Work at the edge of your range

Re:Work at the edge of your range by npsimons on Friday September 01, 2017 @03:37PM (#15151759)

There's this thing called overtraining (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining) and I've found it's very hard to find that sweet spot between "not pushing hard enough" and "pushing too hard". I've a climbing partner who pushes me hard (and I'm thankful for that), but recently I've started to wonder if it's too hard, at least in the mental space. It's one thing to be a little outside your mental comfort zone, it's an entirely different thing to be constantly scared out of your wits, even when you're on top rope.

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Re:Work at the edge of your range by marzipan on Friday September 01, 2017 @06:32PM (#15152854)

W/R to strength training, I've had a lot of success combating overtraining by following the science recommendations more carefully and logging my progress against a target volume which I can gradually bump up and reset with higher weight, and using exact rest intervals. Smartphone apps are a lifesaver for this stuff because they can do all the recordkeeping.

In the mental/emotional arena I don't have as easy a time. I started with judo recently and encountered a phenomenon I remember from other sports back in school, which is the other beginners being extremely hyped up and trying to backseat coach, telling you to do a thing NOW without allowing time or space to take a careful or exploratory stance (also they aren't necessarily doing it right themselves). I'm a lot more resilient in putting up with that stuff than when I was a kid but it still bothers me - fortunately, with the class being just once a week, there's plenty of time to recover.

And with programming, I definitely have a cycle but it's extremely hard to schedule it like I can with the gym. I don't get to pick exactly what I'm working on so it might be too easy(boring) or too hard(can't pick it back up) that day. Sometimes my attention gets torn by other stuff during the day, too, which cuts into coding.

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Re:Work at the edge of your range by jancsika on Friday September 01, 2017 @06:00PM (#15152708)

That's a bit of a different dynamic. Imagine instead a filmmaker wanting you to climb for a scene and they mess with your ropes and harness to try to make things "as dramatic as possible."

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