Overtraining for older guys?

5.samadhi wrote:just go on a climbing dirtbag roadtrip. I've been having to drink white russians with heavy cream, ice cream, donuts, and stouts/porters just to try to keep on weight. I eat a pound of meat at night and lots of veggies and rice and bread. During the day I eat fig newtowns, apples, bananas, protein powder, fish oil, peanut butter sandwhiches, milk. I'm 5'7" and 135 now :/ just climb every day it will sort itself out.

oh snap chad :)

You have to do the hand and head gestures when you say that.

lol!!!!!!!!!!!

Chad, I'm 67 with leukemia and some heart issues. My training this Winter has been climbing 3 days a week outdoors for 6 or so hours per day, mtn biking 7 or so hours per day, and cross country skiing for 6 hrs per day. I rest at least 2 days per week, sometimes 3. Have to work sometime, you know. As we pick up the pace in the spring, the climbing will increase to 10 pitches of 5.10 per day and more days per week. And of course there is easy Yoga too. This leads up to Samadhi's dirty road trip where some of the days are 14-15 hrs. It's extremely tiring, but you recover and feel stronger. Fail to succeed is the model. I enjoy the process and I think there are ways to work around almost any medical issue if you want to.

This in my experience is training, of course there are plenty of people who do more. It is not over-training for me, anyway. I can tell when I'm over-training - I lose strength. If I were you, I would exercise for longer periods and rest more often. Rest is as important as training.

^ wow inspiring as fuck!!!!!!!

No kidding!

I wouldn't worry about your bf percentage. If you want to climb hard (11a trad) you need to be much lighter. It comes down to forearm strength to body weight ratio. Just try to loose weight and not worry when you also loose unnecessary muscle mass at the same time.

If I were you, I would cycle in a primarily cardio phase with cardio one hour a day, 5x a week (build up to this). After you loose an acceptable amount of weight cut back on the cardio and go through a climbing strength phase (more bouldering and hard routes), then up the cardio again to loose more if desired.

During the cardio phase, keep climbing about 1 to 3 times a week to maintain climbing fitness, however, do your cardio workouts first each day before climbing (and/or save the climbing for non cardio days), and don't push the climbing too hard (save yourself for the next cardio workout). I would also take one (sometimes two) days a week to do nothing (sit around, better yet lay on the couch) to recover when you feel over trained. Also, as you are building up to a higher volume of cardio, do not diet, eat normally, but healthy (aka complex carbs, veggies and lean protien). You will likely not loose much weight as you do this, however, your body will get used to the volume, and if you approach the goal of consistently doing lots of cardio, your eating will not be able to keep up with the calorie expenditure. Also, at this point you can begin dieting again and you will loose weight quite fast while maintaining (but not increasing) this volume of cardio. I've done this with running before, but had to increase slowly to let my legs get used to the pounding. It helps to run on trails rather than roads....my 2 cents.