The importance of listening to your body

I've started climbing more often since resigning from my corporate travel job.  Instead of just climbing on Mondays and Fridays, I'm climbing most Wednesdays, too.

Climbing was awesome for the six weeks of 2015.  K and I started doing 4 x 4 workouts again (A 4 x 4 is where you choose 4 routes and climb each one 4 times in a row).   When we weren't doing laps, we were projecting difficult routes.  We'd get to the gym at 5:30 and stay until 8:30 or 9pm.  Eventually, I improved enough to climb a straight-wall 5.12minus cleanly!  Two weeks later, I climbed it four times in a row without falling!  I felt amazingly in shape.

But eventually, the repetitive stress caught up with me.

Last Monday (2/16), I met K at the gym at 5:30pm.  Like usual, we started warming up on 5.8s and 5.9s but I quickly realized that something was "off" in my left shoulder.  My back muscles (rhomboids and serratus anterior) were so tight that it was affecting enervation of the shoulder joint.  It felt like only 50% of my shoulder muscles were working properly.  Any time I reached my left arm out and pulled my body toward the wall (a move I had done over and over and over again on the 5.12minus the previous week), I felt a strain in my deltoids as they overcompensated.

Not wanting to injury my already over-worked muscles, I backed off and climbed 5.8s for the rest of the night.   I listened to my body and took it easy on Wednesday 2/18 and Friday 2/20, too.  On the nutrition side of things, I added extra anti-inflammatory foods to my diet to help calm down the inflammation in my over-worked shoulder muscles.  I stretched and did gentle yoga.

Although frustrating, the rest paid off.  Now, two weeks later, I am beginning to like normal.  I'm headed to the gym in 30 minutes and I can't wait to get back on those 12s!