If you look at high level athletes in other sports like cycling, they all follow strictly planned out diets.  The reason for this is that what you eat has a huge impact on athletic performance.  This fact is just as true in climbing as it is in cycling.  You can improve your climbing performance by learning some nutrition basics to help you optimize your diet.

To help you understand performance climbing nutrition and give you some actionable eating strategies, here’s an article from Climbing Magazine by climber and founder of Trailside Kitchen, Julia Delves.

“Does your climbing performance vary from day to day? Do you send hard only to feel like a wet rag the next time out? Do you feel a constant need to snack to avoid getting “hangry” or crave coffee to battle a midday crash? The biggest gains in climbing come when your energy level is consistently high. This allows you to climb stronger, longer, and more frequently. Strategic eating optimizes energy levels and strength, and minimizes recovery time.” – Julia Delves

Performance Climbing Nutrition

In her article, Delves breaks performance climbing nutrition into three steps.  They are:

• Eat balanced meals
• Ratios of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats
• Combining ratios and timing across disciplines

While this all sounds extremely complicated, it’s actually relatively simple and Delves does a great job explaining these concepts so you don’t need to be a nutritionist to understand them.

Essentially, Delves first discusses exactly what carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are and how our body uses them.  Next, she describes the ideal macro ratios for your meals.  Then, she outlines how to use this knowledge to tweak your diet to improve climbing performance depending on which climbing discipline you are participating in.  Click through below to learn more and read about all these ideas in greater detail.

More on Climbing Nutrition

While this article is full of great information, it is important to note people have individual nutritional needs and what works well for one person may not work at all for the next.

To help you learn more about nutrition, we’ve got two different options that will give you all the information and tools you’ll need to figure out your own optimal performance diet.

First, Neely offers personal one-on-one Nutrition Coaching.  She offers a variety of different plans depending on how much help you are looking for, but they are all geared towards helping you feel healthy and perform better on rock.  Click through below to learn all about it!

If personal nutrition coaching is out of your price range or you really just want more general information, we also have a Rock Climbing Nutrition E-Book by Aicacia Young.  Aicacia is a Registered Dietitian and the E-Book is all about providing you with the knowledge you need to make educated choices about your diet and how they will affect your climbing performance.

Full Article: Performance Climbing Nutrition with Julia Delves

(photo courtesy of climbing.com)

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• Top 5 Nutrition Articles
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• Rock Climbing Nutrition: Rest Day Guidelines
• 3 Common Nutrition Mistakes Climbers Make