Below you will find six (6) questions to help assess the strengths and weaknesses of your cardiopulmonary system, henceforth referred to as Cardio. The three (3) aspects of Cardio include the following: 1) Lungs and the amount of air you can intake or expel, usually through breathing; 2) Heart and the amount of blood you can pump along with your capillary base; 3) Management or simply being aware of your body’s needs and working to meet those needs.. Answer the six questions below and fill in the values to gain your Cardio Characteristic Score.
Characteristic Score
Aspects
1) When climbing at my limit, no matter how hard or deeply I breathe, I feel like I can not get enough oxygen to settle down my breath rate.
Tip: First, be honest and answer the question of whether or not you smoke or used to smoke (this includes any smokable, not just cigarettes). If you answered yes, then there is your answer and you need to quit that s***, or if you already quit congratulations, but unfortunately the damage is already done. We will cover this more extensively in the Care Characteristic. No matter the reason, we can make use of all of your available lung capacity and improve your oxygen consumption through simple training with your effort about 60% or higher. Running, biking, rowing, and swimming are great because once you set a pace, stick to it. Gradually increasing the pace over time will help with how well your body uses the oxygen you take in so less and less goes to waste. The oxygen and carbon dioxide gas transfer is discussed below because the heart is the other half of the system.
2) When climbing at my limit, with my fear and/or anxiety under control, my heart rate still feels rapid and like a thud (heart in the throat) and it takes a lot of rest to calm down.
Tip: When we exert ourselves our heart rate increase, but sometimes it can get too high to really do anything to help us. Part of my coursework included coaching for Track and Field and the Head Coach stated that any heart rate over 180 BPM (beats per minute) is ineffective for actually delivering blood. Now this is his opinion after 30 years as a coach, but there is some science behind it. If the heart rate is too fast, blood kind of just shifts back and forth in the arteries rather than actually distributing oxygen and taking away carbon dioxide. Your heart rate will stay up to facilitate that gas transfer until the levels are equalized in the muscles. The best way to train this excessive heart rate away is interval training, and an appropriate progression will be covered in a later article. Basically, interval training helps to increase stroke volume which pushes more blood a longer distance through the vessels and facilitates gas exchange and balance faster.
3) When climbing at my limit, I forget to breathe regularly and/or sometimes I feel faint or dizzy as my heart rate increase (vertigo does not count).
Tip: Breathing is obviously the only way to get oxygen in the body and your cardiopulmonary system is the only way to deliver that oxygen. If you don’t breathe then nothing is coming and no carbon dioxide is getting out. When you hold your breath, your heart rate increases to try and facilitate the gas exchange with any bit of oxygen that is left your lungs. You can test this by holding your breath even while sitting still. The faintness you feel is that build up of carbon dioxide in your system. When you do this while exerting yourself, the effect is dramatized; your heart rate spikes faster and that dizzy feeling comes on sooner. It is understood and well researched that when pushing or pulling hard, as in professional weightlifting, holding your breath while making singular moves increases internal pressure against the abdominal wall and provides greater support and core tension. If you were to watch videos of these heavy lifters you will see that as soon as the move is completed they go right back to controlled breathing. We are the same, just instead of weights we are moving our bodies on small holds and it is OK to hold your breath momentarily, but as soon as the move is done, get right back to breathing regularly.
4) When on route, each breath is full, completely filling my lungs for each inhale and completely expelling my lungs for each exhale, and each breath is facilitated by diaphragm in my core, not my chest and shoulders.
Tip: Take stock of how you are breathing. Is mostly in your chest and shoulders with large motions or is it from your abdomen and chest? Breathing is facilitated by the diaphragm in our core and when our abdominal front wall is engaged it makes it difficult to fully engage that muscle. We can get air by chest breathing, but it only fills our lungs to about 60% capacity and it is difficult to get enough oxygen when pushing hard. Find moments where you can belly breathe and fully fill your lungs to get that precious air. Rest stances, clipping stances, and any other moments where your skeleton can hold your weight rather than your musculature are moments to belly breathe. Being mindful of this fact is not only good for your performance level, but also a good mental exercise that can be practiced anywhere and should be practiced all the time.
5) Even when I get pumped, or worse, flash-pumped, I can still take some time while on route and quickly reduce or remove the pump.
Tip: Pump is that terrible feeling you get in your forearms as they swell and the pressure becomes so great that you can not hold on anymore and might not even be able to untie your double bowline. This happens because the flexing of the muscles does not allow for proper flow and as a result, carbon dioxide rich blood trying to return to the lungs is trapped and all that CO2 is not helping your muscles. The best way to assist with relieving that pump is to let gravity help by shaking out the arm and hand over your head to get the old blood out and then follow up by shaking below your waist to get the new blood flowing in. That’s not the tip, though, as that should be common knowledge by now. The tip is how to decrease the amount of shaking and delay the onset of the pump by increasing your capillary base. Those tiny arteries and veins that carry blood to your muscles down to the microscopic level are important, and the more your have the better time you will have staving off or recovering from the dreaded pump. A regimented cardio routine will place the necessary stress on the entire body and in turn, your body will create more capillaries to meet the oxygen demand. You may wonder how running or biking would influence the forearms, but the body does not really care. Yes, the legs are working the hardest and would receive a greater degree of growth, but the rest of the musculature will benefit as well. Rowing and swimming, on the the other hand, offer a great total body routine from your toes to your fingertips and will generate a more evenly distributed capillary base.
Bonus Tip: Drink more water! When you are dehydrated your blood condenses and has a harder time moving through your system. When properly hydrated, blood behaves more like the fluid it is supposed to be rather the sludge it can be.
6) When I feel my breathing and heart pace increasing, I can find a rhythm between my movement and breath to maintain a steady rate for my breath and heart.
Tip: Like most of us (OK, all of us), I can’t control when my heart beats. It’s rate is dependent on the amount of oxygen needed and the amount of carbon dioxide that needs to be evacuated throughout the body. What I can do is control my exertion and breath rate. Yes, there are other factors including length of the route/problem, single hardest move, sustained movement, etc., but if I can find a rhythm to the movement and time my breath accordingly using the two other tips above (#1 and #4) then I should be able to maintain a steady heart rate while climbing. Think of it as finding your pace while running. Yes, you are exerting yourself and breathing heavy with and elevated heart rate, and yes, even by pacing yourself you could not do it forever, but you could make it to the finish line or in a climbers case, the finish hold. Take every opportunity to rest, even if you feel like you don’t need to and make it just a simple shake and chalk up because it allows time for the body and mind to catch up with each other. Trying to bulldog your way through is like trying sprint for an entire 5K. Find your pace and stick with it while maintaining focus on what your body needs and delivering on those needs accordingly.
-Tylor Streett, MS, NASM-CPT, PES