Recovery, Sleep and getting older

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DavidM said:
I’ve had a second child recently

Surely we've hit on the big issue here? How recent is this?

My personal experience is that at least the first 8-10 months of fatherhood, where for various reasons I was doing the majority of nighttime care, really knocked me in terms of interrupted / lack of sleep. It's one of those things that's hard to quantify, in that I could seemingly function somewhere close to normally during the day, go to work, drive, climb and train etc. And clearly some days / weeks were better than others. But overall I was consistently, deeply, fatigued and it's only more recently (at c. 16 months now) that I've started to recognise how much it was affecting me, and how different I feel now that she sleeps through the night more often / goes back to sleep more easily.

Obviously every parent is different and I don't know what your set up is with your partner, but this seems like it must be having an impact?
 
Yeah it is but not as much as the first child I guess. The Mrs is doing the night as she’s breastfeeding exclusively so my nighttime is “ok” I often sleep with the boy in his room to escape. She’s defo doing the heavy lifting which is great but I get up early to take over so she rest before boy goes to school. I guess it’s going round back to the original post of how and what people do in these family situations to optimise recovery and any tips that have helped with experience.

I’m getting impression it might be a combination of over training and lifestyle factors.

Thanks for all the feedback.
 
cheque said:
The only times in my life when I’ve regularly needed to get out of bed in the night for a piss have been during periods of stress. Obviously everyone’s different but I think it’s more a symptom of sleeping lightly than of how much you’ve drunk.

One of the most bizarre things I've experienced recently has been that I started to drink quite a bit more water (~2l more per day) and my need to piss at night has gone. I used to always wake around 2-3am for a piss which was actually really annoying especially when in the van or bivvying.
 
DavidM said:
Hi all,

Hoping to see if anyone can help with some wisdom and experience. I've noticed in recent years recovery isn't as good despite doing the usual things and living clean. I'm now 38 with two kids which is to be expected I guess but i'm always looking to improve sleep and recovery. I train in the evening usually between 5pm-7.30pm exclusively bouldering and board climb, eat after and regularly get my 8 hours sleep kids permitting. The thought of training at 4am won't work for me as I have the kids before work.

Outside of the normal recommended advice stretching, massage, adequate nutrition / refuelling, extra sleep, shorter sessions, avoiding alcohol and excess caffeine etc does anyone have any specific tips that have helped them or moved the needle?

Things that have moved the needle for me

-Not training too close to bed time i.e finishing session by latest 7.30pm and in bed by 10.30pm.
-Cold showers in morning
-Hot showers after evening climbing session
-Supplementing with glycine to lower body temperature after training in the evening
-Supplementing with Magnesium in the evening
-Drinking a lot more water after session so your hydrated throughout the night (Piss a lot during the night though)

I know there is a lot of info online but good to hear if anything worked for people that might help me and others aiming to get the most out of the training they are putting in.

thanks in Advance

I personally think your volume sounds reasonable and you clearly have your nutrition and lifestyle factors far more dialed than most people (including several pro climbers I know!).

That being said I think the pitfall here is that you've not got enough diversity in your training. You're doing a lot of high quality strength training and finger loading which is all great but needs to be kept more diverse in order to avoid overuse niggles that can lead on to proper injuries. From a training perspective you're also missing out on the opportunity to diversify your physical profile by working on similar stimuli in every session.

I'd advise swapping out one of your regular limit sessions for a power endurance session such as 3X6 ( 3 reps at flash limit with 30s-1min rest, 4 min rest between sets).

I'd also move the non-finger based stuff like weighted pulls to after the board session.

Something you didn't mention at all is a structure behind all the training which leads me to think that you're simply repeating this week-in week-out. When doing this kind of structured training it's really important to lay it onto a framework that includes deload periods to let the body recover. It's also important to build some progressive overload into this timeframe otherwise you can find yourself doing the same thing for several months but staying at a fairly similar level because you're handling the load easily.

Personally I like to use 4 week mesocycles with 3 week training blocks and 1 week deload.

Hope this helps :)
 
Thanks MischaHY that really does help I guess I do fall into that trap of not sticking to a structured cycle.

Strangely I had been doing some 4x4s recently to vary the sessions if feeling weak or not pulling hard but was wondering if they would be most applicable for boulderers only. It's one thing I have overlooked power endurance and endurance for bouldering upon reflection. These intervals look good I will try.

Few questions

-Do you dedicate a whole session to these intervals.?
-In your 4 week cycles do you place the overload week 3 and de-load on week 4.
-What exactly does a de load week look like.? Half the volume / Half the intensity for example?
-How else do you see I could diversify my training?

Really appreciate everyone's input
 
Apologies if I've missed a post but has DavidM said what he's generally training for?
 
Shit - I should have been training FOR something all this time? what have I done with my life ‍♂️
 
GazM

I only boulder and live in London so climb the Cornish granite options below as they are local to me. Sometimes get to the southern sandstone crags.I have yearly trips to North Wales to just enjoy climbing but that's dropped off with kids. I acutely aware I am not dedicating enough time to outdoor climbing or even varied gym climbing at the moment with my second child born in August but trying to maintain some strength and fitness with some training during this period.

Two projects 7a+ on these two blocks currently.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/shoreditch_park_boulder-9490/

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/mabley_green_boulder-9499/

Best of what I can make of my location with work.
 
Cool, thanks for replying. While everyone was giving their advice it struck me that without actually knowing what you were aiming for, the advice could be wildly off the mark!

Fortunately for you I know very little about training and have never performed at a high level so can't offer any good advice. However, I do have 2 young kids (3 and 5) and a basic home setup so have been following the thread with interest.
 
I can give you the Dave Mac advice if you'd like?
Quit your job.
Move.
Sell your kids.
Ditch your wife.

More seriously, it sounds like your warm up might leave you warmed up for lifting and doing pull-ups but not bouldering? 3 warm up problems isn't much, even after hangs/pickups. Being warm for hanging/lifting is not the same as being fired up for climbing in my experience. I'd be tempted to replace a bunch of pickups with more bouldering, but others may differ.
Perhaps more pertinently, if you can list your warmup like that then surely that's a sign it's too rigid and boring and you need to add variety!
 
abarro81 said:
I can give you the Dave Mac advice if you'd like?
Quit your job.
Move.
Sell your kids.
Ditch your wife.

ali k said:
mrjonathanr said:
so the best thing to do for recovery is stop working?
Wasn’t this Maccy D’s advice in that 9/10 book? Sacrifice everything, leave your wife, quit work, sleep at the climbing wall, eat lard etc.

Copy cat :p
 
GazM said:
Cool, thanks for replying. While everyone was giving their advice it struck me that without actually knowing what you were aiming for, the advice could be wildly off the mark!

Great question though. I know it's going slightly off topic with personal training / planning advice but i'm super grateful for everyones input with their wealth of experience. I think turning a basic home setup into something a little more substantial has proven invaluable with second child, being time poor and keeping psyched.

Abarro81 - thanks for the suggestion i'll experiment with that to.
 
There’s only one page in 9 out of 10 climbers where Dave Max talks about how personal circumstances affect performance. I think it was a later article or blogpost where he was more forceful in his advice about it. I remember Nibile in particular going nuts about it :lol:

Edit: Here it is it’s nowhere near as inflammatory as anyone seems to remember it. I think the whataboutery that followed on here is what’s led us all to recall it as “get divorced and camp under the crag or you’ll never be any good” :lol:
 
DavidM said:
Few questions
...
-In your 4 week cycles do you place the overload week 3 and de-load on week 4.
-What exactly does a de load week look like.? Half the volume / Half the intensity for example?
...
You've different options with a 4 week cycle. You could move to a 3-1 schedule where you do 3 weeks on followed by a ~1/2 volume deload week. In terms of % of the cycles total training time per week, this would be something like 28%, 28%, 28%, 16%.

You could do a progressive schedule where you have an easier week (22% of cycles total training time), medium week (28%), hard week (35%) then a deload week (15%).

I've seen it suggested that a staggered schedule might work better if for older climbers, something like easy week (22%), hard week (35%), deload week (15%), medium week (28%). I might try this myself.
 
cheque said:
There’s only one page in 9 out of 10 climbers where Dave Max talks about how personal circumstances affect performance.

Edit: Here it is it’s nowhere near as inflammatory as anyone seems to remember it.

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good UKB flaming!
 
Nutty said:
I've seen it suggested that a staggered schedule might work better if for older climbers, something like easy week (22%), hard week (35%), deload week (15%), medium week (28%). I might try this myself.

This is great Nutty thank you. Some basic maths on this correct me if i'm wrong in my calculations. Based on the last protocol for older people this equates to the following.

Monthly training time currently estimated is 30hrs.

Week 1 Easy 22% - 6.6 hours weekly volume
3 sessions @ 2.2hrs each

Week 2 Hard 35% - 10.5 hours weekly volume
4 sessions @ 2.6 hrs each

Week 3 De-load 16% - 4.5 hours weekly volume
2 sessions @ 2 hrs each

Week 4 Medium 28% - 8.4 hours weekly volume
3 sessions @ 2.8 hours

I guess within these week blocks i'm wondering how do you structure your sessions for strength, power endurance etc within a given week based on someone wanting to improve at bouldering? Im assuming week two is the overload week for upping the difficulty and weight on strength based exercises.
 
After a few days experimenting thank you to Dexter and Sean Kenny I can report thanks to their recommendations on deep sleep no rest breathing techniques and stopping drinking water 2 hours before bed have made improvements in sleep quality and night waking.
 
Brilliant, glad it works for you. I have no idea why a body scan type meditation works or how the heck someone discovered it, but they are really good.
 

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