Travel, Social Media, Learning to Fly

I haven't been

writing lately because I've been traveling a ton, trying to finish my private pilot's license (maybe by December at this rate!), training a bit despite a really gimpy foot, etc. Plus writing about four articles for various publications, prepping for shows, climbing (went drytooling yesterday!), planning for 2011 and some other stuff like being a dad and finishing house projects. Life is great really, but sometimes there's a lot of it to wrestle all at once. I feel incredibly lucky every damn day to be alive.

Social Media:

I've been on Facebook for a year, and it's a fun combination of voyeurism, communication, posing and public heckling. I've also got this Twitter feed thing, Linkedin, and some other stuff I can't figure out what the hell to do with. But at some point I have to ask this: Is all of this communication making my or your life better? More fulfilling? I'm still working through that one, and while I do there's this cool vid on Facebook I've got to watch... Attention Deficit Disorder and the internet just had to be made for each other, it's brilliant. What were we talking about?

Paragliding:

Over the years I've had a lot of people ask, "How do I learn to fly paragliders?" I wrote the following over the years to answer that question, here's what I generally send back.

What I tell everyone who wants to fly is this:

-Flying is "time expensive," especially when you're learning. It's going to eat about a minimum of 100 hours of your time to get going, plus dicking about driving to and from the hill etc. Once you've got basic skills it's about the same entry cost as skiing without the lift ticket prices.

-Flying is the only sport I've ever done where you absolutely must complete a good instruction course or you will die. You may die even with good instruction. The risk is comparable to riding a motorcycle, but as the air is invisible the dangers just aren't apparent without some good schooling. You'll likely survive learning how to climb, kayak, cave, even maybe ride a motorcycle, but good instruction is critical to staying on the right side of the odds bet in the air.

-It's very addictive. You may quit your other sports, spend money on tickets to warm places with thermals, and generally squander all kinds of time and money. In fact, you'll need to do this for a couple of years to get a solid base level of skill.

-Don't buy equipment until you have your basic ratings. Even then use the school's stuff for as long as possible, and then either buy used from the school if you've got Moroccan bargaining skills, or have an experienced friend help you buy stuff off the web. You can get a solid used setup that will get you through your first two years of flying for about $2-3,000, and which will actually be worth something when you sell it 'cause you will want to upgrade, maybe $1500. If you have a fat wallet then by all means drop the $6K on new gear, your school will love you as they often make more money on gear than on instruction, good to understand this.

-If it's sumer and the weather is reliable in your local area learn there. If the weather is not super reliable in your local area then go someplace where it is more reliable for two weeks and fly your brains out, get the basic ratings done, then continue your training locally. I like Point of the Mountain, Utah, and Santa Barbara, California in general. Lots of other good schools out there too and this is not meant to slight anyone, just that these two places have a selection of schools so you can find one that fits your personality, and the weather is generally reliable in both places. A good relationship with your local operator is important; even if you get your ratings somewhere else you'll still want to get onside with your local school/shop/guru. Paragliding likely has the most retarded politics of any sport I've ever been involved with at the school level, it's insane, but there it is, better to just recognize it and do your best to work with it.

-Your learning is really just starting when you get your basic ratings; if you can find a good local crew of pilots to fly with you will progress faster, have more fun, and be safer. I owe a huge debt to the all the "crows on the fence" at the two places I really learned to fly, everyone does. Do NOT be the guy who knows it all, you suck and will for some time. On the other hand some very good pilots are also idiots, you'll likely figure out who is helpful and who isn't pretty quick. Buy the guys who are helpful beer, they will become more helpful. If someone yells at you in the air figure out why, and remember that in the US a significant percentage of the pilots are armed. In Canada they're just fierce and don't need guns.

-I do not regret one hour of time I've ever spent in the air. It's great, have fun, stay open, learn, yeah!

Right, I'm back on the blogging train, yeah! I hope your fall is going well, it's finally Indian Summer here in Canmore, which is gorgeous after a truly horrendous August and September. If we hadn't had the last two weeks of good weather I'd be booking tickets to Vegas or something, it was truly a dire late summer here in the Canadian Rockies. But now it's perfect, stoke!

Some words on shoes...

Pain, Comfort, Satisfaction

There are a lot of different kinds of pain, and any sane person tries to avoid most of them. It's human nature to want to be "comfortable." Some kinds of pain should be avoided: torn muscles, snapped tendons, relationship drama (all super damaging to training effectively and therefore to performance), but I make my best training gains when I push into areas of pain, especially mental pain, and all pain is mental.... I think embracing pain and becoming comfortable or even desiring it in training and in performance is essential to getting better as an athlete. The amount of pain someone will tolerate is directly related to the desire the person has for something on the other side of that pain. If an athlete really wants to get better then he or she will tolerate and even seek out pain.

If an athlete pushes hard in training then he or she will push hard when it's time to do so while performing. One of the biggest benefits of lifting weights is not in the actual strength training but learning that you CAN lift the weight one more time when your head says, "No." Yes. Twice more. I think this sort of experience teaches both mental toughness and deeper muscle recruitment, both essential to performance.

Years ago I watched one of the best rock climbers in the world climb one of his hardest routes ever at that time. He fought, bled, screamed, and left NOTHING in his attempt. He succeeded and clipped the anchor, then unclipped it and started down climbing for the training. I try to emulate his attitude when appropriate in my own training; to dig deeper, to suffer, to look through the mist at the goal, and upon getting there to shut up and keep going farther

I see some athletes (and I'll use climbers as an example) get a little beaten down and then just give up and say, "take" or stop running back up the field or whatever. They then wonder why they're not progressing, why they're "training" and yet the same old level of exertion still feels hard. The reason it feels hard is that they are letting it feel hard. I've watched numerous athletes say, "I'm too pumped to climb," but if their friends scream at them they'll keep climbing, often for dozens more moves. Watch a guy on the bench lift the weight to "failure," then see what happens when his friends start yelling at him. More reps, guaranteed. Soon the pain becomes irrelevant, it's only upward motion that counts. That is a state of grace.

This post-pain functional state must be entered into in training to be achieved in actual performance. The mind must be conditioned to dominate discomfort, and can be. But it's really uncomfortable in a way we don't often have to deal with as the monkeys on top of the economic ladder...

The corollary to this is satisfaction, of thinking, "Good enough." That's the same as saying, "I'm comfortable with that." If you're comfortable then you're not trying. The best athletes in any sport I've ever been involved with may win, but they're only satisfied for a short time. In training they judge their sessions not by the number of pounds lifted, but by how much attention, focus, grit and even meaning was extracted from the training session. If they are having a strong day they aren't happy with a "personal best," they're only happy when they dig deeper and give it their true best. On a rough day they don't cry and pout when way off their best, they do the best they can with no drama or theatrics. They reach the anchor or their goal, and then start climbing down or pushing another rep because they can, and don't let some arbitrary level of satisfaction dictate the result. The very best athletes don't need a crowd to perform, they could be in a dead-silent cavernous gym and they're still going to do their best.

Training like this is scary. In life we don't generally lay it all on the line, and rarely publicly. It's almost like making love in public or something, it's a bare naked, all-out, intimate, no reserves display of true character if done well. The thing about doing your best is that there aren't any excuses left to hide behind, the clothes are all gone. Many people never see what's there, much less show it to others. The neat thing is that when you do your best it's always fucking cool, no matter what it looks like. We're all gonna cheer for the fat bastard struggling across the finish line 'cause we all know he's leaving nothing behind him. Respect.

The more I train and work with other athletes the more I see a simple truth appear: It's not how many reps that count, but how many were done after the "goal" was reached. I think one of the reasons Crossfit is effective for many people is that most workouts are done for time. There is never a "good enough" in hard training, there is only the point where the weight won't move or you're in the air if you're a climber. That's your best.

Now, a problem with all of the above is that getting injured, over-trained, and generally destroyed too often is a sure path to athletic failure. Once an athlete figures out that trying really hard in training gets performance results they often over-train and end up regressing. "Gee, I'm stronger now after training three days a week. Imagine what I could do on five days a week!" Get over trained and injured is the imminent answer. Training must be periodized to some extent or the result will always be a burned out or injured athlete. I know, I've done that lots, and watched numerous other athletes do the same without even knowing what was happening. There are a lot of climbers from the 90s who had to battle chronic fatigue, adrenal problems, etc. etc., let's not repeat that experiment (I think there's likely a correlation to continuous "met con" or power endurance or whatever anyone wants to call it programming and adrenal issues here, but I don't know enough about how this works to figure it out, just see the results among too many people for it to be coincidence).

Failure is an easy marker to hit, but it's often not the most effective thing to do.... A cyclist may not need to redline repeatedly on a five-hour ride, in fact doing so would be counter-productive. Balancing all these variable is what keeps sports and training interesting for me.

One more rep, one more move, break the comfort shell into a thousand sweaty pieces, do your best with no excuses.

There are a million problems with the above, but I hope it makes sense to someone other than me. My own training is never perfect; scattered, incomplete, not as much, too much, what am I training for, but I do know when I've done my best. Give 'er.

Rolling, Fitness and Kayaking

I've had a ton of fun with a personal kayaking resurgence in the past three years, thanks to a good crew of people here in Canmore and elsewhere, it's been great, yeah! New boats, new rivers, new tactics, loving it, it sure is a great sport. But I'm seeing two issues: Paddlers with lousy rolls, and unfit paddlers. I'll deal with the rolling issue first as it's simpler.

If a person can't roll effectively on both sides of a kayak with or without a paddle he or she has no business being on a serious whitewater river with any sort of serious hazards. A poor roll is a hazard to the paddler, the people rescuing the paddler, and the Visa card when new paddles and boats have to be purchased. Go to the pool or a warm lake, put on a mask, and learn. It will only take a few sessions, and these may keep you from being beat up, losing your paddle, boat or life. When I learned to paddle 30 years ago rolling was still sort of optional; "good" paddlers could roll anywhere, the rest of us hoped to one day roll regularly. After a particularly bad swim in the glacial Athabasca river while wearing a rain jacket I went to a lake with a swim mask a few times and spent maybe eight hours learning to roll up from any possible position I could think of. It's been more than 20 years since I did this, and I've never swam in that period because I couldn't roll up. I'm not special, I just put a modest amount of work into learning a basic skill. There is just no excuse for not being able to roll well other than sheer laziness. My friend Doug Ammons wrote a great essay about rolling up in a class V drop with broken ribs and a bunch of other injuries. He felt that if he had swam he would have died because he couldn't swim with his injuries... I don't know if I could do that, but his point is that a roll should be instinctual and easy enough that the paddler can do it anytime, anywhere. There are likely some paddlers reading this who want to make excuses. Tell 'em to yourself while you're underwater. I've taught kayaking for decades, everybody can have an absolutely bomber roll, full stop.

Now that I've got my rant level up to speed I'll address kayakers and fitness:

Being unfit in a kayak on a difficult river is dangerous. If you're on a play run chilling out then it's no big thing, but here in the Rockies and west people tend to run difficult creeks a lot. Creeking automatically involves carrying your boat in rough terrain, getting beat down in the river occasionally, and having to fully redline your body when things go a little wrong . In the last 30 years I've seen multiple incidents on the river that were, in my opinion, primarily due to lack of strength and stamina, not lack of "skill." Although harder to get than a solid roll, fitness is also important.

High intensity training (going all-out for up to 20 minutes straight) relates directly to being able to put out a lot of physical energy on the river, and then recover quickly from that exertion. If you can blast out a classic "metabolic conditioning" workout then it's going to help when you have to rodeo out of a hole and then keep paddling a long rapid, or have to carry your boat alongside a river in rough terrain, or rescue me. All of these situations are also heavily skill dependent, but I'm seeing paddlers with good skills get worked for a few minutes and then have no energy left to continue dealing and swim or fall down because they're tired. Now, if you can't breathe then no amount of conditioning is going to help with that problem really, but that's actually kinda rare when kayaking--if you have a decent roll!

In climbing if you don't have the skill or fitness you usually can just stop and rest. Same with mountain biking and a lot of other sports. But in paddling it's possible to have the skill to flow with the river until all of a sudden you need the fitness backup and it's not there...

The first place I really noticed a direct improvement from doing Crossfit (which has a lot of HIT training in it) was on a real bitch of a river trip in BC. We were on the first descent of the upper Atnarko river, which would be an all-time classic run if weren't clogged with logs for most of its length. The banks were unstable, vegetated and steep. Due to video and camping gear and some other stuff my boat weighed at least 75 pounds. A 75-pound pack sucks, a boat is way worse. But, due to exercises like thrusters I felt reasonably strong doing battle; the connection was clear in a way it seldom is while climbing or just moving in the mountains. One of the other people on the trip was also reasonably fit, and strangely the two of us were generally having more fun than the other three... Not dissing them, we got down it as a team, but I think our relative fitness really helped the two of us.

Now, skill almost always trumps fitness in sports after a certain base level (Gladwell's "threshold" point where you're tall enough, smart enough, strong enough, whatever to be in the game). A highly skilled but unfit kayaker will be a lot safer than a highly fit but unskilled kayaker on a class V run. But skill and fitness aren't mutually exclusive; go kayaking a LOT for months, like four days a week for three months, and you'll likely develop the strength and skill necessary for that. But most of us don't paddle four or more days a week all year, or even if we do paddle regularly it's often not at a high enough intensity level enough of the time to develop the "flat-out gear" an emergency situation demands. Technical rock climbers routinely go as hard as they possibly can in their sports; redpointing or onsighting a hard route means going all-out. But kayakers don't, so when that output level is required while getting worked it's often not there.

Being aerobically fit isn't enough either; the ability to run slowly for an hour isn't effective when you're trying to muscle out of a situation on the river, totally different pathways and requirements. Done perfectly, kayaking demands mostly mental skill and good movement patterns, and not a lot of strength. But most of us aren't perfect; I need to be able to sort stuff out when I'm getting beat down, and then have the strength to continue dealing immediately. I think the ability to continue putting out power at a high level is more important than absolute power; for example, a small woman will do better than a strong man if she has the skill and fitness to rodeo out of a hole and then still keep functioning at 80 percent of her max for the next 30 seconds. The man could exert more one-move power maybe, but if he's finished after that and his heart-rate is at 90 percent of max and not coming down for a minute it's game over, he's swimming or slow as hell on the bank.

It's easy to fix this problem: do some form of strength and high-intensity training three days a week for an hour or so total (including the warmup). That'll make a huge improvement, plus it's fun. Many outdoor adventure types have an aversion to training; cool, but personally I have an aversion to getting beat down hard in the river. I'll train to help avoid that situation, plus high intensity training is just that: intense, like paddling can be, and I like it.

I generally like Crossfit and think it's a form of training that's appropriate for paddlers. It's also open-source, meaning that it's free (unless you want to join a Crossfit gym). The hype and posing among some Crossfitters is somewhere between comical and a complete turn-off to many individualistic outdoor types, but the workouts and ideas are unarguably effective, you don't have to buy the T-shirt to do the workouts.

Anyhow, time to go train, I've had a couple of days getting soft.... Might have to work on my roll a bit too.

PS--There's some stuff on the Crossfit site about Brad Ludden, a damn good paddler, but it's subscription only. This article is interesting.

PPS--I received a couple of emails on what roll is most effective. The short answer is the one that gets you back to the surface the most consistently in the least time. The longer answer is that I'm a firm believe in the full sweep, front tuck to coming up on the back deck roll. I've seen and taught many different rolls, but over the last 20 years the front sweep to almost lying on the back deck roll seems to be the most effective for the most people. It's basically a back-deck handroll when broken down into components, so add a paddle blade for leverage and it's the most powerful roll on the river. Some people will argue that it's dangerous because the paddler is laid out on the back deck, but the paddler is usually above the surface of the water by about 120 degrees from the initiation. The most dangerous roll is the one that doesn't work the first time.

Mountain Heptahlon

The Heptathlon is an eight-sport track and field event. A friend and I were out for some heavy breathing (that sounds more exciting than it was) the other day and got into what sports would define a "mountain heptathlon." The scoring on a Heptathlon is interesting because it's based on an athlete's performance against a list of standard times (which look pretty tough to reach). This "scored against a standard" system is interesting because it allows comparison across a wide range of venues and athletes. That comparison would be harder to do with mountain sports, but it's interesting if you're interested in that sort of thing...

-Rock climbing. 5.13a onsight.

-Mountain running. No idea for longer courses, but check these times and courses out from the world championships.

-Mountain biking. Standard? Hard to define.

-Backcountry skiing/off-piste skiing with some serious down. Ski mountaineer races seem good?

-Whitewater kayaking (downriver race).

-Nordic skiing of some kind (going fast on little skis).

-Ice climbing/mountaineering/winter climbing stuff.

-Paragliding (includes hiking to launch).

Marginal "mountain" sports, or sports we couldn't agree on:

-Road biking

-Horseback riding

-"Freestyle" snowboarding, skiing, anything that is judged can't be a mountain sport.

-Canoeing

-Rafting

-BASE jumping

-Swimming (lakes etc).

-River surfing.

-Snowshoeing

It would be pretty much impossible to do all of these events in one place, but how about a season of events that would tie all of the above together into one event? Hmmm....

Fitness: A Unified Theory, and intervals

It's been a lot of fun working through ideas on fitness by experimenting, thinking, reading, talking and emailing with different folks in the last couple of years. I think I've finally figured something useful out: I care most about performance. That's the top of my priority list in terms of athletics. "Fitness" is one component of performance, yet it's often not even close to the most important component of athletic performance. But fitness is the easiest to measure, and the easiest to improve at (at a relative novice level). This idea was driven home to me recently when my wife quoted her old Norweigan XC ski coach (say this with a thick Norwegian accent): "You North Americans are all better than us on the treadmill and eat so well, how come the Norwegian skiers kick your ass then?" Performance first.

This philosophy is at the heart of how I look at sport, and how I coach myself and other athletes (only a few). What I coach for and care about is performance. Clients pay half up front, and half when they reach a specific performance goal. If they don't reach it they don't pay. It's all about performance, all about real-world results, full stop. "Fitness" is relevant to that goal, but the vast majority of the people I work with need nothing more than dedicated and semi-organized sorts-specific training to develop the fitness required to perform. If they need a base level of human function then I'll pull from other areas to get that, or send the individual to someone else first.

The real reason I train using non sports-specific protocols (Crossfit, Yoga, Gymnastics, old-time strength stuff, etc) is that I like being a functional human. Deadlifts help my back feel better. Squats help my knees not hurt. I like the way I feel if I hit the WOD regularly. I like to be able to sprint (although I would be mocked at any serious track in the world). It's good. And within that "human" training performance still counts. Better form. Better range of motion. More. Faster. But deadlifting will not help me redpoint my project as much as spending the same amount of time climbing will. So I'l cycle general training and skill training. One for sport performance, one for life performance, both important to me from a performance standpoint at different times in my year.

So there, it's resolved enough for me. Do sports-specific stuff to perform better at sports, especially the mountain sports I do and know well. But also enjoy having a functional body, and find a protocol that works for that. Have performance goals, and be honest about what they are. Be savage like a chain saw in examining the successes or failures of reaching those goals. Learn, think, evolve, try not to be a dogmatic ass, grow as an athlete and human. Train, perform, give 'er, but listen to that old Norwegian coach in the back of your head. There's honesty in saying, "I train 'cause I like the way I feel, yeah!" I can tell when my wife has done her 7:00 a.m. WOD 'cause she's happier. And that's worthwhile.

Give 'er!!!!

Intervals

Intervals rock. I just want to say that. They hurt, they're annoying, but man do they get results. More on this later, just something I'm excited about right now. Intervals...

Odds and Ends

A month or so ago we did a Mountain Movement course here in Canmore, which was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One of the participants wrote up a really funny report on the experience, love it! "Gravel Boarding," ha ha! Can't wait to build the "Playground" up again, I have some new ideas for torture...

I'm playing with some new ideas in climbing training. I've spent 25+ years climbing, so my movement patterns are half decent I think. Unfortunately, due to a few injuries, other sports, etc., my climbing fitness is pretty weak right now. Normally I start with a very high volume base cycle, but I have limited time right now as well as some decent base fitness from other sports, time for a plan B. I've been doing relatively short but higher intensity sessions in the climbing gym, trying to pack larger volumes of movement into shorter periods. The classic version of this type of exercise is the 4x4, but my goals involve longer days on terrain up to 5.12, I don't think I need more power endurance than I have right now, just more endurance and the ability to absolutely blast pitches. What I really is another gear, another way to put out more watts faster in a shorter time period.

My experiences with both Crossfit and training "long-interval" style for the dZi Foundation 24-hour climb have led me toward trying to do bigger sets of fast intervals and then adding a "big gear" load on the end of each total interval. I really felt this gave me one hell of a base for the 24-hour climb, and that's sort of (no more 24-hour stuff though!) where my head is at. So 4x4s with heavy kettlebell swings as the fifth station to totally fry my system, or a long traverse with thrusters at the end to mess me up. One thing I've noticed with doing intervals is that the ability to handle that kind of "Now we're going to gasp for three minutes!!!" load responds much better to training than I used to think, and unlike many forms of training the response isn't sports specific. Putting out at an anaerobic level is a skill, whether it's racing up a pitch or doing thrusters. Anyhow, it's an idea, we'll see how it goes...

I'm also not happy with my definition of fitness from the last post. I think I missed a few things, namely that there is a sort of "base" fitness level where the participant is fully functional, meaning not grossly overweight, can move up stairs quickly without gasping, etc. My definition is more based around athletic expression, which is a narrower definition. I'll keep working on my definition, but it's not as good as it should be yet.

Time to go get after it!

Fitness, Calves

If you could only pick one muscle or area on the human body that would tell you how fit someone is what would that area be? Pecs? Quads? You might say that it would matter what the definition of fitness is, and that would be fair, so I'll deal with that first. At length.

Lots of people put up arguments for what "fit" means on the comments part of my last fitness post. What I see in all those well thought-out comments is that fitness is highly situational, and very difficult to measure without skill at the fitness activity being tested playing a large role. There is no way to test for "fitness" without the testing method or apparatus playing a large role. The most empirical and non-apparatus "fitness" test would be blood tests; that might give a hint of how "well" someone is, but blood tests will tell the tester very little that's useful for predicting how an athlete will perform. "Gee, this blood work looks fantastic, I bet whoever gave the sample can run a 400M really fast!" That's obviously funny to me. Running a 400M fast is legitimately cool. Everything after a blood test involves skill, not just power or watts put out. And if the test is based even partially on skill then how "general" can any fitness truly be?

Even the most "general" fitness that I know of and practice, Crossfit, is still highly apparatus and skill-specific even as it develops a reasonably broad level of general fitness. For example, an athlete may have the base power to do overhead squats, but until the athlete has the shoulder flexibility and movement patterns an overhead squat will be very difficult (I use this example because I truly suck at overhead squats). An overhead squat may help with athletic performance in other sports, but by itself the skill will, until learned, likely trump the "fit" component of the movement. Every activity in the Crossfit games had a major skill component (even the wheelbarrow event, I could sure tell who had run a wheelbarrow before!); what the Games are testing is the ability to do a lot of different skills at a reasonable--not elite--level, cool.

Comparing athletes in different sports is fun and interesting, but comparing their performance or fitness levels is pretty hard to do unless the football player puts on skates, or the basketball player straps on a set of slalom skis. I think everybody would see that would be kind of ridiculous, and that's why claims of being "The fittest athlete in the world" are the same. Fitness without a specific expression of fitness doesn't exist. Put another way, fitness is inextricably based on the skills required to demonstrate that fitness. Fitness without performing a skill is impossible to define as fitness; inevitably the skill shapes the performance.

Most of the improvements in the opening weeks of any training program come not from increases in strength but in increases in skill. Even after years of sports-specific training skill will still often trump pure power in athletic events. Pick any sport out there; the ability to squat 800lbs is less important than the ability to read the action, see the game, and execute the movement, whether the sport is climbing, skiing or NHL football.

However, having a functional body that is strong is obviously a hell of an asset for any sport or life, and I do think Crossfit does a great job on functional movements. That's why I do it; not to be "fit," but to be functional. Big difference there. And before anyone involved with CF gets bent, I think Crossfit athletes are incredibly fit, even though I can only measure their performance at Crossfit.

My definition of "fitness" is this: An athlete's ability to successfully perform at whatever activity or task he has trained to engage in. For a person who wants to run the Grand Canyon rim to rim in a day then doing that successfully means they were fit enough. For an ice climber on a difficult first ascent that means doing it without injury. For a military group on a patrol in the mountains that means getting the job done and being able to patrol again without excessive recovery time. For a Crossfitter it might mean eventually doing Fran in under three minutes while also deadlifting over 500 pounds. For my friends in chairs it might mean being able to bust it out down a flight of stairs and remain solidly in control. All cool expressions of true fitness, but obviously impossible to compare meaningfully. The Crossfitter would die on the ice climb, the ice climber will suffer on the Grand Canyon run in the heat, and all of 'em could die on the patrol... Fitness is just impossible to separate from the situation it's performed in. A fit individual will be able to perform and successfully function in a given situation, or he isn't fit. Being able to do a select set of exercises (Crossfit Games) reasonably well means that someone has trained for just that, and may be the fittest in the world at that combination of those motions. Cool again, but I'm still not buying that the top Crossfit Games athlete is the fittest in the world at anything but Crossfit. Of course, it's fun to argue the question as I'm doing here.

Now, having defined fitness as successful specific task performance, here's a very general question: What one muscle or one area in the body immediately displays someone's fitness level, or at least the broadest prediction of reasonable fitness? If you had to line a bunch of people up and use a screen that would only allow a small glimpse of each person's body to predict their fitness level what part of the body would you focus the screen on?

In my world that one area is the calf and muscles on it. I was sitting with my wife in a cafe the other day that had a huge volume of people walking by and through it, mostly in shorts as it was a hot day. The busloads of tourists basically didn't have calves; it was like a surgeon had cut the muscle bodies out. The cyclists who rode their bikes in did. The climbers on their way to the crag did. One old guy and his wife sported calves cut into granite blocks from decades of walking in the mountains. A "display model only" body builder in a white wife-beater had no calves, and I'm pretty sure he could only define his fitness level with a bicep curl contest, which he would win (pro bodybuilders have rad calves).

Developed, cut calves tell me that the athlete spends a lot of time moving on his feet, whether it's playing basketball or running. Almost every good real-life athlete (as opposed to a gym poseur) from the military patrol in Afghanistan to a mountaineer, will have solid calves. If I had to predict an athlete's performance in the mountains without knowing anything at all about him or her I'd look at the calves for a rough answer; mountain athletes always have strong lower legs.

And that's just it. I'm a mountain athlete; that's where I do my sports in general. If I were looking for the "Fittest Athlete Alive" I'd have a radical kayak race, a deep water soloing competition, a distance paragliding competition, a mountain bike race, a hike and huck paragliding event, etc., and I'd call whoever won that the fittest athlete ever, ha ha! And I guarantee that the winner would have some solid lower legs. No Crossfitter could touch my definition of "fitness," just as I would be mincemeat in the CF Games, or on a pro basketball court. Now I'm going to do the WOD just 'cause I like it, which when I think about is a hell of a huge plus in any "fitness" regime. If you don't like doing it then eventually you won't, and that's the biggest problem with most "fitness" bikes etc., they are deadly boring long-term.

Canadian Paragliding Nationals, etc.

Eric Oddy Photo, a whole lot more at the same address.

I just finished competing in the Canadian Paragliding Nationals. Some of you who know my history with paragliding competitions might be laughing, as I've said repeatedly that I'm retired from that scene. But the Canadian Nationals are different; mellower, more fun, and less gaggle flying. I went to the meet with a relaxed attitude and a commitment to leave the comp and chase distance records if the day presented itself, but ended up doing the whole comp and learning a few things. Here a few observations from the week relating to both paragliding and life:

1. We often need less stuff than we think we do. I'm used to flying with a fairly high-end Flytec flight computer that does all kinds of stuff, but I launched on the first day and the vario and altitude functions totally failed. That means I had no "Beep beep" to tell me when I was in lift and when I wasn't. Initially I kinda freaked out and pounded on the instrument etc., but it still wouldn't beep, and I was sinking lower and lower as I worried about not having the reassuring "beep beep" to indicate lift. I sunk well below launch and almost to the ground before thinking, "OK, no electronics, what can you do without electronics?" I fly occasionally without a vario, but not in a national-level competition, in my mind that was like not having chalk or something in a climbing comp. But, as I sunk lower and lower in a sort of mental paralysis, I remember a story about my bud Chris Muller flying huge tasks in a paragliding world cup without a vario. That made me smile; Chris is always in my thoughts when I'm in Golden, and the image inspired me to focus not on what I was missing but what I still had: a decent glider, a lot of experience in the air, and a fun-looking day if I could figure out how to stay in the air and fly it!

I had to fight my way back into the air by listening to the glider, feeling the forces in the light lift, and tuning into what my body does naturally without listening for the beep beep. I would honestly never have thought it possible for me to fly an entire comp task without a vario, much less do OK. But, 110K later, I landed at the goal field in a good position. I'd rate that flight as one of the cooler experiences I've ever had, both for the silent 3 hours in the air, and because I was able to shut down the negative talk and just fly with what I had. I was ready to fly out and land at the start when I was sinking out, the transition to landing at goal three hours later was something I'm actually way more proud of than winning the title of Canadian Champion five days later (not dissing that, I'm always happy to do well, but that flight on day one was really cool for me).

I've sometimes forgotten "critical" gear on trips before, and yet we often still ended up succeeding somehow. Good gear is beautiful and I lust after it, but day one of the Canadian Paragliding Nationals was a good lesson for me in not letting what I don't have define my experience. What else in my life do I think is essential that really isn't? And I've ordered another Flytec vario, ha ha!

2. Trying to beat other people generally doesn't work out so well in any competition. This is hard to explain, but in every comp I've ever won I didn't think about the other people in the comp much if at all. I just did my thing as best I could, and the results showed some version of how we all did relative to each other. As soon as I start trying to beat other people in any comp I usually lose. In this comp there was a very good German (and hopefully soon Canadian!) pilot, Robert Hauser, on an Ozone R10.2 glider. This glider kicks ass, and because I wasn't really even planning to compete in the Nationals until just before going I was on an older glider that was a couple of generations behind the R10. Anyhow, the first few days I was able to hang with Robert, then I started pushing to beat him by flying low and fast. His skill and superior glider made that tactic just fail, as it always does, and I would repeatedly get stuck soaring some bump down low while Robert's glider flew over my head. He won the overall meet in the end and I was second, fair enough. I think, even with an inferior glider, I might have been able to pull a better result if I had of focused more on my own flying and less on getting in front of other pilots in the last two tasks. Focus on your own stuff first... And well done Robert, it was a pleasure!

3. Situational awareness is everything. I'm currently learning to fly airplanes while getting my private pilot license. This has been a dream of mine for a long time, and I'm lucky to have some time to get it done. Learning how to fly a plane has not been easy for me; a paraglider has three controls, you just fly it like you paddle a kayak. A plane as simple as the trainer 172s I'm learning to fly in have a huge quantity of dials and buttons, and eventually you have to know how to use them all. Each lesson a new control or maneuver is added, but only after you can show enough situational awareness to handle it. At first just pointing the plane in the right direction took everything I had, now I can use most of the controls and do most of the maneuvers required to fly (they let me go alone now, ha ha!). My situational awareness is growing every flight. In the Canadian Nationals I noticed my situational awareness shrink and expand depending on blood sugar, comfort level, emotional state, sleep level, etc. etc. As I think back over all the competitions and big efforts I've battled with the one common denominator in the "success" bracket is how aware I was in the situation I was battling in. If I had a high level of situational awareness I generally did well. Low level, poor result.

I often make an internal game of watching other people's level of situational awareness in different situations. A mother may be incredibly tuned into her kid, but totally unaware of what's happening around her as she drives. I do the same. In a paragliding competition I can watch pilots make the oddest decisions because they aren't thinking about the big picture around them. I do that too. If I had a switch that allowed me to get rid of extraneous thoughts and just work on my situational awareness I'd be a lot more successful in life I think. I haven't yet figured out to how to mentally train my mind to see the big picture or the appropriate picture in different situations, but I'm working on it in my usual ten steps forward 9.9 back. Mental training is way harder than physical training.

4. It's fun to do stuff with friends. I had a great time seeing many old friends at the Nationals, yeah!

I'll try to post some followup thoughts to all the excellent posts on Women and Fitness, thanks to everyone for those.

WG out.

Fitness, Women and Muscles.

A week ago the Crossfit Games ran in California. The parts I watched were hugely inspirational, and had more "real" athletic or non-scripted events than I've seen in previous games. Overall super cool, but I gotta go off on a couple of things.

First, Crossfit pumps the games as finding the "fittest athlete on earth;" I have a little problem with that slogan as I don't believe in the idea of "fittest on earth." I care about performance in sports; I respect every top Crossfit athlete anywhere for their performances at Crossfit, but I also respect top climbers, power lifters, or anyone who practices his or her sport and performs at a high level (except the dope-sucking cyclists). "Fittest" is a meaningless term without context; fittest at what? The people who won the Crossfit Games are the fittest at Crossfit, and specifically those events in the combination presented at the Crossfit Games. Those of us who train Crossfit get good at Crossfit, with some degree of carryover into other ares of our lives. An average high-school runner would destroy the top finishers at the Crossfit Games in a run, same for every individual event in the games.

This searching for the "Fittest Athlete on Earth" is a sign of insecurity to me. The top marathon runner in the world doesn't try to call himself the fittest person alive, they are just the best marathon runner, cool. The men and women who even made it to California are rad in my book of radness, lay off the hype, it takes away from their accomplishments.

This leads into my next bitch fest (bad coffee will do that to me), the topic of which is Women and Muscles. During the Crossfit Games I heard the announcers repeatedly say something along the lines of, "those women down there sure are pretty, and doing some amazing stuff!" I didn't hear him say, "Those men sure are handsome mofos, and doing some amazing stuff!" It would have been ridiculous. But he could get away with it with the women because there's somehow this idea that women competing should be pretty, or that women with muscles can't to be pretty too, or that how hot a woman looks doing a muscle up has some bearing on the worth of the muscleup, or some conflicted mish-mash of all these ideas. What the announcer was really saying at the CF games was, "Well, those women are attractive despite being able to do muscle ups." Or maybe, "Amazing, there's a chick down there doing muscleups who isn't ugly!" Or something along those lines, comments like that are a savage mess just under their surface and lead to stuff like this.

I don't want to hear comments about "pretty" or "handsome" during an athletic event, I want to watch people do their absolute damn best. I'm fully capable of judging whether I think a chick looks hot, or a guy is handsome. If a female announcer were saying something like, "Boy, Iginla sure looked sweaty and handsome when he took that shot on goal" I'd want to penalize her for irrelevant drivel. Same with the CF announcers. And no person, male or female, can ever be ugly doing something she has trained hard for and is doing at her limit and with all her might, as the men and women in the CF games were. That level of effort literally brings tears to my eyes. How"pretty" someone looks doing their sport is irrelevant to performance anyhow, and therefore doesn't belong in the commentary of any competitive event but a beauty pageant.

Let's drop the "we can lift weights and look pretty too, amazing!" nonsense. Same with the women who worry about getting "too bulky" doing Crossfit. Most women I hear say that don't have a hope in hell of ever getting "bulky," same as most men. Fit-looking maybe, but not "huge." Our bodies adapt to what we do; lift heavy weights fast and you'll put on some muscle, but likely not much unless you've got the genes. Look at the top male and female competitors in Crossfit; they are "built," but not huge. I heard the "I don't want to get bulky" comment from a rather skinny (not fit, skinny, no toned muscle at all) woman the other day, and it sounded a lot like she was cutting on muscles as somehow being unfeminine, possibly because she was unlikely to ever grow muscles due primarily sitting on her undeveloped glutes... It was one of those sideways backwards compliment/stab comments that some people are very good at and I seldom understand.

Anyhow, there is obviously some sort of conflict around the idea of athletic women. All I've got to say to that is that every human has within him or her the seeds of an amazing athlete, or they wouldn't be here today. Everyone alive today is the end result of a tremendous, epic selection process that involved athletic suffering not as sport but as survival, and our ancestors all passed those tests somehow. Every woman who has or will give birth is up against a workout that makes a mockery of almost any athletic event I've ever seen, and most women do just great at it if left to go at it on their own terms (in north America a lot of women end up with C-sections, not so in the rest of the world). As a man you're here because of athletic women who could carry your sorry newborn ancestors for miles and not drop 'em on their heads. Athletic women rock. When women are being athletes publicly I want the public commentary to be about their athletics. Leave the commentary on how hot they are off the air, women and men can make their own decisions.

Finally, beauty and and athleticism (bodies that get used to celebrate motion) are inherently linked in my eyes, after some thought that's why the comments at the games and the confused "I don't want bulky muscles" comments irritate me. It's the equivalent of saying, "Gee, look, that car has tires" or something, only slightly pejorative in a confused way.

Edit later in the day: On the whole I thought the commentators at the 2010 CF games did a good job--much, much easier to identify athletes, hear some stories, overall really good. The problem with doing anything well is that the problems then stand out. If it's all a junk show then it's not even worth commenting on.

Mountain Skill Training

I just finished running a four-day course on mountain movement. I'm pecking away at a book on the same subject, and I wanted to test some ideas I had on how to help people move better in the mountains. I had a good response to the course outline that I put up, and selected eight brave victimsto take the course, thanks! The overall goal of the course was to increase the participants ability to move well in non-technical mountain terrain. I have a lot of theories and years of experience teaching mountain skills to people, but often we focus just on climbing or kayaking or whatever, not the equally if not more important ability to move well in the mountains. I was especially looking for people who were less than totally confident in the mountains; if my theories were solid then they would benefit the most, and provide a real acid test for the ideas in my book.

After four days of intense abuse ranging from falling at the Canmore gymnastics centre to hiking with my dad to scrambling up and over Mt. Yamnuska with Mr. Blanchard I felt that we had all learned a lot. I was repeatedly surprised by how well people would learn a skill in a relatively safe environment (the "Playground" I built in my back yard) and then apply it in a real situation. This "train and then do" idea was definitely effective, although I need to refine parts of it. On the final day everyone absolutely rocked over Mt. Yamnuska; I don't think anyone fell down anywhere on mountain, although I fell down once on the trail. My own movement was a lot better, every time I really focus on understanding how to teach something I learn a tremendous amount from the process.

One of the many small things I learned is how important good lugs on your soles are for gripping on steep slabby terrain with loose bits on it. This type of terrain is a real PITA for many people, including me, and we were able to test various shoes on the sliding board (rocks and gravel on steep plywood) I built. Movement was important, but footwear was much more important than I had thought it would be. What is excellent for, say, Grand Teton style rock hopping (sticky dot-style rubber) is truly horrible in other conditions. Because most of us don't test our footwear carefully in controlled environments we don't get to see the pluses and minuses. Anyhow, I learned a tremendous amount on many topics, thanks!

Now it's back to work on the book, and thanks to everyone who took part. I'll put some photos up later today I hope!

Lama, Red Bull, Cerro Torre

The following is my best understanding of what actually happened on the Lama trip, and then some analysis. Anyone who wants the story so far can read this or lots of other commentary out there. Most of this writing is wrong to some degree, including my initial post.

I've spent hours emailing and on the phone with everyone involved that I could contact: David Lama, Red Bull, the guides on the trip, the film makers, Rolo, and many others. I have yet to reach anyone who was on the cleanup crew despite repeated efforts in public and private. I would still like that perspective.

Even with all this research I'm sure some of this writing is still wrong, but it's as accurate as I can make it at this point.

For those who don't want to read this endless post my quick and personal summary is this: Big film crews and difficult alpine environments don't mix, and will always end up doing more damage to a place. In terms of damage, ethics and style we're all hypocrites. I will continue to examine my own efforts to not screw places up that I visit.

Get a coffee or a Red Bull for the next 3,000 words if you wanna tangle with 'em, here goes:

Some physical facts:

Reported: 60 plus bolts on the route.

Reality: Twelve bolts above the shoulder where the route and every topo of the route starts. None of the bolts are directly on the route. Another 14 or so bolts on a new rap line down from the shoulder that's not part of the route at all.

Reported: Large quantities of fixed ropes, garbage, camps, etc. permanently left on the mountain.

Reality: There's only been one haul bag on the mountain for months. The film team did hire some climbers to remove fixed line and gear that was abandoned, and take out some other gear that was left. Today's there's very little up there, despite what's being reported.

That's the direct physical impact. Now it gets more complicated.

David Lama had an idea: Free the Compressor route on Cerro Torre. I think that's a cool idea, and I suspect most climbers would too. He then contacted Red Bull about funding the trip. Lama's athlete manager at Red Bull Austria is a solid rock climber (I spoke with him as he came back from a climbing trip--he climbs more than most). Red Bull was excited about the project, and wanted to make a good film about the project. So far so good.

But Red Bull likes to do things with "high production values," especially when it's challenging to do so. This often means a larger film crew, and guides if the project is in the mountains. It is very possible to make a good film where the climbers on the trip shoot along with one capable climbing cameraman (this is how most of the filming on my trips is done, and how an excellent film maker like Leo Dickinson made his film on Cerro Torre.). It's also possible to shoot with a larger crew in benign environments (sport climbing, bouldering, deep water soloing, that sort of thing) relatively easily, but if you want to have higher production values (think Touching the Void, the excellent production of the Eiger North Face, a lot of modern rock climbing films) then you've got to have a larger crew.

Cerro Torre has some of the worst weather in the world. Huge and violent storms move in with relatively little warning, and climbers always try to push the normally short weather windows. Ice often forms on the mountain, and then falls off when it warms up, posing a risk to anyone below. Moving a film crew, even a solid mountain crew, around in an environment like that is going to be a real bitch to do even remotely safely. To have what he felt was a safe line of retreat on the route the lead guide on the trip, who I'll call Austrian Guide (AG) as his candid conversation with me was private, placed a total of 10 bolts off to the side of the climbing route, two or so near the route, and an additional 16 to 18 on the rappel line from the shoulder down. There are good natural cracks in the area, but the standard for live loads in industrial rigging calls for higher margins. AG felt the only way to safely move people and equipment around was to bolt a new and relatively safe retreat out of the way of the falling ice from the shoulder down, and bolt bomber stations to the side of the actual route. I'm not personally commenting on this decision, just outlining my understanding of the safety plan.

AG said he put these stations off to the side of the climbing route so he could rig fixed lines that would interfere as minimally as possible with other climbers on the route. AG added two or maybe three directional bolts that could be considered remotely on the line of the route. So the total of added bolts by the guides on the climb was less than a dozen, not 60 as reported, and none those are on the actual route according to the reports I received. AG's bolts are unique so they should be identifiable, and I've worked with him on several projects, so I trust his number (and I have his topo--nobody else asked him for that).

AG over-drilled all of his bolts so that he could pound the bolts in. This leaves a surface hole, and AG had a system for filling that hole. From personal experience I know that it's extremely hard to find these holes if you don't know where they are. But they are there, and a hole is a hole.

There was a division between the film crew and Lama. Lama and his partner carried all their own gear into base camp, carted it out, etc. The film crew had help. Lama did not add any bolts to the route.

The team climbed only about 11 pitches up from the shoulder that marks the start of the "real" climbing. Bad weather (which should not really have been a surprise) then prevented the team from getting the fixed ropes off, and some of their gear out. The film team later paid for their gear and ropes to be retrieved, along with some additional fixed junk.

The only gear currently on Cerro Torre from the expedition is one haul bag and less than 30 bolts. The rest has been retrieved.

OK, so there are the facts as I understand them, and despite my best efforts to get accurate info some of them are probably wrong, that's how it works in life. Now comes some personal analysis. These are my own viewpoints, not "cleared" with Red Bull or reviewed by anyone. Writing all of this may cause problems for my relationship with Red Bull, but it's gotta be said if I'm going to wear a branded helmet. If Red Bull is the company I think it is then they'll get it. These opinions are also likely to anger some climbers I regard as my friends. I trust they're also big enough to get it.

If I try to look at this from a global perspective then there are broadly two categories of "damage:" The first is the physical damage to the earth in terms of bolts, left ropes, etc. Knowing what actually happened, I can't get too angry about the damage this trip did from an "earth" basis. From a straight environmental perspective the flights from Europe to Patagonia were a hell of a lot more damaging to the world. The second form of damage is to what the priests of alpine climbing consider "good style." I'm going to mostly leave that alone.

The AG was adamant on the phone that if he were in charge of safety for the crew when and if they returned next season he would take the same tactics, or he would not return with the crew. He did not feel it possible to rig safely off natural gear for the type of load and traffic the rigging would receive. David Lama had not thought about whether or not the bolts were necessary, and that question opened his mind up a lot. He thinks it would be possible to do the rigging without bolts, but he also wasn't responsible for the lives of the people hanging on the gear. However, "safety" is not justification for adding even minimal bolts to a route for a film effort; the whole idea is not to further mess a place up.

Bolting a new rap line down from the shoulder isn't a huge deal to me personally. Metal left behind is metal left behind, if it's a good descent route then I really don't care much about what the anchors are. Apparently the rap lines in this area are full of tat and random gear, a nice clean rap line might not be a bad thing. It might even reduce the quantity of junk left on the mountain by each retreating party. Others feel very differently about this, and I respect them personally even if we disagree on this. If the locals want the bolts on the rap route pounded in as the AG planned to do then I think the crew should do that as planned. Let me know and I'll pass that on.

Several climbers wrote that bolting wouldn't be tolerated on a film project on a classic line in the Alps or another better-known range. Filming with "high production values" in the Alps or anywhere on a major alpine route is very, ah, industrial compared to what went on in Patagonia. I don't think it's right anywhere.

As soon as the crew size expands the level of infrastructure goes up dramatically, and the odds of success go down dramatically. That's was Lama's real error in my opinion; I don't think it's possible to free the Compressor route with this level of infrastructure holding a climber down. In my view you simply can't shoot for "high production values" without establishing more belays, bolts, fixed lines, etc. than is reasonable in a difficult high alpine environment, and trying to do that will lead to failure in many ways.

All the other "physical" problems (new bolts close to or on the Compressor Route, gear left behind, etc) stem from the original problem of crew size in such a difficult environment.

Now we come to the ethics or "style" equation. Red Bull as a company did not understand the anger the bolts (even with the numbers vastly over-stated) provoked among climbers, and their response has been corporate because it ultimately came from a corporate level. Lama didn't understand the anger as he didn't put any of the bolts in. He is sincerely unhappy with the bolting after questioning whether it could have been done without bolting... Climbing "ethics" often make little sense to me even as I fight for my version of them, and are going to be completely incomprehensible to a non-climber. That doesn't release Red Bull as a company or those on the trip from responsibility, but when a climber of theirs (Lama) and guides on the trip aren't seeing a problems then I think it's a bit difficult for RB as a company to see deeper into it all.

Red Bull, and by extension Lama, broke another and perhaps more serious law of alpine climbing: "Thou shalt not spray before the fact." Red Bull put up a rather over-the-top marketing article on their web site before Lama got anywhere near the mountain, and another after he returned. As I read through all the commentary on the attempted climb the writers kept harping on the marketing, and the hubris of it more than the actual bolts. I tend to laugh at stuff like that, but others obviously fail to see the humor.

What now?

The next Patagonia season approaches. What's the right thing for Lama and RB to do? Here's my personal take for what it's worth.

1. RB should stand up and say, "We're sorry about the bolts, we'll do everything we can to make that right." Pound the bolts above the shoulder into their holes, seal them up before any additional climbing is done. Do the same with the stations off to the side of the route. Wait and see what the general response is on the rap line, if it's negative then pound that in too.

2. If Lama and RB do go back then do so with a small crew based around one highly competent climbing cameraman. Take care of the additional bolts before rolling one frame of video. I don't believe a multi-person crew will work on the Torre without adding more bolts, ropes, etc, the environment is just too savage for a large crew to work without relatively heavy infrastructure.

3. Lama, his partner and a super mobile cameraman send the route from the top of Pitch 11 free, with no additional bolts added on the line. One climber very familiar with the route thinks additional bolts will be necessary to free the variations required, and doesn't have a problem with that. Personally, a bolt is a bolt, it would be cooler to do it without any new bolts at all. The 350+ are more than enough already.

4. The production quality comes from what is shot so far, and by being creative on the route. Go "modern" with HD headcams, sound, all the stuff a capable and resourceful climbing cameraman will understand. Immediacy can be more compelling than pure production quality, especially if that production quality can be done on the ground, with what is shot so far, and in post. Hell, this controversy can be part of the story...

5. As a climber I'm increasingly looking at my "ethics" not as just what I do while climbing but what my travel to go climbing and my other sports does to the atmosphere and the wilderness places I visit. This is a much bigger problem than whether I use a pin or a bolt, and to pretend otherwise is selective ignorance.

6. RB is going to keep trying to do genuinely cool stuff in different sports, it's what they do, and one reason I like working with them. RB does sponsor traditional sport, but it's a company built on doing genuinely wild stuff with their marketing money. In doing difficult and "crazy" projects and events they are going to make errors. Those errors should be addressed as openly and as quickly as the successes, or at least addressed with some humility.

Finally, in the end it's all about actually going climbing. It's our responsibility to be aware of the stone and our impacts on it. As a sponsored and public climber I have an additional responsibility to try and do what's right, and do what's right with the companies I work with.

All the spittle on keyboards, reasoned response, and pulpit slamming fundamentalism means nothing when your hands grab the stone. My fingers are getting soft from all this writing, it's now time to shut the fuck up and go climb. I'm outta here on this topic, thanks for reading through this journey.

100 points of health, GPP, New Zealand

GPP, or General Purpose Training, and the 100 point system.

Note--for those of you waiting for the Lama post, I've written that and am just doing a little checking on it, up soon. Mal Haskins photo to left.

A friend of mine sent a link to this video, which I thought was interesting. I'm not completely convinced that doing pushups on a ball is a hell of a lot better than doing them on the ground, but doing pushups on a ball likely does more closely simulate grappling with someone while playing rugby, which is what this video comes from. Our discussion prompted a few thoughts on general fitness training.

The main idea I'm working with right now is that there is no "General Physical Prep" training in an absolute sense. We are all training for what we're training with, or, put another way, we get good at what we train. Crossfit is meant to be GPP, and it is more general than just power lifting or something, but ultimately Crossfitters become best at doing Crossfit. This point was driven home to me while watching the CF regionals in Canada, where only a few of the people in the event could run up a low-angled wet hillside--that was too specific of a skill. In my world that's a basic skill, but nothing can prepare someone for everything (and this is not to rag on CF, I think it's an effective "generalist" program for sure). There will be crossover in sports, but in general the most effective sport training will be that which most closely resembles the sport.

Some sports, like soccer, are easy to train a lot of--go run, do agility drills with the ball, etc. Other sports, like football, rugby, ice climbing in summer, alpinism, etc, are more difficult to train specifically for, and require "simulations" either with weights or specific apparatus.

I was thinking about all of this while in New Zealand last week for the New Zealand mountain film festival. It was a fantastic trip, thanks to everyone who showed me around! I ended up doing about six different sports and activities in my week there; it would simply be impossible for me to be at my top level for all of them, and even training for all of them would take more time than I have in a day. My legs were blowing out skiing, my grip was failing while climbing, and my head wasn't as strong as it could have been for speed flying.... I would have been far better at any one sport if I had just been training that sport, but my life isn't like that (no complaints at all!). I rely on my sports background and general fitness to get through this kind of week...

Right now I'm mainly doing only four main non-sport exercises in any given week: Squats, deadlifts, muscleups and handstand pushups, combined with front levers and a few other things tossed into the mix before, after or during my sport-specific workouts (climbing and kayaking most often, bit of mountain biking etc. tossed in there). These four "gym" exercises are the first to get dropped when my "health" load (see below) gets too high. These four exercises helped with everything I did in NZ, but it was my background skill level that got me through each sport. I also think these exercises help with my life; I like to be able to pick up a bag of peat moss, put it on my shoulder, and walk to the car. Not necessary, but nice. However, having that skill takes away to some extent from my other sports, that's just how it works.

All of this is leading me to look at my training in a new, for me, way. Let's say that at any given time I have 100 units of "health" available for training, work, practicing, etc. in a week. I know from repeatedly destroying myself that I can only realistically handle 100 units of "life" a week. Getting piss-drunk on friday will take away 30 units, or effectively ruin a day and a half of training. Flying to New Zealand will take away about 20 units... Doing Crossfit burns about 15 units a session give or take. A hard climbing workout the same. A big day in the mountains might 80 or more. Not doing anything physical at all will knock me back about 30 units of function a week, I need to do something. It's possible to push to 150 units for a week or maybe a month, but in any given year I'll end up getting really sick, injured, or burnt out mentally if I push past that 100/week average too much in any given period. Everybody has a different level of health load they can handle, but I've found it very useful to look at my life with this idea in mind. I keep a detailed training log, and I can go through it and see what happens negatively when I load up too much, and also what happens negatively when I don't load up enough in terms of performance at a specific sport. The positive comes when the load is appropriate and directed to produce the best performance.

Right now I'm about 50 units a week climbing and about 50 a week kayaking in terms of sports. Doing a lot of CF isn't going to work, nor is doing too much deadlifting/squats/whatever. If I accept my 100 idea I can organize my athletic and life priorities realistically, and not feel bummed 'caused I'm not doing "enough" of whatever. Or if I'm not hitting my goals then changing something. One of the people I coach had a lousy week where life destroyed her training schedule; her problem wasn't what to train, but just to scale back the damage to her 100 points to the point where there was room to train for even 50 points a week.

There is no absolute on this point scale, just as there are no absolutes with training or nutrition (really). The first step to understanding training is to do something, anything, and then to record that information and start to understand it. Then you'll know what produces performance results, and what 100 points feels like. It's been working for me.

Edit July 12:

I just added a photo of my training log from last week, a few people have asked for this. This is a typical "on the road" week, a big variety of stuff. Note that my "strength" workouts are relatively low volume, I know from years of experience that I can not handle highly destructive workouts after doing something like flying to New Zealand, doing a major presentation, etc. Or, I could do monster workouts, but if I push too hard while there's a bunch of other stuff going in life I invariably get sick immediately or injured long-term. This is why I keep a training log, so I can see what happens after I train, and what I was doing that worked or didn't, year after year. I used to keep a very detailed log, but this is what it's boiled down to over the years. Easy to track rough load (and tracking anything physical except weight lifted or time doing something is pretty rough). The single most important number in this training log is the total of all the days I spend climbing, kayaking and paragliding every year. Seriously, that's how I judge the absolute success of my year.

Edit July 13th: Some more good thoughts here on "Bedrock and Paradox." I like the longer cycle stuff and use that too. I do think the total quantity of work in a given sport can definitely increase with fitness, but not the total "strain." So, for example, if you're fit and climbing a lot of 5.13 then you can do five of 'em in a day and be OK. But if you're just breaking into 5.13 then that will destroy you for a week. A guy named OPT believes that if you are fitter you can also destroy yourself on a deeper level during a workout because you both do more work and get much better recruitment than a novice. The novice will be sore, but the trained athlete may take longer to recover from the damage inflicted. Interesting ideas.