Mountain Project Logo

endurance

Jim Garber · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 0

THIS WORKS: Traverse. Traverse until it hurts. Go to a different traverse and do it until it hurts. Find a third traverse and repeat. It worked for me. I had a saying I would tell myself: Endurance is my God. I would warm up on easy and moderate bouldering problems on Flagstaff (here in good ol' Boulder, Colorado) and then go to the fingery fairly overhanging traverse on the backside of Beer Barrel boulder and go back and forth until I puked. Then I walked up the hill on the other side of the road to Upper Y and go back and forth (overhanging but bigger holds) until I pucked. Then I came back down the hill to the main area to the Main Traverse (large , sloppy and greasy holds) and do the back and forth thing until - you guessed it. This prepared me for things like the Edge in Eldo that involve 3 heavy duty pump pitches.
So find some traverses in your area or build them inside and use, use, use them. It's less fun than going up but it sure does help.

Mike Anderson · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Nov 2004 · Points: 3,265
Jim Garber wrote:THIS WORKS: Traverse. Traverse until it hurts. Go to a different traverse and do it until it hurts. Find a third traverse and repeat. It worked for me. I had a saying I would tell myself: Endurance is my God. I would warm up on easy and moderate bouldering problems on Flagstaff (here in good ol' Boulder, Colorado) and then go to the fingery fairly overhanging traverse on the backside of Beer Barrel boulder and go back and forth until I puked. Then I walked up the hill on the other side of the road to Upper Y and go back and forth (overhanging but bigger holds) until I pucked. Then I came back down the hill to the main area to the Main Traverse (large , sloppy and greasy holds) and do the back and forth thing until - you guessed it. This prepared me for things like the Edge in Eldo that involve 3 heavy duty pump pitches. So find some traverses in your area or build them inside and use, use, use them. It's less fun than going up but it sure does help.
I assume you're exaggerating, but training until you puke isn't necessarily productive. It often leads to over training. There are much smarter ways to train that require less time and pain, and yield better results then the old-fashioned "no pain, no gain" methods.
Mike Lane · · AnCapistan · Joined Jan 2006 · Points: 880

I can't picture Jim Garber overtraining. But then he can pause and hang out on route mid-crux and make it look like a mere endurance problem. Without access to the all the vast high-end training knowledge of the Anderson's, Jims method will undoubtedly increase endurance. I used to get about 3-1/2 to 4 laps on the Nautilus as part of my Morrison routine and it made a huge difference. If you're stuck on plastic, use an auto belay and both climb and downclimb a route just a little under your range; and when the burn starts to hit you have to suck up mentally and set a goal of say, 5 or 10 more moves and keep going. And maybe most important, breathe like an athlete working. I think we all tend to hold our breath in really cruxy positions.

Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875
Mike Anderson wrote: My understanding is that lactic acid may still hinder recovery and too much accumulation of lactic acid will kill mitochondria, and thus can lead to injury. This can be avoided/mitigated by properly cooling down after a long training session to flush the muscles of lactic acid.
Where did you read that lactic acid will kill mitochondria? The body's response to large productions of lactate is to actually increase mitochondria. Mitochondria then clear the lactate more effectively by using it as fuel. The hydrogen ions are buffered by other means, including heavy respiration.

There isn't any convincing evidence to show that the hydrogen ions or lactate hinder recovery or cause fatigue.

grayhghost wrote:I have heard that you can use the big muscle groups of the legs to flush lactic acid out of the forearms but have not read anything to it corroborate it. This could be a good application of 15 minutes of running or biking. I know that massage helps a lot.
It is true light aerobic activity can speed up lactic acid byproduct clearance. However, I would hedge that it is somewhat activity specific. i.e. not sure how effective running would be at clearing hydrogen ions from your forearms.

The reality, though, is why are people so obsessed still with clearing lactic acid? It falls back to normal levels COMPLETELY ON ITS OWN in basically two hours or less with no residual ill effects. I have no knowledge of faster clearance = better recovery either.

Just for the record, this does not mean a cool down is worthless (especially for highly aerobic activities). But cool down has multiple purposes; clearing lactic acid is not its primary function.
Mike Anderson · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Nov 2004 · Points: 3,265

Now things are getting interesting....

Aerili wrote: Where did you read that lactic acid will kill mitochondria? The body's response to large productions of lactate is to actually increase mitochondria. Mitochondria then clear the lactate more effectively by using it as fuel. The hydrogen ions are buffered by other means, including heavy respiration.
I read this in Dave McLeod's book, "9 out of 10 climbers....". I have searched for additional support for this claim and not found any, but earlier references, including PRC and Fingers of Steel have cautioned that "too much stamina training can lead to injury". There is something called

From what I've read about the new understanding of the causes of fatigue, the mitochondria do not use lactate as fuel, they use the excess protons from glycolysis for fuel to reform ATP from ADP (oxidative phosphorylation). I'm not clear on how lactate is buffered locally in the cells, but I know that the kidneys are involved in managing pH levels in the blood in general. Is your larger point that activities that produce large amounts of lactate are good because they trigger the growth of mitochondria?

Practically speaking, I can say with great confidence that cooling down with "aerobic" climbing is beneficial to recovery, even if the precise bio-chemical reason for that is unclear. I suspect that it is a consequence of the fact that the forearms are basically very small subsystems of the larger body, so they can suffer from temporary local fluxuations in the cell chemistry, be it deficits of glucose and glycogen, or accumulations of protons or acidosis. in such a scenario, any activity that encouraged blood flow from the larger system into the subsystem would help to re-balance the local chemistry of the forearms. This doesn't explain why there would be a time limit on when a proper cool down should take place, however.
Mike Anderson · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Nov 2004 · Points: 3,265

To follow up.... I have read in a few different places that I trust more than climbing books that acidosis (abnormally low pH level in the blood) impairs cellular metabolism in the short term, and can cause "tissue damage" in the long term. Whether or not this is referring to the suggestion that "lactic acid kills mitochondria", I don't know, but it sounds like an oversimplification to me.

Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875

Ah, yes, now things get interesting.... ha ha.

A dude named Brooks was showing in research as early as the 80s that muscle cells have an ability to shuttle lactate directly into the cell and oxidize it there (vs via bloodstream and circulated back). They have even found the enzyme responsible for transport (lactate dehydrogenase I believe). His research is another nail in the coffin of more lactate = fatigue.

Also, it has been known for a long time that the protons created by the splitting of ATP get accepted by pyruvate and turned back into lactate (which can then be used as fuel). This is actually one method of buffering the system from acidosis: making lactate! So, in other words, lactate production does not cause acidosis, it helps ward it off. (The kidneys, otoh, are not very involved in buffering during exercise because they are too slow in their methods.)

MA wrote:Is your larger point that activities that produce large amounts of lactate are good because they trigger the growth of mitochondria?
Yes. It's what lactate threshold training is all about. That and it improves other buffering methods (proteins in the cell, improved VO2 max, etc).

MA wrote:acidosis impairs cellular metabolism in the short term, and can cause "tissue damage" in the long term.
I am unaware of how it can cause tissue damage in the long run. I think this is a reference to the whole "lactic acid causes muscle soreness" -- which we know to be false.

The claim that it interrupts cellular metabolism in the short run is the long-standing theory new research is shooting down. Studies have shown that lowered pH does not affect contractile ability of muscle in vivo.

HOWEVER, accumulation of inorganic phosphate has been shown to affect muscle contraction in vivo. It is one of the new theories behind fatigue. But this is a result of PCr substrate; so, a totally different thing.

As for cool-down, the real role is to simply move pooled blood out of the extremities and back to the heart for oxygenation. The veins have "one-way" valves that open and shut like trap doors and are driven by muscle contractions, not their own ability to pump (unlike arteries). When people don't cool down, the veins tend to stay closed off and blood pools in the extremities with no oxygen.
Mike Anderson · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Nov 2004 · Points: 3,265

Acidosis is not necessarily caused by lactic acid (that was the old way of thinking), it is also caused by excess protons (the new paradigm). So acidosis is still the culprit, but the cause of the acidosis has been revised. More generally "acidosis" covers many conditions which result in low blood pH, which, if not corrected, damages tissue. See "Ischemia". Acidosis is the cause of tissue damage in t things like stroke, frostbite, hypoxia and others. My remaining question, which I still haven't found a good answer for, is it possible to cause this condition by over training? Is this why several people have warned against too much stamina training?

That tidbit about cooling down is helpful. I didn't know that blood could only be cleared from the muscle from contracting it.

AGParker · · San Angelo, TX · Joined Oct 2009 · Points: 20

For a long time, lactate was believed to be the cause of muscular fatigue during high intensity exercise in which the end product of glycolysis was lactate. In my education, we were taught that lower levels of intramuscular pH were the cause. Current research, ptjournal.apta.org/content/… and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/178…, suggests only a small association with pH decreases and fatigue, and now suggest that fatigue is the result of accumulation of inorganic phosphate and other metabolites that interfere with cross-bridge cycling. I really need to catch up on some research!!

I like this thread.

Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875

I don't know if I would say that the 'new' paradigm of acidosis is that it is caused by excess protons. Certainly protons have always been known to cause it. But the original research that postulated that most(?) of them came from the formation of lactic acid (vs pyruvic acid in ATP production) was never definitively proven. As Dr. Len Kravitz (a well known exercise physiologist) puts it, "It is important to stress that this revealing and interesting history of acidosis and lactate exposes one important message. There really never was experimental research demonstrating a cause-effect relationship between lactate production and acidosis. Yet, the work of these early pioneers has been considered the absolute explanation of acidosis for more than 80 years."

MA wrote:So acidosis is still the culprit, but the cause of the acidosis has been revised.
Well, acidosis does lower pH, but it does not appear to be the culprit in fatigue.

I can't speak to the role of acidosis in things like stroke, frostbite, etc. because they do not have the same exact biochemical reactions occurring as in anaerobic exercise and I don't know much about them.

Overtraining should not cause acidosis (or vice versa). Overtraining is a condition occurring over a long period of time, whereas acidosis is a very transient occurrence (as long as your body is working normally!).
Mike Anderson · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Nov 2004 · Points: 3,265

Yeah, I don't know much about acidosis either, but if you google it, you can find multiple references that say it can be caused by intense exercise. That said,I haven't found anything yet that discusses it in this context, so I'm not satisfied. IME there are severe consequences for over training endurance, and it would be nice to know why.

James Arnold · · Chattanooga · Joined Dec 2008 · Points: 55

"lactate shuttling" is an interesting concept that this link on the Cori Cycle talks about

elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook…

Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875
James Arnold wrote:"lactate shuttling" is an interesting concept that this link on the Cori Cycle talks about
That is the not the lactate shuttling we were talking about. That is the "normal" (and long recognized) cycle of what happens to lactate. The lactate shuttle discussed in this thread was a different, intracellular method.
James Arnold · · Chattanooga · Joined Dec 2008 · Points: 55
Aerili wrote: That is the not the lactate shuttling we were talking about. That is the "normal" (and long recognized) cycle of what happens to lactate. The lactate shuttle discussed in this thread was a different, intracellular method.
hmm, err, well, egg on my face, and from a newer exercise phys book as well.

Perhaps this is better...for sure, "newer"

lactate production actually RETARDS ACIDOSIS. Lactate is a temporary ‘neutralizer’ or ‘buffer’ to the cells elevated accumulation of protons during high-intensity exercise. Lactate production is therefore good and not bad for contracting muscle. Lactate is not a bad molecule, and it has been given a bad rap from being falsely blamed for the cause of acidosis.

unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%2…
Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875

Hi James, yes, that info was already posted by me earlier. Thanks for the back-up.

Nick Zmyewski · · Newark, DE · Joined Jun 2011 · Points: 250

I find it very interesting that a concept as simple as endurance can have so many different theories on what exactly causes the pump and exhaustion. Has there been any extensive scientific research into the sport of climbing as a whole? Obviously climbing has not been around as long as most mainstream sports so the knowledge pool is much smaller. I would love it if somebody would do some research and write a book for the layperson about climbing physiology.

S.Stelli · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Dec 2009 · Points: 150
Aerili wrote: As for cool-down, the real role is to simply move pooled blood out of the extremities and back to the heart for oxygenation. The veins have "one-way" valves that open and shut like trap doors and are driven by muscle contractions, not their own ability to pump (unlike arteries). When people don't cool down, the veins tend to stay closed off and blood pools in the extremities with no oxygen.
Aerili - would you mind expanding on this for me? I don't think I quite understand why the blood would stay pooled in the muscles because of the valves in the veins? Thanks!
Terry Parker · · Fort Collins, CO · Joined May 2006 · Points: 0

Getting back to the original post...how to build endurance. You can look at the Exum Guides slogging up and down the Grand. Once was passed by a cute (woman) guide carrying 2 large full propane tanks up to the saddle climber hut and making good time so she could make it back down for happy hour. I hated her....
This could be you, watch the video on the link....(its definitely not me, but would love to have the time to get in shape like this)
exumguides.com/?page_id=7
Other alternative is Mountain Athlete. They have programs that seem to be Cross Fit, GymJones like, but designed for climbing hard and long.
mountainathlete.com/
My experience it is always more fun to read about it than do it.

Aerili · · Los Alamos, NM · Joined Mar 2007 · Points: 1,875
Nick Zmyewski wrote:Has there been any extensive scientific research into the sport of climbing as a whole? ... I would love it if somebody would do some research and write a book for the layperson about climbing physiology.
The problem is there would be almost no scientific studies to reference in said book (and what is the point of a book based on anecdotes? You have the spray forums for that). You could write a book that references other books' research on exercise physiology, or....you could just read those other books and get the same info.

There are a few books written for climbing training and they explore physiology: Clyde Soles' and Mark Twight's books come to mind, the Self Coached Climber, yadda yadda.

There is no money out there to study climbing. Virtually no one cares. No one makes, bets, or wins big money in climbing. Climbers aren't interested in shelling out for trainers or conditioning specialists, either, so there's no real industry there. Without money driving research, it just isn't done.

clevernamehere wrote:Aerili - would you mind expanding on this for me? I don't think I quite understand why the blood would stay pooled in the muscles because of the valves in the veins? Thanks!
The valves open passively based on blood pressure gradient. This gradient is partially driven by the volume of blood being pumped OUT by the heart and partially by the muscles surrounding the veins contracting and pressing against the veins to help "push" blood through these valves back to the heart (which are one way mechanisms).

So, when you stop a high intensity exercise "cold," (i.e. no cool down), you have a large volume of blood in the extremities since the tissues demanded oxygen and needed to clear waste at the same time. Without cool down, all of a sudden the heart rate will drop a great deal, thus reducing blood pressure and reducing the gradient driving blood flow. You also stop moving, so there are no muscle contractions to assist the veins in pushing the blood back to the heart. Hence, you get pooled blood in the extremities (and often light-headedness to go with since the brain becomes deprived of adequate oxygenated blood). HTH.
S.Stelli · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Dec 2009 · Points: 150

Excellent. Thanks Aerili! This has been an amazing thread to read.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

Training Forum
Post a Reply to "endurance "

Log In to Reply

Join the Community

Create your FREE account today!
Already have an account? Login to close this notice.

Get Started.