Super Vegan rock climber - Steph Davis

Author shares love of rock climbing - Living - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington

Vegan Steph Davis is a real life spiderman and no coincidence that like Toby Maguire who brought the Hollywood spiderman to life, she says she owes her success to a vegan diet.

Steph Davis 34, who lives part of the year in Yosemite and part in Moab, Utah, is one of the top rock climbers in the world, and the second of only two women to solo climb Yosemite's El Capitan.

"When I was younger, I was into strength training, but five years ago, I found that time spent doing yoga is much more beneficial. You're always trying to do a different move with the least amount of energy, and other times, you're trying to rest one body part, so if you've trained your muscles to relax in odd positions, you save a lot of energy."

Steph Davis found veganism indirectly, by trying a lot of different diets, as many athletes do. She remembers being sure that one diet she wouldn't use was veganism.

"Climbers have always said that you need animal protein to climb," she says, "But I tried all these different things, and at one point I did a cleansing fast of about a week, and when it was time to start again, everything was unappealing. But after a couple of weeks, I found that I was eating vegan.

"So I went with it. And strangely, I started to make these leaps in my climbing and even in running. That's when I free-climbed El Cap in a day. Then I climbed even better in Patagonia.

"With the one diet that wasn't going to work! So that was a lesson to me."


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