How to Warm-Up Your Fingers: A growing case study on physical preparation and managing fatigue before you climb with Collin McGee

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How to Warm-Up Your Fingers: A growing case study on physical preparation and managing fatigue before you climb.

I am going to quickly outline and highlight the reasons behind the warm up “protocol” described in the video below:

I quote “protocol” because I think the term is actually quite silly. I don’t want you to blindly follow these sets and reps. I want you to better understand how to find the appropriate sets, reps, and intensity that makes sense for YOU. And not just “today, YOU”, but tomorrow when you are feeling tired and then next-week-you, that is finally rested and feeling 150%!

Because, all of those different “you’s” are going to warm up differently. And that is ok!

And I want you to understand WHY everything was chosen and organized in the way it was.

The whiteboard from the video

Contraction Types

There are two main contraction types talked about in the warm up: an “overcoming isometric” and a “yielding isometric”

An overcoming isometric is a muscle effort in which no movement through space can be observed. The action is against an immovable object. Imagine grabbing your own wrist with your hand and squeezing. Your hand is creating effort but your fingers can’t pass through your arm like a ghost.

This “OISO” is going to be referred to as “more muscle-y” because when you are giving this “active effort” it is primarily coming from the muscle. (which pulls on a tendon, yes, but we’ll say the majority of the effort stems from the muscle)

A yielding isometric is a muscle effort in which the muscle is “holding its position”. If you were to run this effort to infinity, the muscle/joint would “lose the fight” and lengthen in position. Imagine holding a jug of water out in front of you. It is not going anywhere, but it takes effort. And, eventually, your arm will lower due to fatigue.

This “YISO” has elastic properties. Think about pulling on a rubber band: when you stretch a rubber band it “wants to pull back”. It is not alive, nor active, but its material is designed to try to return to its natural shape. It also only wants to do this when it is stretched, and not when it is just sitting on a table.

This “passive” force can be observed in yielding isometrics too. So, the muscles are working, but not as hard. They don’t have too when the elastic properties, in and around the muscle, are “helping out”. This leads to the “YISO” being “not as muscle-y”.


Fatigue

We will accumulate more fatigue, or get more tired, from the YISO’s on average as compared to the OISOs.

When tissue stretches (even a tiny bit that is hard to see in an isometric) extra fatigue producing things occur (stretch induced calcium ion channels, among other things for you nerds). This is not necessarily a bad thing. We NEED to learn how to build up tolerance to this fatigue over time to get better at handling it.

Do you remember how you felt after your first day climbing ever? You probably could barely hold a glass of water the next day! Now look at you! It takes 3 days of climbing in a row to feel like that.

That is an example of increased fatigue tolerance. And that is done by engaging with OISOs andddd YISOs progressively over time.

But, today’s context is warming up. Not training. So, we want to choose the option that will fatigue us the least so we don’t “get in our own way” of performing while climbing after this warm up!


Warm Up Part 1: Ramping Efforts

The main idea here is not the seconds, or the rest, or the reps. It is that you want to start off easy with your efforts and then slowly ramp them up to 90-100% max.

We start slow so that the body and brain can “catch up” and be able to work hard. But, eventually we do need to work hard so that you can optimally “wake up” your muscle and brain to be ready for the physical demands of your climbing to come!

We choose the OISO contraction type to primarily focus on the muscle and getting it primed. We do include some YISO work to prepare the “total system” to be ready to go. But, in a small dose to save on fatigue!


Warm Up Part 2: Blood Flow

“Avoid the flash pump!” is a common thing to hear when you are at the gym or out at the crag. And maybe those who say that are not wrong. We certainly do not want to seek out a pump so painful to the point our arms feel like they are going to explode early on in our climbing session. And especially not for a “warm up”.

But, a “pump” is worth seeking out. Just a more moderate one.

To get “pumped” is to feel the effects of blood flow in and out of our muscles. We want to stimulate blood flow to our muscles because it “widens the roads” that blood will travel on to go from our heart to muscles. This is important because blood carries energy to our muscles. The wider the roads and more efficiently the travel and the more energy we potentially have to use!

We can “fill up our gas tanks” a little more if we can get our muscle oxygen levels to rise before our performance effort. Oxygen is a major energy currency our bodies use. The more we can have before we hop on a climb, the more money we have to spend! We fill up this tank by moderately stimulating the muscles with effort. This uses the muscle to tell the brain: “Hey! Something is about to happen and we need more energy down here!”

Using too little effort and the body won’t be able to tell the difference between you watching Netflix or preparing to climb.

Too much effort in the warm up and you will jump into “send mode” and you may fatigue too much, too quickly and exhaust all the energy currency you have.

That is why there is no perfect “protocol” for warming up and it will always vary. Because the definition of “moderate” will change from person-to-person and from day-to-day for any one individual.

The above photo shows what's going on under the skin while I performed the warm up. These graphs are all from the amazing device called the NNOXX. NNOXX is the first non-invasive (not inside you) way to measure Nitric Oxide. The form of Nitric Oxide (NO) they test really details blood flow in the active and working muscles in real time. So, the more PURPLE you see, the more blood flow!

It also measures that currency we mentioned before, Muscle Oxygen, (SmO2).

You can follow along the line graph and see when I am “spending money” when the graph drops. I am recovering, and gaining more “money”, when the SmO2 line rises.

The amount of purple that comes along with the efforts tells us how much blood flow is being stimulated by the effort.

The most noticeable difference is in the blood flow stimulation between "1-6" (Warm Up 1) and "7" (Warm Up 2). This is the defining difference between the two “protocols”: one is really good at getting the fingers ready to work hard and the other at getting the fingers to endure.

Contraction Types also seem to play a big role in blood flow.

One of the experiments was to test the exact same warm up but using a different method of contracting the fingers.

The top graph is the normal warm up with the mix of contraction types. Only yielding isometrics were used in the bottom graph. Putting them against each other in the photo below illuminates some interesting findings: Less blood flow stimulation from the yielding isometrics only 🧐…

Let’s Review!

  1. The goal of a warm up is to work in moderation to alert your physiology that something bigger is coming and it needs to get ready. Doing nothing for a warm up is like taking a road trip on a quarter tank of gas…and too much intensity for a warm up may leave you overly fatigued before the fun even happens!

  2. Start off easy. Slowly progress the intensity upwards!

  3. We are warming up, not sending. So, think about the cost/benefit of the things you choose. This is why it makes sense to choose more overcoming isometrics in the warm up and sprinkle in the appropriate amount of yielding isometrics.

  4. Muscle needs blood. Muscle pumps blood. Muscle calls for blood. So, when we are trying to stimulate blood flow choose the more “muscle-y” option (overcoming isometric. And save some fatigue while doing so!

  5. Stay open minded and curious! By no means would this paper, my mini-studies, or population size pass in official research. We are still in the infancy of understanding these concepts. But, hopefully I have made a decent case, with some #science, about what direction we should consider when building a warm up .

Resources:

General ClimbingTyler Nelson