stress, recovery, and athletic longevity

The Pillars of Climbing

We are onto the final pieces of the strength pillar of climbing performance: fueling, recovery, and athletic longevity.

These are physical aspects of climbing that are often overlooked for "sexier" areas of focus, like that shiny new protocol or fancy measuring tool.

But the truth is that managing the sources of stress on your body and your recovery from those stressors can make a huge difference in your climbing.

Asking yourself simple questions like, "Am I eating enough? Am I drinking enough water? Am I sleeping enough? Am I stressed in other parts of my life?" can help guide your decisions about your physical training.

And ultimately taking care of your body will give you longevity in your athletic career.

So today I want to introduce you to a simple set of questions called an Athletic Preparedness Survey.

This survey does exactly what it sounds like: it helps you figure out how ready you are for your session.

I recommend using this survey, or one like it, at regular intervals. For example, before each of your sessions or at the end of each week (switching the questions to "on average how [specific question] were you this week?").

This allows you to modify your sessions based on your readiness (also known as autoregulation). For example if you had a big and intense session programmed but you didn't get much sleep the night before and feel less recovered, it could be a good idea to adjust your plan.

Or if you're feeling better than you expected, you can increase the intensity of the exercises in your workout.

The survey also allows you to track patterns and avoid falling victim to overtraining. Overtraining describes excessive overload with inadequate rest over an extended period of time resulting in exhaustion of the body.

If week after week you aren't recovering, are feeling very stressed, and are losing motivation then it's important to adapt your program.