How to read your result
The goal of the chart is to show if you're increasing volume too much too soon. To do this, the chart compares your workload of the past 7 days with your typical workload. A score around 1.0 means you're doing about the same as usual, above 1 means more and below 1 means less.
The chart is an ACWR chart with some tweaks to fit the demands of our sport.
- It tracks finger load and body load separately.
- The green band, 0.8 to 1.2, is where your load is close to usual.
- The dashed lines for finger risk and body risk tell you that the load might be increasing too much too soon.
- The dashed end of each line forecasts the next 7 days, assuming you train a typical week.
For the research behind this, read Climbing training load: how much is too much?
How it works
A week with an extra board session might not feel like too much more volume on the body but it could be a significant increase for your fingers. Crescive tracks the load on your fingers separately from the overall load on the body. Body load tracks the overall load on your body while finger load estimates your actual time under tension and intensity based on activity type and RPE.
A limit bouldering session is mostly rest between attempts, so only a small part of the overall duration counts as time under tension. An ARC session is close to continuous, so most of it counts. Yet they're done at very different intensities, which the calculator accounts for. You can adjust length and effort of the exercises to better fit how you climb.
This is the same calculation Crescive runs on your real logged sessions to show your actual workload, here shown on an estimate.
Is this an overtraining test?
Not really. Overtraining syndrome is when performance keeps dropping for weeks or months despite rest, often with fatigue and poor sleep (Meeusen et al., 2013). This calculator only checks whether the workload of the last 7 days is more than your fingers or your body are used to. Overtraining can happen even if you haven't increased your volume too much in a short time period. If you are tired all the time and getting weaker, talk to a doctor or a coach.
Does this predict injury?
No. It's an estimation of workload over time to show climbers if they're doing too much too soon. The thresholds in the ACWR graph come from team sports. I could not find any validated for climbing or for finger tendons.
This is general information, not medical advice. If something hurts, see a physio or doctor who works with climbers.