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Adrian asked for some hints for a winter training schedule to help those who are unable to get away over the winter months. In this article we will focus on the four main areas: strength, stamina, flexibility and coordination.
Losing strength gained over the summer is always a worry. However, this is the easiest of all to correct. Here we present some progressive exercises. They will take a couple of hours most nights, but the effort is well worth it. Unlike many other training regimes there is no real reason for building in rest days. Start with a glass of wine. If right handed, hold it in your left hand, raise to the lips and drink. You are strengthening both arms and fingers. Repeat with a fresh glass in your right hand. After this comes comfortably, move onto half pints (beer, cider or wine). Finally, make the big push to pints. At this point, wine should be moved out of the training schedule. Success in this training regime will be seen in the development of that all-important “one-pack”.
When you are comfortable with this level of exercise, you can move onto the more demanding exercise which combines strength and stamina. This exercise is commonly known as Christmas shopping. Start easy, perhaps simply walking around town on a Saturday afternoon. This will help with developing the infamous Mountaineering plod. Imagine that instead of walking through town at everyone's snail pace you are actually staggering under the weight of all that ice-climbing paraphernalia through thigh depth snow. Build to buying a few presents for ….. before finally building to presents for me...
Flexibility then comes with the fixing of Christmas decorations; although flexing the plastic in the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy is a good start. Do not shirk if your mother or small son asks for a decoration to be placed in an awkward spot – use this opportunity to balance with one leg on the curtain rail and the other smeared on a nearby wall.
Christmas day itself is a good time to start the co-ordination part of your training. After dinner, don't slump in front of the Queen's speech, but put on that Slade CD and start dancing. Get a woman to show you how to start. Stomp first with the left foot and then with the right. Repeat. As you get confident with these first steps, attempt to do them in time with the music whilst belting out “Mama weer all crazee now” at the same time (assuming that is the song playing!).
Finally, climbing requires a partner and it is at this time of year that you can build up the social skills to ensure that you are never short of a partner. A good way to achieve this is to head to the local climbing walls on a Sunday afternoon for a chance to gossip and make new friends. It can be worthwhile taking a pair of rock boots and even a climbing harness to such events so that you are clearly identifying with the climbing community.
As a postscript, perhaps someone can write a return article that explains why people stop going away camping over the winter season.
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