Flatanger: Project Hard with Adam Ondra

First I have to say that at the beginning of this year I was looking for another challenge. And I found one. I became the physiotherapist of Adam Ondra and have the honor to help this incredibly strong climber to stay injury-free and improve his climbing, especially to make progress in his 9c project in Norway – called Project Hard.

As Adam and me planned in advance, the climbing in Flatanger would involve some fishing, or was it the other way around? 🙂
Anyway when I arrived there Adam and the rest of the crew had a rest day. So we started with the fishing first. At the end of the day Zuzka and me had to catch the food, because Vojta and Adam had to recover their forearms. 😉

Project Hard

After this nice fishing start it got serious. Adam tried a 9b in the cave but it just should not be. Later on I could watch him trying his Project Hard moves! Crazy, so crazy to see him trying something so incredibly hard and weird, upside down, overhanging and climbing feet first!
Just to be here, enjoying the nature of Norway, climb a bit myself and at the same time watching somebody with endless motivation and commitment … I’m really thankful for that. And all this takes place in the pretty and silent Flatanger region with its beautiful fjords.

Every time Adam and I met before this trip we had certain goals to work on. This time was different. I came to this spot to watch Adam doing the specific moves, right there in his project which I so far only had seen and analyzed in videos. Of course the question raised whether the treatments/exercises pay off or not.
And they did! This time Adam felt much better on certain moves we were working on. I could also show him one little trick in order to save just slightly more energy in the route. We both hope that these little additional things will work and make the difference.

But keep in mind what Adams project really is about: He wants to climb an 8b route, then an 8c boulder, the rest is an 8b boulder, followed by an 8a(+) route all the way up. This is in total about 45 metres of steep climbing.

Below you can watch some videos and photos of this awesome challenge.