I’ve been slacking on a lot of stuff lately. I’ve got a podcast in the process of being written, and an essay mostly written with some thoughts on training. I’ve just been really tired lately. I’ve been climbing hard lately and really pushing on the training side of things as well. In the past week, I completed a couple bouldering projects, pushed my limits on trad leading, took some falls, and generally have been going at the edge of what I can put out.
I think I’ve been over-reaching/over-training here. In retrospect I’m exhibiting a lot of the symptoms; exhaustion, lack of motivation, suppressed appetite, trouble sleeping, etc. It occurred to me that over-reaching/over-training is a negative feedback loop. You feel like you’re not performing at your best, which forces you to try to push harder or train more, which just puts you deeper in the hole, which pushes the psychological need to train, ad nauseam. For me, I think one big indicator that I need to scale back is when I just don’t even feel like heading to the gym/boulders/etc to train. For me training is an integral part of my daily existence; my release. When I don’t feel like doing it, it should be a pretty powerful flag to stop and look at things. More often then not, I’m concerned I’m just having a weak mental moment, and I’ll push myself to hit the trail, work a project, or grind through a workout solely to push through a mental barrier. Maybe I need to take more time and look back at the training log and consider whether I’m just being lazy or if I really do need to take a seat for the day. I guess this is what they mean when they say only a fool has himself as a trainer.