Smelling salts for grade pushing

Smelling salts work for powerlifters for the same reason they awaken the unconscious. When you sniff a smelling salt, you’re inhaling a small amount of ammonia gas, which irritates the membranes of your nose and lungs, eliciting an “inhalation reflex.” That reflex triggers an increase in your breathing rate, which causes your heart rate to jump. That, in turn, stimulates your body’s “fight-or-flight” response, causing the release of adrenaline, a hormone that enhances gross motor skills (like lifting) and causes an acute uptick in focus and alertness. In short, it turbocharges the body. 

From https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a31187286/smelling-salts-weightlifting/

My question is, does anyone do this when pushing your climbing grade, especially bouldering?

Most routes I enjoy a calm relaxed engagement with the rock but when you are really bearing down on a hard sequence I could see this helping.

I hear exposure helps with adrenaline, too. But the question was about bouldering, so...

I tried huffing glue once, but found it detrimental to sending.

God I love Mountain Project 

Lol I would’ve bet cash that when I clicked on this it was going to be posted by that Trevor Puppy guy

Men's Health... the go-to source for peer-reviewed physiological research.

“Whips out smelling salts before the crux”

I wonder if this works with bath salts....

Demetri V wrote:

Lol I would’ve bet cash that when I clicked on this it was going to be posted by that Trevor Puppy guy

Haha is the fact that I know Trevor personally an issue? Hahahaha 

Lmao. I know both Trevor and Evan and I still woulda bet Trevor

OK, so ya got a monkey fed on ice cream sandwiches, and a sloth with smelling salts. Who sends the V14?

JonasMR wrote:

OK, so ya got a monkey fed on ice cream sandwiches, and a sloth with smelling salts. Who sends the V14?

The monkey, easy. Humans suck at climbing.

Sloths are good at a certain kind of climbing, but I dunno how effective those claws are on rock. At least I get to use this as an excuse to post my favorite sloth video:

JonasMR wrote:

OK, so ya got a monkey fed on ice cream sandwiches, and a sloth with smelling salts. Who sends the V14?

This deserves its own thread. Red pointing sloth for sure. Monkeys can’t handle the ice cream sandwhich as well as sloths can handle the high.

David K wrote:

The monkey, easy. Humans suck at climbing.

Sloths are good at a certain kind of climbing, but I dunno how effective those claws are on rock. At least I get to use this as an excuse to post my favorite sloth video:

As a newly single guy I appreciate that the sloth is swimming to find some tail.

I've had really good luck with trying to influence my heart rate through breathing. 

Quite easy: to lower your heartrate, breath out for a longer period of time than you breath in. To raise your heart rate, breathe in longer than you breathe out. So, getting ready for the crux I want to raise my heart rate, then lower it afterwards to recover. Seems to work well, and it's that simple. Figure this out from the Huberman podcast, which is worth a listen. 

There's also something called the physiological sigh, where you take a breathe through your nose, then top that off with another quick breath through your nose, then breathe out through your mouth slowly. Useful if you're cruxing out and need to chill TF out. Works better than trying to tell yourself to chill out (which I'm not sure if you noticed doesn't work). I use it a lot when dealing with anxiety in public places. Managing stress in the moment is a nice skill to work on. 

I've thought about trying smelling salts for really long ultra endurance stuff, to wake myself up when I'm stumbling around half hallucinating and want to keep awake, but I've actually never have tried it.

Try meth

if it was a short cut, it would be the main route

Julian H wrote:

I know a guy that works at friction labs and he told me they are about release a new product that is basically their supper chunky chalk with smelling salts added. he said it really packs a punch 

J Tree already did this. They had scented chalks. I had one that smelled like flowers (got for free). Smelled the bag and never used it. Super intense. 

Y'all don't put turpentine in your chalk? 

huh.

Funny I was thinking about this last week when one of my climbing had a story on IG of her doing this at her powerlifting gym.  I immediately thought - how long before I see her and others around the tension board sniffing a strange little bottle :)