It is hard for me to imagine now, how I got to my current level in climbing, without doing much training. Not only have I not done much training, but in the past I almost had a disdain for training, okay, I had an outright disdain for training. I would even secretly make fun of people training at the gym. Or maybe I wasn’t necessarily making fun of the training itself, but what these folks were doing for training. It was almost like I knew somehow, that the guy dynoing V5 all over the gym wasn’t going to improve his climbing by doing more pullups. I also had some bad experiences getting injured during, after, and seemingly even before extensive training.
My ex used to tell me I had strong fingers and great footwork but I lacked “body strength”. I guess I didn’t know what on earth he meant, and at the time, I was too afraid the answer to a question such as, “What do you mean?” would destroy my fragile little ego. I imagined he meant that the functioning of all my body together wasn’t strong, or that my torso needed to be bulked up, or maybe even my legs were weak, but no, that didn’t really make sense. Body strength. I guess I still don’t really know what he meant; looking back I should have asked for clarification because I possibly could have been 3 years into training this so-called body strength already. Because as I sit here now, revelation in hand, it looks like I am in for the long haul of developing body strength right from scratch.
What I think my ex was talking about was upper body strength, the big muscles, shoulders and biceps, muscles women seem to have a hard time developing. I have just recently put it all together, after many years! So I thought I would write about it and hopefully save others with a lack of "body strength" some time and frustration.
Here’s how it all came about. It was when my husband Mike convinced me to train with him one night on his “Moon board” that I had a huge epiphany, actually both of us did. It was from then on that I will never forget that I am a woman and he is a man, and all women are women and all men are men. Sorry, but even the strongest women in the gym have the same shortcomings in terms of this body strength as I do. Mike and I were doing the hangboard. Mike was amazed at how I could hang from his Moon board with one hand on any hold, no weight taken, for seemingly however long I wanted. I was rather astounded that he could not hang at all, and had to use weight bands in order for him to complete the task. I thought I was a total hotshot. But then it was my turn to be astounded by his amazing strength. We went to one-armed lock offs and he casually held his weight for 10 SECONDS!!!! We kept on adding the bands for me and even with 5 bands, I could still not hold my weight up on one arm for 10 seconds. We have both climbed V10. How is it possible to have such combinations of strengths and weaknesses and get to such a level? That’s a question for another blog.
I once did an experiment at ACTIVE gym in Athens based on an hypothesis that arose from some personal experience and observation, because that’s what I do, experiments. I asked the women that were there in the gym to do 3 fast pull-ups. They were beginners and intermediate climbers alike, one girl was there for her first time in the gym and couldn’t even do one pullup!! I had to tell her newbie boyfriend to quit at around 9. None of the girls could do a fast pull-up like the guys could. Okay, so pretty elementary; women have a difficult time with pull-ups relative to almost any man, who is in shape. Given, that may be rare these days. But don’t you think someone like me, who has been climbing for 13 years should be able to do some fast pull-ups? NO. Don’t you think powerhouses like Whitney Boland or Jill Sompel should be able to hold themselves in an unassisted lock off for 10 seconds, NOPE!!!
Now that I have fully recognized the value of training my body strength weakness, I want to go full steam ahead! Of course that’s what I want to do. You’d think you could just jump right in full steam! But no, there’s a catch, just like developing technique, or finger strength, or anything climbing, these things take time and loads of patience. If you read the small print on any of these training methods, even for those nice big large muscles, you need to use caution, lest you end up injured.
My plan was to do 1 session of campus board training, 1 session of lock off training and 2 sessions of bouldering at TBA per week. No hangboarding because I already have strong fingers. Within the first week, I had my first ever case of elbow inflammation!!! First ever I swear. Why? I think because my body is so accustomed to putting as much weight as I can on my feet. From what I have read, the elbow is the weak link. All those big muscles and tendons all connect right there in the elbow at a small little joint and are easily inflamed.
So, bottom line is that I had to stop all training, recommended in the fine print to prevent tendonitis, and I am realizing I will have to develop this body strength over a much longer period of time than I had previously thought. Argh. My message to all women out there, start training body strength gradually NOW!
