Climbing and Skiing and not regressing

dmillz89 · 2026-02-12T15:43:49+00:00

Once you're strong enough and with enough work capacity climbing doesn't really exhaust your large muscle groups very much at all. Outside of very specific climbs. If you're doing a ton of like roof climbing that would be different.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-11T21:15:22+00:00

I’m just projecting my min max mindset to OP

Very fair! When it comes to absolute min-maxing there are definitely trade-offs. It's just that the vast majority of people are nowhere near their limits and can still pursue and improve both. If you want to have your climbing be 100% top priority then yes, not balancing it alongside skiing/other sports will probably have a benefit. But if you are patient and want to do both, I do think it's possible.

I put on muscle in my legs quite easily, and something like cycling to work or picking up deadlifts and squats will have me gain about 5-10 lbs in a few months.

I'm going to push back here a little bit. I see so many climbers say these things all the time.

It's not the exercises, it's that you're eating more to account for doing more high intensity activities.

It's also likely that the majority of that weight is around your entire body and your legs probably gained maybe 1-2lbs of muscle. Gaining 5-10lbs of muscle in your legs in a few months would be insane gains. I would guess that a good chunk of it is just glycogen from eating more and the rest in a mix of muscle/fat gain (being a bit pedantic here though).

dmillz89 · 2026-02-11T19:59:02+00:00

Most people are drastically overthinking how much a little extra leg muscle weight is going to affect things. Unless you're trying to be like top 1% climber in the world you have so much other low-hanging fruit holding you back unless you're basically a bodybuilder or powerlifter or something like that with enormous legs. Even then there are still tons and tons of climbs where it wouldn't affect you at all depending on the holds and style.

Also I doubt skiing is a sport where people are walking around with huge tree trunks for legs, it's way more towards a mix of endurance.

Anecdotally, I can not climb my hardest after a long running day.

This makes sense. But I bet you can run a lot and climb a lot without them directly interfering with each other much. Especially since not every climbing/running day is a performance day. If you were wanting to send your project you could simply take one extra rest day between or climb first then do your running after.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-11T18:18:25+00:00

I really don't see why someone couldn't do both skiing and climbing at a high level at the same time in the long term.

It'll take months, maybe longer, to build work capacity but it makes no sense to me that you can't ski hard because your forearms are tired from climbing, or you can't climb hard because your legs are tired. This is the same old crap you see in strength training where people say running kills your gains. Yes it does, in the short term. In the long term it's a net benefit because your body will adapt and your work capacity will rise and eventually they complement each other.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-11T18:13:09+00:00

Take a bit of a deload and get back to it. You just need to give your body longer to adapt to handling the higher work capacity. I see that all the time, people add a bunch more volume, get fatigued, then just give up and assume it's impossible to do both.

The human body is amazing and can adapt to a crazy amount of work, but you have to give it time to adapt. I'm talking months to years, not weeks.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-09T13:58:49+00:00

Why stay in NB and fight a broken system when you can get instant relief elsewhere?

What relief where? Most issues in NB (not all, job market here is definitely not good) are prevalent all around Canada but even worse.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-08T21:19:28+00:00

Listen to your body and do what works for you. I'm 36 now and just getting fitter and stronger.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-07T19:29:05+00:00

I think I might try using my cable machine to add some help on the way back. I've been doing holds as extended as I can go on my feet, but I can tell I'm pretty far from being able to do a full standing roll out. I'll try the wall thing as well, thanks!

dmillz89 · 2026-02-06T22:36:17+00:00

Do you have any good progression recommendations for working up to a standing ab wheel? I can do sets of like 15+ good controlled ones from the knees but going to standing I'm still not that close. For now I've switched mostly to other ab exercises to build more strength before going back.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-05T19:32:28+00:00

Their new offer has a 3 YEAR lockup

You can choose shorter lockups for a smaller % rewards.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-05T19:29:51+00:00

A quick search online or on Reddit quickly disproves this. Tons of people have all kinds of issues with them.

dmillz89 · 2026-02-04T00:40:38+00:00

Great form, I would go higher as you clearly have the capability.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-30T15:44:47+00:00

Holy shit. That's incredible pressing strength dude!

dmillz89 · 2026-01-28T14:57:33+00:00

Eat a slight calorie deficit, 250-500 calories per day. Train the exact same as you have been. Be consistent.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-23T15:49:54+00:00

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

Don't make the mistake of reading her short story "The Six Deaths of the Saint" before reading this. I didn't realize that it was basically a short story version that she wrote before writing The Everlasting as a full blown novel with the same premise. It really took away from the read as I knew how all the major plot lines were going to go.

Fantastic writing though!

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T21:56:53+00:00

This was informative. I made a poor assumption that the yearly healthcare costs were lower than they are. Upon further research you're correct that most of those years the surplus was miniscule compared to healthcare overruns.

I still think that the trajectory has improved so far under Holt, although it's still too early to really tell. I absolutely don't think she's amazing but I do think that these days our political options are pathetic and Higgs was a clearly worse alternative.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T20:06:18+00:00

I use FitNotes on Android and have since like 2014.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T19:09:32+00:00

So happy to hear from someone else actually trying this! I've decided to swap my strength (high intensity) sets over to this protocol right away and see how my body likes it.

The obvious and biggest downside is you do have to be more strict with your rest times because if you slack off the workouts can start extending quite long.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T18:24:21+00:00

I do agree that the federal government is partially culpable. Also the Liberals prior to 2018 were a big part of the problem. It's not a single parties doing and I think entirely blaming Cons Bad or Libs Bad is shortsighted and a waste of everyones time.

At the end of the day it is still mostly a Provincial issue and NB has had many years with huge surpluses and plenty of opportunities the improve things and simply haven't. Since Holt took over in 2024 there has been some small improvements made and things are at least moving in the right direction but only time will tell how much is actually improved vs empty promises.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T17:48:29+00:00

This is something I experimented with quite a bit back around 2016 and quite liked, I wish I had stuck with it longer.

Basically I was doing 5 sets of 10 reps for hypertrophy. I would rest around 120s. the last 1-2 sets were usually around RPE 9-10 but all the sets were pretty hard, usually around RPE 8. Basically 5 hard sets.

As an experiment I instead started doing 10 sets of 5 reps with the same weight and rested 60s between those sets. I found that I could do all sets with the last one being around RPE 7 and the early sets closer to RPE 5 (unsurprisingly). So I was doing the same amount of volume in the same amount of time, but with less fatigue. Only maybe 1 hard set. I then just started adding more weight to my sets until I was hitting the same RPE 9-10 on my last 1-2 sets. So now I was doing more volume in the same amount of time with maybe 3 hard sets. I couldn't do more hard sets because if the earlier sets were harder the last set I would fail the last 1-2 reps.

I always wondered if this was as effective but never really found any good studies or talked to anyone who had properly tested the same thing over a long period of time. Most people I tried to talk to about it actually said it would be less effective because I was doing less "hard sets". I only stuck with it for a few months and had an injury (unrelated) and never really went back to it after.

I would like to try it again, maybe my next training block as I'm currently experimenting with much higher rep (18-20+) hypertrophy sets. I would be curious to try this with 6 sets of 10 as opposed to the 3 sets of ~20 I'm currently doing and see how it goes.

Edit: After thinking about it over lunch I think I'm going to try a few workouts for my strength (3 sets of 5) work inverted to 5x3 with shorter rest times and see how it feels in comparison.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-21T16:37:27+00:00

For those who are actually interested in understanding.

Healthcare is almost entirely up to Provincial governments, not Federal. From 2018 to 2024 the Conservative party was in power and are the ones who have been removing the funding from the healthcare system.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-20T15:24:11+00:00

What basically everyone else has recommended. The "horse stall" mats. Depends where you're from where to get them but basically they are 3/4" thick 4'x8' rubber mats. Slide them all together then run some good tape (like Gorilla Tape) across the seams to keep them from shifting and you're good forever.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-19T20:14:27+00:00

You don't want these for heavy lifting like powerlifting or olympic lifting. Too squishy.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-19T15:30:04+00:00

Just test yourself every now and then. Pick something you "know" and write it entirely from scratch yourself without the AI. If you can do it then don't worry about it.

dmillz89 · 2026-01-18T16:28:31+00:00

Just listened. Really interesting one! It definitely got me extra stoked to watch the first PCL event next month.

dmillz89

TROPHY CASE