House had an accident on Temple
a month or so ago. I saw him in the hospital, he was a mess but in far
better shape than not being a mess (Being alive sucks sometimes, but
it's better than the alternatives). Anyhow, he wrote an interesting
report on his blog, which got me
going on his training bl ...
I injured my back last monday, and made it a lot worse on Thursday. Now,
injured is a relative state--I define an injury as anything that keeps
me from going 100 percent, or having full function compared to
historical levels. My back first "twinged" while doing the
21-15-9 Snatch/chest to bar pullup combo last week. I did it as
prescribed, meaning 95 lbs, 'cause I can snatch more than that
relatively easily, why not try? I should have s ...
A year or so ago I read an interesting book by Malcolm Gladwell,
Outliers
. Gladwell looks at why some people on the edges of human potential,
or "outliers," succeed brilliantly while others don't.
Extremely high I.Q. people who don't succeed at much of anything are
contrasted with less bright but still smart people who dominate
intellectually. Why does one person succeed and not the other?
A repeated th ...
