Here are three strategies I use in my own climbing to reflect on the previous year and plan for better results in the coming year, with...

This good website has some interesting information on the size of the problem of young sportspeople getting injured. Injury rates are g...

Just had another email from a climber with an amazing story of determination to break personal climbing barriers at a relatively old age ...

I read a comment from a very accomplished climber the other day saying it was getting difficult to find the motivation to train, or most ...

...And we are looking for hard, aren’t we?! On this blog I guess many of the posts are about finding and attacking weaknesses. Lots o...

...even Turkeys can fly” I go on in my book and this blog a lot about influences and their importance on how well we climb. The above quote...

As a climbing coach who is always trying to understand and communicate the ingredients of becoming really good at climbing, I spend a fair ...

Climbers who are into training or pushing themselves are often trying to keep everything ‘clean’. Clean in this sense means without complic...

Mark makes the simple but seemingly obvious point about why the health promotion sector has been roundly failing to get people to change th...

If you wanted to learn how to mess up your training and stay as crap as possible at climbing, or better still injured and disillusioned with...

Remember that being a successful athlete, not matter which arena you compare yourself in (peers, amateur, professional) by definition means ...

Peter commented on my last post: “What about the fact that some (many? most?) climbers are in this game for the sheer fun of it? It seems t...

I just did some interviews about my climbing for various publications. The questions, in one way or another, ask “what is your secret”? It’s...

I’ve written a lot on this site and recently in my Coachwise series on the MCofS site about the crippling and often hidden consequences of f...

In my recent coachwise articles published in Scottish Mountaineer (and online here ) I’ve talked a lot about the power of influences on your...

Averaging out at once every day, I get a very similar email, which goes roughly like this (with minor variations): “Hi Dave, I’m a really ke...

So, you eat well, sleep well, climb three+ times a week and mix up the training venue/activity/angle/rock type etc, but you STILL don’t impr...

Coaching is really great fun. I don’t have experience coaching other sports but I’m guessing climbing must be pretty interesting as sports g...

Following on from my last post about setting up the conditions to get to work on your climbing, and enjoyment of it, here is a practical one...

Freedom > success (not the other way round) Planning your training starts with organising your time to allow time and space to improve at...