For as long as I’ve been climbing and as well as I think I understand and know about how my body works, I still get surprises sometimes. This happened yesterday. I thought that I would have a tired, lower-quality workout than I normally do, given the competition the day before (and how tired I felt during that), and my night of less sleep than usual. Instead, I had the best power workout I’ve had all winter, with my energy improving and increasing throughout the day. What a totally weird and unexpected occurrence. It left me wondering what was up with me at the comp…did I rest too much (three days) beforehand? Or did I climb too much without resting during the competition time? I don’t know, honestly, but I will try next time only having two days of rest before, I think, since this seems to have been working well for me all winter long.

But then, to just feel wickedly powerful during yesterday’s workout seemed just plain odd to me. I tested the waters just to see how far I could push things, too—discovered some cool stuff like that I can now do sets of ultra-wide-grip pull-ups, as far out as I can go on the bar. I couldn’t do even a somewhat wide-grip pull-up two years ago. Now I can do a bunch. I also made improvements in every power area I’ve been working on, from weighted single pull-ups to one-arm pull-ups, to grip strength training.

I concluded after the day was done that from here on out, for the rest of this winter’s training, I’m swapping days, doing my power workout the day after bouldering, and doing my shorter, grip-strength and opposing muscle workout on the same days as bouldering. It’s about halfway through my winter training for this year, so it’s a good time to switch it up, and also, this little experiment makes it seem like it’s perhaps a better way to go about things, given the high level of energy I felt yesterday after a night of sleep between bouldering and a power workout. Always more to learn, I suppose!

I feel really excited, too, because I finally broke down and ordered more than 100 “real” climbing holds for my gym, to fill out the walls hopefully completely. Most of the gym’s current holds are homemade rock and wood holds, which are awesome, cheap, and work great—but, they do lack in particular shapes, especially pinches, nasty slopers, and small but not positive edges. So one goal for this week for me is to get every single hold that’s left to be put up in there right now up on the walls—they’re all screw-ins at this point—leaving all of the bolt holes open to take the new holds when they arrive. It’s going to be awesome, and I’m ultra-psyched to have the gym absolutely packed to the hilt with holds, at long last.

Today, I feel a bit sore, but very well rested and ready for a good cardio workout and stretching once it warms up (2 degrees this morning…hello? I thought February was supposed to be warmer than January?). Plus coaching my climbing students (I’m booked full with eight now!), and posting three new articles—How to Plan and Take a Cheap Rock Climbing Trip,  A High-Protein, Low-Fat Berry Spirulina Smoothie, and Bonnie’s Balms Multipurpose Healing Remedies—and writing several more articles for the week. Good stuff.