A Defense Of Injury

“I had an injury, as I always do.”
- Jerry Moffatt, explaining what kicked off a great training cycle

We should change our outlook on injuries. We think they’re bad because they keep us from doing what we want at a given time. But they also force us to change, which with the right outlook is almost always a good thing. Change forces adaptation and, as any trainer knows, the specificity of adaptation is the key to making progress.

So just after training camp, during a full-swing translation towards building biking and running fitness back up, I hit a snafu. Or rather it hit me, as one of my dogs decided a snowy downhill run was a good time for some impromptu tackle football. Regaining my footing from her cross-body block wrenched something connecting to the old L5S1 injury and, voila, I’m back to traction exercises and back care yoga while my endurance training gets shelved a few weeks.

It’s not my first rehab rodeo and before I’d even assessed the damage I’d refocused my training schedule. A couple of years back, in the midst of recovering from the injury highlighted above, I took one of Kristen Ulmer’s seminars on the mental aspects of sport. Part of this was focusing on the beauty of injuries and how the changes they force on your life give you a new lease; license, or an excuse, to re-focus on something new. Reflection during this lesson confirmed it; many of my best performances have come in the wake of an injury.

The serendipity of this story is that Ben and I had become overly enthusiastic about sending a new route in the Coop. We were fit enough to get close but consistent redpoint attempts tend to make you weaker over time. Training makes you stronger, meaning if we stopped trying to climb and trained we would simply be able to do the route without all the fuss. When I called Ben to inform him that it was time to get serious about training he said, “I know what you mean. During one go (redpoint failure) I landed on the floor and just happened to be looking at The Beastmaker. I swear it was saying ‘Buddy, if you want to do that route you're staring at the answer.’”

Fingerboard (hangboard) training is almost perfect traction for the back. It’s also the single best way to get seriously strong for climbing. Its only downside is that it's hard to focus on because it's not necessarily fun. I haven’t had a meaningful climbing road trip, where I was peaking strength-wise, since sometime last century. Granted I've been focused on other sports but still; The Year of the Van beckons. My injury being the key to great success.

Party Time!

“After his last race of the season,” says my friend Spencer, “he puts him bike in the garage and refuses to even look at it until his legs hairs (which are shaved, of course) grow to an inch and a half.”

We all need rest, both physically and mentally, and this is my favorite off-season recovery story. I like it because it’s simple, clear-cut, and 100% non-scientific. Rest is something where not only is science un-necessary, it’s debilitating. Rest should be both physical and mental. Sports—and exercise—are both physically and mentally addicting. Therefore, breaks should cut you off from both angles so that you come back both physically and mentally fresh.

This is much easier said than done. Vonn (husband of ski superstar Lindsey who is generally referred to by his surname) references the challenge as thus,



“She is extremely diligent,” he said, rolling his eyes. “That’s Lindsey, though. Even when she was supposed to be relaxing and resting her body in April, I would catch her sneaking into the gym. I’d have to drag her out.”

Dragging your spouse out of the gym is certainly counter-intuitive to some of you but, if you’re addicted to a sport or style of training (Xers, yes, I mean you too) there will always be a time where it takes discipline to shut things down.

The reason you want to force is break can best be described as human. Due to a combination of factors no one can stay on top of their game at all times. And if you don’t force rest on yourself then you’re leaving it up to your body to decide when it needs it. While this is obviously dangerous for athletes who need to perform on a schedule it’s better for the rest of us, too. Because we all have times when we would prefer to be at our best, so why leave it up to chance if we don’t have to?

Since my bike’s had plenty of off time this last couple of years I’ve shut down climbing until after New Year. This means no climbing, no training for climbing, no climbing news or scanning the net for videos. It’s a complete forced break that will not only allow microtrauma to heal but will also re-set my daily habits and focus.



Rest has another up side; it’s fun. Historically it’s often been too fun. We only need to peruse the sports headlines to find examples where one athlete or another has gotten in trouble in the off-season. Cyclists are one of the worst offenders. Because it’s such a weight-dependant sport you almost always gain weight you stop racing. Therefore, how much damage was done over the winter has always been headline news in the cycling press.

Jan Ullrich anecdotes aside, just because you’re not focused doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t exercise. In fact you should stay active. The only rule should be that you do something different than normal, with no regiment, no coaching (including Tony, Chalene, Shaun, et al), and no goal except to sustain it for a prescribed period of time. All very calculatedly un-scientific.

It’s hard to force yourself into some down time, especially if you feel as though you’re getting close to your potential. But if you take the initiative you’ll find that you’ll end up with more control over both your performance and your life.

Part II, what I'm doing as "rest", is here.

pics: curious goings on in the off-season: der kaiser obviously not worrying about his weight, party night in italy (“last blowout before training camp”) featuring some of the world’s best cyclists, and mrs. vonn decidedly not wasting her time off.

WFH: Stabilization

While by far the easiest day in the rotation, day 3 is vital for both performance and non-performance. Stability work keeps injuries at bay but, if done correctly, will also free up your prime mover muscles to function more effectively. I dedicate my knowledge in this area to the late Kevin Brown, who taught me much more about stability training than I learned from books, classes, training rooms and medical offices.

He was an innovator in the field of “prehab”, which is addressing injuries before they happen. Sports programs that worked with him saw their non-contact injury rates mostly disappear. Most of his breakthroughs seem obvious once in practice, yet are overlooked by athletes the majority of the time. Over the years he would continually take something conventional and mildly effective and tinker with it until he found something more effective. Eventually he came up with a system that worked for any group of athletes no matter what their given sport.

While training with Kevin could get complex, the cornerstone of his system is simple. There are a few key movements he used that, when done regularly, keep your musculature balanced and greatly reduce the chances of injuring your knees and shoulders, the two hot spots in the athletic world. My stabilizer days feature these movements with a couple others adding for climbing specificity.

Hip stabilization

Hip Medley
A series of four exercises, done in successive 45 second sets, which target the gluteus medius. The benchmark is 3:00 with 5 pounds. Hard to explain so you’ll have to wait for video.

Windshield Wipers
The “my guys would rather get shot” exercise, again targeting the gluteus medius. Do 3 sets of 25 reps with a 10 second hold at the end. Again, you’re going to need video.

Shoulder stabilization
I do three sets of one exercise that targets the muscles of the rotator cuff region. It’s a standard move, sometimes called scarecrow, though I do it one arm at a time. I use both a theraband and a weight to keep the resistance constant throughout (the benchmark goal is 50 reps with 15lbs). The trick is that I push down on a stability ball with my elbow. This deactivates the deltoid muscles that tend to take over the movement, focusing the exercise onto the correct muscle group. Again, vids coming.

Wrist
I do reverse write curls to work the extensor muscles in the forearm. 3 sets of 30.

Core
The same bridge and plank series from the day before, but I’ll do three sets. The benchmarks are a 3 minute plank and 10 sets of one-legged bridge held for 20 seconds rotated back and forth.

TA muscle
Normally I add the exercise from the preceding day on stabilizer days as well.

I can mainly hit my benchmarks so I don’t always do these exercises. During this program, however, I will do them religiously and try and exceed all benchmarks. The stronger these muscles are the better and when you’re spending a lot of time doing other stuff it’s hard to focus on them. I find a few intense periods will give you some margin for error so you can safely slack off at other times.

pic: in the 80s we had lycra, which instantly increased both your range of motion and stabilization strength. it was subsequently banned from competition.

Beachbody Article Archive

Here’s an important reference tool; the Beachbody article archive that’s indexed by subject. Now instead of trying to track down articles with a search engine you can scroll through a decade of subjects in a matter seconds. The newsletter content has always been about responding to your questions. Over the years we’ve probably covered any subject you’ve ever thought about--well, at least pertaining to Beachbody workout programs and diets. Team Beachbody coaches, especially, should bookmark this page because you’ll use it with almost all of your customers. The more they learn, the less you have to actually teach them!

The Beachbody Newsletter Archive

Btw, the rest of my web site is evolving so don’t pay much attention to it yet. It used to be a big reference point but all the links died when we changed the Team Beachbody site. As more features are added I’ll let you know here, or you can sign up for my newsletter that will alert you about important news. Just send an email to:

join-edwards@mh.databack.com

Forearm Training

Unless you play baseball you’re probably not too interested in how your forearms look. However, strong forearms are more important than they appear. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, along with most finger, wrist, and elbow injuries stem from muscular imbalance in your forearms. This video shows a simple workout that can keep these injuries at bay.

In my series I add one more extensor exercise, which is driving your closed hands deep into the bucket and opening them outward. I think this is the most important exercise in the series for muscular balance. This simple 5 -10 minute workout, done a few times each week, is a great insurance policy against many common maladies. It will also, undoubtedly, help impress your colleagues at your company softball game.

My bucket is a gardening pot, wide enough for both hands to open next to each other, filled with 20lbs of rice. In the past I’ve used sand, which provides a bit more resistance. Either way, it’s a cheap and easy insurance policy.

Morning Yoga

I re-injured my back mountain biking a couple of months back and have been trying to play through it. Finally, alas, I’ve been forced to deal with it head on and take some time off. Well, not off exactly, but focused. And the primary point of this focus has been on morning yoga.

Yoga and stabilization exercises were the cornerstone of my rehab last year. A year after the injury I felt as though I was 90% back. After my Mexico trip in March I allowed my focus to wane a little. I was still doing both but not with the same fervor. I wrenched my back a bit in a small crash but it was pain that I could deal with so I kept trying to perform and ramp up my biking mileage. The pain, however, has steadily increased to the point where it’s no longer possible that it’s residual. Something new is wrong.

My standard policy on most injuries is to rehab first and see doctors later. My theory is that the rehab is going to happen, one way or another, so you might as well try it first. This keeps me (and clients) out of the doctors’ office 9 times in 10. After a week it seems to be going well again.

I hadn’t been totally avoiding yoga but I hadn’t been doing actual classes or videos. As a trainer I usually don’t need these things. I know what I want to do and, in fact, almost always train harder when I’m alone and not doing a video. Probably due to my sports background I’m more intense by myself. My sets are more focused. I also concentrate better and, thus, recover quicker between exercises. This competitive nature has the opposite effect on yoga, where intensity is not the objective. Classes and videos slow me down, reduce the intensity, and increase its effectiveness. A lot.

Now, like all those months when I was acutely injured, each day begins with a yoga class (in video or in person). I’m going to keep this up until the pain is gone. I’m so much better than I was a week ago that I find it hard to conceptualize how I went so many years not doing yoga at all.

pic: romney in the canyonlands

One Louder

Power training is a delicate balance between rational and irrational. Yesterday’s harebrained scheme pushed it too far but, hopefully, not so far as to interfere with my program. As Nigel wrote on my Facebook last night, “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”

I mentioned the dangers of power training the other day. Whenever I’m at my limit I’m always trying to gauge whether or not it’s too much and attempting to back off before I hit the inevitable “one move too many”. Until Sunday, each successive workout was building on the prior workout fairly substantially. But my program isn’t for one sport. It’s a hybrid with the aim of concurrently building different energy system fitness for different sports at the same time. Friday I’d done a hard 2.5 hours of running on the trails. Saturday Romney and I did an easy six. Easy, but still six hours on uneven snow with probably 4,000’ of elevation gain. Sunday I was a little tired.

In all training for climbing I used to have a rule that if I warmed up and didn’t feel right I bagged the workout. (I still have it, though I haven’t seriously trained for climbing in ages so used to seemed more appropriate). So after 30 minutes or so of easy climbing I stopped.

Yesterday I completed my warm-up. I wasn’t feeling strong but proceeded anyway because I felt fine, just not strong. I’ve been upped the resistance I use on the simulation I’ve set of my project each workout. Day one it was everything I could do to just do the moves, and then complete the three individual sections. Subsequent workouts added weight (using a vest) until I could hike each move first today. Today the plan was to add ankle weights.

Then I got a bright idea (these inevitably go wrong). Instead of using my small ankle weights on my ankles I opted for the larger ones and put the small weights on my wrist. I did a few easy moves on big holds and then cranked up Big Bottom and went for my project.

And wrong it went. I tweaked a finger. Not bad, but definitely a tweak. Feeling that it might be minor enough to finish the workout as long as I stopped climbing I rested and then began my hangboard session. It lasted two sets or so before I became certain it was at least some kind of injury and was off to ice. This morning it feels good. Almost 100%, but still, almost. Time will tell. Certainly shutting the workout down was the right choice .Whether I stopped early enough remains to be seen. If I did I’ve dodged a shit sandwich.

The crazy thing, really, is that can’t stop thinking about whether I can do the moves weighted down as I was. I think that I can, in fact, if my joints remain intact. And that is the crazy drug of power training. Our bodies only go to 10. We’re always trying to push them to 11.

video:ben's i-phone captures an attempt on the delicate slab climb, 'lick my love pump.'

Balance

My entire training philosophy is now based around balance. I’ve always known about the importance of balance but my endeavors as a human lab rat have meant that I was pushing the envelope in one discipline or another, meaning that balance was something that I advised other people to seek. With my ability to perform threatened for keeps, I’ve finally begun to follow my own advice and, in the process, entered a new world where I’m soaking up info like a kid in kindergarten.

I’ve blogged about both yoga and the Kevin Brown Training system. I work in both of these realms daily. All other training, along with my usual climbing, riding, and running, is focused on foundation; merely keeping my engrams primed for the harder training that will follow, once I’m up to speed on all of my benchmarks.

Benchmarks are the cornerstone of Kevin’s training method. These are tests that gauge the strength of your stabilizer muscles. Until they are strong enough to work in harmony with your prime mover muscles, your body is at a high risk of injury. In short, this is exactly why major sports headlines are as much about injury as they are about performance. With all the technological advancement in sport, you’d think we’d get injured less. But it’s exactly the opposite. This is because we focus too much on the prime movers, the large muscles we see that are primarily responsible for our feats of strength, and not enough on the stabilizers that hold our structure together. Essentially, we’re getting so strong that we’re literally tearing our bodies apart.

All you need are headlines to understand how rampant the problem is, but Kevin has done a lot of testing and has scary data. One example: he tested participants at an elite soccer camp and found that less than 10% of the athletes weren’t at high risk of knee injury. These were athletes being coached and doing high level training. Imagine how bad those stats would be for the average weekend warrior who tends to focus on sexier training that graces most books and magazines.

When I told Kevin that I’d be following his program he scoffed, “yeah, for two days!” His skepticism is valid. I’ve known him for close to twenty years. I see him whenever I’m injured and follow his advice until I’m no longer injured, at which point I go back to pummeling myself. I like pain, suffering, and, as one of my friends put it, “chasin’ the hairy edge”. This training is slow, controlled, and pretty much exactly the opposite of what I do for fun.

It also feels kind of, um, dorky. When I asked my friend Bob if he wanted to join me in a hip medley, he looked at me as though I’d just asked him to catch a Bette Midler show. At our meeting a few weeks ago, one of the attendees, who trains military, just shook his head at one of the exercises and said, “I’ll never get my guys to do that. They’d rather get shot.”

It’s hard to look outside on a beautiful fall day and not venture into the mountains. I’ll still go, but instead of spending eight hours traipsing through the backcountry until I’m exhausted, I’ll just get a taste and then come home and do hundreds of slow easy repetitions with puny weights aimed at training every tiny muscle in my body, and follow it with yoga.

And while I yearn to feel the deep pain that prolonged suffering brings, I’ve got to admit that I feel good. Really good. I’ve been at this since July and my range of motion—that was worse than it’s ever been in May after recovering from my injury—is probably better than it was in high school. Along with daily yoga (which also focuses on stabilizer muscle strength), Kevin’s system uses the theory that strong stabilizers reduce the strain on prime movers. This freedom increases range of motion without increases in muscle flexibility (which helps too), and thus increases the muscle’s workload capacity.

My benchmarks are up to the high school level in some things, college level in others. Most people aren’t close to the high school level, and neither was I when I started. When I hit pro, I’ll begin to ramp up my other training. Assuming all of my personal testing goes well, we’ll hopefully have a way to get this info out to all of you by then.

Gina Kolata And The Art Of Saying Nothing

Today the NY Times ran an article deconstructing the time-honored exercise cool-down, finally deeming it unnecessary for most of us. The problem with the article, however, was that its deconstruction forgot to mention the primary reason most fitness experts include a cool-down: to speed up the recovery process.

Is the Exercise Cool-Down Really Necessary?

We’ve seen this kind of misguided analysis before. From the same author, in fact. In 2007 Kolata made the best seller list with a book claiming that our genes were making us fat. Never mind the right-in-front-of-our-eyes fact that there’s no way genetics could explain the massive increase in body fat percentage over one generation, Kolata’s son trained for a marathon and only lost 3 pounds. OMG, there just has to be a money-making hook in that story!

In the same vein, she’s now demystified the reason behind the cool-down, and deemed it useless. Except she hasn’t because she didn’t bother identifying that actual reason.

In what she does present, she still refutes herself by showing some science that a cool-down can be medically dangerous to avoid after intense exercise.

“If you are well trained, your heart rate is slow already, and it slows down even faster with exercise,” he (Dr. Paul Thompson) said. “Also, there are bigger veins with a large capacity to pool blood in your legs.”

So, well, most of us aren’t well trained. But what if we are? Most of us who begin any exercise program have a goal of being well trained at some point and then, well okay, we need to cool down.

But she means the rest of us. For all of the lazy, deconditioned masses, she states, “… it’s not clear what the cool-down is supposed to do. Some say it alleviates muscle soreness. Others say it prevents muscle tightness or relieves strain on the heart.”

“Ooo, ooo,” I say, raising my hand from the back of the room. “I know why we cool down after a workout!”

But, apparently, she decided that interviewing someone who might know the answer, like a trainer, would be counterproductive to her main point. So no one asked me, nor any trainer, or if she did she didn’t like what they had to say and omitted it. So I’ll answer her anyway and maybe someone will tell her.

The reason we cool down is to lengthen muscles that have been contracted during the workout. I mean, there’s the heart/blood pooling thing to avoid to but, as one of her cited experts stated, most of us do this anyway by showing, changing clothes, etc. But there’s a passel of good science showing the benefit of post-exercise stretching leading to increased performance. Apparently, it just didn’t fit into her sales pitch.

Born To Run

I recently had one of the more pleasurable reading experiences of my life. I read a lot. As you might imagine, much of this is fairly technical in its nature so it’s probably not too hard to knock my socks off. But I’m fairly well versed in the classics as well. And while I’m not saying this guy is Shakespeare, or even Hemingway, he certainly spins a good yarn. I admit that the four books I’d read previous were dreadful, so maybe it’s a right place right time experience. But from the time I picked up Christopher McDougall's Born to Run I was captivated to the point that if my flight had been longer I would have finished it in one sitting.

The book is about a bunch of things, but mainly running. I’ve recorded my disdain for such literature in the past but this is different. It’s written by a writer, not a runner. More and more the writings of “experts” are filling up our bookstores. What our publishers have seemed to overlook is that a good writer is an expert, who can write on any subject. I think it’s a disservice to the public to assume that just because someone has credentials in a subject they should be allowed to write about it. After all, would you choose the person who wrote ER as your emergency room doctor?

The main characters are a native Mexican people called the Tarahumara, or Raramuri (running people) and a gringo called Caballo Blanco. The story of Tarahumara is fascinating.

In Tarahumara Land, there was no crime, war, or theft. There was no corruption, obesity, drug addiction, greed, wife-beating, child abuse, heart disease, high blood pressure, or carbon emissions. They didn’t get diabetes, or depressed, or even old: fifty-year-olds could outrun teenagers, and eighty-year-old great grand-dads could hike marathon distances up mountainsides. Their cancer rates were barely detectable. The Tarahumara geniuses had even branched in economics, creating a one-of-a-kind financial system based on booze and random acts of kindness: instead of money, they traded favors and big tubs of corn beer.

You’d expect an economic engine fueled by alcohol and freebies to spiral into a drunken grab-fest, everyone double-fisting for themselves like bankrupt gamblers at a casino buffet, but in Tarahumara Land, it works.

It’s also a story of the history of ultra-running, biomechanics, the shoe industry, and the evolution of human beings.

For example, you probably didn’t know that “runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes...” and this is because we do things like build arch supports:

Dr. Hartman explained, “Blueprint your feet, and you’ll find a marvel that engineers have been trying to match for centuries. Your foot’s centerpiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. They beauty of the arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. No stonemason worth his trowel would ever stick a support under and arch; push up from underneath, and you weaken the whole structure...”

And if I told you that humans evolved as the most-efficient endurance runners on the planet you’d probably think I was a looney, but read Born To Run and then come argue with me.

The book is not above a bit of hyperbole and often borderlines the Largo-ian “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” mantra for writers. But it never strays so far as to lose credibility. But do keep in mind that for anything to land on the best seller list it’s got to take a spin through the hype machine. For an example, watch the news piece below. While it does lay a nice hook for the story, Caballo Blanco himself states “I was NOT happy with that information...did me, the Raramuri, nor the canyons any favors...take it with a grain of salt.”


I was inspired enough to get in contact with Caballo Blanco himself, and will be running with the running people come March. You’ll get the straight dope then but, for now, I recommend finding a copy of Born To Run.

pic: scott jurek y arnulfo quimare en las barrancas de cobre, por luis escobar.

You Can’t Fire A Cannon From A Canoe

I’ve spent the last week at a conference. Well, it’s more of a brain dump, actually. A good friend of mine has cancer and, with his future uncertain, rounded up his friends to put his state-of-the-art training system on the record. In attendance were Olympians, world record holders, college athletes, golf pros, coaches, trainers, filmmakers, photographers and writers. Even though most of us had worked with Kevin on some level, were more credentialed on paper, and had spent most of our lives in athletics, the common sentiment was that we were being given an entirely new blueprint for athletic training.

The title comes from one of the clichés about stability training that seemed pretty appropriate because, until the base is solid, nothing works as efficiently as it should. The system we covered isn’t entirely new. It’s a hybrid of many popular systems based around core and stability training. But it was a lot more than Chek Institute stuff. Kevin’s philosophy is to identify the weak link in the system. Then, by strengthening the weak link, the process allows the strong links to do their job more efficiently. This results in improved performance prior to making gains in prime mover muscle strength (10% improvements in a few months prior to prime mover training seemed about average, which is off the charts).

What’s also revolutionary is that most of us tend to think of this style of training as injury prevention only. And, certainly, that is a big part of it. One of Kevin’s clients, a professional golfer, began working with him at age 14. He’s never had even a minor injury. The high school and university programs that have used his system (which is still evolving) have seen the instances of non-contact injury rates drop to almost zero. In a world where championships are won by the team who keeps the most players on the field, this is not an area to be discounted.

Perhaps the biggest upside is that the system is simple to implement. It doesn’t require expensive equipment or a trainer to supervise your every move. Most of us feel it’s going to change the way we train our athletes on a global scale.

I’m going to leave things a little vague for now. I’ve got 40,000 words to begin to edit and organize. We’re not sure where this will end up but you’ll be hearing a lot more about it here.

Yoga

I suck at yoga but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to get better each day over the last couple of months. Today, while trying to follow Gillian Clark during Pure & Simple Yoga I was again reminded of how bad I am at it. The upside is that in yoga it just doesn’t matter one bit. Ego aside, yoga makes me feel good and that’s all that matters.

While I’m bad at it, I’m definitely progressing. I’ve been asked to list just what I’ve been doing, so here you go. I should qualify this with the back story. I have a ruptured L5S1 disc, which caused sciatic nerve damage. From Jan-June, I could do very little stretching and no forward bending. When I began doing yoga in July, it had to start slow and easy.

I began with Rodney Yee’s Back Care Yoga. This is a one hour session that is broken down into three sections: flexibility, strengthening, and restorative poses. Restorative poses, essentially, use gravity to slowly stretch muscles. These are EASY. So I began using this 20 minute segment as my default practice, while pushing a little harder on days I felt good.

Once I assessed that I could do this without damaging my back, I began starting each day with one of Rodney Yee’s 20 minute sessions from AM Yoga. Yee is one of the old guard of the video yoga movement. He’s an excellent teacher and these videos are perfect for anyone looking to begin with gentle yoga.

Next, Romney bought me (well, us) the Athlete’s Guide To Yoga. This is also a gentle practice that assumes most of your training is done elsewhere. Since most of mine is, it’s great. The instructor, Sage Roundtree, is a little Berkeley-esque for my tastes but she’s thorough and I’ve come to really like this video. The many short routines are programmable for a myriad of workout options.

A mixture of these three videos has been the cornerstone of my practice, which until recently had been entirely focused on rehabilitation.

The progress I’ve made has caused me to move yoga up on my workout priorities. Now I often replace other workouts, even riding or running, with yoga. I figure that I can get that fitness back quickly anyway, so I should focus on the thing that will increase my ability in those areas to improve beyond where they were when I get back to them. This has necessitated a need to increase the intensity of my yoga practice.

For more workout oriented yoga, I’ve been using Clark’s Pure & Simple Yoga (part of the Yoga Booty Ballet series), Chalene Johnson’s Dynamic Flow Yoga (part of the Chalene Extreme series), and Tony Horton’s One on One yogas and recovery workouts. None of these are 90X-ian in their severity but more balanced practices and much better suited to my days where there will almost always be another workout outside. I am about to start adding Yoga X into the schedule, even if just to gauge how I’ve improved, since for years that was the only yoga workout I did. For me, however, the strength aspects of yoga are not my goals. I’m much better at these anyway. My goals are range of motion increase, improved balance and body awareness.

Neither Chalene or Tony are yoga instructors. While this probably makes their style hard for traditional yoga-ites to stomach, it’s likely very appealing to many who are turned off by the historical mumbo-jumbo and just want a workout. They both have a comical style, which you can see here if this link is still working for "Patience Hummingbird." Gillian’s approach is far more traditional. Her knowledge and passion for yoga is unbridled. She makes me want to get better at yoga.

So far, I think the adding daily yoga has been one of my better athletic decisions. It may not help my ability to suffer through the night on some endurance quest (though it may and certainly won’t hurt), but it’s definitely going to help me age with less pain, and it will help my climbing. As my friend Micah, an avid yoga practitioner, said, “for climbing, yoga is like cheating.”

pic: from sonnietrotter.com

The Anti-Inflammatory Myth

“There is no indication or rationale for the current prophylactic use of NSAIDs by athletes, and such ritual use represents misuse.”

Say what? If you’re like a lot of my friends you might want to re-think your use of vitamin I. NSAIDs might be the most commonly-used “supplement” in the sports world. The latest research indicates this should change. Check out this article from Gretchen Reynolds (who has been on a roll with cutting edge advice lately):

Phys Ed: Does Ibuprofen Help or Hurt During Exercise?

Essentially, a bevy of studies have shown that using anti-inflammatory medication to reduce exercise-induced inflammation and, hence, protect ourselves against injury doesn’t work. As the article states, this is a very common practice (A study of professional Italian soccer players found that 86 percent used anti-inflammatories during the 2002-2003 season).

In the sports world jargon, up may as well be down. Here’s an explanation:

“ Warden and other researchers have found that, in laboratory experiments on animal tissues, NSAIDs actually slowed the healing of injured muscles, tendons, ligament, and bones. “NSAIDs work by inhibiting the production of prostaglandins,”substances that are involved in pain and also in the creation of collagen, Warden says.”

I’ve always tried to limit my NSAID intake to when necessary. All drugs are hard on one human system or another, so there’s always a trade off to consider. This, however, has not meant that I used them sparingly. Like most athletes, I suffer from a lot of aches, pains, and inflammation. However I never took these to mask pain. I took them because I thought keeping inflammation at bay would reduce the odds of injury. Apparently this is false. In a study done at the Western States 100:

Those runners who’d popped over-the-counter ibuprofen pills before and during the race displayed significantly more inflammation and other markers of high immune system response afterward than the runners who hadn’t taken anti-inflammatories.

I guess this puts us right back in the no pain, no gain school of training. Next time things start to hurt a little consider this:

If “you’re taking ibuprofen before every workout, you lessen this training response,” Warden says. Your bones don’t thicken and your tissues don’t strengthen as they should. They may be less able to withstand the next workout. In essence, the pills athletes take to reduce the chances that they’ll feel sore may increase the odds that they’ll wind up injured — and sore.

Now we just need to interpret which is the good pain that we should push through, and which is the bad pain that’s hurting us.

Tale Of A Backcountry Accident

For your weekend entertainment, here's a fantastic account of the sort of thing that can happen when you're playing in the backcountry. As a warning, this is not pleasurable reading if you're squeamish. It bothered me, and I'd already heard the story from both parties. Beyond that and it's a great read from the author of Ocean's Eleven.

Micah And Bob Go Bouldering - A Quick Journey To Hell



If you'd like to follow Micah's recovery, befriend Micah ElLameleg on Facebook.

The Beauty of Being Sore

I’m sore a lot, and I’m getting to like it. When I’m sore I know it’s because I’m training. And while it’s always possible to not be sore, it’s the only true indication that you’ve pushed your boundaries. Not being sore leaves questions about whether you’re training hard enough. Soreness leaves no questions.

The virtual Giro is workin’ its magic. Increased time both in the saddle and running has me in a state of breakdown similar to last year’s X off the couch cycle. This extra work has allowed me to tone down my climbing training to allow my elbow to heal. Pushing on the tender tendon now induces only a dull pain. Another hard cycle is right around the corner.

The latest bout of soreness was induced on Sat morning from this:

Grandeur Fun Run

Having barely started running again it promised to double my longest run and add, oh, about 7,000’ more feet of elevation change. I probably shouldn’t have done it but it’s such an aesthetic loop, and practically in my backyard, that I just couldn’t resist.

To offset my penchant for competition, I left late as to avoid any temptation. I must say, seeing a horde of runners stampeding (hmm, more like crawling or slithering, as there’s hardly a step of runable terrain) up the west face of Grandeur Peak was pretty cool.

Beata and I joined in 20 or 30 minutes later and kept a steady and conversational pace throughout. It was also B’s first long run of the year and she was pretty cooked by the end, but happy to get some training in to defend her title at the Doggie Du. The morning was stellar and I finished with a couple of blisters but barely feeling winded. Seeing Mick’s time (like 3rd overall) made me exceptionally happy not to have started with everyone. He’s one of my main training partners and trying to keep up could have put some serious hurt on. I like to think I would have been restrained, but glad I didn’t put my patience to the test.

As it was, I’m still hobbling around and will be on the bike for a few days. But it was a perfect test run. My back feels great, so do my knees, and my elbow. Definitely, I seem to be on the road back.

pic: "you know, some people wouldn't think this was fun." b looking like a lizard slithering up a very steep game trail.

Patience

“If I’m ever on the fence about whether or not to train, I always try and opt for more rest.”

I’m a patient teacher but not a patient athlete. There are days when this little back affliction isn’t very fun, and today is one of those. It’s beautiful out right now and I’m stuck inside, trying to get my head around the fact that the best training I can do is a little passive stretching followed by icing. Ugh.

I wanted to concoct a training program but the reality of my situation is that I can’t. Each day is an evaluation as to what I can and cannot do. So some days I can push, and others I just can’t, or at least shouldn’t. Last night my back hurt so day is a mandatory rest day, even though I’m feeling quite good at the moment. The quote above is from me, btw. This is a mantra that I struggle with when I’m healthy. Imagine what I’m going through now.

Yesterday, I managed to clean up and then nab the first ascent of a traverse—not easily done in these parts. I should be happy with that. But I’m not. I’m restless. I want to head into the mountains, disappear, run, and explore. But I can’t. Not yet. Patience, dammit, patience!

pic: Road House, Deaf Smith Canyon, Utah. "Pain don't hurt."

Sports Day

We leave for France in a little over a month. The trip has already altered from its original scope; from heaps of training to leisurely riding and climbing while hanging with friends. But those friends will be fit and it’s time to test my back a little bit and try and gain a little form for the trip, if for no other reason than to know how to plan the trip. My back survived a rather arduous road/work escapade, so now it’s time to put it through a block of training. Tomorrow I’ll concoct a preparatory phase. In order to get an idea of what this phase can contain, today Romney and I had a little sports day.

My friends and I have been doing these for years. They consist of combining a lot of different sports into a single day. They can be silly, such as the “vortex weekend” where Todd, Reed and I combined running, bouldering, and riding with soccer, whiffle ball, tennis, some other stuff I can’t remember along with a lot of beer drinking and watching more football “than I have in my life,” according to Reed. Or they can be rugged. Birthday Challenges are often sports days, like this.

Today’s was more modest in scope. It would, however, harbor some important firsts for the year. Since my injury it would be my first bike ride, run, ski, and warrior pose. We would also throw in some climbing so I could actually feel like I was getting a workout.

We began doing yoga, where warrior pose didn’t bother me at all. Being tentative, I didn’t push this much and pushing a yoga session—primarily a lot of time in various stages of warrior—is what exacerbated my original injury to the emergency room stage.

It went well, so we packed the car with ski stuff n’ dogs and heading up Mill Creek. Romney’s been skiing all winter so she zoomed ahead with Copper and Beata while trailed with Ratso, working on slow and calculated movements. Icy conditions weren’t perfect and slips were scary, but it caused me to focus on breathing and posture, doing each step with a rigid core. One positive thing about injuries is that they often shift your focus and end up improving your technique. The downhill concerned me because of the ice. I really didn’t want to fall but I also didn’t want to have to take off my skis and walk. It went a little easier than expected. My back was tight but, after a few extending postures in the parking lot, I was ready for the next sport.

Back home, I dusted off the tandem, lubed her up, and filled the tires. At some point on the ride Romney said, “I like when you’re out of shape. It’s so much easier.” Sad, because I wasn’t trying to go slow, but my leg muscles have atrophied a lot in two months. Cycling fitness comes and goes quickly, so I was expecting this. The up side was that the riding was fine. The hardest thing was throwing my leg over the bike, and it wasn’t that hard. I think I can start riding.

Next we went for a run—a short run. My foot is still numb and running is going to take a while, I think. It didn’t hurt but I do worry about the lack of feeling affecting my cadence and leading to an injury. The run itself was easy but afterwards I sat down and almost fell asleep. So far, I’d done what normally would amount to a warm-up and I was getting worked. The upside was that after the run my foot felt better than before. So maybe I need to run.

Next we went up to the G-Spot, where I made some progress on my project and Romney linked about two-thirds of the upper traverse. I’m more psyched on climbing than I’ve been on years, and it was a great way to end the day. Despite my enthusiasm at the boulders, I can barely write this and think there’s no way I’m making it through the movie that’s on tonight’s agenda. Sports day accomplished.

An Old Dog’s Old Tricks

Sometimes an injury can be a blessing in disguise. While I’m not about to call my back a blessing yet—especially given how painful life is at the moment—I will say it’s led to a advance in my training I haven’t seen in a long time.

My climbing peaked in about 1995. Since that time I’ve continued to climb and some aspects of my performance have improved. But like most sports, ultimately, the highest level one can reach comes down to motivation and effective training. And my climbing training has been practically non-existent. This is by choice as I’ve been focusing on other sports, but I do often wonder how hard I could climb now if I had the same motivation to train that I did in the early 90s.

This injury could lead to some exploration in those areas. As my bikes, skis, running shoes and climbing boots gather dust I’ve turned my attention to the only thing I can do: hangboard training. For those who don’t know, a hangboard is an apparatus that is mounted to a wall that’s littered with various holds you might find climbing. You use it by strategizing different schemes using these holds the same way you would design a program using weights. The goal is to improve contact strength, which is the ability to hang onto small holds.

They’re highly effect; and highly tedious. In vogue for only a few years, now they’re mainly seen in homes of people who want their friends to think they climb and in the corner of gyms for kids to play on. It is hard to justify standing in once place doing endless repetitions of hanging off your fingertips when there’s a gym full of routes to climb. Professional trainers will also tell you that a hangboard only trains you for one aspect of climbing. That aspect, however, is far more important than anything else. As Ben Moon put it, “the only thing that really matters is how strong my fingers are.”

“Technique is no substitute for power.” phil requist at @#$%! Video, circa 1991. note the elaborate contraption, called a forearm trainer, that was designed and built by phil

In 1990 I started a small business that forced me inside for about a year until it was running well enough for me to hire employees. During this period I made the biggest improvement in a single span of my climbing life. I did almost no climbing. I ran or biked in the mornings to keep my weight down and trained on a hangboard. The above quote, again from Moon, hung on the ceiling over the board. It was perfect. I couldn’t get outside so, even if wrong, it was the advice I wanted to hear. When I was again able to go outside my technique was crap but I miles stronger than I’d ever been. As my technique came around to where it was prior, my climbing level skyrocketed.

Since I’ve stopped climbing so much, finger strength is what I’ve lacked more than anything else. I can still figure out how to get up things, I often simply can’t hang onto the holds. If my psyche holds out—and right now it’s strong—this injury could be the beginning of a great season, even it it’s not the one I was planning for.

I wish I’d kept my training journals from those days. I used to graph my strength gains and was able to keep the graph pointed skyward most of the time. If my first round of training in any indication, I’m again headed in the right direction. It would be fun to go back and compare an aged climber to a young one.

I begin with a lengthy warm-up. 15 minutes on the bike (about all I can tolerate right now) or stairmaster, followed by a bunch of light weight resistance exercises to thoroughly warm all of my muscles. Then I hang each of the holds I’ll use in the workout without getting pumped. The warm-up has to feel like work. Any abridging increases the risk of injury.

The target of these workouts is hypertrophy, so I’m doing a lot of volume. Later, for power, I’ll do shorter, more intense, hangs. Right now it’s 5 reps of 10 seconds with a 5 second rest for each hold. 2 minutes between sets. I did one workout just getting used to hanging, then I began charting. Below are the numbers (total seconds hanging) for each workout on each hold, in progressive order.

Shallow 2: 20, 31, 33, 50, 46

Small slope: 30, 50, 46, 46, 50

Small pinch: 30, 50, 43, 47, 47

Small crimp: 44, 38, 41, 42, 44

Medium 2: 24, 25, 30, 36, 44

Big pinch: 50, 50, 50, 50, 50

Big sloper: 20, 34, 49, 50, 50

Slopey crimp pinch: 0, 39, 40, 44, 45

Medium 3: 0, 29, 36, 40, 41

Medium sloper: 0, 0, 0, 20, 35

Comparing like holds, I’ve improved during each workout at ratios of: 35%, 6%, 13%, 7%. The bigger increases came when I had an extra days rest. Counting increased volume my workout load has increased 140% in the last two weeks, which is off the charts. A lot of this has to do with engrams (neuromuscular patterns) kicking in so won’t continue indefinitely but it’s still inspiring. My next series adds weight, decreases the hang time, but increases the number of sets. I’ll post my progress when I’m done.

Making Lemonade

With the passing New Year, many of us have embarked on new ambitions. Those with even the slightest foresight tend to make some type of goal at the beginning of the year. Most of us never see these through but that's beside the point, really. What's important is that we make an attempt to improve. As long as this is happening, there's just no such thing as failure.

One of the most interesting aspects of life is that we never know what's going to happen. This is why most New Year's Resolutions fail. Something knocks us from our set routine and, poof, the pressure to succeed is off so we quit. Of course, when we allow this to happen we’re only hurting ourselves. Conversely, when we don't, success is assured. Goals are there to get us moving and their true importance is in the act of moving; not in achieving the quest.

This little piece of self-reflective drivel has arisen out of three weeks on the couch. I hurt my back training. When holistic practices seemed to be aggravating the situation I turned to Western medicine. Now the choice is whether or not to operate. Obviously, this has put a little dent in my plans for 2009. My current goal is to be able to tie my shoes.

While I’m optimistic about the upside this interlude has not lacked in non-Zen moments. I’m not very agreeable when I’m deprived of exercise. Just ask my wife. But being injured has opened a new world of learning and allowed me to re-focus on some different objectives. I’m quite certain that I’m come back from this whole escape fitter and stronger than ever. When life gives you lemons….

pic: one of these sides is not like the other. you don't have to look too close to see the herniation--it's a grey blotch under the large circle of the spinal column.

Injuries

Yesterday my foot popped off a hold while working on my project (video of route, not me), shock-loaded my already weakened shoulder, and this morning I'm sitting here icing and wondering if I need to finally have this thing MRI'd. This will probably affect my fall but probably not my year-long challenge goals. If anything, it will change the climbing agenda, which will give me more time to work on the bike.

Injuries are unavoidable. If you play sports, you'll get hurt at some point. If you don't, you're body will simply break down doing everyday activities. Avoiding all injury is impossible. So what matters is how you deal with injury and how you build you body to stave them off as long as possible.

I recently wrote a two-part series on injuries, prevention, and what to do when you get injured. Following this I was asked to do a radio interview on the subject. Now that I'm injured, again, I should probably do a follow up on how the rehab I do is going to make me stronger than I was prior to the injury.

Here's part I

Part II

The radio interview.

If that doesn't work it should show up on Gary Doyle's archive page at some point.