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#450 Magic times
April 22, 2016, 01:00:21 am
Magic times
21 April 2016, 10:48 pm

  from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

Right now I am back in Magic Wood, Switzerland, waiting for the rain and snow to stop. I’ve been here for a week, with a mix of great climbing sessions and the usual wet days. I’m always full of anticipation and excitement for any climbing trip. But this one maybe that bit more than ever as I felt some signs that I feel in maybe the best climbing shape I have been.

In some ways I find this amazing since I worked ~16 hour days more or less non-stop between last October and the Fort William Mountain Festival in February. Some of this work included training and climbing. But the point is, I had a heavy workload with a lot or pressure on my ability to rest and thus sustain a training schedule. I have adapted some good strategies to squeeze maximum benefit from less resting time that I would like.

So what about the training? The minor factor in this has been a solid uninterrupted period of training through the winter on my board and not recovering from surgeries as I have been pretty much non-stop since late 2012! There is nothing ‘rocket science’ about the training really - just turning up, working my weaknesses, completing my workouts and then resting as well as I can between them. Because I have my own board, I have to take extra care not to become too set in my ways with the movements I set for myself. Part of this is having a good range of hold shapes, making sure to record and climb other climbers problems and set informal models of hard moves my projects. Part of it is just setting new problems often. But my big weakness remains ‘old school’ pure finger strength and body power. So I have many basic fingery problems and still spend plenty of time doing my deadhangs. When I do get the opportunity to go to large commercial walls (TCA in Glasgow is my favourite!), I forget the basic stuff and use the opportunity to get more variety of movement styles that expose and work my weaknesses. Obviously, this situation is quite specific to me.

The wall-based training factor is only the minor aspect of my recent improvement because it is overshadowed by the other factor has had such a dramatic effect on my climbing. This factor was radically changing my diet back in October. Many readers have asked me to write about this, and I will. However, it is an ongoing experiment and still a little early to draw any conclusions about exactly what has made the difference. I am also reluctant to potentially influence anyone before completing a broad base of reading on the scientific literature on the subject. This is something I have spent a lot of my spare moments doing and find it a mixture of fascinating, shocking, disturbing, exciting and depressing all at the same time. I have more stages of my ‘experiment of one’ yet to complete. No doubt I have much still to learn. However, so far I have experienced a range of quite dramatic health improvements, quite apart from the original goal - to increase my climbing level.

I did a bit of mixed climbing this season which did rather get in the way of rock training, but was certainly worth it with four IX’s onsight. I finished off just a couple of weeks ago with a repeat of Ines Papert’s Bavarinthia IX,9 in the Gorms. I kind of felt ready to get on something harder, but the season didn’t quite work out for me - the conditions disappeared just as I had my window to go mixed climbing more. Hence I went to Mull and did the crack project instead. Just before I left, I squeezed in two sessions on a nice boulder project on Skye. I was sooooo close on the second session. But it didn’t happen, so I’m hoping for some strong northerlies in mid May when I get my next chance to go there.

In Magic Wood one of my main trip goals was to work on the sit start to Riverbed (8B+). Although I did Riverbed (an 8B in itself) on my last trip very quickly, I got totally stumped by the sit start. I couldn’t do it at all!

At the end of a session last week I surprised myself by linking this part in about 30 minutes work, and excitedly reacquainted myself with the Riverbed section beyond. Next session I arrived rested but in slightly humid conditions. After a warm-up I shocked myself by completing the whole thing on my first try. I didn’t expect that! It’s only the third 8B+ repeat I’ve done, and it was great to feel it was not at my limit at the moment. Check out the video above - it’s a nice boulder!

So obviously I’m excited to see that some of my training decisions are paying off (at least for now) in quite dramatic style, but also what else I could climb while I’m here. Unfortunately, it’s now heaving it down with rain and snow. So I am sitting drinking tea and climbing nothing. Perhaps I will see some of you for my talk at the Aviemore Mountain Film Festival on Friday night (22nd) where I will discuss some of the ideas that have improved my climbing of late. After that I will return to Magic Wood and wait for the rain to stop again.

Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Dave MacLeod blog


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#451 Practice of the Wild
May 02, 2016, 07:00:07 pm
Practice of the Wild
2 May 2016, 1:30 pm



Video still of climbing Practice of the Wild (Font 8C) in Magic Wood last week.

The of Tyler Landman doing the second ascent of Practice of the Wild was what first inspired me to visit Magic Wood in 2012. Obviously I’d already heard about it, as ‘Chris Sharma’s hardest boulder problem’. I’d heard about Chris’s method for the last move - a wild all points off dyno across the roof. Landman looked so dynamic and strong on it and the climbing looked so good. It it was an exemplary piece of hard climbing. I had to go there.

But not for Practice of the Wild - at Font 8c and one the hardest problems in the world according to Daniel Woods who also repeated it, it was too hard for me. Although I do boulder for quite a few months in the year, sometimes as much as 6, I’ve never got much beyond a handful of Font 8Bs. On my 2012 visit, feeling in good shape for me, I did manage two 8B+s () which I was very surprised and delighted with.

Of course bouldering grades do tend to be a bit stiffer in the UK and neither of these felt as hard as some of my own problems in Glen Nevis such as . But operating pretty much on your own, it’s easy to get lost with grades, and I frequently do. I’ll give myself the excuse of not doing one climbing discipline for long enough to get an idea, and stick to it.

In 2012 I did try Practice of the Wild for a session, and confirmed that it was indeed far too hard for me. I couldn’t do any of the crux moves. None. But that was sort of irrelevant. Because I was inspired by it, which is all that really matters. I’m fully accepting that when you try something hard, you might never succeed. If that wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be hard, would it? So who cares whether it’s too hard, so long as it drives your motivation.

I visited Magic Wood again in 2013 for a week (of warm and wet weather). The hardest thing I climbed was 8A. Ridiculous as it is to say, the best thing about the trip was just to stand and look at Practice of the Wild again, and think.



Climbing Dark Sakai (8B) last week. I'd tried it before in October but tweaked my finger on a nasty pocket at the start. This time I could do it first try after a quick reacquaintance.

In the past year or so, I’d gone through two ankle surgery rehabs, a big chunk of the year on crutches and was looking at another surgery. I was 36 and after so much time just trying to be able to walk and climb anything, the idea of reaching a new level of Font 8C seemed laughable. A joke. I looked at the problem and even in my dreamy inner thoughts I felt there was no chance, ever. Don’t kid yourself on MacLeod.

For quite a while I accepted this. Actually it was part of a wider shift in my thinking at the time. I was really trying to come to terms with my loss of form after the surgeries. I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it and was trying to find the best way forward. For a time it seemed like I should accept that upward progress in sport climbing or bouldering was just over for me. As I wrote in Make or Break, I do feel that almost every serious battle scar you pick up in life changes your constraints. It changes the rules of the game for you, sometimes tipping the scales against you. If you are unprepared to push back against this and still fail, it may be better to leave the game. Eventually I realised this was not me. I do still enjoy trying to improve at climbing so much, that playing against poor odds is still worth it for me.

Given some time to recover from the surgeries, I naturally felt this black and white way of thinking melt away a bit. The reasons why I couldn’t keep improving seemed less important when I could get on with a daily routine of actually training and going climbing, ticking routes again, even if they were not hard ones.

Some footage of me climbing my model of Practice on my board in March

So with some positive feelings returning I made a statement of intent by building a model of Practice of the Wild on my board. It was a pretty good one! At first, I couldn’t do any of the moves. After several sessions, I could do two of them individually, then another, then another. But that’s where the progress basically ended. By last September, at my strongest I could string two moves together (of seven). At this rate, I’d maybe climb the model when I was 45?! I’d have to hope it was harder than the real thing. Actually I knew it wasn’t.

And so I knew I needed another ingredient, not an edge, but a supercharger on my climbing standard. You don’t get many of them at 37 (without crossing boundaries of legality and sporting fairness). But you do if you are not thin. I’ve never been a thin climber, and always struggled to keep my body fat % below about 15% (putting me firmly in the outlier category at the high fat end of the Font 8B+ or harder cohort). For reasons I couldn’t fully understand (even now I still only have fluid hypotheses) it was getting harder and harder for me to even tread water in this battle. I still had a hunch that somewhere beneath my tyre was a potential Font 8C climber.

So although this aspect of my preparation clearly would be the linchpin, the trouble with it was that I’d already thrown every single piece of advice coming from sports nutrition at it already, and failed. I’d slowly, depressingly failed for two decades. So how might I suddenly succeed? I’m sorry to break the narrative and potentially spoil the read at this point, but the ‘how’ what came next I’m going to save for a dedicated blog post (well, actually massive essay). Please forgive me for this, but it’s such a controversial topic that I am very concerned that I might be taken out of context, or seen as being flippant or glossing over important details in such an important issue. Also, and not least because the approach I took was precisely the one that many nutritionists warn is a path to outright failure in sport performance. So if you are interested in the ‘how’, it’s coming. For now, here’s what happened:

Phase one of me intervention was reading around 20 books and many hundreds of scientific papers and hundreds more webpages, so I had a handle on what I was doing. In phase two, I easily lost 3.5kgs in less than one month and my climbing standard took an immediate jump. I didn’t really get to test this other than on my board since it was the start of the winter. In phase 2, I maintained my new lower weight and felt great in training with much better energy and much to my surprise a few other long term health issues cleared up as well. During this time I managed to climb my model of Practice of the Wild. So I made it harder so I couldn’t do one of the first moves again and built up to being able to just climb it once at my limit.

In phase three of my dietary changes I dropped another 2.5Kgs, still feeling great and just before my trip to Magic Wood in April I could run laps on the model! When I arrived in Magic Wood I headed straight for Practice. I was somewhat bleary eyed after the long drive across Germany, but I could immediately feel I was much stronger on the moves. But it was on the second session, after a night’s sleep that reality hit - I could link it straight away to the last move! A huge leap in progress, and more than that a realisation that this was not a joke project. I could do this.

Since the start holds were still quite wet I spent time practicing the finishing big dyno a few times. On the third time I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder while holding the swing. “Oh no! Surely I’m not going to get injured now. Not now!!!” It didn’t feel that bad, but not good either. In hindsight I think I just scraped a rotator cuff tendon a bit. But I was worried it might be a SLAP tear. Either way I was terrified of doing the move that way again.

So one night while it snowed about a foot, I broke trail into the wood, set up my lights and worked out another method. A huge cross through stab to a crimp, and then I could get the jug statically. It was maybe a tiny bit harder, but I could do the move several times in isolation.

I had one more session of redpoints to the last move every time. One time I held it and my lower hand pinged off. I knew it could happen next session. But I also knew this could get harder psychologically - playing defensively creates pressure. When all you have to do is not blow your chance, somehow this becomes much harder to avoid!

Sure enough, next session I felt inexplicably a few % weaker. Two mistake riddled brawls to the last move, falling weakly. One fall from lower down. Then a hole opened in my finger. It was unravelling! I’d surely need two days to let the hole heal up, then the rain was coming. Practice of the Wild can stay wet for weeks at a time. I spent half and hour repeatedly doing the last move, systematically trying every tweak in the movement I could think of. I came upon a small improvement. If I pulled up a little higher and went for the move without dropping down so much (more of a snatch than a lunge), it felt a tiny bit more solid. I went for a walk. Looking at my shredded fingers, I figured I wanted one more try that day from the start. If I was going to take two days off and potentially more after the rain, what did it matter if my fingers were totally trashed?

Whatever happened in that moment, the pressure of anticipation for that session dissipating, the walk warming me up a bit, my skin hitting that sweet spot of friction just before it gets too thin, whatever, everything clicked. As soon as I pulled on I felt good. The moves flowed by and I arrived and the last move not feeling anything. It wasn’t until I felt my fingers bite into the crimp that I woke up and realised it was on. I breathed to force me to take my time setting my feet, and then grabbed the massive jug.

Done.



Video still of going for the jug on the last move on the successful attempt. I'll post up a video of it when it's ready.

None of this matters to anyone except me. And only two things about it really matter to me. Firstly, Practice of the Wild is a brilliant piece of climbing, and by being hard enough to give me a good battle, I was able to enjoy it all the more. Secondly, I had to make real progress in my climbing to do it. Well okay one more thing matters, I had to use my brain to figure out how to make the progress. The battle was won while sitting on my ass at 2am with square eyes reading obscure papers on cellular metabolism. There is more to climbing than just pulling on holds.

Footnote: I’m always a bit sensitive writing about weight and climbing. Personally, I think writing about it and being open is much better and healthier than being secretive. But I know disordered eating and inappropriate food restriction happens in climbing and it’s a problem. In my view we’ve got to be open about when it’s appropriate to look at weight as a priority for training for climbing. As I said above, I have a post coming on the ‘how’ of my training intervention. It’s a highly controversial and polarised topic that needs handling with care. So even in that post I’ll be urging you to listen to the whole body of research out there, not just one voice. But from this post if you take anything away from it regarding weight in climbing, let it be these three simple points:

1. I spent months and probably 1000s of hours studying vast quantities of scientific research and discussion before doing anything.

2. I used a strategy for weight loss which does not involve being hungry, or anything other than eating high quality real food.

3. I am a 37 year old male who had a tyre around my waist. My individual story is relevant to me, not you. Fat loss tends to be effective in climbers with excessive amounts of fat. It can be seriously performance negative (at the very least) in those who do not carry excess fat, or people who are growing or have other health conditions. This leads back to point one - start from an informed position.



Climbing Steppenwolf (8B) in three tries.Dave MacLeod

My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes

Source: Dave MacLeod blog


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#452 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 02, 2016, 08:43:06 pm
Good blog post

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#453 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 02, 2016, 09:10:00 pm
Quote
had a tyre around my waist

I call horseshit on that. Kinda annoying when already skinny climbers go on about this shit when they don't know what real weight issues are like.

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#454 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 02, 2016, 10:28:26 pm
I call horseshit on that. Kinda annoying when already skinny climbers go on about this shit when they don't know what real weight issues are like.

I remember seeing Dave at TCA once, 4+ years ago. I was pretty disappointed as in his videos he looked quite tall and stocky but in person he was built like a pre-pubescent male (read as very, very slim) and quite short.

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#455 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 02, 2016, 11:51:46 pm
Quote
had a tyre around my waist

I call horseshit on that. Kinda annoying when already skinny climbers go on about this shit when they don't know what real weight issues are like.

This isn't 'obese: a year to save my life' this is a guy climbing 8C. I don't think he is claiming he had a 'real weight issue', he is claiming he lost some weight and managed to go from 8B+ to 8C which seems pretty likely.

I made huge gains by losing weight and I was not overweight before. I was able to lose weight in a healthy way, but there is obviously a fine line. Athletes in general are notorious for sometimes stepping over that line, not just climbers, but I don't doubt the Dave has some idea about what he is doing and is being pretty honest here.

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#456 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:14:26 am
I'm with Fiend on this one.
His words are quite clear. I've been following MacLeod since his Dumbarton cameo in - what was that? Stick it? And I can't remember him with a tyre around his belly. I could go on with lots of puns here but I won't.
The tyre was probably more in his mind than on his belly, in the meaning that he felt that the extra weight was hindering him a lot. He's always played with weight, the thing that pisses me off is that he complains about being heavy, when in fact he's not.
In any case if the price to pay for 8C bouldering is to look like him, well I for sure won't pay it.

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#457 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:30:25 am
Good to see that fat cunt kept off the battered mars bars long enough to pull himself up an 8c.

In all seriousness though, he's fairly clear there that he talking about being at "the high fat end of the Font 8B+ or harder cohort", not the high fat end of the average UK highstreet. It's a blog about performance climbing. We could also get the violins out about his trip to magic wood where he "only" got up an 8a, but it's a blog about performance climbing, the baseline is different. This is a far cry from the days of jerry eating only a lettuce all week and microwaving his chalk to get up the Dominator.

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#458 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:46:36 am
WOAH wait a minute.....does microwaving chalk actually work??  :o :w00t:

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#459 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:50:58 am
Quote
In any case if the price to pay for 8C bouldering is to look like him, well I for sure won't pay it.

He can diet all he likes Nibs but only genetics will grow a moustache you can be proud of.

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#460 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:51:27 am
In any case if the price to pay for 8C bouldering is to look like him, well I for sure won't pay it.

It's not. Jimmy Webb has climbed 8C, Sharma put the problem up in he first place. Maybe you like their bodies more?

What Dave was saying (it seemed to me) it that he felt he had to do something different to make the step up as he's was training hard, training well and still wasn't where he wanted to be so FOR HIM, he decided to focus on changing his body composition and, FOR HIM, it worked.

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#461 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 09:56:43 am
It's pretty obvious what he's saying, why are some people getting ate up about it?

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#462 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:07:39 am
Because its a forum and people like avoiding work by getting hung up on minutiae and over-analysing the obvious.

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#463 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:10:08 am
Dave used an extreme but carefully considered and methodically researched diet to take his bouldering a step further, no-one is arguing with nor criticising that.

However his phrasing of "wasn't a thin climber" and "beneath my tyre" is pure cobblers and not a fair way to phrase things.

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#464 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:11:52 am
Could have been a road bike tyre?

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#465 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:24:50 am
However his phrasing of "wasn't a thin climber" and "beneath my tyre" is pure cobblers and not a fair way to phrase things.

He'd already framed the whole discussion in terms of being relative to 8b+ climbers physiques, so those turns of phrase seem fine given the context of the whole thing.

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#466 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:27:54 am
Fiend is pissed as he really does have a weight issue, and Nibs has had an issue with Dave Mac for ages.

don't think there's anything else going on here?

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#467 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 10:32:25 am
However his phrasing of "wasn't a thin climber" and "beneath my tyre" is pure cobblers and not a fair way to phrase things.

His way of saying he felt he had some unnecessary fat he could afford to loose without getting to an unhealthily low weight, i.e. without loss of protein.

Maybe he could have done something else to get up 8C, but what he did do is loose 6kg. I imagine lugging 6kg up an 8C is pretty hard. If he is honest about the numbers, and no reason to say he isn't, then that isn't just in his mind.

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#468 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 11:17:21 am
However his phrasing of "wasn't a thin climber" and "beneath my tyre" is pure cobblers and not a fair way to phrase things.

He'd already framed the whole discussion in terms of being relative to 8b+ climbers physiques, so those turns of phrase seem fine given the context of the whole thing.

Aye he was a right fat cunt compared to Dave Graham

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#469 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 11:25:19 am
Exactly  ::) ::) ::)

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#470 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 01:57:54 pm
I have no special issue with Dave Mac, that I don't have with any other people in the world. I've only pointed out, over time, that some times, in my opinion, he had "pissed out of the wc", to use an Italian saying.
I have no problem with him dieting. I simply would not have done it, even to climb 8c.
I am very interested into knowing how much he weighed before dieting.

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#471 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 02:14:50 pm

I have no problem with him dieting. I simply would not have done it, even to climb 8c.
I am very interested into knowing how much he weighed before dieting.

Strange given that you just posted this:

Power Club
STG - one board project, go and try the route at least once before Summer.

...

Sun - more rest after a night on the wc... Lost three kilos. Let's jump on the project!

Just out of interest what is the difference between Dave Mac losing weight to get better and you losing weight and then deciding its time to try your project? Presumably Dave started lighter than you but also presumably Dave climbs harder than you?


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#472 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 02:20:08 pm
"pissed out of the wc", to use an Italian saying.

What does this mean?

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#473 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 02:25:37 pm
I am very interested into knowing how much he weighed before dieting.

He showed a graph of his weight on a previous blog about his 4th Wave 8B first ascent

http://davemacleod.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-4th-wave-arisaig-project-done.html

Looks like he was around 66 kg in June 2015 and then between September and November dropped to around 62-63 kg. I'm assuming this is what "In phase two, I easily lost 3.5kgs in less than one month and my climbing standard took an immediate jump." is referring to in his recent post.

If that is the case, he would have been around the 60 kg mark when he sent Practice of the Wild.

edit: typo

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#474 Re: Dave MacLeod
May 03, 2016, 02:39:58 pm
Out of interest does anyone know how tall Dave is?

 

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