Breaking Free pt.1

I have not posted in awhile, which is a huge bummer because I have so much that I want to talk about! I have been extremely busy the past couple of months and it looks like there will be no slowing down! However I am going to update this blog a couple of times per week to catch everyone up with what I have been up to.


Before I go into what I have been doing the past couple of months, I just want to take a moment to reflect on this past year. Last year at this time I was not climbing. My fingers were in so much pain from tendovaginitis that I could not even open a door without whimpering. I would feel pain constantly whether I was moving my fingers or not. I also was in a boot from breaking my ankle while walking (yes I said walking, laugh all you want...okay stop). Not only was I injured, but I was just not satisfied with my life. I was very unhappy and things needed to change.

Six months later(Summer 2012), I had decided to make a lot of changes to my life. I began to step out of my box, which used to consist of just climbing...literally. My life revolved around climbing and that needed to stop. It needed to stop because I was limiting my happiness, my abilities, my health, and just myself in general. I also feared (and still fear) that my fingers will never allow me to climb at the level I dream of being at.

So I began to do crossfit. I started spending more time with people who did not climb, started running, started using rehab techniques such as foam rolling to increase my recovery, started paleo, started to study more in depth exercise science, and really started to enjoy the world and things around me.

Now I am what I think is the most happy I have been in my entire life. I am very fit, but that is not my main focus. I can climb again, but that is not my main focus either. Being able to experience crossfit competitions, climbing competitions, attend a pro climbing camp, study to become a certified personal trainer, coach, meet new people, and also recover from this injury are things that are making me thoroughly happy. Also, I have not had an injury in over six months! This is HUGE for me! To be able to maintain such a physical lifestyle and be healthy means the world to me. 

I would like to share some of my recent accomplishments with you. I am excited to keep progressing with climbing, crossfit, and my recovery! Hopefully I will be able to show better PR's, better photos, and even better recovery news in the future!

- This is a photo of me comparing what I looked like in January 2012 (Left) to how I look in January 2013 (Right). The left photo was taken a little after I had gotten injured, but I felt as if I was in the best shape of my life. I feel really proud of myself when I look at the right photo. I have been working hard to become fit, and I love to see my results!

- Two weeks ago marked the first day I climbed with no tape since I began me recovery process in June 2012. Not only did I climb with no tape, but I bouldered all of the problems v6-v8 in our gym. I also spent time projecting v9's. That was the first true sign that my fingers are recovering. I have been climbing with and without tape since then, depending on how I feel. I don't want to push it. I am still recovering. I feel that I have not reached full recovery yet, but I will eventually. I am hoping that when I reach full recovery, however far away that will be, I will do amazing things with climbing.


-Three weeks ago I got a new PR on my deadlift. I deadlifted 305, and that was all of the weight we had in the climbing gym (The weight set is actually 295; we had to tie a 10lb weight to the barbell to break 305).

- Four weeks ago I attended a pro climbing camp held by Chris Danielson and Tonde Kaito at Earth Treks. It was the most amazing experience and I feel honored to have been invited. More info on this in my next blog post!!

Photo By: Emily Varisco

Photo by: Emily Varisco

The Crew! - Photo by: Tonde Kaito

...To be continued.

(Final)ly is Over!

So this past Saturday was Dark Horse #3. Everyone was super stoked and excited to come fly in for this competition...which was stacked in both womens and mens! Even I was stoked for this comp! But unfortunately, finals week sucked out my soul.

You laugh, but literally I could not even climb a v4 on Saturday. It was horrible! I wound up withdrawing from the competition, which I have never done, even when I'm injured. I figured it was pointless to keep climbing because I am so susceptible to injury. Why beat myself down more when my body was already beaten down by 3 all nighters and some horrible tests? So instead of competing, I cheered on my friends and got some great tacos with Natasha Barnes and Steve Briggs.

Even though I didn't do well on Saturday, I would like to give myself props for such a horrendous semester. But seriously, my schedule was insane. Not only did I coach 5-6 days a week, I took 17 credits, trained for crossfit, trained for climbing, and had some time do some competitions and a paleo challenge.

Here's a little look at what my schedule was like...

6:45am- Wake up, shower, eat, and all that good stuff in between
7:35-8:50am- Anatomy+Physiology lecture....aka nap because it was 7 friggin 30 am
9:00-11:00am- Crossfit (or homework because we all know that got done over the weekend)
11-11:30am- Drive to other campus
11:30-12:20pm- Fitness for life...aka doodling fat people as my notes (yes 'as' them)
12:30-1pm- Lunch
1-2:50pm- Kinesiology Lab
3-4pm- Drive to work and potentially take a quick nap in my car
4-7pm- Coach
7:15-9pm- Climb
9:30-10pm- Make Food, unless I ate dinner before climbing
10:30- Bed

...and that was my Monday! woo what a great start to a week...........unfortunately just about everyday looked like this.

Despite the fact that my schedule was hectic, I still accomplished so many things! And I did fairly well in my classes. I am proud of what I have been able to accomplish...but I will never have a schedule like this again...ever. Cheers to a month off and a spring semester full of advanced personal training, art, sport skill classes, and rock climbing competitions!

I also have gained some pretty cool strengths this past semester. Below are some recent strengths I have developed in the past 3 months. Enjoy!

One Year

I cannot believe that it has been one year since I was diagnosed tenosynovitis in my ring fingers...a whole year!! This week marks not only the 1 year mark of my injury, but the 6 month mark of when I began climbing again (June 2012). This week also marks when I began crossfit 6 months ago. Although my fingers are not fully healed, I am making great progress for a full recovery!

This week also marks the first week where I was able to climb on crimps again with no tape! I have been able to warm up/cooldown without tape, but I decided to try climbing some crimps like these on v3-v5's in the climbing gym, on all wall angles. No pain! I do have to admit that the next day my fingers felt sore, like a sore muscle would feel. So I am not going to climb again for a couple more days. However, this is still progress in my eyes!
 

Not only are my fingers getting better, but I feel tremendously strong! I am able to lift some pretty heavy weights in crossfit, and also do some muscle ups! Here is a little video of some of my muscle up practice:

Now that my recovery is going well, I can finally focus on climbing hard again. Last year, all of my weaknesses were due to an imbalance of musculature in my body. Now that I am doing crossfit, this is not a problem anymore. I feel very powerful on the wall and I can make moves that I could never do before.

Now, my strengths from last year have become my weaknesses. However these are easy fixes such as power endurance training and specific grip strength training. If my fingers stay healthy, these things should attained in time to reach my goals!

I'd like to share my goals for the upcoming months. I have some for climbing, for crossfit, and overall health. I feel that my life is more balanced when I create goals that are not always climbing-specific. I like crossfit and I really want to get better at it. I also care about my health much more than I ever have. So here is my list...I'd like to achieve all of my goals (except for competition scores) by the end of January.

Climbing:
- Make finals for the remaining Dark Horse competitions
- Place top 15 in both ABS/SCS Nationals
- Strive to climb with no tape by February
- Work on pinch/sloper strength
- Practice Dyno's as a part of my technical training
- To climb outside again

Crossfit:
- Increase my metcon (metabolic conditioning) so that I can finish workouts faster/more efficiently
- Learn how to kip/butterfly with pull ups
- Learn/Execute proper form for all lifts
- Learn how to do double unders; get 10 in a row
- No whining/complaining

Overall Health
- Do not overtrain, listen to body
- Perform stretching/recovery exercises everyday
- Do not get injured
- Eat a modified Paleo diet (consists of Paleo with a little more carbs that can be from some grains and rice)
- Take at least 2 rest days a week


Now that I have it all written down, I hope to start working on these goals! Training all of these things without over training is a delicate balance, but seeing as I am going on 3 months with no injuries I think I can do it!

A New Chapter

The last time I posted, I was right smack in the middle of my Paleo challenge. Well, my Paleo challenge ended today! For a quick review of what Paleo is: Eating meats, nuts, veggies, seeds, and fruit consisting of 40% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 30% protein. No grains, legumes, dairy, or processed foods are allowed.

I want to give you just a quick rundown on how the diet affected me. Coming from a 65% carbohydrate (mainly grains), 15% protien, and 20% fat (mainly unsaturated) ratio, I knew that I might run into some bumps along the road with this new makeup of percentages. However for the first month I felt really no changes. I felt energetic and excited about cooking new things and trying new recipes. But about 4 weeks ago this began to change, and I began to feel really tired. I felt really foggy actually. As if I could not respond quickly to what was going on. I found out recently that my ph balance was really alkaline, being almost an 11 on the scale, where humans should be between 6.5-7.5. I'm guessing this is because I took out grains and pasta, which were the only acidic things that I was really eating. However I am constantly learning more about the pH scale and am just going to experiment with implementing different foods into my diet until I find what will make me feel better (or what is making me feel worse).

I think coming out of this challenge I am going to eat a small amount of grains/starches to see if this "fog" goes away. I think that it will, but it may take a couple of weeks. What I like about this paleo challenge is that it has helped me kick my sweet habit! I have no real craving for frozen yogurt, candy, or chocolate anymore. Pretty cool actually. I also feel much better eating foods without high fructose corn syrup (which is in basically everything now, so shopping can get frustrating)

Even though I felt I was in a fog for the past few weeks, I have made some amazing progress! Not only did I get my first muscle up, but I can do three strict muscle ups in a row on gymnastic rings. I can also deadlift 280lbs! Below is a chart of my before and after measurements. Keep in mind that I stayed a consistent 139lbs throughout the entire challenge.

 

Moving on with crossfit and climbing, I am seeing significant changes in my strength and finger health. I competed in this past weekend's Dark Horse, placing 6th, and realized that my fingers are doing pretty well. Even though my grip strength and power endurance was significantly weak, I noticed that my fingers are healed enough for me to begin (very slowly) training these aspects of climbing again!

Going forward I am going to continue with a mainly Paleo diet, crossfit, and climbing and add in some slight climbing specific training. My hope is that I can be strong and healthy enough to compete in both climbing and crossfit competitions this coming year!

End of Paleo!

First Climbing Competition In 11 Months!

Last weekend I competed in the first Dark Horse competition of the season. This was also my first competition in 11 months!! In November of 2011 I competed in the Dark Horse which was my first and last competition of the '11/'12 season. I placed 2nd there, and I was feeling really strong. But I unfortunately felt the effects of my over training three weeks after.

Last weekend was what I consider the real test to see how well my fingers are recovering. I was really nervous about doing a redpoint qualifying round because I wasn't sure how my fingers would hold up with 3 hours of climbing...plus a finals round. Especially with all hard climbs. The longest bouldering session I have had since I began bouldering again in late August had been an hour and a half long and consisted of projecting a v8, climbing v5's, and rope climbing 5.10. Even though I feel that I have all of my power back, I am lacking in the power endurance range. Knowing that made me even more nervous to climb hard.

However, my fingers held up through the entire day! ...with tape of course. But nevertheless, it felt great to compete. My scores were low in the qualifying round because I was trying not to push it too hard on my fingers. I also had poor power endurance and only had enough gas in the first hour to climb hard. I went into finals in 8th place, but I am so happy that I was able to climb hard for three whole hours!

In finals I was definitely feeling tired. But it felt great to climb in front of a crowd again and the climbs were so much fun! I think that one of the most satisfying and exciting things in life is having a crows cheer for you. I felt as if life made sense again. It was great to compete against many of my friends that I had not seen last season, and to meet new friends as well. I think that I either placed 4th or 5th in finals. Scores were not posted for those not in the top three, but I came to this conclusion after talking with my competitors.

Whether I came in 4th or 5th doesn't really matter in the long run. What matters is that I climbed with no further injury and helped put on a great show for those watching; which is one of my all time favorite things to do. I also got some great photos/video of me climbing!

Hopefully I will be able to write more posts about competitions this year! So psyched to be back!
Thanks to Jordan Shipman from Louder Than 11 for the great highlight video and Natalia Boltukhova from Metrorock for the great photos!


Highlight Video:
Dark Horse 2013 Series 4 Round 1 Highlights from Louder Than Eleven on Vimeo.

Photos: (more on darkhorseseries.com)

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.

...

 

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.