After some time

Uhh... It's been a while :) Stuff has changed.

I am back in Lithuania, at least for now. Not planning to go back to UK, unless a chance to go to competition there, comes up. Now I'm happily trying to pursue all I want here, in Lithuania.

First of all, huge thanks to my and Lithuanian Climbing Team new sponsors: Nihil Climbing and Mad Rock.

Since I like writing more about my climbing rather than my personal life, it is not that revealing, I will do just that. :)

My trainings have changed, a lot since the UK trainings. Climbing facilities are more accessible in here for me, so I decided instead of making few long, hard trainings to do shit loads of easier ones.

Trainings in Scala Dream, Klaipeda

For the first time since the preparation for the Millau world cup I put my plan on paper and oh god how awesome that is. It gives so much motivation and becomes a duty (only if you want that). So those days when you can't think of everything else but just laying in bed and watching 'friends' season 7 for the 10th time, you know you still have to do a 30mins or 1hour training. So I get UP, go and DO IT. :) And getting up at 6am before work or anything else to do the training is no longer a problem.


Here what I have been doing for the last 6 weeks (power endurance):
Monday/Thursday - (when I supposed to feel the strongest) C-Webb hanging program in the morning and evening - either pull ups on good edge or 1x easy campusing for 1 hour. In between exercises i give ~2-3mins rest.
Tuesday/Friday - Push ups, or anything else for triceps in the morning. Climbing and dead hangs in the evening.
Wednesday/weekend - cardio (jogging, basketball, frisbee, football, cycling...) and core.
+
Tuesday/Thursday - YOGA!!

https://vimeo.com/102399590

Really suggest to try out yoga for everyone. It is awesome, for climbing, flexibility, fitness and especially mentality. If you dedicate your mind 100% for that yoga session, you will know what I mean. :)

And I have done that for the past 6 weeks and fulfilled 80-90% of it. The next week is just climbing and enjoying week. A
fter that 6 weeks of pure power. :) can't wait. I'll write about that later on. Basically I am now preparing both for Autumn and Spring seasons. I will do something similar again from January and hopefully will be preparing for a world cup or two :)

See ya sooon. :)

Climbing Works Comps

This one for the last few weeks…

So there was this BUCS competition in Sheffield, Climbing Works on February 22^nd. I went there not knowing what to expect. After all, it was uni competition and from  my experience that didn’t mean that it is going to be a really strong comp… But I was nicely surprised.

There were around 400(?) competitors in total. I really didn’t expect that kind of turnout, even for a regular competition that amount would be amazing but for only uni?? That was a huge, wow :) 

So 25 problems (as always in UK) for qualification and I was counting down flashes quite good as I recall only dropped on 23^rd. 24^th from third attempt and on 25^th only got bonus.  Finished with score of 232 and was first from the group 1. So I was pretty sure I got into the finals.

Got in tied in 3rd position. I found out that other finalists didn’t do much better just didn’t drop that silly on 23^rd. I think that made me more confident. It has been a while since I was in the finals so I was really excited, psyched, stoked and all the other fancy words…  I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel any pressure or nor I was nervous, just this excitement was rushing through my blood.

Finals were really weird. You had 5 minutes for only one long circuit board problem and who climbs the furthest – wins. Reasonable, I guess, having in mind that they wanted to save time, the system kind of worked. If only they took at least the half of the circuit board holds that were really in a way and the holds would not have been marked with dark blue tape on dark wall that would be even better. On my first attempt I felt good, even forgot about how tired I was from morning session, and that was my most successful one as well, fell of only few moves away from top. I felt confident that on the next attempt I’ll do it with an ease. But those freaking foot slips… Finished in joint third position. Nevertheless, I had a smile on my face for the rest of the evening. 

The weirdest thing was the crowd… There were maybe 200 students staying for the finals, so naturally I was expecting quite amazing roar during the finals, I was expecting to get that extra power from the crowd and etc… BUT I felt just the same as I would be climbing in the training, expect from the fact that 200 people were staring at you, not even chatting among themselves or anything, just staring. And when someone dropped there would be just a massive ‘uhhhh’ sound and clapping. And the worst part, there wasn’t even music playing. WEEEIRD. I thought: alright, it’s probably just because not most of people from the crowd haven’t been climbing longer than two years and probably haven’t been in competitions. But I was mistaken. Almost exactly the same happened in CWIF, it was boring watching finals in there. I have been in really amazing finals, where after them you might have heart beat hitting over 160 beats per minute and tear rolling down the cheek from amazement. And all of this happening just because  that feeling when every single spectator is screaming his ass off to help the competitors to crush to the top.  But in CWIF if you had the soundtrack of the crowd you would only hear occasional ‘c’mon buddy’ and of course the ‘uhhhh’, moderate cheering when someone tops and clapping (and ‘davai Rustam’ from me). I guess nobody wanted to be too bothered doing that stuff.  Brits…

Thanks to Mackenzie for photo

The climbing in CWIF was really top notch. Very spacious, the queues weren’t too long, none of the problems overlapped and setting was really really high quality. For success in qualification round you had to show all the technique guns you had and as I realized towards the end some endurance wouldn’t disturb your performance as well. Before the competition I felt so confident, so powerful but unfortunately as soon as I started climbing all that was replaced by terrible, awful shake. I shook through maybe 20 (30 boulders in all this time) flashes and when it came to a bit harder problems I just didn’t have any power left from all the hard pushing I had to do in order not to fall from the easy problems. Don’t know which position I finished in. When I saw that I am not even in the first page of the results list I didn’t scroll any lower. 

Now I am really psyched about the next week. Plan is to do some serious Yorkshire bouldering with V-man. Can’t wait!!


 And here is the vid from Fontainebleau trip.

Blokfest. Nutrition.

Karolis Pipiras

So last weekend was Blokfest. Had to leave on Friday, because it is wayyy too long journey to travel on the same day. Thought I will have once again a miserable time on the bus, had few things prepared to do including some course work and randomly took a book from library... Eventually I was happy to be stuck in London traffic giving me more time to read the 'Little Brother'(soo good!)

Saturday. Had to get up pretty early cause other guys had to volunteer in 'the Castle '. It was the last Blokfest this year, so as expected quite a few strong climbers showed up including the regular ones. About 1 or 1,5 hours left till the start I began to get my psych up, went through the problems probably for the fifth time, that last cup of coffee, and doing all sort of things that I usually do and of course - getting nervous. I was so happy to roll along with my buddies Arta and Vaidas, so much easier to climb when you have someone to discuss the cruxes with. So we started crushing, doing fancy upside down starts and stuff from the beginning. At first we were able to do what we always do in these sort of comps when you play with the queues run from one to another quickly depending which one is the shorter, but after a while you had to wait for at least 5 min on every single problem. We were flashing quite easily, dropped once on dyno and didn't do 3 hardest problems. Finished with 217 (231 got you in the finals) and was sharing 16-19 places.

Can say that I am quite happy with my performance, had a chance to compare myself to others and can see some promising signs. Still a lot of things to develop and get stronger at though... Hopefully I'll continue climbing that ladder.

After AMAZING finals in Manchester, I left 'The Castle' really disappointed. Even though the wall and problems were 'entertainish' it didn't matter when you had columns covering half of the view. As well as atmosphere wasn't that very electric how I was expecting... Nevertheless overall good and exciting weekend.

Nutrition!

This is what I do, what I find best for myself, what I discovered is most suitable for me over the years.

I am not one of those people who can eat shitty food and stay strong, I know I will not perform at the highest level the next day after eating even slightly worst food.

Firstly, I don't eat meat or fish. (8 months now) Think that helped me to lower my body fat index, since I lowered the saturated fats consumption. Feature plan is to give it up entirely. Secondly, I try to avoid products with histamine since I found out that they don't help me and affect my certain muscles group that is responsible mostly for pulling up. That kind of might not be helping for my climbing. All these fullish years eating banana or some chocolate (that what I miss the most) before trainings or comps thinking 'yeah, that will totally contribute towards strength' or whatever... Thirdly, I try not to eat after 7p.m. Fourthly, water throughout the day. Those are my general rules about my nutrition.

*Breakfast. Basically any carbs (excluding wheat): rice, buckwheat, barley, oats... just boil it in water, pour some soy or regular milk and some sugar or salt. If feeling luxurious I might throw in some nuts, dry fruits or jam. mhmmm..

*Lunch. Depending on whether is training day or not I might skip it or just have a snack. If training I'll make something similar to breakfast menu because it's mostly carbohydrates, digests easily and keeps the energy high. If am not training I'll grab a flapjack, rice cakes, nuts or dry fruits and keep snacking while sitting in Uni or wherever else. The only time during the day I might eat wheat products is at the time of training, since it is so cheap, usually sugary and easier to find in shops....

*Dinner. If training, obviously, I'll need protein and for that I for the most part I'll cook some soy chunks (50% protein), or tofu (12-25%) along with any veggies. I will try not to eat carbs in the evening.

Two-three cups of coffee with delicious whipped milk foam on the top a day lightens up my brain and life. As well as fruits, at this time of the year you would see lots of pomelo peels in my trash.

Don't get me wrong, I do have those break downs from time to time, when you will see me buying pack of crisps, bad ass wheat cookies or a bag of butter croissants. I let myself enjoy that a two-three times a month.

Tips: eat fruits for deserts instead of any fat food. It is so much easier to keep good, healthy diet if you have goals. It can be anything - competition, route, one armer or anything else it just have to be motivating. Set the desktop picture to to that theme or open THIS or THIS link from time to time to see what strong buggas there are. You might as well go further and make it life goal (Nathan Phillips' tactics). If you find hard to do that, promise yourself to eat healthy just one week. Get through that one week and you will see how much easier it will be the next week. Home made food beats everyone's ass. :)

Stay strong!

Next up is BUCS in Sheffield, 'Climbing Works' this weekend.

First one. Training. Getting back in shape. First season comps...

So. Decided to create and start writing my own blog. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it. I want to apologize in advance for all the grammar mistakes I will make.

'Three sacred approaches' (Dave Barrans)

For the first one decided to write more about my own training.

The whole January I was doing lots and lots of endurance training because I usually take the whole December off to rest and to let my self enjoy all the junk food there is in the world. First two weeks of January I did shorter trainings (2h-2,5h) but more often (4-5 times a week) but I didn't seem to make any improvement and was still struggling on V8's and harder... didn't even go to the 'tough boys' training room, simply couldn't do any campusing or climb on beastmaker.

After that decided to change it up a bit. Longer trainings with at least one day of rest in between climbing days. Trainings: warm up, then campus boarding (currently doing 2-4,5-7 and trying to improve on locks), then go out and just enjoy crushing boulders. At first only climbed V6-7's simply because I was soooo tired already after campusing... But now finally can crush depot's yellows or do some 'beastmakering'. After that I would go on fingerboards - pull ups, triceps (would do some rings training as well, but they are gone at the moment), and finally 15min hanging session. (all in all around 4 hours)  And this system helped my sooo much more than the previous one! Finally again feeling strong and ready to squeeze the hell out of holds. Psyched! And how much happier I am overall, life simply colors it self. I'll continue doing this for another month or so. Then will be time to mix it up with more strength exercises. Trying to do lots of kardio on non-climbing days, so either go to frisbee training or go out around Bradford, but its slightly too chilly, caught a cold last week

  

First season comp. Overall would say did pretty well, wasn't happy with the 21-22nd place, but considering it's the first one in 2014, it is alright. Manchester RockOverClimbing wall is quite good, but not to host such a HUGE qualification round. Had 'only' 3 hours (for 25 boulders) but felt like 1.5 with queuing on every single problem. Scored 190 points. Could say I 'lost' 20 on not flashing easy ones with silly mistakes such as foot slips, not being so precise and rushing too much.. And score 210 made the finals... But it is ok, it's all learning process, trying not to take it too seriously and just enjoy it all, learn from my mistakes, meet people and appreciate things that I do and what surrounds me. Shout out to organizers of Rockfest, despite poor qualys, because the finals were AMAZING. Would say top 3 of all the ones that I been to. They most certainly the created the atmosphere they were aiming to create.. the lighting, music, speaker/announcer building up the anticipation and routesetting. WOW! As always got back home with the HUGE smile on my face wanting to go back to the dusty 'Depot' and push even harder.

Took some photos of finals ---> ROCKFEST 2014

Next weekend London baby! Blockfest! cant wait to crush it there with fellow Lithuanians - Arta, Vaidas and Mindaugas!

If you have any questions/notes for my training will be more than happy to answer/listen. I'll try to cover my nutrition on second post