Winter Training and UKC Gallery

A few posts back a friend of mine, lets call him the Aberdonian Adonis, posted about a winter training session he'd tried influenced by the winter training beast Stevie Haston. Adonis had managed 267 ice axe pull ups in an hour chasing a rumoured 2000 by Stevie. Inspired I tried a little session last night which I think is perfect for those like myself at the moment with very little spare time and adaptable for many levels of fitness.

Rather than an hour I went for 30mins (I didn't want to write off my season before its even started yet). Every minute, "on the hour", do a set amount of pull ups (between 2 and 6). This first session I did 3. Now doing 3 ice axe pull ups seems pathetic on its own right but by the end of the 30 minutes I'd done 90 pull ups, and if you can build up to doing 6 pull ups on the minute that's going to be 180 in 30 mins - a respectable tally for even grade IX monsters. If you find yourself doing more than 6 then you'd probably want to add a weight belt/vest. I think this session works well in that it replicates what you might expect in Scotland where you'll often get a tough physical section for maybe 10ft, followed by a decent rest. Having to do each set on the minute gets surprisingly tough with the last 10 minutes seemingly like a battle against a racing clock.

Also added yesterday is a gallery of winter shots on UKC http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=2235