England Team Training Camp Blog
On the 30th & 31st October we welcomed the England youth team to Parthian Manchester for a lead & boulder comp simulation.
With around 20 athletes attending it was going to be an exciting day.
The morning began with a mock boulder comp, which was set to a national finals level by our In-house setting team.
There were a great variety of boulders to test the athletes abilities ranging from technical & delicate to powerful & dynamic, with grades from v6 to v11. We even had an exciting scorpion dyno thrown in for good measure.
Full comp rules were in effect, with a timed inspection of the boulders and then each athlete having 4 minutes to try each boulder.
It was really impressive seeing the level that the athletes were at, given that they had only just started their boulder training season. All of the boulders were topped except for the hardest one, on which only one person managed to get the zone.
In the afternoon the kids moved onto the lead part of the simulation where we had set a series of routes for them, ranging from 7b to 8b.
With the athletes right at the end of their lead training cycle there were some pretty impressive displays of endurance. With most of the athletes looking very comfortable on the majority of the routes up to around 7c. We started to see really good separation of the athletes above this point, with everyone falling off on a different move on the 8a and then everyone, understandably, finding the 8b very difficult.
The athletes came back in the following day to work on the problems and routes that had previously eluded them. It was really interesting to watch them problem solving without the added pressure of the timer and a lot of them managed to top both routes and problems that they had struggled with previously.
Overall the England camp was a huge success and we had amazing feedback from coaches, parents and athletes alike.
It was really nice to be able to demonstrate that even in a centre with fairly limited bouldering facilities, that we can still set and put on a comp for such high level athletes.