The Conscious Competence Model and Learning New Movement Skills

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The Conscious Competence Model and Learning New Movement Skills

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or you’ve been on one of our courses, you’ll know that movement coaching is one of my passions. I try to incorporate it in every mountain day that I do with clients, whatever the main focus of the day. So you might book a place on a Contour Masterclass, and you will definitely finish the day with lots of skills relating to contour interpretation, but you will also go away with all the basics about efficient movement. So why do I think it is so important?

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Updated: What’s On My Climbing Rack And Why?

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Updated: What’s On My Climbing Rack And Why?

My climbing rack is one of my basic tools of the trade. Every piece of gear on it has been used many times and is very familiar to me. What I actually select for my rack on a day out depends on the rock type and grades of the routes I am expecting to climb. When on granite or gritstone I carry more cams, and sometimes doubles of common sizes like 1 and 2. When on slate or harder Lake District routes on rhyolite I take more small wires. Here’s a summary of anything I might carry, and why.

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What's It Like Taking The Step Into Extreme Climbing In The Lake District?

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What's It Like Taking The Step Into Extreme Climbing In The Lake District?

[GUEST POST] Taking the step into climbing extremes can seem daunting – at least, it’s felt daunting to me! But if you’re placing good gear, have spent time developing your basic skills and have built up confidence at VS and HVS, you may find that in reality E1 is not only achievable, but already in-line with the difficulty of some of the harder routes you’ve done. Either way, it’s worth stepping out of your comfort zone because getting on E1 routes means accessing more involved and enjoyable climbing on memorable routes.

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Top Tips For Bouldering

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Top Tips For Bouldering

When I was a child I would climb anything: trees, bridges, garden walls, anything, partly because there weren’t any crags near to our home in Surrey and partly because I just loved the challenge, particularly when I was with friends, egging each other on to try harder. I have always loved all different forms of climbing, from bouldering to big mountains, ice climbing, mixed snow and rock, and ski mountaineering. Bouldering is a form of rock climbing on small rock formations or artificial walls without using ropes, harnesses or any of the usual climbing kit. Most bouldering problems (the sequence of moves that a climber performs to complete the climb) are within 6m of the ground.

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The ABC of Trad Climbing

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The ABC of Trad Climbing

Until fairly recently, climbing was just called… climbing. With the rise of sport climbing, a new name was needed for what everyone had been doing previously, and so the name ‘traditional climbing’, or ‘trad climbing’, was born. In sport climbing, the routes have pre-placed bolts, allowing the lead climber to follow the route and quickly clip in to the bolts. In trad climbing, the lead climber carries, places and clips into protection (nuts, cams, etc) whilst finding the route, so as well as the physical challenge there is a significant mental challenge too. The basics of trad climbing can be summed up in three letters: A = anchor; B = belay; C = climber

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