Nervous System Regulation, Pumped at the Third Bolt Edition

How does someone test really well for endurance on a hangboard and then get pumped stupid by the third bolt of an actual climb? Is there that much physiologically different between those two things? I have no bloody idea, I'll leave that to the people trained in that department. I will, however, give you my two bob on the mental side because sure, it's such an easy thing to put down to needing more fitness. But what if it has more to do with which state the nervous system is in when testing on a finger board versus climbing on a route.

Your nervous system has two main modes. Most people know these as the sympathetic versus parasympathetic systems. I call them the insta coke bottle mode or the fluid efficiency mode. I like a good visual label if I am going to label something and I think that gives you a pretty good visual on what they both look like and probably feel like on the wall.

So the insta coke bottle mode is our fight or flight system. We sense threat (or we train ourselves to anticipate threat, or just that this requires threat mode activated, more on this later) and our nervous system switches. A quick thing to note is that this switch does not require the thinking part of our brain, it is a biological response. So often we don't realise the switch has been flicked. However, we can cognitively activate and deactivate it.

It's the system that evolved to get you out of danger fast, and it does exactly that. A flood of adrenaline, heart rate up, breath high and shallow or held altogether, blood pulled away from the periphery and sent to the big muscle groups built to carry you away from a threat (run Forest run).

The trouble is that it's a high energy system. Under sympathetic dominance the body leans on its fast fuel system, working without enough oxygen. That yields far less energy per unit of fuel and dumps a lot more metabolic waste, so you burn through your stores at a frightening rate. This is the physiological signature performance researchers tie to earlier fatigue, shakier fine motor control and poorer decisions under pressure. Ever been so gripped you missed that obvious foothold?

And the adrenaline hasn't just mega fuelled the working muscles, it's switched the whole system on. Heart, lungs, muscle tone raised everywhere, plus the bracing, muscles firing against each other and holding far more tension than the movement needs. So a huge amount of fuel is being spent, very little of it on anything useful, like um climbing, and in sustained gripping work all that tension squeezes the vessels shut so the waste can't clear leading to that very familiar sensation of coke bottled forearms.

The other side is the fluid efficiency side. Steadier, lower heart rate, breath slow. Here the body is working aerobically, with oxygen, which yields far more energy per unit of fuel and produces far less metabolic waste, so it sustains effort for longer before fatigue sets in. This is the state associated with efficient performance across endurance and skill sports. The system supports what performance researchers describe as movement economy, doing the required work at the lowest physiological cost. Efficient through the easy ground, meaning you have power still there for the crux.

Here's hopefully a really obvious example. How many times do you think Usain Bolt breathed during the 100m? If your first guess is that he held his breath, braced, and powered through all that tension, it would make sense. That's what most of us imagine explosive effort looks like. But he didn't hold it. He breathed. And there's a reason a sprinter at that level doesn't clamp down and hold on for those ten seconds. Holding your breath and bracing your whole body is the fight or flight system taking over, and that's the state that tenses everything, burns through energy fast and makes you less efficient, not more. To take that title he needed to be about as relaxed and efficient as a human machine can be, even while moving that fast.

But I'm not scared on the wall

This needs another million word essay but, simply put, I agree some people don't think they are frightened. But their nervous system is telling a different story. It's usually pretty obvious which system someone's body is in when they are climbing. I just watched a girl utterly dominate the 3 cruxes of an 8c. She climbed aggressively but relaxed, attacked then fully then recovered in the rests. Until she passed the last big move that she had fallen on a number of times. Her climbing then turned rigid and robotic. Brutally put, she climbed horrendously. She made it to the anchor by the skin of her teeth but it was far from enjoyable for her, as she later admitted. The final five bolts paled in significance, difficulty wise, compared to the cruxes, and yet she went into fight or flight mode. Not because she was scared. She just didn't want to drop it. Now some of us are comp kids from way back who have the endurance of an Ethiopian marathon runner from the Rift Valley. The rest of us though are going to burn through our energy before we are anywhere near the anchor.

So if she wasn't scared, did you pick up what activated her fight or flight mode? Because it doesn't only switch on from fear. It can fire from wanting it too much. It fires from the pressure of not wanting to blow it now. It fires from that little jolt of this could actually happen. And every one of those is a mental event, a thought or an interpretation of the situation. Which means you can be running completely hot, fully coke bottled, with no fear anywhere in sight.

Now for this particular climber it was a distinct moment, more specifically a thought. Most of us have been there. We finally stick the crux and instantly think, don't fall off now.

But for a lot of us it isn't a moment at all. We've climbed in this state so often that it's become the default, the thing that fires the second we tie in. Project in it, warm up in it, send in it, and the nervous system learns that this jacked up, coke bottled feeling is simply what climbing is. A conditioned habit, running on its own, and remember it doesn't need the thinking brain involved to switch on.

And here's why it's so easy to miss. We aren't afraid, so it never occurs to us to question it, to explore if there is another way. And more importantly, it's become our normal. When you've only ever climbed in this state, there's nothing to compare it against, so it doesn't feel like a state at all. It just feels like climbing with a lack of endurance problem.

That sounds a bit bleak, but it really isn't, because a conditioned habit is not a fixed trait. You are not a fixed being. Even your nervous system learns. Anything the nervous system has learned, it can learn differently. You trained your fingers into what they can do now, and there's no real reason the same patient training can't teach your system another way to climb.

Which brings us back to that climber who tests brilliantly and pumps out by the third bolt. The fitness they built likely hasn't vanished like Houdini. It's far more likely that the state they're climbing in is burning through it faster than is required.

So before you sign up for another six weeks of endurance work, it might be worth asking a different question. Do you actually need more of it, or might it be easier to use more efficiently what you've already built.

I mean, go do another 6 weeks of 4x4s or hours of boring as batshit arcing. Or…. retrain your nervous state so you stop running hotter than a fighter jet on jugs your grandmother would bake scones on.