Warming Up 101
(photo: Charlie Fowler, a cold start after a snow cave bivy, high on Fitzroy)
Hi,
I am Mohammad Faisal Halim (please call me Faissal), and I have a question about exertion. When you are camping out, and wake up to climb, do you just climb while your muscles are still cold (I do not see how you could do warm up exercises out in the field)? I am asking because I have not been able to leave my lab much the last few months, and since I have been waking up with my body cold, from catching a few hours of sleep on the lab floor, I have not exercised for fear of hurting myself. I have only been able to do push ups sporadically (and pull ups, when nobody is looking at the elevator door frame) throughout the day, but I am gaining a truck tire around my belly, and I fear this will hurt my climbing ability. Now, I cannot risk hurting my upper body, because I cannot exercise my lower body too much as I have not completely recovered from my snowboarding injury from last December. Being unable to exercise either parts will just leave me getting fatter, and EXTREMELY unhappy (I have to feel my world in motion, as one does when climbing, trying cartwheels, vaulting over railings, or doing parkour rolls, in order to be content).
So, I need to know what techniques you use to avoid strain injuries in the field, when you are climbing for days, and have to climb as soon as you get off your sleeping perch (maybe you are using some form of warm up that I do not know of). This knowledge will be invaluable to me whenever the pressure keeps me from going home and waking up warm in my bed. Of course, such knowledge will be useful to me in the lab, too.
Thank you so much!
~Faissal
P.S. Thank you for all the information that you have put up; especially the “How to Start Jumping” article. You see, I decided to try climbing because I had read that climbing skills can make more jump sites accessible, and being a rather conservative risk taker (compared to the friends whom I go skiing with, anyway), I feel that your article will help me greatly. Of course, a BASE number is still a long, long way away, since I am a poor graduate student, and I chose this goal deliberately because it was going to be very, very hard.
Dear Faissal,
Well, truck tires are no good. Unless you are a truck. And I encourage you to start doing your pullups when other people ARE looking, and start a pullup team in your lab! You may think I’m joking, but it could be a lot of fun for all of you…..
I tend to be always too cold, so I have a lot of warmup tricks. First of all, if you are sleeping in an uncomfortably cold bivouac (i.e., on the floor of your lab or on a small ledge on Cerro Torre), make yourself a hot water bottle. I drink out of stainless steel bottles (Kleen Kanteens), and if it’s a cold night, I boil some water and fill my bottle. It’s amazing how much warmer you feel with a hot water bottle between your feet or on your stomach….if it’s very cold, two are even better.
If you wake up cold and need to get moving, drink hot liquids. This will make you immediately feel warm. Swinging your arms like a windmill, doing deep knee bends and even running in place will also warm you up really fast.
Above all, don’t forget that warm legs will really increase your overall feeling of warmth, since your legs represent a lot of surface area in your overall body mass. A pair of long johns under your pants dramatically increases your warmth. That sounds basic, but a lot of us are used to adding a layer on top when we’re cold, which doesn’t help as much as warm legs.
I hope this helps!
Steph
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http://faissal-bd.blogspot.com/ Faissal
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Steph Davis
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Faissal