NEWS

Cafe Craft presents their holistic approach once again
Gimme Kraft presents their second training bible after they first success - a book that sold out several times. The book, written by physiotherapist Simon Friedrich, contains some 240 pages and in practice it is about showing and describing non-climbing exercises. The overall message is "Climb Better, Feel Better" and "Climbing Training Meets Good Health also through MOBILITY - STABILITY - STRENGTH." It feels as if the whole book wanted to grab and shake all the gym rats focusing on finger power and inspire them with some odd training we seldom have seen before in climbing. The book is very user-friendly and you can more or less open it randomly and get very inspired. It is actually quite extreme and you just wonder what effect such training would have had on all climbers saying they never do any complementary training because this is what it is all about. Hannes Huch give some more insight: "Our first Gimme Kraft! book, written by Dicki Korb and Patrick Matros, was and still is a huge and unexpected success with nearly 25000 copies sold in less than 3 years. We received a lot of positive feedback from all over the world. The people especially seem to enjoy the easy-to-understand and inspiring design. It's more the Mac than the Microsoft among the training books :) But we also heard that people were missing entry level exercises, which gym-climbers can easily add to their bouldering to stay healthy. So we switched to our Cafรฉ Kraft physiotherapist Simon Friedrich, who's repairing all the climbers who want too much in too short time. We invented a very easy to handle training plan so that even a newbie can create his own additional program to his climbing training. There's a lot of emphasis on mobilisation and stabilisation, things a lot of climbers lack of! Nevertheless working with the book is intended to be fun and enjoyable and to keep your motivation high. Gimme Kraft! The Cafรฉ Kraft brand is growing again: In 2017 we will open another big franchise location ... but we can't tell the city yet. And we will release another book which will be about mental training. Main author will be none other than the rockgod himself: Jerry Moffatt!"

The sixth and second last stage of the Lead World Cup took place in Xiamen, China this weekend. The world champion, Janja Garnbret, took her fourth victory and so she has secured the overall title. Among the male, Stefano Ghisolfi won for the first time since his first victory in 2014. The overall leader, Domen Skofic, also from Slovenia, was just #9 meaning that also Jakob Schubert and Romain Desgranges are on the run for the 2016 title. 1. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - Janja Garnbret SLO 2. Dmitrii Fakiryanov RUS - Anak Verhoeven BEL 3. Jakob Schubert AUT - Jain Kim KOR 4. Gauthier Supper FRA - Akiyo Noguchi JPN 5. Romain Desgranges FRA - Mina Markovic SLO

1. Domen Skofic 392 - Janja Garnbret 465 2. Romain Desgranges 337 - Anak Verhoeven 395 3. Jakob Schubert 337 - Jain Kim 350 4. Stefano Ghisolfi 301 - Magdalena Rรถck 308 5. Gauthier Supper 255 - Mina Markovic 251 The overall ranking above is based on five out of six events. If Anak wins the last event, she will get 495 points but Janja has 516 points counting all six so she has already secured the overall title. If either Romain Desgranges or Jakob Schubert wins in Kranj, Domen has to be #6 in front of his home crowd to secure the title. Overall, only 20 male and female have competed in all six events in 2016.

More updates on beta.8a.nu
Our new Web Developer, Tieme van Veen, has deployed some updates to our new responsive beta.8a.nu. New things: 1. Click Search and you will get a list nearby crags with distance to them and driving instructions. 2. Filter Crag Ticklist to find your best climbs (not mobile yet) 3. All news in a handy mobile format - beta.8a.nu/news" 4. Check your and friends' scorecards Next up is making it possible to add ascents to your scorecard. The plan is to have most ready within a few months but keep the old website so you can choose between them.

Ondra back on the ground after being almost at pitch #16
Adam Ondra has made fast progress on The Dawn Wall and this is his latest Instagram report. "@kjorgeson giving me the jugging up master class the other day and as well as beta for the pitches. The third day up on the Dawn Wall I fixed the lines almost to the top of pitch 16 (dyno pitch). I checked the moves on the crux pitches and it looked definitely hard. Beautiful, HARD, intimidating and motivating project. @tommycaldwell was a huge visionary to see this line in the middle of the blank wall." On the Black Diamond FB Adam gives some more insight to his strategy. "I would like to emphasize that I am not free climbing everything yet. The goal right now is only to go ground-up to the top, free-climbing and using a little bit of aid climbing, to fix the whole line with ropes and start working on the pitches properly to have them ready for the final free push later. So if the crux is around the protection, I just touch the holds to see how the sequence would be and continue. The first crux-pitch looked definitely super hard to free climb. Almost impossible. I will have to take a look at all these razorblades more closely."

With more than 3 300 routes spread over some 70 sectors it can be quite hard to find your preferred routes to try. One great assistance can be the 8a Ticklist, where you can search for grades and the best routes, for example by onsight percentage etc. However, based on your personal wanted routes and daily conditions, you might be better off by a local Kalymnos insider that knows the topo and the Ticklist. Based on the idea of providing Inside Tick List Tips on Kalymnos, Wild Sport will start doing it next week in their main shop. Just show up there and they will help you to find the best sectors and routes for you.

In order to promote onsight climbing, the webmaster has created an onsight ranking. Enjoy!

EPIC TV shop has La Sportiva sales this week. Testarossa is offered at just Euro 109 with free shipping. This price is actually lower then what La Sportiva offers at their own Outlet.

First 8c+ by Neil Gresham (45)
Neil Gresham, a well-known trainer for the last 20 years, has done his first 8c+, Sabotage in Malham. ยฉ Ian Parnell Photography "I guess I've reached a peak in sport climbing in my mid forties because I didn't really do any sport climbing in my thirties - I was just going adventuring and doing trad, ice DWS, and so on. I pushed my sport climbing pretty hard in my early twenties but training methods and facilities were primitive back then and I used to get injured quite a lot. There were also way less routes to choose from back in the early 90s and most of the routes in the high F8s were short and powerful and didn't really suit me. I've been pretty structured in terms of applying a very specific focus on my projects. Both Sabotage and Freakshow (my 8c at Kilnsey last year) had moves that I couldn't do, so I had to gain the specific strength for them (by doing replica blocs and working the same finger grips on a hangboard etc) and I also trained endurance at the same angle, style and intensity as the routes. As for 9a, it isn't a goal unless my next project at Kilnsey turns out to be 9a, in which case I will square up to it!"

The Dawn Wall Ondra updates
Black Diamond comes with the latest Dawn Wall updates with some quotes from Adam Ondra. (c) Heinz Zak โ€œWe started pretty late yesterday and the fact that we are very inexperienced was obvious right from the beginningโ€”Iโ€™ve done a lot of jugging up in my life, but only sport climbing and always using one GriGri and one ascender. Bad technique resulted in being super slow and tired after having jugged up the first 7 pitches. It was 3:30 p.m. by that time, so I managed to get to the top of pitch 10 until it got dark. It was quite intense, a lot of bold climbing again, especially on pitch 10, which is another horrendous layback with poor protection. A combination of aid climbing, French-freeing and fear got me to the top without ripping out any of my pieces of pro. I didnโ€™t feel like going for more adventure in the dark, so we just fixed our ropes and I tried pitch 7, 8 and 10 (5.14a, .13d and .14a) on toprope with headlamp. These pitches are not only bold, but freaking hard too! Definitely no easy grades for these onesโ€”Tommy and Kevin are tough guys! I tried the moves all over again to get some confidence and we got back to the camp by 12:30 at night. Big day for sure."