My sporting, climbing, and training background.
In spite of the “brief” period in my life where I was quite over-weight, I have an athletic predisposition and grew up being very active, playing and excelling in many sports. I played baseball, fast-pitch softball and Australian rules football for well over a decade and played to a high level, playing in the State teams on a few occasions. After a 8 year absence from sporting activities (where I was studying and slowly gaining weight) I found climbing.
I began climbing relatively late in life at age 29, in early 2004, and have been hooked ever since. I started out exclusively rope climbing and, due to the proximity of Mt Apariles in Australia, became an accomplished, self-taught, traditional lead climber. This then expanded to include sport lead climbing and finally, about 5 years into climbing, it expanded to include bouldering. In more recent years I have rope climbed less and focused more on bouldering. Probably 90% of my current climbing pursuits, both indoors and outdoors, is bouldering.
Over the years of my climbing, my interest in increasing performance has led me to following many blogs, websites and coaches trying to expand my knowledge and skills in coaching and training principles for climbing. I have attend many coaching clinics and 1 on 1 coaching sessions to gain as much first-hand knowledge and perspectives as I can. With an education and current employment in science, I have also been fortunate enough to have access to many scientific journals which has allowed me to expand my knowledge in coaching and training principles from both climbing and non-climbing perspectives. In early 2015 I completed a Certificate III and Certificate IV in Fitness and Personal Training in Australia in hopes to begin a personal training career with a focus on training for climbing.
I approach most endeavors with a very logically ordered mind and so my basic philosophy on training, for both climbing and non-climbing pursuits, can be summed up succinctly in the KISS acronym, keep it simple stupid. This, combined with my ever-expanding knowledge of climbing has led me to develop my own thoughts and principles on training for climbing. I also believe that as important, if not more important than the actual details of any training principles or program is the simple matter of participant compliance. The best training program in the world is useless if no-one wants to, or is able to, follow it. Ties in well with keeping it simple yeah?
About my Eating.