3 signs you might be overdoing it

Today I wanted to talk through the second most common answer I got about barriers to climbing progress:

Injuries and tweaks are part of the game of pushing your physical limits in climbing. If you experience an injury and/or tweak, it doesn't necessarily need to be a huge cause for concern.

However, if you seemingly always have a tweak or injury and can't seem to stay healthy long enough to make progress, it is worth taking a look at your regimen. 

Here are 3 ways you might be overdoing your climbing and/or training:

1. You take your sessions to exhaustive failure

Knowing when to walk away is truly a skill. If you catch yourself saying "just one more try" five times over, you're likely pushing your session too far. 

Especially when the quality of your efforts start to decrease, the pay offs of continuing to climb or train diminish while you continue to accumulate fatigue.

You should try to have a little gas left in the tank when you finish each session to avoid digging yourself into a recovery hole over time.

2. When you're feeling good, you significantly ramp things up

When you feel strong, it's easy to fall into the trap of immediately trying to go the extra mile. However, a sudden spike in intensity and/or volume increases your risk of getting an injury or tweak.

The goal of training is progressive overload, meaning you progressively increase intensity and/or volume as your body continues to adapt to the stimulus you are giving it. Suddenly adding a significant amount of load can have the opposite effect than intended.

Think about it this way: if you're feeling good it means that what you are doing is working. Trust the process and stay the course.

3. You don't leave time in your training schedule for recovery

I recommend taking at least one FULL rest day per week (two if you can make it happen). A full rest day means completely deloading your body for a day. A light stroll or stretching is fine, but the goal is to not stress your body and to let it recover.

It's important to also be aware of the other stressors you may have in your life and plan your recovery accordingly. If you are in a time of high stress, you will likely need to take more time to recover between sessions (more on this in another email).

Inadequate recovery can quickly lead to overtraining which increases the risk of injury, so it's important to be intentional with your rest days.