Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

blood flow and oxygen transport in the muscles. The benefits of this superficial “rubbing” are brief, however, and have little residual effect on performance.
    Sports massage utilizes a deep-fiber-spreading technique that produces hyperemia (a dilation of the blood vessels) through the full depth of the muscle. Furthermore, the state of hyperemia lasts long after the procedure has ended, so the enhanced blood flow can accelerate recovery and aid healing after strenuous exercise.
    Tips to Accelerate Medium-Term Recovery
     
    1. Refuel early and often. Consume a piece of fruit, a balanced-style energy bar, or sixteen ounces of sports drink every two hours throughout the day of climbing. Favor low- to medium-GI foods and drinks.
    2. At the end of a workout or day of climbing, kick-start recovery by consuming a high-GI sports drink or a 4:1 ratio carbohydrate-to-protein sports drink within the first thirty minutes of cessation of strenuous activity.
    3. Within two hours of concluding your workout or climbing, consume a meal comprising approximately a 65:15:20 percent breakdown of carbohydrate, protein, and fat, respectively.
    4. Avoid consumption of alcoholic beverages, since alcohol has been shown to slow supercompensation and reduce beneficial growth hormone response.
    5. Stretch, massage, and use a heating pad or whirlpool to increase blood flow to sore, tired muscles. Use cross-fiber friction massage and direct pressure to trigger point spasms.
    6. Engage in progressive relaxation (see chapter 3) to further relax muscles and quiet the mind during midday breaks from climbing and before going to sleep.
     
     
    Sports massage also helps reduce the number of small and often unfelt spasms that regularly occur in the muscle. These spasms may go unchallenged by conventional stretching and warm-up exercises and, left unchecked, can rob you of coordination and induce mechanical resistance and premature fatigue.
HOW TO DO IT
     
    There are several strokes you may want to learn, but the most effective is called cross-fiber friction. This stroke is best executed with a braced finger (see the photo). The motion is a simple push in followed by a short push back and forth across the muscle fiber. Keep the stroke short and rhythmic; only gradually increase the pressure to penetrate deeper into the muscle.
    Although sports massage can be used on all muscles, focus your efforts on the upper body and, in particular, the finger flexors and extensors, and the pronator teres and brachioradialis (upper forearm muscles), the biceps and triceps (muscles of the upper arm), and the large muscles of the shoulders and back. Incorporate five to ten minutes of massage into your regular warm-up routine. This, along with the warm-up activities and stretches detailed in chapter 6, will better prepare you for an excellent workout or day on the rocks.
SPORTS MASSAGE TO ACCELERATE RECOVERY
     
    Your body has inherent mechanical weaknesses where sport-specific movements can trigger stress overload. In climbing, the muscle most overloaded are the forearms, upper arms, and back. These muscles are the first to tire, and they are typically the slowest to recover. Fortunately, you can modulate fatigue and hasten recovery through application of sport massage to the specific stress points—often called trigger points—inherent to climbing movements.
    To become familiar with these stress points, it’s best to have some understanding of how a muscle works. First, voluntary muscles have two ends, each of which is attached to a bone via a tendon. One end is a fixed attachment called the origin, and the other is a movable attachment called the insertion. For example, the origin of the bicep muscle is at the shoulder, and the insertion is just below the elbow. The motor nerve enters the muscle in the thick muscle belly between the origin and insertion. It is here that all contractions begin, and they spread toward the ends of the muscle as more forceful contractions are needed. Consequently, only a maximum effort will recruit the high-threshold fibers situated near the ends of the muscle.
    For this reason a proper (submaximum) warm-up does not work the whole muscle. The end fibers (near the origin and insertion) largely miss out on the warm-up process, and thus they are more likely to underperform when called into action for high-intensity movements. Fortunately, sports massage applied to these points before a workout or climb helps warm even the least used