let the bodies hit the flow

Boy and I went climbing last night for the first time in over a week. The Boston Rock gym doesn't have any sort of air conditioning to speak of. It is quite literally an old warehouse and all they can do is open the HUGE truck doors in the front and turn the fans on. You can normally count on the gym to be 10 - 20 degrees warmer than the outside and its been around 90 degrees here for the last two weeks. You can understand why we haven't felt inspired to climb.

Anyways, we went last night and I did great on my first climb. Complete zen climbing. Smooth, controlled, no scrabbling, clean foot switches, very balanced even on the stretches, everything working just right. Coming down, I felt pretty happy...so I decided to do a 5.7+ negative climb. Now normally I do negative climbs one full level below what I'm climbing on the zero or positive walls that night. Like I had mentioned before, I forget to use my legs enough on negative walls and I run out of arm strength quickly. I didn't make it. I only got about 2/3rds of the way up before I hit the soapy grey hold of doom (no finger holds, just a big round textureless ball covered in chalk). I tried the wall 3 times last night and that hold was the highest I got. Oh well. Learning process.

I think I need to start moving upwards off of my legs BEFORE I pull inwards with my arms to reach the next hold. I seem to always start arms first and then push with the legs. Boy also pointed out that I need to start turning my highest hip into the wall when I push off. I ended up doing some uncomfortable stretches where turning my body would have given me the reach easily.

Of course, he didn't tell me that until AFTER I came down.
It might be time to start trying 5.9's. Most of the 5.8s I can do now...