It’s strange sometimes the things you learn.

Small things which have a big effect. And when I did my year of Lattice training a few years ago one of the key things I learned was pretty basic, but had never occurred to me.

Tom put it like this ‘It’s not how hard a move you can do it’s how hard a move you can keep doing, or put it another way, what can you do when you’re pumped?’ Like I said basic. But it hadn’t really ever sunk in before. Especially in the days when I was super strong but would get six moves up a route and get pumped and fall off. This time it did. And when my test results came back and said that I wasn’t a ‘stamina-proof’ climber i.e. I could get fit it took hold. The nugget wedged in a seam!!

Tom followed this by showing me my training plan, which for the first few months seemed to have very little ‘fun stuff’ and seemed to consist of a lot of dull, easy core and lots of something called continuity.  He saw my disappointed look and continued ‘Richie, everyone needs a base to build on, something to stack all the other work on top of. And at Lattice we call that base continuity. And that’s a key part of getting to the promised land.’

And so that was the second other thing I learned; you can’t build a house without a foundation. That the pyramid that leads to peak performance starts with a wide base. The long, slow run; fifty laps of front crawl; 50km at 100 watts on a bike. It seemed to be same across a bunch of sports. It was the long slow days which allowed the hard days to happen. So, after an operation and series of injuries, I’m back to square one so I’m going back to the plan; and the plan dictates back to basics. So yesterday I did a series of shoulder exercises with very light weights led by a guy on a YouTube fitness channel who looked like a robot and today I did ‘Continuity’.

And it was dull. And I only managed three sets of six minutes.

And I sucked it up and I was happy. Because I’m on the path back. And I’m going to take it easy this time. And I’m not going to blow it.

After losing two years to a freak fall I haven’t got much time left…

And if you want to know what this magic ‘continuity’ training looks like on a very small wall with only a tiny area that’s not overhanging (and thus too steep) here’s it is…luckily not in real time!!!!!!!!!

PS This is probably not called ‘Continuity’ by Lattice or anyone anymore…

PPS  Still don’t understand modern, new-fangled ‘energy systems’ etc etc so no idea what you would actually call this.

PPPS It’s still very highly recommendable…