Food For Pump

The fickle weather of the Northwest threw a wrench into this weekend's plans for Leavenworth. Stuck in Portland, I have been taking refuge in my staples of plastic pulling, internet, and beer.

While wading through mediocre climbing videos, blogs, training schedules, and nutrition articles I came across an article indirectly dealing with one of the most common, and often overlooked aspects of climbing: being pumped.

After more time wasted on overly scientific explanations of lactic acid, pH balanced diets, and a mess of other things it seemed that the common thread is there are certain basic or alkaline foods that absorb and in theory reduce, lactic acid from reaching your muscles (Read: forearms).

There are lists of these alkaline foods all over the internet, however this article seems to do a decent job of summarizing of the basics. This chart is also a good visual:


I'm not sure how quickly the process works or if it is even applicable to climbing, so I thought to try it out on a few levels specific to the sport over the next month:

1. A large dinner using some of these foods the day before climbing.
2. A smaller meal an hour or so before climbing.
3. Snacking mid-session during a water break.

As with any diet or nutritional advice I'm approaching this with doubt, however boredom and bad weather are powerful allies.

-BLOCHEAD