UKC

Hi folks, how often do you take a break from climbing/training and for how long to let your body regenerate? thanks for the replies, E.

In reply to eivrol:

If I'm training/indoor bouldering I try to rest every other day, but I never rest more than a couple of days. I bouldered on three consecutive days recently and it didn't do me any good at all.

If I'm on a sport climbing trip, I might climb most days, but I'll generally do hard day, easy day, rest day (and occasionally do 2 rest days if it's a longer trip).

If I'm trad climbing, it varies a lot.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

When I'm training I normally rest for 2 days after training. This is when your muscle is at its weakest and more suseptable to gain.

In reply to coreybennett:

so you dont take any rest through the year apart from the day rest after 2 days of climbing/training?

what I meant was for example: you are training/climbing for 2-3 months (with a rest day every second or third day), then you go on a trip, come back a train again with no rest till your next trip? or you train 2-3 months, go on a trip, come back and have a 2-3 weeks rest - no climbing, no training at all

In reply to eivrol:

I might have the odd week off during the year if I'm feeling particularly tired and grotty, or I'm under the weather. I wouldn't have a 2-3 week break unless there was something wrong with me. Most overuse injuries respond better to active rest than to total rest anyway so I don't really see the point to having more than the odd week off.

In reply to eivrol:

Depends how your body feels. If your performance starts to degrade while you are sticking to a routine you've been doing for ages, its probably a sign that you have continually overloaded and you should take some time (generally around a week) off to recover. Remember that the micro trauma's you are causing when training are cumulative, and will build up unless you give them time to recover.

The Anderson bro's in the Rock Climbers Training Manual have a fairly intensive training plan that (from memory) has no 'real' rest period for around 3 months, before building in a rest week. Its worth pointing out that that particular plan is full of cycles of training (ie - 3 weeks of ARC training, then hangboarding, power, power-endurance etc), so the 'rest' as it were is built into the cycles themselves.

The TL;DR version is if you feel crappy, and you aren't getting anywhere progress wise, either mix up the training to a different style (if you are hangboarding all the time go out and do some limit bouldering), or take some time off. Just what I've found, YMMV.

In reply to eivrol:

I don't climb so much these days so time off climbing is just time doing other stuff but when I was keen, climbing a few days a week I'd take time off as and when I needed it, a week here, a month there and occasionally a few months to sort out recurring injuries (often conveniently coinciding with being sick to the back teeth of whatever I was doing to cause the injury, too much bouldering usually). Just do what you're happy with, it's your life, your body.

jk

In reply to jkarran: can any one point me at some studies that prove the effectiveness of rest for building muscle. I understand that over training may cause injury, but if you are not worried about injuries can you train too much so that you actually get less strong then you would have by doing a bit less training. hope this makes sense.

.

In reply to coreybennett:


Two days! I'd get bored.

In reply to climbercool:

Google 'training supercompensation' and have a look at the images, there is a pretty standard graph that demonstrates how your muscles recover from training, as far as I understand it, it's pretty well researched and agreed to be correct.

Basically if you push your muscles too soon again after exercising, you will compound the damage done to them, making them steadily weaker (and more susceptible to injury). Equally if you leave it too long to exercise the muscles again you will lose any gains made from the first session. There is a prime period somewhere in between when you should exercise for maximum benefit.
This rule applies seperately to individual muscles or muscle groups so you can train on consecutive days as long as you work different muscle groups each day.

In response to the OP, if it were completely under my control, I would never rest longer than 2 days between sessions, it's just the intensity that might vary, but then I enjoy the act of training as much as the improvements that it brings. Unfortunately life and injury doesn't always let that happen.