Rest. Rest, is a four-letter word. Funny, I like a lot of four-letter words, but I, like many of you, have a hard time with this one. 

It has been observed that we get stronger when we rest, not when we train. And that is true, yet how to rest? How to know when to rest? And how much should we rest?

In the last three weeks I trained 76 hours and in the process I climbed 101 pitches of ice. During this time I was also traveling, sleeping in different beds almost every other night. I guess I’m moving up in the world, or getting old, because not once in the three weeks did I sleep on a floor. Though I did spend two nights on a nice couch in Calgary.

Sometimes it’s easy to know when to rest. Last week was one of those times. I was tired, and a little sick, with a cough nagging me. Saturday I didn’t feel like doing anything, I read and watched a film. Sunday I cleaned my garage and washed my truck and was exhausted. Obviously I needed one more rest day, so I went climbing on Monday. Just sport climbing, so it wasn’t like real climbing. Of course, being type-A, I can’t just go climbing, I got on an old project and had two pretty good goes at a 13a called Darkness at Noon. Not restful. So today’s planned strength training followed by the three-hour run was cancelled. I woke up heavy.

I think that one of the important lessons a mentor of mine, Mark Twight, said to me once. We were on the phone and I was spinning off ideas for climbing, and Mark just said: “You just can’t live there all the time.” And he’s right, on many levels. Both the psychologically and physically you need a break.

But objectively, how do we know when to rest. Here are a three methods I’ve used, from simple to sophisticated:

Waking heart-rate.

I started doing this when I was a teenager training for cross country ski racing. My coach had me take my pulse for 10 seconds as soon as I woke up. I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t even have to count. I can feel whether I’m rested or not. Slow, and ready to train again is for me around 36-42 beats per minute. Not recovered, fast, for me, is anything higher than 48, but usually if I’m tired I’m most often at 52.

Box-Step Test

Another, more objective method, is the box-step. I like this because I can do it in base camp where the waking heart rate test can be thrown-off by the altitude. For this test you need a heart rate monitor. Find a step a little lower that knee-height and step up and down rapidly. Push hard for 60 or 120 seconds, get your heart rate high, maybe as high as 170. Then stop, lean against the wall, walk around, do whatever you do to recover as quickly as possible. Note both your Max HR and your HR after 30 seconds. If I’m rested I’ll go from 170 to 70 in thirty seconds. If I’m still tired, it will stay between 100-120 after 30 seconds and maybe after a minute it will drop below 70.

Rusko Recovery Test

The Rusko recovery test is a modified test created by Heikki Rusko, the reknowned Finnish researcher who worked with cross country skiers.  He is affiliated with Polar so they have adapted this test into some of their high end HR monitors and tech-support. This requires their fancy software but essential acts like an EKG test as it gathers data then makes a call on your fatigue state.  Many, many tests show its efficacy.  Polar calls it the Own Optimizer test,  Ruskos studies call it an Orthostatic test.

Without a HR monitor.

Lie on the floor calmly for 4 min and record your lowest Heart Rate.  Stand and record peak HR then record HR at 1 minute and 2 minute intervals.  The minimum HR along with the body's reaction to the stress of standing is a very good indicator of the relative conditions and balance of the two main autonomic nervous systems; sympathetic and parasympathetic.  For this to work you need to record this daily over a period of two weeks while rested to establish your baseline. Future deviations will show up and need to be heeded.

With Polar HR monitor: The beauty of the Own Optimizer test is that it not only does all this stuff for you it does a much more sophisticated EKG-like test of actually measuring HR variability.  HR variability is the spacing of the actual electrical impulses in the heart-beat.  It turns out that the greater the HR variability the fitter and more rested the person.  If you normally have a certain level of variability when rested and the OO test shows a drop in variability it looks at the other parts of the test and makes one of nine recommendations based on a proprietary algorithm.  This test has been shown to predict illness and over-training several days in advance.  The simple orthostatic test will give you useful info for sure. (AFTER you establish the baseline.)  But for $300 you can get an amazing tool.  It could be useful for showing acclimatization too, but I have not tried this. Only certain models include the OO test feature.

For the record, I do not use a Polar Monitor. I broke a lot of Polars, they just didn’t handle the abuse I was giving them, and have since switched to a Timex Ironman “Race Trainer Kit” . I’ve been happy with the Timex Ironman especially as I can wirelessly download and store my workouts and log them on the TrainingPeaks website.

So these are a few tools that are useful for us to identify when to rest and when to train. Next time, why it’s so important and a bad story about what happens when good people over-train.

A rested Ian Caldwell nearly redpointed Chemical Ali (14a) this weekend.