Sublime mindstate

I love listening and reading interviews with climbers as I feel deep connection with the passion we share. It's the ability of shutting everything else out and solely focusing on climbing in this case, but most importantly focusing intensly combined with great physical effort.
For me it begins when I'm on my way to the climbing gym. It's a subtle feeling of excitement and soon as I enter the gym It's like my whole body starts to focus. If I had some what of a cold before and my nose has been running all day it stops. If I had an ache somewhere it dissapears. It's like my body knows that if it keeps whining we're going to turn this buss around right away! When I'm putting my shoes on I'm slightly incoherent and the focus is getting stronger. I use La Sportiva's Mythos and they are shaped perfectly for my foot and it has to fit just right and be perfectly tightened, it's a process. When warming up I start with pull ups and some warm up excercises along with stretching and I'm basicly on autopilot. Every muscle takes different time to warm up properly depending on if it's cold out or if I'm just extra stiff from work.
Once I'm done with warm up and start climbing some easy problems and then I do some traversing. It doesn't really matter how full the gym is. As soon as I start traversing I enter this sublime mindstate of combined focus with physical effort and theres nothing else. Now add the mental aspect and push yourself. The harder you push the greater the reward. I would not be suprised if climbers have higher dopamin levels than most athletes.

My last sessions has involved a lot of traversing. It works out good and it's not as stressfull for my finger which is still not 100%. Traversing is wickedly awesome. It's like the endless boulder problem with all the holds you could ever need. Technique is how you make it as there's so much to work with so it's very creative. I'm currently working on getting around the whole boulder area from one side to the other and allthough there are some places I cant really get pass (yet!) because of door openings and impossible corners. I just turn around and go back the way I came.
I get a good endurance work out and very little stress on the fingers. I'm almost embaressed by my bad endurance but I've noticed a small improvement on just the last three sessions.

It's really hard not to try some of the problems I've been finishing before. When you'r going 400km/h slowing down is not slow enough. I've had great progress and that makes it even harder to brace yourself. I just want to keep it up and keep pushing harder. Last session I got a neck strain at the end of the session which at first I thought was wierd. I tried stretching and kept going and that resultet in a fullblown neck strain. I tried stretching that out but without luck. However stretching my right shoulder really worked and that explained why it happened at the end of the session. So if I want to keep climbing at all I need to take it easy and not climb with any left over aches from previous sessions, get my 9 hour of sleep and stretch well after each session. Im at 85kg solid now and I've noticed my back muscles are much more defined and I have lats.
I still need to work harder on my side abs as I've noticed some problems requires me to reach up and bend a lot and I just dont have what it takes.

I'm going climbing tomorrow again and I'm so happy it's friday. I have traversing planned along with a good work out that will certainly finish of this week nicely. Getting 9 hours of sleep is harder than one think's as it usually means getting off work and hitting the gym right after, coming home to eat and then basicly going to bed right away. This is the life of waking up at 5.30 to go to work. Another great motivator for trying to become a proffessional rock climber and getting sponsors. Ha!