Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Muscles like a Bathtub
Climbing better requires knowing what your muscles are capable of and what they need. It’s too easy to climb yourself into a situation on a route where the moves are too hard and you’re stressed and over gripping.
The key is learning how to maneuver your climbing around your limits. Think of your fitness level, or your capacity to climb, as a bathtub that’s got water pouring in and an open drain emptying it out.Your fitness level is sort of like the depth and size of your tub, the rate at which you can pour water in, and the rate at which it can drain. If the rate at which the tub fills is faster than the rate it drains, then it overflows and you have a disaster. If you stress the muscles at a rate faster than they can recover, they shut down.
Muscles have stored glycogen that they burn to contract. Then the byproducts of that energy exchange must be metabolized. Wastes need to be shuttled out of the muscle tissues, and fresh oxygenated blood with more energy needs to be brought in. If you do too many hard moves in a row, the load you’re putting on the muscles quickly overwhelms the system’s ability to keep up. Lactic acid saturates the muscle fibers and they quickly reach failure. Now there’s water flooding all over the bathroom floor and threatening the drown the downstairs neighbor.
What can you do? Strategize your movement. Take advantage of any and all rest situations. Snatch a quick shake for either arm before the hard sequence if you can. Move through the hard part fast and get to the bigger holds. Then take the time for the system to catch up. Don’t hold your breath (if you put the stopper in the tub, a flood is inevitable).
Breathe, relax, and don’t over grip. Develop a sensitivity for how hard your muscles are working at any given time by paying attention to them. When you’re training, figure out where your failure point is. Find the point at which you’ve pushed so hard you can’t adequately recover.
Climbing better requires knowing what your muscles are capable of and what they need. It’s too easy to climb yourself into a situation on a route where the moves are too hard and you’re stressed and over gripping.The key is learning how to maneuver your climbing around your limits. Think of your fitness level, or your capacity to climb, as a bathtub that’s got water pouring in and an open drain emptying it out.Your fitness level is sort of like the depth and size of your tub, the rate at which you can pour water in, and the rate at which it can drain. If the rate at which the tub fills is faster than the rate it drains, then it overflows and you have a disaster. If you stress the muscles at a rate faster than they can recover, they shut down.
Muscles have stored glycogen that they burn to contract. Then the byproducts of that energy exchange must be metabolized. Wastes need to be shuttled out of the muscle tissues, and fresh oxygenated blood with more energy needs to be brought in. If you do too many hard moves in a row, the load you’re putting on the muscles quickly overwhelms the system’s ability to keep up. Lactic acid saturates the muscle fibers and they quickly reach failure. Now there’s water flooding all over the bathroom floor and threatening the drown the downstairs neighbor.
What can you do? Strategize your movement. Take advantage of any and all rest situations. Snatch a quick shake for either arm before the hard sequence if you can. Move through the hard part fast and get to the bigger holds. Then take the time for the system to catch up. Don’t hold your breath (if you put the stopper in the tub, a flood is inevitable).
Breathe, relax, and don’t over grip. Develop a sensitivity for how hard your muscles are working at any given time by paying attention to them. When you’re training, figure out where your failure point is. Find the point at which you’ve pushed so hard you can’t adequately recover.
Labels: climbing, fitness, tips
¶ Tuesday, September 11, 2007
