Discovering the Secret to my Strength after 10 Years

So if you've been watching the channel lately, you know that I've been pretty busy. Oh my god, it's cold! And as a result, I haven't climbed in two months. That is the longest break I've taken since I started climbing. So I'm gonna do the first session in a very long time to see how much worse I've gotten. I don't even understand how you're supposed to do that. And then with only one week of training, I'm gonna go back to the same boulders and see how much I've improved. Oh, and I'm also gonna see a specialist who's gonna compare my body to 10 years ago when I was still a professional climber. And he might have the secrets to why I became a professional climber in the first place. I was surprised now. You've never seen anyone with... No. That's crazy. That's a huge one. So not climbing for 60 days has been really weird. But one thing I'm on top of is my nutrition. I've been tracking everything and that is thanks to Microfactor. Microfactor is a premium only nutrition app I've been using lately to make sure I'm fueling properly even when I'm not training like usual. So I'm making sure I'm getting enough protein and overall energy. When you change your training routine, your nutrition needs to change too. And Microfactor automatically adapts to you. It updates based on your progress and activity. So you're not just guessing. It's super quick to use. I can log a meal in seconds. And it gives me clear feedback on carbs, protein and fat without pushing diet culture nonsense. Microfactor is a premium only app. No ads, no gimmicks. And now you can try it for an extended period of time using my code MAGNET. Link is in the description. Whether you're training hard, you're changing up your training like me, or you just want to eat in a way that supports your health, Microfactor is a great tool. All right, now I'm excited to see what my climbing shape is like. One of the weird things after the race, my toenails turned completely blue or black. Look at this. I have no idea why that happened. And I would say that overall, I'm pretty fit now. Although my climbing shape is probably not great. Because I have not climbed in two months. When I say not climbed, it means I haven't even touched a climbing hold in two months. So I'm curious how it's going to feel just to get on the wall now and just warm up. Like if I'm going to feel super out of it, or if the cycling and all the other training I've done is going to help me. Okay, now I feel pretty heavy actually. It feels so weird. The skin on my fingers have never been softer. It feels like I have baby skin. It's crazy how quickly that changes, you know. Even after climbing for 25 years, the body goes back to standard or like default really quickly. Okay, good. Would have been embarrassing to fall on that. Next grade is red though. That's when it starts getting hard. I also don't know if I'm going to do better on a steeper wall where it's more physical, or if I'm going to do better on a more technical one. Because technically, I probably shouldn't be that much worse. I don't even understand how you're supposed to do that. I'm just going to give it one more attempt and then I'm going to leave it for now. I'm not going to try it in the next week, and then I'm going to come back and show you how it feels in a week. In between these two sessions, I'm just going to go to the other gym and just try to get stronger. Because obviously if I practice this, then it's maybe not that I'm getting fitter. It's just that I've tried the boulder more times. Okay, I'm going to leave that boulder for now. Try another one instead. Here's one that looks a little bit more technical. This is a black grade as well. So it's not even the highest grade. The highest grade of this gym is purple. The weird thing too is that I'm getting a little bit pumped. I usually don't get pumped from bouldering, but now my forearms just feel so weak. Okay, I'm going to leave that one too. Here's another black one. I was thinking of maybe trying a purple one this session, but I haven't been close to doing the black one so far. I think I'm going to leave that for the next session in a week. Had to use a knee bar there. Okay, I don't think I'm going to try that one again. It's just very long and exhausting. I'm going to go and see how I do that. Like one arm to front levers and stuff. Okay, so the moment you've all been waiting for. Actually, you probably haven't been waiting for it. I've been waiting for it. Let's just see if I can still do a one arm pull up after not training climbing for two months. Usually I can do one pretty easily. Oh, it's just the last bit. That is surprising. Let's see the... That was the strong arm too. See this one. The chin is not above the bar. It's the last bit. Shit. It's just I was 12 years old. I haven't been able to not do a one arm pull up. I've always been able to do a one arm pull up. This is crazy. Okay, now front lever. Okay, I can still do it. But it feels hard. It feels really hard actually. Last thing I'm going to try is dead hang. If I'm in shape, I can do almost between 15 and 20 seconds somewhere. That's crazy. That is shocking how weak I've gotten in only two months. But it's also really motivating to get back into training. And I think when you see me in a week from now, I'm going to be a lot stronger already. So yeah, that was not a great session at all. I probably felt the weakest I felt in as long as I can remember. But the next day we went to meet Dr. Johnny Hisdal. He did an experiment on me 10 years ago. So we thought it would be really interesting to compare that to now. First of all, I think we measured the diameter of your brachial artery, main artery to your arm. That was very huge last time we saw it. So see if it has changed. The thing is, now I haven't been a professional climber in the last 10 years, obviously. And also I haven't climbed for two months. So I'm actually really curious how this is going to affect it. Let's see what we can see. So we place the ultrasound probe here. This is your brachial artery. And you have actually the same diameter as we measured last time. 4.4 millimeters. Really? That's amazing. So it hasn't decreased at all? No, not at all. Not a single tenth of a millimeter. And that is huge. Still huge. That's huge compared to your size. You said it's like... It's like for the thermal artery for other people. Other people have in their legs. I have in my arm. Yeah, you can start working on your arms. That's huge. Really huge. Yeah. And I was surprised now. Yeah, I was surprised too. Maybe last time we discussed, is it because of the training? Or are you born like this? It may be part of your talent is that you have huge arteries. And you're specialized in this and you've never seen anyone with... Not that big artery in the arm, no. That is crazy. That's a huge one. Shall we look at the blood flow pattern also? What we do is that in the end of this session, I will measure the blood flow in this artery. Now the blood will go down to here, but nothing will pass this cuff. Yeah. And you will have not much blood here, but when we release it, all the blood vessels below here, they are open up now. Totally dilated. So how many people have you tested for this? A lot. When I release the cuff now, try to move as little as possible, okay? And try also to relax in your arm as good as possible. What we see now, you have much lower maximum flow now. Compared to last time. So that's a huge difference. You're under half of the values that we measured last time. Really? Okay, wow. That's amazing. That's a huge difference. So I think you were up to 800 here. In flow, and now it's 400. Now it's 400. That's more normal, actually. That is because you're less strained now in your underarm compared to last time. Right. So it's not about the capacity of the blood vessel here, but now it's about the capacity in your muscles. Right. And we know that's fresh. So if you don't train regularly, the muscle cells will reduce in size and amount. Come back if you train good now for a period. This will for sure increase. And what's interesting, what we saw last time was that this was almost correlated perfectly with the rank of climbing. Okay. So the highest ranked climber has the highest flow. This makes me want to get back to training and climbing. Okay, so that was pretty crazy. And also a little bit complicated. So basically the bigger the arteries, the more blood can flow through. Since I have abnormally large arteries in my arms, it means that more blood can flow through to my forearms. And he had tested a lot of people, professional climbers, and also a lot of normal people. But he had never seen anyone with arteries as big as mine. So this could potentially be the reason why I'm able to maintain my level without training that much. But size is not everything. And even though my arteries are as big as they used to be, they're not pumping as much blood. And that could be because the last decade, I've pretty much only bouldered. I'm not sure. But with that news in mind, I was excited to go back to training for climbing again. Okay. So I used to do this every day for like 15 years. I haven't done it in a while. This is what I used to call the ABS program. It's like a core workout. So I thought to get back into climbing shape, I would do this at least a couple of times during this week. Okay. So I'm at the gym now. And for the first time ever, I get it. I get how annoying it is when people beta spray. Because like now when I feel weak, people walk up to me and the boulders that I can't do, and they show me how to do it. And they're just trying to be nice, but it's pretty annoying. So now I feel so bad for having done that to other people. So it's exactly one week since I was there last time. One boulder is gone, but I think the other ones are here that I tried last time. I do feel quite a lot stronger. Just warming up now, I do. And also tomorrow, I'm leaving to Switzerland to try to climb Matterhorn. That was like a last minute thing. I watched a video of it four days ago, and then I decided yesterday to book a ticket. It's like last second, which is going to be a crazy adventure. This yellow one I tried last time, couldn't do. Let's see how it feels now. It's crazy, I climbed pretty bad, but still managed to do it. It's such a big difference from last time. This boulder is gone though. I wanted to try this again too, but there's one upstairs. And I'm also really excited to see how like the one-arm pull-ups and the dead hang and stuff. The black boulder behind me is still here. Luckily, I got to like here last time, I think. This is like a mini route. The last boulder was hard. I didn't even try that part last time. But yeah, good night and day. So much has happened in just a week. I think I'm going to try a purple one too. That's the hardest grade. It would be crazy to go from like struggling on red grade last time to now doing purple. That's a big step up. You know, even though there's only two grades from red to black, black to purple, it's still like a massive difference. And that was pretty easy for the grade, I think, because that was a flash of a purple. But it shows that I've gotten a lot stronger in a week, which is really nice. But also all the grades and the boulders are subjective. So it's going to be interesting now to see downstairs if I've gotten stronger at hangboarding and also one-arm pull-up strength, because that's much more like measurable. Okay, so I was standing exactly here exactly a week ago. And for the first time in my life, or in my adult life, I wasn't able to do a one-arm pull-up. Let's see now. I'm back, baby. Left arm, that's my left arm. A little kipping with that arm, but still, I did do a front lever last time, but it's the hardest front lever I've felt in ages. And I think maybe one of the things, one of the reasons why that is, it's because my legs have gotten heavier because of all the training I've done with the cycling, especially for a front lever. If your calves are just a tiny bit heavier, it's going to be so hard to keep your legs up. Yeah, still feels hard, but definitely a lot better than last time. And another thing too is that I haven't felt anything in my finger. Like the last year, I've just like, my fingers feel, or this finger feels a little bit inflamed. This finger feels a bit inflamed. And like, I think this two months plus rest has done wonders. Okay, let's see. Still can't do it, but I'm closer. Let's see. Okay, yeah, that's a big improvement from last time. Far from my best, but a big difference in only a week. All right, so you've seen me at my best. Now you've also seen me at my worst. Thank you for watching. See you next time.