More climbing

Today's session was good. Looks like I am becoming a regular here. Don't know how long that will last. I was able to do stuff which I couldn't the last time. People were a little amazed and puzzled that I wasn't using shoes. I just want to see how far I can go on bouldering(rock climbing without ropes or support on boulders or small monoliths as against free-soloing - which refers to rock climbing without ropes on any structure - big or small) without shoes. But it definitely is fun because bouldering as such is a challenging sport and not having 'climbing shoes' (which are especially useful because they are sticky, prevent scratches from sharp edges and give a better grip for small sharp cracks and footholds) is a disadvantage but also a challenge.



Confidence - This plays a big role in climbing atleast. I found that I am able to climb better in front of a group of people than when I am doing it alone. This maybe because when people watch what I am doing, it gets me focussed as I don't want to goof up!
I think the ideal climber is one who can climb the monoliths easily and fluidly as if they were just walking up the monolith. Infact I am starting to see some similarities between our primal ancestors and the pros at the place :).
To illustrate my point in the previous statement, I have included a wonderfully badass video of Dan Osman free soloing Lover's leap, California. (Ignore the music if it sounds like trash metal).

In the end it all comes together: Hatha yoga or yoga (including pranayama), swimming, taichi, kungfu, gymnastics, rockclimbing, running and biking. Though the goals seem to be different (apparently), at the highest level, all the sports aim at one thing: High flexibility and high strength.
Rockclimbing from my experience, not only develops high flexibility and strength, but it also requires high flexibility and high strength if you want to 'decently manage' some climbing routes!!! To elaborate on this, let me give a hypothetical example.
Lets' say that there are 5 levels in climbing skills with the successive levels being better than the previous level. Then the flexibility and strength of level 2 will not be enough to tackle level 3. In that sense higher flexibility and strength is a requirement for level 3. So you are in effect forced to do some weight training or some thing like that in order to do better climbing unlike in running, where one does weight training(to look good) because running (long distance) reduces muscle mass for efficiency!!

I am not done with running yet, though I haven't run in a long time (months). Running real fast or speed training is an altogether different experience as compared to regular running. Even long slow runs come under a different genre of experiences in life. So the memories of these experiences should bring me back to running, though I am not sure when.