Neuromuscular recruitment in climbing part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned I knew next to nothing about neuromuscular recruitment. This article by Tom Randall lets me know that I do have some experience with this recruitment phenomenon.

So every time I go to a climbing gym, I have to start warming up by doing a little bit of stretching, then climbing the easiest boulders, then move on to the big walls, whereas my boyfriend can start on pretty challenging routes right away. I have attempted to go straight to a long climbing wall before, and I felt like crap. It feels like I can't reach as far as I'd like to, even though I could, because I stretched. Once I reach a high hand hold, I feel like I struggle to pull myself up (even though I should be using my legs more, like taking the stairs up rather than pulling up, but still). I feel tired half way through, even though it's a route that I would have no problem with if I do it 30 minutes into a climbing session. I always thought it's an issue that my muscles are not warm up enough. I never thought of it as a muscle recruitment issue.

Randall's article reminds me that it is totally a neuromuscular recruitment issue. If I go straight to an intermediate wall, probably only 50% of the nerves and muscles are awakened. No wonder the climb feels much harder than it does when I am fully warmed up on easy routes. In fact, at my current level, the best time to try a route that is at the limit of my level is on the 3rd or 4th long route after warm up on boulders. That is when I feel my performs at its peak. I feel a flow inside the body (blood circulation maybe); my movements are also more flowy. I can push my body's limits -- try a power move that I couldn't do previously, or hang on to that crimp for a little longer than I am comfortable with.

Every person's body works a bit differently than others. My boyfriend seems to be able to do hard stuff right away, and do a hard route at the end of the day when he's super tired. I guess that means he hasn't been climbing at his limits yet. He also recovers super quickly (0-1 day rest), whereas I need at least 2 days rest after a hard climbing day.  Higher testosterone levels and low body fat composition probably helps a lot in this regard. I have also seen beginners who try hard stuff right away without warm up, push as hard as they can the entire climbing session, and then wonder why they do not seem to improve much after a year.

I am sure my training routines are not yet optimized, but I am just enjoying the activity. I am at the stage where I have acquired a bit of endurance that I can "waste some energy" trying a few different things on the wall. I'm sure if I have to climb harder routes later on, I will need to learn to climb more efficiently, ie. clip ropes faster and hang less, and use my legs to hold more of my body weight than my arms.

Climbing -- mental models and perceived limits in my body

As I climb up a tall wall, I get scared by the heights. Being strong muscularly and positioning my body and limbs in steady positions help alleviate the feeling of anxiety. However, I get tired after so many moves. For climbing, often a "pump" is experienced in the forearms. A pump, or a feeling of tightness and burn in the forearm, is caused by gripping a handhold strongly for too long, where the long static contraction of the forearm finger flexor muscles results in restricted blood vessels, limiting blood flow (and thus oxygen + other chemical exchange) to where it's needed the most. 

So at this stage of my climbing career it's mostly caused by bad techniques. I'm gripping handholds for way longer than necessary because my rope clipping technique is atrocious, and I grip harder than needed because I am scared of heights. Nevertheless, when feeling pumped, my instinct is to just take a break (ask my belay partner to tighten the rope and I just hang out for awhile, shaking out both my arms and my calves, before moving on. However, when I climb a relatively easy overhangy route, even though I experience a pump and tiredness in my fingers, I find myself ignoring the pain, pushing through, and continuing to climb until the wall is straight again, because I have this big fear for hanging too far away from the wall (happens when you release your arms, you are hanging perpendicular to the ground, and the wall is tilted away from you).

So, it seems like my fear for hanging in midair combined with my fear of falling can overcome my feeling of tiredness, and my hands work fine. I can keep climbing with pumped arms and cramped fingers for several more moves than where I think my physical limits are. Given this is the case, should I push harder when I climb straight walls too? It's hard to say. There are several conflicting goals. I want to improve my endurance, but I don't want to overdo it and injure my body. I want to push myself hard, but I also don't want to promote bad habits (again, there are better ways of improving my techniques, such as positioning my feet and my body better). But climbing through the pump does help improve endurance.

I guess for people who injure themselves easily while doing sports, they should definitely take it easy. I am probably overly cautious and not pushing my body to its real limits. On the other hand, I am always totally sore the day after a climbing session, so I am not too easy on myself either. Being injury-free probably is a good thing, allowing me to climb more often. I do bang my knees and scrape my skin against holds on the wall too often though, due to carelessness. I hope I can get better at preventing such injuries.

I really enjoy how climbing challenges the nonthinking part of my brain. I feel pain in the head (probably imaginary, but it's the result of pushing it to its limits, given that it controls my body movement and seems to care about safety a whole lot) when I am struggling on the wall. I am unable to think about other things like what worries me in life. Climbing headspace can feel very peculiar. Rationally, I know I am "safe" because I am attached to a rope with a belayer holding on to me. But my perception is that I am in danger, because I haven't mastered stability, especially on walls with some cracks, some protrusions, or some corners.

Many people try climbing once and don't want to do it again. They believe they are just not strong enough to do this sport. But actually most of the fear comes from the brain not being used to operating in this funny vertical 3D space. Once the brain (the limbic system? Hippocampus?) forms a mental map (that the cognitive brain doesn't really understand at all) of vertical space, the inner car alarm will tone down. Then it's time to work on stronger fingers and techniques etc. to climb better.

Rock climbing and feet

For those of you not familiar with how climbing works, to keep yourself on the wall and to move upwards, you mostly stand on your toes (so you can rotate your feet and shift your body in all sorts of ways) and grip the wall with your fingers (could be as little as one finger for the advanced climbers). Hey, I didn't know how climbing worked when I started. I would use my whole hand and whole foot for maximum contact (= feeling of security) with the handholds and footholds.

So, what about the feet?

Well, one of the essential piece of climbing equipments is climbing shoes.  These shoes are made with a thick layer of sticky and relatively stiff rubber all around the shoe, encasing your foot such that all of the toes are squished together, acting as one unit, so you can push hard off of your big toe and generate a lot of force to propel yourself up the wall. The more advanced shoes also allows you you stand on tiny ledges on overhung terrain, and lets you heel hook or toe hook a ledge to balance yourself on the wall.

I have wide, flat feet; so called "fallen arches". I have bunions on both feet. Wearing climbing shoes feels a bit like Chinese foot binding. To be fair, even people with narrow feet don't feel great in climbing shoes, which are supposed to be worn pretty snug, with no deadspace in the shoes. I have purchased several pairs of climbing shoes. I blamed the first one for being too much of a beginner shoe (La Sportiva Tarantulace) that it didn't let me climb harder routes (though I have witness many other people climbing harder routes with the said shoe model). My second pair of climbing shoes, the Scarpa Vapor VS, is supposed to be "the most comfortable intermediate performance-based climbing shoe". It's true that this pair is made with stickier rubber and squeezes my toes more, so I did have more confidence standing on very small holds and climbing climbing harder routes. However, it also was super uncomfortable. It's partly that I have long toes that are weak and can't handle my body weight for very long. So I got another pair of shoes with a flatter profile but is not a total beginner shoe (La Sportiva Finale Women's). It squeezes my foot in a different way. I could keep the shoes on my feet for longer periods of time, but it also isn't as precise on small footholds as the Vapor VS. My toes would still hurt after a period of climbing. With my toes so long, I'm not sure how much stronger they will get, but I will keep trying.

To be honest, I think I'm a bit too heavy for my toes to handle, but I have never been good at losing weight. My feet cramp a lot, sometimes they cramp just from me trying to put the Vapor VS shoes on.  The cramming effect of the shoes can't be good for my feet. When I try to do yoga (feet flat on the ground), I can feel different parts of the foot clicking to try to clear the tension and cramps caused by rock climbing. But at the same time, climbing must strengthen parts of my feet somehow, as I do put a lot of body weight on the toes, and I do feel I can push off of each foot more than I did a year ago. I don't know what are the overall effects of climbing on my feet. Do they make the bunions worse? I'm not entirely sure. I think I should try to do other activities to balance out the effects of climbing shoes on my feet. I should also look into foot reflexology. Someone suggested that I get orthopedics foot inserts for my shoes. I think I would try barefoot footwear first actually, to try to strengthen my foot muscles and tendons.

Lead climbing -- a beginner again

So I feel like a beginner again, climbing route with big, juggy holds. I panic when I can't figure out where to place my feet and one hand comfortably. The rope from below pulls me in funny/scary ways (partly because bf is belaying quite tightly).

When I first got to 6b, the biggest challenge was to be able to do the power moves to reach the next hold, which can be quite far away. Now that I am doing all easy routes (5b's and 5c's), I never imagined the simple act of clipping the rope into a metal draw could cause so much soreness in the shoulder of the hand holding a handhold on the wall for stabilizing the body. I also don't seem to trust my new shoes: La Sportiva Finale on artificial rock footholds. I thought my footwork have gotten a lot better, but turns out they could use a lot more work. It's going back to the foundations:

- Better foot placement needed, better body positioning, arms should hang rather than kept bent, better breathing, keep movements slow and smooth, don't panic (breath!!), and remind myself that I am strong enough to get through these "easy" routes.

Through climbing, I'm noticing I have a ton of self doubt and self-distrust. Even though I end up topping all the routes I have tried so far, I had a lot of negative self talks while doing it, such as "I'm not going to make it", " I'm going to fall", "This route I chose is way too hard for me", etc. I panic super easy the moment I come to a spot where I'm not totally sure what to do next. The thing is, I usually end up resolving the problem. It's my brain's default mode for everything that I do. I'm not a good cheerleader for myself. I need to start believing in myself more.

I really think climbing is a good way to examine how my thinking habits work and try to change it to a more positive tune, or at a minimum, recognize all the self doubts and negative talks I do normally. Hopefully I learn to nip the negative self talk in the butt and feel more confidence about my capabilities.

Rock climbing progress after 1 year

The activity of climbing is like being on a hamster wheel or an angled treadmill -- you have to keep doing it to just move up in levels, or even just to stay at the same level. The moment you stop doing it (for more than a week), you slide back down in the amount of power, strength and endurance.

First I went on vacation for 3 weeks and did zero climbing. When I came back, even the simplest route (5b/5c) felt difficult. I guess that was somewhat understandable, given I wasn't exercising my body (especially upper body) much for like 20 days. But then, when I spent a month only bouldering, which emphasizes short bursts power moves, I also felt weak on the rope climbing wall, which consists of a series of moves requiring less power but more endurance. My wrists were really feeling it after a few routes. Climbing at my highest level (6b/5.10c) felt impossible.

Then when I started training for lead climbing (bringing the rope up the wall as one climbs, instead of having it set up at the top anchor, known as top rope), I picked the easiest routes on the wall (4 to 5bs). It felt super awkward to have the rope in between my legs instead of hanging from above. I also did not know exactly where to place my body to minimize energy usage. As a total chicken about slipping and falling to my death, I gripped the handholds super hard. One year of climbing seems to have provided me enough endurance to do a lot of over-gripping (read: waste more energy than necessary to keep me on the wall) the holds while still completing several easy routes. I would be sore the next day, feeling like I have trained pretty hard. Unfortunately, when I went back to the bouldering wall, I could no longer boulder at my highest level at bouldering (6a+/6b). 

So the situation for the last 3 months is somewhat frustrating, but also kind of illuminating about this activity. Even though I have been climbing every single week, I have been slipping back because I haven't been consistently pushing my limits. It's not like I feel I climb worse every week. In fact, I have been feeling better about being in a lot of awkward body positions. It's just that, specifically, hand/wrist strengths and power moves require consistent training. I can already see that by starting so late in life, I will not get super far in this sport. However, I am still hoping to build a foundation such that I can still climb 6A-6B when I am 50-60 years old.

Basic understanding / beginning interest in neuromuscular recruitment

I have been very interested in how the body reacts to a new physical activity ever since I started yoga. When I was taking physical education classes in high school, we mainly did ball sports, which require a lot of quick hand-eye / arm-leg coordinations, running, quick bursts of sprinting, and a competitive mindset. Because I have never been great with quick coordinations, I often lose the ball, be it soccer, basketball, badminton, or frisbee. I also lack the strong desire to sprint faster than the next person for a few seconds in order catch that frisbee or dive hard for that volleyball. These sports require a ton of intuition and spontaneity.

For activities like hiking, snowboarding, yoga, and climbing, it is a totally different mindset. You are in less of a rush. The goal is kind of to keep the body moving, to be immersed in the experience and feel the movements. There is also coordination required, but you are more looking in a general direction rather than at a specific item outside of your body. Of course at a competition level these activities can be fast-paced, but when performed as leisurely activities, it is more enjoyable to focus on the breathing, whether or not the movements feel smooth and natural, in order to enter a flow. While learning the movement for these activities, one even has time to examine the body specifically from within: Am I using my leg muscles correctly for this lunge? Are my cores engaged adequately for this specific move? I find the whole internal inquiry journey quite enjoyable. Perhaps it's because I'm ultra nerdy.

I learned a lot about anatomy and breathing in general through learning yoga. However, I know very little about how the nervous system adapts to exercises. I mean, my nervous system tells me how I feel in the body before, during, and after a yoga or climbing session, but I'm not sure how to observe the nervous system itself. I know it's ramped up as my heart rate increases and my breathing becomes quicker and shallower. When the heart rates starts to calm down and I feel overall less panicky during cool down, that's the parasympathetic nervous system at work. After a yoga session, I usually feel a sense of electric pulses flowing up and down the body, but I'm not sure if that's the nervous system itself or more of the nadi channels / chi / elusive meridian system.

For yoga, from not being able to do an asana at all to feeling comfortable in an asana, there is of course neuromuscular recruitment. But it is not as apparent as climbing, when I started from not be able to do a single pull up (in fact, I could only hang on a bar for about 2-3 seconds before my shoulders and just the whole nervous system screaming at me to let go), to being able to hang for 5 seconds, with no more mental panicking; rather, just the nerves on the skin on my hands ask me to give my hands a break. Now I can do some pull ups (not great ones, since I do not specifically train for them), and can do some lock-offs (hold my arms in a tight bent position for 1-2 seconds). That is an obvious neuromuscular recruitment improvement.

I need to read up more on nervous systems in order to better describe how I feel in my journey of learning to climb.

Bouldering movements

I have been watching IFSC bouldering world cups on Youtube lately. I am very happy to discover this spectator sport. It is super exciting to watch, actually. This takes place in several cities in Asia, Europe, and North America each year. It is not televised, but is live streamed and can be played back later on Youtube. There is a qualifying round, a semi-final, and the final, where only the top 6 male and 6 female athletes are given 4 minutes to solve a boulder problem (4 boulder problems total).

Just what is a boulder problem? For competition climbing, it is a bunch of plastic handholds and footholds that one has to move through ("solve the sequence") to get to the top hold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgkRwiNQQs

In this video you see many athletes not being able to complete the problem at all, and the last guy completing the sequence, thus winning the competition.

What the video edited out is his previous 6 attempts, which is what I have enjoyed watching in the live stream version. In the first attempt an athlete often fails at an early stage. With each attempt the athlete "learns" the movements with his or her body, and gains some muscle memory. A good athlete usually improves with each attempt. If one doesn't run out of energy or time, one can often solve the problem within 4 minutes. A tall person often has reach advantage, but a short person can have better control of the centre of gravity and has better control of the body for explosive power movements. I just love to see the 4 minute progression where these world class athletes can go from totally failing to mastering a particular boulder problem.

I normally enjoy watching Youtuber climbers ranging from pretty good to really awesome monkeying around in their home gyms. But right after watching a World cup, where 22 year olds dominate the podium, the Youtuber climbers' movements seem somewhat sluggish. I guess right after watching Usain Bolt win a race, your friend who just won the local sprinting competition would look a bit slow too.

Does watching athlete boulder help with my own bouldering progress? Well, my progressions has been as follows:

Stage 1: Not able to do anything except what looks like a straight ladder climb on the wall (with big juggy hand and footholds).

Stage 2: Trying V1 (French grade 5) climbs that require some shift in body weights. Not able to read routes at all. My hands would hurt after holding my body on the wall for >3 seconds so I would come off the wall right after starting a route.

Stage 3: Being able to shift my body weight a bit more so I could do the V1s.

Stage 4: Hands getting a bit stronger so I could get on the wall, stay there a bit while looking for the next hand/foothold.

Stage 5: Get on a boulder, imagine what a world class athlete would do for the next step (some power jump move to the next handhold), and then recognize I am not strong enough to do it myself.

So I went from not knowing how to solve boulder problems to mentally knowing what to do but physically not able to do it. Believe it or not, this is a major improvement. Climbing is always both physical and mental.

By the way I just moved to another city (yet again). The boulder problems here are quite a different style than in my previous gym. I was doing 6A+s/V3/V4s. But now apparently V3s are out of reach for me here because they put dynos in (jump to the next hand holds... I am unable to jump while on a wall right now). So I will work on my balances and core strengthening (on the wall, not working out at a gym), hoping by the end of the year I will see some improvements.