Overtraining is one of the biggest reasons that climbers don’t progress! You get stronger while you rest, you do not get stronger while you are training.
There are 2 major aspects to consider here with regards to the time invested in training.
1. The focus of training
The first is the amount of time being spent each week, i.e. climbing 4 or 5 days per week with little to no plan for what you are working on means over - trying certain moves and under - trying others due to fatigue. Spending too much of your work capacity on small amounts of climbing variety or skills slows down progress massively. a 3 hour climbing session that is non - specific or not guided has the potential to yield less results than a 30 minute climbing session that is specifically designed to progress you.
It’s like a road map, you will still go places just driving around but to reach a destination you need to know your destination and have a clear map or path.
2. Deload time
The second is deload time, do you train 3 or 4 days a week every week of the year except the ones where something hurts? If you are training hard you need time to recover, every 4th week of training for a deload is about right to keep you training consistently throughout the year (providing your program and daily recovery match up). I’ve been caught in this loop before too, train hard for as long as I can, something breaks, have a week or 2 off then 6 -12 weeks to recover again meaning I cannot try hard for that whole period. 14 weeks of not trying hard due to injury is more than the 1 week of deload per month over the course of the year, so not only are we able to train better but we can try harder more consistently meaning more progress and less pain. You don’t need to stop climbing during a deload but shorter sessions on easy repeats is enough to recover from the stress of projecting or hard drills. We are looking to drop the intensity and frequency of our climbing roughly 50% in a deload week. Think of this week as a consolidation of all the hard training you put in during the lead - up to deload.
