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Westgate School Resource

Each week this resource will be updated with material, links or pdfs that will assist you in your course. All the information will remain on the page and be there for you to refer to over the coming weeks

Session 2 & 3 - Consolidation of Skills

By now, having completed 3 sessions of your course you should be tying-in and belaying with confidence, even if your personal climbing still needs some work.
If you have all the basic safety skills in place you will be able to confidently practice hard on any indoor wall and improve your climbing skills over the coming weeks.

In the 4th session in the series you will be assessed on your basic safety skills and we will have a look at your climbing technique. Both assessment and technique will be crucial markers to determine who is ready to move on with their training.

On this session I will take pictures of you for recognition purposes so that I can give individual assessments to your teachers.

During your assessment session you will be doing the following:

Choosing and fitting your own equipment
Selecting a belay device and karabiner to you
getting into 3's and setting up to climb
Tying-in
Setting up the belay
Checking each other
Using recognised climbing calls
Showing effective belaying and lowering off
Being able to arrest the a climber's fall
Showing effective back-up of the belayer

The criteria for passing a candidate for assessment is always the same: As assessor would I let this person belay me, would I let them belay my child? If the assessor cannot confidently answer yes to both questions then a pass cannot be awarded and you will need to do further work on your safety techniques.

In looking at your personal climbing technique in the next session we shall move around the wall looking at techniques you use to climb specific climbs. Have a look at the follwoing techniques and try to identify places on Brunel Wall where you could employ these techniques:

Lay- away. Hooking with hands and pushing with feet

Heel Hook. Using your heel to help you pull on an edge.

Hand Jam. Tensing your hand in a crack to give purchase.

Chimney Bridge. Using opposing walls to climb.

Chimney Bridging with back and feet on opposing walls

Below are some links and downloads that may help you with your assessment:

Warming up before your climb. To see a BMC video - click here

Moving effectively. To see a BMC video - click here

How to climb steep rock. To see a BMC video - click here

How to tie-in using a figure of eight. To see a BMC video - click here - Have a close look at the video. there is something different in the demonstration to how we teach climbers to tie-in. what is the difference and why is it important?

Belaying and lowering off. To see a BMC video - click here - Have a close look at the lowering off technique in the video. We teach that it should be done slightly differently. what is the difference and why is it important?

BMC Summit Magazine Article on Basic Climbing Wall Technique

BMC Safe Belaying and Abseiling leaflet

All of the above material will help you with your assessment, however, if you are to move on you will need to acquire some technical information and the following downloads will help you. Read and inwardly digest the following information over the next 3 weeks, after which your knowledge on technical understanding will be assessed by a question and answer session along with a written multiple choice questionaire.

A complete guide to understading, caring for and maintaining climbing equipment

A look at the next stage of climbing techniques in preparation for leading outdoors

A Summit Magazine article on women role models in climbing

I would further suggest that you go to the BMC website (The British Mountaineering Council) for which the link was previously given.

Also you should go to the SIBL website (Southern Indoor Bouldering League) which will give you information on copetition bouldering in the south of England. www.sibl.co.uk

Your next web update will be after your 6th session.

Session 2 - Consolidation of Skills

During your first session you were learning your basic skills. Your second session concentrated on consolidating those skills.
Now you should be able to:

Safely fit your harness
Warm up effectively
Tie in
Set up a belay
Check your buddy
Use climbing calls
Move more effectively over the wall
Arrest a falling climber
Boulder safely

In our next session we will look at :

Advancing your personal climbing skills
A further consolidation of your safety techniques
Choices of equipment
Using different belay systems
The use of prussiks
Preparing for your assessment
Looking forward to assessment day and where you can move your climbing on to

If you have not already looked at our links below then please do so now.

Session 1 - Basic Skills

The Climbing Wall

The climbing wall you attend is only one of many around the country. Each wall will have it's own safety guidleines and terms of use and it is important that you know these in order to ensure you and others are safe.

Safety

it is very important to make climbing as safe as possible for the grade of climbing you are participating in. Climbing on an indoor wall is one of the safer ways to climb because such factors as weather and rock falls have been removed from the equasion but indoor walls can still be dangerous places because of one of the following reasons:

Not understanding or following the rules and regulations
Not climbing within your ability
Not checking equipment
Not working effectively in a team or pair
Using the facility or the equipment for purposes it was not made for
Over confidence
Horseplay / playing around

Carrying out risk assessments is an important part of making groups as safe as possible on the wall and carrying out your own personal risk assessment is very important when you go to any wall. Look around the wall and say "what if?"

Next session you will be asked to give the safety briefing for each other. Can you remember the issues?

Next session you will be asked to fit your own helmets without assistance from the instructor. Can you remember how many adjustment points there are and how they need to be adjusted?

Next session you will be asked to fit your own harnesses without assistance from the instructor. Can you remember how the harness should fit?

On your first session you worked in groups but from our next session you will be learning to belay in groups of 3.

You will need to be able to:

tie a rethreaded figure of eight with a stopper knot
Set up a belay and use it effectively
back up a belay effectively
Use the standard climbing calls
Climb effectively using 3 points of contact
Understand the risks

These are sites and links that may help you

http://thebmc.co.uk This is the website of The British Mountaineering Council. Their website is full of information about every aspect of climbing and mountaineering

http://www.animatedknots.com This website is a great resource to help you learn climbing knots and other knots

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ROCKFROGOUTDOORS&p=r This is a link to some of the Rock Frog videos on Youtube. You will be able to see some of our climbers doing particular moves on the wall. Watch how they use their bodies using 3 points of contact.

There are a huge number of climbing videos on Youtube . http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qkOJV05Goqg is a link to a video compild by Brunel Students; the end of which is not for the squeemish!

http://www.ehow.com/how_1252_belay-rock-climbing.html A helpful (if rather wordy) "how to" site.

Lastly, it is important to understand how injuries occur so... how do you think the"nasty injury of the week picture" below happened? We will discuss this on our next session

Please note that you may have found this page through one of three routes in the resources section. In future this page will only be found via - Resources - Overview - Westgate School Resource

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