[abarro81]

Ah right, I see where you're coming from. I've always found for me (within the context of being in the UK and climbing/training, trips being a bit different) that working less = better gains.
DM article is quite interesting, though my two gap years (pre and post uni) have been the best 2 years of my life, so it's definitely a good option for some people! (Not necessarily in terms of getting better at climbing, just in terms of fun).

[cheque]

even if Doug so could make me a 9b climber

Who is this Doug?  Does he offer coaching?  I would so like to be a high 8th grade climber if Doug could make that happen.

Get in touch and find out.

[rginns]

 

Ah right, I see where you're coming from. I've always found for me (within the context of being in the UK and climbing/training, trips being a bit different) that working less = better gains.
DM article is quite interesting, though my two gap years (pre and post uni) have been the best 2 years of my life, so it's definitely a good option for some people! (Not necessarily in terms of getting better at climbing, just in terms of fun).

2 years out would be awesome!
Alas for me it's the lunchtime quarry bashing I have to make do with 

[rodma]

Ah right, I see where you're coming from. I've always found for me (within the context of being in the UK and climbing/training, trips being a bit different) that working less = better gains.
DM article is quite interesting, though my two gap years (pre and post uni) have been the best 2 years of my life, so it's definitely a good option for some people! (Not necessarily in terms of getting better at climbing, just in terms of fun).

My year off from work was also fantastic and i climbed loads. definitely managed to train better and climb harder once i knuckled down to a career and had less time to play with.

In saying that, despite having a decent home setup, it is now exceptionally difficult to get time for both me and mrs rodma to train properly more than once a week, but i still try a bit.

I do think Dave could have done with perhaps interviewing a few normal folk, prior to writing that, to give him some perspective. 9 out of 10 climbers was well researched after all, rather than just "here's what i dun". i guess it is just a blog though, so perhaps it's acceptable.

and as for having no snacks about, ffs, it's just like having no wine in the house in order to cut down, there's a shop or two in the tiny town i live in that sells wine and snacks and my legs are perfectly capable of taking me there, wheteher i want to or not.

[nai]

Alas for me it's the lunchtime quarry bashing I have to make do with 

 

Handy working close to crags, when my first arrived I was working near Buxton so at least once a week lunchtimes involved a full speed sprint to Newstones, getting changed en route, running to the crag, warming up in seconds then working a problem or knocking off a load of easy things before reversing the process.  Pretty much ticked the crag in 40 minute sessions.  Once went to Ramshaw instead and got myself stuck soloing, only time I was late, or at least so late that it was mentioned.

A lot of folk on here have done what Dave suggests, just maybe at a different stage in their life to now, university choice or postgrad job still counts as a decision to be closer to climbing (how many climbers in Sheffield are from Sheffield?), maybe easy to forget you made that choice now you're established in a place.  It's not necessarily middle age men with families and careers he's responding to, quite likely to be teens looking to make Uni choices  or 20-somethings who could opt to rent a place elsewhere or choose a different area if looking to buy a place.

[JohnM]

I agree with others who have said that when they took on more responsibility they have improved through a stronger focus and making more efficient use of their training/climbing time.  I have climbed my hardest route since moving to London and taking on a demanding career.  However, I think I have pretty much reached my maximum potential in this context.  I can't train any harder/longer indoors to make bigger gains in the short time I get outdoors.  I either don't have enough time or just get injured.  I think I could improve a grade or so by focusing more on rock climbing for a while so I will probably have a "gap yah" like Barrows soon and see what happens.

[Nibile]

image by Nibile, on Flickr

[rginns]

image by Nibile, on Flickr

F*ck me can I come to your house to train Nibs?
 

[petejh]

Font 8 biscuits no less

[Nibile]

F*ck me can I come to your house to train Nibs?
 

Yes you can.

[rich d]

What's BCCA nibs? Love the 8 biscuits

[abarro81]

branched chain amino acids

[Nibile]

If I tell you that I'd never seen an 8 in those biscuits, can you believe me?
And if I tell you that thanks to you lot, from now on I'll always think about Font 8 whenever I'll have yet another last one biscuit before training?
Don't know if this is good or bad. Probably bad.

[comPiler]

One thing out of your comfort zone
9 December 2014, 12:39 pm



Video above: One thing out of you comfort zone, each day.

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 9/10. 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.

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:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.

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.

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 9/10.Dave MacLeod

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

Source: Online Climbing Coach

[comPiler]

When the regime gets harder
9 December 2014, 1:33 pm



My (latest) board. The result of a decade and a half of relentless work and saving. But worth it.

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!).

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.

With regard to how to keep your climbing standard high in your new, time pressed routine, here are the three number one priorities:

• Build a board.
• Build a board.
• Build a board.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If any of this was easy, it wouldn’t be so rewarding when we crack it.Dave MacLeod

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

Source: Online Climbing Coach

[kelvin]

Where's Nibs?

 

[shark]

Where's Nibs?

 

 

[JohnM]

Dave just seems to be reiterating that you make your own choices in life.  If you disagree with this then I guess that means that you disagree that you are an entity of free will.

[petejh]

Yes, and this is basically what every self-help book does - that 'Regime' post of DM's is just generic self-help applied to climbing. After reading it I find myself thinking that any person who's motivated enough to take the sort of action DM suggests, by definition doesn't need DM's or anyone else's advice on how to do it. Everybody else will just think 'what great advice', not do anything major to change their routine, and move along to the next self-help blog. Perhaps I'm too cynical...
It as if he's explaining how to do all the things only the truly committed people do, but it's aimed at people who aren't or can't be truly committed. Like he's talking to himself. Doesn't make much make sense other than it gets people reading.

[B0405413]

Yes, and this is basically what every self-help book does - that 'Regime' post of DM's is just generic self-help applied to climbing. After reading it I find myself thinking that any person who's motivated enough to take the sort of action DM suggests, by definition doesn't need DM's or anyone else's advice on how to do it. Everybody else will just think 'what great advice', not do anything major to change their routine, and move along to the next self-help blog. Perhaps I'm too cynical...
It as if he's explaining how to do all the things only the truly committed people do, but it's aimed at people who aren't or can't be truly committed. Like he's talking to himself. Doesn't make much make sense other than it gets people reading.

[krymson]

I actually changed my lifestyle to accommodate more climbing, based on that book and stuff like these blogposts, so I'd say it's not entirely going to waste. (I don't claim to be very strong, but I'm certainly much better than I would've been otherwise)

In the short term yes few are going to add an addition to their house, move for the sake of climbing, or quit their job to climb more.

In the long term, people are presented with life choices and it's possible to tilt those towards climbing, often much moreso than you'd think at first.

[petejh]

I agree that there's merit in being made aware of new possibilites. I just think that most people will make the sorts of high-commitment choices DM describes based on who they already are and what they aspire to acheive regardless of being influenced by any coaching blog post. But that's just my take - stuff like build a board, move, adjust work routine etc. are just obvious to me, even though they're often difficult actions to take and might force you to compromise your goals or face up to how much you want something. That's not aimed just at DM although he seems fond recently of the self-help change your life type advice.

A beginer/improver doesn't need (or likely want) full-on life changing advice. Whereas a lifer with an ingrained routine considering making a firm commitment to reach a higher level/achive a lifetime goal might benefit from tips on shaking up their habits/circumstances - but I still think this sort of person is likely to already be well-experienced in life-balance struggles and knowledge of options/workarounds by time they get to this stage in their climbing.
There seems a disconnect in some of DM's advice between the commitment level required (high) and the likely commtiment and skill level of most of the audience (low to mid?).

[Stu Littlefair]

Honestly, I think that latest blog post is designed to wind us up

[petejh]

I did wonder about that. Lucky that it's priced accordingly.

[T_B]

Call me cynical, but isn't he just promoting his coaching? Every blog post has reference to getting a coach. If I want life coaching, I'll go to a life coach. If I want someone to remind me that I climb too front on, then I'll go to a climbing coach (or not as the case may be).

DM strikes me as a no-compromise type of person. I wouldn't want to be married to him! Hey, Dave, how about putting up a fingerboard rather than building a full-on board? Or asking your boss for a longer lunch break 1 or 2 days a week so that you can train (someone on here gave this practical advice to Luke in Power Club).

His advice on skin maintenance in his book was very good.