So I'm reading Dave MacLeod's book "9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes". I'm really enjoying it. It talks about the big four: "technique, finger strength, endurance, & body mass", but it doesn't give specific, useful advice about diet. In particular, I'm wondering if I should eat all the girl scout cookies today, so they are not around to temp me all week, or am I better off eating fewer cookies each day but eating cookies on more days?

They are Thin Mints & Peanut Butter Sandwich.

You're best off giving them away and avoiding all kinds of such junk food.

I suggest freezing the thin mints. That way you can burn a few extra calories thawing them in your mouth.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Unfortunately, it's too hard to test now, as I've already had some cookies. I was thinking of eating all the cookies today, and then seeing how long I can hang from my training-board. Then tomorrow I'll eat some cookies and hang from the same holds (with the remaining cookies tied around my waist so my weight would be the same).

I'll adjust my training regiment according to how this experiment works out. Can't wait for spring. I'm going to get so strong with this science-based approach to training.

Excellent! That's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. Did you know another poster actually suggested *not* eating the cookies. I know! But if you search this thread (and the webmaster doesn't delete such nonsense) you can see it.

Glad to help!

Now where can I find ME some thin mints....

Now where can I find ME some thin mints

Recall, in that Monty Python masterpiece, The Meaning of Life, what one thin mint can do.

Please eat them before your girlfriend gets home. Thank you!

I live by the "you are what you eat" scientific discipline. For example, birds have an excellent strength/weight ratio. I mean, hell, they're so strong they can just flap their wings and take off. So anyway, since the wings probably are the most strength-to-weightiest part of them, I had about 15 buffalo wings smothered in blue-cheese dressing while sinking ever deeper into the couch and watching the superbowl and drinking beer (note the bubbles in beer - they make it especially light and bubbly!) the other day.

I'm sure the combination of beer and wings will allow me to pull at least another letter grade harder.

I'll report back on how it goes.

In the meantime, I'd suggest you hurry up and finish those cookies, and then buy some of these girlscout cookies:



The hollow circle is a very strong and light form found throughout nature, wherever large area but light weight is required.

They're especially good frozen, with some ice cream sandwiched between two of them.

Cheers!

GO

place them above the hangboard. you only get to eat one after you crank a few off.
keep them under the fridge. you have to lift the fridge to get to them.
etc.

They must be called THIN mints for a reason. You should be able to them by the box with impunity. And if you only eat the centers of the Samoas there is no risk of weight gain.

Thin mints and tagalongs are great coming out of the freezer. Samoas don't work as well, it's like stuffing a pine cone into your mouth. Nuking it for a 15 seconds helps, but then you don't get the calorie burning of warming it up... so while it's being nuked, do jumping jacks.

This "calorie burning" claim is silly. Body temperature is about 37 degrees Celsius. If you drink one liter of ice water, your body's warming it up to its own temperature requires only 37 calories. Now melting a gram of ice in your mouth requires about .08 calories. Heating it up to body temperature requires only .037 calories. I doubt one would want to melt more than a few grams of ice in one's mouth.

We're not talking about ice. We're talking about thin mints. Dummy.

The water content and specific heat of a thin mint is less than that of a gram of ice. But if you were merely being jocular in your first post in this thread, you may disregard my prior post.

As many calories as I burned shoveling snow this week, I could eat a case of Thin Mints and still be in a calories deficit

TS

They shouldn't even post calorie counts on GS cookies. They should just have a facepalm symbol and maybe "you don't want to know" written under it.

"If you have to ask, you can't afford it!"

I am especially poor in that regard but it doesn't stop me from enjoying the occaisional case.

I recommend any cookie in large concentration.

Chas is right, life in Japan has taught me that even the absence of girl scout cookies can be overcome with sufficient courage, improvisation and butterfat.

If in doubt, I recommend these:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/dining/111brex.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=brownies&st=cse

My current favorite.

Aha! Butter solves everything. So, if I sandwich a cookie between a cat and a piece of buttered toast, does the resulting weightlessness also render the cookie calorie-less?

Empirical evidence derived from observation of my kids bouncing off the ceiling after eating enough cookies suggests that neither cat nor toast is necessary to achieve weightlessness in pre-teenagers. Furthermore, their skinny little bods suggest that calorielessness is a naturally occurring cookie bi-product for this age group.

For those of us who have attained more advanced years, however, I'd recommend at least the cat, and maybe the toast as well...

I'll need to read the book, but totally disagree. Most people really need to work the hardest thing of all to work. Mental attitude (and this is coming from a conservative climber himself). My old neighbor has the strength and ability to lead 5.14d sport, but he is spending the next 5 mos in Europe to break into the 5.14's. On the other extreme, we had a kid here in town (Flagstaff, Az) who was bold, but had slightly stronger then average strength but he also got on lead a 5.13c/d finger crack second try.

Now back to girl scout cookies, since they do rock!!!

And we are suppose to eat the cookie, toast and cat???? I'll stick with just cookies. And invoking the name of the great and all knowing guru (Homer)...... donuts (while drooling).

To be fair to Dave, the section 3 is: "Fear of falling: the real problem, probably" and section 4 is: "attitude, lifestyle, circumstances, tactics". So he does cover mental attitude. Still, the most valuable sections of the book (for me anyway) was the section on movement technique. I started focusing on how to use momentum while I boulder. I'm enjoying the training and I'm optimistic it will be useful in having a good climbing season.

I haven't read Dave MacLeod's book, but I may say something about body and mind in climbing, based on my experience. The two are synergistic. Muscle and endurance building in a gym will give the climber confidence. And a confident climber will "go for it" rather than dilly-dally and fight himself, draining his endurance. Sport psychologists suggest that the athlete imagine himself doing what he'll attempt just before attempting it and I've found this helpful.

Maybe for you, but it sure doesn't work like that for me.

One winter I spent a lot of time in the gym. Got stronger than I've ever been. Ticked off several low 5.12s in the in the gym.

Early the next season I got on Directissima. A 5.9. I got... Shut. Down. Completely. On the traverse, I spent too long fussing in pro, didn't have my feet placed properly, and completely toasted my arms. In the end, I wound up lowering to the belay with my tail between my legs, and my partner finished the pitch.

I had led a number of 5.9s in the Gunks in previous seasons. And I have never, either before or since, gotten shut down so hard.

I have NEVER since then thought that gym power = ability to lead trad. The beginning of every season now starts with humility, and re-gathering of my lead head.

Cheers,

GO

Maybe for you, but it sure doesn't work like that for me.

Ok, we differ that way.

I spent too long fussing in pro, didn't have my feet placed properly, and completely toasted my arms.

Perhaps had you trained longer and harder, you could still fumble around without completely toasting arms, maybe not.

The beginning of every season now starts with humility, and re-gathering of my lead head.

My experience too.

For me, (my experience only), I've kept a high level of fitness most of my life, but my lead ability has directly correlated to my head, and experience (which I don't seperate).To me its taken a long time to get rid of an overly conservative point of view towards climbing. Its taken a long time for me to understand that I SHOULD be leading .13's on gear, and to take the experience for what it is at the moment, instead of what my head says an experience I should have based on a grade.

Strength gives me confidence, time to place gear, power to pull through without technique when fatigue and fear cause technique to desert me. But strength comes from climbing overhanging stuff in the gym which does not teach me to use small footholds, a fact of which I'm reminded every Spring. But a few days back at the Gunks usually gets the lead head and feet back in working order. Feet + lead head + strength is better than feet and lead head alone.

On a more important note, one of the best things about working from home is there's no one here to sell me GS cookies. Mmm, Thin Mints. I can easily do a sleeve in a single sitting.

Mmm, Thin Mints. I can easily do a sleeve in a single sitting.

Good that you have a hard time getting them. At a single sitting, you might increase your seatprint.

Are you sure this is really a good thing? You may be suffering from an undiagnosed sugar and or cholesterol deficiency! Try the brownie recipe I posted. Believe me - next to those things, thin mints are a health food.

On a slightly climbing related note - my ability to use (and even see) small holds also goes to hell when I spend too much time in the gym and away from real rock. Generally it comes back after a bit, and the gym power really helps; but sometimes I traumatize myself by trying something harder than my footwork will sustain too soon. Then I have to ease off and re-establish my outdoor lead head all over again.

Jeez - I'm such a wimp.

Just got a new batch of GS cookies! Samoas, Tagalongs and Thin Mints! Just in time, the freezer was looking a bit empty.

Now I can begin training in earnest!

It could just be where I work out but I find the gyms don't set routes which beat my body up as much as the routes that I am doing outside does. I need a couple of good days outside where your arms and body cramp up on the drive home, and make you want to scream to get back into the swing of things.

Remember when the girl scouts actually went door to door instead of having their daddies sell to victims at work?

My parents never would have done the fundraising for me in any of the youth groups I was in - boy scouts, explorers - they'd have driven me to a different neighborhood so I could sell, yes, but I had to do all the walkin and talkin myself.

(And we wore onions on our belts, as was the custom at the time.)

I remember selling girl scout cookies door-to-door in the snow. Uphill both ways, of course ...

Strange. I remember the Cookie Monster selling dead Girl Scouts door-to-door....

Ah, yes. Always a good idea to stock up when you can.

At least the GS had things people wanted to buy. As a boy scout we had to lug around that stupid tom wat suitcase filled with crap that nobody wanted to buy. It really annoyed me that I had to try to try to get people to buy the stuff, it really was worthless yet overpriced junk.

I remember having to peddle magazine subscriptions in high school to finance our prom. Nowadays every soccer camp has something to sell.

We used to sell candy bars to raise money in my Vo-tech school. (My favorite was Carmello) I remember going into the VFW and selling out instantly to the drunks and then using the money so I could go skiing. I scrambled to raise money to pay it back, including over-charging on the next round of candy bars

Yeah, every day there's a pamphlet at work from someone's kid's team or group or class that's trying to sell something. Mostly chocolates, candy and tsotchkes, though I think they're much better than the stuff we had to try to sell.

The difference was that we had a cardboard suitcase with samples of each that we had to lug around from house to house, sorta like avon in that respect. Now that I think about it, it was cub scouts, not boy scouts. Anyway, the only reason people let us in was our uniforms, they pretended to be interested in the crap because they felt sorry for us, but nobody was interested in frivolous spending at that time, especially after seeing how crappy the samples were.

Ah, good times.

Candy bars and Girl Scout cookies are hard to resist but they're easier to resist if they're not in your face.

D'OH! Guilty as charged... <hangs head in shame>

GS cookies make excellent belay ledge snax, though. (At least, that's the line I use on my climbing friends...)

Thin Mints are excellent fuel for ski touring: