[Danny]

Beyond taking a day or so off beforehand, I don't have any pre trip strategies. Probably because I rarely go on trips, and haven't been performance focused until the past year. Do people have any specific knowledge here?

Things that spring to mind: applying the stump cream, stretching, going on a crash diet (IIRC, "glycogen dumping"?), taking a full week off, etc.

[monkoffunk]

Glycogen dumping and ‘crash dieting’ per se are not the same thing. Glycogen dumping is avoiding carbs the day before a hard redpoint to lose the extra weight of glycogen and associated water. It might add 1% or something to your performance, so unless everything else is on point and you are a total wad, I probably wouldn’t consider it.

[r-man]

Depends also what kind of trip you want to have. Bouldering? Big days climbing as much as possible, or focused goals?

Taking a week off makes me climb like crap. Never found this useful. I try to increase time on rock before a trip. Helps get skin into condition. (Perhaps helps with movement, though that might be more noticeable if you aren't that fluent outdoors.)

As far as pre-trip training goes... If the goal is big days and lots of mileage, I think it helps to ramp up the mileage before a trip. If the goal is sieging hard stuff, it helps to increase the amount of goes you can have near your limit - maybe best done by increasing the number of hardish problems you can repeat within a session.

[Ged]

I have a week of just having a couple of short, power based sessions before. Just redpoint attempts on something hard, and stop before you get tired.

Skin sanding

Healthy eating but not dieting

I find it helps to spend the second to last week getting everything ship shape at work, so I can wind down the last week.

Get loads of sleep and don't plan any benders

A couple of easy runs and lots of stretching

[Danny]

Useful, thanks. I think this time it's gonna be 10 days of bouldering with fam and friends in the mix. That'll mean getting up early to go at hard things for an hour or so, then mellow mileage later in the day.

[BuzyG]

Glycogen dumping and ‘crash dieting’ per se are not the same thing. Glycogen dumping is avoiding carbs the day before a hard redpoint to lose the extra weight of glycogen and associated water. It might add 1% or something to your performance, so unless everything else is on point and you are a total wad, I probably wouldn’t consider it.

Without wishing to thread hi jack. How the heck does dumping the sugar your muscles run on help to improve performance?  I spend days Carb loading before I set off for a days fun in the mountains.  It does indeed add about 5lbs to my start weight, but the energy store sure gets used during a full days climbing.

[jwi]

taking a full week off, etc.

Tapering is only a good idea if you are borderline overreached. The frequency and insensitivity of workouts is kept the same or higher, but the volume should drop, i.e. climb as often as before, at as high difficulty as possible, but with do fewer moves per session.

[monkoffunk]

Glycogen dumping and ‘crash dieting’ per se are not the same thing. Glycogen dumping is avoiding carbs the day before a hard redpoint to lose the extra weight of glycogen and associated water. It might add 1% or something to your performance, so unless everything else is on point and you are a total wad, I probably wouldn’t consider it.

Without wishing to thread hi jack. How the heck does dumping the sugar your muscles run on help to improve performance?  I spend days Carb loading before I set off for a days fun in the mountains.  It does indeed add about 5lbs to my start weight, but the energy store sure gets used during a full days climbing.

Well if you are off in the mountains all day I’m going to assume you are climbing high volume well below your technical limit. In this case yes, lack of glycogen won’t really help you. The idea of glycogen dumping is going to be much more important for hard single pitch routes right at your limit, where a full day is not the goal but a single redpoint. Fuel will be consumed before the redpoint but you aren’t planning on a full days hard work.

Remember when I say much more important we are still talking about a tiny margin and only that it might be helpful. It is small print that won’t help at all for the vast majority of climbers, myself included, who should be putting their efforts elsewhere. And not as pretrip preparation unless you think starving yourself for a week would help performance.

[monkoffunk]

I am interested though, when you say you spend ‘days’ carb loading, what do you mean by that?

[moose]

Behold! The Book of Dominator from the Gospel of Moffatt:

"I got used to a strict diet for about a week. Salads only. I could do it if I felt dizzy, so I cut out almost all food. My stomach was a void, but I didn't care. I will eat after I do this I thought. On the third day I woke up and knew the time had come. I chalked up. The night before, to give me every possible advantage, I had microwaved my chalk for about five minutes, thinking that if there was any moisture in there at all, this would get rid of it. ”

[jwi]

Behold! The Book of Dominator from the Gospel of Moffatt:

"I got used to a strict diet for about a week. Salads only. I could do it if I felt dizzy, so I cut out almost all food. My stomach was a void, but I didn't care. I will eat after I do this I thought. On the third day I woke up and knew the time had come. I chalked up. The night before, to give me every possible advantage, I had microwaved my chalk for about five minutes, thinking that if there was any moisture in there at all, this would get rid of it. ”

He could have used the heel hook instead of starving. Just saying.

[Doylo]

They hadn’t been invented then.

[duncan]

John Syrett, Encore, 1973 

Glycogen dumping is a strategy of sorts for a one-off effort surely, not at all helpful for a trip.


More seriously, any skin preparation ideas other than regularly attacking the tips with sandpaper?

[Ged]

taking a full week off, etc.

The frequency and insensitivity of workouts

I'm intrigued by the concept of insensitivity of workouts. Does this involve only training when it's your partner's birthday or valentines day? Or waiting until they are halfway through telling you about a really difficult day that they've  had, loudly declaring that they're boring you, putting your headphones in and starting to do pull ups

[teestub]

Insensitive workouts include:
- ARC on the circuit board during peak hours
- yoga session on the mats in front of the campus boards
- linked boulder problem circuits when there’s tonnes of people waiting to climb
- campussing people’s projects in front of them.

Combining these activities will put you on peak trip form.

[SA Chris]

Laughing out loud when someone fails on a problem

Traversing on the lead wall

Spending hours working a route too hard for you

Shouting and swearing in front of small children.

[BuzyG]

I am interested though, when you say you spend ‘days’ carb loading, what do you mean by that?

Moose's post is probably based on carb loading.  A couple of weeks before a days hard effort.  Reduce your calorie intake especially carbs, you don't need to starve, but you should feel hungry.  Then a few days before your effort, increase your calorie intake to a little more than usual and include plenty of carbs. 

This has the effect of loading the maximum amount of carbs into your muscles.   I always feel a little bloated when I do this and I weigh more at the start of the day as carbs bind with water 1g of carbohydrate to 4g of water.  A big guy like me can easily store 200g of carbs so that is over a kg to carry at the start of the day.

The major upside is bags of energy and of course as you use up the carbs the weight drops too. 

[monkoffunk]

I normally focus on aiming to cut excess fat and eat a reasonably low carb diet most of the time (partly because it’s the easiest macro to leave out of a meal) but I’m not totally restrictive.

I certainly never carb load, but then I only sport climb and boulder.

I would have thought you can store more carbohydrate than 200g, my exercise physiology textbook might be out of date but that says 15g glycogen per kilo is around max, with normal storage being around half that without carb loading and being ‘well nourished’. With a glycogen:water ratio of around 1:3 or 1:4 that’s potentially quite a significant excess weight! Good in the mountains maybe, less good bouldering, potentially pretty bad sport climbing.

[webbo]

I thought carb loading was now confined to things we used to do that didn’t work.

[Ged]

I thought the same

[BuzyG]

I thought carb loading was now confined to things we used to do that didn’t work.

Depends what you want to do.  In my newbie intro, I make it clear why I have taken up bouldering.  To top out tors and mountains that would otherwise remain above my skill set to reach.  As such I often walk 15 miles to climb just a dozen problems.  I fully appreciate that profile is different from what most here will follow.  Horses for courses.  Always interested in how others prepare.  Took me many years to find what works for me, but it does work.

[monkoffunk]

I’m unsure of any hard evidence but seems to me that a decent fueling strategy over a day could provide adequate readily available glucose without the need to bulk up on the water weight. Doesn’t matter if performance not really an issue though!

[webbo]

These days in most endurance sports it’s about using your fat stores as a fuel source as well as carbs.

[BuzyG]

This site explains how it all works.  Better than many I have read over the years.

http://resource.download.wjec.co.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/vtc/2015-16/15-16_30/eng/02-during-the-game/Unit2-energy-systems-and-their-application%20.html

Have to say at my age I need all the help I can get. So having some understanding of what is going on in these more mature bones, is well worth a few hours of reading.

[webbo]

As I thought it does say the higher your aerobic fitness the less you deplete your glycogen stores.
So it’s all about how you train not just about how eat.