![]() ![]() The distinction between grovelling and thrutching might appear to be nothing more than semantic, but it is important. ![]() Why would anyone subject themselves to this depraved form of mental and physical abuse? The answer can be found a couple of paragraphs earlier in the word “unavoidable”. Contortion of limbs and general physical discomfortĪll of these characteristics have directly contributed to the unpopularity of said style.To help clarify, here are a few tell-tale characteristics: ![]() It’s a bit like art – hard to define, but you certainly know what it is when you see it or experience it. In its essence, it is the technique of climbing something which is horrific and unavoidably awkward. Grovelling, closely related to Thrutching, is a technique as old as climbing itself. But perhaps the most undervalued skill in the entire climbing wheelhouse is the humble art of grovelling. Approaches are, like, totally lame, offwidth is basically a swearword, and most modern climbers would greatly prefer an enema over a pitch of friction slab. So while the majority of climbers rehearse the moves on a single pitch and perform weighted mono hangs in their downtime, several important climbing techniques are being slowly lost to the sands of time. Thus, the community tends to lionise the few genetic anomalies who can perform in the upper echelons of hard sport and bouldering, all while desperately trying to emulate their gifts – finger strength, power-endurance, superior latissimus dorsi and abdominal definition. Modern climbing tends to focus exclusively on what John Ewbank described as the “sheer technical difficulty of a single move”. He has made it his business to climb well ‘ard chunks of rock and ice, performing at the highest levels in sport, trad, bouldering and alpine climbing – a goddamn Renaissance Man.Īnd yet, the idea of being an all-rounder is very much out of vogue. In his book, 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes, Dave MacLeod argues that the best climbers are those who have developed a high level of mastery across the broad spectrum of climbing skills. Dave James on/in/outside Smoked Banana, Frog Buttress (Photo by Simon Carter) ![]()
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