As climbers looking to maximize our performance, we have a complex relationship with food and nutrition.  We want to fully fuel our climbing and give our bodies everything it needs to recover and get ready for our next climbing training session.  We are looking to constantly be able to train hard and get stronger.  However, we want to do all of this while loosing weight or at least staying light.

Obviously, this can be a tall order.  So, we thought we’d share the top 5 most popular nutrition articles from the TrainingBeta Blog.  This way, whether you need a reminder or are delving into trying to dial in your climbing diet for the first time, you can see what everyone else has found interesting and helpful.

Top 5 Nutrition Articles:

• How to Lose Weight for Climbing
  • “You’re a climber. You’re probably here because you’re an obsessed athlete who wants chiseled(er) muscles and visible(r) veins, and as little weight to carry up rock walls as possible. Because let’s face it: not having a bunch of extra weight on your body is helpful in rock climbing.” – Neely Quinn

• Foods That Strengthen Your Tendons and Ligaments- ClimbHealthy
  • “Muscles tend to hog the spotlight when it comes to recovery and sports nutrition, but if you’ve ever injured a finger, then you know that your muscles are pretty useless without your tendons and ligaments. Tendons are thick bundles of collagen that connect muscle to bone and allow movement, while ligaments are flexible bundles of collagen that connect bone to bone and protect your joints. They have slightly different functions in the body, but they are both forms of connective tissue made up of collagen, elastin, proteoglycans (chains of sugars attached to proteins), and minerals like copper, manganese, and calcium.” –Aicacia Young, RDN

• 2 Tips for Finding Your Own Optimal Climbing Diet
  • “So. First thing is that everyone is different. While I eat a certain way to feel my best, you may need to eat a completely different way. Unfortunately there’s no handbook to your body, so if you want to know what works best for you, you’ll need to do some experimentation.” – Neely Quinn

• Weight Management for Climbers
  • “Controlling body weight is critical to maximizing climbing performance. Climbers go to great lengths to develop finger and upper-body strength, with the aim of improving their strength-to-weight ratio in order to resist the pull of gravity. They work very hard (and proud) on the “strength” side of that equation, so it would be foolish to ignore the “weight” side.” – Mike and Mark Anderson

• Understanding Your Metabolism and Climbing
  • “Most people think of the relationship between weight loss and weight gain as dichotomous, with only a thin swath known as “weight maintenance” dividing the two. And almost invariably, they assume that this swath is closer to the weight loss end of the spectrum than the weight gain end, or at least that they’re better off maintaining weight on fewer calories rather than more. They short themselves, and end up shorting their performance as well.” – Brian Rigby

Nutrition Help and Information:

If these articles peak your interest in how proper nutrition can really help with climbing performance, but you don’t know how to move forward, you’re in luck.  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 some 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.