I am nearly two months into my “training” for our trip to Hueco Tanks. I like to think that I am feeling fairly strong, but it’s been difficult to find benchmarks for my progress. But more on that later.

Primarily, I’ve been using the hangboard, generally three days a week (sometimes four). My big breakthrough there was finding the Beastmaker training guidelines. As I’ve noted before, the British often have an obsession for training (over, sometimes, actually climbing on rocks), so they are the best source for motivation and direction when using a one foot by three foot piece of plastic and wood in your cellar.

I started with sets of repeaters and encores, plus core work, and stayed with that for about a month of so, mostly to get my fingers used to the idea of working hard again. For the past few weeks, I’ve shifted over to doing pyramids (essentially offset pull-ups), throwing in repeaters and encores when I do workouts on consecutive days.

What about actual climbing? Well, motivation for that waxes and wanes. I was reasonably motivated to go to the gym during and after the holidays, since we spent quite a bit time setting new boulder problems. Motivation has waned, however, now that I’ve done most of those “projects” and I don’t feel motivated enough to do circuits. Its times like these that I miss the bouldering coop, or the old bouldering wall at the gym–large swaths of plywood completely covered with holds for an infinite selection of moves. Realistically, it would be good to start some circuits, at least once a week, and there is a good crop of steep, fingery problems to include.

So, where do I stand? That’s a good question. I have no idea if the grades I’ve given to problems I’ve set in the gym are in the right ballpark. If they are, well, I am rounding into shape and my ticklist for Hueco isn’t pie-in-the-sky, If those problems are soft (or, worse, horribly overgraded), then I am in for quite a surprise. Sadly, given the weather, I can’t be sure we’ll climb outdoors before the trip. I’d love to go to Coopers Rock and try some of the standards there, just to see where I stand.

Posted on 27 February 2010