TRAINING
The Framework.
If any layman in anatomy has ever kept his fingers on trunk or sides while walking down or up hill, he will have been astonished at the amount of work that is done by groups of muscles wholly remote from the calves or thighs upon whose development he has proudly relied. Suppleness and an even development of hardened muscle all over the body are what tell in climbing, not local bulges. Most men are designed by nature to develop most spring, suppleness and strength at a point of general muscular development which will never earn their portraits a place beside the corrugated limbs of the gentlemen on the hoardings. Of course a naturally big-muscled man must remain big-muscled. But it is the quality of the muscle that counts. Whatever there is, large or small, it has to be spun into fine silk. Any effort to develop unduly some group of muscles, in arm or leg, will even prejudice the ease with which a man can recover in training the harmonious control of his machinery at its best, and the artificial muscle is apt to degenerate into fat when he goes out of training. A man, evenly developed according to his potential strength, even when he goes out of training has little difficulty in preserving a level, if lower, plane of general fitness and suppleness; and when the time comes for winding up or for relaxing, his condition moves evenly and easily up or down, and he is ready, in a few days if he is young, in rather more as time goes on, to climb again at his best.
To keep in moderate training out of season, any regular exercise in the open air is sufficient which exercises different parts of the apparatus of the body in their relation to one another, and which holds the attention. Monotonous repetitions of particular muscular movements are of little service. They bore the mind and weary the nerves; and it is the interworking of his nerves, muscles and will that a climber has to train. If he is prevented by circumstances from getting open air exercise, he may find fencing the most effective, concentrated and lasting indoor practice which he can fit conveniently into his working day. An hour’s hard fencing with both hands, comprising exercises, free play and a cold douche to finish, uses every muscle and connection of the body to the full, but risks no local strain. For in fencing every movement must be supple and yet controlled; the whole system is kept concentrated, and at full tension, upon movements minute, quick and fine. The training in rapid adjustments and lightning reactions is invaluable to the climber, and its unboisterous character makes it possible of continuance without prejudice well into old age.
If he can face them, dancing and skipping are admirable exercises to the same end. Tree climbing, or even haystack climbing, where possible, are also fine climbing practice. Swimming and sculling exercise organs and muscles smoothly and develop them evenly. Swimming has no equal as an exercise for growing strength. It runs no risk of violent local strain, and it cannot be continued beyond the point of wholesome fatigue. In all its varieties and attendant circumstances it combines more educative merits than any other form of open air sport.
My own view is that the development of special groups of muscles is best left for the climbing days themselves to effect. ‘Morning exercises,’ before the cold bath, are excellent to get the circulation right, and better than nothing for climbers whose day allows them no more wholesome outdoor activity. Among special exercises I should put first those that strengthen the forearm and fingers, for ‘gripping’; those that build up the muscles of the trunk, which have the greatest share of work to do in climbing; those that train the body to balance easily up and down on one leg, for balance; and those (if there are any but wood chopping) which prepare the shoulders and trunk for the movement of step cutting. But the working in easy combination of groups of muscles is what the climber aims at. Excessive exercise of independent groups is apt to militate against quick muscular interaction. It is well, therefore, to make movements in combinations, and constantly to vary them. This helps to keep the attention concentrated. So does a looking-glass. Boredom invalidates the whole effort. Each movement should represent a separate effort of the will.
The Organs.
For a climber the lungs and heart must be the chief care. The action of walking uphill, the lifting of foot and arm continuously and with effort, make a sustained extra demand upon these organs especially. In climbing they have to supply the fuel consumed in muscular effort, and to throw off the poisonous residue, in greater quantity than in normal action, and at an increased pace. The effects of the extra effort, shortness of breath, fatigue, exhaustion, even, in cases, suffocation, are symptoms of the failure of the heart and lungs, in varying degrees, to maintain the equilibrium between the supply and discharge of fuel. The muscle cells and the lungs are being starved of their substance, and the acids are accumulating too rapidly to be naturally got rid of. The heart is consequently enfeebled, the lungs get choked, and the exhaustion increases progressively. The severe muscular strain of a difficult rock feat is in this way doubly exhausting. The local tension is consuming the muscle cells at an abnormal rate, and therefore putting an excessive demand upon the heart and lungs to keep them supplied; and at the same time the contraction of all the great muscles of the trunk, involved in the local effort, is compressing the great organs from outside, and thus impeding their action in producing the increased supply required. Hence the ‘panting’ of an untrained climber after any severe rock passage, however short the effort.
Now, both heart and lungs can learn by practice to perform their normal functions at more than double their normal rate, and yet to maintain the equilibrium in the supply and discharge of fuel such as is needed to allow them to continue their free action.
Hence a climber is concerned to accustom his heart to accelerate, without enfeebling its action and thus diminishing the amount of fuel which each pulsation is supplying. Also, so to exercise his lungs that a number of breathing sacks, not usually employed, may be ready and accustomed for easy use whenever the extra call may be put upon them. By practice a number of dormant lung sacks, as well as those in normal use, may be actually increased in elasticity and volume, so that the lungs as a whole will be prepared to receive a far greater quantity of ‘breath,’ whenever that may be required for a greater effort.
The training for the heart is a regular and increasing graduation of effort, developed in healthful exercises such as walking, running, swimming, wood chopping, etc., and practised until even a violent or long-sustained effort can be made without panting or discomfort.
The training for ‘breath’ is deep breathing; from the bottom of the lungs, and through the nose as much as through the mouth; practised either in the course of natural open air exercise, or, almost as effectively, by slow inhalation and exhalation, for a few moments each day, in the best air obtainable. To increase the capacity of the lungs is to increase the chest measurement, that healthful vanity which mountaineering, above all exercises, flatters. Contrary to our ideas as boys, this is effected from the inside, by breathing, and not from the outside, by arm exercises, etc. ‘Chest’ exercises, indeed, help to make supple the ligaments of the outside framework, and so permit of a greater elasticity in the breathing cells within. Otherwise they are only of use in so far as they demand, or are accompanied by, deep breathing.
Will and Nerves.
A climber has also to remember the very active share that his will power must take in difficult or prolonged mountaineering. He depends upon his will to supply to a large extent the impulse, physical and moral, when nerves and muscles begin to show signs of unwilling service. Among some of the greatest of mountaineers, will has to a notable extent supplied the place of physique. They have climbed on their ‘vitality,’ as we say; on the success of their will in maintaining the impulse to movement long after the muscles have protested their inability to continue the rate of consumption of energy.
The impulses of the will are communicated physically. Their transmission exhausts nerve-fibre as materially as muscular action. As the muscles tire, the messages from the will quicken and increase. The nerve transmitters get irritated, and finally revolt. As a result, we have the frequent mountaineering symptoms of ennui, irritation, conscious fatigue and, in extreme cases, of complete nervous incapacity to resolve upon making another step. But the nerves call for a truce before the muscles are actually exhausted. The muscles, male fashion, invariably protect themselves by retaining some reserve of energy, if only a way can be found of exacting it. Some new interest or excitement may do this; the messages are then switched on to other nerve-lines, the congestion of monotony is relieved, and the will resumes control of the communications, to the extent of obtaining whole hours of further effort from the striking muscles.
But training offers us a surer way of postponing or avoiding these strikes. The body is animated in two fashions from the spinal nerves: by the messages that pass through the brain—I speak as a layman—and by those which serve that mysterious but autocratic regent of our habits, the ‘subconsciousness.’ Under the latter are grouped all our automatic actions, and the more actions we can qualify for admission to its extremely select group of well-ordered subjects, the fewer sequences of orders will the dictator-brain have to promulgate on their account, and the less congested will be the nerve-lines of communications. Walking, for instance, is, with most people, a subconscious action. Once the impulse to step out has been given, the legs will continue to walk automatically so long as the look or feel of the familiar smooth surface continues to suggest the familiar reflex. A change of surface may disturb and therefore make the effort conscious; otherwise the walking can be maintained without fatigue for a much longer time than the same group of muscles could have held out had they been performing some unfamiliar action, and therefore been under the direction of conscious impulses.
The human frame, in attaching itself at two, three or four points to any ordinary surface, is capable of only a limited number of positions. Holds upon rock or ice, suitable for use, not unnaturally recur frequently in similar groupings upon the same type of surface. Consequently, there are whole series of positions of the body and limbs which are constantly repeating themselves in climbing. The more of these subconscious associations which a climber can succeed, by practice, in establishing, as between familiar sequences of holds and automatic adjustments of his motions to their requirements, the fewer calls will he have to make upon nerves and will, and the greater, therefore, will be his endurance. It is largely on this account that a climber, as he gets experience, finds that he can climb with always decreasing effort. It is for this reason also that long, continuous rock ridges, with oft-recurring situations, form the best initial training for young mountaineers and the best annual reintroduction for their elders.
A climber who can get away, if only for a day or so, at frequent intervals, to rocks small or big behind his house or on convenient hills, secures the best training for his balance, his nerves and his muscles, not by attempting extravagant gymnastic problems, but by practising, and always adding to, the number of his sequences of familiar climbing movements. He must learn to perform these with such facility that, finally, their execution becomes subconscious. On a long climb ten out of every twelve situations will be familiar to experience. Suitable training will enable him to meet these ten with the right motions, without conscious effort, automatically. The nerves and the will-power are thus economically kept in reserve for the remaining two.
Nerve.
Many of us take a day or two at the beginning of the season to get back our ‘nerve.’ We boggle at a bold reach, or feel inclined to crawl where we know we should stride. This is not due to any fine new sensitiveness to mountain danger, acquired during our civilized sojourn in the plains; it has nothing to do with vertigo or effect of height. It is simply lack of condition. By inaction we have allowed sets of automatic motions to become unfamiliar. The will has, therefore, to take charge, and does so tentatively, like a professor of metaphysics left in charge of a class of elementary school-children. The nerve communications are sluggish from disuse; the muscles are out of control, and distrustful of what the arbitrary will may ask of them. We become ‘nervous,’ and potter. This can all be avoided by reasonable and light practice. Regular exercise of the heart, the lungs, the muscles and the nerve-lines of communications, with occasional repetitions of our groups of familiar subconscious motions, will maintain a general level of fitness even out of training. If the machinery is kept working smoothly, we can soon get it going at high pressure again, and can return to top condition without any local strikes or nerve signals. The final tuning up to meet the call of the mountain holiday will then proceed easily, of itself, in action. For a man whose system is set, and who practises a consistent habit of living, the amount of actual exercise required during the intervals to preserve his elasticity is usually small, and tends to diminish. This is one of the compensations of advancing years.
Height and Reach.
No man by any pleasing afterthought can add to his height; although by suppling his shoulders and lengthening by exercise his trunk muscles he can extend his apparent upward reach. The stride of the tall man before us over soft snow; the long-armed man’s careless caress of a salvation hold well beyond our reach; the inimitable and perpetual rhythm maintained by the Agile Gibbon of the Zoological Gardens, on the security of his four whiplash limbs,—these are natural advantages, whose injustice we may challenge but not compete with. Their regretful contemplation suggests, however, the possible usefulness of a warning, and some consolations.
A man of great reach, whose span from toe to upstretched finger approaches or exceeds eight feet, has one undoubted advantage on difficult rocks, where holds are rare and precious. If his legs are long enough to allow him to sit across the smooth sheer walls of a chimney or to straddle it on small footholds, he has yet another. But he must expect to suffer from the drawbacks incidental to height. A tall man may be weak in the body muscles, with less suppleness and ease of balance, or, if he is muscularly developed all over, his weight is apt to increase with time out of all proportion to the suspensory power of his fingers on small holds. If he is tall, slight and sinewy, his strength of arm and hand is rarely proportionate to his greater weight, or equal to the greater expenditure on leverage which height requires of arms in balance climbing. If he is tall, muscular and heavy, this weakness pursues him in the same ratio. If chimneys are narrow, he is too long to ‘bridge’ them securely; if the holds are tricky and slight, he finds greater difficulty and effort in ‘folding up’ so as to use them, and in keeping his centre of balance well in and above his feet. It is a consolation for a short or slight man that great experts in climbing are to be found among men of every build, with a preponderance in favour of those of medium height and of sinewy and supple rather than of big muscular development. The outside feats of rock climbing, the abnormal climbs made by a few men in recent years, undoubtedly require abnormal strength of finger and arm, not seldom accompanied by great size of hand. But these men have also possessed an equal development of strength and rhythm in body and leg; their all-round design has been abnormal. When, as in one or two cases, their exceptional physical development has been assisted by great height or great reach, without loss to rhythm or balance or to the sterling quality of supple sinews, the perfection of the climbing machine has been attained.
For the normal climber to imitate the performance of these men is to incur a proportion of danger, the measure of the interval between their abnormal reach and power and his own, expressed in terms of all too distant or too indefinite rock holds, such as no sane man has the right to risk from any emulative or competitive feeling.
Every climber has to recognize that there is an absolute upper limit to that which it is physically possible for a body of his design, when developed to its utmost, to perform. If he concentrates upon an even and efficient training of his own measure of power, and climbs always well within his confident capacity, he will have the gratification, as time goes on, of finding that his improving knowledge of himself, added to his increasing experience, enables him, little by little, to reduce the margin between his own achievements and the humanly impossible.
By a pleasing accident in rock structure, rock is either utterly impossible, smooth or stratified at gigantic intervals, or its cleavages and intrusions, and consequently its holds, occur at intervals within the average man’s reach. While a tall man has, therefore, a greater choice of holds, qualified in his case by a greater effort in using them, a shorter man has only to perfect his skill, and to profit by his lightness and balance, to be able to keep level with him in performance on all normal rock. Again I except the superman climbs, which are climbs made by exceptional men upon exceptional accidents in rock structure.
As a further compensation, peculiar to advancing years, a lightly built man who lives healthily finds less difficulty in recovering a condition of hard training and in keeping up his standard of achievement. Failure in wind or increase in weight may make the process of recovery longer each year by a few days, but he has not the handicap to contend with which threatens the big or heavily muscled man, who requires constant and intensive exercise to check the local degenerations which increase with time.
Climbing is one of the few exercises that can be continued well into what used to be deemed old age. Trained nerve, tough sinew, supple muscle, experience in adjustments, in balance, in foresight and in economy of strength, compensate for the loss of youth, for its fire and spring. An old climber of the balance school can mountaineer in the front rank until the last, and, by a happy compensation which no other interest enjoys, when the deterioration of the body finally begins and the natural powers fail, the desire for the fiercer emotions of difficult climbing contentedly diminishes. In their place the inexhaustible mountains discover a whole range of subtler sensations; returning for our feet the echo of lost rhythmic movements perfected by complacent memory, and using even the shadows of our sunset years to throw into relief treasures both of human and picturesque interest, which were unnoticed or hurried over in the daylit enthusiasm of athletic youth.