Recovery Month 9 and 1/2

I cannot believe that I have been recovering from this injury for 9 and a half months now. That is crazy! Obviously this tendovaginitis had been building for quite a long time before I could feel the full effect of the damage. When I did it was already too late...like every climber's nightmare.

After taking a full 6 months off from climbing and seeing various doctors/trying many different remedies, I found myself able to climb again in June! I began on easy routes, then easy bouldering in August. With a combination of crossfit, a couple of hard climbing days a week, and lots of rest for my fingers, I found today that I am back to where I was last September! Last week I sent a v8 in the gym and yesterday I was able to climb all of the v6's in an hour. The pain in my fingers while climbing has gone from constant, to every 10 minutes, to every 5 minutes, and now to every 2 minutes. I am hoping that with slow progression, this pain will completely subside.

So with this recent breakthrough, what comes next? Well in my last post I spoke about how I was shifting my focus to my nutrition and overall fitness. I truly believe that if I can get a good routine going with these two aspects of my life, it will have dramatically great effects on my climbing. I figure that this will help my fingers recover and help me reach my big goal for the year.

My big goal of 2012: To make a full recovery in my fingers by December...and to stay un-injured.

December 3rd of 2011 was the first day I had felt the pain in full force. I am expecting this recovery to last one full year (2 and 1/2 more months to go), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed! Until then, I am going to focus on climbing 2-3 days a week and doing crossfit 3-4 days a week.

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A week and a half ago I began my paleo diet challenge. Right now I feel as if my body is detoxing. I do not feel very energetic while working out and I sometimes get headaches. But I knew from the start that this would happen to me. I also know that this will most likely go away within the next week or so. It is just my body's response to such a drastic change in diet.

With this diet I am going to keep close tabs on my body fat percentage and document my results. I had a skin fold caliper test done the other day to see (roughly, since this test is not completely accurate) what percent of body fat I have. The test said that I have 18% body fat. So my fat percentage is somewhere in the vicinity of that.

These are my body shots from Day 1 of paleo. I am going to compare these with the future photos I will take at the end of the challenge.

Psyched for what the rest of 2012 has to bring me! I am going to do my best to make sure that does not involve more injuries!
 

The Paleo Challenge

For the past month I have stated that I was thinking about going to the SBC pro in Seattle at the end of this month. Well I have decided not to go. Simply put, I feel that my fingers are just not ready for a competition that requires me to climb hard two days in a row. For the past month I have been bouldering v8 in the gym, but I cannot climb hard for at least four days after a bouldering session.  I really just want my fingers to heal appropriately so that I can attend these competitions without any hesitation in the future!

That being said, my main goal for the rest of 2012 is to have my fingers make a full and healthy recovery. I really think that this can be done successfully. Then I will CRUSH in 2013! For some reason I can already feel that 2013 will be a good year!

So what now? 

Do I just sit and wait for my fingers to heal? Of course not. That's way to boring. So I have decided to switch my focus to gaining overall physical fitness of my body. I have already begun to balance my muscles with the crossfit workouts I started three months ago. I have also focused on balancing my bouldering and sport climbing so that all of my climbing muscles are developed properly.

You might be wondering what else an overall physical fitness entails other than the balancing of muscles. Well, along with playing other sports and just being active in general, I think that nutrition is a huge part of physical fitness. Being helthy will not only limit my risk on injury and illness, it will also cut down on some body fat that I have (except not too much; I am already pretty skinny).

The subject of nutrition brings me to the title of this blog post: The Paleo Challenge! Basically, the paelo challenge is a two-month diet/lifestyle change. The Paleo diet is based upon what the Paelo cavemen ate way back in the day (when every caveman was supposedly jacked). Eating on the Paleo diet is basically just eating meat, nuts, veggies, seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, and no dairy. It is also made up of 40% carbohydrate, 30% fat, and 30% protein. This challenge is done through a company called Lurong Living and is strict Paleo, meaning no cheating (cheating is a deduction of points). Cheats include eating legumes, grains, alcohol, and basically anything that is not listed above. However because this is a nation-wide lifestyle challenge, Lurong Living provides supplementary crossfit workouts, resources for documentation of progress, and of course prizes. If I can go three weeks on the challenge I will get $85 worth of fitness gear!

To most, this challenge might seem crazy. But I am also on a team with some of my crossfitting friends and we are going to prepare our weekly meals every weekend. Doing this with other people is really motivating! I am also extremely interested in how this diet is going to affect my body. I have never restricted my eating before, except for when I gave up alcohol and sweets for a short period of time. I wonder how my body will react! Will I feel more energetic? Will I build more muscle? Will I become more lean? Or will I become ill? Will I injure myself?

I can only answer those questions in the way I knew best: experience. I am the type of person that needs to experience things in order to learn. I cannot experience a diet through a powerpoint, just like I cannot experience coaching without actually coaching. Or climbing without actually climbing. I want to feel the changes so that I can share my experience, whether it be good or bad, with other people.

The Paleo Challenge begins on September 17th. I am going to start posting my experiences of being on the diet while I try to crossfit and climb. I am going to pay specific attention to how the diet is affecting my finger recovery, my hypothyroidism, my muscular hypertrophy, and body composition. Hopefully only good things will come from this experience!

For more information on the Lurong Living Paleo Challenge, click here.