1/1/18 – 1/7/18 Training Journal

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Wow, the start of the new year perfectly coincides with the beginning day of my training journal? Guess that’s good enough excuse enough to jot things down online.

This year, I’ve decided to keep record keeping in a actual gridded notebook, and make my notes as I do the exercise, which makes a world of difference when doing a half a dozen things say, at the gym, and want to keep track of progress on all those things. Even using it for these few days, it’s been amazingly helpful, if not for recall.

Sadly, it makes posts like this one pretty boring, since the added minutiae may not be all that entertaining. But, I’m generally working on a few things:

Aerobic Conditioning

I have no concrete goals, so I’m just hoping for consistency of my aerobic training – doing a workout 6 days a week of at least one hour each workout would be ideal. I’m not looking to kill myself. My aerobic conditioning is probably my most mature of all my fitness by a wide margin. Right now, I’d just like to feel fit, and get a sense of balance and health. Consistency is key – I usually gravitate towards death marches of 9 hours+, but they’re not really really worthwhile for training purposes, as I usually take a few days off afterwards to recover.

Climbing

Far below my aeerobic fitness is my climbing fitness – I couldn’t be any more different in how I train the two. Instead of every day (with one reset day) for aerobic work, I shoot for every other day. I focus almost exclusively on bouldering (power). When it comes time to project a route, it only takes a few weeks to build up enough endurance to make this reasonable. I’m not against training via sport climbing, but I do find bouldering to be the most efficient use of my time. Generally, I find myself pretty heavy for a climber – my legs are pretty developed from mashing those bike pedals and power hiking up those hills, and my upper body just isn’t in comparison. I shy away from any sort of upper body development I don’t need – I’m one step away from being allergic to weights – getting muscle on this frame usually isn’t a problem. Too much back meat does make for a slow Justin.

I’ve been working through an injury in my right ring finger which doesn’t have an exact time/reason it started to affect my climbing, but boy does it. Symptoms are also much stranger than I’ve experienced before: very tender in the pad right after my knuckle – perhaps this is an A2 pulley problem… who knows.

My general way to treat this problem is a little bit of rest, a lot of taping (“x method” being my favorite) and taking a big step back in the grades I climb. Last summer before my trip, I was topping V7’s and V3 were more a warmup. Not being able to do any V3 I want in the gym is a little bit of a pride-swallower. Pulling hard really angers that pad though – more so than crimping. Jugs are also very hard to hold, as they also put pressure on this A2 pulley area. Ugh!

Ankle PT

Man, where to start? Right now, my ankles are some of the worst spots of my lack of mobility. A few years ago, I fell strangely on my left ankle while bouldering, causing an audible (if only to me), “pop”, and some definite problems with my left ankle ankle-ing. I’ve since worked through that, getting marginal mobility back, but pain still remains. Could be just an old-man pain from whatever scar tissue is still in there causing discomfort and slight inflammation. I wish it would go away, and hoping more mobility will at least help on that front.

My right ankle succumbed an intense sprain and/or break (in the foot itself) in September, as I finished my last peak (Longs Peak) of my 105 peak trip. I hobbled down the mountain that day, and got back to the bike, where the injury really didn’t affect me. The next day, I could barely walk. Walking the next few weeks was pretty painful, and running was absolutely out of the question.

I’ve slowly been regaining mobility and use of my ankle, but it’s still touch and go. I’ve started to ramp up my ankle PT I was practicing because of my left ankle for my right ankle. It’s a long, slow, painful process. Each day, I measure the dorsiflextion I can make – just by seeing how many inches away from a wall I can put my foot, and still touch my knee to the wall, when I bend it.

My target is 5 1/2″. I actually do two measurements: one before I workout, and one afterwards, usually after I do all the PT. That way, I can see if there’s a immediate benefit to all the stretching/tearing/terrible things I do to the ankle.

To me, it seems that the ankle PT has to be done almost daily, or the work I do just gets quickly reset.

Yoga

I’ve started doing yoga quite a bit, as a way to work on my total body mobility, which I have painfully (if literally painfully), very little of. I’m quite terrible at it, but it’s fun to start something fully from the beginning again.

Antagonist Training

To be somewhat balanced with all the climbing I do, I sneak in a little antagonist training. I’ve a torn shoulder, so I don’t too any benchpress, but I’m also at the point where pushups are challenging.

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