Periodized training update

As the season is winding down I thought I would post an update as to the results from this falls training cycle.  Overall, I would rate it as a success.

There are many factors that influence a seasons quality, some within your control and others beyond - partners, weather, free time, challenging high quality routes, and of course personal fitness.  This fall, things came together nicely and I was able to strike a good balance of getting out to take advantage of good weather and staying sane/not traveling EVERY weekend as well as climbing both trad and sport.  While I didn't bump up my hardest sport redpoint grade, I am stronger than ever bouldering.  Likewise, a combination of physical strength and improved mental toughness have pushed me to new grades on gear (very exciting).

For this training cycle, I focused on one hard workout per week, one hard session bouldering, and then getting out on the weekends.  Weekends climbing throw a wrench in your training schedule, but its worth doing because a day out is always better than a day at the gym.  Plus, depending on the season, you can tailor your day at the crag to fit your training cycle.  The consistent one hard workout plus one hard bouldering session per week were the single most important factor to the training.  More than one hard workout and I 1) got bored of just doing workouts, 2) would push myself too close to injury, and 3) noticed a decrease in my climbing skill.

Near the tail end if my training, just before my planned peak period during early October, I took a small vacation with my girlfriend.  This was the power endurance phase of my cycle, and despite the one day climbing on vacation, it was certainly not power endurance.  The week after the vacation I felt noticeably weaker, but pushed as hard as I could on my 4x4's and by the third week was easily finishing three sets of v2-v3 problems for my 4x4s.  Conclusion: a one week break is not the end of the world.

My peak period was fun!  Routes and holds that previously seemed impossible were now easily in my grasp.  Even routes that felt hard while hanging the quickdraws saw a redpoint on the next burn.  I may not have increased my absolute highest sport redpoint grade (but that is more a function of the fact that I was previously in good shape and found a few routes that fit my strengths), but I built up my base of solid-for-the-grade 5.11's on sport and solid 5.10's on trad.

Looking forward to a winter cycle and killer spring season!

Scarpa Vapor V

As the fall season started this year, I found myself in need of a new pair of shoes.  While many boulderers and sport climbers have an arsenal of shoes, sometimes even wearing different shoes on each foot for a single climb, I prefer to have one or two pairs that I use for everything.  Perhaps if I were pushing closer to my genetic limit, I would require that extra bit of send power, but given my current status, I prefer to know my shoe and be comfortable in it.

For the last several years, my go to shoe has been the La Sportiva Muira (laceup).  It knuckles up my big toe to concentrate power, it edges, it's surprisingly comfy, and its durable.  But its made me complacent - are there other better shoes out there?  Not quite ready to drop $160 to continue my love affair, I picked up some Scarpa Vapor V's and put the savings towards continuing my actual love affair with my girlfriend.  And so far, I am pretty happy with my choice.

The Vapor V's have a dual velcro closure over a padded and elasticized tongue, leather uppers and sturdy Vibram rubber sole.  The velcro is faster than laces, but the shoe doesn't slip on as easily making this shoe more cumbersome in the event you take it off on a multi-pitch route, but less hassle at the boulders or your single pitch sport crag.  Once on however, the shoe feels quite secure.  The full leather uppers do stretch; while remaining secure on your foot, they feel a little baggy after breaking in.  The full leather uppers are also showing a bit of wear just behind my toes from dragging along the rock or the occasional crack.  The Vibram XS Grip 2 rubber is great.  It is plenty thick, which is great for durability, and at my level (low 5.12s), its sensitive enough.  They have performed admirably all around:  at bouldering (secure heel hooks), sporty face climbing, and even some cracks (though given the scrunched nature of the foot, it is obviously not playing to their design).

I've lodged a few complaints above, but those are very nit picky details so that you know what you are getting.  The bottom line is this:  I am happy with my purchase and have worn these bad boys on some proud sends this fall.  I look forward to using them on winter training and for the spring rope season.  That said, after a resole, I'll be saving up an extra $20-30 and getting my lace up muiras again - more durable uppers, same rubber with more flex and sensitivity in the sole, a toe box that fits me a little better, and an easy slip on for casual climbing.  Returning to the Muiras with a more critical foot, perhaps I'll be less impressed...

The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin

This was a fascinating little sci-fi book.  It perfectly embodies what I see as the power of sci-fi:  to explore humanity through the introduction of bizarre and fantastical alterations to our world.  The story follows George Orr as he attempts to come to grips with his strange ability to have "effective" dreams that change the world.  Read on for further discussion that may present some spoilers.

As a more complete summary, the book documents the struggle of George Orr to control his dreams and fight their exploitation by his psychiatrist, Dr. Haber.  His psychiatrist aims to make George dream effectively under hypnosis so as to study the effect.  Using a new tool called the "augmenter," Haber directs George via hypnosis to effectively dream a world into existence in which Haber himself is a researcher of growing power and importance.  Taking things further, Haber tries to direct George to dream a more peaceful and perfect world.  Each time, however, his attempts are foiled as George's dreams follow the directions but foil their purpose - for example, the war in the middle east is ended, but only as humanity unites against aliens or overpopulation is solved but only by a great plague that wiped out most of the population.  Eventually, Haber directs George to the obvious solution of effectively dreaming to end his ability to dream effectively.  Perhaps due to his unwillingness to relinquish power, Haber further directs George to transfer the ability to effectively dream on to Haber himself.  Haber's resulting nightmare mixes each of the worlds George has dreamed into a single point in space and time.

The ties this book has to eastern philosophy are made obvious throughout.  There are quotes at the beginning of each chapter from Chuang Tzu as well as more subtle references to Taoist tenants like that of the "uncarved block."  George Orr is a very Taoist person - seemingly unassuming and easily manipulated, but impossible to budge when pushed; not one to push in any given direction but looking to follow the path and natural order (even in mixed up realities).  Further, he works with, not against, his surroundings to achieve a harmony in his life despite the ever changing and turbulent world in which he finds himself.  There are also some implications of Hindu-like "Brahman" as George works with the (now) friendly aliens to understand the nature of effective dreaming.

What is the knowledge to be taken away from this book?  Perhaps that solving the worlds problems is more difficult than we can immagine - even with unlimited power to develop a solution, there are many ways for things to go awry.  Perhaps that humans must fight their tendencies towards greed and power. But most of all, I think it mirrors many of the lessons of Taoism and other eastern philosophy:  to work with, not against, the world to become comfortable with your role.  I don't mean that we are each a mysterious cog in the machine of the world trying to figure out where we fit, but I think this book demonstrates, through bizarre circumstances, the necessity to be cognizant of the Way and how to work with the people and the world around you in an organic way to create an environment of peace and harmony.

Voting

My friend Jon showed me a slick video about the failings of the electoral college, its 6 minutes of your time well spent:

In addition to this video explaining the electoral college, CPG Gray explains a number of other voting related issues such as gerrymandering, the problems with "first past the post" (FPTP) voting methods, and some possible solutions to voting.  All well made and informative videos worth your time to watch.

Between the shortcomings of FPTP, the electoral college, and the problems with voting machines, its high time we citizens make this an issue.  Until we do, what good are our votes?  As usual, the task of making a nationwide change is daunting, so think global and act local.  If it successfully changes on local and state levels, then it can change on a national level.  In the words of Grover Norquist (paraphrased from NPR's This American Life):  given a generations worth of time, we can change anything.

Become informed and make it a habbit to write your representatives (local, state, federal).  They represent your voice, make sure they know what you have to say!

Periodized Training for Climbing

Climbing is an odd activity that blurs the line between lifestyle, hobby, obsession, and sport.  If you get into climbing, you'll want to get better if for nothing else than the ability to explore more places and more climbs.  Getting better involves two distinct components, namely 1) technical skill and 2) physical ability.  In this post, I'll discuss methods and means to improve physical ability.  **Disclaimer:  this is not professional advice, nor is it for novice climbers.  Novice climbers should climb a lot, pay attention to movement efficiency and balance, climb on varied terrain and find a mentor.

If you want to know more, read these books:

• The Self Coached Climber - the most current book on the market that brings it all together
• Performance Rock Climbing - a little dated, but still full of good info
• An Eric Horst book (How to climb 5.12, Training for Climbing, one of the other equivalents)
• The Making of  Rock Prodigy / Anderson Brothers' Training Guide - this is essentially the beef from the above books; what exercises to do and in what order to get results.  It may not be the be all end all, but it gets results for a lot of people.  

What I do:
My training is essentially based on these books plus what I've picked up from friends.  I don't want to restate what others have said better, but as a brief summary, I try and periodize my training as follows (3-6 weeks per step):

1. ARC:  build up aerobic endurance/increase anaerobic threshold through long times on the wall.  
2. Hypertrophy:  build muscle mass, one rep max weight lifting style by hangboarding.
3. Power:  force divided by time, improve explosive strength by campusing
4. Anaerobic endurance:  climb through more pump with 4x4's

Try it once and listen to your body.  Then individualize your regimen.  Here is my current schedule (note the incorpration of bouldering, antagonist muscle training and spreading out of hard workouts):

A few more details on each phase:
ARC:  Look at professional marathon runners and you'll see that their mile splits are faster than you can run a single mile.  What pushes you into unsustainable anaerobic excercise is within their sustainable aerobic capabilities.  According to running literature you can train yourself to run at 80-90% max intensity and be in your aerobic state by running a lot at your aerobic limit (right under your anearobic threshold).  So do long sets on the wall over easy to moderate terrain, like 30 minutes of 5.8 climbing.  Take this time to work on movement, practice backsteps, footwork, and flagging.  Then reap the rewards of recovering while climbing sections of routes that within your aerobic limit.

Hypertrophy:  This is building muscle to gain strength.  You do this by working so hard that your muscles fail within a very short time.  The rock prodigy method suggests choosing 6-8 grips on the hangboard and doing 3 sets consisting of 6 reps of 10 sec hang / 5 sec rest.  Furthermore, rock prodigy suggests using weights and rigging a pully system to add or subtract weight as needed.  I have also been mixing in "frenchie's" (pull up hold, drop, pull up, lock off at 90 deg, pull up, lock off at 120, repeat...).  And to keep it interesting, boulder problems that focus on small holds with stopper moves, essentially fast failure but on a route.

Power:  also known as max recruitment, this is about getting all muscles to fire simultaneously to generate maximum force.  The classic exercise here is campusing.  I do 4-6 sets of ladders, that is start with hands off set (left hand low, right hand on the rung 18 inches higher, then reaching the low hand to the next rung 18 inches above the right hand).  I have also been doing 1 arm lock offs / negatives (with assistance as needed) and it is paying big dividends.  Not sure if that is more hypertrophy, but it helps with low lock offs while climbing.  To avoid campusing too much I am also aiming to do dynamic bouldering - big moves to small holds that focus on explosive power and contact strength (its not about finishing the problem but trying hard).

Anaerobic Endurance:  This is supposed to be the fastest to gain, but the fastest to lose, so it goes at the end of the periodization.  All I know to do here are 4x4's - choose 4 problems that are below your grade such that you can just barely do them all back to back to back to back.  Maybe you could eak out harder problems by doing running style repeats - alternating hard problems with short rest or an easy down climb.

Putting it all together:  
It seems easy, but the details are critical.  Find your target peak period - send season (October in my case) or a trip date, then plan backwards.  You have to do it to figure out what your body can handle.  Remember, injury free is the number one goal, so take a day off or drop down to one hard workout per week if you are feeling off.  Note in my plan the included antagonist muscle training.  Make sure to do pushups, wrist rotations, elastic therapy band workouts for your shoulders (rotators and stabilizers) at least once a week.

That got a bit long... I'm curious to here what else you guys do for exercises in each phase.  

The Climbing Media Fantasy

There seems to be a trend in climbing/mountaineering media that glorifies total commitment.  As a climber, who doesn't love commitment? That knowledge that the only way out is up and that when you make that move, there is no turning back; it raises your pulse and hits you with that shot of adrenaline you crave.  But this focus is more than just the moment while climbing, its about committing to the lifestyle of climbing.  

Climbing has always struck me as odd, its a rare subculture in which "the dream we all aspire to" is to be homeless, living out of a van at the crag.  You can see why the media loves this:  awkwardly good looking person realizes they don't fit the "traditional mold" forced on them by society so they abandon it to find freedom and follow their dream; its a perfect fairy tale.  But thats all it is, a fairy tale.  

We all love the butterflies in our stomach as we commit and feel every inch of air under our feet.  When it comes down to it, we like that feeling, but no one wants to get hurt.  Just the same way, no one actually wants to be the dirt poor totally committed climber.  What they want is to be recognized as the unique and individual snowflake of a person who contributes to society with their personal art of a lifestyle, but still has enough money to hang out at coffee shops on rest days while they live out of their off road and fuel efficient RV.  Its hypocrisy to want all the benefits from society without making any contribution.  

The opposite of the dirtbag dreamer is the weekend warrior, not the nameless, faceless, dead-inside cog-in-the-machine worker bee drone of society.  What sets the weekend warrior apart from the dirtbag dreamer?  Where the dirtbag dreamer is a hypocrite living in a fantasy, the weekend warrior is rooted in reality.  The weekend warrior cannot give up climbing, nor can they give up their life.  The result of climbing is that it makes us feel good.  The result of our careers is that it leaves our mark on the world.  Along the way, it earns enough money to provide stability, to live comfortably and even to climb a fair bit.  

Its easy to see the trap of society as a slippery slope: buy a car, buy a house, pay off debt, buy a bigger TV, pay taxes, repeat. die.  But is the dirtbag dream really any better?  In short, dirt bagging is neither sustainable nor secure.  Food, lodging, and transportation cost time either in money earned or effort spent.  Is it better to spend a day foraging for food or a day working and buy a weeks worth of food?  The weekend warrior is a roped climber while the dirtbag dreamer is a free soloist.  The weekend warrior is hindered by what he carries where the dirtbag is hindered by what he doesn't.  

The trick is to walk along the ridge top and not slide down the slippery slope on either side - not the societal trap to the left nor the dirtbag illusion to the right.  Plan ahead, take risks, and wander down off the ridge top.  Just don't get struck in a rut.  Dirtbags make for better videos, just don't confuse fantasy with reality.  

Malcom Gladwell: Blowing Up

This book is good.  Check it out!

Blowing Up: 
This story compares and contrasts two archetypical and polar opposite investment bankers.  One who is a knowledgeable gambler, your typical Wallstreeter, the other is Nassim Taleb (of the Black Swan fame) who trades in options.  One can apparently make money by trading options – betting that the price of a stock will rise or fall.   Here, my lack of financial knowledge clouds the details of how this works, but apparently it does.  Nassim’s idea is that by having a balance of options (bets?) that a stock will go up and others that a stock will fall ensures that he wins – kind of like MPT, but with options.  From the article, it sounds as though his portfolio value experiences drastic increases when the market goes haywire, but generally slowly bleeds in value. 

This whole story was curious.  The pin stripe Wallstreeter goes through booms and busts, living large and then losing the shirt off his back.  Nassim’s strategy makes for a hell of a payday, just widely separated and sporadic in nature.  No matter how well balanced (stocks, bonds, international markets and REITs) your portfolio, if the market crashes, so does the value of your portfolio.  But with Nassim’s options, you can cash in on a market crash.  It seems like Nassim’s options allow you a perfect negative correlation – that is, you could buy stock of company X and watch its value grow with the company, but also buy an option betting the value will drop; if the first half of your investment works, the second doesn’t, but if the second half works, the first doesn’t.  I wonder if there is a way to buy a small but significant set of options betting on a crash such that it would offset your losses in the event of a market crash.  Your portfolio value might look like this: 

This plot compares returns of a standard 7% return (red) to a simplified options balanced model (blue), assuming in both cases a $5,000 per year contribution (Roth IRA).  The options balanced model has a 5% compound interest return, where I assume the extra 2% is spent on options to balance your portfolio.  Then, depending on a random number (if rand() > 0.9), the market experiences a crash.  Your Portfolio loses half its value, but if you have options, you get a bonus ($50,000).  It’s a back of the envelope style calculation, so I doubt the numbers are right, but it seems like an interesting idea.  I’m guessing the devil is in the details – how much time can you spend buying options and how much of a return can you expect from your options?  But it’s an interesting idea and perhaps someone will offer an interesting financial product to simplify this (option index insurance?).  

Malcom Gladwell: John Rock’s Error

Now this was a fascinating story!  I don’t even know what insight to draw from this story. Mostly it’s just fascinating and I think more people should know about this stuff.  It’s the story of the Pill, women’s birth control.  This story has it all – science, fiction, politics, and betrayal.  As with Gladwell’s other articles, this weaves together several plot lines: of the Pill inventor, John Rock, the religious perspective (of the inventor and the Pope), the science of menstruation, and cancer.  Trying to summarize this succinctly will be a challenge, but here it goes.

John Rock was a devout Catholic and wanted to help people utilize the rhythm method, a natural form of birth control condoned by the church.  His solution was a “natural” one, the use of natural hormones in a pill that allowed for predictable periods of fertility.  Somehow he and his coworkers decided on a 4 week cycle.  This is curious because it raises the question of how frequent menstruation is naturally.  An academic spent a few years studying the Dogon people of Mali, in Africa who were determined to be, for all practical purposes, unchanged by the modernization of the rest of the world.  Women from this culture rarely menstruated as they spent most of their time either pregnant or breast feeding (which inhibits menstruation).  To cut to the chase, The Dogon women averaged one period per year until age 35, then four per year until menopause for a lifetime total of about 100 menstruations.  This is roughly 25% of the average contemporary Western women who menstruates some 350 to 400 times per year!

Ok, enough about menstruation.  Why does this matter you ask – cancer.  Every period corresponds to the production of huge numbers of cells.  More cell growth and production means more chances for cells to wrong.  American women are six times more likely to have breast cancer than corresponding Japanese women.  Why?  The fact that Japanese women started menstruation two years later (16 years old rather than 14) accounts for 40% of the difference.  Throw in higher weight at menopause and lower estrogen production (which could be due to their lower fat diet) and there is no difference.  Fortunately researchers are working on other forms of birth control that work to reduce lifetime menstruations. 

To finish the story is the perfect twist, only possible in real life: that John Rock, the devout Catholic, questions his faith as the Church bans all forms of oral contraceptive.  After working so hard to help humanity in a accordance with his Catholic religious beliefs, the rules change and deem what he created against the rules.  Did he leave the Church, or did the Church leave him?  Question the status quo.  Follow your gut.  Make a difference!   

The book:  Malcom Gladwell's What the Dog Saw.

Malcom Gladwell: The Ketchup Conundrum (or Lord of the Recipes)

The Ketchup Conundrum (or Lord of the Recipes):

This was a fascinating story of the development of the phrase and underlying idea that when it comes to food, there is no single perfect recipe, but rather there are a set of perfect recipes.  Essentially, a clever guy in the food science industry, Howard Moskowitz, developed a code that, given the input of taste test groups and their preferences, could optimize the (in this case) spaghetti sauce recipe to maximize the score for each of 4 groups that were recognized.  This was revolutionary in that it challenged the idea of a perfect recipe that would please everyone.  Well, with one exception:  ketchup, there is only one and like a black hole or singularity, it has its own rules that no one understands.  What other “single recipes to rule them all” ideas do we have in our daily lives?  Perhaps politics – each group has an idea on how to solve a problem, perhaps a plan to please each group rather than one plan that pleases only a few (obviously there are issues with maximizing funding and mutual exclusivity of ideas). 

The idea was revolutionary to the food industry, but it seems mundane from an engineering perspective:  choose the number of sauces you want to make and then choose your optimization criteria.  The food industry chose 1 recipe and optimized to 1 testing group.  That would be like designing one type of motor for all vehicles:  everyone could still get around, and a lot of folks would be happy.  But by understanding specialization (trucking vs. commuter cars vs. luxury vehicles), one could modify the one design and please each individual group more.     

The other cool thing to take away from this:  the basic taste of Umami.  Sure, we've all heard of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, but I'd never heard of umami before.  Cool!

Malcom Gladwell: What the Dog Saw and other adventures

Perhaps I will get around to re-reading “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” and continue on to “Outliers.”  But in the mean time, I’ll focus on my current read, “What the Dog Saw.” 

The book is a collection of his articles from The New Yorker.  In many of the articles, Gladwell weaves together seemingly unrelated stories, into a coherent story that challenges the conventional mindset.  It seems as though the book is much the same, that while each topic is different, the way he approaches the problems is similar and there is some larger message to take away.  Its hard to describe what it might be other than “out of the box” or “lateral” thinking, but its something.  How does one better describe that and apply it in the context of their own life? 

With 25 very unique and interesting chapters, there is a bit too much to review in full detail, so I’ll cherry pick.  Over the next posts, I'll share my thoughts on select chapters from the book.  My brief summaries are an injustice to the book.  Buy it.  Or at least check it out from the library.  Nothing you read here will detract from reading the book yourself, there is much more than I mention here.