Exposed!

Yesterday my wife and I went to Austin Rock Gym http://www.austinrockgym.com/nargpics.htm to try our hand at indoor rock climbing.  We went to the North Austin location which has a huge indoor climbing area dedicated to "bouldering".  Below I quote from the wikipedia page for bouldering:

"Bouldering is a style of climbing emphasizing power, strength, and dynamics. Its focus is on individual moves or short sequences of moves, unlike traditional climbing or sport climbing, which generally demand more endurance over longer stretches of rock where the difficulty of individual moves is not as great. Boulder routes are commonly referred to as problems (a British appellation) because the nature of the climb is often short, curious, and much like problem solving. Sometimes these problems are eliminates, meaning certain artificial restrictions are imposed. Bouldering is more focused on the technique of climbing instead of undertaking a full bodied climb."



Austin Rock Gym's North Austin location has 30 ft. high climbing walls (and lower ones), simulated caves, and cliff overhangs.  There are crash pads all around the gym that you can position underneath yourself to ensure safety, though the pads do little to reduce the fear accompanied with being 15-20ft. in the air, with no rope, hanging on to a tiny hand hold.

Both my wife and I are avid CrossFitters and generally excel at physical activities, even when we have no previous experience with the activity.  CrossFit attempts to develop a broad and general fitness that will allow a person to successfully participate in just about any physical activity.  We like to think that we are training people to be able to go run a 10K, swim, row, play soccer, whatever the situation calls for, and to be able to do this at a competitive level.  We stepped into Austin Rock Gym with the confidence of CrossFitters, ready to conquer the walls...even though neither one of us had ever done it before.

To our credit, and the credit of the CrossFit training program we both completed some pretty awesome climbs for beginners.  In fact we completed a route that a novice climber in the gym that day, with previous climbing experience, was unable to complete.  I watched with pride as my wife Samaria would try a climb, fall, get back up with a laugh, and make it to the top on her second attempt.  We fulfilled the promise of CrossFit: we showed a broad based fitness, prepared for the unknown and unknowable.  However.......

Climbing exposed some major weaknesses in my fitness.  After a few climbs my forearms were exhausted.  My hands were beginning to cramp.  I watched in frustrated amazement as veteran climbers hung upside down, 20 feet off the ground with an ease and grace that was beautiful and astounding.  After an hour and a half of climbing we could simply do no more.  We had plenty of energy, and wanted to keep climbing, but our ability to grip or pull was just gone.  It was incredibly frustrating.

Climbing was one of the most fun activities I have participated in.  I loved it.  Samaria loved it.  We plan on making regular trip to the Rock Gym to develop our climbing strength and skills.  It was a great experience.  It also showed me a whole other aspect of fitness training, a whole side of physical and mental development that is missing from my training regiment.  It is a great thing to have these kinds of weaknesses exposed.  Now it is time to go back to the drawing board, and figure out a way to turn those weaknesses into strengths.  And once that is complete it will be time to search for more weaknesses.  These kinds of exposures are the engines of change and progress.