[health] Rock climbing builds muscle (pic!)

[mattbell]

I've been doing indoor rock-climbing as my primary form of exercise since mid-April, and it seems to have had a significant impact on my amount of muscle.  Since I started tracking my lean mass in mid-May, I've put on around 10 pounds, mostly muscle.  I've put on close to 20 pounds since I got back from my trip, (at which time people described me as rather emaciated).  Meanwhile, my girlfriend, who's been doing a fitness challenge, has dropped her body fat percentage by 6.5% while adding a few pounds of muscle. 



I wish I had a good "before" photo...  This is the closest I could find.  I look kind of emaciated in this one, which was taken about three months after I got back from my trip:

Comments

[proctologiste.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I reduce load every other day. I used to have a personal trainer who taught me how to do strength training, the thing is, with him every single rep had to be 100th percentile. I'm keeping it low on purpose, combining a "hard thing" (pushup), with a reasonable level of exhaustion. When I was doing the strength training with him, it would be *really* hard stuff, to maximal exhaustion, and then at least 2 days rest.

To summarize: yeah, taking it easy.