How to Deal With Being Human
Hi Steph!
I am sure you get tons of letters about climbing injuries, being that they are so pervasive, but this isn’t about treatment (time off, easing back in, etc.). Since I am sure you, like most of us, have gotten your fair share of injuries, what do you do to pass the time while waiting to heal?
Also, somewhat related, any thoughts on how much a person should train? I know that many climbers ignore rest days and just push as hard as they can, but I would imagine this is only effective after years of conditioning your body. What are your thoughts?
I hope you are doing great, I have been incredibly inspired by both your climbing and BASE jumping. You seem to be an incredible woman.
All the best,
Steve
Dear Steve,
The one thing you can count on as an athlete is that you will have down time–whether from overuse injury, sudden injury, sickness, life stuff, off seasons/weather or just plain having to rest. You can be frustrated and wish you were doing something you’re not all the time (which is not productive), or you can use this time.
As it turns out, you can’t climb (or do whatever) all the time, and in fact, it’s better if you don’t. As you say, it’s easy to overtrain. I agree with you, that over time, years of muscle use and memory get built into the body. Still, pushing too much when muscles and connective tissue are fatigued can definitely cause injury, either from overuse or from accident.
But to answer your question about training, I find that either one day on/one day off, or two days on/with one then two days off, is a good cycle for physical performance. This seems to be about what everyone follows, when climbing consistently and at their limit. Climbing every single day (except for special times like one week climbing trips where you just want to enjoy the place and not necessarily push your limit every day) is not productive.
Personally, I now look forward to rest days because I honestly don’t prefer to climb all day every day. As with everything, too much of a good thing is just too much…. I like to do a lot of other things too, athletic, puttery and intellectual. I actually appreciate my body’s insistence on taking time off from activity to recover and rebuild, because sometimes I don’t know enough to say when on my own 🙂
At this point, I try to maintain some sort of schedule of activity almost every day, whether climbing, jumping or training-related, because switching between activities does allow the appropriate muscles to rest from the other ones. However, if that way of life gets derailed by the unexpected, like injury or weather, I just work on something else for a while. In fact, periods of injury have often been the most productive, and oddly enjoyable, for me, because they lead me to train in different ways or to learn something new. In my mind, everything I do is related somehow, whether doing yoga, writing, learning, cooking, running, weight lifting, house projects, editing or connecting. And I don’t need to do just one thing ALL THE TIME….
Interestingly enough, performance always does increase after long breaks, perhaps because the body really can repair deeply or because the mind has had long stretches of subconscious to learn things?
Everything that comes comes for a reason–at least, that has been my experience so far.
Best to you too!
🙂 Steph
