I Don’t Feel Like Training: What do I do?
“Training hard doesn’t feel accessible today…”
We walk into the gym, ready to do the training session that we’ve planned… but… we just don’t feel up for it…
Many things interact with our climbing and training: we should never expect our progress to be linear.
It is important to be adaptable and understand how we can make adjustments to our training to keep us on the right track.
So, on days when you don’t feel like training, what can we do?
4 Ways to Adapt Your Plan When You Don’t Feel Like Training
1. Warm-up slowly
It’s worth warming-up gradually on those days when you don’t feel like training; spend more time than you might normally, and see how you feel.
With your body primed and ready, you might surprise yourself!
2. Cut the session short
Doing a ‘half session’ means taking what you were planning to do and cutting the volume in half whilst aiming to keep the intensity the same.
This allows more time to warm-up into the given intensity, but doesn’t require as much energy or focus. This goes a long way to keeping your training consistent.
Remember, a training session does not have to be perfect to be effective!
3. Adjust the intensity of the session for the correct RPE
Our perception of effort can help guide us to the right training stimulus.
For example, complete your max hangs at a lower weight if that keeps the effort level in the right range. This is more helpful than struggling to complete the session, failing on a lot of the sets and perhaps getting more fatigued than is useful.
Similarly, for a Boulder Triples session (repeating hard boulders with short rest intervals), you want the rate of perceived effort (RPE) around 8/10 and you should be failing, or almost failing, just by the end of the session. You could lower the grade of the climbs to achieve this RPE and ROF.
This is not ‘failure’, this is effective.
4. Adjust the session
Be flexible and choose to do a session that does feel accessible. When we train, we want to send the correct training message. Some training sessions require high intensity, but some don’t. It might be easier to give the necessary quality on a different session.
Note: this should still be a session that plays into your goals!
** These options are for fluctuations in training, if this is happening consistently or for prolonged periods, then it is time to go back to your plan and troubleshoot!
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