Gap the mind. Climbers feel fear but cannot act on it. Forced restraint widens the gap between stimulus and response. A tunnel becomes a decision tree.
To perform or protect? Which is better? Most mornings, I make pour-over coffee. I weigh and hand-grind 20 grams of whole beans. I pre-rinse a filtered V60 cone. Then I put the grounds in the cone on a mug on a digital scale. When the water reaches ~93 degrees Celsius, I start to pour.
Genetic potential? Excuses matter more. “Uh oh, you’re not going to like that,” my wife said. We were in a bookstore, and I had picked up a copy of The Sports Gene. I often sneer at discussions about genetics in sport. It’s not that I disbelieve that genes set our limits. They do
"When can I stop easy training?" When I introduced an allowance to our oldest son, I used three jars: Spend, Give, and Save. The three jars represented three big-picture elements of managing money. After describing the first two, I got to the one that I was most excited about, the Save jar. “And with this
What is the most important intensity? Performance in an endurance event comes from the highest average speed. Training determines what the highest average speed–“race pace”–will be. The higher the race pace, the faster the time. The faster the time, the better the performance. So the more race pace training an athlete can tolerate, the
A Review of My 2018/2019 Skimo Training The 2018/2019 skimo season was my best ever. I finished the season sixth in Canada and went to the World Championships in Switzerland. A lot of factors contributed to that outcome, luck included. My 2018 training cycle was a big factor. It was much different than in previous years
Six Drills to Make ARC Training More Effective After a ten-year hiatus, I’ve started rock climbing again. I “remember” how to move–thank God for engrams–but I started with zero climbing fitness. My forearms felt pumped and acidic within seconds. Even after two months of training, I’m just starting to feel like I have
VO2 Max: A 14-year retrospective In 2005, I went with three friends to get our first VO2 max tests. I didn’t know what the results meant. But fourteen years later, that first test is a good benchmark, and I can make some unfortunate conclusions. When compared to two more tests that bracket six years
Is 5.11 the junk zone of rock climbing? Between 2005 and 2010, I focused on sport climbing. I redpointed 13c and flashed 12c. A key part of my progress was avoiding 5.11. When I was sport climbing, I learned a lot from my friends Jay Audenart and Simon Villeneuve. Simon in particular has a fun, irreverent attitude
Functional Mysophobia: Crazy Ways to Stay Healthy Originally published at Uphill Athlete in February 2019. For endurance athletes, staying healthy while training represents more money in the fitness bank. Imagine that for every day you were sick, you had to dig into your savings and pay your employer two and a half days of income: * Five days