Climbing Creativity

When the UK and Greece first went into national lockdowns in March 2020, Johnnie in the Upper Sixth, an international climber, found himself unable to train at his local centre; an experience many people empathise with. However, it didn’t take the determined student long to find a solution to his problem. By the end of March, Johnnie had completed his own in-house climbing construction and has since gone from strength to strength.

The former storage room come home gym and climbing wall has transformed his training. “After all the climbing gyms closed in Greece, I was unable to do any sort of real climbing specific training other than climbing on rock. This was a problem for me as I was losing strength fast and I could really feel it affect my performance. Once I built the climbing gym, training has improved drastically (even more than before lockdown) as I have both the facilities for an ideal training plan, and the time to train as much as I need due to the lockdown.” He commented.

Johnnie who is typically a full boarder, currently resides in his family home in Greece. Having seriously trained for competition climbing for three years to date, he has already enjoyed numerous international competitions for Greece, consistently placing in the top three nationally and in the Balkans. He continues to work his way up the ranks as he competes in European and world competitions.

He continued “In school, Jez [Belas, Director of Sport, PE and Wellness] and the team support my climbing incredibly as I use the time during Games (in addition to the three other days I train a week) to train which also supports me in my studies as this means I have more time after school to do school work.”

“I had always been planning on building a home climbing gym, and the lockdown was a perfect opportunity for me to do this. Two weeks later, the gym was ready, and I was training there daily. Thanks to this, I have made big strength gains, and I am at a level that I certainly would not be at if I didn’t have such a facility available.”

After seeing Johnnie’s video, Helen Taylor, Head of Sixth Form exclaimed “That is amazing! I’m so impressed by the wall – which I’d heard described but not imagined to be quite like this – as well as the STRENGTH demonstrated. Literally more strength in his little finger than many have in an entire body!”