Robert Mcgrady - 164217

QEH - 14:00 - 15:00
Up to 10 participants, all adolescent males. This is a regular group to Bloc who have been attending regular bouldering sessions for a number of years as part of their PE syllabus.
Today I wanted to give them an opportunity to push themselves, but without the pressure of being told that they were going to be climbing hard.
As this is a long term group, we look at various aspects of climbing per week, with the aim of improving individual's ability and confidence on the wall. Each session will have a focus on either technique, strategies or competition prep.
Structure:
- Paperwork
- Intro
- Check for illness & injury
- Warm up (cardio pulse raiser followed by mobility exercises - Though this warm up featured dynamic movement patterns i.e., frog hopping, side stepping, skipping)
- Safety Rules
- Free climb to get the group ready to climb.
- Group activity including an introduction to the session aim, a demonstration and then a task to practice newly introduced skill.
- WATER BREAK
- Cooldown/stretch out.
Sam and I split the group up so we had the same students as last week. We had seperate session plans for each group. My group were the stronger, more confident climbers. So we looked at pyramid climbing,
- 4 greens VB-V0
- 3 blacks V1-V2
- 2 reds V3-V4
- 1 blue V4-V5
And then re-visiting the yellow V5-V6 slab problems that they had been working last session. With little to no coaching they managed to send it with a couple of attempts this week. So I capitalised on their success and showed them more of the V5-V6 circuit. In particular another yellow V5 which wasn't reachy, but still technically demanding.
Most of the could get up to the fourth move. But struggled with the crimp/sidepull. We had a water break and moved to the new set on the prow. There were a number of V4 red problems that they struggled with, which required heel hooks or toe hooks. This has given me the idea to run a heel hook and toe hook workshop with the group next week.
To get them excited about it, I demonstrated a blue V5 that has a bat hang move to show the power of toe hooks.
Reflecting on the session, there's a few areas of technique that this group are struggling with.
- Flagging. They can all flag.... if it's a normal flag. As soon as they encounter a rear or inside flag, they come up on their arms.
- Heel hooks and toe hooks. They've always bene taught to use their toes and correctly so. However they've been climbing long enough to start introducing advanced foot work techniques. I'll write up a session plan for next week and see how they get on.