Boldering Forums

So most of us are fighting father time and shiz...

I'm trying to step up my game after knee and shoulder injuries, and resulting 3 year layoff.

Trying to train, but a couple of my fingers are stiff in ways that they didn't get back in my 20's. It's like they need WD40 or something. I wake up the next morning after a hard session and can't ball a fist because of the stiffness in a finger. I've been taking glucosamine stuff and fish oil, but it's not much better.

Is this just bad genetics? or do I need to rest more... build base before I train like a maniac? Maybe just str8 old. 35, feelin' 50 son...

Nutriex and ease back in...

Perhaps try to base up before doing any harder problems or training. Maybe something like a 4-6 week block of 3-6X 10-20 minute pieces on the wall very easy. Or just lots of volume on very easy onsight routes with a patient belayer. relatively speaking compared to other sports that's actually a short base for periodization, but if you do two macrocycles with two peaks in one year, indoor and outdoor seasons, that should be enough to prepare for harder training. I've tried to base with boulder circuits, but found it's too easy to jump into stuff that's actually hard too soon. Campus boards, hangboards, and system wall all should get saved for later in the training cycle. Even easy campusing is hard.

I feel now (at 37) like i need way longer to warm up also. A little skipping, hike or jog, range of motion all over, massaging the forearms and fingers, finger flicks, partial bdy weight hangs, then super easy climbng to start. And spending time just baking like an iguana in the sunshine between sets. We spend a lot of time thinking about the work to rest ratio in other sports or lifting. That could be better thought out in climbing. Easiest would be to adopt a periodization from say an olympic liftng program and plug into that.

Or just get existential, do whatever, and embrace mortality.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=dr.bronn ... 24&bih=593

WD40 is weak sauce

Enjoy taking cold showers with all the different kinds

stonefiend wrote: 35, feelin' 50 son...

climbed all weekend.

suck it up 'son'.

Just got back from a night session hoping to bag a handful of easy routes. Had to rescue draws on some 12d slab in the dark. Epic..

i gotta tweaked pulley in my middle finger. how long til that shit heals? sucks balls.

pretty sure LOX recommended this product:



i started taking 4 pills twice a day a few months ago hoping to get some relief from sore elbows, aching knees and nagging lower back pain. honestly, the product must help because, now that i think about it, i have had significant improvement in all of the three areas i mentioned.

i started climbing at age 30 and in a few weeks i will have been climbing for twenty years. i think i'm just really starting to get the hang of it. over the past two years i made physical and technical progress by trying harder to work on fundamentals and having fun. this year i am hoping to do the best climbing of my life - if i can continue to progress, and if i'm lucky and can stay healthy and free from injury.

whenever i hear somebody younger than me bitching about getting old i can't help but think of the time i hiked a few hours up Mt. Olympus in Salt Lake City before turning around one summer day because i was tired and didn't have it in me to finish to the summit. on my way down, just as i was thinking to myself about how i was getting old and feeling sorry for myself, i was passed by an old guy with white hair who was running and on his way up. He looked to be at least in his upper sixties. except that because he was shirtless i could see his torso was cut like somebody half his age and he was running at a pretty rapid pace.

my mind was blown. that was the day i realized how stupid it sounds for anybody younger than that guy to ever complain about, or use age as an excuse.

I'm not that old but training my hand strength in a safe and controlled manner outside of 'just climbing' has reduced the amount of tweekage I experience quite a bit.

Hang boarding FTW.

+1 Nutriex Sport

Yea. I don't take Nutriex, but have recently been taking Osteo-biflex (MSM/Glucosamine/Chondroiton/stuff), fish oil and multivitamins to supplement my 4000 calorie diet.

Fingers are feeling better. Like all lubed and shiz. Middle finger still feels stiff in the morning like criz'... squeeze the tender spot and it feels hella bruised. Been taping that bitch.



pinky finger is feeling strong.

Just a guess that any health and performance issues you have aren't a result of undertraining.

Lucky thing is that in taping like that, with the cross under the knuckle and the joint pre-tension loaded, the pulley function is supported. My sense is that those pulleys are often gettng tweaked and torn a bit in training. Best would be if the rest cycles for recovery are planned rather than reactive if possible.

Open hand for life!

stonefiend wrote: Middle finger still feels stiff in the morning like criz'... squeeze the tender spot and it feels hella bruised. Been taping that bitch.


pinky finger is feeling strong.

its true, i get huge pinky boners in the am.

I used to not share all of my climbing tips on purpose because I wanted the competition to not be as good...Hopefully you guys can find this to be beneficial



Get brown rice and if you always wash your hands with orange oil right before the exercise you can eat some of the rice so you have carbs ready to burn while doing the exercise...If you do not have carbs in your body ready to use then your body is burning muscle tissue for energy. Enjoy chick pea's & or red meat (but not pork) with the rice so you can get some nitric oxide which helps with endurance & strength. Do not take nitric oxide supplements from stores like GNC because they blow out your kidney's.

i feel kind of loathe in some regards to post this, but this kid sent my projects, so i feel obliged.



this is bouldering taken to a kind of hypertrophic extreme on the training side. but then that's good preparation to send outside. one caveat would be that indoor climbing doesn't teach footwork well.

you know what hurts my hands? falling on them and banging into rocks and all.

it's probably not awesome. ice it. rest i suppose. warm up better.

pinches seem non-problematic compared to crimps or pockets but the whole hand aspect can tweak things also. doing the same thing over andover can be dangerous. i find the angle of the hold with pinches and the wrist orientation can make it more or less comfortable to hold.

RIP allez up- some pleasant memories of comps there. they really had it feeling like it was going on .