When Your Grip Strength Is At Its Best

I'm jonesing to go rock climbing today but there's a bouldering competition going on at Upper Limits; so, no dice. My jones will have to wait until tomorrow.

I've been reading Eric Horst's Training for Climbing. A lot of the advice applies across disciplines: strengthen your core, be relaxed, eat properly, get enough sleep etc. Chapter seven, Personal Training Programs, had me chuckling:

As a final note, the belief that physical performance tends to be worse during menstruation is not absolute. While the menstrual cycle's affect on performance varies widely among individuals and from sport to sport, at least one study has shown that grip strength was greater during the actual menstrual phase (Davis 1991).

No doubt, the grip is stronger. I know that I've wanted to put my hands around some necks, instead of holds, during that time.

In the same chapter, there's also a section devoted to special considerations for females and "juniors." Horst mentions teenager Tori Allen, who is already an accomplished, award-winning climber.

Here's a video from a segment that the Discovery Channel did on Allen.



Needless to say, Allen is athletically gifted.

Could You Survive?

Going through some old e-mail subscriptions, I saw a link to this story, Woman Didn't Hesitate To Run After Attacker, while reading a post at Blogging Away Debt.

Christina Hennigan, a marathon runner, was attacked and took some hard hits but ran after the man long enough that an off-duty border patrol agent witnessed the chase and, eventually, apprehended Hennigan's attacker.

Hennigan's story jogged my memory about an article that I had seen in one of the fitness magazines. A doctor, Dr. Pamela Peeke, was inspired to start a television show after seeing footage of a woman who was about to be rescued but couldn't hold onto a branch long enough.

Dr. Peeke's show appears on the Discovery channel. Since I don't have cable, I haven't seen it but I like the premise.

One of the tag lines is:

Odds are you're not fit enough to save your own life let alone some one's that you love.

Are you fit enough to survive a natural disaster et al?



When Fitness Means Life or Death