MSI Press Blog

Reflections on Strategy, Gravity, and the Art of Falling at 75 I haven’t been back to the rock gym in a while—it’s thirty miles out, and other demands have crept in—but the wall is still in me. I think about climbing often: the problem-solving, the weight shifts, the quiet math of reach and momentum. What stays with me most, though, is this truth—climbing walls don’t care how old you are. They don’t care if your arms are short, your knees creaky, or your ID says you’ve been around for seven and a half decades. All a wall asks is: what’s your next move? 🦵 Planning Beats Reach I climb slow. Not out of hesitation, but precision. I have proportionally short arms for climbing, so getting high means using my legs as leverage—sometimes even when there’s no foothold. That’s where strategy takes over. I’ve learned that leg pressure can transform vertical surfaces into temporary holds. In biomechanical terms, it’s dynamic friction: your momentum temporarily overtakes gravity, letting the wa...

One of the first things I learned as part of my fitness training -- and am still learning -- is that when it comes to physical fitness development of any sort, slow is better than fast. That came as a surprise to me, especially since I have been impulsive and near-hyperactive my entire life. Doing things fast comes naturally. Doing them slowly does not--and frustrates me as well. However, I now understand that I MUST do fitness activites slowly for a number of reasons: to avoid injury to let your muscles fully experience the activity not to confuse cardio training with muscle training to get the full benefit of each activity  to build muscle faster -- more time under tension Try it. Lift 20 pounds rapidly 20 times. Then lift 20 pounds slowly 20 times. Slowly is harder to do; it taxes your muscles more; it build muscles faster. (Though with faster, you can live more weight or do more repetitions.) A length of 2-6 seonds between repitions seems to optimal. What you...

So, after a bit of hiatus because of that pesky roatotr cuff overuse that made my trainer suggest I leave off some of the more strenu ous arm activity, I returned to yoga. Suerprisingly, yoga requires a good deal of arm strength. (This has been a surprise to me: my arm strength is not good enough to get me easily through a one-hour yoga class, but it is good enough to get me rather easily through a two-hour rock climbing class. Boy, the myths are being vividly revealed as I continu with training.) One of the things I have learned is something I suppose every athlete knows, but, then, I am not and have never been an athlete, so I would not be aware of it. That is the best knowledge (and not really a sexret at all): no matter what it is you want to do, however impossible that seems, just start small and keep on going. That happened with leg presses. I struggled at first, just 18 months ago with 10 pounds, and I stayed around 30-40 pounds for months. Now, surprisingly, I can do 24...

Pacific Edge Gym Teaching Room In accordance with my planned approach to developing ninja capabilities, two weeks ago I enrolled in a rock climbing class. One of the things I had learned from watching the stories of competitors on American Ninja Warriors included seeing how many of them were either rock climbers or spent time at rock-climbing gyms. Good climbing depends on feet, not arms. In fact, with feet properly placed, one can hang by one arm for a very long time and feel little strain. Shoes should fit snugly and have bottoms that create friction in order to use feet more effectively. The "climber's triange" -- toes and ball of foot -- indicates where a climber should place his ore her weight when climbing. (After scaling the wall in the gym three times, my toes were really sore! I gave them a nice bubbling session in my foot massager afterward.) I thought I would have to build arm and shoulder strength. I never thought I would have to build toe ...