Physical Condition for climbing

[Chad_A]

(snip...)I'm curious as to how light I can go as far as body weight goes without sacrificing too much strength in other important areas.

 

Wimpy climber-type here...

 

Lack of body weight hasn't bothered me any. Like anyone else, you learn what your body can do, then gauge how to treat it. Long haul... go light. Short haul and willing to suffer a bit... pile on the weight. I've always thought pack weight, up to a point, is just a mental issue. I'm pushing 145lbs soaking wet and have had guys at 200lbs heft my pack after a long haul and their eyes bug out. To them, it was heavy. For me, it was fine. Go figure. (No chestbeating... just trying to point out that like most things in climbing, a LOT of it is just in your head.)

 

As far as snowshoes go, the lighter the better! Same footprint/area as everyone else, but less weight equals less floundering for me!

 

And if you're with a sympathetic bunch, us lightweights can always use the "but I'm already carrying 30% of my body weight" excuse to offload group gear to the other brutes in the party. Personally... I've never done this - or should I say - been sucessful at doing this.

 

-kurt

 

True, true. I'm 6 feet, and 145 lbs. If I have a 45-50 lb. pack, I can keep up with the others...then again, if my share of the group gear is the rope, which inevitably ends up on upper half of the pack (under the lid), I certainly seem to tip over easier than the other heavier guys. Just an observation.

[Jedi]

I would like to have some fat on longer trips. I've been working my cardio getting ready for my next trip and I've become leaner than usual. Even eating all I want. Dropped from a 147lbs to 142lbs. I've weighed between 145 & 148 for over 20 years so 5 pounds is a lot. Maybe I need to eat even more cake and ice cream before bed.

Carring a pack 33% of my weight is really works my traps by the end of the day. That's a 59lb for someone 180lbs.

Oooo..... or a 66lb pack for you 200 pounders.

 

You know when it's a heavy pack when you have to sit down to put it on and have trouble getting up (flash backs of the West Buttress). Or that lovely haul bag that is half you size and weight.

[Bogen]

Bullshit, bullshit. Fat does NOT help you climb. Maybe you think those extra pounds would be worth carrying on a month long expedition when you are working at a deficit for days at a time. Even then, it's just poor planning. If you're skinny, and you are prepping for the above scenario, put some extra food in your pack, and some extra clothes on your back. Lemme break it down for ya...

 

First, your body stores energy in a variety of ways, and what we are striving for with all the energy bars, drinks, gels we eat, is to keep our blood sugar high enough that we don't 'bonk.' Bonking is what happens when your blood glucose drops low enough that the body has to start liberating energy from other stores, like fat. Free glucose is stored in the liver and the brain. You aren't losing, or even using, your fat stores till well after you 'bonk.'

 

Second, fat does not keep you warmer, other than through a volume/surface area relationship (volume increases as a cube, area by a square, so the greater the mass/area ratio, the slower you cool.) This relationship is relatively minor in the face of good clothing and a healthy metabolism.

 

 

So your excuses, weak-minded fools. Trying to justify your extra weight as performance enhancing is ridiculous.

Lose it, or carry it to the top with pride.

 

Here is the Bogen method for weight loss, which I don't practice much in winter laziness, but reassume every spring:

1) Exercise at least to the point of a light sweat first thing in the morning, BEFORE you eat. If you are short on time, find whatever exercise will make you sweat fastest, and do that, but make sure you do it every day.

2)DO NOT eat anything in the evening if you can avoid it. Plan ahead to eat early, if you have to eat late, eat really light.

 

That's it. This will work, unless you do nothing the rest of the time but eat ham and french fries.

[Dru]

i thought the Bogen plan was deep fried Mars bars 3x a day?

[Dru]

Second, fat does not keep you warmer, other than through a volume/surface area relationship (volume increases as a cube, area by a square, so the greater the mass/area ratio, the slower you cool.) This relationship is relatively minor in the face of good clothing and a healthy metabolism.

 

Fat does keep you warmer. Ive known tubbies who could swim in cold water for like an hour, I was shivering after 10 minutes. Also I've seen anorexics who would be fully shivering and wearing sweaters on +25C days in July. Additionally fat has no metabolic load so you don't have t divert energy to it (unlike bone and muscle) and can use that extra energy to keep warm.

[Jedi]

Bogen: I hear what you are saying but I'm not talking about an energy source while I'm climbing or on the move. I had mentioned I had picked up my cardio workouts. AND I am burning off what little fat I have, hense the weight loss (pretty ripped in a wirey way). My body must be burning my fat stores up, eh? I was saying it would be nice to have a little storage for my 3 week trip (hense the increase in cake & ice cream).

I believe what Dru mentioned since I have shivered like a chiwawa(sp?) is temp's other more meaty might not shiver in. So I do go a little heavier in the clothing section.

 

Now there might have been a little confusion. I know people who are 200lbs and all muscle. And I know more people (non climbing types) who are 200lbs who have a high body fat percentile. I would think the ones with the lower body fat percentiles would fair better carring large pack that someone with more fat.

 

Hey...then would get into a tall vs short people. More specifically longer strides vs. shorter strides. The amount of caloires burned by a shorter person trying to keep up with someone with a longer stride and their caloric expenditure..........blabla bla...

Of course it's a moot point unless the 6'4" guy is giving his 5'6" partner shit about keeping up.

 

I gotta buddy who is 6'2 and has an ape index of 9". More efficent aid climber than I. Has a bigger rack at the end of a pitch than I do. Different body types has their advantages.

I think there is an advantage to naturally being more bigger (not huge) than me as an alpine climber. More muscular to offset the weight of the average pack (28 to 40lbs) and more muscle/protein for you body to use if it needs it.

[Bogen]

Fat does keep you warmer. Ive known tubbies who could swim in cold water for like an hour, I was shivering after 10 minutes. Also I've seen anorexics who would be fully shivering and wearing sweaters on +25C days in July. Additionally fat has no metabolic load so you don't have t divert energy to it (unlike bone and muscle) and can use that extra energy to keep warm.

 

I have known people like that too. I suspect that cases like that fall into outer portions of the curve, there is obviously a great deal of physiological variation in metabolic rate vs body fat, and there may be other reasons that they are generating more or less heat. Fat is not good insulation, and it doesn't start giving you energy til you are really out of blood glucose.

[Dru]

Fat is not good insulation,

 

Psychologically not, because your nerve ends come out to your skin, outside your fat layer. But physiologically, it does insulate. That's why cold-living groups like the Inuit are physiologically adapted to be chunky. Well, that and the seal blubber diet.

[griz]

Bogen, everyone is different. If i'm getting ready for a long multi week climb then I work on weight gain w/ both muscle and fat because it's all gone and then some when i get back. The suggestion of "putting extra food in your pack" is overly simplistic, also. When you start hitting some altitude and your body doesn't want and can't hold down unlimited amounts of food then you just go off the muscle and fat of your body as another source.

Edited January 21, 2005 by griz

[Bogen]

But physiologically, it does insulate. That's why cold-living groups like the Inuit are physiologically adapted to be chunky. Well, that and the seal blubber diet.

 

The only physiological benefit is the volume/area relationship. The Inuit actually seem to be an exception to Baergs law, that animals within the same species tend to larger size as you go North, irrespective of body fat. The Inuit are not large people as far as it goes, but they do tend to fatten up when they can. Anyway, while the vol/area ratio benefit to heat loss may be significant over evolutionary time, we are talking about athletic performance here, and ounce for ounce I bet fleece (or sealskin) is better insulation.

[Dru]

Unless you can quote me R-values for 1) skin over muscle at 5% body fat and 2) skin over 2" of fat over flabby muscle at 30-35% body fat and show they are not significantly different, I'm not going to trust your claims that fat provides no insulation.

[Bogen]

I'll check my books...

 

Anyway, I'm not claiming it provides absolutely no insulation, just that as far as climbing goes, the additional benefit of weight as fat doesn't justify carrying it. You'd be better off losing 20 pounds of fat and carrying a 1 pound fleece.

[Squid]

Bogen, he's called your bluff. Time to skin an Inuit and a skinny white guy. I suggest AlpinFox.

[Bogen]

I've met alot of Inuit, enough to know you wouldn't go after one with a knife!! They do like to be touched, maybe a gentler approach would work better. I don't know about Alpinfox...

[Dru]

Influence of clothing and body-fat insulation on thermal adjustments to cold-water stress.

 

Toner MM, Holden WL, Foley ME, Bogart JE, Pandolf KB.

 

U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, MA 01760.

 

Male volunteers were divided into a low body fat (L) group (X = 10.6%, N = 5) and moderate fat (M) group (X = 18.6%, N = 5). Each was dressed in both dry suit plus medium insulation undergarment (DS-M) and dry suit plus heavy insulation (DS-H) and immersed in 10 and 15 degrees C water for 3 h. In 10 degrees C water, through not significantly different, rectal temperature (Tre) at h 3 was slightly higher in M (DS-M 36.4 degrees C, DS-H 36.5 degrees C) compared with L (DS-M 35.9 degrees C, DS-H 36.3 degrees C), whereas mean skin temperature (Tsk) and metabolic rate (MR) were in general, slightly lower for M(DS-M 23.6 degrees C, 184 W; DS-H 25.5 degrees C, 147 W, respectively). Over time the metabolic and thermal responses tended to stabilize after 120 min of immersion in both groups. Similar responses were observed in 15 degrees C water. These data suggested that despite the variation in body fatness, minimal thermal differences between groups were noted because of the attenuating effects of the insulated clothing.

[griz]

nerds.

[Bogen]

Bogen, everyone is different. If i'm getting ready for a long multi week climb then I work on weight gain w/ both muscle and fat because it's all gone and then some when i get back. The suggestion of "putting extra food in your pack" is overly simplistic, also. When you start hitting some altitude and your body doesn't want and can't hold down unlimited amounts of food then you just go off the muscle and fat of your body as another source.

nerds

 

Of course, you're right. On both counts.

 

The reason extra fat helps you on an expedition is the same reason it helps the Inuit in winter. But for one or two day climbs, even in cold weather, that fat is mostly just useless extra weight.

[Bogen]

While we're on the subject...

A prof at my university was doing some of this cold weather physiology research, with army grant money. Remember the ColdBuster Bar? It was a bar he designed with a bunch of stuff that was supposed to warm you up by tricking your body into burning its fat reserves. The active ingredients were cocoa, skim milk powder and rice!!!

 

It did work, a number of my classmates earned money playing chess while hypothermic to test its various constituents.

 

The mechanism by which the protein in the milk powder caused heat release wasn't well understood, at least not when I left, but it was well documented.

 

The cocoa has theophyllin, a methyl xanthine like caffiene, that cause fat to metabolize quickly in the presence of carbohydrate - the rice powder.

 

Unfortunately, milk chocolate has very little real cocoa, but you should be able to make your version of this cold weather energy food if you want. At the time, the army was apparently using this bar in cold weather rations. It was on sale in MEC for a short while, but I guess no one believed in it.

[Dru]

Rice pudding and hot chocolate for breakfast

[Buckaroo]

"Bullshit, bullshit. Fat does NOT help you climb."

 

Depends what your climbing. On K2 in 1986 7 climbers got trapped at the high camp on the shoulder of the Abruzzi in a late season storm with no extra food or fuel for water.

 

The 2 that made it down alive were considerably overweight to start with. The other 5 all lean climber types died of attrition and exposure either at high camp or on descent.

[Bogen]

Were they overweight to start with? Were the missing climbers accounted for?

[Buckaroo]

"Were they overweight to start with?"

 

Yes the survivors Willi Bauer and Kurt Diemberger were overweight to start with.

 

Julie Tullis, Alan Rouse, Alfred Imitzer, Hannes Wieser and Mrowka Dobroslawa were all normal to lean to start with.

 

"Were the missing climbers accounted for?"

 

Not sure if all the bodies were found/recovered or not, don't think so.

 

The best account is Diemberger's "The Endless Knot", a tragic and illuminating tale about what can happen when people tackle the 8,000 meter peaks.

[Stefan]

Bullshit, bullshit. Fat does NOT help you climb.

 

Then why do those badass Russkies eat Halva?

[David_Parker]

Bullshit, bullshit. Fat does NOT help you climb.

Tell Don Whillans that!

1. Exercise at least to the point of a light sweat first thing in the morning, BEFORE you eat. If you are short on time, find whatever exercise will make you sweat fastest, and do that, but make sure you do it every day.

I have yet to find a girl who actually wants to have sex EVERY day!

[Dru]

Bullshit, bullshit. Fat does NOT help you climb.

 

Then why do those badass Russkies eat Halva?

 

halvah is mostly sesame paste and honey

badass Russkis eat "speck" (pork fat)