[Jiri Haban]

Hello,
I’ve had a strange experience several times now and was wondering if you could help me understand what’s going on and maybe prevent it. The best word I can think off that describes this is “crash”.
This “crash” was me absolutely unable to finish an excercise or a climbing route, even though this should’ve been very easy for me. I managed to start my training/climbing rather normally, but after a while I was absolutely done, unable to keep climbing even very easy routes. I just got tired very quickly, after a few moves and just couldn’t keep going.
Preceding this event I was either sleep deprived, underfed, already tired from training or a combination of these. I understand I wasn’t set up for success, but the training I had scheduled was very easy and I still couldn’t finish it.
The obvious solution could be “don’t train when you’re tired”, but I’m concerned that this “crash” will happen on a mountain (and it already has happened). Alpine terrain isn’t a place where you wanna find yourself unable to keep going all of a sudden and sleep, nutrition and rest aren’t always perfect.
Can you offer any advice how to build my resilience to these “conditions”?
Should I even attempt to train when not rested/fed perfectly? I work shifts so this happens quite often.

Thank you in advance.

Topic

[jakedev]

jakedev on February 8, 2023 at 6:00 am #75484

So I’ve had a similar issue. Basically sounds like you’re overdoing it and probably been for a few weeks if even easy climbs and workouts can’t be finished.

I work night shifts as well and some can be insanely busy. I learned the hard way that my training volumes can only be so much. At the very high end I can do total of 12 hours of training a week (climbing and running) and sometimes my cycles will be 2 weeks of training then a week of rest.

I think with varying shift work I am limited to this training volume and do not have the luxury of doing more volume without running the risk of “bonking” and being very fatigued at work, which is not good for patients or fair to coworkers.

My advice. Dial it back and take studious notes about your sleep, what your shifts were like (busy, stressful, etc?). This way you can establish a maintainable training volume.

[Jane Mackay]

Jane Mackay on February 8, 2023 at 10:44 am #75490

Spot on, Jake.

Jiri, it does sound like you’re chronically under-recovering. Sleep as you note is a huge factor. Also, the stress of your work. As far as the body is concerned: stress is stress. It doesn’t matter whether it’s physical, psychological, emotional, phsyiological or any other -al. It all has the same effect. Nutrition might also be something you could look at. You might be able to support your body better with some nutrition modifications.

These articles might help:

Practical Recovery Essentials

Active Recovery: You May Be Doing It Wrong

Nutrition for Injury Prevention and Recovery

Recovery by Feel

Recovery Strategies for Endurance Training

Overtraining: The Elephant in the Ultrarunning Room

There has also been at least one podcast on the topic of recovery and overreaching/overtraining.

Let us know how it goes.
Jane