But am having climbing rescheduled to Mondays and Wednesdays and it struck me that maybe it’s better from a recovery standpoint (I have never experimented with this so I have no empirical evidence with regards to my own body) to consolidate training onto specific days rather than smearing out training across the week.
Su: Rest
Mo: Climb AM / Upper PM
Tu: Rest
We: Climb AM / Lower PM
Th: Rest
Fr: Upper
Sa: Lower
On paper the second option seems as if it provides more recovery for the body than the former. Is this intuition wrong?
In that situation, I prefer to do both on the say days. As you mentioned, it provides more rest days. This is especially important with a sport that has a high neurological component like climbing. If someone can afford to do both on the same days it will almost always be the better option.
For anyone else reading this (other climbers perhaps) I’d like to highlight I put climbing first before lifting as to me it’s the activity with the highest neurological component (and risk).
I prefer doing the explosive, dangerous, neural, and technically demanding training modality first.
If I had to climb in the PM I wouldn’t be as inclined to lift beforehand unless I purposefully altered how I trained climbing. At least one session would then have to be on a day when I’m fresh and the other session would be more technique work where I can be fatigued from lifting.
I used to train and climb on the same days. I found that I could deadlift before climbing fine, but I couldn’t deadlift after climbing. My lats and grip where trashed and it put more strain on my lower back. My lats always grew from climbing so I took out chins and bicep from my workouts. Did prehab shoulder and delt stuff in as my pull.
I’ve said it before but I think lifting and climbing can go really well together if you want to be well rounded. I’m not, but it’s an aim.