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Overtraining syndrome in climbing: Get strong by climbing less

If you are an athlete you probably know what overtraining syndrome is. For a casual climber, the news might come as a surprise: someone who’s juggling work-life-climbing balance might be more prone to burnout.

While a professional climber trains full-time for their sport as a job, people like me and you train full-time in their free time. And this rarely leaves you time for rest.

Work-life-climbing balance

You are trying to find the perfect work-life-climbing balance but let me guess…you want to be a top performer in all three of them?

Also called under-recovery, the overtraining syndrome is a medical condition that negatively influences your body, mind, and emotions. It is similar to work burnout – doing too much, resting too little. The end results impact not only your climbing performance but also alter your life quality.

This article will give you a better understanding of when you’re training too much, how you can benefit from rest, and how adapting your training to your lifestyle can help you improve as a climber.

The 2 main stages of overtraining

Research suggests two main stages that lead to Overtraining Syndrome: overreaching and overtraining.

Overreaching

Overreaching starts with a climber experiencing unusual soreness after a training session. Then it can evolve into insomnia, fatigue, moodiness, and low performance.

This can be due to insufficient rest between training sessions combined with inadequate nutrition and it occurs after consecutive days of repetitive hard training.

Overtraining

Overtraining happens when despite all the upper signs, a climber feels this is a result of them being weak. Because it is frustrating, they keep pushing to overcome the tiredness. However, instead of getting the aimed results, the psyche and motivation decrease and it all starts to feel like hard work, physically and mentally.

Eating disorders, eating disorders, exhaustion, and unexplained sadness are just a few of the symptoms you might be experiencing.

Overtraining syndrome (OTS) in climbing

Despite adding more intensity to your training and dedicating more time to it, you’ve been feeling off. Common signs of overtraining syndrome in climbers can sometimes translate to a weak immune system:

  • Flu-like symptoms
  • Poor sleep
  • Missing periods for women
  • Fatigue
  • Feeling like you don’t get in the climbing mode
  • Prolonged soreness
  • Weakness when training
  • Mood swings
  • Feeling anxious
  • Elevated heart rate
  • Lack of motivation
  • Ultimately an increase in injuries!

Not only detrimental to your performance in climbing, OTS can negatively impact your daily life as well.

All the upper signs usually mean the neurologic, endocrinologic, and immunologic systems are under too much stress. And this is the body’s way of saying ‘You have to stop and give me what I ask for’.

The art of rest

Overtraining syndrome in climbing: Get strong by climbing less

Yoga is teaching it, therapists are talking about it – how come we get so little of it in our climbing?

Habits. The social focus is on teaching activities. Nobody teaches rest in school. Crucial for becoming a complete climber ‘the art of rest’ is an important tool I want to discuss today.

Here are three explanations for why we often seek only external tools:

1) We want more of everything

Power, strength, endurance, balance, core, flexibility – everyone in the community is talking about it. Now read it with ‘more’ in front of each word. and we naturally want it all. Do you resonate with the idea of wanting more of everything in your climbing? Me too!

2) A hunger to achieve

In a world of achieving and doing, we are less and less willing to rest. Between work, life choices, and passions, rest is often disregarded and maybe even confused with sleep. Even though we don’t know ‘behind the scenes’ we forget about ourselves and we start to secretly want what other people have.

3) Other people appear superactive

Everyone is living their best life on social media. Superactive people posting how they successfully multitask and live 48 hours in just 24 feels overwhelming. Sometimes we fail to see and remember these results might not be realistic for our lifestyle and we often don’t know the full story.

The secret to not overtraining…patience

Weapons within us are just waiting to be mastered and you’re missing the bigger picture: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Think about it: when coming back from an injury the body requires patience and time to rebuild and we often tend to compare ourselves with our old selves. Instead, when we want to become stronger to send a boulder problem we tend to compare ourselves with those who have already achieved it. This approach may work against you when it comes to developing climbing-specific abilities because it tends to skip important steps in the process.

I am a doer myself. That’s why, in the beginning, the most challenging yoga pose for me was Savasana (the corpse yoga pose). In this pose, one is supposed to simply rest and go into a deep relaxation mode. I used to skip it at first because my mind was often invaded by my plans for the unraveling of the day. It was hard to quiet it. After a while, I took it as a challenge.

Now and then, depending on my mood, I still struggle. But I found that focusing on one thing, such as breathing, helps me to get back to myself, in the present moment.

The paradox: climbing stronger by doing less

As humans, we tend to exaggerate with things we like. It happens with food, it happens with climbing as well.

The truth is when – for some reason, having less time for training or you get injured and you end up climbing less because of recovery, you end up realising less is more. I have friends who became parents and started climbing harder after this because they started using time wisely and on a schedule.

Others came back stronger after an injury. In my case, taking a few weeks break from climbing (but keeping the core exercises, cardio, and hangboarding as a routine) turned out to be the best for my climbing cause it allowed my fingers to take a break.

These are just a few examples. Don’t overestimate the power of rest. Doing with intention, on a schedule can bring much more than if you were training to exhaustion.

Main signals of overtraining

How do you know you get too much of something when you enjoy doing so much? And especially when you are new to climbing?

It feels like you are doing it for all the wrong reasons

What got you excited before, now feels overwhelming and you lack motivation. What used to feel like something nice to share now feels like a constant comparison with others who are performing better than you.

Listen to your body

As a new climber, I can understand you are stuck in this loop of not knowing when it all becomes too much while always wanting not to do too little.

In this case, ‘listening to your body’ might be something difficult when you are maybe just starting to know yourself as a climber. I believe one way is trying to stay open and curious about how your body reacts to what you do. See it as a ‘testing’ period.

Trust what your body is telling you

Fear is felt when a situation is dangerous to us and is meant to protect us. Similar to fear are sensations such as discomfort and pain. Feeling a bit tired is ok and normal when we push ourselves. But feeling that something is very unpleasant or painful is usually a red flag of you pushing over your limit and it might get you injured.

How to adjust your training

Ticking boulders is fun; the more we send, the harder we want the boulders to be! But overtraining isn’t the way to climb better, but your approach is. Doing less is. Here are some ideas on how to adjust your training.

Adjust your climbing expectations

Take into consideration unloading your training after you’ve been ill, stressed, etc. I know from experience how the brain remembers it has a strong body. However, keep in mind your body is in recovery mode and will use those sources accordingly. Not unloading your training increases your injury risk, will probably get you frustrated and it will prolong your recovery period.

Advice: Lower your climbing difficulty according to the exterior conditions such as temperature. Or at least stay aware of it and take full responsibility for the fact that climbing performance will probably be affected by it.

Get the right nutrients

Make sure your body gets the right nutrients according to its fitness.

Sleep well

Sleep is a very important part of training, not to mention a healthy lifestyle. As important as making sure you have enough carbohydrate intake before, during, and after, proper recovery – electrolytes, protein.

Eat well

Nutrition and hydration are fundamentals for having good results in climbing, in the long term.

Get a blood check and consider supplements

Being a bit sore after a training for climbing session is normal. However, if you follow a structured training schedule and you’re still painfully sore after each session it might be time to get your blood checked and find out if there are any supplements to take.

For example, especially when on a training schedule, I like to take supplements such as protein, Curcuma, collagen, and electrolytes and pay more attention to my climbing nutrition.

Stop having a beer after a training session

Overtraining syndrome in climbing: Get strong by climbing less

Yes, beer indeed has B vitamins and minerals. But let’s not forget about alcohol, which is known for producing inflammation in the body.

Don’t get me wrong: ì still enjoy a glass of wine or Aperol Spritz from time to time. However, after listening to Huberman’s Lab podcast on alcohol and the significant negative changes it produces on our health, I drastically reduced my alcohol intake.

As for training periods, I drink zero alcohol because I noticed it interferes with my sleep, hence appropriate rest. Therefore I end up feeling weirdly fatigued during the day.

Listen to your body signals

One of the most important skills a climber can possess is to being able to pay close attention to body signals. Learning to tell the difference between discomfort that comes from normal training and warning from doing too much.

From my experience, the discomfort that comes from effort usually feels challenging but doable. You feel it in your gut that you can push through. And it lasts a very short amount of time.

In contrast, excessive fatigue usually feels like perpetual tiredness, lack of energy every day, and lack of motivation toward achieving your goals.

Rest properly between training sessions and climbing days

Be realistic and remember to adapt to your lifestyle and do what you can according to your life rhythm. If you are training for a specific project, alternate hard days with rest days.

Don’t do too much in a single session

Create a structured climbing schedule to avoid doing too much of the same thing or trying to do everything in a single session. Make sure you check our Boulderflash page for the many training guides we have to help you with that!

A climber’s life never ends

A friend once told me ‘a climber’s life never ends’ and he was referring to the wide variety of routes that exist for us to climb. No matter if we climb 5 days a week or just on the weekends, we are all climbers, and we’re all on the same page with trying to get better at our sport.

That being said, no matter what your climbing level is, it’s important to regularly check in with yourself to make sure you stay on track with your goals. Athletes can have their biomarkers regularly checked.

For the rest of us, a tool to better understand when something isn’t going right could be checking in if we’re still having a positive attitude toward climbing. I mean, it’s such a great activity and for some lifestyle that it would be a shame not to do it for the right reasons.

Additionally, if you are already experiencing some symptoms, talk to someone you trust. Most problems have solutions most of the time and seeing a specialist such as a doctor, your coach, or a therapist will also bring you peace of mind.

When not performing as you would like, remember to stay curious about it, as this can lead to important insights and development.

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