Nov 6, 2009
yeah wadeva
Hello Team Training,
I am very angsty now. And very disappointed. Today I went down to training. We started off with 20 mins ARC. And then we went upstairs and stared into space for 1 hour. My last competition was ClimbOn just 4 days ago. I was severely aching all over from the competition (having slogged my ass out boulder circuiting everything). I can truly say that I really did this competition to the best of my ability. Everything that I couldn’t do, I really couldn’t do yet. I was really inspired by the competition. My prior training has paid off. I remember last year, a certain somebody was more than double my score. But this year, I am catching up. I have narrowed the gap. There is hope still.
Today I went to training feeling really psyched. I haven’t climbed in 4 days since the competition. Am looking forward to training hard again to reap even more rewards. I have Rock On next weekend and really should be doing boulder endurance/high wall/anything that will boost my performance within these 2 weeks. BUT NO. I WENT TO TRAINING JUST NOW AND SPENT 1 HOUR STARING INTO SPACE. after which i rushed through my boulder endurance and kena flashpumped.
I understand the inter and novice girls need some psyche in their lives. I know they need training. But to take up the entire wall at the expense of the men?!
Since I’ve entered NUS, it has always been, “open men arh. You all go upstairs, do whatever you want, later come down free climb.” DU LANZ. Open men need training one also leh. I don’t understand why open men always expected to give in to the other categories. I don’t understand why open men is always left to their own devices.
I am a YEAR 2 OPEN MEN. I don’t know about the other open men. But I HAVE POTENTIAL. I AM NOT A LOST CAUSE IN OPEN MEN. I NEED TRAINING TOO. I WANT TO CATCH UP TO MY CLIMBING HEROES OF THE PAST AND COMPETE ON THE SAME LEVEL AS THEM. I don’t want to play big brother all the time and expect to help little brother here, help this brother there. I am in fact, a little brother, too.
Ever since Year 1, I’ve come to realise that this training is not doing me any good at all. I’ve had long discussions with many seniors and seriously contemplated screwing NUS training. But I give in. Social gathering. Team bonding. Yeah whatever. DUDE, laughing and gossiping during training is NOT training. Enjoy the route yes. Climb hard and have fun yes. But sitting around gossiping and chit chatting?? I don’t know about the rest. But my goals are different. I want to TRY MY BEST. I want to attain a podium finish. I don’t know why, but I’m driven about my climbing. Maybe it’s because I HAVE A FRIEND WHO LOVED CLIMBING SO MUCH BUT DIDNT LIVE TO ENJOY IT? I feel like I have to carry on his legacy? It just irks me that I go to training and I WASTE TIME. I could have better spent that time finishing up my essay/tut/project OR doing clinical training.
Thanks team training. You have been a great help to me. Really.
K Thanks Bye,
Jansen
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well said
ReplyDeleteok my english is bad, so i speak my mind in a blunt and crude manner,most of the time with no mercy, thats what feedback is to me. if you do not wish to be annoyed do stop reading here.
ReplyDeletelets not talk about today's incident, organisation of training was unsatisfactory, time was wasted, psyche was lost, tears were shed.. I was nua too *sniff*
[insert usual 'who-doesnt-make-mistakes' paragraph]
..just like we were into 'open' concept juz 2 days ago and today we are into 'closed' concept..
Okay, im not open men, not as experienced in training as u guys, but the word team to me means alot. NUs for you is a barrier for your future progress, but for me, its where i grew to like climbing and really learnt my ropes(literally).
I feel obliged to help out with anyone that i can, so many people that i want to help out, esp the novice men. But sometimes i just get tempted by that sickass crimp route thats just beckoning to be
climbed. So much so that I unknowingly leave the infants "to their own devices".
maybe its coz i owe this place too much... for helping me discover a passion that i can hold on hopefully forever..
Ultimately boils down to the point, would you sacrifice ure improvement so that someone else in the team benefits? and also, would you take that proactive step as a team member in making sure change happens?
lets say you didnt join the team at all, you know none of us, you go down every other day to climb-asia to climb.(which is good coz u get strong climbing with singapore's strongest) and maybe u got ure podium finish.
would you like that?
you would have missed out knowing jiawei (thats a big loss man!), how bout felicia too?
maybe the team has nothing to teach you anymore...maybe none of us can..maybe u expected too much out of NUS team.. we are weaker than you think
I like to use maybe.. great word..
maybe i should sleep now..
reading your blog makes me wonder why i stopped trying to go for my dreams in climbing.
ReplyDeletewow.. i respect heng hong.. no mercy at all.. and u put ur real name!
ReplyDeleteAiyo, Year 1 Who Sits Around During Training. Winfred right. Put your real name la...haha.
ReplyDeleteOkay my comment is going to be lengthy cos of the character cap blogger has. Many-parters yo.
When I first read this entry, I went “Holy crap, what happened?” and I went around obtaining the story from a few sources. I was never a fan of a one-sided story. I had a lot of things to say initially (as with the other team people who have read this post, please do not be ignorant that your blog is not widely read amongst climbers, not just the team), but I decided to not pay you any attention because you have a right to your own beliefs and if I was as strong-headed as you, I would definitely have felt the same.
But after today, I had revelations. And that I need to post it here to air my smelly armpits and views to whoever cares to smell them.
You do not spell it out in this blog post, but I believe that you stand firm in climbing being an individual sport and not a team sport, and this mentality led you to this angry outburst of a post. I agree with you entirely that climbing IS an individual sport... well to a large extent at least. Chris Sharma climbs individually, but behind him, he has a team of people taking care of and filming him.
I’m a person who chooses to believe the best in everybody. Call me a carebear, whatever. And I think I will have to explain why in the first place there is an NUS climbing team and not NUS climbing group, because I think that it is ignorance on your part which led to your outburst that team trainings are useless.
The tiles, the mattresses, the door’s lock, the vacuum cleaner, the equipment such as ropes, the subsidies for overseas trips, they come from SRC. The budget allocation from SRC is mainly according to the strength of our team, both in numbers and in achievements. And SRC counts our achievements as a team.
So in short, to get more budget from SRC to improve the team, or perhaps, the gym in your case, we need to showcase stellar team results.
ReplyDeleteAnd that’s where the team thingy ends. Everything else is individualistic, if you were to analyse and breakdown each component of this ‘team’ thing. It’s not a team effort to improve your holds on slopers. It’s not a team effort to make moves off a shitty crimp.
So you (or anyone else) will ask, “Where’s the team in NUS climbing team?”
Here’s my answer.
Not everyone is as psyched as you- the optimum condition would be everyone to be as psyched as you, or Jiawei for that matter because we would win every single competition, bargain for a better budget the next time round, improve the gym, and have more fun climbing while being able to train better.
(Many tiles in our gym are going to be taken away early next year, and the reason why we can replace most of the tiles after that is that we have a budget set aside for them thanks to the efforts of the teams before us performing well)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete(made a few edits)
ReplyDelete1) The team in NUS climbing team is the people who laugh, gossip, joke, poke around during training. These are the people who make training more fun and hard training more bearable. These are the people who encourage each other to climb on harder, to do harder and harder routes, to cheer them on when they accomplish a hard route, to spot them, to cart them out of the gym if they sprain their ankles. I’ve been at the receiving end of this definition of team, which leads on to my next point.
2) The team in NUS climbing team is the spirit of giving back to the gym and the team. As HH has previously mentioned, and I wholly agree, NUS was, and still is, the place I learnt my literal and metaphorical ropes. Perhaps you do not possess this spirit because you got into the NUS team as a strong, respectable climber (case in point: I knew of you by hearing about you before even seeing you, dude). I possess this definition of team: giving back the team and the gym. I did not start out in NUS being able to campus. I was inspired by the seniors, and the seniors helped me out, at the expense of their own training. It is a good feeling to have a podium finish, but I always, and still do, thank the seniors who have taught me the art of climbing well. The NUS climbing team is an entity I am indebted to, for making me the strong (but could still be stronger) climber that I am. Of course I want to give back, in hopes of having juniors stronger than me, and spurring me on to train harder. I am not qualified to be a climbing coach for sure, my footwork is still horrible, my sloper strength can be better, blahblahblah, but one thing is for sure. I am qualified to hold the hands of the babies in climbing and teach them how to walk. After the walk, they can go and learn how to fly. But of course, I would hope they inculcate the spirit of teaching other babies how to walk as well.
Finally, I’ll cap this lengthy comment with something HH typed.
Ultimately boils down to the point, would you sacrifice ure improvement so that someone else in the team benefits? and also, would you take that proactive step as a team member in making sure change happens? (Lee, 2009)
Issues regarding training matters, the exco is going to talk about it during Monday’s feedback session. I do hope you are able to come and just hear what’s going on and satiate your curiosity or whatever it is. And just to clarify, the feedback session is not about you, it’s about training in general. You are not the only one who has given feedback on training. I know that you are not BHB, but yea, whatever, just stating.
Kthxbye,
Doris
dear vice-capt,
ReplyDeleteyes, i signed of as 'year1 who sits ard at team trg' as my comment was meant only for jansen, for him to know who wrote that comment. i didn't see the need to tell the whole world that i'm unhappy with team training, because hopefully people still have a good impression of team nus climbing. but if you insist on me telling the whole world that i'm unhappy with team training, here you are.
(btw the fourth comment wasn't by me. it was totally unecessary by whoever who wrote it. i think that as long as the writer of the blog knows who is replying to him that is okay right? i'm sure jansen knows who posted the 3rd comment (lets call her gxx) as well, so whoever posted the 4th comment, there go you.. jansen knows who posted all the replies, so thats good enough)
well as for team training. i just don't see the point in doing arc for 20min and then sit around for half an hour/one hour? it has happened on multiple occasions already, so you can't say this one off incident. okay, you can say that we can train on the campus board or hangboard, but why would we want to do that when we're supposedly in our endurance phase? (one of the previous times of this phenomena was the thursday training before climbaprix, where we were supposed to be doing onsight training, but ended up, sitting around) i seriously contemplated bringing notes to training, so as not to waste the half an hour or so doing nothing, but to avoid un-necessary unhappiness, i haven't done so yet. my main concern is that why put open men training on thursday when we don't train on thursday? why be unhappy at people who train on their own and not turn up for team training days if we can't even have proper training?
btw no offence to jensen seah. i think he has sacrificed a lot (of his time and energies) to train the inter women, and looking at the response from the ladies, i think they really benefit from his training
but just like jansen (ko), i feel that i'm just a little brother who wants a big brother to look after me. i would like open men to have our own 'jensen' to look after our training and make sure that we're getting stronger
my goals in uni is just to climb an 8a and get into open men finals. others may perhaps think that once you're in open men, its the end of your competition life, and you should just devote your energies to helping your teammates. however i don't think winning open men is impossible. yes i may be selfish, but i'm still a year1, and have at least 3 good competition years ahead of me. as vice-capt has said, achievements would lead to getting more budget from src. as a climber from team nus, i want to contribute to the achievements by having a podium finish
winfred
Okay Doris is currently displaying Jekyll-Hyde personalities and quite possibly in love with the idea of commenting 219319209 times. For probably the 3rd time tonight, I really appreciate your feedback, Winfred. :) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteOh yea any feedback please email radi130@hotmail.com, love letters not appreciated. Address it to Pretty Girl.
Sorry arh for taking up the space here haha. Free media platform yo!
But yes on a more serious note. Please. Do give feedback, if any, to radi130@hotmail.com. Checking back here ever so often is not efficient.
yoyo its me again!
ReplyDeletelets dun get too hard up here discussing all these..
didnt know doris will also make long comment.
basically talking bad about the team will result in long replys..logical coz ure infringing on team integrity..
but with organisation wise i do agree that training can very much be improved and thats wat we gonna do on monday, hope u guys can convert that anger into constructive critisims , i will have my own arsenal of things to bomb them , as i hope u guys will join me too. ;)
dw jansen we still love you =) *huggs*
Hi, i think the exco can help themselves by deciding what is the Team goal. It should not purely be SRC's goal ie medals.
ReplyDeleteIt's an age old problem that advanced climbers are hindered rather than helped by training. It is unfair to discount them as they too are part of the team.
I agree with Doris/HH that we should inculcate a spirit of helping other climbers. However, I believe that during official team training, this is the role of the appointed training co-ordinator and the rest of the team should be training, the point of which is to improve. Helping others can come during spare pockets of time :)
To solution. I believe that more flexibility can be offered during training. tight focused groups at dispersed timings? All the best with the solutions exco!
To the troublemakers, have faith in the exco and solution together!
I must first apologize for resurrecting this post but I personally find this topic very intriguing and inspiring. I am very encouraged by all the initiatives taken by team members and the personal aspirations of individuals. These are the qualities that set punters apart from those who send.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, all these angst and frustrations boil down to structure. I just want to ask a simple question...with all the training that's been going around, has there been a coach?
A climbing team must function with a head coach. Relying on its own members to carry out this function will cannibalism its resources.
Anyway, I just happened to chance upon this post while enjoying the Hampi read. Moreover, my experiences growing with the NUS climbing community has been monumental to my progression in climbing and the people has always been close to my heart. I sincerely hope that the situation with the team training is better resolved and I wish you the best for the year ahead.
Spy
The Front Climbing Team Coaching Staff
Salt Lake City, Utah
Hello Spy,
ReplyDeleteIndeed this is a topic close to my heart. Shortly after this angsty post was put up, I got flooded with comments comming into my email, blog and msn from many people. We had a team talk during which i air-ed my views (which had by then after several writes and re-writes culminated into a 20min non-stop speech). I could send you a softcopy of what I said if you are interested. Hopefully things can change for the better in the coming semester, otherwise..
Your question is a difficult one to answer. Even more so on this platform.
Anyways I'm glad you enjoyed the Hampi post. I put quite some effort into it. I sincerely thank you for your well wishes.
Jansen