PNW Advanced Bouldering Clinic for the Competitve Climber

Last bouldering season the Pacific North West region put on a weekend training clinic at The Circuit in Portland OR and there was a great turn out of about 15 climbers.  This year the event doubled in size!  The Advanced Bouldering Clinic was geared towards the competitive youth climber and focused on competition strategies, mental aspect of climbing, and advanced climbing technique. The clinic was headed by Steven Jeffery and Kevin Jorgeson with the help of  team coaches from The Circuit, MAC, Bend Climbing Team, and Nike.  The clinic had 33 attendees with climbers from The Circuit, Bend Climbing Team, Vertical World, Stone Gardens, Edgeworks, and Nike

Kevin Jorgeson going over the finer details of footwork. Photo Emmy Surma.

The first day of the clinic was at the original Circuit where we had the participants run through a mock on-sight competition.  The focus of this exercise was on route preview and decision making. In the afternoon Kevin Newell from FiveTen stopped by so we could test out some of the latest and greatest in climbing shoes (my personal favorites were the Quantums and the Hornets).

 Kyle (Circuit Coach) running some heel hooking drills.  Photo Emmy Surma

Day two was at the recently opened Circuit Part Deux!  The groups were split up with half running through another mock on-sight competition with Steven Jeffery and the other have doing a technique based training circuit with Kevin Jorgeson, Kyle Elmquist, and Mike Rougeux.  The technique training was centered around foot work with stations addressing heel hooking, drop knees, trailing foot, and back stepping.

It was great to have a bunch of climbers from various teams throughout the PNW Region get together and train for a weekend.  It's really cool seeing these young climbers feeding off of each others energy and throwing down on the wall.  I can't wait to see what some of them go on to do in the climbing world.  Thanks to all the coaches who helped out, Emmy for getting things organized and making it happen, and a huge thanks to Kevin and Steven for spending time working with and climbing with our PNW climbers!