The benefits of using Sequence to plan and track your training are obvious but Sequence is also a powerful tool to help improve your performance on a dedicated rock trip. You can get all of the benefits listed below by spending about 5 minutes a day reflecting on your climbing within Sequence. How much of your life revolves around climbing? Why would you even question spending these 5 minutes?!

Whether your goals are to redpoint a hard project, increase your onsight/flash level or climb loads of boulders, Sequence gives you the ability to ensure that you keep on track to meeting your goals on the trip. Simply writing your goals down before the trip will be better than nothing, but within Sequence you can link activities to goals which will help you from getting distracted from what you planned to do. In the pre-Sequence era I had a trip where my stated goal was to commit to a limit project. But after trying it (only once!) it seemed too hard and intimidating and so I completely changed my trip and did a bunch of easier routes. This was fun, but not what I had set out to do and in hindsight felt a little hollow. Had I been using Sequence, I would have been far more likely to stick to the plan and try hard to achieve my goal.

Another major benefit of using Sequence during a rock trip is that it allows you to track how much climbing you’re doing and so helps you make informed decisions about when, and how much, to rest. For example, you can compare the number of moves you do on the rock to your regular training volume as well as track metrics like your time on rock, how you feel and how motivated you are. By keeping track of these metrics, and regularly reviewing them during your trip, you can prevent yourself from digging a fatigue hole that might put a hard stop to your trip aspirations.

Ever woken up the morning you’re hoping to send, feeling like you’ve been hit by a train? Not ideal! In the end, the difference between having a good trip, and a great one, might come down to whether you’re fresh enough to go amuerte on your last redpoint burn of the trip.

If you’ve been a regular Sequence user for a few months or more, you will have noticed how much more awareness you have about your training. How often you train each week, what type of sessions you do most, how you feel during a hard session etc. Simply by having one place to regularly and consistently record and reflect on your training you’ve learnt more about your training (and probably yourself). So why stop now that you’re going on a rock trip? Especially as a lot of us train to be able to perform on the rock, it could be argued that its even more important to keep track of what happens when you’re “doing the thing” not training for it! This can then in turn help you develop your next training block to me more suitable to your rock goals.

Finally, if you’re going on a long trip say 3 weeks or more, you might plan to do some supplemental strength training to keep yourself tuned up. Sequence gives you the opportunity to pre-plan those sessions before the trip and ensure that you don’t get lazy or forget about them. An example would be if you have a hard crimpy boulder project at home but you’re going to Thailand for a month to climb on tufas and steep jugs. You might schedule a weekly max hang session on your crag board at the Freedom Bar so you don’t loose all that hard earned finger strength and can go straight back on the home boulder project once the Phet Mak is out of your system.

If you train for the rocks then keeping track whilst on a rock trip can be pivotal to learning more, sending more, staying focused and levelling up your climbing with as little as 5 minutes a day.

Doug McConnell is an Australian climber currently on an extended European rock trip. In the last 12 months he has climbed 4 x 8c+, 5 x 8c and many more hard routes in a variety of styles. I have a feeling within the next 12 months we will see Doug climb his first 9a. Doug’s dedication and attitude is inspiring and knows a thing or two about climbing rocks.

Follow Doug McConnell on Instagram.

Photo Credit - Kerrin Gale.