The first day outside after a long winter of training is always exciting: getting on familiar routes and last year’s projects, and wondering if all that hard work will have been worth it.

I went out for the first time last weekend. As I got on hard moves and saw the results of my endless hours of hangboarding and campusing, I was blown away. Thinking to myself, “Holy shit! This move [that I struggled with last year] feels really good.”

It’s an amazing feeling—an experience that you have to tune into to fully appreciate. You can tell that the training was successful because it feels good. While tracking the data is important for getting immediate feedback during training, it doesn’t mean anything until you test it out in the field. That’s when you finally see how the strength you’ve built over the winter months translates onto rock.

The first time back on last year’s project is like catching up with an old friend who just came home from the Peace Corps. Same old bro, but at the same time, completely different.

It’s been about seven months of hard training since I’ve been on my projects, so when I went outside this past week to see how I’d do, it was unbelievable! After all that work, finally positive feedback: Yes, it was worth it.

After all these months indoors, go test your new strength. Take it out for a test drive and see what you can do, and after an awesome season, you’ll be excited to get back to training next fall and see how much further you can push yourself.

It’s a positive feedback loop, a vicious cycle of crushing; you’re so strong that you’re psyched to train more, so you train more, and get stronger and crush even more.

A week or two ago I was questioning myself, “Was it all worth it?” After this weekend, I know it was.

Get your ass outside and run a field test, apply what you’ve learned and gained  and see what you can do.

If you’re still not happy with the results … we can talk about that later.