tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-318458242024-03-18T11:58:24.581+00:00Online Climbing Coachtraining for climbingDave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.comBlogger211125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-66140948407745964272019-06-24T13:38:00.002+01:002019-06-24T13:38:42.178+01:00This blog has moved<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This blog has moved. After redesigning my website in June 2019 I have moved my blogs to:<br />
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<a href="https://www.davemacleod.com/blog">https://www.davemacleod.com/blog</a><br />
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I'll leave the archive of posts on this and my personal as they are. But new posts will follow at the above URL. You can also follow me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/davemacleod09/">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/davemacleod09">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/climbermacleod/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/davemacleodclimber">YouTube</a>.<br />
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I will be continuing to produce written and video content related to my personal climbing, and climbing performance on the new blog. We have also updated the shop on the site which works rather better and offers more flexibility for payments etc. Claire and I have been shipping climbing books, fingerboards and other items we like around the world since 2006 and are looking forward to continuing to help climbers.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-47366396811811075552019-01-10T17:59:00.000+00:002019-01-10T17:59:34.234+00:00Vlog #10 Three strategies for a stronger new year<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Near the end of this video, I discuss some supplementation I do while recovering from tendon/ligament injuries. The paper I reference is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/105/1/136/4569849">this one</a> by Keith Baar and colleagues.</span><br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-27687831991030005882018-09-17T12:02:00.001+01:002018-09-17T12:02:28.279+01:00Vlog #2 How to make your own wood holds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Vlog #2 is published. We all think wooden hangboards are a no brainer. They are nice to use, they save your skin. They allow you to do more training. More folks are thinking the same about wood holds for the actual climbing. They are not a new invention of course! But this is the nature of history - old ideas get forgotten or go out of fashion and then get picked up again years later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In this episode I go through how I make my own wood holds, why I think they are a good idea and solve some specific problems I have with training on climbing walls, and how I set endurance circuits with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thanks for all the feedback so far on these vlogs. Glad to hear they are proving useful.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-38395076065826877122018-09-12T11:50:00.000+01:002018-09-12T11:50:01.719+01:00Vlog #1 How to train early or when you only have 10 mins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For a long time I’ve considered making a vlog as an additional form of media to share ideas for improving at climbing. Now its happening and here is episode 1. I’ll post all of them up here on this blog of course, or you can subscribe to my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/davemacleodclimber">youtube channel</a> as well to make sure you catch the following episodes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In this one, I dive into how to make sure you are awake, alert and ready to train early if that is your window. And how to squeeze high quality training into a schedule so busy you can only spare ten minutes. Ten minutes. No excuses.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-36100889234514697752017-12-04T21:14:00.000+00:002017-12-04T22:06:21.972+00:00Edge Hangboard<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">I’ve just added the <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/edge.html">Edge hangboard to the shop</a>. I’m excited to see this hangboard released which I’ve collaborated with Edgy Climbing Holds to design. I’ve used wooden fingerboards for 12 or 13 years and they propelled my standard in climbing beyond what I imagined they could (more on this below). So despite being on the face of it an extremely simple device, it is hard to overstate their importance in climbing training. I’d call fingerboards and fingerboarding the core exercise and equipment for strength in climbing. Something every climber ought to have in their home and use year round.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My first fingerboard was a single campus rung which cost me a few pounds. I used it to go from being stuck at around 8b/V10 for quite a few years to jumping forward to E11/9a/V14 in the space of about a year and a half. However, it wasn’t just any old piece of wood! The rounding and finish was just right for pain free comfortable training, and so I could do more on it and get stronger. Since then I’ve used some of the more popular models of wood fingerboard which are also pretty good. I’ve also visited some climbing walls with some fingerboard models which I feel are just nasty. Perhaps you can get away with lots of training on these for a while, but they just make my fingers hurt and as such end up being counterproductive in the long run. Obviously you can still make something great to train on by yourself if you have the skills. The problem is most people don’t do it and just want to buy one. So when asked to help design the Edge, I tried to think of the things I’d always wanted to make a fingerboard that is just right.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">First, I wanted to avoid plunged pockets. I’ve seen some climbers do exactly what I tend to do and use poor form by ‘nestling’ fingers against the sides of the pockets for extra advantage. After a quarter of a century of climbing, my index finger joints have become permanently twisted. It could be just normal climbing that does this, I cannot be sure. However, I wanted to ensure my core training tool could not contribute to this. So I wanted a fingerboard to have an open rung to force the user to use good form.</span></div>
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<a href="https://vimeo.com/242551199">Edge Hangboard</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user799476">Dave MacLeod</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span class="s1">Second, I wanted three rung sizes, all with a carefully designed profile. I experimented with lots of profiles and settled on shapes that for me hit the right balance of depth, roundedness and finish and would most likely suit most folks strength levels. Some climbers have asked me about the rung depths which are 45mm, 21mm and 15mm, so that they might compare between other hangboards, but this does not tell you anything useful as the difficulty of hanging the rung is a function of not just the depth but the roundedness and texture/finish of the wood. I’m all for looking at numbers in training where they can be genuinely informative. However, in my view this is not one of those cases. Which brings me to simplicity.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">My overriding goal with the Edge was to make the design simple. Removing unnecessary complexity to me is a highly desirable goal in all aspects of training, including the equipment. Simplicity re-focuses the athlete on the important things like level of effort, strict form, completion of the training and listening to the body. Additionally I’m acutely aware through coaching many climbers that the somewhat garish appearance of some fingerboards are an impediment to building fingerboarding into the regular routine of climbers with family/shared homes and busy schedules. A fingerboard that is conveniently situated is a lot more likely to get used, but some non-climbing relatives or friends legitimately object to a loud or ‘homemade’ looking training setup being installed in an otherwise nicely decorated kitchen or living room! So we wanted to make the appearance of the Edge as low-key and neutral as it could be without sacrificing any functionality. Climbers who live in a climbing household, or alone, might scoff at this idea, but I’m certain that a good number of climbers I’ve coached will welcome it and finally get their home fingerboard installed.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Finally, we wanted to make the hangboard from wood that is sustainably and locally sourced and manufactured. The hardwoods used to make fingerboards is a resource which can be a contributor to environmental damage along several lines (GHG emissions, transport, deforestation etc) and we didn’t want to be a contributor to this. We knew this would noticeably raise the cost compared to some other boards which sometimes use imported wood and/or manufacture in distant corners of the globe. Edge boards are made from Scottish Ash and each board carries the precise grid reference of the source tree. It also carries the Scottish Working Woods logo. As a licensee of this label scheme, it ensures that the wood and manufacturing is local, and the scheme is managed by a range of environmental organisations such as The Forestry Commission and Reforesting Scotland, which promote sustainable practice of both forest management in Scotland and production of wood products. Clearly, this is something that’s important to me, and my guess is that it will be important to lot of climbers, who as a group are more environmentally aware in general and supportive of efforts to minimise the impact of our activities on the environment.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">So, with all that said, if you are thinking “that all sounds good, I would like one, but how do I use it” I took some time to make the 25 minute video with a good deal of information about most aspects of how to fingerboard. My view would be that what’s not in this video is less important, but if it leaves you with further questions, please leave a comment below and I’ll try to answer it, and if need be update the video. The video is aimed at folk who don’t yet habitually fingerboard, or do a bit and want to get more out of it. In due course I’ll make another one with some even more geeky details for real board monsters.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">You can check it out and order <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/edge.html">here</a> (shipping worldwide).</span></div>
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<a href="https://vimeo.com/245812366">How to Hangboard</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user799476">Dave MacLeod</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-89217351483648164012016-12-06T10:01:00.002+00:002016-12-06T10:01:58.626+00:00Failure to sleep 8hrs = failure to train<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">This is a fantastic lecture by Kirk Parsely on why you need (NEED!) 8 hours sleep per night, and why if you don’t get it, your training, studying etc is at best impaired and at worst a complete waste of time. Kirk lays it on the line. But if you don’t have the hour to watch it right at this moment, here are a few headlines that I hope will encourage you to watch it at the first opportunity:</span></div>
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<span class="s1">1. The research shows that everyone settles out at 7.5 hours sleep or more. Genetic exceptions might be more resilient to short term sleep deprivation, but that’s all. They are still slowly breaking themselves by chronically sleeping less.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">2. The sleep deprived adapt to feel like they can cope with the deprivation and perform normally. But the research shows that they do not. Their performance remains significantly depressed. They just don't realise it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">3. Are you sleep deprived? It’s extremely likely.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">4. Digital screens, caffeine, light in your bedroom, noise in your bedroom are all problems. If you want to respond to your training, you need to address them. Thankfully, they are all fixable.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">5. To sleep, cortisol must fall to low levels and melatonin must be released. Nutrition plays a role in both and you can easily manipulate this to make sure you have the raw materials to make what you need.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">6. Can’t lose/control weight? It may well be the sleep.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">7. Injury risk skyrockets for the sleep deprived. Dose-response relationship.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">8. The bottom line - failure to sleep = failure to reach potential. It is therefore the foundation on which any training plan must be built. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-30485043000082708972016-09-02T13:13:00.002+01:002016-09-02T13:40:11.635+01:00Climbing masterclass dates at my wall<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I don’t get much time to run climbing coaching sessions these days but I have just put up details of sessions I am running at my own wall in early December and over the Fort William Mountain Festival in February. These always sell out so if you are keen, do ring and <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/events.html">book your place</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the past I’ve tended to run either full day coaching sessions for one individual or shorter group sessions. This time I’ve decided to try out a new format of full day group sessions/seminars. This way, there will be time for two climbing sessions in the day focused on particular elements of technique, training practice and additional exercises, as well as informal lecture/discussions over lunch and after the second climbing session to cover principles and practicalities of planning and customising your training as well as preventing and managing injuries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ll be running two separate one-day sessions on the weekend of December 3rd and 4th. 10am-5pm at my wall in Roy Bridge. Spaces will be limited to 6 climbers per day, £120 per person and climbers of all abilities are welcome. My wall is well suited to running sessions of this type folk operating at recreational grades right through to as strong as you like beasts!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ll also be running another one day seminar on Feb 19th 2017, over the Fort William Mountain Festival, as well as more traditional three-hour technique masterclasses on Feb 18th (£60 per person for these).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Full details and contacts to book a place are up on my events page <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/events.html">here</a>. See you there!</span><br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-45144485665812419522016-03-10T11:06:00.002+00:002016-03-10T11:18:15.209+00:00Reflections on beginning climbing coaching again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A few shots of my own training over the past few days</div>
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I built a large climbing wall at my house a year and a half ago, not just for myself, but with the intention of running climbing coaching sessions there. I knew it would be great to have a dedicated climbing facility that I’d set up myself, without some of the limitations of big climbing centres. Last week, as part of the Fort William Mountain Festival, I ran my first few classes - three hour masterclass sessions with groups of climbers travelling from as far as Belgium to join us.</div>
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I hadn't run clinics earlier as I spent some of last year recovering from surgery and then just wanted to go climbing! So it was really interesting to be assessing and observing climbers again after a break for a while and gave me a chance to reflect on what patterns these sessions reveal about climbers and what holds them back or propels them into improvement. Here are three themes that filled my mind after the sessions.</div>
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1. The ability to try hard still trumps everything</div>
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As usual I met some climbers with good technique, some with strong fingers and some with good tactical awareness. But out of all the climbers on my sessions, I met very few who had trained themselves in how to try hard. And so they were not improving nearly as fast as they could be, even when they had already made other good training decisions. You can design a great training programme, show up and complete every session and immerse yourself in climbing tactics, but if you don’t know how to really try, where is the stimulus to yield improvements from that training?</div>
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I think I was especially aware of this because we were in my own wall, where I normally train, uninhibited by anything. Some of the climbers I coached clearly had significantly stronger fingers than me, but I sensed that they did not habitually fight to the death on a routine basis.</div>
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To gain strength, the body really needs to be pushed into it, especially if you are not that young any more. In my mind, a big overarching weakness of many, if not most climbers is simply the ability to get really determined to get to that next hold and hold onto it. Often when you put this point to climbers, they are confused, even a little unhappy about the suggestion they could be trying harder. But think of this applied to other core skills of climbing - Of course it ‘feels’ like you are trying as hard as you can, just as easy routes feel at your limit when you are unfit or sequences are at the technical limit of climbers who are not immersed in climbing day in day out. This does not mean this limit is fixed. The ability to focus physical and mental energy is trainable just as other skills are. The limit is not fixed.</div>
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It is not just about delivering physical effort either. It is also the ability to make every single climbing session an immersion in deep concentration anticipating and then analysing each effort on each route, and comparing technical strategies for the moves with that of your climbing partners. Way too many climbers are resting their minds as well as their muscles in between efforts. </div>
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If you start off by training your ability to focus and deliver a huge mental and physical effort during your climbing/training time, the rate of improvement rises. This helps to explain why two climbers who both climb the same number of routes per week at the same climbing wall improve at very different rates.</div>
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A final point on this - often I find that it doesn’t always work for me to make this point about trying harder. Climbers sometimes consider me, as a professional climber and coach, to be somehow ‘a different animal’ and not subject to quite the same constraints. However, the great thing about group coaching sessions on a bouldering wall is that over the course of the session, as we work on problems, me offering technical pointers of the fine details of the movement that get you closer to succeeding on each move, climbers in the group start to rub off on each other and lose their inhibitions to try harder than they otherwise would. They see the others doing so as desire to solve the boulder problem overtakes physical and mental inhibitions. They concentrate deeper and pull harder and often pull off some moves that seemed far off, an hour previously. Even if they don’t, I always hope that climbers can see this happening among the group and understand that real concentration and real grit is the basis for training that works.</div>
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Lesson? Boulder more, do it in groups of the keenest people you can find, and get into the habit of systematically offering each other feedback on moves and encouragement at every turn. Training is only training if you are really trying both physically and mentally.</div>
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2. Time remains a key currency of improvement</div>
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A big proportion of climbers are still seriously constrained by time to climb and train, and just as important, constrained time to rest and recover properly from the training they do get. Some only have time for one or two sessions per week. Others have time for four or five, but only get the results of two sessions, simply because they don’t have time to sleep, eat and rest well enough to get good results from their training.</div>
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I hope that running coaching sessions at my own wall would spark people’s imaginations about what fantastic training facilities you can make in a small space. My wall is about as badass as they come for home walls and it took a fair few years of prudent financial decisions to get there. But I remind folk that my last wall was in a small room and was still amazing, and the one before that was a single campus rung. The single campus rung got me up the world’s first E11 and from 8b to 9a in 18 months. </div>
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When time is constrained, convenience is the king of training variables. Many of the climbers told me familiar stories of living just minutes from a big climbing centre, but how it was difficult to get themselves to it in the 90 minutes or so they had to spare after a tiring days work that hits you after you put the kids to bed. I have two responses to this problem. First, a home facility, no matter how small, removes the ‘getting myself out of the door’ barrier to completing the training. Second, remember that when you feel tired later in the evening, it’s because your body’s metabolism is slowing down. You can usually reverse this feeling after a ten minute warm-up and feel just fine again. Moreover, creating a late evening ‘second wind’ like this doesn’t necessarily interfere with your sleep. In fact, the physical activity and mental wellbeing that goes along with it can often improve it.</div>
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I noticed that the proportion of fingerboard-owing climbers seems to have risen since I started coaching ten years ago. However, the proportion of those actually using them has not risen nearly as much. This is a rather basic problem for which I offer some solutions in my book <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10 climbers</a>. Underlying these is a principle that relying on using willpower to make yourself train if you don’t enjoy it tends to be unsuccessful for most. Instead, you change the environment or routine, to make it take willpower NOT to train instead. </div>
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Putting your fingerboard in the highest use area of your house, so it’s where you always are, and highly visible is one way. Another is to use social pressure to your advantage. Ever noticed that your house is at it’s cleanest and tidiest when you have friends, or the landlord coming round to visit? You can capitalise on this social pressure in your training too. Invite your training partner round to share a fingerboard session two or three nights every week. You are less likely to skip it when you know they are coming. Got a TV programme or radio programme you never miss? Combine them with the fingerboard routine. It removes the boredom and makes it part of your week’s enjoyment. Digital tech these days makes this easier than ever.</div>
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There are countless other ways to tilt the behavioural environment to make it easier to complete your training, and harder to miss it. Use your imagination for your own routine, or get a coach to tell you straight.</div>
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3. Protect your hard earned gains better</div>
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It seems to me that the improvements in climbing walls could be widening the gap between the extremes of the bell curve of ability across climbers. Some of the climbers on my classes were in pretty poor physical shape, despite having a lot going for them in other aspects of the whole performance picture. Again, busy schedules are often the underlying theme responsible for this. But simply being aware of it can help you to mitigate it. A basic principle of training is reversibility. I discuss its implications in <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10</a> but I think it bears reinforcing as I still think climbers undervalue its effects.</div>
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Many climbers have lost periods of weeks or months of little or no training for a few common reasons - work/accommodation/family transitions, injury or simply focusing on something that makes you weak such as trad or alpine climbing. Now, some loss of base level strength and fitness may be unavoidable due to these things. But that doesn’t mean you should completely abandon any attempt to mitigate them. Yet that is exactly what many, if not most climbers do.</div>
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The result is that so much form is lost and it takes months to return to where you left off, if indeed you ever can. I have made this mistake myself several times. With hindsight I can see that 1 year without a board while I moved house and saved to construct my new board caused my level to drop to 8c. I was still out climbing just as much, but I just didn’t train. And so I lost strength, capacity to handle training and agility. Only now do I feel like I’m getting it back, 18 months later. Similarly, while recovering from surgery last year, although I trained harder than ever and emerged with stronger fingers after three months off my feet, I still lost some agility and base level of fitness. I could have mitigated much of this by incorporating more basic body strength and fitness exercises into my routine. You don’t need to make the same mistakes as me.</div>
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Of course, this problem doesn’t always apply - keep in mind your individual weaknesses. Wall rats who can be found in the climbing wall training hard 5 nights a week are often pretty strong and fit, but their climbing ability on rock will never match this because they lack the hard-to-measure tactical skills of being a rock climber. So far weaker souls who get to the crag more often will still out climb them.</div>
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Lesson? Life throws up things that interrupt your training. If you don’t plan for this, you’ll lose out. The time to really organise your training is not so much when you have lots of time, but when you have less. Don’t make the mistake of doing nothing, when you can only do a little. If you do, you’ll spend all the ‘good times’ just catching up to where you were, rather than breaking new ground.</div>
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So there are some highlights of themes I noticed that applied to a good swathe of the climbers who visited my wall for coaching. Of course there were many more - frighteningly common footwork errors, training errors, poor diet choices, psychological approaches and many more. If you are reading this thinking you’d like to get some coaching yourself, stay tuned to this blog as I’ll post up some dates I’ll be running more classes during the year shortly.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-37656754562163809962016-03-02T15:02:00.003+00:002016-03-02T15:16:30.190+00:00Review: Stonesmith holds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some new shapes ready to go on my wall ahead of my first masterclasses at my place last week!</div>
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I am seriously obsessive about holds, as any route-setter should be. Although you end up setting with a lot of holds you either don’t like that much or equivocal about, it’s always a pleasure both to set and to climb on holds you do. As I gradually gather holds for my own wall, it is slowly becoming a collection of rather fine holds I’ve seen in other walls or tried out.</div>
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On the whole, climbing holds have improved massively and the industry is full of innovation. Despite this, I’m often still a fan of some old hold designs, especially when training for real rock - where an old school approach of fingery moves yields good results from training, at least for weaklings like myself.</div>
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Which brings me to <a href="http://stonesmithholds.com/">Stonesmith holds</a>. I already have many of their holds on my wall at home and are some of my favourite shapes. As well as the nu-school innovative shapes, their training range also includes some very carefully designed shapes more designed for training which I love. It’s really an ideal mix - nice texture, a careful design that is nice to train on for long hours, but also nice and fingery.</div>
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The differences between different manufacturers holds are obviously tricky to describe in words - they sit on a continuum of niceness to climb and set with and ideal texture. Stonesmith holds sit as far at one end (the good end!) as any I’ve tried. I’m glad to hear I’ll have the chance to set with more of them in the new <a href="http://threewisemonkeysclimbing.com/">Three Wise Monkeys climbing centre</a> in Fort William next month.</div>
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If you’ve got a wall, <a href="http://stonesmithholds.com/">get some.</a> I'm actually just off to order a set of their <a href="http://stonesmithholds.com/product/suspension-training-balls-2/">suspension training balls</a> from their site just now. I've been meaning to get these for my poor weak thumbs for ages and wring this has galvanised me!</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-9634793286544431362016-01-05T13:35:00.002+00:002016-01-05T13:35:54.831+00:00Video: Basic movement technique on ice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://vimeo.com/149167537">Basic Ice Climbing Technique</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/ellisbrigham">Ellis Brigham</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span class="s1">Here is a short video I made for Ellis Brigham and my sponsors Gore-Tex and Mountain Equipment with my thoughts on basic movement technique for ice climbing and also using an indoor ice wall for training for ice climbing.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">If you are like me, waiting for winter conditions to start shaping up in Scotland, you’ll no doubt be training like a demon and feeling fit. You need to be a little inventive to get the most out of indoor walls for training for ice and mixed. But it you go beyond just doing a few short top ropes and get a bit more systematic about using your time on the wall, you can do a lot to prepare yourself for the hard leads ahead when the forecast turns cold.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">If you’ve not been training - it’s never too late to start!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Thanks to the staff at Ellis Brigham in Manchester for helping us have a good time shooting this video.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-40151207553957591902015-11-26T11:15:00.000+00:002015-11-26T11:18:07.818+00:00Tendon Pain - Could your diet be a problem?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Since publishing my climbing injuries book <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">Make or Break</a> earlier this year, <a href="http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/23/1504.full">this</a> is the first important paper released into the scientific field during the year which has really caught my attention. Co-authored by professor Jill Cook (one of the tendon pain research big guns worldwide), it reinforces the idea I put across in Make or Break that looking at tendon injuries simply as ‘overuse’ injuries may at best blinker us to other important causes, and at worse be plain wrong.</div>
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In this review, Cook explores the possibility that your cholesterol profile could possibly cause tendon pain. The evidence available shows association, not causation. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t ignore the data. Not only is it known that cholesterol accumulates in tendons, that people with the disease ‘familial hypercholesterolemia’ have much more tendon pain, but several studies show that various cholesterol parameters are associated with tendon pain.</div>
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Influences such as this, if causation could be ultimately demonstrated, help to explain the apparently unpredictable individual variability in tendon injury, if you are looking at the problem solely as a result of training errors.</div>
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So if we can’t ignore the data, we get to what we should do to improve our cholesterol profile. The paper points out that increased tendon pain is associated with the same cholesterol profile as cardiovascular disease, namely a lack of HDL cholesterol and an excess of LDL and blood triglycerides. Unfortunately, the world of medicine and public health is in a big fat mess when in comes to providing evidence based recommendations for how to improve our cholesterol profile. </div>
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If you want to learn just how messed up the situation is, read <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/192522810X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=192522810X&linkCode=as2&tag=davemacleod-21">Nina’s book</a>. Apart from teaching you a few seriously important lessons about trusting both science and government, it might even save your life if it turns out to be right. No joke. </div>
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Unfortunately the low fat, high carbohydrate diet (as well as the problem of the oils used in processed foods) that sportspeople are still widely recommended to eat may well cause just the bad cholesterol profile we are talking about (low HDL, high LDL, high triglycerides). Diet is not the only input of course.</div>
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My personal hunch is that this line of enquiry will continue to yield evidence we should listen to. At a basic level, the idea that human tissue is unbelievably plastic, responding to training with precisely regulated growth and maintenance responses could go so frequently awry simply by doing some training does not add up. It seems likely to me that there are some things missing from the picture. This could be one of those things.</div>
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I would urge anyone serious about their tendon health, their sport performance and their long term health to go right back to basics when it comes to diet and nutrition. It’s fair to say that the whole world of nutrition and health has been blown to bits in the past five years, and pieces are still falling back to earth. Meanwhile, some of the medical world and much of the public have yet to notice. And many vested interests are desperately trying to keep it that way. Personally, I have finally wriggled free from the paradigms I learned in University about sports nutrition and stand in a confused state of optimism mixed with distrust and scepticism. The problem is, we can't wait for better evidence - I have to eat something, in two hours time! So what to eat? I’m cautious about publishing my observations on my own diet and performance just yet. I will do when I feel a bit more comfortable and educated about what the hell is going on. But, I will tell you that I feel like I’m on an exciting journey!</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-86511205730861601842015-06-02T16:25:00.000+01:002015-06-03T09:44:59.020+01:00Positive thinking is not necessary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On the crux of Fight the Feeling 9a in Glen Nevis. For a long time I thought I was just not good enough to do this route. In the end, that thought didn’t matter. Photo: <a href="http://www.lwimages.co.uk/">Lukasz Warzecha</a></div>
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A lot of folk ask me at my climbing talks about my mental tactics for climbing. They ask both about how I have been able to be confident, composed and tenacious on hard routes especially when they are badly protected. And they also ask about how I have been able to stay committed to progressing my climbing through setbacks of the hard routes I have attempted, or through injuries I’ve had in training or from accidents.</div>
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In the past I have struggled to give a good succinct answer, because it’s not something I find I have to give much conscious effort. It feels like it comes naturally. However, I have come to the conclusion that this does not mean that this ability is something inherent to me. I now think that I have, by accident, adopted an effective approach. It is not a positive thinking approach.</div>
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It’s a big subject and one I will explore in more detail on this blog in future. But for now I will try and summarise it.</div>
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The cult of positive thinking, both in society and in sports psychology, is looking increasingly like it may be among several major diversions from the path of progress of sport and health in recent decades. As a short term strategy, it can have some transient worthwhile effects. Unfortunately, the longer term effects of relying on positive thinking as a mental strategy seem to go the opposite way.</div>
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In my own climbing, I have often heard climbing partners, friends or even folk interviewing me express surprise at how ‘negative’ I sound about my chances of success on a project, or how my preparation is going. They worry that I am talking myself into failure by not thinking positively. I even attended a course (not by choice!) where the tutor taught us to rigorously identify and eliminate any negatives from our discourse about our activities. He wanted me to eliminate even the mention of falling. This struck me as ridiculous!</div>
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I do think it is possible to talk yourself into failure and have seen it done many times by climbers capable of the climbs they feel have beaten them. However, it does not follow that positive thinking is the solution!</div>
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The positive thinking paradigm, in summary, suggests that by using positive visualisation, we create an image that we are more likely to live up to in the real event. Unfortunately the research shows this approach is ineffective. Positive thinking appears to reduce motivation and self discipline. Moreover, it tends to kill the critical thinking that underpins learning of complex skills. A practical example of this is when coaching climbers to overcome fear of the most basic form of climbing fall - falling onto mats at an indoor bouldering wall. Unless you also consider what a badly executed fall looks like, how can you even visualise ‘good’ falling and landing technique. If positive thinking allows you to believe the fall will be fine when you jump for the last hold, the fall, should you miss, is that much more undermining for the confidence since you did not expect it.</div>
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In my own preparation for climbing situations of all types, I have found that I take care to examine the negative outcomes as well as the positive. I look for the problems and the weaknesses. But all this focus on the negative does not mean that I think or talk myself into failure. Quite the opposite. I deal with the problems at the time when they should be dealt with - in the preparation stage.</div>
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In this way, when I tie in at the foot of the climb, I know there will be no surprises, no confronting fears or unexpected doubts once I start climbing. All that is left is the effort. I find that the moment I step off the ground, I feel completely free to give my best effort without distraction or hesitation and in full acceptance of both good and bad scenarios should I succeed or fail on my effort. Not all performances are so cut and dry and ideal like this. I’ve succeeded on plenty of hard routes where I felt unfit, unprepared and totally gripped. I climbed them fully aware of the low probability of success and felt very pessimistic throughout. It made no difference. I had decided to try just as hard regardless of how I felt about my situation.</div>
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It is odd that the notion of focusing on your weaknesses is uncontroversial for physical training, and yet avoided in mental training in favour of positive thinking.</div>
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The funny thing is, I find that this ‘negative’ thinking is in fact the default approach for lots of people. Moreover, people often find that when they consciously try to think positively, it feels hollow. Try standing in front of the mirror and saying “I can climb 9a” out loud. Feel any closer to that goal? So if people naturally default to the right path of looking at the problems, why isn’t it working and why have people been searching for a different solution?</div>
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I find that many climbers I’ve coached go wrong at the stage right after thinking about the problems. They visualise the negative scenarios, the weaknesses they have, or their fears. But at this point they fail to move on to the next stage: taking action to eliminate/mitigate them. They keep their focus on the constraints pushing on them, rather than what they can do to alter those constraints. In the midst of this mental cul de sac, positive thinking becomes attractive as it allows you to bypass the hard bit of training - behavioural change and effort to address, rather than block out problems or weaknesses.</div>
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Another way to look at my point in this post is not that positive thinking is right or wrong, just that it is not really necessary, not that important. Any successes you have on the cliff are a direct product of your motivation for the climb and preparation put in. The perfect preparation would be to focus on all the potential causes of failure right up to the moment the success comes. </div>
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To me, this is why you see climbers explode in a whoop of delight when they grab the finishing jug. Until this moment, there are still mistakes to be corrected, weaknesses to be eliminated, self-discipline to be executed. Forced reminders to believe you can do it are just a distraction. Of course you can do it, if you meet the demands of the task. But surely you are going to need all of your focus on meeting those tasks to make sure you maximise the probability.</div>
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Sure, a determined mindset can make a huge difference in the moment of a crux move, or last move of a hard climb. But whether that mindset is positive or negative may not be the important thing. I find they are often just two sides of the same coin; “I want to get to the top on this attempt/I’m scared I’m going to fail on this attempt”. Both are really a distraction from the one thing that will actually make a difference: Focusing on what you can do right now and executing it.</div>
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In summary, If you have focused on the problems, and then moved on to addressing them with rigour, positive thinking is not necessary. A determined performance with 100% effort can exist just as easily in any state of mind, positive or otherwise. The key point is to give that effort regardless of your state of mind.</div>
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As an epilogue, here is a basic example of this thinking in action.</div>
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Thought example 1. (in training): “I’m not good enough, I’m going to fail.”</div>
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Positive thinking action: “You will succeed, you are strong and tough and you can do this.”</div>
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Critique: Note that if you really <i>are</i> good enough, strong, bold, tough etc then you are perfectly entitled to think that way. But the paradox is that you will have no need to, since you will not feel like you are going to fail in the first place. And if you discover that have <i>unrealistic</i> expectations of failure, then addressing whatever underlying problem you have, such as fear of success, is the way forward, rather than a forcing a few positive thoughts that don’t feel right. If the positive statement doesn’t match the reality, it only distracts you from the task in hand.</div>
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Realistic thinking action: “Do something about it before it’s too late - Get that climbing coaching, build that climbing board, get on that fingerboard every day, lose that stone of fat, practice and perfect that falling technique.”</div>
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Thought example 2. (at the last move of the redpoint): “I’m not good enough, I’m going to fail”</div>
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Positive thinking action: “You can do it, get the jug”</div>
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Critique: The thought offers no practical help. It merely starts an argument in your head at exactly the wrong moment!</div>
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Negative thinking action: “Be decisive, full commitment, pull down like hell on that crimp”</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-25485415251897932182015-05-26T10:56:00.002+01:002015-05-26T10:56:36.941+01:00Make or Break reviews coming through<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Many of you have emailed to let me know that you found Make or Break to be very useful for dealing with your climbing injuries. Thanks for sending those, it’s good to know the effort of writing it was worth it.</div>
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There are now a couple of reviews of the book around and below are a few comments from those and links to the full reviews. As ever, you can get the book in our shop <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">here</a>.</div>
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Neil Gresham, writing in<a href="http://www.climbmagazine.com/"> Climb Magazine</a>:</div>
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“...a modern bible for avoiding injuries...anyone who owns a pair of rock shoes owes it to themselves to get a copy...at last,there’s no longer an excuse for doing climbing and <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">training wrong and getting hurt, now that this fantastic book exists.”</span></div>
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“No stone has been left unturned and advice is given on everything from supportive nutritional strategies to sleep positions, non-sporting injury contributors and so on. I particularly like the chapter on managing injuries from a psychological perspective. Again, this is delivered with empathy from someone who clearly understands how demoralising it can be to have your climbing goals dashed on the rocks. But the most revealing section is surely the one on proprioception and correction of technique. I can’t think of many climbers who won’t need to take a rain check after reading this.”</div>
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The full review was in Climb Magazine issue 122 (May 2015)</div>
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Duncan Critchley, Physiotherapist, lecturer and pain researcher, Kings College London, writing for UKbouldering.com</div>
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“This is the best book on climbing injuries by a large margin. The section on tendon injuries is one of the best I've read anywhere, clearly presenting what we know and don't know. It suggests specific treatment ideas but is happy to acknowledge when we don't know the best treatments or why treatments work. Many medical practitioners would benefit from adopting this humility. Make or Break is well designed and attractively produced. It even has an index. At £30 it is exceptionally good value for a medical text-book.”</div>
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“Pain specialists know tissue damage is one factor of many contributing to pain and how we deal with pain. Mood, beliefs about pain and injury, health behaviours and social circumstances are important in determining who gets injured, which bit hurts and how much, and speed and extent of recovery. It is great to see the 'Know Pain' chapter start to acknowledge this, explaining how to interpret pain, and why pain is rarely an honest witness of damage. This is common knowledge in pain management but unusual to see it recognised so clearly in the world of sports and sports injuries.”</div>
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The full review is on UKB <a href="http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,25664.0.html">here</a>.</div>
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There is also a review by Steve Crowe on Climbonline.co.uk <a href="http://www.climbonline.co.uk/make_or_break.htm">here</a>.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-75372488788991064392015-02-06T00:18:00.001+00:002015-02-06T00:18:53.638+00:00Make or Break: Don’t let climbing injuries dictate your success<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">For the past 4 years or so, I have been working on a book about climbing injuries. It spells out in detail how to treat them once you have them, based on the evidence from high quality scientific research and practice. More importantly, it discusses all the things we do in our climbing routine that cause our future injuries and prolong those we have already caused.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have titled the book <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">‘Make or Break’</a>. This is because becoming an expert in understanding the causes and treatments of climbing injuries will be make or break for your climbing career. As Wolfgang Gullich said, “getting strong is easy, getting strong without getting injured is hard”. In my first book, <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a>, I suggested that many aspects of training for climbing are not rocket science. Keep showing up, pulling on small holds, pushing the limits of your motivation and learning from others and you will get stronger fingers and get better at climbing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It will be injuries that will get in the way of your progress, and if you let them, they will dictate how far you get in climbing. The research suggests that nearly all climbers get injured at some point. Finger injuries are most likely, followed by elbows and shoulders. Of course there are countless bits of our anatomy that can break if suitably mistreated. When you get one of these injuries, you need to be the expert, because unfortunately you cannot rely on anyone else to make sure you recover. This is not because doctors and therapists fail to do a good job (although they sometimes do). It is because there is no single source of advice on the vast array of things you must do to make sure you recover well and prevent future injuries. The climbing coaches, physiotherapists, otrhopaedic surgeons etc. that you will see will all give you pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, but it is you who must put them together.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Claire MacLeod dispatching our pre-orders the other night.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">During the process of writing the book, I have discovered many pieces of hard scientific information and subtle concepts I wish I’d known when I was 16. They would have saved me so much of the pain and psychological torment of injuries that climbers everywhere share at some point in their career. There are many strands of information in the book. It is a handbook on how to take care of yourself as a lifelong climbing athlete. In this blog post, I will briefly outline three messages that will give you a flavour of what you will find in the book:</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>1. Tendons don’t like rest, or change.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Surprisingly, sports medicine research still has a lot to learn about tendons and how they heal and respond to training. However, there have been several big steps forward in the research over the past decade or two. The only problem is, new knowledge in sports medicine takes years or even decades to filter through to the advice you receive. Consider the following <a href="http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2013/04/11/bjsports-2013-092329.full.html">quote</a>: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“In general, it takes approximately 17 years to get 14% of research findings adopted into practice. Moreover, only 30–50% of patients receive recommended care, 20–30% receive care that is not needed or that is potentially harmful and 96% may receive care with the absence of evidence of effectiveness.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was shocked too when I read that. I was aware through my own experience that the advice I’d been given to recover from my own climbing injuries was often at odds with research I’d read. But to discover the extent of the lag between research findings and advice given to sportspeople is depressing. We only have one life and we cannot afford to receive outdated advice. Unfortunately, the internet hasn’t made the task of unearthing reliable advice any easier. Scientific journals remain hidden to most behind a paywall, while the same poor quality, outdated and non-specific advice drowns out the few reliable sources.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the shifts in understanding from the past decade is that slow-onset tendon injuries such as golfer’s elbow do not respond well to complete rest. In fact, it often makes the condition worse. Moreover, many of the adjunct treatments often offered - stretching, massage, ibuprofen may do little to contribute to healing, and only affect pain. Instead, the most promising treatment has been large volumes of exercise of a specific mode (eccentric) and at a level which causes some pain. Much of this seems counterintuitive at first sight, which is why a detailed understanding of what happens in injured tendons is so important. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some practitioners in sports medicine are still working to a pre-1990s concept of tendon healing and will advise you to heal your injured tendons by resting them completely. In contrast, modern research has found that the best way to heal injured tendons is to use them, but only in a way that is specific to the nature of the injury. Tendons do not like rest or change. The successful formula is to provide constant stimulus to tendons to maintain their health. But if you want to change that stimulus, such as by training harder, you must do so very carefully, using all the cues from the body that you can listen to.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Section 1 of the book discusses in detail the limitations of the sports medicine industry and how to get the most out of it, and section 4 details the modern understanding of tendon injuries and how to successfully treat them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>2. Know pain, or no gain</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Above I hinted at the difference between the pain level and the healing status of an injury - a crucial concept for any sportsperson to understand. Understanding of the nature of pain has been another area of science that has advanced hugely in sports medicine. It is not enough to be able to listen to your body. You need to be able to decode the messages and see the patterns in them. This is both a science and an art.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Climbers need to be able to differentiate between healthy soreness from training and activity, and damage that demands action. They need to be able to take understand how various treatments affect pain from their injuries and what this means for their daily decisions on how much activity to expose them to. They need to understand how many aspects of their environment and psychological state amplify or suppress pain sensations from their daily activities. Pain sensations are an essential measure for climbers to monitor, but without detailed knowledge of how it works, it is very easy to interpret those messages from pain wrongly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Section 2 of the book is entirely devoted to understanding pain.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>3. The luxury of doing sport badly will not last</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A young body can withstand a surprising amount of abuse. But the relentlessness of sport and training amplifies the effect of small imbalances or errors, and it doesn’t take long before these accumulate to the point of injury. Balance is the key word here. One area of sports medicine that has come on a fair bit in recent years has been the recognition that athletes need to develop strength in a balanced way, taking care to strengthen muscles on both sides of joints. That is a good development, but it is not enough.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Balancing of the stress imposed by training for climbing needs to come in several other ways too. Matching increases in training intensity with improvements in the quality of rest is one way. Improving technique and the design of the training progression to spread that stress is another. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sections 1, 3 and 4 deal with these concepts and the specific details that climbers should be aware of which commonly result in climbing injuries.</span></div>
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Repeated forceful internal rotation of the arm (the right arm on this move) is a big part of climbing. So it is no surprise that the internal rotators of the arm at the shoulder become dominant. You may well get years out of a healthy young shoulder without feeling a thing. But the resulting impingement syndrome affects so many climbers. If you'd rather prevent it, it's not hard to do a little work to keep the shoulder joint working well. And if you are already suffering, you may be able to reverse it quite quickly, unless you've really tried to ignore it for too long!</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Maintaining awareness of the foot during hand movements is a core skill in climbing injury awareness. Slipping feet are a important cause of many finger and shoulder injuries. Do your feet slip too often? Do you know what to do when they do slip? Correct your climbing technique and you can push your body a lot harder before it starts to complain.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finally, there is the psychological challenge of injuries which is hugely underestimated by both climbers and their friends and families. In sections 1 and 5 of the book, I present the idea that we should see the injuries we suffer as a crucial message that something must change in our way of approaching climbing. By seeing the injury as an opportunity to go back to basics, to understand what must change and make that change, we can not only improve our climbing, but enjoy the process rather than endure it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope the book will help many climbers prevent their future injuries or overcome existing ones. You'll find the book in our shop <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">here</a>, dispatching worldwide.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-77230649968538102112015-01-19T12:32:00.000+00:002015-01-19T12:32:47.020+00:00My climbing injuries book is up for pre-order!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html"><img border="0" src="http://davemacleod.com/images/make-or-break-800px.jpg" height="640" width="518" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Readers of this blog will of course know that I have been working on a book on climbing injuries for some years. It has turned out to be a much bigger book than I originally envisaged. It has been a huge project, but in a few weeks I will reach the finish line. The book is currently with the printers and some time in the next few weeks, many boxes of copies will arrive at my house. The final stages were a rather exhausting process, but I’m excited to release it and potentially help healthy climbers stay healthy and injured climbers to get back to the fray.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’ll write a more detailed post about the content of the book when the stock arrives in early February. If you want to make sure you get a copy as soon as you can, we’ve put it up for <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">pre-order in the shop here</a>, and it’ll be in the post to you as soon as it arrives. I’ve also added the table of contents below so you have an idea of the breadth of the areas covered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My aim was to write the manual on how to stay healthy as a climbing athlete that I wished I’d had when I was 16. The first priority was to base my writing on the cutting edge of sports medicine research, wherever it was available. The second was to include all the diverse aspects of injury prevention and recovery, and then present them in a way that allows you to see them in the whole context of your efforts to stay injury free. As with the world of training, too many injury texts focus on or overplay the importance of just one aspect of sports medicine.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Having spent around 4 years researching, thinking and writing the book, I do feel that if I’d had access to the information contained in it when I was a teenager, my health and climbing achievements over the past 20 years would have been significantly better. I hope the book can make this difference both for both youngsters who have yet to experience injury, and battle scarred climbers like myself.</span></div>
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Below is the table of contents, so you can get idea of the scope of the book. <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You’ll find the book in the shop <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html">here.</a> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 1: Make or break</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Why the treatments you have tried aren’t working, and what to do about it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">How to use this book</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The real reasons you are injured</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Stress and injury</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The reason you are still injured</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The language problem</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The practitioner problem</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The sports medicine problem</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The missing link</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Exceptional use: the luxury of doing your sport badly</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Prevention</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Your visit to the doctor’s</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Summary</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 2: Know pain, or no gain</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Pain and how to read it</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Seeing the patterns in your pain</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What is healthy soreness?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Understanding your pain</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Going beyond reading only pain</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Summary</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 3: Removing the causes of injury for prevention and treatment</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Are you only treating symptoms?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What was the real cause?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The big four: technique, posture, activity, rest</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Correcting technique</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Correcting posture</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">How to rest</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Warm-up and injury</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Lifestyle</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Nutrition</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 4: Rehabilitation of climbing injuries - treating both causes and symptoms</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When to move beyond acute care</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Goals of mid-late rehabilitation</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Modern understanding of tendon injuries and recovery</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Therapeutic activity - basic exercises</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Therapeutic activity - climbing</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Proprioceptive training</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Walking the line of rehab ups and downs</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Drug and other emerging treatments</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When to stop rehab?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Summary</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 5: Psychology of injuries: dealing with the anguish of injury</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Face it: it really is that bad!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Take heart</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 6: Young climbers</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What young climbers should know</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Too much, too young: a warning</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What parents and coaches should do</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 7: The elbow</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Golfer’s and tennis elbow</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Brachioradialis/brachialis strain</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Other elbow injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 8: The fingers</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Different grips in climbing and consequences for injury</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Pulley injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When and how to tape the fingers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Painful finger joints</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Flexor unit strains</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Dupuytren’s contracture</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ganglions</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Other finger injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 9: The wrist</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Triangular fibrocartilage injury</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Carpal tunnel syndrome</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">De Quervain’s tenosynovitis</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Other wrist injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 10: The shoulder</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Shoulder impingement/rotator cuff tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Biceps tendon insertion tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Labral tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Shoulder dislocation</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Frozen shoulder</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Thoracic outlet syndrome </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Shoulder and neck trigger points</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 11: Lower body injuries</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Foot pain in climbers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Plantar fasciitis</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Heel pad bruising</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ingrown toenails</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Sesamoid injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hallux valgus</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Morton’s neuroma</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ankle injuries in climbers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Cartilage/joint injuries</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ankle impingement syndrome</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Achilles tendon pain</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Knee injuries in climbers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Meniscus tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Anterior cruciate ligament tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Medial collateral ligament tears</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hamstrings tear</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hernia</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Section 12: Further reading</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Further reading and references</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Getting access to good care</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>The author’s tale of woe and hope</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Glossary of key terms</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Thanks</b></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-32380192622096994582015-01-15T22:32:00.000+00:002015-01-16T10:27:03.067+00:00Hyperhidrosis and climbing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Over the years I’ve heard from a few climbers who suffer from hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) of the hands. For obvious reasons, the condition is a major hindrance for rock climbing and causes much torment for sufferers who love the activity but are constantly hampered by severely sweaty hands.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I do not have the condition myself, but I definitely have more sweaty hands than average and I find that my indoor climbing performance has always lagged as much as a number grade behind my outdoor climbing grade. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to deal with the condition as a climber, having dripping hands with the slightest exertion. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hopefully, most sufferers will already know about iontophoresis, but in case not, I thought I should write this post.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am grateful to Bob Farrell who got in touch last year to let me know that discovering the treatment had completely transformed his climbing. He went from a state of despair about how to enjoy rock climbing to being able to enjoy good friction and dry hands on small holds, both indoor and outside in warm weather.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The treatment involves passing a small electrical current, supplied by an iontophoresis machine through the hands, for 15-30 minutes or so. The hands (or feet) have to be placed in a water bath to apply the current. Despite its remarkable effectiveness, its mechanism of action is still unknown. But it blocks the sweat glands in some way, temporarily. Several treatments are required to see the benefits, and top-up treatments are needed every few days or weeks (with individual variability) to maintain the effects.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But those effects appear to essentially solve the problem for a great majority of sufferers. Although I have not tried the treatment myself, it sounds from Bob’s experience and the evidence from other non-climbing sufferers, that all affected climbers should definitely try it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is available, at least in some places on the NHS. But most sufferers who try the treatment and have good results seem to just purchase their own iontophoresis machine and do their top-up treatments at home. Machines cost £3-400 for a standard model. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There seem to be few side effects, although if you have cuts in your fingers from climbing, these will burn during the treatment, with the workaround of just excluding the cut finger from the iontophoresis bath during treatment</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope this post provides some help to sufferers who have yet to hear of the treatment.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-74819066495108587762015-01-15T14:33:00.004+00:002015-01-16T10:31:47.152+00:00And another point about fear of falling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’ve posted on this blog several times about fear of falling, and of course written a whole book section on it in <a href="http://davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10</a>. But further elements of this complex issue of mental training continue to challenge so many climbers, certainly if the number of emails I get on the subject is anything to go by.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One aspect that just came to mind while reading another of these is the issue of focusing your mind too much on the problem of fear of falling in the process of trying to address it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So the problem of excessive fear or anxiety in leading may arise subconsciously. By the time you realise that it is actually a big limitation with your climbing, it may already be quite a large and engrained issue. So you need to stare it in the face and look at the roots of it to first understand its origin and then change your habits to reduce and eliminate it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But the subtlety of how to approach this effort seems to be important. I notice that some climbers seem to view their fear of falling as a foe in which they are in a constant battle with. Given the time and difficulty involved in overcoming fear of falling for a proportion of climbers, I can completely understand why it must feel like this. Nevertheless, viewing it along these lines could become self-defeating.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Fear is a healthy and and entirely natural human emotion. Again we have to go back to the difference between the actual risk, and the fear we produce from it. Sure, we can swallow fear in a moment of truth. But this is not a training strategy. The training strategy is to alter the inputs that result in the fear. You’re not trying to squash the fear, you’re trying to change how you think, plan and act on the rock so the fear needs not arise. The fear inputs can be reduced either by resetting your sense of what is actually fearful, such as by gaining familiarity with practice falls, or by reducing the sense of uncertainty about your position on the rock, by learning all the countless tactical tricks of leading.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Although you must face the problem directly to get to this stage, you must be careful to maintain attention on the pleasure and satisfaction of leading, as opposed to a constant battle against fear. When people have asked me about the boldest leads I have ever done, I’ve always come back to the same basic idea that the desire to experience and complete the climb simply overwhelmed any fears I had, no matter how serious they were.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You must give active energy to thinking about why you are motivated to have the experience of leading difficult rock climbs. What positives are there. When these elements are front and centre in your mind, the fears are naturally pushed to the side, or rather put in their place.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-25128912974307240572014-12-09T13:33:00.001+00:002014-12-09T13:33:44.815+00:00When the regime gets harder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My (latest) board. The result of a decade and a half of relentless work and saving. But worth it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Andreas emailed to ask about keeping up progress in climbing when your routine gets harder for various reasons. He refers in passing to cases such as injury. Since I have whole book on this subject now in production, I’ll leave this to one side for now. But on his mind is a baby soon to arrive (brilliant news!).</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Having a child is obviously a huge challenge in maintaining the other aspects of your life. Some things have to change, as they should, and as you will want them to. In many cases, your old way of life will be abandoned altogether and replaced with a new one. A better one, if you deal with the challenge properly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With regard to how to keep your climbing standard high in your new, time pressed routine, here are the three number one priorities:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Build a board.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Build a board.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Did you get that? If you don’t feel you have space to build a board in your house, move. If you don’t feel you have the power to move because of work or other issues, solve those issues. Take the power. There are of course some workarounds such as hiring a garage in your street etc, but they are poor solutions because it’s the fact that the board is immediately accessible and you are immediately accessible while using it that underlies it’s utility.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the early days of parenthood, the odd 45 minutes here and there may be all the free time you have. You can easily fit a high quality training schedule into this timescale, but certainly not if you have to go anywhere else to access the climbing wall, even if it’s only 5 minutes drive. So just get it built. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Andreas referred to a comment in 9 out of 10 where I was talking about maintaining a base level of fitness with one session per week. It’s true that you can do a lot in one session a week, as I have done during various busy periods. But my point here was that doing something, even if it’s a little training, is much better than giving in and doing nothing, as many people do. I was not trying to recommend one session a week as a medium or long term solution for training. It is nothing more than a workaround for people who choose (choose is the key word) to fill their entire waking hours with activities other than climbing. For most people, this is a temporary issue related to work trips, although some climbers carry on with a schedule like this indefinitely. That is their choice.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For most with a busy schedule, an aggressive problem solving approach, resourcefulness and an understanding of your priorities are all you need to create a routine that allows time for work, rest, family time and plenty of training on your board in the spare room. If you introduce all the solutions and there still isn’t time, well you’ll just have to work less, wont you! (I’m kind of talking to myself here). 9 of of 10 climbers obviously doesn’t deal with every conceivable circumstance and individual routine. But in it I repeatedly make the point that you have plenty of options, and often more than you think, if you are willing to see them and accept the change and challenge that they bring. If you struggle to think outside the box and your thinking is full of ‘I can’t’ type of thoughts, get a coach to tell you straight. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If any of this was easy, it wouldn’t be so rewarding when we crack it.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-31113774679566238782014-12-09T12:39:00.002+00:002014-12-09T12:39:28.080+00:00One thing out of your comfort zone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Video above: One thing out of you comfort zone, each day.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Una on Twitter was asking me about recovering leading confidence after a bad fall. She felt she was still struggling, even following the advice in <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9/10</a>. Was there anything more? In a practical sense, not really. The advice I laid out in the book about progressively exposing yourself to more and more challenging leading situations is the easiest, if not only way to do it. But that’s not to belittle it. For some people, it can be an enormously difficult thing to do.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Therefore, the response is to take it seriously as such. A huge problem needs a huge response, in the form of dedicated and relentless application of training over a long period. Here are six common pitfalls with building up leading confidence after a knock:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Expecting too much. The apparent unfairness of confidence is that it takes many exposures to build it up, but a huge chunk of it can be wiped away in one go with a bad fall. Patient application of the training is definitely required. No perceptible difference may be noticed for many training sessions. The other problem is that it is harder to measure than pure finger strength. Even if you are making gains in mental confidence, you might not notice until this add up to something quite substantial.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Measuring the wrong thing. Lots of people measure the success of their training based on time. “I’ve been working on my leading for two months and I’ve not noticed any changes”. However, if you were only leading for two sessions per week, that’s only 16 training sessions in two months! The result may have been different with 5 sessions per week.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Failing to complete the training. Practicing leader falls indoors is just one small part of gaining leading confidence. If you are training for something like trad climbing, you need to have plenty of safe falls, as well as real trad leading. Lots of it. One without the other tends to be ineffective. Yet a lot of climbers complain of lack of time and opportunity to get on real rock, especially at this time of year with dark nights and poor weather. Unfortunately, this is the excuse that separates those who succeed and those who fail. We are training mental confidence in leading - the climbing standard does not need to be high, the rock doesn’t need to be dry and the sun needn't be shining. Get a headtorch and a Gore-Tex and go climbing! You think people don’t do that? Sure, it’s great if you live somewhere like Scotland where you can go mixed climbing all winter - a perfect training ground for leading confidence (people were quick to cite it’s effect on me when I downgraded The Walk of Life from E12 to E9 a few years ago). It’s true that winter climbing makes climbers mentally tough. But if you can’t access this, just go to the crag and climb at the level you can in whatever conditions you find.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Kidding yourself. A big problem with training your leading confidence is kidding yourself that you are going out of your comfort zone when you are not. Recently I climbed with a chap who was climbing well but leading confidence was his main weakness. He was more than capable of taking proper leading falls and building up a ‘go for it’ attitude in his outdoor leading. But when backing off from a lead, he said “I need to go back to the climbing wall and do more practice falls”. They won’t work. He was choosing them precisely because he’d already mastered that level. They were now inside his comfort zone, an easy option. Finding the right intensity of experience to build up your confidence is not easy. But it is just as easy to undershoot and unwittingly stay within your comfort zone as it is to overdo it and maintain a state of poor confidence.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Asking for failure. When it comes down to it, leading combines the skills of common sense problem solving, mental toughness and practical skills. Many climbers focus too much on the mental toughness part. Young lads are especially good at overriding their fears and just going for it and everyone can do this to an extent. Overriding fears is good if it’s irrational fear, In other words, when your mind ought to know that you have a solid base of practical skills and well developed problem solving approach. Far too many climbers push on with the fear conquering without developing that base of skill in parallel. This is asking for failure, because you will put yourself in situations where you are genuinely unable to wield control. Good leading is about having more control. It is also about having control over fear, as opposed to having no fear. Excess of irrational fear, and lack of healthy fear both lead to loss of control, in different ways. Take care from every training session to learn new details about the practicalities of leading - dealing with gear, ropework, falling technique, anticipation and planning etc. Don’t just focus on being fearless.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Not really wanting it enough. This aspect is underestimated in sport and training, surprisingly. Those who want it badly enough simply do not rest until they find the right path through the training to get to the goal routes they cannot live without. Rather than throwing up their hands after experiencing lack of progress, they jump right in and make plenty more errors until they find a formula for progress. Inevitably, we never get the balance of training 100% perfect. No one does. But burning desire to move forward and get to the next level is a crucial catalyst in letting you absorb the stresses and knocks of pushing outside your comfort zone. It creates resilience in people that are not inherently made of hero stuff. So, sometimes a clear conversation with yourself about exactly what this means to you is the fuel you need to get you through anything. What if you have that conversation and realise you don’t want it badly enough to push yourself through all the challenges? Hurry up and do something else then! Life is short.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Training the mind has some similarities and some important differences from training the muscles. It is similar in that it is a ‘plastic’ tissue. Train it appropriately, and it will change. The difference is of course it’s vast complexity and especially how the layers of thoughts, emotions and basic programmed responses all mix together. Mental training demands careful consideration to make sure you are applying a sustained progressive overload, but getting the size of the stimulus just right.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My approach as a youngster was just to climb one thing that was truly out of my comfort zone, every time I went climbing. Every time, no excuses. If it didn’t give me a dry mouth and a small knot in my stomach, I knew it wasn’t really out of my comfort zone. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">NB: The notes above are NOT a guide to what to do to improve your leading confidence. They should be read in the context of applying the advice in <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9/10</a>.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-20453494703083065892014-12-02T11:35:00.000+00:002014-12-02T11:40:53.218+00:00Changing the architecture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">O</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">ne of the important findings from the world of behavioral science is that willpower is a finite resource. Sure, some seem to be able to show more of it that others. But regardless of inherent or learned capacity for it, everyone can run out of it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The understanding comes from fields of research such as why apparently smart people eat badly or fail to exercise, or other such dangerous behaviours. Moreover, they do so in full knowledge that these behaviours are bad news for almost all aspects of their life and despite their stated intentions to act differently. The idea is that since willpower is finite, if you spend all of it forcing yourself to work long hours, there is none left to help you choose healthy foods or turn your phone off and get some sleep.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Making sure you spend your willpower wisely is the obvious first line of attack. But so often, people don’t feel able to change their routine to allow for this. Topping up your willpower ‘account’ is the second line. You can do this by making sure you are well slept, well fed and surrounded by supportive people, among other things.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The third line is more of a workaround than a solution. But it is better than nothing. You can change the choice architecture. In other words, you can set things up to make it harder to make the bad choices and easier to make the good ones, acknowledging that when you are tired and worn out, your good intentions will go out of the window. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some examples:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you don’t have the biscuits in the cupboard, you’ll not reach for them ‘just tonight’. Instead have you chosen healthy food at the ready. In moments of good willpower, prepare them for your future willpower starved self. Wash your fruit, put it in a nice bowl or do whatever you need to make it more appealing and convenient to choose.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Cycle or walk to work. Once you are there, you have to get home the same way! Make it easier to choose by ensuring you are fully kitted out with clothing to keep you warm and dry for bad weather. Make sure the bike and kit are ready to go by the front door so there are no excuses in the morning when you are running a bit late and bleary eyed.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Choose your workplace and house based on your chosen training venue. Make sure you’d have to literally drive past it on the way home to excuse yourself from training.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you climb with a partner who habitually leads and sets up a top-rope for you, climb with someone else or instruct them to refuse to lead for you under any circumstances. Better still, climb with partners who would mercilessly rib you for even suggesting that you skip your turn to lead. The shame would be less painful than just attacking swallowing your leading phobia.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">If you need to get stronger openhanded, set your wall accordingly (see photo above). Don't have a wall? Make one!</li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Everyone can think of instances in their own routine where they habitually make poor choices. In <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">9 out of 10</span></a> I described many of the big and important ones, but the number of decisions we make that influence our performance is huge. Try to think of ways you can make it harder for your future willpower starved self to make the right decisions at those crucial moments in everyday life.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-72168685360590812352014-12-01T15:02:00.000+00:002014-12-01T15:02:16.731+00:008b - 8c+ How?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Over on my personal blog the other day I was talking in passing about a period in my life about 9 years ago when I took my best sport climbing grade from around 8b to 8c+ in about a year and a half. On Twitter, Sean picked up on this and thought that would be a good subject for a blog post. Here is the short answer:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I started fingerboarding.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But it’s not as simple as that. So here is the long answer. I was replying to Sean in 140 character stylee that I would explain but there are no secrets and the explanation would be nothing that isn’t in my book <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10</a>. However, personal stories are always helpful if you highlight how the results link back to the underlying principles.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You might be tempted to take my short answer above and think if you just fingerboard, you too will climb 8c+. It’s unlikely to say the least. That’s because basic strength may well not be your weakness. I think it’s fair to say that most climbers would say they feel their strength level is a performance weakness relative to technique. I’ve spent much of my climbing coaching career repeatedly trying to convince climbers otherwise. In fact, in almost every climbing wall on a busy evening you’ll see climbers with enough strength to climb 8c+, but will never even get close to this grade.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What was slightly unusual about my background in climbing was how little I time I spent in climbing walls during that period. I climbed outdoors, year round. My staple diet of climbing was trying super technical projects at <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/dumbybloc.html">Dumbarton Rock</a>. I really valued the fact that they could be cracked by exploring every subtle detail of the technique used to climb them in place of brute strength. When conditions allowed, I’d be teetering about on hard mixed routes, mountain trad, sport climbing, sea cliffs, etc, etc. I had built up a huge depth of experience as a tactician. In other words, if a project was 100% of my strength limit, I’d still have a 100% chance of succeeding on it. Fear of falling, redpoint nerves, mistakes on the lead, finding the best sequence were all things I’d put huge volumes of hours into developing. One thing I hadn’t really done was trained strength properly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Training was only half on my radar really. I was just a climber having a whale of a time going outside and having adventures trying new routes in places I loved to be. But when I decided to sacrifice some of that to up my level a bit, my strength level was so poor that I had rapid results.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I decided to start in June 2005. The inspiration to start was realising I could climb the Requiem headwall if I really wanted it badly enough. Six days a week, I started the day with around 40 minutes of fingerboard (the same routine I published in <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html">9 out of 10</a>). Then I went round to the Dumbarton boulders and did endurance circuits for another couple of hours, followed by a ten mile run. Sometimes I’d go for a second run late at night, at a relaxed pace, just to wind down. At the weekend I went climbing in the mountains if the weather was good. I worked before and after my training, at home of course - a working from home job with flexible hours is a good catalyst for climbing performance.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I didn’t vary the training all that much for many weeks at a time, although the ‘real’ climbing days were as varied as ever. But I did start gently with the fingerboarding, building up very steadily for the first 6 weeks. And that was against a background of already doing a large volume of bouldering for a decade beforehand. Without these factors, I’d likely have got injured, not stronger.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After three months I went back to an 8c project I’d previously failed on and was completely shocked when I linked it first try from the second move to the top on my shunt in freezing conditions. Later in the winter I completed Font 8b projects at Dumbarton, Rhapsody the following spring, and my first 8c+ sport route shortly afterwards.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I can’t overemphasise the importance of the previous decade of building up those skills in being a solid all-round climber. The pure finger strength was just the final piece of the puzzle. The fashion in the popular climbing culture is very much revolving around physical strength right now. The underlying message is ‘let’s train like proper athletes’ and that means <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/GimmeKraft.html">this kind of stuff</a>. That’s great, but it is nothing if you miss the crucial toe-hook that knocks a grade off the problem, or you are so scared you crush the rock as soon as you are 20 feet above a bolt. The strength level generally among climbers these days is mind blowing. Training like proper athletes means being able to use every ounce of strength in your muscles at the right moment. While you might be able to one-arm a crimp in 6 months with nothing but a piece of wood above your doorframe, you can’t shortcut learning to be able to do something good with all that strength.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-41780139750544535232014-11-07T18:08:00.003+00:002014-11-07T18:08:27.205+00:00Mental training, 3 simple mantras<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Natalie Berry stepping out on her first E4 trad lead.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There are now several books available on the difficult subject of mental training specifically for climbers. If you add in the wider sports psychology literature out there, you could read yourself to death on this subject. And yet I’m not convinced that all that literature has made as much impact as the equivalent literature on physical training.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As I observe climbers these days I see more and more physical strength and fewer tough performers who can get the most out of themselves when it matters. Why is this? It’s debatable. Maybe it’s because mental training is inherently less quantifiable, so less likely to get done? Maybe it’s because the cognitive habits we form are so hard to break and the impact of a book on it’s own is rarely enough? I also sometimes feel that the complexity of trying to explain performance psychology makes the literature hard going, maybe even self-defeating for some.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While writing on this subject elsewhere, I thought of a few simple messages I tell myself while preparing to climb or actually on a climb which distill these complex ideas down to a tool you can use in the heat of the moment. I hope they are useful to at least some of you:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“If it felt easy, it wouldn’t be hard, and I’d want to try something harder”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Nobody cares about this effort except me. So relax, you’ve got nothing to lose by just trying and trying hard”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“There are no prizes for holding back”</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-16645532304725669742014-11-07T17:57:00.002+00:002014-11-07T17:57:16.669+00:00Four reviews<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Every so often I write the odd gear review for this blog, mainly of gear that I already like and want to share, and occasionally I’m asked to write. Here are 4 things I’ve seen over the year that I have tried and liked.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was given a pair of <a href="http://www.bootbananas.com/#/home/4568902309">Boot Bananas</a> at the Outdoors show in London and they have lived in various pairs of my shoes and rockshoes ever since. Like a majority of folk, my shoes are boufing (Glasgow slang, in case you didn’t know) and I’ve tried quite a few things to make them less anti-social. Deodorising spray is the closest I’d come to a solution. But the effects on the smell seemed pretty short lived and it was a faff to keep a bottle of it handy. Boot bananas are simple shoved into the offending shoes and a mixture of various deodorisers (including charcoal and baking soda) do an excellent job of killing the odour. I found them to be more effective than spray or anything else I’ve tried. Their practicality was even better though - you just shove them in your street shoes while you put your rockshoes on, and vice versa at the end of your session. Well worth £13 to put an end to offending your own nose and more importantly your family and fellow climbers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">YY sent me a pair of their new </span></span><a href="http://www.yy-belayglasses.co.uk/" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">belay glasses</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> to try out which are very well made, with attention to detail and crucially a robust and secure carry case for throwing in your sack for a day at the crag. Not being a serial sport climber, it was a while until I got to use them and it's the first time I've used a pair of belay glasses. Perhaps it’s because I’m not always sport climbing and generally train on a bouldering wall that when I do it, the ‘belayers neck’ is that much worse. As expected from just looking at their good construction, they did the job perfectly and are now flung in my sport climbing kit along with my Gri Gri and </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">quick draws</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">. If I was going to buy a pair of belay glasses, I'd </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">definitely</span><span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> get these ones.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Bouldering Essentials</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiVfsC2vZB7wPDPoVr2XVaD649l7y0d0wLb-BWQhpyYSrQhU8p9-BlKZq8hGT8v3nmHjkArBZx7PYmFcqTvIhjN9FKB1VAETiLeVZ7PfN5S6UKhCbcb8iDXJ7deWOAweKXjD1o/s1600/Boul+Ess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiVfsC2vZB7wPDPoVr2XVaD649l7y0d0wLb-BWQhpyYSrQhU8p9-BlKZq8hGT8v3nmHjkArBZx7PYmFcqTvIhjN9FKB1VAETiLeVZ7PfN5S6UKhCbcb8iDXJ7deWOAweKXjD1o/s1600/Boul+Ess.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">David Flanagan’s new book <a href="http://threerockbooks.com/index.php/bouldering-essentials/">Bouldering Essentials</a> is aimed at those just starting out in bouldering. It makes sense that there is a reference there for the large numbers of boulderers coming into climbing by introduction at the large bouldering centres in most cities. The does a good job of listing those basics you need to know from types of hold to how to fall and various other things you’d otherwise have to pick up in a peicemeal manner through experience. However, I’m not too sure it’s something I’d have read as a beginner. I found myself reading through wishing the information had been written by some of the famous names in bouldering, with some anecdotes that would have brought those lessons and tactics alive and made them easier to relate to. But if you are the type of person who likes the facts and techniques listed in a direct way, then you’ll find them here and you'll love it. It was nice to see a section on bouldering destinations which will no doubt start the imagination for some boulderers just starting out in their local bouldering centre.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZbyHys18tQ9DYJ9Ymd-OG-Nl-L2auE2uvPp0GMNaUxmQ7oEM-jDg9XcRa7tgbdM81pMXv74oKlUUURyv_ZIoOcuqYQVw8znpiZ9uTB04nlbHHdlNzdt6F-kfFp-e9rGEiXIhuDA/s800/TRANSGRESSION%20por%20Eva%20Lopez%20y%20JM%20Climbing%20Surfaces%20400x621.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZbyHys18tQ9DYJ9Ymd-OG-Nl-L2auE2uvPp0GMNaUxmQ7oEM-jDg9XcRa7tgbdM81pMXv74oKlUUURyv_ZIoOcuqYQVw8znpiZ9uTB04nlbHHdlNzdt6F-kfFp-e9rGEiXIhuDA/s800/TRANSGRESSION%2520por%2520Eva%2520Lopez%2520y%2520JM%2520Climbing%2520Surfaces%2520400x621.jpg" height="320" width="206" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Eva Lopez is one of the famous names in the world of training for climbing, and someone who has demonstrated the value of her own wisdom, climbing 8c+ at the age of 42. The <a href="http://en-eva-lopez.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/transgression-fingerboard-for-high.html">Transgression</a> is her own brainchild and a beast of a fingerboard. But it’s a bit more than that. The concept isn’t hard to understand. It’s a resin fingerboard with progressively smaller rungs, going from big and positive right down to a very thin 6mm. It comes with a well thought through recommended program to follow and several climbers at various levels right up to the top grades report good strength gains having followed this. The question of course, is can you not get the same gains from some of the more famous wooden fingerboards on the market. Especially since these might be both kinder on the skin and considerably cheaper. I’d say that is debatable. I must admit that although I’ve experimented a bit with the Transgression, I simply preferred training on wood. Only time and dedicated experimentation by numerous climbers would give a clearer idea if the concept of the small incremental increases in difficulty afforded by the board’s design yielded noticeably better results. It wouldn’t surprise me if either it did yield better results due to the steady progression of intensity. It also wouldn’t surprise me if there was no difference. Noone can confidently say I don’t think. However, if you can afford the price, I certainly don't think you will find a much more useful fingerboard available.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-15871770574151800502014-04-26T16:17:00.001+01:002014-04-26T16:19:04.131+01:00Holds finally going on, and venturing outside<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsA_FnvRty9e_KXxLpfOwzBHv6C53W9H-M1nn5Bb4ylA-wrqUaVmerxD0IpFVT-_n-vjB3VOScUAs40PB-uvh-nrJirDV5ZO6QMN40YMp2XySv7V7bTCcIYtdxu18YLPUYeyG1/s1600/cw8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsA_FnvRty9e_KXxLpfOwzBHv6C53W9H-M1nn5Bb4ylA-wrqUaVmerxD0IpFVT-_n-vjB3VOScUAs40PB-uvh-nrJirDV5ZO6QMN40YMp2XySv7V7bTCcIYtdxu18YLPUYeyG1/s1600/cw8.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some holds going on the climbing wall at last!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After a month straight of 16 hour days on average, my climbing wall is finished. Well, apart from getting all the holds on. I must admit that after completing the build and various other jobs that needed doing at my place, I was a bit too broken to even climb on it. I just wanted to sleep! But now there are some holds going on it I’m getting more and more excited as it turns from a building project into what I had originally envisioned - a brilliant place to train.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, rather than jump straight on it, I opted to take advantage of the dry weather and head to the Outer Hebrides for a couple of days new routing and prospecting with Calum Muskett. We did a handful of new lines from E3 to E5 and I worked on this immaculate 40m wall of perfect Gneiss that has been on my projects to look at list for a few years. It was just as good as I hoped, if maybe a little hard.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There were a couple of different ways you could go. The best, and hardest looks upwards of 8b+ climbing with adequate gear. But the crux is super hard. On the first day I was climbing all day in a <a href="http://www.mountain-equipment.co.uk/citadel-jacket">Citadel jacket</a> and still had numb hands in the wind. In those conditions I could get some purchase on the crux crimps, but couldn’t see how to use them. The next day it was much warmer and I needed a bit of help from the rope to stay on, but did get a sequence that may work. So now I have something great to direct my training, and an excuse to get the ferry back to Harris pretty soon.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7_q_uiXsI9vgA-jfYTs5EYiYB8n5abZL2dyTW8w5KihjlJUAoTEe7Y70huCZdSIL_O9Yc1e4MA7Wu3hP-10MmZG0RX5R9NEE7o1iJ_dwbYL_tbDKrlSdwikpleblW5xqnkhC/s1600/7awall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin7_q_uiXsI9vgA-jfYTs5EYiYB8n5abZL2dyTW8w5KihjlJUAoTEe7Y70huCZdSIL_O9Yc1e4MA7Wu3hP-10MmZG0RX5R9NEE7o1iJ_dwbYL_tbDKrlSdwikpleblW5xqnkhC/s1600/7awall.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A very very hard project to go back to.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31845824.post-77231106520734955282014-04-26T16:04:00.000+01:002014-04-26T16:04:25.106+01:004 new titles in the shop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve just added four great new books and DVDs to the <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">shop</a>. The first three books are all major contributions to the literature on improving at climbing and I’d recommend getting hold of all three. Well done to the authors of all of them who have made a great contribution here and no doubt these books will be the first step to many hard ascents and goals realised in the future.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/gimmekraft.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.davemacleod.com/images/gimmekraftbig.jpg" height="235" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/gimmekraft.html">Gimme Kraft:</a> The Cafe Kraft gym (Kraft = strength btw) in Nurnberg, Germany has gained a great reputation for coaching a string of fantastic climbing talents over the past few years, most notably, Alex Megos who became the first climber to onsight 9a. Their coaches have put together a new book and DVD detailing the principles and exercises they have used to help their talented young climbers become super strong and fit beasts.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So the book is very focused on physical strength and endurance training, both on and off the climbing wall. It provides a great and easy to follow manual for sharpening up weak areas in your strength. This is particularly useful since it can be hard to choose or adapt core strength routines from other sports for climbing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Both the book and DVD show clearly how to do the basic strength and endurance exercises and the DVD contains many interesting interviews with climbing legends about training and climbing performance. </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/newalpinism.html" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.davemacleod.com/images/newalpinismbig.jpg" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/newalpinism.html">Training for the new Alpinism: </a>Steve House and Scott Johnston’s new book on training for alpinism is a much awaited and weighty addition to the available literature on training for climbing. It is the first book to focus solely on alpinism and brings the field right up to date. It is very much training focused (as opposed to skills focused), which is both it’s greatest strength and weakness.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It contains clear and extensive sections on the basic principles of sports physiology, but with the discussion relating directly to climbing in an alpine setting. So you no longer have to learn and then adapt the principles used in other endurance sports to effectively plan your training regime. It also has great and focused sections on strength, mental skills, nutrition, altitude, schedule planning and choosing your training goals. It also contains some fantastic contributions from other world class alpinists, sharing what they have learned about the most effective ways yo improve your alpine climbing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Its focus on physical rather than technical skills training means there should probably be more than just this book in your training library. However, it joins a collection of titles that are essential reading for climbers who are serious about improving.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/tradclimbersbible.html">The Trad Climber’s Bible: </a>The skills for trad climbing are about as broad as in any sport. This is especially true if you wish to climb in many different settings - hard, technical single pitch climbs, big walls and and alpine faces. The Trad Climber’s Bible comes at the challenge of passing on these skills from a different angle from most instructional manuals.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I jumped at the chance to order it in for the davemacleod.com shop simply because it was authored by the American trad legends John Long and Peter Croft. I was fascinated by how they had approached the challenge of writing about trad skills. They have written the book in a narrative style, with many stories and anecdotes from their combined 70 year experience of pushing their limits on trad all over the world.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some of the sections, such as those on ‘fiddling’ and ‘embracing the weird’ made me smile as they highlighted the sheer range of unusual skills that are nonetheless essential to be a successful trad climber. It’s a big, thorough, entertaining and inspiring book which will provide much food for thought and arm you with many more skills to throw at your next big lead. Excellent photography throughout and great value for what has clearly been a huge project for the authors.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/wideboyz2.html">Wideboyz II:</a> The Wideboyz, Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker, have decided to turn their hand to finger cracks, with the goal of repeating the hardest and most famous of all finger cracks - Cobra Crack (8c) in Squamish. In their own Wideboyz style, they convert their offwidth training den into a finger sqaushing setup and proceed to train, hard. Still, Cobra Crack put up a good fight! Entertaining as ever, and a reminder that focusing and trying damn hard goes a long, long way.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p>Dave MacLeod</p>
<p>My book - <a href="http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html">9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes</a></p></div>Dave MacLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442169589581067050noreply@blogger.com0