Kimmo

i'm not worrying! But, you're a coach, right? football? would you like climbing offered as a competitive sport in high school? don't you think that would be fun to coach? or is that aspect of the sport anathema to you? i know you like the athleticism and the competition, having worked on boulder probs with you at the uw rock. oh btw, where's that keg of koenigshoeven?

he did say that with complete commitment he thinks anyone could. i don't know if i agree with him....but maybe.

woazers. century squats. that sounds ridiculously hard. yeah i don't know, the 5.13 varsity comment was rather spontaneous, but imagine if you would have had the same coaching and training in climbing as you did in running. i imagine you would have climbed 5.13 after two or three years?

two things, besides the already mentioned: 1. i doubt you were hospitalized for anything related to malnutrition; perhaps hypoglycemia? 2. sure, do whatever works for ya, but being fat ain't gonna work for ya. i'd say it's a rarity (has it been done?) for anyone over 10% rp'ing 5.14. 5.13? sure, you can drink your beer and generally be a slob, but shit, it's 5.13, which is probably like running a 5:30 mile. it would barely get you on a high school varsity climbing team (if there was such a thing).

your methodology is indicative of an "on your ass" strategy; proper protocol indicates an "in your ass" approach.

I doubt they have to fast like Kimmo to achieve that though. my purpose wasn't to lose weight at the time, and yeah i don't think someone who's running 100+ miles a week CAN fast.

my bad. elite marathoners average 3.3% body fat, per this article.

i call a giant BS on your 15% body fat on world class marathoners, at least during competition phases. check yer data on that. they tend closer to elite cyclists (duh, it's a long distance endurance affair where weight matters) at around 5 to 6%. what i meant by protecting laziness is that people sometimes get overly alarmed by things outside their comfort zone. eating seems to fall into this. "oh my god, if i don't eat for a day I'll DIE!". i've personally fasted for up to a week straight and felt great, and actually won a climbing contest on the 7th day of a fast once (that one was a 300 cal a day fresh juice fast, not just water like the other).

it's not like the weight-drop is a permanent chronic situation. i personally think it's healthy to drop weight once in a while to pretty low levels, ie fasting and such. get down to 5% body fat for three weeks. armstrong and jordan seemed pretty healthy to me at 5%, and this was close to their normal %. people seem to want to protect their laziness!

Shit man I'm all about training and working hard and making lifestyle sacrifices to get better but giving up eating and drinking beer just to get another letter grade, that's just geh. don't think of it in the first person: for you it's happy homo, but at a certain level, every little thing can make a big difference, and weight is one of the biggest factors (try a route at your rp limit with a 15 pound squash sticking outta yer ass). but again, pushing difficulty at this seemingly obsessive level ain't for everyone.

right on (except "everyone Climbs in the range there happy with"; can't assume about anyone else's happiness!). there's no friggin absolute about "improving"; i love ping pong (really) but i'm not into pushing it like i am with climbing, and ain't nothing wrong wit dat.

the two aren't mutually exclusive.

there's some of that, but not necessarily as much as your post seems to infer. it's not like you need to drive out to the crags and while away your time to improve (or maintain); I personally MUCH prefer training, at home, close to family, instead of sitting around the crags all day with my fellow orangutans. And once certain levels are achieved, it's way easier to (vs initial improvement). i personally think that once you've hit say 5.13, an hour of the right things every week will keep you there (assuming you don't bloat out and gain a buncha weight). see above. i think perception of situation has a ton to do with it. i know a few climbers who dropped the game when the 30's came around, with jobs and families, and suddenly they didn't "have time". well, they didn't have time to hang out at the crags all day like they used to, but they certainly had plenty of time to stay fit and even improve, if they wanted to , or knew how. personally, i'd way rather be siked about training and exercise than wasting an hour a day in front of the tube or whatever other time-wasters i might be engaged in (cascadeclimbers?). like i said, it doesn't take that much time.

two more quotes, y entonces: buenas noches. "With every grade higher you get, it becomes clearer that you are only limited by your desire to see if you can go further." --Dave MacLeod, blog Feb 09 2007 "There are no secrets to becoming strong. It's all about hard work. Beer and women will be the ruin of you." --Ben Moon, FreakClimbing.com, Nov 28 2004

more from haston. Training “Train hard, rest, don’t eat. It’s a power to weight thing. In fact it’s a weight to powerful fingers thing. It’s not rocket science. Laurence went from F6a to F8a+. Any man or woman can climb F8a within a year in my opinion. All they have to do is everything in their power to do that and not get injured.” rest of interview: linky link

"To train for his latest tough routes, Stevie Haston adopted the mantra “Eat Less, Train More, and Try Harder.” Haston has done a lot of hard climbs because he’s a training maniac, doing as many as 2,000 pull-ups, as well as push-ups and sit-ups during a typical training day. He also went on a strict diet, dropping his weight to 145 pounds by eating 700 calories a day, which he says, “It’s not healthy.” Haston added, “I've been stronger but can't pull on such small holds because of the extra muscle bulk. Muscles are heavy.” combine with tall steep crags=hard climbing.

i think you've been the reasonable voice in this argument i've been unfortunate enough to expose myself to. thomas merton is another name that comes to mind, a man of considerable faith and considerable thoughtfulness.

well, it might be-depends on yer perspective-but that wasn't the point, right?

i don't think anyone was arguing, dickhead. why don't you take your "humor" into a private message forum with porter? there you can joke about minorities, women, the developmentally disabled, etc etc to your heart's content, without exposing others to your poor taste.

what if that "hard move or two" is a V10 on an otherwise 5.10c? . the hardest move'll dictate the grade of a route only if there is no cumulative fatigue, ie. a V7 boulder crux on a 5.11 with good rests before and after the crux, pretty standard to rate it 5.13a. on the other hand, you can have a 5.14 with nothing harder than V4.

He specifically showed that in the presence of thimerosal, there’s a lot of damage to nerve cells. When you add aluminum to the thimerosal, you need less thimerosal to create the damage to the immune and nerve cells in the presence of aluminum. Then when you add neomycin – an antibiotic in some of the vaccines – it potentiates the potency of nerve cell damage with aluminum and mercury together. And when you culture the nerve cells and testosterone, versus estrogen, and you expose them to some of the vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged in greater amounts than the nerve cells that are bathed in estrogen. That raises some concern because we do see that children with neurodevelopmental disorders are 4:1, boys to girls. So you have to question whether testosterone actually makes children more vulnerable to exposure to toxins like mercury, aluminum or their combination? None of these studies have been done in humans. People say, “We can’t do those studies.” And I say, “Why not?” They say, “It’s unethical.” I say, “Well, if it’s unethical to do those studies on vaccine ingredients and combining them together, then it’s unethical to give the vaccines in general.” So we’re missing a lot of important data that we won’t believe, and we’re also missing a lot of important data that we won’t accumulate because most of the studies that are done are by the manufacturers of the vaccines themselves.” interesting reading. here's a link to someone who's opinion i've come to appreciate. neither an anti-vaccine alarmist, nor a pro-vaccine fear-monger. cedars sinai pediatrician

so what's the advice regarding bolting? does he talk about sleeved vs wedge, stainless vs galvie, length, hole blow-out, etc etc? a rather important topic, considering the ramifications of poorly placed bolts.... i imagine the rest of the stuff stayed the same, such as the advice about campusing with taped fingers and all the weightlifting? i think much of that portion needs to be taken with a grain of salt and critical thinking skills.

well, ok, some species aren't what would conventionally be considered "social"....

even taking up "climbing" itself is the result of "advertising" in one form or another. we are a highly social and conformist species, like all species on this planet.

consumer psychology is an interesting topic, and i'd wager, contrary to all the denials of the effects of "advertising", there aren't many immune from its effects. we live in a matrix of barely conscious impulses, deeply imbedded from early on.