Ready for Africa

A few days ago I got an email from a friend of mine that I'll be staying with in Africa. As with most of his emails it was brief, candid, and to the point. It read:

I can't help but feel the same way. I've been training harder than ever for the past 3+ months specifically for this trip, not to mention all the hours compounded in the past years leading up to this. At this point there is nothing I can do that would make me any sronger. Some people have asked what I am planning on doing, or if I have specific goals. I do, but I'll spare you the ticklist for a more honest answer. I want to climb well and feel strong. I leave in one week on what will undoubtedly be a trip that I can't even wrap my head around, so I won't try. I'm excited to try my hardest, laugh, see new things, and soak everything in. And of course penguins.

That said I will try to stay connected and post small videos, pictures and other updates. This will be my last post here until we arrive, so if you are looking for updates between now and then let me shamelessly plug a few outlets where I will be constantly updating with photos and statuses.

@maxmoorephoto -Instagram and Twitter (I can assure lots of updates here, especially in the airports)
Max Moore Photography - The facebook page where I will be dumping all of the photos taken periodically throughout the trip.
And Max Moore on Vine if you're into that.

And if I don't hear from any of you :( then have a great summer!

-BLOCHEAD

Getting Wrecked

This workout really did it. Usually when I go to the gym I try pretty hard, but not hard enough to fail at my entire workout. Like all climbers I like to feel successful and send things. That is the natural urge that I have been fighting to suppress in the gym. In general I do a decent job of this, but I wanted to take my training to the next level for these last couple weeks. In a recent conversation with my buddy Dave he reminded me of this aspect, something he had read in a book by Dave MacLeod. I'll have to read that one sometime.

Failure never felt so good. I mean painful and monotonous. But worth it. Or something.

This is just a basic workout with 3 sections: warm up, climbing portion, training portion. For my climbing portion I wanted to do a set of 4x4's that was at/above my limit. I chose problems that I could confidently reach the 3/4 mark but would be very difficult to send 4 times in a row. My results were an awesome amount of failure. I fell a lot at the 1/2 way or 3/4 mark on the harder problems and fell last move on the two easier ones a couple times. I ended up sending 25% of my efforts with one send consisting of a variation I improvised on the V12 at the top just to keep going (read: I cheated and made it V10/11).

Following the 4x4s I did an hour of hang boarding using the CWP plan followed by campusing and some core. It felt great to be pushing myself that hard and trying things out of my league. 3 weeks until I leave for Africa!

-BLOCHEAD