Steph Davis On Climbing, Jumping, & Life

Here's some Monday Psyche for a holiday week. Not the usual Psych fare, and some might find it boring, but I think it's very cool. Steph’s more introspective than the average climber and her observations about life are, in my opinion, pretty spot on. Not that I always agree with her, as that isn’t the point. It’s that she agrees with herself. She’s figured life out, at least at the moment, and that’s always an inspiration for the Psyche. Plus climbing desert towers and jumping off of them is rad and never really gets old.

Le Tour Challenge

My Tour challenge is a bit different than your average office pool. Instead of betting on who might win the actual race, I challenge my own fitness to keep up with them in a virtual stage race. I have a long history of such nonsense. Beginning back in ’98 with "Le Cog Corrode." I’ve often used the Tour, Giro, and Vuelta as a template to concoct very difficult 3-week training blocks. With a race coming up at the end of July this year’s early Tour start (it’s still June fer crissakes) was tailor made for me.

Though my ’98 challenge mirrored the race almost identically it’s not necessary. Your own personal goals should/need to be on the horizon and you can do a Tour challenge even if you never ride on the road. In fact, you could do one without riding at all but non-cyclists would likely find a different form of motivation more effective. Three weeks, however, is the perfect amount of time for a very hard block of training. Not only does it make good physiologic sense when you analyze the “specificity of adaptation” but it’s a mental window that psychologists seem to agree is an ideal amount of time to induce long-lasting habitual changes.

As serendipity would have it two factors led to a “bingo” moment in designing a Tour challenge this year. After last week’s breakdown I’d just happened to take a recovery week leading to today’s “grand depart”. I’ve also been struggling with motivation on the bike this year and very much questioning my ability to be ready for my upcoming race. I needed to ramp things up somehow and the Tour, one of the most exciting athletic events in the world, has come at just the right time.

So what’s it gonna be?

As in ’08 I’ll start and finish with a time trial to gauge fitness.

I’ll ride everyday they ride in the race (so only two days off the bike in the next three weeks)

One day per week will be full distance of the race (this will be by far my longest days of the year on the bike so far)

Time trial days will be time trial days (100% effort)

I’ll mimic the days course to some degree—though mainly on dirt—-especially the mountain days

So that’s it, though it is more like IT. This will be hard it’s the motivation that I sorely need. And can really only be heightened by doing Le Velo.

The Problem With “Calories In, Calories Out”

One of my themes this year at Summit was “TMI” or too much information when it came to how to best educate coaches. Clichés can be helpful but, when the root is not understood, can also lead to stagnations or regressions in your fitness. One of the worst offenders is the saying “calories in, calories out”.

This is not an untrue statement. The problem is that no watch made records the information you need to know. People are constantly rattling off numbers to me that they’ve used to assess their training that are not only wrong, but crippling their ability to evaluate the program.

In the name of the free market, you can now purchase all sorts of training apparatus that provide TMI when it comes to evaluating your training program. There are many important physiological responses at work that aren’t recorded by your Polar. To ignore them in the name of numbers will lead to an exercise plateau or worse. A deeper explanation will help you understand why we create fitness programs the way that we do.

In order to keep this short and simple I’m going to gloss over some science in the name of clarity. “Calories in, calories out” is correct in that it’s how you calculate weight loss or gain. The issue is that your monitor can’t see most of the factors involved. It cannot assess hormonal and nervous system responses to training or nutritional factors that affect recovery and all three things are arguably the most important aspect of your training.

Nutritional factors are the easiest to understand. Proper foods and nutrient timing, as you’ve heard in any spiel about Recovery Formula or Shakeology, enhance the body’s recovery process. The faster you recover the harder you can train. As those of you who are P90X Certified know results are based on adaptation to stimulus, and the only place you might be able to gauge this on a watch is with morning resting heart rate.

just some of the stuff your watch doesn't understand

Even more important are hormonal factors. If you’ve read the guidebook for Turbo Fire you’ll see something that we call the AfterBurn Effect, which is your body’s metabolic adaptations to high intensity training. As our training programs get more advanced one of the main factors we’re targeting is hormonal response. In a nutshell, as we age our body shuts down its hormone production (eventually leading to death). Intense exercise is one of the few things that force you to keep producing these. Intensity is relative, of course, which is why we progress from say, squats to squat jumps to X jumps as you move up the Beachbody food chain of programs. But what’s called a “hormonal cascade” in response to training is even more important than what your heart is doing during exercise, and it’s something else you can’t see on your monitor.

adaptive stress that leads to overtraining that only can be guessed at by close evaluation of morning resting heart rate

Hormonal cascades are triggered by your central nervous system, which is the hardest training factor to gauge (why most overtraining comes from breakdown at this level). When you dissect a program like P90X2 or Asylum, one of the main things we focus on is nervous system function. All of those “weird” things like Holmsen Screamer Lunges or Shoulder Tap Push-ups work on something we call proprioceptive awareness. And while it might seem hard to understand, since it doesn’t lead directly to more sweat, the neuromuscular action of these movements force deep adaptations by your body. These changes can take a long time to register but force a massive adaptive response that lead to long-term increased changes in movement patterns that trigger hormonal responses and, thus, metabolic change. Needless to say that stuff ain’t getting registered by a chest strap or pedometer.

Sure, the cumulative effect of all these can be calculated and the number at the end would equate to calories in, calories out. But since there’s no way to measure these numbers without doing a ton of fancy testing in a lab setting you can see why doing one of our diet and exercise programs and trusting us is a better option than scarfing an “Extra Value Meal” and then walking around the neighborhood until your heart rate monitor says you’ve burned 1,500 calories.

Surviving Summit

The Straight Dope is a balance between work and play, indoor training, nutrition advice, and outdoor sports, and it’s got followers on every side that’d prefer it to be more of one and less of the other depending on their personal perspectives. So for all of you, today’s post has a bit of everything: training, diet, work, sports and even birthday challenges.

The Beachbody Coach Summit is always a challenge for me. My de-facto job is one of a walking FAQ and I spend my week basically roaming around answering questions, which usually leaves me drained of energy and an audible voice by its end. This year, with 5,000 attendees and 2 days of P90X Certification tacked on, it promised to be a colossal task. An impending race and training schedule heightened it, which I amped up slightly by decided to attempt a “birthday challenge” on my way home.

Vegas in June is no picnic when you’re trying to train. Rides would have to be early and, en route, I did an interval session on a dirt road outside of Mesquite as a test. Finishing just shy of 8am, with the thermometer already north of 90, I concluded that late nights would not be on the agenda—or planned agenda anyways.

Summit is actually quite fun. I don’t mind answering questions. In fact I love it. Helping people better understand fitness is something I can go on about endlessly. In the moment it’s not tedious or tiring and I wouldn’t mind spending my entire job doing it. I did my best to clean up my plate of projects so that I could be as available as possible all week long. The key was then staying ultra hydrated and fed, kind of like a race, to sustain my voice and keep my brain turned on (your brain runs on glycogen, making the entire event not so unlike a week-long ultra).

much easier to hear and converse in the latter setting

Thursday I had two presentations, which I actually found easier than my general schedule. It seemed efficient to speak with a group instead of one on one, I had a microphone that saved my voice, and, most importantly, I didn’t have to speak over music or a crowd or anything else. Made me think I should just have an area where I answered questions all day but that would negate some of the coolness of Summit, which is a social environment where anytime you might run into Carl or Tony or someone else you’ve seen on TV.

louder than a bird or a plane, it's super workout!

Things went more or less perfectly until Sat, when a screaming crowd interrupted a perfectly peaceful dream at 5am. At first I thought it was partiers but looking out my window I saw that there were already hundreds of people gathered for the Super Workout that wasn’t starting until 6:30. Did some yoga and made my way down, which was the start of a long, long day punctuated by a “business” dinner with Dr. Marcus Elliott sometime after 2am.

with super coach and X2 cast member monica and super trainer and long-time friend marcus

The Finale

After sleeping far too little I rolled out of Vegas early. I was now hammered. Training is not just about recovering from muscle breakdown but hormonal and nervous system balance and the latter two were clearly in distress. Still, I was keen to keep to my schedule and I had a hard ride planned that day, which you can read about here:

Tiger Funk’s Birthday Challenge

I figured that a good long ride, especially if I could keep it somewhat aerobic, would bring things back towards homeostasis. I’d planned on over 5,000’ of climbing but given it was a 13-mile climb it seemed reasonable. However, Tiger’s challenge was, well, challenging. It ain’t birthday pretty hard.

On Utah Mountain Biking Dark Hollow is listed as a downhill trail. There isn’t a single mention of it being ridden uphill. This would have kept me off it if not for Tiger’s account. In fact, while he said it was hard his report didn’t sound too bad. Since it’s also a “must ride classic” I was expecting gentle meandering single track, perhaps tightly wound around Aspens. Instead, I was greeted with steep, loose rocks and dirt with big wide tire tracks, at least when it wasn’t mud or trees draped over the trail, or both.

Dark Hollow’s a big bike trail. While rideable on anything its forte is clearly for those who like to point it down and let er rip. Tiger’d ridden it on a light Moots hard tail, similar to what I was on, which while way less fun for the descent was crucial on the ascent since it’s easier to carry, and there was no shortage of bike portaging.

I spent most of the last 5 miles carrying my bike. If it weren’t for my Nepal race I would have bagged it. Not knowing how far I had to the summit, or if the trail would ever be more rideable, I wanted to turn around the entire time but was simply too intrigued about Tiger’s adventure not to keep going. “who would do this for fun?” I kept thinking over and over. It was the kind of shit they add to adventure races to make you hate them.

Near the end I finally hit some proper trail. It was beautiful, making me glad I’d persisted. And while the little adventure added to my overall fatigue it did kick me back into my default mode and out of the bizarre reality that comes from any trip to Vegas. And while I survived another Summit in reasonable fashion, one of this years I'm going to nail it and finish stronger than when I started.

Is 50 The New 20?

pic: tom evans, el cap reports

Another for the “age doesn’t mean shit” files, my friend Hans has once again set the speed record on The Nose of El Capitan. At 48, the full-time father with a full-time job has somehow found time to get faster than he’s ever been and smashed the record by more than 13 minutes. He’s first set the record in 1990 and each time it’s been broken he’s gotten it back--more than 20x over the years. After failing to recapture it last fall he trained through the winter and nailed it on the first attempt. Huge congrats to Hans Florine and his partner Alex Honnold (who capped what’s probably the most impressive single month in the history of Yosemite) for your Friday Psyche.

There’s a great photo account of the ascent on Tom Evans’ El Cap Reports site. Click below for the play by play:

I got up real early, as the day was predicted to be a hot one, and motored down to ElCap at about 5:30am. Fortunately for the climbers and unfortunately for me, they planned to climb completely in the shade for the entire route. That made photography difficult but I figured I could take a stab at it and maybe get lucky with some good shots.

The place was already filling up with spectators hoping to be on hand to watch a new record set on the Nose. They were not to be disappointed! Alex and Hans started at 5:52am as noted by the cheers of a couple dozen of the people who had walked to the base with them.

I’ve reported on Hans’ exploits on the Nose for years. If you’re interested in the history of the climb I recapped it here:

History of Speed Climbing The Nose

More and more we’re seeing athletes age without losing their top-end speed, or even getting faster. And while there are some facts on growing old that we can’t ignore it’s certainly clear that the limitations once imposed by professionals are being pushed further and further back.

No Meat? No Problem.

In the wake of last week’s post on vegan boxing champion Timothy Bradley comes an article from the NY Times asking the question Can Athletes Perform Well On A Vegan Diet? While the champ offers an anecdotal yes there are further considerations, which is where Gretchen Reynolds’ piece begins by questioning three nutrition experts about what might be missing should one go meatless. This, of course, begins with protein.

You do have to be diligent about protein intake if you’re vegan. I have clients, especially women, who say, ‘Oh, I put a few chickpeas in my salad.’ But that’s not going to do it. Women need about 60 to 90 grams of protein a day, and athletes are on the high end of that. That means you have to eat cupfuls of chickpeas. And you can’t eat a quarter of that cake of tofu. You need to eat the whole thing. It’s not that there aren’t good sources of vegan protein. But it’s not as bioavailable as meat. So you need to have more.

Most of you are already aware of the protein issue but other things, such as B12 weight loss, and creatine are also evaluated. It’s a quick read, and not all that earth shattering, but weighs the issue with a healthy dose of common sense.

I like to tell people that if we got most Americans to eat one less serving of meat every day, there would be far greater impact from that, in terms of improving overall public health and the health of the planet, than convincing a tiny group of endurance athletes to go full vegan.

And while the article focused on endurance parameters only, leaving Bradley alone as the torch bearer for power athletes, all experts agree that it’s possible to get all of your nutritional needs without meat and dairy, something that heavily-lobbied USDA isn’t ready to admit yet.

The Best Article Ever About...

...basketball, although it can be applied to anything. If you’ve been watching the NBA finals, which you probably haven’t if you read my blog, you’ll notice one conspicuous name amongst those you’d expect to star in each game: Shane Battier. He was the subject of an article written a few years back by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball) that was called by many people I know one of the best articles they’ve ever read, which includes praise from people who hate the game of basketball. It’s a fascinating take on the game, and life in general, and is getting dusted off because of Battier’s play in the finals, where he’s actually been getting mvp consideration in reader poles so far.

The article is titled The No Stats All-Star and is more a homage to intelligence than anything else. Battier views the game differently than almost anyone. And even though he rarely does much that makes highlight reels his teams almost always win. It’s fascinating. So much so that to me, someone’s who has been around the game my entire life, it’s more exciting than highlights like this.



Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly ¬reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”

In this typical Battier highlight, he appears to get schooled by Durant. A lesser player, however, would have also fouled, which would likely result in giving up 3 points instead of two and also stopped the game clock with Miami leading and time winding down. It’s one of the invisible strengths Lewis is talking about.



It’s a fairly long read but certainly worth your time. Psyche isn’t all about frenetic, hard driving action. There’s plenty to be inspired about keeping ones wits about them, especially under pressure.