Deutschland JA!

We have been blown away by the amount of rock here. We were expecting it to be pretty amazing but their are more crags littered around than you can imagine. Its been awesome to see Tanja again and see some of the local area. The weather here has been incredible with it touching 35 degrees on our first day, which made a bit of a change from the UK!
We're on a rest day right now, and just got back from the school where Tanja works, as she asked us to come and talk with her students and help them out with their English. It was a bit of a surprise for them I think but it went really well. The big difference between being here and France last year is that pretty much everybody speaks English, even if only a little, which is pretty cool and a real bonus when trying to find your way around.
Below are a few shots from our trip so far, just had time to upload them before we hit the local village for a big Mayday festival. Auf gehts!

The Jura is looming!

Not long now till myself and Ted fly out to Germany for a couple weeks and get stuck into the incredible looking routes the place has to offer. We fly out from Manchester Thursday night and then hopefully be hitting the crags Friday! Really stoked to meet up with our good friend Tanja out there, along with a few members of the German climbing team, who will give us the grand tour and fingers crossed not feed us too much cake!

The finger is feeling much better now, although still a little stiff but we've had some really good indoor sessions in the last week and its definitely getting there. So hopefully we'll be fine getting involved with all these pockets and mono's!

The Frankenjura apparently has over 1000 crags with approx 7000 routes! More than enough to keep us going that's for sure. Anyway I'll be keeping the blog rolling while we're out there, so check back in to see how we're getting on.

Rainy day syke

Check out this cool video of our homie Hannah Wilson, getting down with it on the blocs. Keep the psyche going on a rainy day!

And for those that haven't seen this trailer from Nikon be sure to have a look! Its definitely worth another watch. I'm off snorkling now, cheers.

Fingers n Veins

Wrestling with my Dangerous Soul

I've had a bit of a bruised finger for a few days now, so had to take a bit of time out and rest up, but it came at a good time as I've been helping out a bunch of PhD students at Loughbourgh university with their study into how effective the arms blood vessels, among climbers, are at delivering blood. So the finger setback hasn't bothered me too much as I wasn't supposed to really train while they performed their tests, plus I was in need of a few days off! It'll be really cool to see the full results when they are published, it was definitely interesting seeing the arteries rushing with blood on the ultrasound as they released the clap from my arm! Below is the study overview for those that are interested.

Elite rock climbers have a highly adapted forearm vasculature, when compared to the sedentary population. For example, we have previously demonstrated that the blood flow capacity, and blood flow during exercise, was much higher in the rock climbers compared to non-climbing control subjects. However, this study is not able to identify the mechanisms for this higher blood flow capacity, which could be due to structural and functional changes in the artery supplying the forearm (brachial artery), or a higher number of capillaries within the forearm.

Therefore, this study aims to examine artery structure and function, and capillarity, in a population of elite rock climbers, and compare them to a group of non-climbing control subjects.

I'll be sure to post up the report of their findings soon as they email them through. Out.

Chillin int woods

This last week has been pretty intense with quite a few trainings sessions on the plastic and then some more trips to the uber popular Anston. I am definitely in need of a rest day and have some time to just chill out and take it easy. Hoping all this bouldering we've been doing will help us out in a few weeks when we hit the Jura up! I am very excited to get out there and big thanks to everyone who has been sending me lists of some of the best routes to get on!
Anyway some of the top sends over the last few days have been: Into the Light Direct 7C+, Dark Art 8A, Dark Beta 8A, and Wrestling with my Dangerous Soul, a potential 8A+... from where I started on the back wall. No idea about this one really but a good line with a fair few hard pulls. If you've not visited this place yet, I'd really recommend you check it out. If only to get away from the usual limestone spots. Have a gander at the video just below of the problem Dark Art and fingers crossed this rain doesn't ruin the lime for us, as people are really starting to get back into it!

Lime is back with a bang!

We hit the Tor up at the weekend, along with just about every one else as the place was crowded out, but it was good to catch up with a few people and get stuck into some more boulder action.
After watching Simon blast his way up the Weedkiller/Chimes link I managed to get Tumbleweed done. Whether this is still 8A I don't really know, but just really stoked to see the progression!
We all decided to then escape the crowds and had a cool few hours at Gardoms, doing a bunch of classic blocs, before another sick carvery with the crew.

Hannah getting a good SPOT on Marks!

I've been meaning to check out Anston for a good while now so yesterday me and Ed drove on over and ended up having a rad session in the woods. This place is soooo good and with it only being 20 minutes from my house I'll be spending a lot of time there this summer for sure. Highlights were us both sending the amazing roof problem, Soul Crusher 7C+ as well as the 8A sit start from the back! Other sends of the day included Bullit 7C, The Pheonix 7C, The Vision 7C, Black Crow 7C+ and a send of the super popular 8A, Dark Art and Quarantine, 8A by Edwardo!
We both made pretty good progress on the 8A+ Vanilla Sky as well so we're super keen to get back and try it some more.

Anyway we've got loads more video footage from the last week so take a look. Cheers to Nathan for the one just below!