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

enough intensity that you don’t get heavily winded or pumped and only break a light sweat. Limit yourself to thirty to sixty minutes of active-recovery exercise, and remain disciplined in not letting the activity escalate into anything more than active rest.

Possess a Positive, Calm Personality 24/7
     
    This last recovery tip is subtle yet very powerful. Possessing a positive, relaxed, and easygoing attitude not only puts you in a better performance state, but has been proven to increase recovery and maybe even encourage muscular growth.
    Strenuous exercise and stressful situations cause a drugstore’s worth of chemicals and hormones to be released into the bloodstream. Some of these hormones have long-term positive effects, such as growth hormone, which is anabolic. The fight-or-flight hormones like epinephrine and cortisol, however, can have a long-term negative effect when released chronically. In particular, cortisol has been shown to be catabolic, meaning that it results in breakdown of muscle.
    In light of the above factors, elite athletes have long been interested in enhancing the release of growth hormone and preventing high levels of cortisol. This is the very reason some athletes take anabolic steroids.
    Fortunately, you can modulate levels of growth hormone and cortisol with proper training, quality nutrition, and adequate rest, as well as through adjustments in your lifestyle. For instance, individuals with Type A, aggressive behavior naturally exhibit higher levels of cortisol (Williams 1982) and reduced levels of growth hormone. It’s also been shown, however, that behavior modification and reduction of the stressors in life can reverse this effect and provide more beneficial training (Dinan 1994). Therefore, possessing a relaxed approach to climbing and a humorous attitude about life in general will play an underlying but beneficial role by enhancing the quality of your training adaptations, accelerating recovery, and boosting climbing performance.
     
    It’s important to recognize that training (climbing) and recovery are opposite sides of the same coin. You must place equal importance on doing both optimally and to the best of your ability. Clearly, it requires a shift in perspective to actually plan and engage in the process of recovery in the same way you plan and engage in the process of training. But in doing so, you will distinguish yourself from the masses by producing uncommonly good results, and by avoiding downtime due to injury and illness.

 
    Daniel Woods crushing Armed Response (V13), South Africa. KEITH LADZINSKI
     

    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Injury Treatment and Prevention
     
    Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson
     
     
    This last chapter might not be necessary if this were a book on training for bowling or training for badminton. Despite what we tell our parents, however, climbing is a sport with an unusually high incidence of injury. Several studies report that up to three-quarters of all recreational and elite climbers have suffered a climbing injury. Fortunately only a small number of injuries are severe traumas produced by falls—the rest are overuse and minor acute injuries that most commonly occur in the fingers, elbows, and shoulders. These insidious “nuisance injuries,” while far from life threatening, can become chronic and debilitating, and they are extremely frustrating for an otherwise healthy individual passionate about climbing.
    The goal of this chapter is to increase your awareness of the causes and symptoms of the most common overuse injuries. Early identification is the best way to mitigate an overuse injury, whereas ignoring the early pangs and hoping that it will go away is almost always a recipe for a chronic injury that could sideline you for months. Ultimately, learning to recognize at-risk situations both when you’re training and when you’re climbing, and embracing a prudent approach to these activities that errs on the side of caution, is the best medicine for preventing injury.
    Over the last decade numerous relevant studies have been presented by British, French, German, and American researchers, and several excellent articles were published in climbing magazines by physicians experienced in treating injured climbers. Based on this growing body of knowledge, I will present what seems to be the current treatment protocol for the most prevalent injuries; still, I urge you to