Prosthesis adventures – Part 1

June 15, 2017 Melinda Comments 2 comments

I just got my first ever prosthetic arm. It’s not one of those fancy electronic hands where you can move “your” fingers. Instead, it’s one with a hook, custom-made for me by Hempel. Functionality above aesthetics. As a start, I wanted to be able to cross-country ski with a pole in my left hand, to do pull-ups with a good posture and to give out rope with my left arm when belaying. Then I figured that I could also use it on the campus board and finger board. And it would be totally cool to get an ice axe tool with it at one point (as a friend suggested). Probably I’ll find even more uses for it as I start practicing.

For now, here is a short video of my first testing: campus board, finger board and pull-ups. Kind of a baseline.

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Injuries and progress

March 10, 2017 Melinda Comments 1 comment

Ever since I started climbing in 2012, I have kept wondering about how far I can push my climbing without fingers on my left hand. For a long time, I thought that 6a (VI+) would be a limit. Now, I know for sure that my limit of possibility lies somewhere beyond 6c (VIII-). This story is about my hilly road of progress towards pushing my limits.

Okay, maybe it’s actually about how my injuries have helped me push my limits. But in my case, these two are almost the same.

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My climbing story

February 21, 2017 Melinda Comments 0 Comment

It is only fitting to start my blog and website with the story of my life… but I promise to focus mostly on climbing! Actually, this piece was originally published in German in the Berliner Bergsteiger in January/February 2017 (read it here). The Hungarian translation was published on the website of the Hungarian Mountaineering and Sport Climbing Federation (read it here). And here you can read my original version:

I love the feeling of climbing. It makes me forget about everything else around me except for the movement of my body on the wall from one hold to another. In these moments, I am completely absorbed in solving the puzzle presented to me in the pattern of possible hand- and footholds with the objective of getting to the top of the route. It is almost like a form of meditation: I focus on the moment and follow my intuition.

Melinda Vigh

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Tag: training