Training regimen help (older climber)

I am in my mid 40’s, and I can only manage one full day outside a week.  Lately I am starting to feel like I need a recovery day the day before and day after the outside day. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for training. At the gym I alternate between aerobic endurance training, anaerobic training, and what I call a project day where I am trying to red point routes. Outside the gym I also do light hang board exercises, general aerobic training, climbing specific weight/core training, and yoga. Lately I am just feeling like my body doesn’t seem to be able to handle the load. But if I take the day before and day after climbing outside off, that really doesn’t leave a lot of days to train (job and motherhood also interferes). I feel I have a pretty solid diet and I am beyond strict about sleep. Anyone can help me with how to handle this feeling of not being able to recover as quickly?  What sucks is I feel like I need more training and not less if I want to maintain or improve my fitness outside.

Folks who are in their 40’s and older, can you share your training regimen with me?  How many rest days a week are you taking?  Do you feel you can do “recovery” days like aerobic training days on rest days and not feel it interferes with climbing training?  Should I train the day after climbing outside even if I feel beat or would that be counter productive? 

Thanks.

Christine 

I am really excited to hear you are able to exercise 7 days a week!  Maybe I just need to arrange things around to make that happen.

Specifics: I shoot for 

Climbing:

1 day of aerobic training like ARC

1 day of anaerobic training like 4x4.

I day of indoor projecting where I am red pointing 

1 day of outdoor projecting 

1-2 days of hangboard exercises 

Weight/core 

3 days a week 

General aerobic training (1-2 hour stair sessions at heart rate zone mostly 2 sometimes 3) 

1-3 days a week.

Yoga

1-2 days a week

Hiking, climbing (with kids most exercise I get is on approaches carrying everything so I consider it a general aerobic conditioning or recovery day), or skiing with kids  

1 day a week 

How many years have you been climbing? What has been the bulk of your experience?

WF WF51 wrote:

How many years have you been climbing? What has been the bulk of your experience?

18 years, though school, having kids, and injuries made it not entirely continuous. I do mainly cragging and multipitch, no alpine.  These days I climb mainly in my state, but I’ve climbed all over the country from Gunks to New to Yosemite etc. It’s easier to find pretty trad lines and most sport climbs I like in my state are currently out of my pay range, so these days I do mainly trad.  Would love to get back in shape to regularly climb sport though. 

You mentioned that you are in your mid-40s. Did you include that as background information or are you wondering if it could be a factor that is affecting recovery ability?

What grades are you climbing?

David Y wrote:

What grades are you climbing?

Also what grades and styles are the climbs you would like to be able to do? Bouldery vs endurance-y? Vertical, slightly overhung, overhung?

I think you are trying to do too much all at once.

I climb/train 4 days a week. And yes, I definitely need a rest day on Friday, and on Monday, if I climb outside over the weekend. Which means the other two days are Tuesday/Thursday. Sometimes Tuesday/Wednesday.

Some thoughts:

Treat your gym “redpoint” day as your outside climbing day. In other words, if you happen to not go outside on the weekend, do your redpoint day on the weekend. If you are going outside for the weekend— skip the redpoint day in the gym.

ARCing isn’t necessary to do every week for someone who's climbing regularly. You can do ARCing during your “deload” week, every 4 weeks or so. On those weeks, skip, or lighten the power and power endurance workouts, and scale back on the hangboard.

Do your weight/core on the same day as your midweek gym climbing, 2x week, instead of 3x a week. Add the 3rd session only when you aren’t going outside for the weekend.

Keep your rest days really resting. Yoga is fine. If you are going to do running on your rest day, do it in the morning, so you have 36 hrs of recovery before climbing the next day.  

Agree with other posters that OP needs to provide more information about grades, main climbing locations, and goal routes, in order to get adequately specific advice. The details matter. 

At first glance, one red flag I see is an excess of endurance work (4x4, Arc, redpoints), and a lack of high-intensity low-volume climbing (such as bouldering). This should be a regular part of basically any climbers repertoire; time spent practicing hard moves is a backbone of climbing improvement.

I also agree with Lena that the schedule stated by OP looks like too much all at once. Given that OP is doing this much training and not seeing improvement, I'd suspect the volume is too high and quality is too low. You probably need less (but better) training. As an experiment, I'd suggest for 8 weeks you cut the total volume down significantly while trying to maximize quality of sessions and quality of rest days.

 For climbing this likely means a higher intensity session (try-hard bouldering) followed by a proper rest day, instead of just wearing yourself out each day with medium-intensity climbing. The strength training could look similar - lift heavier on fewer days.

OP is basically on a treadmill of low to medium intensity something-something with no benchmarks given in terms of volume difficulty intensity etc. An effective training regimen records baselines and sets goals with an eye to following typical periodization sequences of building strength power and endurance. None of that is presented here. JCM is certainly on track in diagnosing the problem.

OP seems to have lost interest once the prevailing advice went against the high-volume exercise preference. The "I need to do more" compulsion can be strong, even when it is misguided. The advice to do less can be hard to accept. This is how people stay stuck on the treadmill Peter Beal describes.

A complex periodised training plan is probably not needed to improve at this point - they may just need to address some issues with the balance of volume and intensity in the weekly routine.

In fairness to the OP, she didn't say she wanted to get better at climbing, rather that she wanted to improve her recovery and need fewer rest days.

For that sole purpose, assuming she wants to continue her excessive volume of low to mid-intensity training, I would suggest she try to combine multiple training sessions on the same day and have more true rest days in between. 

Resting the day before a project day is not a bad thing!

She might also consider seeing her Doctor if she hasn't recently and getting checked for anemia, thyroid disease, etc. 

A long shot, but 40 isn't as young as it used to be.

If she actually wants to improve, following the advice of Peter, Lena and JCM above would be a good start.

I had blood work done recently, and apparently I am fine. Just getting older :)

I was actually asking about how older climbers are handling needing to rest more as I am pretty happy with the results I am getting especially coming off an injury, but I got a lot of good additional feedback on my regimen. I was feeling lazy and had purchased a climbing workout program online, and it does seem that maximum power is largely missing from the program.  I am unfortunately unable to boulder at my limit due to bad joints (I can’t fall off or jump off) but I guess I need to research what other options I have. Thanks everyone!