when to peak performance
Springtime is back and so is The Approach! After taking a bit of a hiatus this winter, I'm excited to share a newsletter with musings, updates, and, as always, education! If there's anything you're keen to read about this spring/summer, let me know by replying to this email.
As you may have seen on my recent IG stories, I've taken to sport climbing this spring. This decision came about from a few factors, but ultimately the biggest was seasonal planning... wait hold up, what do I mean by seasonal planning?
Sport seasons is a topic I bring up quite a bit because of both its importance in our sport and the lack of usage in our sport. Unlike many other sports, it can be challenging to know when to prioritize performance. It's often possible to climb year round, especially in climbing gyms.
the 4 sport seasons
There are two main seasons to think about: training (AKA offseason) and performance (AKA in-season). There are additionally two transition seasons that we won't dig into now (preseason and post-season).
When trying to determine your in-season versus offseason, I typically recommend working backwards from desired performance peaks. Rather than trying to perform year round, which results in lower performance overall, performance peaks allows you to concentrate effort and prioritize when to push at your true limit.
performance/in-season
A few examples of when to choose to peak performance are:
a planned climbing trip
a good weather (conditions) season where you live
a competition season
These discrete performance periods allow you to then decide when to train to prepare.
But, what if there are good conditions all year round? How then do you decide when to train and when to perform? My answer to this is to circle back to your goals.
Are there certain limit projects you'd like to complete? If so, plan your training around these projects. When is the weather best to put in effort on that particular climb? Are you willing to sacrifice some climb time to train for this project?
Or, do you prefer to do more volume overall? If this is the case, then it's less important to have a specific performance peak.
So, today zoom out and take a look at the next 3 or 6 months, or even the next year. When would you like to perform? I'll be back Thursday to talk more about the off/training season.
