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General Climbing Discussion

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Onsight FA of 34 / 8c+ / 5.14c 28-Dec-2007 At 9:47:16 AM tmarsh

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devlin66 - can you point to any research that backs up your theory? My take on this is that the limiting factor in most hard climbing is muscle failure due to localised oedema, meaning that the muscles simply can't receive any more blood in the first place. If your arms are locked solid due to pump, then it's not going to matter if your blood is super oxygenated or not. Breathing difficulties on routes are more often caused by failure to breathe due to the need to maintain core tension, or indeed being scared stupid.

> When you climb at your limit it usually is when you are over your anaerobic threshold.
> Now this means you are using basically oxygen as an energy source.

Are you sure this is what you meant? Anaerobic respiration is the production of ATP in the absence of oxygen, which in turn produces pyruvic acid which in the absence of oxygen dissociates to form lactic acid. Your concept of the chemistry of anaerobic respiration is all wrong, based on what you've posted here.

The point I'm trying to get across is that the energy system requirements of climbing are very diffierent to those in sports where blood doping has become common. A short (say less than 5 minute) climb is not the same beast as maintaining 95% of your max HR for 90 minutes. Increasing the oxygen carrying capacity of your blood will help you in the latter, but my guess is that it would only be of marginal benefit - if any - in the former.

Do you know of any studies in analagous sports like gymnastics? I pick gymnastics as it has a similar duration/intensity to climbing. I'm curious to know if any sports scientists back up your view.