People who train for climbing get tired, but overtraining goes beyond fatigue and leads to diminishing returns. Unfortunately, in skill-based sports such as climbing, it’s not easy to tell if you’re overtraining or just tired. Today, we are looking at research to guide training better.
Overreach and overtraining
First, overtraining and overreach are two similar but different conditions that are worth separating. According to Jeffrey Kreher, an orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, “Overshoot is a condition of excessive amount or strenuous exercise that reduces sport-specific athletic performance.” Kreher also has the highest incidence of athlete overreach. He states that overreach is more common than 60% overtraining.
By comparison, overtraining is less common. “OTS (Overtraining Syndrome) is a very special and serious condition that, when overtrained without adequate rest and recovery, can lead to poor performance that lasts for more than a couple of months, coupled with mood swings,” Kreher said. Says. Syndrome is a description of a series of symptoms. The length of this reduction and significant mood disorders separate these two syndromes.
To strengthen, climbers need to push themselves beyond their current limits to adapt to higher stress loads. Functional overkill, Also known as short-term overshoot, it occurs after strenuous exercise. The body suffers short-term disadvantages, after which the body is strengthened and achieves improved performance. This is our progress.
Non-functional overkill It occurs over weeks or months and causes long-term adverse effects, but the body heals after adequate rest. In these cases, the time frame is long enough that the training results are negative due to symptoms and loss of training time.
Overtraining syndrome It’s been done for months, potentially damaging enough to end an athletic career. Diagnosis of OTS is difficult because there are no suitable markers to separate OTS from overreach. One can see some of the biomarkers found here, but ultimately, self-diagnostic athletes succeed in monitoring their condition through lenses for parasympathetic and sympathetic mood changes. There is likely to be.
Symptoms
Parasympathetic changes to your condition appear to be: fatigue, depression, bradycardia, and motivation. These symptoms are most common in aerobic sports. Climbing is primarily an anaerobic sport. At sport climbing levels, long routes get closer to the climber’s aerobic capacity, but even sport routes manifest themselves as short bursts of anaerobic exercise. Nevertheless, these symptoms may be associated with sports climbers, or athletes who are under prolonged training stress.
Sympathetic changes may be more clearly associated with bouldering, as these symptoms are more common in anaerobic sports. Bouldering is primarily anaerobic. Insomnia, hypersensitivity, agitation, tachycardia, hypertension, and restlessness are symptoms associated with anaerobic-induced overtraining.
Other symptoms include eating disorders, lack of mental concentration, heavy and stiff muscles, anxiety, and waking up without refreshment.
In an article published by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, “Aerobic endurance overtraining is primarily due to excessive volume overload (parasympathetic innervation), but anaerobic or resistant overtraining (sympathetic innervation). Is mainly due to excessive high intensity overload. “
From time to time, climbing can walk the boundaries between these forms of overtraining by attempting excessively hard movements. At this moment, we put a lot of strain on our bodies. Even when there is a variety of movements, as climbing often explains. The high intensity volume provides ample opportunity for overtraining and injury.
Prevention
So how can you prevent overtraining? Some of it will come from personal experience. If you’re lucky enough to get your biomarkers checked regularly, that might be a good way to tell if you’re recovering, but as with all climbing things, whether you’re recovering. You probably don’t need to do any testing to make a decision. overwork.
Instead, consider whether you are consuming enough food and water. Consider whether you are sleeping well. Determine if you are satisfied between sessions. If you feel tired and wake up tired, you may be heading for overtraining. This sensation is short-lived and you may recover and progress when you book a period of fatigue in the unloading week.
If you feel regressed or your fingers feel uncomfortable or swollen, you may need to improve your recovery. Overtraining slows your muscle development. Excited climbers often seek better results, but slowing down and focusing on efficient burns can improve performance and resilience.
