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

fibers, and enables maximum efforts with minimal resistance and risk of injury.
    These trigger points are also more likely to harbor stress and become cramped post-exercise. Use of sports massage and trigger point therapy will help relieve these stress points and speed recovery. You can best address these trigger points with what is called the direct-pressure stroke. Apply firm, constant straight-in pressure with a braced finger, a wooden Bodo or shepherd’s crook (available from www.bonnieprudden.com ), or a friend’s elbow, and hold for fifteen to thirty seconds. Direct pressure is especially useful when applied to the trigger points near the base of the muscles. This will help relieve any known or unknown spasms, increase local circulation, and aid healing. (Be sure never to apply sports massage tactics to tendons, joints, or injured tissues, however.) Conclude your massage with some mild stretching.

Use Relaxation Techniques
     
    Chapter 3 described an excellent relaxation technique called the Progressive Relaxation Sequence. Though commonly used before going to sleep, progressive relaxation is also highly effective for relaxing the muscles and quieting the mind during a midday break from climbing. When resting between climbs or taking a break before returning to work on a project, find a quiet spot, lie down, and spend ten to twenty minutes performing progressive relaxation. Upon completing this process, sit up for a few minutes and enjoy the day before proceeding to the next climb.
    Make a midday relaxation break a regular part of your climbing ritual and you’ll find yourself climbing better, and with less fatigue, late into the day.

Accelerating Long-Term or Interday Recovery
     
    The interday recovery period involves the long-term recuperation from a severe workout or a couple of hard days of climbing. Depending on the intensity and volume of the activity, full recovery could take anywhere from one to four days (or more).
    When you wake up in the morning with sore muscles (delayed-onset muscle soreness), it’s a sign that you incurred microtraumas and that a recovery period of at least another twenty-four hours is needed. Of course, you have two choices in this situation. The first is to go climbing (or work out) for a second straight day, despite the soreness, realizing that your performance will be less than ideal and your risk of injury is increased. Or you could take a day or two off and allow your neuromuscular system to recuperate to a level of capability higher than before the workout (supercompensation).
    Certainly, there are times when you will select the first option of climbing a second day straight, but there should be an equal number of instances when you decide that “less will be more.” Weekend climbing trips are the classic situation in which you’d want to climb two days in a row, regardless of sore muscles. Given proper nutrition, a good warm-up, and a prudent approach to pushing yourself on the second day, you will usually get away with climbing sore.
    Choosing to take a day or two of rest, however, is clearly the intelligent decision when climbing indoors or during an off-season training cycle. Hopefully, you gleaned from chapter 5 that proper rest is as important as training stimulus in becoming a stronger climber, and that under-resting is a primary cause of injury. Enthusiastic indoor and sport climbers are most commonly guilty of under-resting, but regardless of your preference, it’s important that you distinguish yourself from the mass of climbers who overtrain. If you find yourself drawn to overtraining with the crowd, remember that in order to outperform the masses, you cannot do what they are doing!

Eat Frequent, Small Meals
     
    Instead of eating the typical three meals per day, you can accelerate recovery by consuming six smaller meals or snacks spaced evenly throughout the day. Avoid high-GI foods; they are less effective for recovery after the first two hours post-exercise. Instead select low- and medium-GI foods for all your meals and drink at least ten glasses of water throughout the day.
    At least three of your meals should contain a significant portion of protein. For instance, breakfast could include a couple of eggs, skim milk, or whey protein; lunch might include some low-fat yogurt, skim milk, or a can of tuna; and for dinner it might be good to eat a piece of lean red meat, chicken, or fish. Each of these meals should also include some carbohydrate, and