Fast Forward 2

This is the name of a class my climbing gym offers. It’s a three week class that starts to teach climbing technique and strategy and basically open up your climbing abilities. Squeaks and I signed up for this class and tonight is the first night. We’re both very excited about it. When we joined the gym about 18 months ago we said we were going to sign up and take all these technique classes and try and get better faster. Of course, that didn’t really pan out (for lots of reasons) so we’ve been climbing on our own and teaching ourselves stuff from reading magazines and watching other climbers.

Tonight we’re starting down a path of actually taking some classes, learning a few things and getting to practice them with an experienced instructor who can offer coaching and feedback throughout the session. The woman who is teaching the class is someone we’ve seen around the gym a whole lot and she’s a great climbing… I’ve actually seen her climb some really hard stuff using only one foot (she’d injured her knee and couldn’t put any weight on it). It was very cool to see how strong and graceful she was and most of that came from having really really good technique and knowing how to move her body properly on the wall.

Squeaks and I have done pretty well for ourselves these last 18 months, but most of what we’ve learned came from watching and guessing and trying to mimic what other people were doings. We’d gotten a few verbal tips and suggestions from other climbers but most of what we’ve been able to do has been self taught. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve done some amazing things and learned a lot this way. But I think we’ll both benefit a great deal from being able to take a class where they are focusing on a specific set of skills designed to improve your climbing ability. Even if we spend the next three weeks perfecting stuff we already know we will have gained a great deal from it. Theory is one thing… practicing on your own can lead to bad habits that can be hard to break. Getting some real instruction and coaching over the next week can only serve to INCREASE our knowledge and abilities and I for one am very much looking forward to it.

There are basically four tiers to the “Fast Forward” training series at our gym. We’re intentionally starting at Tier 2 because we HAVE been climbing for some time and want to make sure we’re starting in a place where we’ll be challenged and learn a lot of new things but that is maybe a bit less advanced than we THINK we are. The next two levels after this one get into some really challenging technical stuff and I want to make sure we have a really really good foundation for moving forward. Plus, even though we’ve been in the gym for a long time now we’ve never taken any classes and the instructors may not know us and may decide to deny us access to the higher level of classes until we’ve taken all the pre-requisites. Fast Forward 1 is some really basic wall contact technique that we’ve mostly figured out already so skipping that one and going straight to level 2 seemed like the best use of our money.

So, as I said, class starts tonight and runs on Tuesday evenings for the next three weeks. I will try and offer a report every Wednesday about what we learned in class the night before and how that could change the way we climb. And, as I sit here writing this post I really wish it was 6pm and we were on our way to the gym. Definitely excited about the class and generally just loving that it’s Tuesday – which means it’s a climbing night!!