Do I need to stop drinking beer and alcohol to climb 5.12 [Solved! Nope! But I'll cut back anyways]

I think drinking a day before climbing is no good... drinking too much after climbing too makes it feel like my tendons get zero recovery the day after...
drinking though on off days or before rest days isnt too bad from my experience. If alcohol though prevents you from staying light, id abstain.. sending feels wayyy cooler than getting a buzz imo. But everyone is different... my good homie sends 13+ on the reg and he drinks beer pretty regularly at the end of the day... see what works for you.

I think climbing 5.12 more involves just learning to rock climb efficiently and really putting in the time. Depending where you climb, some crags you can get away with climbing 5.12 using more technique than strength.. i think 5.13 and up is where you really need to lock it in and start to make big sacrifices in diet and lifestyle in order to achieve your goals. Just keep climbing, youll be climbing 5.12 eventually.

Floyd Eggers wrote: "When alcohol is consumed, it’s broken down into acetate—which is similar to vinegar. The body burns acetate before any other stored energy in the body. In other words, it thrives on the alcohol instead of any excess fat you might be working towards reducing. The body prefers acetate to sugar and fat. In other words, your body will cling to the treats you had earlier in the day or week and thrive on the alcohol. That’s why plateaus are so common for those who drink and are working towards fat loss."

That's an interesting way to frame it, but really alchohol is first metabolized in your brain, then metabolizated similar to fructose (by the liver). You can think roughly that a can of beer is just as bad as a can of Coke, but at least the beer can get ya drunk! The poison is in the dose of course, and that's why excess sugar and/or alchohol is pretty bad for things like: your liver, general inflammation, insulin sensitivity, obesity - yadda yadda. Along with limiting both of those, getting some exercise is, you know: good. For climbers, I would (as someone with no degree in health, science, etc), would suggest some sort of cardio, so not to fall into Skip-Leg-Day-itis. You don't have to go cray with it, as I'm sure there's some weird fear that you'll grow hyuge legs that would disrupt your power to weight ratio. 

Food for thought:

​https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/well/eat/which-kinds-of-foods-make-us-fat.html​​​

Tradiban wrote: Food for thought:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/well/eat/which-kinds-of-foods-make-us-fat.html

So mixing bacon grease with maple syrup and pouring it all over chocolate pancakes was not covered in this article. Fake news.

Ted is right on... Tradiban, what a moroon...

Seth Hendy wrote: As a home grown Utahn south of Salt Lake, I learned some things with the help of others in my local inner circle.

Let me quote "One not need be, what one isn't" This really strikes home with me when thinking about this questions. As I have been sending 5.12s for coming up on 3 years now, consistently, I have probably sent over 70 5.12's since and I can almost positively say, not once did I not slam a high point beer with in hours of the send. You would have to be a fucking idiot to think you would have to stop the booze to send 5.12, just drink enough every day to be able to control it, so you be come a functional alcoholic, this will allow you to keep the same drive and motivation but with the comfort of beer keeping you strong.

Please tell me you’re at least celebrating with real beer like Wasatch or Uinta, not that whack ass nerfed baby beer they sell everywhere out there.

I usually keep it light with a Hops Rising

Seth Hendy wrote: I usually keep it light with a Hops Rising

Manly choice, climb on!

It's amazing to watch how this thread Is the defense of one addictive habit and why it doesn't affect their other habit.

My opinion about training, diet, life, ect isnt really important. But since this is the internet here it is.

Your habits when your 20 will have alot more to do with you athletic performance into your 40s and 50s than youd like to think. Beer is high calorie. You boys metabolizes alcohol before all other forms of energy available. Study after study confirms drinking makes it harder to loose weight.

Weight is not the end all of climbing. I am 6,2 I have weighed in at 160 and I have weighed in at 185 after long training cycles. The difference in my climbing was stark. my endurance both on route and during the day was much better when i weighed more. My ability to climb gymnastic overhung routes, my performance on long routes near my red point limit. Were all better when I weighed 25lbs more. I even onsighted a full 3 letters better. Jumping from 12a to 12d. The difference was I had trained harder. I had eaten more calories and I had put on enormous amounts of functional  athletic strength.  I worked my self raw getting that fit in 8 weeks. I did things the become a better athlete not just a better climber.

I gave up lots of things people will defend as necessary. Refined sugar, alcohol, pot, TV, parties, social events that conflicted with training.

It fucking worked. Maybe you could still eat cake, drink beer and sit on the couch alot.  I dont think if your pushing your limit whereever it is...especially when you are just starting to train, making it harder to succeed. It seems wise to do things to stack the odds of your improvement being as exponential as possible. Until you hit your genetic potential and have to start really trying hard to get better. 

Why not swap one habit that penalizes athletic performance for one that increases it?

If the idea of limiting or eliminating alcohol makes you that angry, depressed or irritable. You may have a problem. That or you like getting buzzed more than you like gettig results.

I have a real job, I work long hrs. When in a training cycle I put in at least 20hrs a week as the minimum. I cross train, I eat balanced high protein low carb high fat meals. I prioritize money towards getting time with a rolfer and a trainer.
 No sugar, no booze. More importantly, no problem. I want to improve more than I want to consume those things.

At the end of the last cycle these were my numbers pulled straight out of my log.
deadlift 390lbs 
Weighted pullups at +150lb 1rep max
+100lbs set of ten pullups
Hangboarding 10 secs on with 95 extra pounds for sets of 8 reps 1/2 pad 4 fingers
Bouldering v8-9 in a short session
V10 in a few days at most.
This is after a 9 year break from bouldering.
OS 5.12c/d sport
OS 5.12c trad
Effortless one arms

So back to weight why is losing it so important. Your weight isnt the problem. You muscle density and training load is the problem. You dont just need to be thin you need to be strong. I didnt get better at climbing by just focusing at going back down to 160. I chose to train to get stronger all around. My goals involve me climbing as many styles of rock as many angles and as many pitches as I can. When I was 160 Ithe only thing i could do better was climb thin technical face.

Being stronger than the problem solved the problem. Anything that got in the way of that goal was gone. So ask yourself, why are you only training to get to 5.12? Why not train to go as far as you can go?

Not trying to spray at you. I am really excited to have made progress I want to share that I had a really good time. Made a plan wrote down my workouts and stuck with it.  

Would love to hear about the same thing happening to you.

I do... I juat find people rallying around an addiction and normalising it to be super weird

Tradiban wrote: Food for thought:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/well/eat/which-kinds-of-foods-make-us-fat.html

That is an interesting bit of information, especially in light of the metabolic changes which happen in organisms in response to what percentage of the diet is fats, proteins, or carbs. Here is an interesting quote from the article:

Only some of the mice became obese — almost every one of which had been on a high-fat diet. These mice showed signs of changes in the activity of certain genes too, in areas of the brain related to processing rewards; fatty kibble made them happy, apparently. None of the other diets, including those rich in sugar, led to significant weight gain or changed gene expression in the same way. Even super-high-fat diets, consisting of more than 60 percent fat, did not lead to significant weight gains, and the mice on those diets consumed less food over all than their counterparts, presumably because they simply could not stomach so much fat. These findings were replicated in subsequent experiments with four other murine breeds. Male mice on relatively high fat diets became obese. The others did not.

Thus, one can clearly see that it was the mice who ate a specific combination of fats and carbohydrates which gained weight, since the mice who ate a diet consisting of 60% or more fat did not gain weight, and neither did the mice who ate high carb diets. So why would this be?

The first part of the answer lies in looking at the base level metabolism of mice and humans: mice have a higher metabolism than humans. Thus, they are better able to handle high carb diets without the same insulin response (and fat storage) as humans, and so the mice on high carb diets did not gain weight.

The mice on high fat diets would have their metabolisms slow down in response to the fat, so they would be running at a rate which would put them at risk of an insulin response due to eating carbs. However, they were also likely getting some protein in their diets, so it is unlikely they were getting enough carbs to get insulin responses often enough to accumulate fat stores. Also, the brain changes would be a response designed to match their appetites to their metabolisms (if environmentally possible), and so since their metabolisms slowed due to the macro nutrient ratios in their diets, they began to crave fat. 

Now, the mice who ate a middling amount of fat tuned their metabolisms down and simultaneously ate enough carbs to cause insulin responses often enough to accumulate fat. In humans, due to our slower metabolisms, this same thing can happen with very little carbs at all.

Thus, yes, that is an interesting bit of information, but overall I clearly have a different interpretation of the data than the study authors, likely due to either a different theory of diet and its interplay in our biology and evolution, or from different assumptions, or both.

Rob the tricam wrote: I do... I juat find people rallying around an addiction and normalising it to be super weird

Rallying around having fun with friends= addiction? I might think that statement over again.

Mobes Mobesely wrote:

Rallying around having fun with friends= addiction? I might think that statement over again.

Look at my post. Why do you have to be drinking  to be having fun?  Why is the idea of cutting back or out alcohol such a problem. As far as I am concerned your tone proves my point.  

I dont drink, I dony mind if you do. However, dont pretend it's not a potent intoxicant with habit forming pathways in the brain. Dont pretend that under the established medical guidelines most people have a substance abuse issue with alcohol. Two beers a night is well over the weekly units of alcohol. It's no ones fault. Humans are hardwired to enjoy getting fucked up for the most part.

I am not edge, I enjoy some recreational substances. However, I have a keen eye for why I want to use and when. Socially with friends my ability to act wildly uninhibited, gregariously and hilariously, does not require alcohol. If you require a substance to create a certain mental state. You have a problem with that substance.

To my main point, you really cant argue that drinking is good for performing effectively. Arguments using anecdote aside.

Its fucking poison.

I'll get my sister to explain her PHd in alcoholism pathways and gene expression if your interested.

Rob the tricam wrote:

Look at my post. Why do you have to be drinking  to be having fun?  Why is the idea of cutting back or out alcohol such a problem. As far as I am concerned your tone proves my point.  

I dont drink, I dony mind if you do. However, dont pretend it's not a potent intoxicant with habit forming pathways in the brain. Dont pretend that under the established medical guidelines most people have a substance abuse issue with alcohol. Two beers a night is well over the weekly units of alcohol. It's no ones fault. Humans are hardwired to enjoy getting fucked up for the most part.

I am not edge, I enjoy some recreational substances. However, I have a keen eye for why I want to use and when. Socially with friends my ability to act wildly uninhibited, gregariously and hilariously, does not require alcohol. If you require a substance to create a certain mental state. You have a problem with that substance.

To my main point, you really cant argue that drinking is good for performing effectively. Arguments using anecdote aside.

Its fucking poison.

I'll get my sister to explain her PHd in alcoholism pathways and gene expression if your interested.

People who don't drink seem a little unhinged, don't y'all think?!

I've been getting back in to my training schedule and skimming through one of my books again for some inspiration. Like any good training book there is a chapter on diet, and they do discuss Beer's effect on metabolism among other things.  Best way to describe my stance on it is.. .

I will quote Ben Moon Here:
" There are no secrets to becoming strong it's all about hard work. Beer and women will be the ruin of you! "

Harold Sutton wrote: I've been getting back in to my training schedule and skimming through one of my books again for some inspiration. Like any good training book there is a chapter on diet, and they do discuss Beer's effect on metabolism among other things.  Best way to describe my stance on it is.. .

I will quote Ben Moon Here:
" There are no secrets to becoming strong it's all about hard work. Beer and women will be the ruin of you! "

All of this may be true but do you really need to train to send 5.12? 

If you know how to move your body, you should be able to climb 5.12a, Emily Harrington says, no matter how strong you are. 

why don't you just keep learning how to climb and then start training once you stop progressing?

master gumby wrote:

All of this may be true but do you really need to train to send 5.12? 

If you know how to move your body, you should be able to climb 5.12a, Emily Harrington says, no matter how strong you are. 

why don't you just keep learning how to climb and then start training once you stop progressing?

I would for sure need to train to cleanly send 5.12.. haha

All of my difficult sends were during training periods  However the grade is all objective, In a lot of instances i learned how to better move my body on rock by training.. meh. 

I think Emily underestimates her baseline.

Ted Pinson wrote: I think Emily underestimates her baseline.

Responses to this? This sounds just about right to me

This may seem surprising to the climbers out there for whom 5.12a is a lifetime goal, yet the point is not that 5.12 is easy, but rather that proper technique honed over many hours of practice is more enduring than one’s momentary form strength and fitness. The problem is, it’s easier to get stronger than it is to get better.