Every December I take two or three weeks off. After an entire season of training and climbing, my body needs the break.
I came to Flatanger with a plan in my mind to bolt a really, really hard thing that would be beautiful and keep me motivated to try it for a long time, in some underdeveloped area.
Bouldering on real rock, which I'm more used to climbing on, is a lot more static and requires mostly finger power, whereas competition-style boulder problems are about coordination.
Even though Czech food is traditionally a bit heavy, especially for a climber, I can't resist some dishes: sveckova, for example, is beef in a creamy sauce with celery and dumplings. It's probably fortunate that I don't know how to cook it myself.
There are way more powerful climbers compared to me but I think I can really take advantage of all my power due to my technique.
I think speed climbing is kind of an artificial discipline. Climbers compete on the same holds and train on the same holds, which doesn't have much in common with the climbing philosophy in my opinion.
My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.
Czech people are quite hard to get to know, in my opinion.
My diet is mostly composed of whole-grain cereals, legumes, beans, lentils. Lots of cooked, baked, or steamed vegetables. Lots of spices like curcumin or cumin that help aid digestion. Some superfoods.
It's really difficult to climb effortlessly.
When I was young, I loved the feeling of escaping to the rocks on a Friday afternoon with my parents.
I didn't want to hike to the top of El Capitan and rappel down the route, and start fixing lines. For me it was really important to try to climb it from the ground up at first.
I thought I knew how to jug, but when you only jug 30 meters to the top of a sport climb, you don't need good technique. But jugging 400 meters, that's a big deal.
For the Olympics, I'm mostly training in the gym, so I'm running laps on the standard speed wall.
What really motivates me to climb harder and harder is not necessarily that I want to push my limits or show who's best, but climbing harder and harder routes makes it more fun.
The harder routes you climb, the more interesting the climbing gets and the more crazy moves you are forced to figure out.
I shriek when I am climbing at my absolute limit, but never shriek in the warm-up or when trying the moves. No matter how terrible it might sound, it helps me.
