by Erich Sachs
During the winter, when you’re in the gym several days a week, chances are you’re going to exhaust all the routes in your range. It doesn’t matter how hard you climb. You’ll either send it before it’s taken down, or you won’t. Instead of focusing on the routes you may or may not be able to do, I’m advocating that you use your larger pool of resources, i.e., go to different gyms.
If you live reasonably close to a few different gyms, why not take advantage of them all? I have punch passes all over town rather than a membership at any one gym—I prefer to keep my options open.
You’re not getting any stronger sprinting those last two projects you have wired and falling at the same low-percentage move all winter. You need new moves, different angles, and more styles. In a word, you need variety.
Some of the criteria I use to choose my gym of the day are as follows:
Proximity
If I don’t have a lot of time, just need to get a session in, or warm up before heading home and doing my main workout, I generally go to the closest gym in town.
If I have more time, particularly on the weekend, I’ll travel an hour to Seattle to take advantage of more and different problems.
Assets
Depending on what I’m training, I may have a specific routine that I want to do, so I’ll consider what assets a facility has—a treadwall, auto top ropes, hard boulder problems, a campus board, weights. My training plans for that day frequently determine which facility I choose.
Travel
If you have a lot of time, or are traveling out of state, check out a “destination” gym, a premier facility in a region. This is always fun. I wasn’t always into gym climbing, but I’ve come to appreciate destination gym climbing almost as much as a destination crag climbing. When I’m visiting family and friends out of state, I’ll check out a local gym and see how another part of the country lives.
Competitions
Competitions are a burst of fresh air for gyms. They get a makeover, an opportunity to binge and purge and add all new problems, which is great after several months with the stench of failure filling the room. Keep the comp schedules in mind when considering where and when you want to head to a location.
You gotta make it fun and do what you gotta do to stay psyched. Use those resources! Meet cool new people! Try hard! Use all of the time, location, and the facilities available. Hope to see you there!
For those of you in the Puget Sound area, here is a list of the gyms that I keep in my rotation (more or less in order of distance from my house):