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the shizzle => the blog pile => Topic started by: comPiler on April 27, 2010, 07:00:14 pm
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What school can’t teach you about climbing hard (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/AXOnIuYv8Gs/what-school-cant-teach-you-about.html)
27 April 2010, 2:25 pm
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 especially relevant in my case as I can’t answer that I’m naturally strong, or thin or talented or started climbing before I could walk.I’ve given roundabout answers for years, not understanding the underlying theme myself. In parallel I’ve tried to understand why climbers I’ve coached plateau where they do with apparently all the practical ingredients to keep improving.Recently I’ve thought and talked a lot about school and it’s effects down the line. Sad as it makes me to say it, I learned my ‘secret’ to doing what I have when I was away from school, which happened a lot. A lot of school is about explicitly or implicitly working to fit in. To attain the satisfactory standard of your peers and nothing more. The minimum necessary to get an A and then you can coast. But good performance is by definition not fitting in. You won’t find the solution to the technique, motivation, training, financial, practical or unexplained problem that’s holding you back, by waiting for your teachers or peers or someone on a forum to tell you.I’m not saying they are useless - they are essential for pointing you in the right direction and supplying the initial shove. After that you roll to a stop pretty quickly unless you start producing your own momentum.Fifteen years of learning to wait to be told what to do and put in the minimum amount of work is really hard to unlearn. Start now!Examples of climbers doing what others were not:Jerry Moffatt’s generation were all shy about wanting to really go for it and be truly competitive. Instead, Jerry set his sights publicly on the next horizon even though his ambitiousness stood out to onlookers as brashness.Patxi Usobiaga understood that there was room to make training for competition climbing more scientific for someone with the will to do or access the necessary learning. His competitors were too busy just showing up at the wall to be bothered with this extra effort.Adam Ondra probably clocked up more metres of limestone climbed by the time he was five that you have in your whole climbing career. Watching him, you might mistake him for a speed climber. Could you climb as fast as that without messing up?So if this idea helped me, how? Two examples:A lot of climbers will try one climb for a few tries, maybe even several days of tries. I got used to this early, because I was rubbish at climbing. So used to it, I thought, why not try not just a few more times, but a lot more times. At Dumbarton rock I tried single moves hundreds of times. Not just the same way every time. I experimented by changing one aspect of the movement each time and recording the results in my mind. After 15 years of this I became probably the weakest 8c+ climber you’ll ever meet. In training I apply the same principle - at the bouldering wall I concentrate during my rests on what happened during the last attempt and what the plan is for the next. This is why I don’t get bored training on my own.I needed to be able to understand training to be able to adapt the advice written in training books with less error. So I studied it for 6 years at university. This was the shortest way to getting the answers I needed - the shortcut! The long way round is to stumble around with trial and error and poor bits of advice forever. My good fortune was that I came to realise it was the shortcut.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3651715560696783090?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/AXOnIuYv8Gs)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Chasing numbers versus breaking barriers (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/GtE-qJ2Qye4/chasing-numbers-versus-breaking.html)
27 April 2010, 10:05 pm
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 to me (from my bumbly-level vantage point) that chasing numbers is 99% drudgery, so many climbers naturally plateau at the point of maximum fun for least effort (however you define those two dimensions).Tangentially, a few climbers I've known who've played the numbers game inevitably reach a performance plateau no matter how hard they work, and in a couple of cases that's been sufficiently demoralising that they've given the game away entirely.”
I started replying as a comment but thought it might be better as a whole point seeing as he raises such an important question.Chasing numbers is 100% drudgery because numbers are meaningless. Improving at climbing is entirely different. Depending on how you go about it, it can be a source of endless and deep enjoyment and satisfaction, or it can be hellish.It’s enjoyable and satisfying if you are oriented towards using all your skills to break the barriers and are good at measuring when you’ve broken them. It’s also enjoyable when you suddenly get an insight into how you have become stuck in your ways or limited in your ideas about how to improve. This is a constant battle (and hence enjoyment). Plateaus are not really frustrating because they are ever more challenging opportunities to play the next round of the improvement game. The early rounds, where all you have to do is show up as a young climber and your muscles get bigger are just the warm-ups. Once you hit your first plateau the game gets much more interesting and ultimately rewarding. More on this in the first chapter of my book.It can be hellish if you think you are chasing improvement, but deep down you are really chasing numbers. You move from hollow victory to ever more hollow victory until you hit a plateau and realise at the bitter end your top number was no more satisfying than the first. That feeling would make any athlete throw in the towel.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5718473857346277203?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/GtE-qJ2Qye4)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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A2 pulley injuries review re-posted (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/XVTmdpSjvKE/a2-pulley-injuries-review-re-posted.html)
4 May 2010, 8:37 pm
Disruption of finger flexor pulleys in rock climbers: prevalence, diagnosis and strategies for rehabilitation.NB: This article was formerly in the articles section of my old website. It was really popular so I’ve reposted it here.BackgroundThe sport of rock climbing has developed into a mainstream, competitive sport with considerable popularity. This growth is likely to be partly attributable to the virtual elimination of the significant danger aspect in rock climbing, within the disciplines of sport climbing (routes protected by pre-placed anchor bolts) and indoor climbing. In addition, the explosion in numbers of indoor climbing centres and organised competitions in most cities in Europe and the U.S. have prompted a significant rise in participation. The focus of these new disciplines is the gymnastic, athletic and competitive aspects of movement on rock (Jones 1991).The history of structured and specific training patterns in rock climbing spans only the past few decades (Morstad 2000). Today, considerable sport specific literature together with increased availability of climbing facilities has fuelled a dramatic rise in standards throughout the sport, such that its basic biomechanical demands have changed and continue to change. Today’s hardest rock climbs feature angles up to and beyond 45 degrees beyond vertical (Goddard & Neumann 1993). On such overhanging terrain, the legs cannot support much of the body mass in the vertical direction; they can only push the body along the plane of the surface (Fig 1). As the angle increases, the forces exerted shift increasingly to the smaller muscles of the upper limbs. This area is also the focus of rock climber’s training regimes with exercises such as ‘deadhanging’ (isometric hangs from fingertip edges) and ‘campus boarding’ (a form of training based on plyometrics which involves jumping between fingertip sized rungs on a wall) (Goddard & Neumann 1993; Morstad 2000). The forearm, specifically the finger flexors have been identified by several studies as the most significant centre of muscular fatigue during rock climbing (Watts 1998). Figure 1. Elite level climbing places high demands on the fingers.In climbing movements, the fingers produce tension on a hold to support a proportion of the body mass while the elbow and shoulder joints flex to pull the body upward. The isometric contraction of the finger flexors is interrupted when reaching towards the next hold. Finger flexor strength has been shown to be a determinant of performance in rock climbing (Bollen & Cutts 1993; Grant et al 1996). Holds used by climbers, even at a recreational level are remarkably small (often less than 10mm deep) and can often accommodate only 1-4 digits (Bollen 1990). Several different grip styles can be used to maximise the force produced on holds (Goddard & Neumann 1993). Bollen identified one style in particular, known as “crimping” which is of particular relevance to injury patterns among climbers. It is thought that over 90% of climbers use this grip style regularly (Bollen 1988). Crimping involves placing the fingertips on the hold with the distal interphalangeal joint (DIP) held extended while the proximal interphalangeal joint (PIP) and the metacarpophalangeal joint are held flexed. An early study investigating common rock climbing injuries reported that the hand and wrist was the commonest site of climbing related injury (Bollen 1988). Incidence of pain, sometimes accompanied by swelling on the volar aspect of rock climber’s fingers, often centred near the PIP joint was a common complaint (Bannister & Foster 1986; Bollen 1998). Bollen hypothesized that the site of such injury might be the flexor pulley system. The purpose of the flexor pulleys is to maintain the position of the flexor tendons, flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) and flexor digitorum profundis (FDP) close to the phalanges. In a 1988 case study Bollen observed pain and swelling over the volar aspect of the proximal phalanx of the middle finger in a 20 year old rock climber. Avulsion of the FDS of FDP tendons was ruled out, as flexion against resistance was possible. There was visible and palpable ‘bowstringing’ (bulging of the flexor tendons away from the phalanges) at the PIP joint, pointing to rupture of one or more of the flexor pulleys. There is no mention of any confirmation by imaging of this diagnosis. The climber described the injury as occurring suddenly while holding onto a ‘pocket’ hold with only the middle and ring fingers. The climber’s feet slipped and caused sudden increased strain on the fingers, with immediate pain, swelling and subsequent bruising experienced locally on the affected finger. Bollen suggested that this type of injury was already well known among climbers and the study prompted a larger investigation of its prevalence. Pulley injuries among climbers had already been described in the French and German literature (rock climbing is particularly popular in both countries) as early as 1985 (Schweizer 2000).PrevalenceBollen & Gunson (1990) examined 67 world-class climbers at the first ever rock climbing indoor world cup event in 1989 for signs of current of previous hand injury. Flexor pulley injuries constituted by far the most common complaint, affecting 26% of the climbers, mainly affecting the ring finger. The injury was diagnosed by observation and palpation of flexor tendon bowstringing on resisted flexion compared to the same finger on the other hand. The injuries had occurred suddenly while falling or slipping while pulling maximally on a small hold, causing localised pain and varying degrees of swelling and bruising on the affected finger. Again, no imaging was used no attempts were made to classify the severity of the pulley injury. It was noted that the climbers considered firm taping with non-stretch zinc oxide tape around the affected part of the finger allowed continued training in the presence of injury and made the injury “feel better”. A more recent study (Wyatt et al 1996) reported one case of pulley injury in nineteen climbers presenting to a local A & E with a range of climbing related injuries. A comprehensive review of patterns of all types of rock climbing injury by Rooks (1997) suggested that 30% of all injuries are centred around the PIP joint and that such injuries are present in 50% of sport climbers. The study suggests possible PIP injuries comprise of flexor pulley tears, FDS insertion rupture or PIP collateral ligament strains. Rooks suggests that any of these injuries may progress to fixed flexion deformity or contracture of the PIP joint and athroses. Bollen & Gunson (1990) also found evidence of fixed flexion deformity in 24% of climbers as well as chronic PIP collateral ligament injury and two cases of FDS tenoperiositis. Rohrbough et al (2000) studied the prevalence of ‘overuse’ injuries in a group of elite climbers attending a national level climbing competition (n = 42). Collateral ligament injury at the PIP joint was most prevalent (40%) and only 1 competitor had no signs of upper extremity injury. Evidence of A2 pulley injury was present in 50% of the climbers. 26% of these showed evidence of bowstringing while a further 24% had pain over the A2 pulley but no clinical bowstringing. The authors suggest that A2 pulley injury where bowstringing is absent is the result of an isolated pulley rupture. Other finger injuries described included flexor tendon strains (referred to as Flexor unit strains) and tendon nodules. The authors note that most subjects who had consulted health professionals following their injuries reported a lack of appreciation by professionals for the demands of climbing on the body, and little help with diagnosis or treatment prescription. Gabl et al (1999) suggested that prevalence of flexor pulley injuries among recreational climbers (outside the professional competition circuit) might be far greater than the literature would suggest. Most case studies have been based on patients who present to medical practitioners with an injury. Gabl suggests that 60-70% of injured climbers do not seek medical attention. Both Gabl et al (1998) and Bollen & Gunson (1990) sampled elite competitors at an international event. Clearly, this sample excludes those competitors who are in layoff due to injury.The general finding from the studies described above is that PIP joint injuries among rock climbers are most prevalent on the middle and ring fingers. It is likely that this is because these fingers are most often used on ‘pocket’ holds, which can only accommodate two fingers. Other pathologies in this area, which have been described, include tenosynovitis (Bannister & Foster 1986) and abnormalities of the phalanges (Bollen & Wright 1994). The radiographic changes included formation of thickenings of the proximal phalangeal cortices at the attachment of the distal edge of the A2 flexor pulley.Given the range of injuries experienced by rock climbers centring around the fingers and the PIP joint in particular, there is a clear need for application of detailed knowledge of the functional anatomy of the fingers in diagnosis of finger injuries. Furthermore, there needs to be an establishment of sound and thorough diagnostic techniques for climbing related injuries to ensure appropriate treatment is subsequently applied.Functional anatomy of the flexor pulley systemThe flexor tendon sheath of the fingers is a continuous connective tissue structure running from the metacarpophalangeal joint to the DIP joint. The transverse fibres of the palmar aponeurosis may also be considered part of the pulley system (Phillips et al 1996). The flexor pulley system is a series of thickened fibrous tunnels running across the flexor tendons that maintain and stabilise the position of the flexor tendons close to the phalanges during flexion (Martinoli et al 2000). There are five annular pulleys, A1-A5, positioned where the sheath is required to be stiff. Three cruciate pulleys, C1-C3, are aligned over the tendons where the sheath must flex. The continuous flexor sheath contains a synovial membrane that allows tendon gliding and assists (along with the vinculae tendinum) with tendon nutrition.The A1 pulley is situated anteriorly to the metacarpophalangeal joint capsule. The A2 pulley lies over the proximal phalanx. This pulley is the longest pulley and has a well-developed distal free edge containing synovial fluid. A2 is considered the most important pulley as flexor pulley system function is most affected by excision of this pulley. There are well-defined ridges on the proximal phalanx where the A2 pulley attaches, particularly at the distal edge. These attachments can become thickened in climbers as age advances (Bollen & Wright 1994). A1 and A2 must absorb bowstringing forces from both the FDS and FDP flexor tendons. The A3 is a narrow pulley overlying the PIP joint capsule. The A4 pulley, again slightly longer than the joint pulleys, lies over the centre of the middle phalanx. The smaller and only recently described A5 pulley lies over the DIP joint (Phillips et al 1996). During flexion, the cruciate fibres become more transversely aligned and the edges of the annular pulleys draw together to become a continuous fibrous tunnel. The length of each pulley varies with the length of the digit and thickness varies with the relative length of the pulley.The mechanical advantage or moment arm of the flexor tendons depends on the perpendicular distance between the joint and tendon. The flexor pulley system effectively reduces the moment arm of the tendons over the finger joints by keeping them very closely apposed to the phalanges. By doing this, the tendon excursion required to provide a given range of joint flexion is greatly reduced. The pulley system permits 180 degrees of angular motion across the PIP and DIP joints for 2.5 cm of tendon excursion (Rispler et al 1996). This function is important and makes physiological sense as muscles are capable of producing extremely large forces but incapable of shortening many times their own length (Hunter et al 1984). Thus, an intact pulley system is considered essential for normal hand function and pulley ruptures are regularly treated by surgical reconstruction (Lin et al 1990). Sectioning of the A2 and A4 pulleys results in a need for 30% greater tendon excursion to obtain an equivalent PIP joint flexion (Le Viet et al 1996).In addition to its importance in maintenance of appropriate lever arms, an intact pulley system, through its effects on tendon excursion, is essential for flexor tendon function and health. The flexor tendons of the hand do not ‘glide’ as such through the synovial and fibro-osseous sheath. The tendons are attached to the paratenon that surrounds it (Hunter et al 1984). This relatively elastic tissue is relaxed during the mid-point of tendon motion. When the fingers are more flexed or extended, thus the peritendinous structures are stretched. This stretching uses energy and has been recognised as an important factor in tendon transfer. Furthermore, abnormal patterns of tendon excursion (the result of pulley malfunction) cause the phenomenon of ‘creep’, where the surrounding structures become permanently stretched. This effect causes an inflammatory reaction that eventually results in additional fibrous tissue deposits. It has also been shown that fibrous tissue deposits form under the bowstringing flexor tendons in the presence of pulley tears. Both these phenomena lead to flexion contracture, a condition that has been described in rock climbers suffering from pulley injury.Strength and efficiency of the flexor pulley systemThe pulley system of the middle finger is the strongest of the digits, followed by the index, ring and little fingers (Bowers et al 1994; Marco et al 1998). The strengths of the individual pulleys have been extensively studied with varying results (depending on testing protocol), as have the effects of pulley excision. Pulley excision or rupture causes varying degrees of loss of flexion, depending on the extent and position of the pulley rupture. Tropet et al (1990) noted that in a rock climber diagnosed with A2 pulley rupture, active flexion of the PIP joint was impossible. Yet when the affected finger was gripped anteroposteriorly by the examiner, flexion became possible once more. Lin et al (1990) studied the mechanical properties of the pulleys in cadaveric specimens. They found that the maximum breaking strength (Newtons/mm pulley length) were similar for the annular pulleys. However, due to the different lengths of the pulleys, the maximum breaking loads differed significantly. A2 was strongest (407 N) followed by A1 and A4 (209 N). A3, A5 and the cruciate pulleys had much lower breaking loads (<100 N). Load deformation curves were also produced, showing that A2 and A4 tend to be stiffer and less deformable than the other pulleys. An important conclusion from this study was that surgical reconstruction of pulleys should pay attention to pulley position, thickness and length. When pulleys were reconstructed using a ‘belt loop’ technique, near normal breaking strengths could be achieved. Bollen (1990) suggested that the force produced on the pulleys by a 70 Kg man supporting his body mass through one finger using a ‘crimp’ grip would be sufficient to exceed the breaking strengths reported by Lin et al. A similar study (Marco et al 1998) suggested that such an estimate may be an underestimation and the forces produced by supporting body weight may be three times as great as the breaking strengths recorded for pulleys in their cadaveric specimens. However, it is recognised by Marco et al that he age and fragility of the specimens may have adversely affected pulley strength. Marco et al replicated a ‘crimp’ grip and measured breaking strengths of the pulleys with the hand and flexor system essentially intact. The flexor tendons were attached to a loading device and force was applied until failure of all the pulleys and ultimately avulsion of the flexor tendons. With this grip, a distinctive pattern of failure was observed in most cases. A4 ruptured first, followed by A3, A2 and finally the FDS and FDP tendons. A1 did not rupture in any of the 21 fingers tested. Breaking loads were significantly lower that of Lin et al. Lin et al used specifically designed hooks to load the pulleys evenly. In vivo, the forces on the pulleys during ‘crimping’ may be unevenly distributed, creating a ‘cheesewire’ tearing effect. Marco et al suggest that the absence of skin on the volar aspect of the specimens may have reduced the breaking loads observed. These authors also observed that once pulleys A2-A4 had ruptured, the direct transfer of bowstringing force of the FDP tendon of the overlying FDS tendon caused avulsion of FDS. This finding has clinical significance, demonstrating the need for prudent management of pulley injuries in order to prevent the more serious complication of tendon avulsion.Bowers et al suggested that occurrence pulley rupture in vivo is dependent on the degree of flexion of the finger. They suggest that the correct conditions for pulley injury are created when a sudden additional force is applied while the pulleys are already loaded and the finger is flexed to a high degree. In their case study of nine patients with pulley rupture, the A2 pulley ruptured first. Again A1 ruptures were not observed. Several other case studies have suggested that A2 pulley rupture is the most common injury among climbers (Cartier et al 1985; Tropet et al 1990; Moutet et al 1993; Gabl et al 1998). Many of these studies used evidence of clinical bowstringing across the PIP joint as the main diagnostic indicator of A2 injury. However, Marco et al observed that pulley ruptures rarely occurred as isolated events and that clinical bowstringing was only evident after A2-A4 had ruptured, a finding supported by 16 case studies by Martinoli et al (2000). Le Viet et al (1996) observed both isolated A2 and A4 ruptures as well as combined injury to the pulleys in seven patients.Rispler et al (1996) identified a need to detail the efficiency of each flexor pulley in order to determine the functional importance of each. The rationale for this is that during reconstructive flexor tendon surgery, the surgeon must balance a need to preserve pulley function for reasons outlined above and allow sufficient access to the flexor tendons to allow repair and prevent postoperative adhesions forming. Rispler and co workers examined the effects of random pulley excision on a range of functional measures, using cadaver specimens. A5 sectioning produced no difference in tendon excursion efficiency or work (force produced by the flexed finger multiplied by excursion) efficiency, and was deemed expendable. Similarly, A1 sectioning had no impact on excursion and actually improved work efficiency of the flexor system. A2, A3 and A4 each made significant individual contributions to tendon function. However, A2 sectioning alone produced little reduction in work efficiency despite significantly affecting excursion. The authors concluded that A4 rather than A2 was the most important pulley, contradicting earlier findings. The authors recommend that reconstructive surgery should aim to preserve at least A2-A4 in order to protect normal functioning.Diagnosis of pulley injuryThe importance of accurate diagnosis for preventing further injury and preserving normal hand function has been clearly outlined above. Greater understanding among physicians of the nature and demands of rock climbing would benefit appreciation of the mechanism for pulley injuries. However, such injuries have also been documented in non climbers (Le Viet et al 1996). There are several methods of assessment of suspected pulley injuries available. In addition, there are some prevalence issues that are of note here.Early studies used the appearance of clinical bowstringing as the main indicator of pulley tears. The appearance of bowstringing is clearly a simple and conclusive method of diagnosis at the initial examination of the patient. Depending on the extent of the injury (i.e. how many pulleys have ruptured), bowstringing may be apparent on the volar aspect of the proximal phalanx, PIP joint, distal phalanx or all three. Bowstringing maybe visible and palpable in the resting finger, but due to the weak pulley effect of the skin, palpation during resisted flexion should also be performed. Active flexion should be possible by the patient in the absence of tendinopathies, but range may be severely limited if several pulleys are damaged. In addition, late presentation by the patient may result in the development of fixed flexion contracture by mechanisms discussed above. Several studies have indicated that isolated pulley rupture may not produce sufficient bowstringing to be detectable either at examination or by a range of imaging techniques (see below). Thus, more information should be sought at examination. If the injury is fresh, there may be evidence of local swelling, tenderness and pain over the affected area. The patient should be questioned about this and the occurrence of the injury. Pulley ruptures commonly occur during ‘crimping’ manoeuvres during climbing, especially if there was a sudden additional loading due to a hand or foot slipping off a hold. Injuries are more common while climbing in cold weather of while warming up. Patients have also commonly experienced an audible ‘pop’ or ‘bang’ at the time of rupture, sometimes accompanied by pain and immediate swelling. However, these indicators do not necessarily occur in limited or partial pulley tears (Rohrbough et al 2000). Imaging has been used to detect clinical bowstringing and reinforce the findings of initial examination. Imaging is often expensive and may only be necessary when the findings of an examination are unclear. This may often be the case if pain and swelling interfere with the examination procedure. The merits of using various imaging modalities have been reviewed in the literature. MRI, CT and ultrasonography have all been used successfully to detect bowstringing. X-ray scanning is not helpful to pulley injury diagnoses unless injury to bony tissue is suspected (Bowers et al 1994). For example, x-ray may be required if avulsion of one of the flexor tendons at its insertion is suspected. Le Viet et al (1996) reported excellent results in visualising flexor tendon bowstringing using computed tomography (CT) scanning on a sagittal plane. Bowstringing was more obvious when the finger was scanned while flexed against resistance. The authors recommended this type of imaging as comparative examination of the opposite finger and use of flexion against resistance is possible. Gabl et al (1998) used MRI scanning on sagittal and coronal planes both to confirm diagnoses and measure a range of clinically relevant variables. The researchers were able to diagnose both complete isolated tears and partial pulley tears (of A2) using MRI. Such detailed information on the extent of the pulley damage was possible as the extent and position of the flexor tendon bowstringing was clearly visible. Patients with incomplete pulley tears were successfully treated with a non-operative treatment protocol. The main finding of the study was that bowstringing, observed at MRI that extends proximally as far as the base of the proximal phalanx should be treated with surgical reconstruction.Given the expense and limited availability of MRI and CT scanning, more recent research has examined the effectiveness of ultrasound as a viable diagnostic tool for pulley injury. Klasuer et al (1999) recognised the potential of ultrasonography in this area as it can detect soft tissue anatomy and inflammatory changes. It was hypothesised that this type of imaging may be of particular use for finger injuries as the required penetration depth is low, allowing increased resolution with use of higher scanning frequencies. This study provided valuable information on the anatomy and pathophysiology of the pulley system. By comparing a group of 34 elite climbers who had recently experienced suspected pulley injury to age and sex matched controls several variables could be measured to establish patterns in health and disease. It was demonstrated that clinical bowstringing was completely absent even during resisted flexion in controls. This demonstrates the relative inelasticity of the pulley structures. 26 symptomatic fingers among the climbers demonstrated increased (0.14 cm) flexor tendon to phalanx distance. A further 3 demonstrated bowstringing of 0.31 cm with complete rupture of the A2 pulley confirmed by subsequent MRI scanning. This result points to a greater proportion of partial tears among climbers than previously recognised in the literature. The climbers also demonstrated increased flexor tendon thickness (0.56 cm) compared to controls (0.42 cm). In addition thickening of the A2 pulley was observed in the climbers (0.11cm) compared to controls (0.08 cm). Several other pathologies were observed on the climbers including tenosynovitis, cysts, and thickening of the PIP joint capsule. In addition tendon gliding function could be visualised in real time. Thus, Ultrasound is a highly attractive modality for the imaging of this type of injury. However, other studies have raised concern about the requirement for considerable skill in interpretation by the radiographer and the potential inter-observer variability. Another study (Martinoli et al 2000) compared the effectiveness of ultrasonography and MRI scanning in 16 injured elite rock climbers. Again, healthy fingers showed the flexor tendons aligned very close to the phalanges at ultrasound scanning. The pulleys were again visible as a hyperechoic line on the volar aspect of the tendons. Again, partial tearing of the A2 pulley was diagnosed by thickening of A2 in the absence of significant bowstringing. The diagnoses from MRI and ultrasound scanning correlated well. Ultrasound was recommended by the authors as a viable and inexpensive method of scanning finger injuries to achieve accurate diagnosis. Non-operative treatment protocolsThere are two main protocols available to treat pulley tears, pulley reconstruction at surgery or conservative treatment with rest, splinting and NSAIDS. The factors influencing the decision of the practitioner as to which protocol to choose includes how old the injury is, success of previous conservative treatment, competitive level of the athlete being treated, the age of the patient and most importantly, the extent of the pulley damage. As discussed above, the prevalence of isolated partial tears among climbers may have been underestimated by the literature. Patients with partial tears, often of A2 are not thought to be at risk of fixed flexion contracture or flexor tendon avulsion (providing appropriate treatment and advice are given) and may even have been able to continue training with the injury (Bollen 1988). Thus, non-operative treatment is recommended in these cases (Gabl et al 1998). Some of the studies discussed above have used splinting of the injured finger followed by gradual progressive increases in use before resumption of previous levels of training. All studies have reported successful results and it is thought that the flexor pulley system repairs well compared to other connective tissue structures. However, Rohrbough et al (2000) indicates that there remains some disagreement between researchers as to the treatment of pulley tears. Tropet et al (1990) suggested that conservative repair may lead to a chronic weakness of flexion. However, there are numerous reports of successful return to top level climbing following pulley tears (Bollen 1990) and chronic bowstringing should theoretically translate to increased strength in the finger flexors by increasing mechanical advantage (at the expense of range of motion). The main components of non-operative treatment regimes are discussed below. If the injury is fresh, then a standard RICE procedure should be followed. However, many cases present several weeks or even months after the initial injury as normal daily life activities are not adversely affected by partial tears. There is little information available in the literature regarding splinting techniques. Techniques used for post-operative treatment are discussed below. Some literature has suggested layoff from climbing for up to 3 months. However it is well known that underuse results in sometimes severe degeneration of connective tissue structures as well as muscles (Kirkendall et al 1997). Hunter et al (1984) suggests that passive range of motion and gentle activity should be commenced after three weeks. Sandmeier & Renstrom (1997) conclude from a review of treatment principles in tendon disorders that exercise should be encouraged and will promote healing. It is added that resumption at a lower level of the athletes sport may cause frustration and over ambitious rates of progression, leading to re-injury. Thus, an alternative therapy such a squeezing a ball may be useful. However, while such therapy is useful in promoting healing in the injury, it does not prevent atrophy of other healthy tissues. These concerns are of particular relevance in rock climbing as very few athletes, even at world class levels have a coach to monitor and discipline the rehabilitation program. Given the fact that several different grips can be used in rock climbing, it should theoretically be possible to resume climbing as soon as the inflammatory phase is over. If the climber uses only an open handed grip (Goddard & Neumann 1993) where the DIP joint is flexed and the PIP joint remains at zero degrees of flexion. Using this grip, only the A5 pulley is required to resist a flexor tendon bowstringing effect, and injury to this has not been described in the literature. In the presence of pulley tears, bowstringing does not occur unless the PIP joint is flexed. Moreover, patients with pulley tears report that pain from the injury disappears when this grip is used for climbing (Schweizer 2000). However, such a protocol may be difficult and dangerous for the climber to undertake as the crimp grip is widely used and is likely to be habitual. It is plausible that finger exercises performed on a finger board with strict adherence to an open handed grip (routinely used in normal training patterns) may be a safer method of preventing atrophy of other tissues during rehabilitation and promoting psychological health of the injured athlete. There are no reports in the literature of the viability of this technique.NSAIDS may be of use to control excessive inflammation where an injury becomes chronic. Indomethecin has been shown to increase tendon strength and collagen content (Kirkendall et al 1997). The rationale for using NSAIDS during rehabilitation of connective tissue areas is primarily to reduce inflammation, which is assumed will lead to a speeding up the healing process. A secondary objective is to reduce pain from the injury, either in the acute phase or later, to allow a resumption of the activity. Reviews of the use of NSAIDS in healing have reported unconvincing results (Sandmeier & Renstrom 1997). It is clear that the inflammatory phase is a vital stage in healing and mediates initiation of the later stages of repair. Gailey & Raya (2001) suggest that therapeutic interventions should not necessarily be aimed at eliminating inflammation, but rather “maximizing the conditions for connective tissue regeneration”.Chronic inflammation and edema at the site of an injury may result in certain phagocyte cells with short lifespans to die and leak their enzyme contents into the injury site, thus damaging healthy tissue. In addition the high pressures caused by excessive edema reduce blood flow to the area. The enzymatic reactions involved in collagen synthesis are dependent on oxygen availability at the injury site (Anderson et al 2000). Under normal circumstances, the inflammatory stage of repair lasts only a week or so. After this period is completed, rehabilitation should focus on increasing blood flow to the injury and improving range of movement.Stretching is recognised as an important promoter of formation of strong compacted scar tissue (Gailey & Raya 2001). Two types of finger flexor stretch have been detailed in climbing literature. These involve pulling the finger in the varus direction, effectively hyper extending the metacarpophlangeal joint and PIP joint (Gresham 1996). Deep friction massage (DFM) has been successfully used to treat ligament tears and promotes local hyperaemia, analgesia and reduction of adhesion formation. DFM is applied perpendicular to the direction of the fibres in the tissue being treated. The aim of this therapeutic modality is to separate fibres, mechanically assisting alignment in the appropriate direction. Flexor pulley fibres run in a transverse direction and it follows that massage should be longitudinal along the affected finger. Studies have shown that the effects of DFM are dependent on mechanical force. Heavy pressure must be applied to promote fibroblast proliferation.A relatively poorly understood method of increasing local blood flow is ice massage. Ice is routinely used to reduce circulation, swelling and pain during the acute inflammatory phase. In this type of therapy (cryotherapy) significant cooling is applied to reduce the skin temperature to 12-15 Celsius. This results in vasoconstriction and resultant reduced blood flow. However, it has been observed that more gentle cold application to a small area around the injury has a somewhat different effect. The skin temperature should not fall below 15 Celsius. After a brief period of vasoconstriction, there is a large reactive hyperaemia. Lewis first described this reaction in the hands in 1930. The Lewis reaction is thought to be a tissue protective mechanism, but its function is not well understood (Lemons & Downey 2001). The reactive vasodilatation occurs after 30-40 minutes of cold application and when the hand is sufficiently warm once more, vasoconstriction occurs once more and the pattern continues in an oscillating fashion. Thus, the treatment should ideally last 30-40 minutes and should involve only moderate cooling. Circumferential taping of the injured pulley is widely and routinely used for both prevention and rehabilitation of pulley tears among rock climbers. Non stretch, zinc oxide tape of 1.3 cm width is used. Schweizer (2000) tested the effectiveness of pulley taping. The findings were that taping was minimally effective in relieving load from the A2 pulley. The effect was maximised (10% of bowstringing force) when the tape is positioned near the distal end of the proximal phalanx. The tape absorbed progressively less bowstringing force as the force produced at the fingertip increased. This result has two implications. Firstly, taping is likely to be most effective during the earlier stages of rehabilitation when the forces produced by the fingers are lower. Secondly, taping is unlikely to prevent pulley injuries, as these are likely to occur when forces on the pulley are maximal. This finding is supported by Warme & Brooks (2000) who showed that taping had no effect in preventing pulley ruptures in cadaveric specimens.Surgical pulley reconstructionThere is disagreement in the literature about the requirement for surgical repair of pulleys. While it is clear that an intact pulley system is crucial to long term hand function, successful repair can occur with conservative treatment. Surgery if often carried out where there is complete rupture of more than one pulley. Various techniques have been used to repair pulleys. Where the ends of the pulley are intact, a simple end to end suture or Kapandji’s technique (Tropet et al 1990) has proven effective. Otherwise grafting from the FDS tendon or palmaris longus is generally performed (Hunter et al 1984). Repair of at least A2-A4 is necessary to retain normal function and prevent fixed flexion contracture. Ideally all pulleys should be repaired and A2 should be greater than 0.5 cm wide in order to adequately withstand bowstringing forces (Lin et al 1990). Studies have shown that correctly repaired pulleys can reach similar breaking loads to healthy pulleys. Patients are kept in a dorsal extension block plaster split for three weeks with the interphalangeal joints in extension. Passive motion exercises are commenced immediately after. PreventionAs discussed above, circumferential taping is of limited preventative value. Decreased reliance on the crimp grip, cautious use of holds which fit less than three digits, and a more controlled climbing style have all been recommended to avoid injury. (Goddard 1993). Attention should be paid to the feet as well as the hands as pulley tears often occur as a result of additional loading following the slip of a foot. Gradual progression in training load and thorough warm up and stretching procedures are also important (Gresham 1996). Warm up has been shown to improve the elastic properties of the flexor pulleys (Schweizer 2000). Diet is another factor influencing tissue health and thus predisposition to injury. O’Brien (1997) suggests that adequate supply of proteins, carbohydrate, vitamins and various minerals, particularly iron, manganese, copper and zinc are important for connective tissue turnover. SummaryThe crimp grip used by 90% of rock climbers produces extremely high bowstringing forces from the finger flexor tendons on the digital annular pulley system. Partial tears of isolated pulleys or more significant rupture of several pulleys at once are the most prevalent injury among climbers. Injury is most often found in the A2-A4 pulleys and these pulleys are essential for normal hand function. Bowstringing may be palpable at examination, allowing diagnosis of pulley injury. Various types of imaging will assist accurate diagnosis, especially if examination is not possible. If several pulleys are ruptured, surgical reconstruction is recommended. In less serious tears, non operative rehabilitation has been shown to be successful in restoring normal function and previous levels of sport performance. Rehabilitation should include several techniques for increasing blood flow to this relatively avascular tissue. Taping of the flexor pulleys is of benefit during the early stages of repair but is unlikely to prevent pulley injury.ReferencesAnderson, M. K., Hall, S. J., Martin, M. (2000) Sports injury management. 2nd ed. Lippincott Williams & WilkinsBannister, P., Foster, P. (1986) Upper limb injuries associated with rock climbing. Br. J. Sports Med. 20(2): 55Bollen, S. R. (1988) Soft tissue injury in extreme rock climbers. Br. J. Sports Med. 22(4): 145-147Bollen, S. R. (1990) Injury to the A2 pulley in rock climbers. J. Hand Surg. 15B: 268-270Bollen, S. R., Gunson, C. K. (1990) Hand injuries in competition climbers. Br. J. Sports Med. 24(1): 16-18Bollen, S. R., Cutts, A. (1993) Grip strength and endurance in rock climbers. Proc. Istn. Mech. Engrs. 207: 87-92Bollen, S. R., Wright, V. (1994) Radiographic changes in the hands of rock climbers. Br. J. Sports Med. 28(3): 185-186Bowers, W. H., Kuzma, G. R., Bynum, D. K. (1994) Closed traumatic rupture of finger flexor pulleys. J. Hand Surg. 19A: 782-787Cartier, J. L., Toussant, B., Barlot, P., Herry, J-P., Allieu, Y., Bousquet, G. (1985) Approche d’une nouvelle pathologie de la main liee a la practique de l’escalade. Journal de Traumatologie du Sport. 2: 35-39Gabl, M., Rangger, C., Lutz, M., Fink, C., Rudisch, A., Pechlaner, S. (1998) Disruption of the finger flexor pulley system in elite rock climbers. American journal of sports medicine. 26(5): 651-655Grant, S., Hynes, V., Whittaker, A., Aitchison, T. (1996) Anthropometric, strength, endurance and flexibility characteristics of elite and recreational climbers. J. Sports Sci. 14: 301-309Gailey, R. S., Raya, M. A. (2001) Manual Modalities. in: Gonzalez, E. G., Myers, S. J., Edelstein, J. E., Lieberman, J. S., Downey, J. A. Physiological basis of rehabilitation medicine. 3rd ed. Butterworth Heinemann Goddard, D., Neumann, U. (1993) Performance rock climbing. CordeeGresham, N. (1996) High performance: warming up. High. 166: 14-15Hunter, J. M., Schneider, L. H., Mackin, E. J., Callahan A. D. (1984) Rehabilitation of the hand. 2nd Ed. The C. V. Mosby CompanyJones, D. B. A. (1991) The power of climbing. CordeeKirkendall, D. T. Garrett, W.E. (1997) Function and biomechanics of tendons. Medicine & science in sports 7(1): 62-66Klauser, A., Bodner, G., Frauscher, F., Gabl, M., Zur Nedden, D. (1999) Finger injuries in extreme rock climbers. American journal of sports medicine. 27(6): 733-737Lemons, D. E., Downey, J. A. Peripheral vascular function. in: Gonzalez, E. G., Myers, S. J., Edelstein, J. E., Lieberman, J. S., Downey, J. A. Physiological basis of rehabilitation medicine. 3rd ed. Butterworth Heinemann Le Viet, D., Rousselin, B., Roulot, E., Lantieri, L., Godefroy, D. (1996) Diagnosis of digital pulley rupture by computed tomography. J. Hand Surg. 21A: 245-248Lin, G. T., Cooney, W. P., Amadio, P. C., An, K. N. (1990) Mechanical properties of human pulleys. J. Hand Surg. 15B: 429-434Marco, R. A. W., Sharkey, N. A., Smith, T. A., Zissmos, A. G. (1998) Pathomechanics of closed rupture of the finger flexor tendon pulleys in rock climbers. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. 80A: 1012-1019Martinoli, C., Bianchi, S., Nebolio, M., Derchi, L. E., Garcia, J. F. (2000) Sonographic evaluation of digital annular pulley tears. Skeletal Radiol. 29: 387-391Morstad, M. (2000) Training – technique. On The Edge. 98: 70-73Moutet, F., Guinard, D., Gerard, P., Mugnier, C. (1993) Subcutaneous rupture of long finger flexor pulleys in rock climbers: 12 case reports. Annales de Chirugie de la Main. 12: 182-188O’Brien, M. (1997) Structure and metabolism of tendons. Medicine & Science in Sport. 7(1): 55-61Phillips, C., Mass, D. (1996) Mechanical analysis of the palmar aponeurosis pulley in human cadavers. J. Hand Surg. 21A: 240-244Rispler, D., Greenwald, D., Shumway, S., Allan, C., Mass, D. (1996) Efficiency of the flexor tendon pulley system in human cadaver hands. J. hand Surg. 21A: 444-450Rohrbough, J. T., Mudge, M. K., Schilling, R. C. (2000) Overuse injuries in the elite rock climber. Med. Sci Sports Exerc. 32(8): 1369-1372Rooks, M. D. (1997) Rock climbing injuries. Sports Medicine. 88: 261-270Sandmeier, R., Renstrom, P. A. F. H. (1997) Diagnosis and treatment of chronic tendon disorders in sports. Medicine & science in sports 7(1): 96-106Schweizer, A. (2000) Biomechanical effectiveness of taping the A2 pulley in rock climbers. J. Hand Surg. 25B: 102-107Tropet, Y., Menez, D., Balmat, P., Pem, R., Vichard, P. (1990) Closed traumatic rupture of the ring finger flexor tendon pulley. J. Hand Surg. 15A: 745-747Warme, W. J., Brooks, D. (2000) The Effect of circumferential taping on flexor tendon pulley failure in rock climbers. Am. J. Sports Med. 28(5): 674-678Watts, P., Drobish, K. M. (1998) Physiological responses to simulated rock climbing at different angles. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 30: 1118-1122Wyatt, J. P., McNaughton, G. W., Grant, P. T. (1996) A prospective study of rock climbing injuries. Br. J. Sports Med. 30: 148-150
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3415165384138710164?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/XVTmdpSjvKE)
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Pulley injuries article (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/hSBI1ySbRqk/pulley-injuries-article.html)
4 May 2010, 8:42 pm
NB: This article used to live in the articles section of my old site. I've reposted it here since it was really popular.
Finger pulley tears are now more common than any other in rock climbing, yet few climbers know much about how to treat or even avoid pulley tears. After trawling the scientific and climbing literature on the issue (not to mention treating my own injuries!), I realised there was plenty of knowledge out there…Definitions and DiagnosesThe first problem is deciding what your injury is! Most of us can’t afford to pay for specialist sports injury consultations or therapy and it’s safe to say that your GP alone is unlikely to provide an accurate diagnosis or strategies for repair of this extremely sport specific injury. There are two tendons which flex your fingers and are tensioned while you pull on holds. The tendons are held in place by the flexor pulley system; a series of ligamentous bands stretching over the tendons, along the length of the fingers. The pulleys withstand astonishing forces, especially during crimping. If these forces are high enough or if there is a sudden additional loading, they can and do tear. The severity of the tears can range from partial tears of isolated pulleys to complete rupture of several pulleys!Often there is an audible popping noise if a pulley ruptures, (remember you might not hear this if you are concentrating on the job in hand!). Later there may be visible bowstringing, where the tendons can be seen to bulge in the finger when you flex it against resistance. This might not be obvious if the finger is too swollen and painful to examine. If you suspect a rupture, you MUST try to see a specialist to have a scan (ultrasound, MRI or CT) and receive expert advice. Complete rupture may require splinting and/or surgery to repair and ignoring the problem can lead to further tears, permanent loss of ability to bend the finger and arthritis.Partial tears of isolated pulleys are much more common and heal remarkably well compared to certain other ligament injuries. You might feel a sudden twinge of pain in the affected finger (and possibly a small pop). However, it is possible not to notice the injury at all during the climb or session. There might be localised pain and tenderness over the area the next morning or the next time you climb. The most commonly injured pulley is A2, which is near the base of your finger. A1 or A5 tears almost never occur. If you have a pulley injury, and the acute inflammation is not too bad, it should still be possible to pull on holds with a fully open-handed grip without pain. If the pain becomes much worse during or after crimping, this indicates a pulley injury.Another common finger injury is flexor unit strain. These are tendon strains which often occur in the ring finger when using two or three finger, open handed holds. Unpleasant twinges of pain are felt along the length of the tendon through the finger and palm. For this injury, follow the treatments below and avoid gripping positions which irritate it.Preventing pulley tearsIf you have a history of repeated finger injuries, or even if you just want to protect against ever getting one, you must look at your climbing and lifestyle. Tears are most often caused when you are pulling hard on a crimp and your feet slip off, placing a sudden additional load on the pulleys. To avoid injuries in general, you must try to be in control of your movement as much as possible. This is a difficult and multifaceted skill to learn! An important thing to understand is that it is possible to stretch your abilities to the absolute limit, pull with 110% and climb explosively, yet still be ‘in control’. The goal is to be more aware of what your body is doing and how it moves. In this way you can predict what it will do before it happens. If you can improve this skill you will not only prevent injury but climb better too! Try to feel how your feet are positioned on each foothold, feel the traction. If you can do this then you will be ready if they slip.Climbers who don’t get injured often tend to have a good balance of gripping styles. Before my first pulley injury, I was one of the many climbers who crimped everything, even pockets. Once I was forced (by injury) to train using open handed, I realised that this grip is much stronger and less tiring on certain holds. You don’t have to learn the hard way!Some climbers use finger tape on healthy fingers or old injuries to try and prevent pulley tears. The consensus of a few scientific studies is that tape is not strong enough to absorb injury causing forces. Tape appears to be useful only in the early stages of repair when the pulley is weak and you are not climbing hard. It’s also important to consider your general health, diet and lifestyle. Good sleep is essential for tissue repair during training and if you are tired, your sloppy technique will predispose you to tweaking your fingers. Don’t underestimate the importance off gentle and progressive warm up during a session.Treating pulley tearsIn this article I have focused on the self administered treatment/prevention of minor pulley injuries (where hand function is not severely limited). If you suspect a pulley rupture you should see your doctor/specialist straight away. For less serious tears, long lay-offs and surgery are thankfully not necessary and with prudent care, the injury should heal very well. It is crucial to understand that the extent and speed of your healing is down to what YOU do during the recovery. The outcome is dependent largely on the effort and diligence you contribute to the process.RestContrary to popular belief, months of complete lay-off from climbing is not required and is likely to stunt the healing process! All injuries follow a well defined and staged healing process. The first stage is inflammation and this usually lasts a few days to a week. Inflammation is a good thing as it triggers the later stages of tissue repair. However, chronic inflammation (from climbing too hard, too soon) can cause further tissue damage. It’s important to stop climbing completely until the inflammatory phase is past. It’s hard to know exactly how long the lay-off should be, but in general it should be 1-3 weeks. Too short and you risk chronic inflammation and too long and the tissues become naturally weaker and scarred. Once you can move the finger through its normal range of movement without pain, its time to start using it again gently. Using the injured part encourages healing in the same way that training makes your body stronger. Build up carefully over weeks and back off if the pain and tenderness increases. Climbing with a completely open handed grip produces little strain on the pulleys and thus you may be able to climb harder by using strictly only this grip until you can crimp again. Such discipline and change to your climbing style is extremely hard to maintain and it might only take one lapse of concentration to crimp again and risk further injury! It follows that this approach may be best confined to careful use of a fingerboard and certainly not where any dangerous climbing is involved.Ice therapyIncreasing the blood flow to the area helps to speed healing greatly. Gentle climbing or exercise is an obvious way of achieving this. A little used, but massively effective method of increasing blood flow is ice therapy. If significant cold is applied to the skin, the blood vessels in the nearby area (in this case the hand) constrict to reduce blood flow and prevent cooling of the blood. However, when moderate cold is applied there is an initial reduction in blood flow followed by significant dilation of the blood vessels and subsequent increase in blood flow of up to 500%. This is called the ‘Lewis reaction’. The cycle of blood vessel constriction and dilation takes around 30 minutes and thus the cold application should last this long. Place your injured hand in a pot or small bucket of cold water with a few (roughly 5) ice cubes added. Leave your hand in the water for the length of the treatment. If your hand hasn’t gone pink and feels flushed with blood after ten minutes, the water is too icy. Try to use the ice at least once or twice a day. Don’t use this treatment on a freshly injured finger where there is significant inflammation!Deep friction massage (DFM)DFM helps to break up the loose network of scar tissue which forms in an injury, promoting its realignment and strength. Rub the pulley with your thumb, applying firm pressure (moderate pressures dont produce the desired effects). The thumb motions should run lengthwise along the affected part of the finger. Only use DFM when your injury is already well past the initial inflammatory stage and stop if you feel the massage is irritating the pulley or causing excessive pain. Use DFM for a few minutes at a time and begin with very brief applications. StretchingStretching the injured finger is another vital treatment you must apply to ensure adequate healing. Stretching promotes blood flow and tissue growth. You should stretch the finger until it feels tight and hold this position for 10 seconds. After holding it may be possible to stretch a little more, held for up to 30 seconds. Never stretch the finger aggressively; it shouldn’t be painful. You can stretch the injured finger as often as you like but particularly important before and after a climbing session.DrugsSome climbers use anti-inflammatory drugs such as Aspirin or Ibuprofen (from a class of drugs called NSAIDS). NSAIDS have been used to reduce ongoing inflammation and allow continued training. NSAIDS can be useful where there is chronic inflammation, in conjunction with lay-off. However, in general the inflammatory process should be seen as vital and upsetting its progress will prevent normal progression to the tissue building stages of healing, and ultimately result in permanent dysfunction. If a pulley injury is persistently painful and tender, you need rest or reduction in your climbing level and perhaps a change in climbing style until the injury has a chance to progress.TapingTaping allows you to climb while taking up to 10% of the strain off the affected pulley. Recent scientific studies have confirmed its effectiveness in supporting the injured pulley in the early stages of healing. It was suggested that the greatest support came from taping nearer the middle finger joint where A2 was injured. Tape has poor tensile qualities compared with healthy pulleys. Therefore, there is no advantage in continuing to use tape once the injury is nearly recovered. The single most important aspect of any rehabilitation is that you are in control of the recovery and you recognise that hard work and patience brings good results. Work hard at the treatments outlined above and be positive! Seeing results of rehab treatments can be just as rewarding as seeing results from hardcore training. Recovery from pulley tears will still take time, so be patient and don’t overdo it. It can be very disheartening when the pulley is still painful after three months despite all the effort. However, if you just stick with it you will be cranking it out again a few weeks later. Finally, it’s also my experience that my best ever periods in climbing have always been just after recovery from finger injuries!Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-9127089923346805141?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/hSBI1ySbRqk)
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A review of strength and endurance in climbing (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/KmVByU1rvgM/review-of-strength-and-endurance-in.html)
4 May 2010, 8:56 pm
NB: This article used to live in the articles section of my old site. I’ve reposted it here since it was really popular. Note that it’s nearly ten years old now! BackgroundSport climbing is the branch of rock climbing involving routes protected by pre-placed anchor bolts. The explosion in popularity of sport climbing and organised competitions have prompted a significant rise in participation and standards in recent decades. The focus of this new discipline is the athletic and competitive aspects of movement on rock (Jones, 1991). Coupled with this has been the development of structured and sport specific training techniques among professional and amateur climbers alike (Goddard and Neumann, 1993; Morstad, 2000). Climbing is a physical activity involving repeated movements of the body against gravity by producing forces on the holds on the wall surface via the upper and lower limbs. A considerable movement technique and psychological performance element is also universally recognised in the climbing related literature. The rise in participation, training and organised competitions in climbing and well documented increases in the occurrence of climbing related soft tissue injuries underlines the importance of research which evaluates the physiology of climbing.The aim of this review is to critically evaluate the current literature concerning the physiological demands and determinants of performance in sport climbing. Particular focus will be given to the forearm, specifically the finger flexors, and the physiological characteristics and adaptations occurring in trained climbers, which confer increased forearm strength and endurance. Future research objectives will also be outlined within this specific area.Physiological demands of climbingRock climbing involves moving over the wall surface supported by four limbs, described by Quaine et al. (1997) as “vertical quadrupedia” (Fig. 1). Early attempts by climbers to identify key aspects of performance on which to focus their training recognised that the centre of acute fatigue during climbing lay invariably in the upper limbs, especially the forearms (Hurn and Ingle, 1988; Goddard and Neumann, 1993). It was observed that in general, the difficulty of the climbing becomes greater when the wall angle becomes steeper and the holds (particularly handholds) become smaller and further apart. The apparent limitation of the forearm in climbing makes physiological sense given its comparatively small muscle mass, not anatomically designed to support forces comparable with body mass (or exceeding it to produce accelerations against gravity). Morstad (2000) (citing unpublished quantitative analyses) argued that even at wall angles 45 degrees beyond vertical, where the lower limb cannot support much of the body mass in the vertical direction, successful movements must be initiated using the lower limb and trunk in order to reduce peak forces required at the hand holds. Although there are few reports in the climbing related literature of significant lower body fatigue, there is anecdotal evidence that lower limb strength is an advantage on certain types of moves, particularly to maintain contact on the footholds on very overhanging rock (Morstad, 2000). Unfortunately, no studies have examined lower limb or core strength in trained climbers.Bouts of sport climbing last for several minutes with sustained periods of intermittent isometric contraction in the finger flexors. Schadle-Schardt (1998) observed mean climbing times of 4.5 minutes during indoor competition climbing. Thus, sport rock climbing must be considered an endurance event. Few studies have attempted to analyse the movement patterns associated with climbing. Billat et al. (1995) observed that upward movement during indoor climbing occurs intermittently. Video analysis revealed that 63% of the total climbing time was spent ascending (vertical displacement of the hips) and 37% was spent maintaining an ‘immobilized’ position (static equilibrium). In climbing, static equilibrium must be maintained at certain times in order to clip the rope into protection bolts, rest individual fatigued limbs and scan and reach for the next holds (Goddard and Neumann, 1993; Sagar, 2001). Schadle-Schardt (1998) measured mean contact times for the fingers on each hold in competition climbing of 10 seconds with 2.4 second rest periods in between holds (presumably spent reaching the next hold and replacing chalk on the hands).The angle of the wall surface has been shown to be an important influence on the physiological demand placed on the body due to climbing. Noé et al. (2001) examined the biomechanical constraints of static climbing positions at different angles (vertical and 10 degrees overhanging). When vertical and overhanging quadrupedia were compared there was a large shift in the distribution of the supporting forces to the upper limbs, from 43% to 62% of body weight supported by the upper limbs in the vertical and overhanging positions respectively. Given that rock climbs can feature angles of up to 90 degrees beyond vertical, this magnitude of shift appears remarkable and certainly explains the physiological findings (described below) of performance studies which showed much greater energy expenditure and lactate production with only small increases in angle beyond vertical (Watts et al., 1998). Unfortunately this is the only study to compare supporting force distribution at different angles. Further studies examining a greater range of wall angles would give further insight into the dependence on the upper limbs for support at overhanging angles.Finger flexor strength has been extensively measured in trained climbers by a number of studies. The conclusion of these studies appears to be that trained climbers have higher finger strength compared to controls, although methodological differences have provided varying results (Sheel, 2004). An early study by Watts et al. (1993) observed no differences in absolute values of hand-grip strength measured by hand-grip dynamometry in world class climbers and controls. It was suggested that climbers may not need high grip strength per se. Rather, strength to mass ratio was thought to be a more important variable and this was significantly higher in climbers (due to low body mass). Several later studies have measured hand-grip strength, some observing no differences in absolute forces between elite climbers and recreational or non-climbers (Ferguson and Brown, 1997; Watts et al., 2003) and others observing that climbers have higher grip strength (Bollen and Cutts, 1993; Grant et al., 1996, 2001). Grant et al. (1996) recognised that grip strength dynamometry might not provide an accurate assessment of the type of strength required in rock climbing, and developed a climbing specific device for measuring finger strength that simulated more closely the grip styles used on climbing holds (Schweizer, 2001) (Fig. 1, 2). All subsequent studies using this type of grip specific measurement have recorded higher finger strength in trained climbers (Grant et al., 1996, 2001, 2003; Quaine et al., 2003; MacLeod et al., unpublished data; Reid et al., unpublished data). Although climbing moves often involve hanging or moving underneath horizontally aligned finger edges, the types of moves and positions experienced in climbing are extremely varied and it seems likely that some may involve a force requirement greater than that needed to support the body in the vertical direction (such as using ‘undercut’ holds) (Goddard and Neumann, 1993; Sagar, 2001). This view would challenge Watts’ suggestion that climbers do not need to produce large absolute forces. Unfortunately no biomechanical analysis has been carried out on a range of climbing positions/movements to date, in order to determine the supporting force requirements of climbing positions.Anthropometric characteristics of climbersSeveral studies have measured anthropometric data in various populations of climbers. Watts et al. (1993) studied a highly homogenous group of climbers; semi-finalists in a sport climbing world cup event. This study observed that this group were characterised by low stature and very low percentage body fat values (4-14% for men, 10-20% for women). This finding has been supported by several subsequent studies of trained climbers (Binney and Cochrane, 1999; MacLeod et al., unpublished data; Mermier et al., 2000; Sheel et al., 2003; Watts et al., 1996, 2000, 2003) and percentage body fat has been proposed as a key predictor of sport climbing performance. Grant et al. (1996, 2001, 2003) failed to observe any differences in percent body fat between trained climbers and controls or other athletic groups. However, the absence of significant differences might be attributable to the comparatively low ability of the climbers compared to the studies mentioned above and/or different equations used to estimate body fat percentage..It is logical that a large body mass or any excess body fat would be disadvantageous in elite level climbing as body mass must be repeatedly moved against gravity. However, it is well known that climbers have long considered excess body fat to be a disadvantage and control it strictly. It is also considered advantageous to avoid hypertrophy training of lower body muscle groups. Hence, the question remains whether body mass and body fat percentage are important determinants of climbing performance or merely a feature of climber’s training patterns (Farrington, 1999). It is conceivable that any performance advantage conferred by maintaining very low body fat may be offset by problems with consumption of sufficient caloric energy to support a rigorous training regime. Longitudinal study of the effect of manipulation of percentage body fat on climbing performance would yield more meaningful data on the subject (Sheel, 2004). Low stature might be an advantage in climbing due to volume-mass ratios. However, any advantage may be offset to some degree by a reach limitation in shorter climbers (Sagar, 2001).Reach is universally recognised as a common limitation on climbing moves among rock climbers. This has led to ‘ape Index’, a measure of reach relative to height, (arm span/height) being proposed as a performance predictor. Watts et al. (2003) measured ape index in adolescent competitive climbers and found small but significant differences relative to age matched controls. There was no relationship between climbing ability and ape index. Watts suggests this may be due to the lack of variability between climbers. Grant et al. (1996, 2001) found no differences between trained climbers and controls for leg or arm length. The significance of these findings is limited due to the small sample sizes and ability level of the climbing groups. It is not possible to make any conclusions about these variables from the available data.Given that climbers perform repeated contractions of the forearm muscles and appear to possess greater finger strength than controls, it has been hypothesised that climbers will develop greater forearm muscle mass. Muscle force is highly correlated to muscle mass, whereas no consensus has been reached on whether force per unit muscle mass is influenced by training (Fukunaga et al., 2001). Only three studies have attempted to measure forearm muscle mass in trained climbers and controls. MacLeod et al. (unpublished data) measured forearm circumference is 12 elite climbers and found significantly higher forearm circumference to body mass ratios in climbers. The absence of significant differences in absolute values is explained by the difference in body mass between the subject groups. This finding agrees with those of Watts et al. (2003) who observed similar forearm volumes in competitive climbers and controls, despite the climber’s lower stature and body mass. Reid et al. (unpublished data) measured forearm circumference in height and body mass matched trained climbers and controls. Climbers had higher forearm circumference although the difference was not significant. Again, the low variability in this anthropometric measure calls for further study using larger subject groups and more sensitive methods of measurement.Mermier et al. (2000) attempted to quantify the relative contributions of anthropometric variables (Height, mass, leg length, percentage body fat), hip flexibility and training variables (grip, shoulder and leg strength, grip and hang endurance, lower body anaerobic power) in a study of 44 trained climbers of varying standard. It was concluded that trainable variables were much more important predictors of climbing ability and that anthropometric and hip flexibility variables were very poor predictors of ability. It was concluded that climbers do no need to possess particular anthropometric characteristics to be successful sport climbers. FlexibilityBody flexibility is another variable which is thought to be relevant in climbing performance as the ability to reach distant holds and maintain positions at extreme joint angles can provide a clear advantage on certain climbing moves (Goddard and Neumann, 1993; Sagar, 2001). Grant et al. (1996, 2001) measured hip flexibility in trained climbers and controls but observed no significant differences. However, issues with the standard of the climbing group discussed above may have affected the validity of the comparison. An intervention study into the effect of flexibility in competitive climbers would yield more useful information.Fatigue factors in climbingTo successfully complete a sport route, climbers must maintain the ability to make high force, intermittent isometric contractions of the finger flexors. Indeed, competition routes are designed to have progressively more difficult individual movements (the purpose being to separate out climbers of different abilities). Failure to produce the required finger force, coupled with burning, stiff and painful sensations in the forearm (known as ‘pump’) are recognised as being the dominant symptom of fatigue associated with failure to complete a climb, resulting in a fall (Goddard and Neumann, 1993). Finger endurance has been identified as a key attribute of elite level climbers by several studies (Binney and Cochrane, 1999; Ferguson and Brown, 1997; MacLeod et al., unpublished data; Quaine et al., 2003; Reid et al., unpublished data). Grant et al. (2003) demonstrated that intermediate level climbers do not differ from other athletic groups with respect to finger endurance.The intermittent isometric contractions seen in climbing are unusual in sport generally (Spurway, 1999). The nature of isometric exercise has several important consequences for the development of muscular fatigue with repeated contractions. Asmussen (1981) characterised this type of contraction as causing significant increases in intramuscular pressure. This change causes blood to be squeezed out of intramuscular blood vessels and hinders or even completely stops blood flow through the muscle. Blood flow can only resume when the contraction ends. The magnitude of increases in intramuscular pressure, and hence blood flow occlusion, is dependent on the intensity (that is, the percentage of MVC) of the contraction. It is thought that contractions below 10-25% of MVC receive adequate blood flow and can be maintained without muscle fatigue (Asmussen, 1981). Above 45-75% MVC, blood flow is completely occluded in the forearm and fatigue patterns mimic those where artificial occlusion is present (Barnes, 1980; Heyward, 1980; Serfass et al., 1979). Between these values, blood flow is reduced and fatigue occurs, but at a slower rate. There is considerable variability in the extent of occlusion in a given subject and muscle due to the following factors: the prevalent muscle fibre type, the size and structure of the muscle. MacLeod et al. (unpublished data) measured finger endurance using a climbing specific protocol (a ‘crimp’ grip with 10/3sec contraction/relaxation ratio) in trained climbers and controls. The intensity was 40% MVC and times to failure in the climbers were similar to the total climbing times observed in a world cup climbing event (Schadle-Schardt, 1998). The authors suggested that 40% MVC may be representative of the average MVC percentage required from the finger flexors in climbing.Carlson and McGraw (1971) observed lower isometric endurance in subjects with higher MVC and hypothesised a negative relationship between these variables. Based on these findings, it would be anticipated that the climbers would have shorter endurance times as they exhibit higher MVCs than non-climbers. The literature has demonstrated that this is not the case and it is thought that adaptations present in trained climbers appear to offset any disadvantage due to higher force production (MacLeod et al., unpublished data). Quaine et al. (2003) demonstrated that muscle fatigue, measured by the decline in median frequency of surface electromyogram (EMG) in the active forearm muscles, in a climbing specific finger endurance task was delayed in elite climbers compared to non-climbers. The rate of fatigue in climbers was twice as slow as controls at 80% MVC. The authors concluded that this delay was due to climber’s enhanced ability to recover between contractions, speculating that enhanced vasodilation during rest periods accounted for the climber’s advantage. Reid et al. (unpublished data) also observed EMG fatigue using a similar protocol to MacLeod et al.. Trained climbers and controls had similar times to fatigue and decline in EMG median frequency. However, the climbing group had higher MVC and hence produced significantly higher force for a given test period. Watts et al. (1996) measured maximum hand-grip force before and immediately after a climbing task to exhaustion. Hand-grip MVC decreased 22% after the climbing task and remained depressed for 20 minutes post-exercise. However, later work by Watts et al. (2000, 2003b), which also measured maximum hand-grip and finger strength before and after a fatiguing climbing task showed no drop in ability to exert maximum force. Watts et al. (2003b) showed no change in root mean squared EMG values pre and post climb. However, change in median frequency was not measured. It seems possible that the results of Watts et al. (1996, 2000, 2003b) may be affected by the delay in measuring MVC after the climbing bout ended. It is noted that the measurements were taken within one minute of failure on the climb. However, Quaine et al. (2003) points out that the difference in endurance capacity between climbers and non climbers is due to an ability to recover significantly in the short (5 seconds in this case) rest periods between contractions. Future study employing continuous EMG data during a climbing or climbing specific task is required to fully establish whether loss of finger strength occurs during strenuous climbing.MacLeod et al. (unpublished data) pointed out that loss of fine muscular control may be an additional causative factor for failure to complete a climbing task. Climbing movements require precise timing of force development, as well as extremely rapid and complex movements of the body. Indeed, it is often necessary to lunge for handholds which require precise placement of the fingers in the most advantageous position on the hold to provide adequate support (Goddard and Neumann, 1993; Sagar, 2001). It seems plausible that falls could be caused even by small decrements in force production on such precise holds, or by loss of coordination due to the effects of muscle fatigue on muscular control. Bourdin et al. (1998, 1999) observed a hierarchical organisation of reaching movements between climbing holds (measured on a climbing ergometer). It was noted that reaching duration was shortened by increased postural constraints, regardless of the destination hold size (and therefore accuracy requirements). This factor appeared to override the speed/accuracy trade-off seen with seated or standing reaching movements. Postural constraints are greater in vertical than overhanging climbing, however, overhanging positions are characterised by greater force requirements from the fingers to support body weight (Noé et al., 2001). It seems plausible that this factor would produce an additional demand for shorter reaching durations. This hypothesis has anecdotal support in the climbing literature (Morstad, 2000). Future studies using a similar protocol to that of Bourdin et al., comparing the organisation of reaching and grasping movements at different wall angles would help resolve this question. Such a study has not been undertaken to date.Physiological responses and adaptations to climbingClimbing involves whole body movement against gravity for sustained periods. It appears that the upper body is the primary centre of fatigue in climbing, but the role of the lower body in climbing movements has yet to be quantified (Sheel, 2004). Several studies have measured whole body VO2 during climbing on an indoor wall or climbing treadmill. These studies have shown that VO2 rises during climbing to a moderate proportion of running VO2 max (Billat et al., 1995; Watts et al, 2000). VO2 values are markedly variable between studies, but this can be explained by differences in testing protocol and subject groups. It appears that average VO2 during difficult sport climbing is about 25 ml.kg.-1 min-1 (Sheel, 2004). However, values of 43.8 ml.kg.-1 min-1 were recorded in a maximal treadmill climbing task to exhaustion (Booth et al., 1999). Sheel et al. (2003) showed that climbing VO2 was related to climbing difficulty, with VO2 values reaching 45% and 51% of cycle ergometer VO2max for an ‘easier’ and ‘harder’ climb respectively. However, Watts et al. (1998) observed no increases in climbing treadmill VO2 as treadmill angle increased (four minute climbing bouts at angles between 80 and 102 degrees). It is suggested that arm specific peak VO2 may have been reached, rendering further increases impossible when climbing angle became steeper. In addition, the active muscles may be completely blocked from general circulation during contractions, limiting large increases in VO2 (Asmussen, 1981).Several studies have measured blood lactate concentration after a climbing bout (Booth et al., 1999; Billat et al., 1995; Grant et al. 2003; Mermier et al., 1997; Watts, et al., 1996, 1998, 2000). The values for blood lactate following strenuous climbing range from 2.4 to 6.1 mmol/l. This large variation is likely to be attributable to different modes of climbing (wall, treadmill or simulated climbing), different subject groups and different intensities of the climbing bouts. Watts et al. (1998) demonstrated that lactate production is related to climbing angle. This finding is supported by Mermier et al. (1997) who observed that lactate production is related to climbing difficulty. Large increases in blood lactate may be surprising given that climbers report that muscular pain and fatigue lies predominantly in the forearm. The small muscle mass of the forearm would not be expected to produce large amounts of lactic acid. However, as mentioned above, the relative contributions of different muscle groups to movement on rock have not been quantified to date. Given that such increases in lactate are observed, and that blood flow may be partly or wholly occluded in the forearm during intermittent exercise at high intensities, it seems likely that lactate may accumulate to high concentrations within the forearm muscles during climbing. No studies have compared lactate production in elite and novice climbers in order to establish whether there is any adaptation in trained climbers which affects metabolite build up during climbing (see section below on blood flow). Grant et al. (2003) observed greater increases in blood lactate during a climbing specific forearm endurance task. It is possible that greater blood lactate could be an indicator of increased lactate clearance from the exercising forearm due to increased blood flow.It has been suggested above that climber’s superior finger endurance may result from an increased ability to recover from isometric contractions. Ferguson and Brown (1997) measured forearm blood flow by venous occlusion plethysmography after intermittent isometric contractions of 40% MVC. Trained climbers had significantly higher vascular conductance following the exercise bout. The authors concluded that climbers demonstrate enhanced vasodilator capacity, which is attributed to adaptations of the local vascular bed, including increased capillary density, capillary cross-sectional area or alterations in local dilator function related to endothelial change (Delp, 1995; Smolander, 1994; Sinoway et al., 1986; Snell et al., 1987). MacLeod et al. (unpublished data) monitored changes in forearm blood oxygenation continuously during a climbing specific endurance test using near infra-red spectroscopy (Fig. 3). Oxyhaemoglobin levels in trained climbers were significantly lower during contraction phases (attributable to higher force production) than controls, but recovered to a significantly greater extent during 3 second rest phases. It was concluded that ability to restore forearm oxygenation (by increased blood flow) was an important predictor of success in an endurance test of this type.The pressor response to isometric exercise has also been identified as a variable of interest. Isometric exercise causes increases in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) greater that would be expected for equivalent dynamic exercise, reaching a peak at the point of fatigue (Asmussen, 1981). The large increases are caused both by rises in intramuscular pressure, exceeding systolic pressure and blocking blood flow into the active muscles, and sympathetic vasoconstriction in other tissues in order to re-direct blood flow to working muscles. Increased sympathetic activity is triggered by the muscle metaboreflex and a central command component. Significant rises in systolic and diastolic BP have been observed during a climbing specific task (Ferguson and Brown, 1997; MacLeod et al., unpublished data). Increasing central arterial BP has been shown to enhance force production during isometric contraction (Wright et al., 2000). MacLeod et al. hypothesised that an increased pressor response would confer a performance advantage in the endurance tests by opposing occlusion caused by the muscular contraction, thus permitting increased intramuscular blood flow. No differences were found between BP responses for trained climbers and controls during a climbing specific task. Ferguson and Brown (1997) observed an attenuated BP response in trained climbers, an adaptation known to occur following endurance training. The authors hypothesised that the reduction in muscle sympathetic nerve activity could be caused either by reduced chemosensitivity in of the metaborecetptors or reduced build up of metabolites in trained individuals. The latter possibility would seem to be contradicted by the evidence of MacLeod et al. who found significantly lower muscle oxygenation during climbing specific contractions, and by those of Mermier et al. (1997) who found that lactate production is related to climbing difficulty. However, further study is required in this area to fully elucidate the responses and adaptations of pressor response in trained climbers.It is concluded from the available data that sport climbing relies on both aerobic and anaerobic energy pathways. It seems likely that increased climbing difficulty and/or angle causes more reliance on the anaerobic system. Further research is required, examining both central and peripheral adaptations and responses to climbing, in order to fully understand the physiological determinants of climbing performance.SummaryCurrent understanding of the mechanical and physiological demands of sport rock climbing has revealed that performance is dependent on a wide array of physiological, anthropometric, movement technique and psychological factors. The centre of physiological fatigue and performance limitation lies predominantly in the forearm musculature. It appears that successful sport climbers have developed greater finger strength and endurance than other populations. As climbing difficulty increases there may be increased reliance on the anaerobic system, particularly in the forearm, coupled with increased lactate production and blood pressure. Enhanced climbing specific endurance may be the result of an increased forearm vasodilatory capacity allowing better recovery from intense contractions of the finger flexors.Future research objectives have been noted in the text. Much of the research to date has focused on comparison between trained climbers and controls and is descriptive in nature. It seems likely that the results of several studies seeking to establish their physical characteristics have been weakened by problems with availability of subjects of appropriate training status (Sheel, 2004). The diverse nature of the sport of climbing, with its many disciplines compounds this problem. Future studies of this nature should seek to recruit subjects who participate in similar patterns of climbing activity, for example sport climbing competition teams.ReferencesAsmussen, E. (1981). Similarities and dissimilarities between static and dynamic exercise. Circulation Research, 48 (supp.1), 3-10.Barnes, W. S. (1980). The relationship between maximum isometric strength and intramuscular circulatory occlusion. Ergonomics, 23, 351-357.Billat, V., Palleja, P., Charlaix, T., Rizzardo, P. and Janel, N. (1995). Energy specificity of rock climbing and aerobic capacity in competitive sport rock climbers. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness,35, 20-24.Binney, D. M. and Cochrane, T. (1999). Identification of selected attributes which significantly predict competition climbing performance in elite British male and female rock climbers. Journal of Sports Sciences, 17(1), 11-12.Bollen, S. R. and Cutts, A. (1993). Grip strength and endurance in rock climbers. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers H. Journal of Engineering in Medicine, 207, 87-92.Booth, J., Marino, F., Hill, C. and Gwinn, T. (1999). Energy cost of sport rock climbing in elite performers. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 33, 14-18.Bourdin, C., Teasdale, N. and Nougier, V. (1998). High postural constraints affect the organisation of reaching grasping movements. Experimental Brain Research, 122(3), 253-259.Bourdin, C., Teasdale, N., Nougier, V., Bard, C. and Fleury, M. (1999). Postural constraints modify the organisation of grasping movements. Human Movement Science, 18, 87-102.Carlson, B and McGraw, L. (1971). Isometric strength and relative isometric endurance. Research Quarterly, 42, 244-250.Delp, M. D. (1995). Effect of exercise training on endothelium-dependent peripheral vascular responses. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 27, 1152-1157.Farrington, J. (1999). Nutrition. On The Edge, 92, 28-29.Ferguson, R. A. and Brown, M. D. (1997). Arterial blood pressure and forearm vascular conductance responses to sustained and rhythmic isometric exercise and arterial occlusion in trained rock climbers and untrained sedentary subjects. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 76, 174-180.Fukunaga, T., Miyatani, M., Tachi, M., Kouzaki, M., Kawakami, Y. and Kanehisa, H. (2001) Muscle volume is a major determinant of joint torque in humans. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 172, 249-255.Goddard, D. and Neumann, U. (1993). Performance rock climbing. Leicester UK: Cordee.Grant, S., Hynes, V., Whitaker, A. and Aitchison, T. (1996). Anthropometric, strength, endurance and flexibility characteristics of elite and recreational climbers. Journal of Sports Sciences, 14, 301-309.Grant, S., Hasler, T., Davies, C., Aitchison, T. C., Wilson, J. and Whitaker, A. (2001). A comparison of the anthropometric, strength, endurance and flexibility characteristics of female elite and recreational climbers and non-climbers. Journal of Sports Sciences, 19, 499-505.Grant, S., Shields, C., Fitzpatrick, V., Ming Loh, W., Whitaker, A., Watt, I. and Kay, J. W. (2003). Climbing-specific finger endurance: a comparison of intermediate rock climbers, rowers and aerobically trained individuals. Journal of Sports Sciences, 21, 621-630.Heyward, V. (1980). Relative endurance of high and low strength women. Research Quarterly, 51, 486-493.Hurn, M. and Ingle, P. (1988). Climbing Fit. Wiltshire, UK: The Crowood Press.Jones, D. B. A. (1991). The power of climbing. Leicester UK: Cordee.Mermier, C. M., Robergs, R. A., McMinn, S. M. and Heward, V. H. (1997). Energy expenditure and physiological responses during indoor rock climbing. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 31, 224-228.Mermier, C. M., Janot, J. M., Parker, D. L. and Swan, J. G. (2000). Physiological and anthropometric determinants of sport climbing performance. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 34, 359-366.Morstad, M. (2000). Training – technique. On The Edge, 98, 70-73.Noé, F., Quaine, F. and Martin, L. (2001). Influence of steep gradient supporting walls in rock climbing: biomechanical analysis. Gait and Posture, 13, 86-94.Quaine, F., Martin, L. and Blanchi, J. P. (1997). The effect of body position and number of supports on wall reaction forces in rock climbing. Journal of Applied. Biomechanics, 13, 14-23.Quaine, F., Vigouroux, L. and Martin, L. (2003). Finger flexors fatigue in trained rock climbers and untrained sedentary subjects. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 24, 424-427.Sagar, H. R. (2001). Climbing your best. Mechanicsburg, U.S.A.: Stackpole Books.Schadle-Schardt, W. (1998). Die zeitiche gestaltung von belastung und entlastung im wettkampfklettern als element der trainings-steurung. Leistungssport, 1/98, 23-28.Schweizer, A. (2001). Biomechanical properties of the crimp grip position in rock climbers. Journal of Biomechanics, 34, 217-223.Serfass, R. C., Stull, G. A., Ben Sira, D., Kearney, J. T. (1979). Effects of circulatory occlusion on submaximal isometric endurance. American Corrective Therapy Journal, 33, 147-154.Sheel, A. W., Seddon, N., Knight, A., McKenzie, D. C. and Warburton, D. E. R. (2003). Physiological responses to indoor rock-climbing and their relationship to maximal cycle ergometry. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 35, 1225-1231.Sheel, A. W. (2004). Physiology of sport rock climbing. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 38, 355-359.Sinoway, L. I., Mutch, T. I., Minotti, J. R. and Zelis, R. (1986). Enhanced maximal metabolic vasodilatation in the dominant forearms of tennis players. Journal of Applied Physiology, 61, 673-678.Smolander, J. (1994). Capacity for vasodilatation in the forearms of manual and office workers. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 69, 163-167.Snell, P.G., Martin, W. H., Buckey, J. C. and Blomqvist, C. G. (1987). Maximal vascular leg conductance in trained and untrained men. Journal of Applied Physiology, 62, 606-61.Spurway, N. C. (1999). Muscle. In: Basic and Applied Sciences for Sports Medicine. (edited by Maughan, R. J.), pp. 42-44. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.Watts, P. B., Martin, D. T. and Durtschi, S. (1993). Anthropometric profiles of elite male and female competitive sport rock climbers. Journal of Sports Sciences, 11, 113-117.Watts, P. B., Newbury, V. and Sulentic, J. (1996). Acute changes in handgrip strength and blood lactate with sustained sport rock climbing. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 36, 255-260.Watts, P. B. and Drobish, K. M. (1998). Physiological responses to simulated rock climbing at different angles. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 30, 1118-1122.Watts, P. B., Daggett, M., Gallagher, P. and Wilkins, B. (2000). Metabolic response during sport rock climbing and effects of active versus passive recovery. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 21, 185-190.Watts, P., Joubert, L. M., Lish, A. K., Mast, J. D. and Wilkins, B. (2003a). Anthropometry of young competitive sport rock climbers. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 37, 420-424.Watts, P. B., Jensen, R. L., Moss, D. M. and Wagensomer, J. A. (2003b). Finger strength does not decrease with rock climbing to the point of failure. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 35 (5), Supplement 1, 256.Dave MacLeod
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For those into a few sports (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/B2HrLqhvLTI/for-those-into-few-sports.html)
4 May 2010, 9:23 pm
Been talking to Tim Emmett over the past couple of days and sharing ideas about training when you are into a lot of different sports. The same points apply if you work a lot and generally have limited time to climb. If routes are ‘your thing’, you’ll want to do mostly routes in your limited time of going climbing. And if you have any time in the year when you’ll be training indoors, it’s likely that endurance will be an immediate high priority. This presents a problem for longer term development of strength to move to the next level in climbing. There simply isn’t enough time in the year spent pulling super hard on small holds to get really strong fingers. As always, there are workarounds and they are basic stuff when it comes down to it:1 - Use brief fingerboard sessions to effectively ‘concentrate’ the strength training into the most time efficient hit. Think of it as the ‘espresso’ of finger strength training. You can get away with it because your time on the routes is keeping your technique sharp. For example, if you are an expedition climber, hang that wee fingerboard rung you packed at basecamp and camp near those lovely granite boulders.2 - When you do find yourself with enough time to get some bouldering in between routes sessions, you really need to make the most of that time. If you are frequently visiting unfamiliar climbing walls/crags. It’s easy to waste precious time finding the good problems at the right intensity or making some up. Try extra hard to eliminate this by tagging onto locals who can show you what’s what. Don’t be shy, they really wont bite. And if they sandbag you, so what? You wanted a hard session didn’t you. Try not to be put off when you can’t complete many problems. It’s normal if its an unfamiliar situation. Just try hard and you’ve done well.Dave MacLeod
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New look site! (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/5xqh7Yl8TVw/new-look-site.html)
4 May 2010, 9:25 pm
As you can see the site looks rather different. I’ve just spent a good while reorganising and redesigning it. Hopefully it should all be a bit more user friendly now. But I’m eager to hear your feedback. If you like or dislike anything or find any problems I should know about. Please do leave me a comment. I don’t get much time to go through everything with my site very often so sometimes I don’t always spot problems. Thanks for your help!Apart from the structural and style changes to the site I’ve substantially reorganised my shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html), adding more products and shopping in the Euro and US dollar currencies for those whom that will help. These days you are ordering your training books and DVDs from all over the planet. Thanks so much for the support of our shop - it really helps us.Below I’ve re-posted some really old extended articles I wrote on research and finger injuries that used to live in a different place on my old site. Sorry if you’ve seen them before. I just didn’t want them to disappear altogether.Now that I’m (hopefully) over the task of site redesign, I can get back to writing posts…Dave MacLeod
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Repoint tactics: pacing (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/-16QsHVEzH0/repoint-tactics-pacing.html)
7 May 2010, 12:12 pm
Finding the most efficient pace in repointing is huge area and isn’t as simple as climbers might hope. The basics of pacing are that it’s a good idea to climb fast; as fast as possible without sacrificing accuracy. But even this isn’t so simple as occasionally on steep burly climbs with big positive holds, it can be better to err more on the side of speed even if accuracy is sacrificed a little bit.Climbing fast comes from being good at climbing. And being good at climbing comes from having a lot of routes under your belt. So if you realise you are climbing too slowly on a redpoint, but can’t seem to go faster without making mistakes, there’s no shortcut unfortunately - if you clock up more routes, you’ll slowly be able to make movement decisions quicker. The only short term fix for the route you are trying right now is to learn the moves better. A lot of the time there is some mileage to be gained out of this. The technique is two-fold: First it’s to have a clear separation between ‘working’ mode and ‘linking’ mode. Often, climbers are too busy trying to make better links and forget to remember all the little movement tweaks they are learning. So progress is much slower than it needs to be. Stop linking for a bit, and just do shorter sections or single moves until you are super slick before moving on.Apart from overall climbing speed, the amount of resting during the climb is a big variable that could make the difference between success and failure. The main point of this post is that the correct amount of stopping/resting time depends on the character of the climb as much as the length or number of moves. Here is a video of yesterday’e efforts of mine on a long project (estimated grade V14). It’s about V12 to just before my failure point and the next few moves are the crux, so I need to have plenty left in the tank to make any more progress.
You can see this is an all out sprint with no rests. But I’m climbing for nearly two minutes straight on very steep ground. 120 seconds for just over 30 hand moves. The climbing is pretty technical and there is a lot of footwork to be done for every hand move. It contrasts with a 9a I did in spain a while back which is 30 moves in 30 seconds. Massive difference. On the 9a, the correct strategy (after much trial and error) was to go as fast as possible. I skipped clips, didn’t chalk up once - just continuous sprinting to get to the end before the anaerobic system started to falter.On other projects I’ve tried for a long enough time, I’ve experienced through trial and error that many different strategies for resting worked - sometimes stopping only enough to chalk up, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes longer. In general, the trend has been that resting less has been better.However, On this cave project, I’ve just realised that my previous strategy of no rest might not be the best. I started with this strategy partly because there’s no obvious place to rest, and partly because its only 35 moves to the crux. But once the climbing time starts to creep above 60-90 seconds, the need to stop and rest, at least briefly becomes more and more important. It’s a moving target though depending on the nature of the climbing. Last thing in the session (after this attempt I lay down and slept for half an hour!!) I worked out a rather unreasonable rest from two toe hooks just at the point I fell. My plan is to get the climbing time to here down 25% to 90 seconds, and rest for about 2 chalk-ups each hand. Ill let you know how it goes…Summary: experiment with different resting times and pacing on your redpoints, the character of the individual climb often confounds expectations.Dave MacLeod
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Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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The middle way of rock movement (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/25vG6FaJ5Cg/middle-way-of-rock-movement.html)
23 May 2010, 4:58 pm
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/S_leOJiFZII/AAAAAAAACOI/WowV8td9V40/s400/DSC_9840.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/S_leOJiFZII/AAAAAAAACOI/WowV8td9V40/s1600/DSC_9840.jpg)
Cubby throws in another drop knee, Glen Etive
A session with Mr Cuthbertson got me thinking of changes in movement fashions in climbing since I started. Where Cubby dotted his feet around miniscule smears on blankness, I tended to swing and heelhook. Cubby was obviously leading world trad climbing in the early 80’s, often on routes that were hard because they were completely suicidal. When he got into sport climbing at it’s birth at venues like Malham in the mid eighties, the fashion was for precision. Climbing like a gymnasitc performance, with effortless grace. I have this idea that even grimacing and grunting was not really ‘in’.Fast forward, and watch a modern climbing film like Progression (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/progression.html). Quite a difference - Ondra is racing up the rock before you can blink. The American boulderers are leaping with feet off and one hand as you reach the for the remote control to turn down all the yelling.The popularity of bouldering and the influence of famous climbers has tended to make climbers move faster and more aggressively, with less foot moves per hand move. What does this mean? It adds efficiency because you get through the moves quicker and more momentum is used and more aggression is good for realising the maximum force you can produce. But it loses efficiency by getting less weight on your feet throughout the whole move or sequence and adding a lot of swings into disadvantageous positions that must be countered with muscle power.You might have guessed the punchline already - somewhere in between is best. Race up the rock or leap wildy for holds if your technique is quick enough or you have shoulders like Daniel Woods. But if you are more average in your build, background and climbing ability, someone like Fred Nicole or the female climbers in the world cup competitions would be better movement role models.One other thing… One positive trend in modern rock climbing is that crimping everything is much less in fashion than it used to be. Thats definitely a good thing for all out tendons.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-629780960497983695?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/25vG6FaJ5Cg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Don’t do what they do (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/2xz3KcwAvHU/dont-do-what-they-do.html)
25 May 2010, 11:02 am
Remember that being a successful athlete, not matter which arena you compare yourself in (peers, amateur, professional) by definition means doing what other people wouldn’t.Lots of people model their technique, training and tactics on what their peers are doing. But if you want to get better than them, they are exactly the wrong people to look at. The modelling can be conscious and deliberate, but most of the time you actually do it subconsciously. So wake up! The greatest success you can hope for by doing what everyone else (in YOUR world of peers) does is to assimilate the same level of mediocrity they have. More about all this in my book. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html)While we’re on the subject of role models, an important point about them. Yes they are useful, even essential to help you get more out of yourself, so long as you chose the right role models. But keep in mind it’s the approach they have that you’re copying, not the exact actions. Their life, physiology, schedule, resources etc can never fit with yours. So don’t try. So the question is “What would they do if they had this (my) circumstance right now?”.And one other thing… Good role models in sport are ones you can actually find some details about - someone you can feel you know through seeing them, reading about them or even better, being coached by them! If it’s someone who never speaks, blogs, writes coaches, it’s pretty hard to ask the question above and get near a useful answer.You have two choices, pick a better role model, or ask them to keep in touch more. Interview them for your blog or your favourite website and ask them all the questions you want in one go. Just an idea.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-912107237749160672?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/2xz3KcwAvHU)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Glycogen dumping (and why it probably won’t work for you) (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/4axsBSNWVk8/glycogen-dumping-and-why-it-probably.html)
8 June 2010, 8:02 pm
Tim just did a new E10. Looks fantastic. He mentioned in his blog post (http://www.planetfear.com/blog.php?id=240) about it that he used glycogen dumping to help him close the deal on this long term project of his. He had been asking me the previous week about strategies for making yourself a bit lighter for a hard redpoint such as dehydration. It’s really hard to get dehydration to do anything other than make you feel ill. But carrying less glycogen up your route is a strategy that is occasionally useful. Talk of this ‘new’ (it’s actually very old) strategy peaked some interest and various emails asking me to explain it. It’s really simple, so I’ll explain it in two sentences.For each gram of muscle glycogen, the body has to store 3 or 4 grams of water. If you eat less the day before your big lead you can deplete the store, lose a few kgs and maybe get a small but crucial advantage.The explanation of why it probably won’t work for most climbers needs more words, but is really worth reading, so you don’t waste your time, energy, food and chances of sending.The first and biggest reason why it won’t work is that people will try to use it to replace ‘real’ preparation. The real reason why Emmett climbed his E10 is because he’s Emmett. This accounted for 99% of the success, the new strategy only making up the tiny difference which was crucial in this case as it sounded truly at his limit.That 99% - ‘being Emmett’ - is what most people should really be concentrating on; learning how to go for it without hesitation, without fear of falling, with every shred of effort you can muster. It’s the tactics of learning to know your body, mind, strengths, weaknesses, equipment, conditions etc unspeakably well through endless consideration, planning and testing over years. It’s the boring old stuff - the hours of training, the getting over the excuses that get in the way of getting the hours in.The second reason why it won’t work for most people is that their technique, especially foot work is not good enough for small differences in weight to make a noticeable difference.The third reason is that it won’t work if you overuse it, or use it when you aren’t already really really close to success. This technique by it’s nature depletes your energy reserves for the session. So it’s good for one, maybe two all out redpoints in the day and then a good recovery. It causes a reactive glycogen loading afterwards (indeed it’s used for carbo loading by endurance athletes) so using regularly has the opposite effect. If you are still working the route and aren’t ready for a pure redpointing session, you’ll just burn out after a short session. Depleting the glycogen store to really low levels takes much longer to recover from.If you are thinking I’m trying to put you off, you’d be right. Used well, it can be useful once or twice a year for your career best project, and only in addition to your very best in the real methods of preparation and good tactics. The trouble with tactics like glycogen dumping is that most people use them (subconsciously) to replace real effort, real thought, real preparation. It’s such an easy psychological trap to fall into, and most the time, we do fall in.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4252305543256428369?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/4axsBSNWVk8)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Basic technique - saving energy on trad (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/isrBoOLFSfE/basic-technique-saving-energy-on-trad.html)
20 July 2010, 10:46 pm
I’ve not posted on basic technique for a while, so here is something that my own summer of trad has been reminding me of recently. In trad climbing, the actual climbing bout is not just a little bit longer than sport or bouldering, it’s WAY longer. 20, 30 60 minutes instead of seconds up to a few minutes on many sport climbs.The implications of this are very important. Most of us train for trad on short steep sport routes in climbing walls - this is fine - we need the endurance for the crux sprints even during long routes. But the movement is very different on trad.The amount of time searching for handholds, footholds or gear, or resting takes up the vast majority of the total climbing time. Actually making moves is quite fleeting between long periods on the same holds. If you’ve ever edited a piece of video of a climber doing a long trad route you’ll readily appreciate this!Let’s go through the pictures (BTW these are from our Triple 5 trip to St Kilda - nice route eh?):
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfFVxhv8I/AAAAAAAACUg/i71TGvf1g20/s400/IMG_0394.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfFVxhv8I/AAAAAAAACUg/i71TGvf1g20/s1600/IMG_0394.jpg)
A rare moment of actually making a move. Note bent arms, trunk close to the wall and shoulders pulled back in tension. On a climbing wall route, you move almost continously by comparison and your body tends to adopt this sort of position a lot - like maybe 60% plus of the time.So what? You get into the habit of staying in this position. If you can’t find the hold or need to clip gear, you just freeze in this position and sort it out before continuing seconds later. Because the climbing bout is short, it doesn’t matter too much. In fact, the moves are probably hard enough that it’s actually more efficient not to set up a full resting position, just to go back to ‘progress’ mode a few seconds later. Next photo >>
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfHMO-R7I/AAAAAAAACUo/CNvI_zVWGL0/s400/IMG_0404.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfHMO-R7I/AAAAAAAACUo/CNvI_zVWGL0/s1600/IMG_0404.jpg)
In trad, not only will you have to make these stops between moves many times more than on a short climbing wall route, but they might be of much longer duration. So the climbing style has to change. You can always tell a very experienced trad climber when the adopt the position in the picture 2 almost immediately when they have to stop on a pitch. The hips are in, back arched and leaning back on straight arms. The maximum amount of weight is on the feet, but you can lean back a bit to scan the rock ahead more effectively. Next picture >>
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfJJlT7rI/AAAAAAAACUw/yLHg2mFzH8M/s400/IMG_0370.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TEYfJJlT7rI/AAAAAAAACUw/yLHg2mFzH8M/s1600/IMG_0370.jpg)
The other common position in trad is when searching for footholds. In this case, the shoulders are in, drooping from straight arms and the bum is out to give a clear view of the footholds.If you haven’t been tradding for a while, you often have to remind yourself to take these resting positions immediately by conscious reminder and accentuating them, so you fall back into the habit. If you haven’t developed the technique at all, long steep trad pitches will feel a lot harder than they should. But even a delay of a few seconds in assuming these positions will really add up as you might use them 100s of times in a single long pitch.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-138288876667757863?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/isrBoOLFSfE)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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5 ways to sabotage your training session (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/qLVG_mhMZfA/5-ways-to-sabotage-your-training.html)
11 August 2010, 12:14 am
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 your sport, you could learn any of these five habits that you’ll see in fellow climbers all the time. Guaranteeing failure to improve at climbing is a lot easier that guaranteeing success, which is why so many people manage it with the following:
1. Wait until you are tired. Slower reactions and lazy movements will add more peak forces on working tendons and joints, giving you more microscopic tissue damage. So you can add the same damage as you would with a heavy training session, even though you burned out after a short time and gave up. Because you only measured the training load as route grades X volume, you wont notice the extra damage and fail to rest long enough. Repeat for several sessions and you have an overuse injury.
2. Listen too closely to fear. Could be fear of falling, or fear of failing. Doesn’t matter. The research shows that we are driven by fear of loss. It worked well at the time our brain architecture was being designed by evolution, a few years back when something stealing your food or worse still eating you meant it was game over. But the trait causes some big problems in modern life. Like in sport climbing when falling is safe but still feels terrifying. We are scared of the wrong things and worse still when we expose ourselves to them in the wrong way (too much too soon) we become hypersensitive to them. A crippling negative feedback cycle. Slow, incremental exposure to scary things like competitive situations, pressure to succeed when you’ve invested a lot in a goal, or even just taking a lob is the way to conquer. Try and shortcut it or skip the training and go straight for the performance and you’ll fail spectacularly.
3. Do the same as last time. Humans love routines, so this one couldn’t be easier to slip into. Successful training is about maximising the total load on the body across the different energy systems, muscle groups, techniques etc. Working on one while the other rests allows you to fit in more stimulus per unit time. If you do the same routes, on the same length of wall, same angle, hold type pattern of session intensity you’ll manage to overtrain a few systems while detraining the rest. Worst possible place to be. Ever wondered how olympic athletes absorb 10 times the number of training hours you do, but have less time out to injury?
4. Compete like it’s a competition. It rarely occurs to amateur athletes that there is a difference between competing in training and competing in competition. Mainstream sports are pretty messed up, but if there’s one thing they are good at it’s knowing where the difference lies. The (superficial) goal is competing in competition is to win the game, be the best, outdo the other guy. So you have to bend over backwards, go that extra mile, ignore pain, tiredness and not look over your shoulder, just focus on the finish line. Competing in training is about learning from the other guy. So the point is for you to watch them, not for them to watch you. But if they are watching you while you show off your skills, they can catch up faster by assimilating what you do and adding it to their individual strengths.
5. Get angry. I don’t mean simply release the tension of a big effort with a power scream - that’s fine. I mean get ANGRY! Kick the wall, tear your hair out, have a rant at the hold that moved, the heat, the grease, the duff beta you got off me and the guy who was watching and made you feel nervous. That will distract you nicely from the things that might actually make a difference.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-64289940090357347?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/qLVG_mhMZfA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Vapour Velcros and how to use rockshoes (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/9VmcEX2uZQg/review-vapour-velcros-and-how-to-use.html)
9 September 2010, 4:52 pm
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TIkPqib33JI/AAAAAAAACYo/nfKJM4HE_GQ/s400/IMG_0794.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TIkPqib33JI/AAAAAAAACYo/nfKJM4HE_GQ/s1600/IMG_0794.jpg)
A couple of months ago I reviewed the Instinct slippe (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/2010/02/scarpa-instincts-review.html)r which I’ve since been wearing for all my indoor bouldering. Next up on Scarpa’s new rockshoe range is the Vapour Velcro (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/Products/Product.asp?ProductId=135). These are aimed as a more all-round use boot and are hence less aggressively turned down than the Instinct. As is usual for my reviews, I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent to talk about how to choose and use rockshoes generally...Turned down shoes (if you don’t know what the term means it’s basically that the toe box is curled slightly downwards) are the cause of much debate and polarisation among climbers. Some think their only useful for steep climbing, or if you climb hard. Others cannot understand them at all! The first big problem that a lot of people have is that turned down shoes feel downright weird when you first try them on in the shop. Book publishers know that no matter how much we hear the old adage about not judging books by their covers, we all do and will always do. Likewise for rockshoes. We can’t help but judge them by how they feel standing on a flat shop floor without being broken in, despite the fact they will probably feel completely different after a session of climbing and standing on actual footholds. If you want to get more performance from your rockshoe, you’ll have to get beyond how they feel in the shop. Most will never heed this advice, which is too bad…The other problem is that turned down shoes require an actual technique of their own, distinct from traditional flatter soles. Watch some youtubes of leading and bouldering world cup comps. Watch in particular the climbers moving up vertical ground. Watch carefully how they place their feet. See how as they pad their toes downwards onto the foothold, they continue to drop their whole foot down by an inch or so after the toe has made contact. As they do this, watch the downturn of the boot bend back to a normal position. Once in the normal anatomical position, the foot can produce both power and control, but the elastic energy of the downturned rockshoe being stretched has added to the support. A flatter shoe has to provide that support by being stiffer, and that stiffness can come at the expense of sensitivity.A case in point - Recently I climbed the famous death defying slab route Indian Face (http://davemacleod.blogspot.com/2010/06/indian-face.html). My ascent was just before the Vapour Velcros came out, and I wore a pair of Scarpa Stix. Some climbers asked me why I would wear an apparently turned down boot on a smeary slab climb? The implication is that turned down boots wouldn’t smear well because they don’t bend back enough to make full contact with the smear. But they do! You just have to let them. This is a limitation of climbing technique, not the versatility of the boot. So what should one do about this problem of choosing shoes. Well, manufacturers tend to run boot demos around the country from time to time. They aren’t so popular these days as people are turned off by being marketed to during their climbing time. Of course the events are designed to get you hooked on the shoes, but they also save you from making expensive mistakes in buying shoes that don’t work well for you. My advice? Make an effort to keep track of boot demos near you and use them. Anyway, back to the review. When I got my new Vapour Velcros through from Scarpa I was all set to get them moving on some trad terrain straight away. But the wettest Scottish July in a decade made sure I tested them out on my board first. Out of the box, they feel very comfortable and indeed not so aggressively turned down. But support on small edges and tensiony steep ground still felt good on my standard tests on my board’s hardest problems. On my first outing in them on trad I filled one of them with enough blood I had to pour it out after this injury (http://davemacleod.blogspot.com/2010/08/minor-surgery.html) in preparation for the climb. Thankfully I was able to wear them for the first ascent of the Usual Suspects - a 5 pitch E9 7a first ascent was a good trad test I reckon. And they felt great. Precise and powerful on a 7a drop-knee crux at 50 degrees overhanging, and then supportive on tiny slippy quartz dinks on the pitches above. The heel felt not to hard on my achilles even after 6 hours of hard continuous climbing, but the velcro cinch was good enough to keep in snug for pulling hard on heelhooks. Not as good as the Stix for bat hangs but then there aren’t too many routes that require this! They have softened up a bit since and feel great on granite smears.All round climbers will love these and they’ll be perfect for sensitivity on indoor routes and problems. With the luxury of having a few pairs, I’m still wearing my Instinct slippers for long board training sessions for the combination of 100% tension grab and soft comfort on the toes. I’m wearing Vapour Vs for indoor and most outdoor routes for comfort and that little bit more support on long pitches. Enjoy..Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7108425555788450459?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/9VmcEX2uZQg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Thanks to pain... (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/xrHB41sjuiA/thanks-to-pain.html)
21 September 2010, 11:51 am
(http://thxthxthx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/thx_220.jpg) (http://thxthxthx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/thx_220.jpg)
Leah from the THXTHXTHX blog (http://thxthxthx.com/) reminds us that pain has some superb qualities and is worth listening to if you work your body hard. Listen in good times and in bad, and take a moment to make doubly sure you do listen on those days when the immediate holds all of your attention.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3647514704873927819?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/xrHB41sjuiA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Thoughts from technique classes (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/x93ZiC2sWzo/thoughts-from-technique-classes.html)
22 September 2010, 9:34 am
Some themes that commonly emerge when coaching movement technique with climbers. Thanks to Rick Marland (http://www.rickmarland.com/) for the pics from Big Rock at the weekend.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFA3JkNzI/AAAAAAAACZ4/SWk70Bop-rI/s400/AVUM.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFA3JkNzI/AAAAAAAACZ4/SWk70Bop-rI/s1600/AVUM.jpg)
The nature of climbing walls - look at the layout of the holds on modern climbing walls. In the main, setters tend to space the holds fairly evenly leading to the sort of position I’m in here, with limbs all at different levels. This makes quite pleasant continuous movement. But keep in mind that a lot of rock types have more patterned arrangements of holds; holds together in breaks with long reaches between and sometimes on good handholds but miniscule dinks for feet or vice versa. If you are training for this, watch out that your regular diet of climbing contains at least some movement like this.Note also the three finger ‘pocket’ grip on the left hand. Climbers in their early twenties or younger don’t use it much, relying on the crimp much more. They haven’t had the pulley injuries yet - but they will! When we go to the campus board they can’t even hang on it openhanded. Older climbers use openhanded much more through necessity - too many pulley injuries. The serendipitous discovery is that once you get over the initial weakness, openhanded is a much stronger and less tiring grip on more than 50% of holds.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFHMmzPrI/AAAAAAAACaQ/QLtufJHB_OI/s400/SQVE.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFHMmzPrI/AAAAAAAACaQ/QLtufJHB_OI/s1600/SQVE.jpg)
I’m pointing at the left foot in this picture. It needs to be pressed hard against the wall to complete the preparation to move the right hand. Although it doesn’t have a foothold to go to, it’s doing one of the most important jobs of all the limbs here. By pressing directly into (not downwards) the wall, it holds the upper body upright, preventing it falling outwards as the right hand reaches. Beginners miss this, experienced climbers do it intuitively but rarely with enough force or often enough and often the foot is systematically placed in the wrong spot. In my classes I show how the flagging foot should be placed various different types of move.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFFNAo1nI/AAAAAAAACaI/cJ-kWQFuoGY/s400/QAHR.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFFNAo1nI/AAAAAAAACaI/cJ-kWQFuoGY/s1600/QAHR.jpg)
About to pull in hard with the left foot to get in position for the hand move. Climbers are generally too passive with the lower body. It’s natural to focus your aggression on the tiny handholds, because pulling really hard with our fingers is not a natural activity. It grabs our attention. Pulling hard with the feet in rock climbing is a learned skill. You have to force yourself to do at first.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFDBIj2mI/AAAAAAAACaA/iJBO_1ckHKQ/s400/HSXU.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TJnFDBIj2mI/AAAAAAAACaA/iJBO_1ckHKQ/s1600/HSXU.jpg)
Comparing rockshoes. The move in the second picture was impossible for some because they couldn’t get any weight on the foot on a small foothold. The reason was purely that the shoes were poorly fitting or worn out so the sole had no stiffness left. It’s easy in your normal climbing to convince yourself that this isn’t happening or it’s importance is small. But when we all try the same move and all the chaps who are not as strong can to the move easily it is an illuminating experience and climbers start talking about choosing a good pair of new shoes.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4588401082351734007?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/x93ZiC2sWzo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Lessons from health promotion (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/HG4s1TAFkEI/lessons-from-health-promotion.html)
7 October 2010, 8:49 pm
Mark (http://herd.typepad.com/herd_the_hidden_truth_abo/2010/08/reckless-or-social.html) makes the simple but seemingly obvious point about why the health promotion sector has been roundly failing to get people to change their habits. If you don’t have time to click through the stories, the short version is that the most senior elements of the medical profession are still attempting to get people to take control of their own risk behaviours for health - smoking, drinking and getting fat - by issuing a ethical and moral appeal direct at the individual. Mark points out that it cannot work on it’s own. We are social beings and it’s too hard to act individually swim against the tide of what everyone around you is doing. Kids that go to boarding school end up with totally different accents from their parents - almost permanently. Go on a holiday where there isn’t a culture of sitting around, drinking, eating and not doing much (like a mountaineering trip) and you’ll probably come home a pound or two lighter, without even trying.Some goes for your sport performance, training, whatever. The best way to get into a national team is to spend a stack of time with everyone else who is doing the same. I feel that it’s not necessary to make this a permanent move. It’s about hardwiring a new set of habits, norms, standards. It takes a bit of time to get there. But once you are there it’s possible to operate in isolation with only sporadic refreshers. In other words, beyond a certain point you can partially insulate yourself from settling for a second rate effort at being good at sport, even if you regularly train with others who do.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4034260748763100666?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/HG4s1TAFkEI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Tactics: Anticipation (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/m00sMUC0oW0/tactics-anticipation.html)
17 October 2010, 10:58 pm
In observing climbers I’m always looking for running themes that tend to characterise successful climbers versus the unsuccessful ones. My definition of unsuccessful here is not defined by a given grade but just by failure to make continued improvement over time, almost irrespective of the type or intensity of training they do.
Above a certain (fairly low) level of regular climbing time, climbers should tend to get better, just by learning better tactics. How does this happen?The core skill needed, and missing from so many climber’s fundamental approach to climbing is that of anticipation. In a nutshell, anticipation as a tactic is simply thinking “If I do this now, what effects will it have later?” It could be later in the move, later in the attempt, the climbing day or even in your whole climbing career.
This fundamental basic approach is visible in so many fields not only of climbing but also in task management generally. People have a tendency to knuckle down to the immediate task and allow themselves to be distracted from the wider need to step back every so often and re-assess which tasks are appropriate and how everything is going. “I’m too busy getting on with it to stop and have a re-think”. Successful people either inherently do this or have taught themselves to remember to do this.
In climbing, it’s most obvious in mountaineering situations. You start of the day with a given plan and a long series of small tasks that make up the entire day. The problems start when the unpredictability of mountaineering changes the constraints in real time. Usually this affects you by slowing you down or tiring you out more than expected. Climbers get into trouble when they are too busy following the ‘old’ plan that they either don’t notice the new constraints (weather changes, snow, difficulty, errors etc) or fail to anticipate their effects on the old plan and update it with a new one. Yet the same thing happens in so many aspects of climbing, including rock climbing movement and even things like planning your training.
Part of the natural tendency for us to behave like this I’m sure comes from our aversion of the status quo changing or of loss. Measuring the constraints that affect your plan for anything you are doing requires you to face the fact that the desired outcome, or route used to get to it, might not happen like you hoped or expected. It might no longer be realistic at all. Or perhaps it never was, but it’s taken going part-way down the path for this to become obvious. Either way, it’s easier just to keep your head down and stick to the plan. But it’s more likely you’ll fail eventually with this approach. And fail more painfully - with more time lost and effort expended.
For some reason, good climbers, athletes or people in general seem to be able to get past the uncomfortability of the idea that although you might want the plan to work out just as you want, it just isn’t going to happen. In the same way that throwing out old clutter or starting anything with a clean slate gives a weird sense of refreshing bold clarity and therapeutic freedom - the old no longer seems important once you’ve let it go.
Summary:
Are you blindly following your own plan without reflection?
Is the plan still appropriate based on what you are learning on the way?
Do you really know it needs changing but are resistant for no obvious reason?
NB: The opposite problem - of failure to stick to any plan for long enough to actually get anywhere - is less common but just as ineffective. I’m thinking of climbers that keep looking for another hold when it’s obvious there is only one real choice. Or climbers whose only measure of progress seems to be when you actually get to the top of the route (and so never try hard ones for long enough to actually create a chance of doing them).
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5912509121105038329?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/m00sMUC0oW0)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Injury therapy in Margalef (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/Dxv-ghT8ZxU/injury-therapy-in-margalef.html)
12 November 2010, 5:48 pm
About a month ago, on the crux sidepull of Muy Caliente E10 6c, I tore a ligament in my DIP joint of my left index finger. I spent the rest of my week long trip there climbing openhanded on it, or at least not using my thumb on half-crimps. Thankfully none of the other routes I did needed any crimping. After I got home, I spent the next three weeks climbing solely openhanded on my board, bouldering outside or sticking to slabs on trad, even if pretty hard slabs. The tear was immediately painful on crimping, slightly painful on half-crimps but totally fine openhanded. This was all going fine, although the intensity of training on my board was probably still a bit much for it. What is always needed in this situation is a change of scenery. A couple of weeks hard climbing in the steep walls and roofs of Margalef was exactly the therapy I needed.
The point here is that the injured part must be relatively unloaded for a good several weeks to give it a chance to progress and form a strong scar. But doing nothing tends to cause that healing progress to falter. Choosing climbing that will keep everything moving, responding and basically stimulated means healing progresses faster. So the goal is to look for a type of climbing that is kind on the injury but lets you climb hard and keep your fitness. In the case of this particular injury that simply meant climbs that don’t need crimps, or at least that only need them rarely and you can get around it. A lot of the time it’s exactly the same with pulley tears.
In two weeks of pocket pulling on routes F8b and up I didn’t aggravate the injury once but gained fitness and gave the finger a good stimulus to heal. It totally worked, and now at the end of the trip it’s feeling painless testing it on hard crimping. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s gone. I’m sure if I spent a week crimping my way up some British limestone face climbs, it would soon go backwards again. It just means it’s made great progress, and with a few more weeks of the same and no mistakes, it should be getting more and more resistant to full normal climbing.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4355702614804745598?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/Dxv-ghT8ZxU)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Avoiding pulley injuries - the hard and easy ways (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/tionNEAcGWY/avoiding-pulley-injuries-hard-and-easy.html)
18 November 2010, 11:20 pm
In the comments of my last post (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/2010/11/injury-therapy-in-margalef.html), John asked about how to avoid crimping all the time and hence reduce the build up of stress and microscopic damage that leads to pulley tears. Of course there is the short answer of ‘just openhand everything’ and you’ll get better at it. When it comes down to it, that’s what you have to do.
It’s not easy to take the temporary drop in climbing grade while you gain openhanded strength. Most climbers who’ve not had pulley injuries yet are miserably weak at openhanding and really have to take a hit. But it’s your choice - it’s only your ego you have to beat. I’ll make a very detailed case in Rock ‘til you drop not only for why you must do it, but all the ways you can make it easier on yourself. However, since you’ll have to wait a little longer for that, here are a few headlines for now:-
‘It’s just training’. The biggest enemy of changing habits like crimping is that climbers are always trying to compete, even in training. When you go to the climbing wall, you cannot bear to do something differently to normal because you’ll have to take a grade hit for a while. And maybe your training isn’t going perfect anyway so you are trying extra hard to the standard you’ve become accustomed to. There is only one way around it; stand back and realise that you are just training. You are just pulling on plastic blobs. Who cares what the number is? If you think other people do, you’re kidding yourself. Sure it’s ok to compete once in a while. Climb openhanded most of the time, and allow yourself to crimp when it really matters. If you don’t, you’ll only have to later when your broken pulleys won’t let you do anything else.
- Get off the starting blocks. If your openhanded strength really is that spectacularly rubbish in comparison to your crimp strength, you could get yourself off the starting blocks by a little supplementary fingerboard work with a 4 finger and 3 finger openhanded grip. Use the protocol I described in 9 out of 10 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). After 10 or 20 sessions you shouldn’t have to take such an ego hammering blow when you climb for real with an openhanded grip. But don’t forget that the subtleties of the movement are realy quite different than when crimping; getting comfortable with openhanded needs both the strength part as well as actually learning how to climb with it on real moves.
- Know the score. A lot of people I’ve coached reckon they just aren’t cut out for climbing openhanded. They usually invent a reason like the shape of their hands or the length of their fingers. Rubbish. If it feels weak, it’s only because you’re weak. And the only reason you’re weak on this grip is because you don’t do it. I challenge anyone to climb solely openhanded for 20 sessions or more and still tell me it doesn’t work for them.
- Do it on easy routes first. Very experienced or expert climbers have a disadvantage in that their habits are very set and egos expect very consistent performance. But the advantage they have is that a lot of the movement decisions are quite automatic. Someone who climbs 8a+ can probably do a 7c while having conversation. So there is room on easier routes during warm-up or mileage climbs to concentrate on learning a new technique like openhanding. Crimp everything and you will suffer for it down the line. Don’t worry about it too much - most people have to learn to openhand the hard way (post-injury). But injury is arguably the most wonderful motivator for changing the way you climb. That’s what happened to me. At 17 I scoffed at openhanded climbing. 5 years of constant pulley injuries later I couldn’t believe how much better it is than crimping on the vast majority of holds.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3041971585934281520?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/tionNEAcGWY)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Tactics: Climbing in the cold (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/6C-XouyvzFs/tactics-climbing-in-cold.html)
28 November 2010, 10:46 pm
On my main blog I just added the video above about a new 8b I did in Glen Nevis. It was climbed in temperatures of Minus 2 or 3 with a light breeze. I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about working around the cold for doing redpoints like this. The tactics are fairly simple:
1 Start off very warm. Make sure you wear enough clothing so you arrive at the crag at the point of overheating. This way, by the time you’ve faffed and put your gear on, you’ll be at the right temperature to start climbing, instead of freezing already and ripe for an injury or at least a cold pump. If there's no walk-in, you'll have to go for a good 10 minute run in your duvet instead, even if you just got out of a warm car.
2 Warm up on the project. Go bolt to bolt, still dressed in your warm clothes. Make sure you finish by doing a medium difficulty link that gets a bit of a pump on and leaves you feeling a little overheated.
3 Lower down and don’t stand still. It doesn’t matter (for most people anyway) how big your duvet jacket is, if you stand still in the cold for any length of time, you’ll struggle to keep warm enough muscles and fingers to go for your redpoint. Ideally your light pump will have been recovered from after about 15 minutes. During that time don’t stop - get everything ready, blow on your hands, run and jump around. And then get your shoes back on and go for it. You don’t want your heart rate to drop towards resting at all in the whole session.
4 If you do need to stand still, usually to belay. You’ll need to fully warm your body up again. Walk off for a good ten minutes and then power back up the hill to arrive at the crag really hot. By the time you have your shoes on and tied in you’ll be set. Jumping around at the crag to re-warm doesn’t usually cut it. It follows that sport climbing sessions in the cold are much better done in blocks, i.e. Your partner belays you for a whole session with warm-up and redpoints before switching and they re-warm by walking somewhere else for their session. It’s pretty hard to do it swapping belays without a lot of aerobic work in between.
5 Hands - They’ll start off warm from a gloved and duvet clad walk-in. Keeping a warm core is by far the biggest thing you can do to stop them getting too cold and to rescue them if they do. Ideally you don’t want to have gloves on after your warm-up because it’ll soften your fingertips too much. Instead, keep the heart going and jam your hands in your roasting hot armpits to keep them warm before you go for the redpoint. If they aren’t roasting hot, go back to point 4. If it’s short route (like 15 metres) you’ll be fine, but any longer or with a shake out during the redpoint and numb fingers will be a problem even if you started off with hot hands. A ‘teabag’ style handwarmer in your chalk bag is often enough, and was used in the video above. Make sure you open it at the start of the session as they take a good while to reach maximum temperature. You might want to supplement it with the armpit treatment on your shake out if it’s a really good rest.
So, nothing complicated really. Where people go wrong is they just cant resist the temptation to stand still if they start to feel cold, or they go for a jog but not nearly for long enough. Enjoy your cold rock sessions!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-9121194710343171107?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/6C-XouyvzFs)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Racing Weight (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/HkPtFVNQIHU/review-racing-weight.html)
2 December 2010, 9:29 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/racingweight.jpg)
Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald is the first dedicated book for athletes on maintaining an optimal body composition. I first heard about it a few months ago and raced to get hold of a copy. As soon as I read it I bought a stack of them for my shop (right here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/racingweight.html)) as I felt this is a must have book for any climber investing time and effort into manipulating their weight for climbing. I’ve been meaning to write this review for a while to explain why.
First off, climbers will notice that this is a book aimed at endurance athletes like cyclists and runners. Why is that important? Because their training is totally different to ours. Aerobic athletes need to burn larger volumes of calories for more hours than climbers do. But despite this, much of the book is relevant to us and even the bits that aren’t help to inform what us climbers should be doing in our nutritional regime.
Fitzgerald has all the credentials to write this book - a successful athlete (triathlon), nutritionalist, coach and professional writer. Although he references the scientific literature throughout, the text is still easy to read if you aren’t a sports scientist and is both well laid out and clear in its messages. The discussion early on comparing the sizes, shapes and demands of many different sports was very illuminating. We are totally not alone in our challenging nutritional and physiological needs as climbers. While endurance athletes have one killer advantage in the weight loss game (that their sports use up a ton of calories), they also struggle because any caloric deficit interferes seriously with training intensity. If they don’t eat really well at all times, they get unfit. Fitzgerald outlines in excellent and convincing detail how many angles we can come at these problems using the content, volume, timing and quality of our diet.
I learned a great deal about all of these different components, as well as reinforcing a lot of what I had previously learnt in my own study of this subject. I’d also read a lot of research in recent years about the tactics of appetite management, perhaps the ultimate nemesis for those permanently adrift of their fighting weight. It was fascinating to see an up to date review of all of this in one place. An excellent chapter and surely useful to just about anyone never mind just athletes. The only place I’d like to have seen an extended discussion was that of intermittent fasting - an increasingly popular protocol in several non-cardiovascular sports that depend on low body fat percentage. Fitzgerald essentially dismisses it as unsuitable for endurance athletes due to the inability to fuel daily training sessions. This totally makes sense. But given that a lot of the book seems to be written with a wider audience of athletes or the general public in mind, I was surprised that more space wasn’t given to it. I suspect that lack of solid research on it’s effects on sport performance was the main reason. It does however leave an opening for someone else to discuss this aspect (or better still research it!) further with a greater range of sports and applications in mind.
As a coach myself I observe climbers constantly applying bits and pieces of nutritional tactics from all kinds of sources; pseudo-scientific diet books aimed at the mass market, knowledge adapted haphazardly from other sports, out of date knowledge or simple unconscious habits. In my view, every climber who cares about training or knows their body composition could be better should read this text.It’s in the shop here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/racingweight.html)Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6208248664674896158?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/HkPtFVNQIHU)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Training for winter climbing - some thoughts (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/yuJzXkYa72U/training-for-winter-climbing-some.html)
2 December 2010, 11:17 pm
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TPgondqNCMI/AAAAAAAACc0/hxV-jtiKDvk/s400/unicorn.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NCwOS2t65Sw/TPgondqNCMI/AAAAAAAACc0/hxV-jtiKDvk/s1600/unicorn.jpg)
Donald King ready for a big pitch of weirdness on Unicorn VII,8 Glencoe
At this time of year, especially with the deluge of snow, everyone is suddenly psyched to get in their best shape for winter climbing (what? you mean you haven’t been training for months?!).
It’s funny to me how much the prevailing memes about training for winter climbing have changed since I started climbing. In the early nineties, some misguided old souls still trained for winter by walking up hills in the October sleet and bivvying out to harder themselves up. That, together with eating some extra pies to put on a good ‘storm coat’. Fast forward to 2010 and everyone talks about nothing else apart from dry tooling, dry tooling, dry tooling. Who is right?
To gain some insight, consider the recurring training-for-climbing mystery of the underachieving board beast. ‘beasting’ is all the range right now in bouldeing. Get on the ‘beastmaker’, get ‘beasting’ and ‘beast’ your way to success. Except the strongest lads that are permanent furniture under the steepest part of your local climbing wall somehow aren’t the ones climbing the hardest climbs. ‘beast’ and ‘best’ are linked, but not the same. Right now in bouldering, technique is undervalued. I don’t see it changing for a few years yet. The attraction of the simplicity of pure strength training is too tempting for angry young men of the climbing wall. Along with the rise in availability of dry tooling in the UK at least, comes a swing in the same direction (pun wasn’t intentional) - towards looking at the whole sport through the lens of how hard you can pull on ice axes.
If you’ve ever been to a dry tooling comp, you’ll witness some eyebrow raising displays of lock-off strength, not usually from the winner of the comp. The winner won’t be the weakest thats for sure, but they’ll be the one who magically climbed the problem with the method that you just would never have spotted, and neither did anyone else (especially if they were too busy unleashing the beast). The pie eating, sleep out in a seet storm method represents the opposite extreme, both are probably equally ineffective at getting you up hard winter routes, if you use them in isolation. So my appeal with this post is not to use either pie eating, bivvying in your garden or pull-ups on ice axes in isolation. The best winter climbers are the ones who have an uncanny knack of getting up just about any sort of weirdness you throw at them. In fact, if I could do only one type of training for Scottish style winter climbing, it would be to go and climb weirdness of all shapes and sizes.The cruxes of winter routes are always weird. So if you melt your technical climber brain into that of neanderthal with nothing but ‘pull up and pull harder’ in the movement repertoire, you’ll fail. Winter climbing done well generally feels like a yoga workout in the cold. You’ll do a move you’d never even thought of before on every pitch. Train for this by climbing the weirdest things possible and do it well. Climb chimneys, loose rock, wet rock, slabs, V-slots, flared offwidths, sentry boxes, buildings, drainpipes, bouncy castles - whatever you see, climb up and over it. Only when you have the cat-like ability to climb any sort of feature that nature throws at you, will your tooling power really count.
Now that’s out of the way, some points about dry tooling:
1 The movement is very fast, similar to rock climbing. This is nothing like real mixed climbing. Climbing problems you have wired accentuates this problem and you’ll not develop either technique or endurance in the right way. Making up new problems on the spot and changing them constantly helps slow things down and keep you hanging on longer and learning to relax and save energy. The ice holds in the video below are one novel solution to this problem (a lot of people ask me where you can get hold of them - here! (http://www.tcaclimbingshop.com/Default.aspx?LoadContent=StoreIceHolds&StoreID=9)). You need to keep clean technique to make upward progress. Rushing at it will be terminally counterproductive, which is exactly the drill you need for the real thing.
2 People who do a lot of tooling tend to do it on roofs a lot and get hung up by learning roof tooling specific footwork tricks. That’s great if you are training for the cineplex, but if VIIs on Scottish mixed cliffs is the objective, then the key technical skill is to learn to keep the axe still no matter what other body part you are moving. The hooks on hard winter routes are poor and directional. It’s lack of awareness of axe movement as you reach ‘in extremis’ that causes a lot of the falls in real mixed climbs.
3 Be aware that most indoor tooling on resin holds is just hooking. That’s great practice, because it feels scary at first and once you are comfortable with thin hooks it’s a great confidence booster. But when I wee climbers who tool a lot on real mixed climbs, they miss all the obvious torques, steins, axe head and shaft jams and a myriad of other ways to use your tools that beardy mixed climbers from the 80’s were proper experts at.
4 Dealing with hooks on real mixed climbs often involves a bit of ice as well. Often the hook relies on a tiny bit of ice or frozen moss to work. If you mess around with it too much by taking your axe off it and replacing it, or just plain whacking the hell out of it, you’ll waste it. Learn to know when you have to use the first time placement or nothing. You’ll probably have to train that skill ‘on the job’. But the odd hour snatched on road cuttings or climbing thin-ice boulder problems at ground level while you wait for the roads to clear will teach you a huge amount about this kind of thing.
5 Falling off in mixed climbing is generally not cool. I’ve definitely noticed a trend for people falling off mixed routes more readily than when I started climbing. That’s all fine if you really know how to place safe gear in icy cracks. But if you don’t know what you are doing, don’t go throwing yourself off icy cliffs too readily. Be careful to keep the big separation in your mind between the dry tooling wall and the big scary real mixed climbs.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5899783101006129186?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/yuJzXkYa72U)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Boulderer's transition to route climbing (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/hA5wZBA_cFo/boulderers-transition-to-route-climbing.html)
3 December 2010, 1:28 pm
Ross asked me recently about making the transition to routes from an apprenticeship in bouldering.
With ‘bouldering only’ climbing walls becoming ever more popular, there is an increasing body of young climbers who have an entire apprenticeship on them and make a difficult transition to route climbing after a year or two. These climbers get pumped really easily on F6s even though they can boulder Font 7s. Their initial feeling is to blame lack of endurance fitness, which is of course a part of the problem. But a few weeks of racking up the route laps will see a lot of progress in fitness.
The bigger, but less understood problem is hidden in their technique. These guys have spend 100% of their climbing time trying to learn to pull as hard as possible, on 3-10 move boulder problems. The technique of route climbing - to pull as gently as possible - is a totally different technique. You can’t learn it overnight. Often, they want to find a training solution to climbing routes that still involves using the local bouldering wall - i.e. Circuits. That’s fine in theory, but it’s definitely the hard way. The reason is that to learn to climb efficiently for routes, saving energy as opposed to climbing explosively, is best done on long pitches that take 2 minutes to several hours (as in winter climbing). So the best thing to do is get out and climb some big routes, tons of them. Fiddling with a wire placement for five minutes will always teach you how to relax and find the most efficient position much more effectively than doing circuits or lots of easy problems.
Even a week of sport climbing will get you further than months of trying to learn route climbing technique on a boulder wall. Get out and climb at a standard that allows you to do 12 x 30m routes a day or more. That’s 2500 metres climbed in a week minimum - hard to achieve in the boulder wall. By the end of a week your movement and style will be so different.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-2829310255760284588?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/hA5wZBA_cFo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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A rehab story (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/WgwPB58VRSI/rehab-story-from-jacob-fuerst-on-vimeo.html)
11 December 2010, 7:41 pm
A Rehab Story (http://vimeo.com/16553629) from Jacob Fuerst (http://vimeo.com/user5140950) on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/).
Nice story of Josh Wharton coming back from a serious injury. For me this is a nice reminder that the diligent work of rehab exercises, no matter how much of a drag (swimming with old folks!), pay off. Also, the rehab is just as much about overcoming the psychological challenges as the physical/practical ones. Like myself in the past and lots of others, it strikes me that the injury ends up making you feel more positive about your climbing in the end.
Thanks to Andrew's blog (http://www.rockandice.com/tnb-blog) for the heads up on this.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7213410076173677133?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/WgwPB58VRSI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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New year message for your training plan (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/hsxqq8DZUhw/new-year-message-for-your-training-plan.html)
28 December 2010, 5:38 pm
As another year draws to a close think of all the training/climbing wall/ crag sessions you’ve done in the past year.
Now think of the grade increase you’ve made in the past year. Not your ‘best ever’ grade when everything came good, but your day-in, day-out regular climbing grade. What do you warm up on; 6b or 7c? What can you onsight 100% of the time? What can you always redpoint in a day? Odds are it’s pretty much the same. But even if I has risen by half a grade or more, try dividing that grade increase by the number of regular sessions you have through the year. Wall sessions particularly all kind of merge into one. Let’s say you did 200 sessions at the wall and increased half a grade. That’s 1/400th of a grade per session improvement. Not great, for an intermediate climber anyway.
Next year, what sessions could you dream up that would crank that fraction up a bit, or a lot? A session with a good coach. A change of climbing wall. Finally attacking the overhangs you’ve avoided for no good reason. What about a whole year of ONLY overhangs? You can afford to miss a few 1/400th of a grade sessions for the sake of something else. How about a whole week of practicing leader falls? One after the other, every day. 200 leader falls in one week. What would that do to your onsight grade? A lot more than another year of your regular climbing wall session.
My guess is that if you spent the entire next year doing climbing sessions that were nothing like you’ve ever done before, next new year you’d be counting a bigger grade increase. And anyway, what’s to lose by changing everything? Seriously. Another year of same old...Have a great 2011 climbing year.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4819939776262067162?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/hsxqq8DZUhw)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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I've definitely noticed an increase in my theraband skills after 14 sessions in 7 days :thumbsup:
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Base training detail (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/NoSQK4nSf68/base-training-detail.html)
3 January 2011, 12:25 pm
I was just talking on my main blog about my own training over the past few weeks, building a base of strength and addressing various fitness/physiological issues at the start of the new year. Various folk have asked I elaborate a bit on this.
The normal progression of a new macrocycle is generally to begin with high volume, low amplitude work (with oscillations within smaller cycles) and gradually progress to higher intensity work with more rest as you get closer to when you need the fitness for your goal routes.
If you live in the northern UK then the dark months of Nov-Jan of are a good time to mark one training season’s end and begin again with a new period of foundation training. The tricky thing for most is resisting the temptation to rest and have a mini ‘peak’ because something (like Gritstone) happens to be also in condition right now. The decisions about the trade off between short term ‘peaks’ and long term progress are totally down to you. But the detail of that is another blog post…
If you have a ‘dead’ month or two and want to do a base training phase then usually keeping the intensity low and progressively increasing volume to a high level is the thing to do. The idea is to get your body used to a high training load. But increasing volume rather than intensity is less injurious than racking up intensity early on. It’s also a great (essential if you are advanced) time to address any strength deficits, niggling causes of recurrent injury or technical flaws you might have. For girls this might be a little weights or pull-ups to strengthen comparatively weak shoulders and arms. For guys this is likely to be rotator-cuff exercises and stretches to realign gorilla shoulders (I’m doing this 90 mins per day right now).
High volume means doing something every day, even at an intermediate level. But because intensity is low, rather than feeling wasted, you’ll probably feel really good. Certainly this phase for me leaves me feeling fit, refreshed and highly motivated for the training that follows in February and beyond.
Some typical components for a base phase:
-Bouldering with short rests on problems/angles you know you’re bad at. No getting addicted to one problem and repeatedly thrashing at it.
-Static or CRAC stretching of the muscles around the hip joint. For men especially hamstrings and hip adductors.
-Full stretching and exercise workout to correct shoulder instabilities/postural faults.
-Repeated drills of particular moves you are bad at e.g. Foot swaps.
-Fall training on lead, LOTS of it.
-Weights to address muscle weakness or injuries.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6774906958513913684?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/NoSQK4nSf68)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Golfers/Tennis elbow etc - what eccentrics do. (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/VJDApRgMCRc/golferstennis-elbow-etc-what-eccentrics.html)
6 February 2011, 5:20 pm
I’ve been asked a lot about eccentrics which are a really big part of successful rehab from tendonosis, in climbers that’s usually Golfer’s or Tennis elbow. What to they do? How do they work to heal the tendon?
There are no definitive answers, in fact, right now the various teams around the western world researching such things are arguing more about this subject now than they were a few years ago. Here is a little discourse on where things are right now.
The protocol of eccentric wrist curls was first brought to prominence by two Canadian physiotherapists (Stanish and Curwin) who reported very impressive and consistent success rates with their tennis elbow patients using a protocol that stopped short of provoking pain in the tendon. Since then, lots of studies have followed over the past decade and a half, also generally reporting good or excellent results with various protocols. These days, the evidence is mounting that nearly everyone with elbow epicondyle tendinosis should be able to get rid of it without resorting to surgery, so long as they do the exercises (the hard bit!), do them right and eliminate the original cause (the other hard bit!).
Protocol - The various different research teams have, generally speaking, had success with three different protocols. One is to do 3 set of 10 reps daily, with a weight that stops just short of provoking pain throughout the exercise. A second is similar, but at an intensity that provokes a little pain in the final set. The third protocol, favoured in a string of papers by a Swedish researcher Hakan Alfredson and his team, is to do 3 sets of 15 reps daily at an intensity that causes mild pain throughout.
Several other teams replicated good results using eccentrics only three days a week. The allowance for pain during the rehab exercises runs counter to much of orthodox sports medicine, even from researchers in the same field. Far from being settled, it’s a question that is only just being opened in tendon research right now. However, the successful healing demonstrated by Alfredson’s protocol does speak for itself.
Briefly, the idea behind it is that tendons suffering tendonosis (degenerative tissue changes) grow numerous and sensitive new nerve endings that serve as a protective measure to self limit the condition. In order to stimulate the tendon enough to grow new collagen and remodel immature scar tissue, the exercise must be a little painful. If the exercise progression is correct, a little exacerbation in the first few weeks should give way to steady pain ratings while the exercise intensity gradually goes up.
So why eccentrics only? Well a lot of researchers were unsatisfied with the rather simplistic explanation that this mode of contraction (lengthening under load) preferentially loaded the tendon rather than the muscle, preventing the muscle from getting strong ‘too quickly’. It’s true that muscles respond better to a combination of concentric and eccentric loading. What tendon strength responds best to is nearly impossible to research (would you let a man in a white coat train you for weeks, chop your bicep tendon out and pull it on a strain gauge until it snaps?).
One idea from Alfredson was that the eccentric loading breaks up the adhesions of disorganised scar tissue, as well as abnormal blood vessels and free nerve endings that proliferate in degenerative tendons, allowing both pain free stimulation and collagen maturation. There are various other ideas about how the tendon responds biochemically to eccentric loading related to growth factors, inflammatory processes and other very complicated processes of cellular messaging.An intriguing new hypothesis is emerging that tendonosis might be down to underuse, rather than an overuse injury as it’s traditionally been perceived.
Research into painful achilles and patellar tendons is suggesting that unequal distribution of loading exists within tendons that are chronically loaded at a certain joint range. Some areas are overworked and strained, other areas ‘stress shielded’ become atrophied and weak, and eventually strain as well. This lends weight to the importance of technique, training design and posture as being the direct causes of these injuries in at least a proportion of cases. There is some evidence that eccentric loading allows more even loading in the tendon, stimulating both the overused and underused portions in a way that allows them to recover normal collagen content and arrangement.
Whatever the underlying mechanism, there is quite convincing evidence that these exercises are the thing to do and seem to get through to even the most unresponsive tendons, except in a few extremely advanced cases where the tendon has been trashed so severely it literally turns to bone.
Which protocol you choose largely comes down to experimentation I’m afraid, as no studies have compared the effectiveness of each in a reliable way. Personally, I’ve found that either pain free, or with a little pain worked on all three of my injured epicondyles (two now symptom free, one more recent injury well on the road to complete recovery). People tend to fail at this by simply not disciplining themselves to do the exercises. Simple as that.
I’ve read a couple of studies that demonstrated clearly that tennis elbow sufferers tended to recover much better on identical protocols if they were done with the physio there. Remember that doing these exercises, although a gift to climbers who are suffering chronically, are only one part of the response. Unless your technique, posture, training all change to remove the reason you got injured in the first place, it’ll probably come back the minute you start trying to push your grade or training volume again.
This post is just a snippet about one aspect of elbow rehab. The above discussion should reinforce that healing a tendon for sport is a massive field and way more than a few blog posts. There is much more you should know - about the stretching, fitting the rehab in with climbing, and the detail of the changes to make in your technique, posture, training, lifestyle. Hence I’m writing the book. I know, I know, it’s not out yet… I’m working hard on it, but couldn’t resist a moment out to write this as I’ve been asked so many times…Happy curling
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-8962062118459993909?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/VJDApRgMCRc)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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For skinny female climbers (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/u0tkDShmgng/for-skinny-female-climbers.html)
6 February 2011, 6:00 pm
Comparing general performance characteristics between male and female climbers is always interesting, especially when coaching in a group session.
The common finding is that the guys can often at least throw for the holds, but fall trying to hold onto them. Meanwhile, the girls can hold on for ages but fall trying to move between the holds. The basic reason is that guys have much more muscle to throw their upper bodies around at extreme joint ranges. A lesser appreciated reason is that girls are often reluctant to climb by throwing for holds out of fear of falling, and so adopt a massively inefficient static style. Thankfully, the guys more than balance it out by forgetting to use their feet and still can’t climb a vaguely technical problem despite all that muscle and grunt. The winner is the guy, or girl who is confident enough to have a dynamic style, considers the best foot sequence before actually going for the move, and lastly (LASTLY!) has the strength to move to the hold, and hold onto it.
For girls, first of all, no progress can happen without addressing the fear of falling first. Every effort will fall flat on it’s face. You can’t climb to your potential without slapping, snatching, deadpointing, dynoing on most moves, or if fear of falling is dictating how you approach every move. The solution is simple, easy to follow and 100% successful whether it’s bouldering, sport climbing or trad. The details are section 3 of my book.
With that out of the way, there is an argument for some girls for a little dedicated work on the larger upper body muscles. In some cases, girls who can move confidently and have strong fingers struggle to clock up enough mileage on steep powerful terrain to ‘fill in’ their lack of upper body power. The best way to address this is simply by climbing on steep ground with well spaced holds that are big enough that you can actually climb all session long. In many climbing walls, the number of steep juggy problems on the boulder walls aren’t numerous enough to prevent boredom. Answer: ask to set some more yourself. Steep juggy routes does it too - especially if you climb them with your feet on features only.
Sometimes though, a little supplementary weights for a few months is useful to get you off the starting line.I wouldn’t lean on them permanently, because the strength gains will eventually be more than cancelled out by how badly weights make you climb. Basic exercises like a work out of pull-ups (probably assisted at first), lat pull-downs, press-ups, seated rows (but not the low resistance aerobic type), and maybe some hanging leg raises and clean and jerk are all good. Do more of the ones you can feel you are really weak on. A few sets of each, a few times a week, for a few months should get you to a stage where you can drop the weights and progress to doing all the work on steep powerful real climbing moves.
Above all, don’t be intimidated by the ‘wads’ at the bouldering wall with tops off and making loud grunts. They don’t bite! They are often a useful source of new problems to work on, if nothing else. Just remember to burn them off occasionally on the balancy wall problems and high-steps..Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6186912271562551160?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/u0tkDShmgng)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Clean and messy performance (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/zg02ecR2ofA/clean-and-messy-performance.html)
13 February 2011, 2:35 pm
Climbers who are into training or pushing themselves are often trying to keep everything ‘clean’. Clean in this sense means without complication - black and white, yes or no, all or nothing.
This is good, but it can backfire. It backfires because real life performance in sport (of life etc) is messy, always. Well, OK not always. If you’re a bit older, you’ll look back on a handful of moments, maybe only one, where everything was clean for a fleeting few minutes on a climb. Sometimes that’ll be during a lifetime best performance for you, but not always. Sometimes it happens on an easier climb that just went like a dream.
So the problem is that in all your mental effort and training, you’re pushing to make everything cleaner. Clean training schedule with no interruptions from work, weather or injury. Clean technique with no sloppy footwork, grunting or wobbling. Clean preparation with a good nights sleep, rested muscles, good food and good vibes before you want to climb something hard. It never happens does it? Well apart from those one or two times in your life when it does. Obviously we can’t go around hoping for one of those once in a lifetime moments to happen right now. We need to find a way to climb well and be comfortable with our performance on a daily basis. It’s fine to try and keep everything clean and optimal. It’s the eternal game of the athlete.
But accept that no matter how much you try, you dealing with something that is inherently messy (life) and you will never win. Climbers that do try to beat the messiness of life and sporting performance get backed into a corner. Narrowing your field of skills to keep greater control over them. Training fewer performance components so you don’t have to face losses of previous gains. Competing in smaller and smaller arenas, like one angle, board, discipline etc. In the short term it might even work and feel comforting. In the longer term, it is almost guaranteed to fail to make you a good climber and leaves you wide open to taking big hits to morale and motivation. Most of the keen climbers I’ve seen give up completely have done so for this reason.
Keep your climbing, your training, your mental preparation, your schedule as clean as life allows. But be ready to keep going when everything is a complete bloody mess.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3434638388797057780?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/zg02ecR2ofA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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For young wannabes playing the lottery (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/YBJCvOHCORU/for-young-wannabes-playing-lottery.html)
20 February 2011, 9:21 pm
As a climbing coach who is always trying to understand and communicate the ingredients of becoming really good at climbing, I spend a fair bit of time observing other disciplines like art and business.
An idea I read today looked at the lotteries we play as wannabes in whatever field. Not the ‘actual’ lottery, but the lottery of getting picked by a talent scout, signed by a big record company or featured in a TV programme. Most people get to show some raw, unrefined talent as youngsters. It’s not really gone anywhere yet. It needs focus and application over years to develop before it has the power to break new ground. If you are gearing everything you do towards winning that lottery, are you accepting that you’re almost certain to be one of the ones who loses?
People don’t really keep playing the national lotteries as a way to become millionaires. What keeps them buying the ticket is the buzz of buying the ticket. A lot of the time, ‘waiting’ to win opportunity lotteries like record deals causes young talents to languish without ever going anywhere. In a flash they are no longer 18 but jaded and tired out from the fruitless wait for something they will never win. I’ve seen a lot of talents in climbing fizzle because they are ‘waiting’ to score a sponsorship deal, strike on a magic training formula, move to a climbing mecca and magically soak up the ability etc. How would it change your approach if you bet on never winning a lucky break? If you bet on having to get there just on the resources you have right now? That’s when industriousness kicks in and some actual progress happens.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5694978965698240884?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/YBJCvOHCORU)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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For climbing coaches : “In a Hurricaine… (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/pEoSrV3MJyY/for-climbing-coaches-in-hurricaine.html)
19 April 2011, 11:14 pm
...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, reminded to me by a CEO talking about economics, made me nod and agree.
In a social group of climbers, like a group of friends, a climbing wall scene, a club etc there are some who are the beacons - they have so much energy and drive that it radiates onto everyone else nearby and helps them learn more, have that extra attempt, try that different foot sequence or bear down and hold that swing.
If you are that person - great! All you need to do is learn to focus your energy and unleash it without inhibition at the right moments. For everyone else, it’s a problem because without the warmth of external energy, you might not keep progressing, or may even go backwards in your climbing. The paradox is the that your challenge is to take what you can from the beacons, but also learn to be able to go under your own steam. This means understanding well what particular parts of the climbing game motivate you to do the mundane stuff, like try that problem all those different ways or complete those physio exercises, or do that training session on your own.
For coaches looking after a cohort of climbers - your task is tricky. You have to identify the beacons, channel their energy, not let them settle for just being the best in their little group. Show them the next level of challenges before they lie back and forget how to be hungry for improvement. You also have to look for the turkeys (I’m only calling them that in ref to the above quote!) - the ones who will not keep showing up and giving it some if the beacon wasn’t there with them. Showing them how to stay patient, focused and enjoying the routine of climbing from within themselves rather than the social framework where it normally occurs is easier said than done. It’s best taken in small steps, with gentle encouragement.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5388307993500640660?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/pEoSrV3MJyY)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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The limiting factor - setting (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/ICW12Xi7HQo/limiting-factor-setting.html)
25 September 2011, 3:03 pm
The limiting factor in your rate of improvement can sometimes be something that never changes throughout your climbing career.
That’s not to say they are inescapable, just that folk simply never take the bull by the horns and change them. ‘Permanent’ limiting factors are things like only climbing a couple of times a week, avoiding overhangs, never learning how to try hard or focus, or being scared of falling. Other limiting factors are more often important for part of your career. Things such as having an old floppy pair of rockshoes you never bothered to replace, putting on a stone over christmas, getting a new job and not climbing much for 6 months. That kind of thing.
While giving some coaching clinics recently I met quite a few good climbers who struck me as being limited by their ability to set their own problems. I’d hazard a guess and say that most climbers who regularly boulder to train and have climbed for more than 10 years know how to go a bouldering wall and set themselves problems to fill the training session. It often seems surprising to climbers that I think it’s a critical skill to have. But think about it, if you can’t set your own problems, you are dependent on either a bouldering wall with a steady supply of well set, numerous and regularly changed problems, or climbing with a bunch of mates who can set good problems and are willing to show you theirs all the time. That’s fine if you have that, but move house, lose a regular climbing partner who moves away, or get a lazy route setter at your local wall and all of a sudden your training drops a couple of gears to say the least. You aren’t in control of your own improvement basically.
Even if your local wall does have excellent problems, there are some pitfalls. The biggest of these is local hero syndrome. You have the problems wired, you do them a lot and feel strong. But even though there are quite a few of them and they are on different angles, they are not varied enough. Your technique suffers. Your standard outside of the wall is not nearly as high. If you have any sway with your climbing wall management, persuade them to invite a rotation of different setters as often as possible. Some modern dedicated bouldering walls are now showing the way in this respect. Hopefully the dinosaurs will catch up. But even in boulder walls which have a steady flow of good problems, it’s a good idea to set your own of make variations on the set ones rather than just lap them all the time. This is about setting a nice ratio of hours spent climbing on moves you know well vs moves that are new to you. Too much of either extreme has consequences for technique.
If you have a wall which doesn’t have set problems, or set ones which are never changed. Setting your own problems is essential. Get into a good routine of setting the problem at the right standard for this part of the session (warm up, in a few tries, or whole session to climb the problem). Tweak moves that don’t work well. When you have the hold choice right, stick with it and refine the movement until you do it. If you can do it with others helping to choose the holds, even better. It adds variety and saves you from playing to your body size advantages (tall or short!). All this means that when you have the inevitable sessions when noone else is around and the set problems are crap, you still can do some meaningful training and not end up bored, demotivated or just not any stronger than before.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1467315935872663766?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/ICW12Xi7HQo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Coaching observations (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/gcpfsB4My78/coaching-observations.html)
3 November 2011, 9:26 pm
I’m just back from various coaching sessions around the UK. After a little break from coaching over the summer, I’ve come to it with fresh eyes after digesting a lot of variety in watching and doing climbs of many different types. It’s amazing how your perspective widens.
There are always some patterns to observe. Older climbers who have been going 10-20 years don’t go for the holds with nearly the same determination as the young angry lads. The young angry lads are too busy going for the (hand) holds and being angry to move their feet onto better footholds and actually use them.
Some more detail - Older chilled climbers: Experiment by role playing the 16 year old young angry men! Climb like you really really want to hold onto the next hold and nothing in the world is going to stop you. Grimace like you’re going to bite your bottom lip off. Don’t let go, even if you think you have no chance. The reality is that you only have no chance if you jump off the boulder wall instead of lay one on! The other point is that the learning, and training happens in the zone between success and failure.
Young angry men: Time that anger. Climbing has two stages; preparing to move and execution of the move. If your mind is fuzzing with anger while preparing to move, you don’t see the foot sequence, you don’t feel the shift of body weight that makes the difference. Learn to detach from that anger for a moment and take in the available move choices. If climbing was just about how hard you could pull or how angry you can get, the top climbers would be very different.
Both groups: Learn to be curious about finding the ‘right’ way to do moves. Whether you succeed on the problem/route, try it again using that other possibility you spotted for the move. And that one, and that one too. See which was actually the easiest. Systematic experimentation with moves makes you learn what works. Just because you got to the top doesn’t mean you did it the best way or actually learned anything about how to climb. Just because the climb is too hard for you doesn’t mean you can’t use it to learn something about movement. Even if you just watch someone else manage it. Be curious, watch others on the move, then try again yourself. Compare options, learn. This experimentation is what makes up the bulk of your bouldering sessions. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1177110133086636439?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/gcpfsB4My78)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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The importance of being not normal (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/DSEZLtv5ylM/importance-of-being-not-normal.html)
3 November 2011, 9:54 pm
Following on from my last post about learning technique, another thought following my recent travels. I was speaking about risk and decision making in bold climbing at the SAFOS seminar at EICA Ratho. One of the other speakers was Mark Williams who gave an excellent lecture summarising some of the fascinating research on skill learning in sport right now.
Mark talked a lot about practice, it’s importance, just how much is necessary to reach your potential (a LOT) and crucially, what good practice consisted of. A key characteristic of good athletes in any sport is that they look for patterns in the vast amounts of basic data we absorb in our day to day practice and play. They don’t just take in the data, they strive to understand it, make sense of it. There’s a big difference. Understanding it means re-running it, either in the imagination (day dreaming, or in scientific terminology, visualisation) or by trying it again and tinkering with some aspect of it in order to understand it better.
In climbing terms this means trying the crux with the right foot on all the plausible options, then coming back next time and trying again, until something in your mind tells you you have ‘understood’ the move. Quite apart from the physical effort of practice, which has the side effect of getting you strong, it takes a huge amount of mental effort and focus.
After his talk I was very eager to ask Mark what, if anything, climbers could do to improve the quality of the practice since in climbing it is difficult to amass thousands and thousands of hours since our little forearms get tired and our skin wears out.
He told me that a big part of it comes down to this striving to ‘understand’ the movements. He reminded us that truly great athletes stand out because they are by definition ‘not normal’. They verge on an obsessive, compulsive need to go back and analyse every detail.
So is this trainable. Well, much as an obsessive compulsive driven athlete would find it nearly impossible to simply drop this deeply held personality trait on demand, it’s similarly hard to start acting like this if it’s just not you. However, just by recognising that this sort of time consuming, repetitive practice and reflection is what is necessary, we can at the very least remove some inhibitions that might hold us back from this sort of approach.
In my mind, modern life demands of us the need to preform a heck of a lot of repetitive yet skilled tasks with a great deal of concentration and effort in our working lives, that are lot more boring than training for climbing. I know we are ultimately climbing for fun, but if we are serious enough even to use the word ‘training’ to describe some of our climbing sessions, then surely we can apply a hardcore work ethic and up the ante a little. It's worth noting that one of Mark's points was that even the experts who absolutely love training often feel that the best practice sessions simply have to be so systematic and repetitive that they cannot be enjoyed.
But the results of those sessions certainly are enjoyed!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3153627061330241430?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/DSEZLtv5ylM)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Leading confidence - a worthy enemy (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/HQxFGTIg23M/leading-confidence-worthy-enemy.html)
3 December 2011, 3:07 pm
Recently I’ve been coaching a lot of sport climbing and spent lots of time trying to get climbers to recognise that leading confidence is placing a huge barrier in the way of improving almost any aspect of their climbing.
What I’ve noticed is that climbers with leading confidence issues are desperate to avoid tackling it despite appearing quite highly motivated to make changes in most other areas of their climbing skills. Taking the first step in attacking leading confidence just feels so painful and scary. It’s more comfortable to convince yourself (and try unsuccessfully to convince me!) that it’s unattainable due to past bad experiences with leading or that it’s not actually an important weakness.
Next time you lead a route, notice what thoughts are running in your mind during the climbing. If most of the time is spent thinking “I’m scared, try to calm down… I can’t get to the next bolt, the last one is too far away, I don’t want to go any higher… what will happen if I fall” then very little progress can happen in your climbing. Fear is paralysing your ability to focus on the rock and the moves, and therefore your ability to learn.
In fact, your climbing standard might be doomed only to go down. Every time you toprope, you reinforce the feeling that toproping is normal, leading is abnormal. And when you do lead and take a fall, you have never learned to fall cleanly and your scrape down the rock rather than leaning back and letting the rope take you will wipe away even more of your confidence. A downward spiral basically, of climbing feeling progressively more scary and unpleasant until you eventually feel you just aren't enjoying doing it at all.
Improvements in confidence come in small increments, from forcing yourself to lead more and more and not ignoring learning how to fall nicely onto the rope. But what I’m realising is that many folk stall before even getting onto the road to improvement because they have yet to actually see it for the huge problem it is.
Leading confidence is not a small detail of climbing. For many climbers, it’s the biggest challenge climbing will ever throw at you. Beat it, and many more skills will unfold beyond and become attainable. Respect it as a worthy enemy and give it effort and energy accordingly.
Footnote: Leading is not essential in sport climbing. I often say to climbers that if they never want to lead and always toprope routes others have lead that’s totally fine. Climbing can be whatever you want it to be. I’m sure there are plenty of folk that do just that and probably get on very well because they can get on with actually enjoying their climbing. However, although I’ve said this to many climbers I’ve never actually met any who have decided to reject leading. In fact, often I’ve noticed that just by recognising that leading is an option (not an imposed rule) and it’s their choice, they choose to attack leading and if they follow the right steps (part 3 of the book (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html)) progress is almost guaranteed.
A jump from being too scared to lead hardly at all to leading consistently can be achievable within a few sessions for some, just because the shift in attitude from leading as an unpleasant rule to a worthy challenge is so powerful. That’s what happened to me also - at 16 and too scared to lead. My attitude changed and I jumped from Severe to E2 in a week. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4221994296060397166?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/HQxFGTIg23M)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Technique learning - noticing things (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/18Ba150zjew/technique-learning-noticing-things.html)
3 December 2011, 3:32 pm
When coaching climbers I’m constantly trying to encourage them to set up a routine both in themselves and as a group of peers climbing together of recording the details of their climbing movement and tactics and discussing the feedback and experimenting with different ways of doing everything.
Examples of this might be: how does the move change if you lunge a bit harder, or pull more with the right toe, or use that other foothold instead? The criteria for success on a move isn’t just if you can climb it or not. It’s whether you found the most efficient way. So even if you flashed the problem at the boulder wall, do it again and find out if the move was easier if you used that other foothold or sequence.
If you climb with others and you have a good routine of passing movement feedback and ideas back and forth between you on the climbs you try - that’s great. But it’s only the first level. The next level is to be able to do this by yourself.
You don’t have an observant friend to say “You threw your left hip inwards more that time and that looked closer to the move”. So you have to notice it yourself while you are actually climbing, and that’s not easy until you train yourself to do it.
The easiest way to learn is when bouldering, trying a problem that is taking you a few tries to complete. When you are working the moves, don’t give all of your mental focus to delivery of power. Instead, keep a little part of your concentration reserved for noticing how your body and limbs feel as you move through the sequence. Look for things that feel ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, where wrong means it’s more likely to make you fall off. If your right foot is very stretched or is about to slip, what options do you have to solve that problem?
Once you are close to success and you feel it might happen next try, you can switch to full on redpoint mode and focus completely on just getting the next hold and completing the problem.
Note: The above is moderately advanced. Many less experienced climbers wouldn't even be able to tell you which hands when on which holds immediately after trying the climb, never mind recording the amount and direction of force at each limb and the path of the body during a move. If that’s you, practice noticing just the hand sequence you used, even if it’s just for the first few moves. It’s an essential skill for more advanced climbing and it takes time to learn. There are lots of ways to help you memorise it. But deliberately looking at the wall and each hold and then taking a mental snapshot of how the hold feels in your left or right hand works well.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1219759085077889709?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/18Ba150zjew)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Training the ability to try (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/QY09bZL9n4M/training-ability-to-try.html)
21 December 2011, 2:18 pm
If you see people in action during training (it’s easiest to observe in a traditional weights/cardio gym), it’s not hard to notice that theres a massive difference between the majority who are having a ‘light’ session to say the least, and the much smaller proportion who are really working their bodies hard.
As an aside, If you do see those people in the gym who look like they aren’t trying - don’t scoff inwardly (or outwardly!) at them - not everyone goes to the gym to work hard. Some people exercise to relax and wind down. And remember you don’t see what other workouts they get up to. You might be surprised!
Sometimes folk don’t have the right peer group to influence them to learn to try really hard, sometimes, they just haven’t found the right motivation, or more likely they just don’t realise how hard they could be trying. This is not something that applies to some and not others. Everyone has room to really grit their teeth and work themselves harder.
It’s true in many cases that the best athletes are the ones who are trying hardest. It’s not always the case for various reasons and it’s too simplistic and misleading to view athletic success purely as a product of effort. However, that doesn’t change the point that if you can find ways to try harder, you’ll go further.
I talked a lot about how to do that in my book, but one thought for your training sessions over the Christmas period; Before you go for your session, or have your next attempt on the problem, or circuit, or route, imagine what it would feel like if you were to try harder than you’ve ever tried before. Think about how your fingers would feel crushing down on that little hold. Think about how you’d grab the next hold and start pulling lightning fast and concentrate on keeping pulling with maximum force right through the move until your feet swing back in. Think about how sore your skin and arms will feel on that last circuit and how you’ll detach yourself from it and keep right on slapping. Think about the mindset of those climbers who inspire you by their amazing feats of climbing. What do you think goes through their mind when they train? They are people on a mission! They have learned to love their training and they feel satisfaction that every last grain of hard effort takes them closer to the routes they are on the mission to climb. So what's your mission?
Now repeat through the whole of next year!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-8561839329069596716?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/QY09bZL9n4M)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Through the whole move (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/KqW39BqT7Hk/through-whole-move.html)
4 January 2012, 12:48 am
I’ve just spent the week staying with family in Glasgow and visiting the fantastic new TCA bouldering centre (http://www.tca-glasgow.com/) as often as muscles allow. It’s obviously a bit different from most bouldering facilities, being the biggest in the UK, and this brings many new benefits for training, as well as some new ptifalls. Some observations on these:
The first observation I made which was very heartening, was the notable absence of people complaining about being too short, or the moves being too reachy. Obviously, part of this is down to an underlying assumption that by it’s very nature, the bouldering game involves more big dynamic moves that route climbing tends to. For those who find themselves often blaming failure to climb on height or reachy setting - have a few sessions in a bouldering centre like this. Take time to look around you at the short folks slapping and jumping for the holds. You can’t change your height, but you can learn to move your feet into the right position and then go for that hold!
Someone asked me about how training purely in a bouldering wall, even for route climbing stamina might affect their technique. It’s a worthy concern - constantly bouldering teaches you how to to deliver maximum force and tension from start to finish. It’s often very easy to tell that a climber mainly boulders, just by looking at them climb for a few moves. For someone very experienced who is still climbing a lot of routes for a large part of the year, it’s not such a problem. But if a large proportion of your yearly climbing is on a boulder wall and you are ultimately training for routes, it’s still worth putting a harness on and clipping a rope on a real route whenever you can so you don’t lose the ability to climb with minimal force on the steady parts of routes. In the boulder wall, circuits are still ‘the business’ but make sure and mix them up often and include some you don’t have dialled, so you remember how to use your brain while pumped and make it up as you go along if you mess your feet up or forget where the next hold is.
Someone else asked me about high steps. They are a real weakness for me, as they are for a lot of guys. I’ve improved mine a good bit with some work but I’ve got plenty more to do and I’m determined to sort it out this year. My passive hip flexibility is fairly poor but I get away with it to a certain extent by having very good active flexibility. A lot of folk don’t know about the difference. Passive flexibility is the range of motion (ROM) you have when you pull the limb as far as it will go with an external force (such as your hands pulling your leg into a high step position). Active flexibility is the ROM that the limb can achieve under it’s own steam (i.e. Your highest high step in a real climbing situation!). Obviously, if the antagonist muscle group is very short, passive flexibility will ultimately limit how far you can pull the limb. But in reality, active ROM is often limited by the agonist muscles ability to pull hard in the inner range of it’s ROM. I’ve seen lots and lots of climbers with pretty or even exceptional hip flexibility who still struggle with high steps because they are not strong enough at the extreme joint angles to pull the leg really high under it’s own steam. Why? Like everything, it comes down to the basic rule of training - what you do, you become. They spent lots of time sat on the ground stretching by pulling the leg with an external force, and not enough doing desperate tensiony high steps.
Properly inflexible guys like myself have to do a lot of both passive and active flexibility training - a LOT and for a long time - to see real improvements. So if you really want to high step, work on it every time you climb. If you have your own board, make sure you set problems with very few footholds available and in very unhelpful places. Try to set them so that moving the feet is the crux of the problem. Train yourself to stay tight and strong on the lower foothold and two handholds while you forcefully open your hips and pull the leg right up into a high step at the limit of your ROM. I find it helps to visualise my body as a rigid board stretched between my toes to my fingers while I move the other leg. You can also stretch by pulling the leg up with your arms to stretch your gluts and then let go and try to hold the position unassisted to train your inner range holding.
Training at big boulder walls with big dynamic moves requires a lot of body tension. I’ve often seen the term ‘body tension’ referred to in magazine articles as a strength aspect. It’s not just that. Strength is needed to be able to apply body tension, but it’s your technique that actually does the applying! It’s perfectly possible to be a front lever monster with rubbish body tension on the rock because you fail to apply that strength. A big part of body tension technique is remembering to apply tension through one or both feet through the whole move as you dynamically lunge to the next handhold. I found myself recently completing a lot of problems during training by consciously thinking about this as I executed the move. Really claw down into the key foothold with the big toe until the last possible moment. This buys you the maximum amount of time to take the next hold a little slower and more accurately and generate enough grip to hold onto it. I often remind myself by saying ‘through the whole move’ inwardly as I set up for a big move, so I don’t lose tension too early and end up with an impossible swing to try and hold. It works!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-8802351215399908041?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/KqW39BqT7Hk)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Confidence de-training (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/Gxh7XBD4IYI/confidence-de-training.html)
11 January 2012, 2:11 pm
I went bouldering outdoors for the first time in two months yesterday. Lochaber deluge enforced indoor training regime. I was shocked at how tentative I was and worried about bad landings after so long falling onto big friendly climbing wall mats. Note to self, and anyone else in the same situation: Too much time above big mats destroys your boldness and ability to fall properly outdoors on poor landings. Not much you can do about this other than be aware of it and take care to give some time to retraining when the rain stops. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-2335760228377635956?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/Gxh7XBD4IYI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Learning errors? come back fresh (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/oJRJaX65Frk/learning-errors-come-back-fresh.html)
18 January 2012, 12:38 am
The story behind this new problem from yesterday is on my main blog here. (http://www.davemacleod.blogspot.com/2012/01/dry-rock-new-routes.html) But I wanted to share a couple of lessons I learned from a few sessions trying this rather technical eliminate:
First, while trying it after a summer of trad when I was weak I went backwards on it. I couldn’t understand why at first. I had an awful session when I couldn’t even do the swing move at all. My raw finger strength was still there - I could feel it in how hard I could pull on the holds. But the move wasn’t working. I later learned that lack of recent bouldering mean’t I’d forgotten (relatively speaking of course) how to maintain maximal body tension through a sequence of very sustained moves. In the process of trying it over and over out of frustration, I accidentally learned many errors in the moves. I started taking the holds in a less efficient way, timing the movement wrongly and getting less weight through my feet.
It happened because I was ‘over thinking’ the movement rather than letting my subconscious mind do at least some of the work. Because I was previously able to do the moves easily, I concluded there must be a movement error I was making, and If I just experimentally tried subtle tweaks in the move I’d figure out the mistake. But there was no mistake, I just wasn’t quite strong enough and in the process of looking so hard at one move I learned some new errors and lost confidence.
How to avoid this problem if you are in the habit of redpointing? On the whole I’d still say it’s fine to try one move that you can’t yet do over and over for tens or even hundreds of times. But recognise that within the session you sometimes lose confidence, strength, positivity and make more errors, even if this effect remains largely subconscious. You’ll sometimes find that you come back next session with a fresh body and mind and do it straight off. The correct way to do the move will just happen spontaneously.
Take a break, try something else for a session and come back to it.
One other thing: The first move of the problem required pulling in super hard on a small heelhook on a spike. Wearing slippers (I took my tightest pair that I can’t even get on my feet unless it’s cold!) or even lace-ups if you pull really hard your boot might start to slide off and you’ll lose tension. A good solution in the pic below is to wear a sock for extra boot tightness and run finger tape through the pull-loops around your ankle. Point your toes downwards while you stick the tape down. It works a treat.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLCoC0Z2ns8/TxYR2X_sYfI/AAAAAAAACvg/-Xn5TBPiasY/s640/heel.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLCoC0Z2ns8/TxYR2X_sYfI/AAAAAAAACvg/-Xn5TBPiasY/s1600/heel.jpg)
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4043989799894597876?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/oJRJaX65Frk)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Dave explains how to improve one's bouldering by wearing thick woolly socks. (But shouldn't they be red, like Ron's?)
Could there be further potential gains from replacing the beanie with one of those scratchy wool Joe Brown balaclavas? A Dachstein mitt might stick quite well to verglassed slopers too.
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Injuries in young climbers - learn the hard way? (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/8Qq3aetovzI/injuries-in-young-climbers-learn-hard.html)
23 February 2012, 4:11 pm
When it comes to injuries, the vast majority of sportspeople learn the hard way. They learn how to take care of their bodies by getting injured repeatedly and cursing their misfortune until sheer frustration prompts them to look more closely at what’s going on and realise there is something they can do about it.
For youngsters, it’s even harder. They aren’t so used to thinking strategically and anticipating problems as real athletes do. They just go at it with training as keenly as they like until something starts to hurt.
Complicating things further is that kids often do more than one sport. Multiple training programs, multiple coaches all working independently, not always with an eye on the total training load and hows it’s changing over time,or possible sites of stress on a joint or tendon becoming excessive. I was lucky in a way to have no coach rather than partial coaching. With my first finger and elbow injuries at age 16 I realised that no one but me was going to get me back to climbing quicker. So I found that university book stores were good places to find sports medicine books and huddled in their corners reading everything I could to while away the many hours and days of my lay-off. It was a good thing too. I suffered plenty of injuries, as you do if you push yourself hard in multiple disciplines. But learned incrementally to anticipate them and respond quickly to manage them. Being coached a little is sometimes worse than not being coached at all. The youngster relies on the coach to keep them on track and progressing sometimes at the expense of thinking critically and strategically for themselves. That’s fine if the coach is taking care of everything, but often the coaching only tackles one small aspect of the sport skills such as the technique or training exercises (possibly at the expense of the recovery, nutrition and injury avoidance/management).
The answer? Well, someone has to take charge of looking after the young athletes body! It’s best if the youngsters themselves take this seriously. It’s ironic that they rarely do since they show the fieriest passion to work hard at sport, yet it’s injury avoidance that is very likely to determine their ultimate long term success in sport! And after all, they are the ones who are going to grow up and manage themselves in adulthood. The sooner an awareness of injury and it’s prevention awakens, the better. If a climbing coach only sees them occasionally, that coach should probably encourage the parents to start thinking and acting like coaches, and realise that training for sport is a 24/7 activity that comprises training and recovery and that both are just as important.
Coaches or parents say “But all they want to do is climb, climb climb!” They don’t want to hear about planning the training carefully, increasing load slowly, stretching, warming up, eating well or exercising antagonists. That’s boring.
It’s boring until it becomes clear that this stuff is what separates forgotten athletes who were promising but burned out at 17 from those with long successful careers and still enjoying healthy climbing. So the advice from people who know better, whether that’s coaches or parent has to be framed in a way that makes it clear that this stuff is where the advantage over peers and competitors will ultimately come from. Anyone can get fit and strong just by climbing a lot and pulling on small holds. The goal is to climb for long enough without interruption from injury to actually get really good at it. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3449798332836712342?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/8Qq3aetovzI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Distracted from the task at hand (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/oqsy1oB8vHg/distracted-from-task-at-hand.html)
23 February 2012, 9:21 pm
After my last post, Toby commented: “I'm 25, been climbing for about two years, and am about to embark on a long road trip. I've quit my job and... ...I've had a whole spate of minor injuries crop up in the last eight weeks...It definitely helps to see you acknowledge the realities of being injured and managing those injuries. I look at some of my friends who train six days a week for months on end with no ill effects, and I curse my body for not being able to stand up to that sort of load... but the reality is we have to work with what we're given. Much as I would like to keep pushing it, I guess I have to view all these little injuries as signs from my body to take some time off, and be thankful they're not more serious.” I wouldn’t take the message that this is a necessarily a sign that you cannot train as hard as others you observe, just that you cannot do it yet. Big difference. Injuries are much less often caused by a high training load per say, rather it’s sudden increases in the training load or where it is distributed across the body that is more important. It’s true that some respond differently than others to training stress, but I’d say this is a distraction from the real problem that people run into, which is failure to adjust training load carefully enough and failure to adjust the quality of the recovery to match the change in training load. If you are used to sitting at a desk all day and training a handful of hours a week, getting stressed, not sleeping enough and drinking a couple of beers every night to forget about it, and then switch to full on climbing many more days on with intense work for elbows and fingers, no wonder the body gets a fright and isn’t able to catch up. 2 years of climbing is nothing. The body takes many years, like ten, for some just to get used to hard training. That is, just to get into full gear and then really start. There are no shortcuts. My advice to anyone in this situation is to use extra time they have to get out and climb in as many different laces as they can. The adjustment needed in the elbows and fingers to train harder will happen along the way, and meanwhile you will actually learn to be a good climber, a process that takes tens of thousands of routes under your belt. I’m sure Toby will have a good trip and come back a better climber. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4920255731914001699?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/oqsy1oB8vHg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Injuries: The problem with Lay-off (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/rDLsH3VXxB0/injuries-problem-with-lay-off.html)
7 March 2012, 8:53 pm
A traditional approach to a tendon injury such as commonly experienced by climbers is to include an extended lay-off of several weeks or even several months. There are several good reasons to consider a lay-off, and several not to lay-off at all, depending on the circumstances.
The basic rationale for lay-off is to allow the tissue some rest and a chance to recover from it’s severely compromised state. There are quite a few assumptions built into the decision to completely rest the tissue. First, that the tissue will really benefit from complete withdrawal from the sport. Unfortunately, this isn’t strictly true.
In the earliest stages of injury rehab, where the tissue is extremely weak, inflamed and possibly swollen, even the lightest use risks further damage. However, this stage is extremely short - a few days or weeks at most. After this, lay-off is actually contributing to loss of tissue health. Even moderate activity tends to be enough to maintain strength in muscle or tendon. But inactivity causes it to lose strength rapidly. When the tissue is immobilised, the rate of atrophy is positively frightening.
A related assumption is that immature tissue that forms in those initial days and weeks after an acute injury will mature into tough tendon that will handle the forces you were asking of it when you were healthy. This isn’t true either. It was the training you were doing that made you strong. Only progressive training of the injured tissue will bring it up to the exceptional level of strength and toughness that you need for sport. If the lay-off is long enough for the tissue to mature without a good progressive rehab program, it will likely end up weak, the wrong length and vulnerable to re-injuring just as you start to get your momentum back.
Another dangerous assumption inbuilt into a lay-off program is that the painful tissue is the problem and that allowing this to recover will solve the problem. In a few cases this could be true, but in the majority, an underlying susceptibility forms a large part of the cause and lay-off will do nothing to remove it. For certain less severe injuries, simply addressing the underlying causes without any intervention to treat pain symptoms will be enough to put things right.
Who can help you identify those causes? Climbing, being such a technical sport needs an excellent coach with a thorough understanding of physiology, and the biomechanics of climbing movement to identify why your climbing movements are injuring you. Since your posture is probably contributing too, you need an excellent sports medic/physiotherapist who can thoroughly asses the mess of your wonky back and shoulders. If they are not too shocked by the horror of your shoulder movement, they will help you unload the stressed out muscles and tendons with proper alignment. Sounds like a lot of effort? Well, I guess you could always just hope the pain goes away by itself instead.
Now, what a heartening blog post I hear you think; forget lay-off, keep climbing and my injury will still recover? Be clear that despite it’s psychological challenge for keen sports people, lay-off is in fact the easy option compared to the work and discipline of recovering from an injury without lay-off. This is because changing habits is really hard and requires iron resolve that most people cannot sustain as long as they need to. Hence the high recurrence rate of injuries. People just try to do things as they always did (including the things that caused the injury). If you are ready to climb differently - at the level the injured part demands, working daily to correct your bad technique habits, tactics, postural faults and specific muscle weaknesses, then recovery without lay-off is the short cut to successful recovery. Most folk don’t have the discipline either to source the information on what they ought to change, or to put the work in and actually change it.
The detail of what things climbers should change has been my constant work over the last month as I continue to write my climbing injuries book Rock ‘til you drop. It’s been fascinating study so far.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7017004565428375206?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/rDLsH3VXxB0)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Good technique, bad technique and not enough techniques (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/kEMh5F-g460/good-technique-bad-technique-and-not.html)
26 May 2012, 9:36 pm
Over the winter I got more involved in bouldering again and thought a lot about what’s changing among boulderers. There are a lot of great new indoor bouldering facilities all over the place and the identity of bouldering as a sport gets stronger all the time. It really struck me climbing at TCA how the way climbers move on these walls has changed fast. I guess it’s because in this type of centre there is a lot of opportunity to watch and be influenced by others climbing on the same problems.
Naturally enough, the changes I’m thinking of are generally positive on the whole. But there are some negatives to watch out for depending on your training goals. It’s hard to describe these subtle changes properly without demonstrating it as I would when coaching, but generally there are a lot of ‘front on’ moves, a lot of cutting loose, many moves with the foot on one foothold for part or all of the move and probably a lower ratio of foot:hand movements than outdoors.
It’s very hard to consistently set indoor boulder problems that have footwork that is outdoor like. The blobbyness of bolt on holds and limitations of panels is one thing. The bigger problem is of course that it’s just hard to match the creativity of real rock!
So folk training ultimately for outdoor rock but relying heavily on indoor centres (especially when it’s one centre in particular) end up getting really good at the techniques for indoor bouldering, but still fail to get their outdoor grade to match or exceed their indoor grade. It’s important to understand what is going on clearly. The climber can move really well. In other words you could say they have excellent technique. They read the moves well and execute them with precision and few errors. And yet technique is the reason for failure to reach their outdoor potential.
It’s not that there is bad technique, just not enough techniques being learned through the training diet. A simple point when you say it out loud, but often missed.
What to do about it depends on your resources. If you can climb more outdoors, do it. If you really can’t (are you sure it can’t and not just less convenient?) then at least an awareness of the problem will help you stay focused on finding a better sequence rather than just blaming weakness all the time. You are training yourself to spot better sequences, by trying to do just that, all the time. A good mindset is that you are never just trying to do the move, but always trying to find the easiest possible way to do it.
There are social influences too. If your ‘beast’ training partner does the move one way, and you just can’t, don’t be put off straight away. Keep experimenting to see if there is a tweak in the foot sequence, or a way to take the holds that removes the need for power usage. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7913428008379570045?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/kEMh5F-g460)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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9 de cada 10 escaladores cometen los mismos errores (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/sKgEUu5oHRU/9-de-cada-10-escaladores-cometen-los.html)
27 May 2012, 10:30 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/9decada10escaladores.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9decada10escaladores.html)
We arrived home from Switzerland to find our stock of our latest publication; the Spanish edition of 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes! 9 de cada 10 escaladores cometen los mismos errores (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9decada10escaladores.html) is now available in the shop right here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9decada10escaladores.html). It’s €18 and worldwide shipping is €3. We are massively grateful to Alicia Hudelson and Elena Suarez for a huge amount of hard work to make the translation of the book. 9 out of 10 has been out for 2 years now and read by many thousands of climbers all over the English speaking parts of the planet. We are continually amazed not only by it’s popularity but the nice messages from so many of you letting us know that it helped you break real barriers in your climbing. It’s a pleasure to open it up to a Spanish speaking audience. Stay tuned for news of some other translations of the book... Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1786511268827382298?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/sKgEUu5oHRU)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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If it wasn’t hard, it would be easy (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/-KzZG3z2Oeo/if-it-wasnt-hard-it-would-be-easy.html)
9 June 2012, 9:30 pm
...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 of people avoid them without realising it and hence the need to keep reiterating both the general point and the detail. But what of milking your strengths. Some strengths, like being a little stronger of finger than the next guy or being able to reach a bit further or being dynamic and confident enough to jump can only be milked so much. Not all strengths, or weaknesses are equal.
Someone recently asked me what my ‘secret’ was for climbing hard. I’m wary of oversimplifying or seeing a complex picture as black and white, but I’d say I have one strength that I’ve milked a hell of a lot, and fortunately it’s a gift that keeps on giving. I’m not good at climbing hard, but I like having a hard time. Simple as that really.
So why is that a strength? Well just think about some of the things that are ‘hard’ about climbing: Failing repeatedly and not having an immediate solution or avenue to pursue next. Nerves of anticipation. Fear. Even occasionally a little pain or self-discipline (these things are all relative). These are normally the things that make climbers outright give up an attempt or decide not to keep having attempts. Or it could be more of a subtle effect. Thee things might not make you give up, but just cause you to lift off the gas pedal slightly.
Revelling in the ‘hardness’ of hard climbing isn’t an easy mindset to adopt. What worked for me was simply to remind myself, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes directly, that if whatever I’m trying wasn’t hard, it would be easy. I’m not looking to do easy climbs easily. I want to do hard climbs easily. Every hard climb I’ve ever done has felt easy in the moment of success, but hard right up to that point. Therefore since 99% of climbing time is going to feel hard in all the forms that ‘hard’ takes, if you enjoy those things then you get on with the journey to that special moment of easiness quicker.
Some examples:
Bouldering - When holding a swing at the limit of your strength, you feel like you don’t have enough strength to absorb it and are going to come off. A lot of hard bouldering experience teaches you to ignore that feeling and keep pulling. A proportion of the time, despite your expectations, your feet will swing back and you’ll get to the top. All of this process of doubt and reaffirmation of belief happens inside a split second at the apex of the swing.
Sport climbing - Just because you tried the move for 300 times doesn’t mean you cant do it with your present level of strength. You might not have found the best way yet. Just don’t keep trying it the same way. Change something, however small, each time. Experiment systematically. You’ll learn that the available holds and ways to move through them have a lot more to offer than you could have imagined. If you do want to try it 300 times though, do your belayer a favour and learn to top rope self belay!
Trad - When you are dealing with something that is all in the mind, like confidence, recognise that you are dealing with the most complicated object in the universe. You might try to understand good and bad mental performances, but you will never be able to attribute them completely and correctly to the factors that resulted in the performance. Take what messages you can, use them and shrug off the negative or retrograde feelings with vigour. We feel amazing after a steady lead of a bold route because it is a feat that is extremely difficult to achieve. Don't be scared of mental blocks. Although they seem utterly impenetrable when you are up against one, they are ultimately just thoughts.
Treat each climb as a worthy enemy. Expect it to lie down and it might be impossible, Expect to be tested and you’ll be ready for the test. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6715651272994148498?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/-KzZG3z2Oeo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Redpoint - a whole book on tactics finally! (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/kfAdwBaCBgI/redpoint-whole-book-on-tactics-finally.html)
9 June 2012, 10:31 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/redpoint.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/redpoint.jpg)
Finally we’ve got hold of some stock of Hague and Hunter’s new book ‘Redpoint’ in the shop (right here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/redpoint.html)). The authors are most famous for their superb book The Self-Coached Climber which is justifiably one of our better selling climbing improvement texts. Like I’m sure most experienced coaches know, tactics are becoming an increasingly important area that forms the difference between progress and stagnation among modern climbers. So they have written a whole book dedicated to perfecting all the tactical tricks and advantages for both onsight and redpoint climbing. It’s a worthy addition to the knowledge base and I’d say there are very few climbers around who are not aware of, or milking all the tactical advantages offered in the book. Whether you read it as a beginner or intermediate level climber to open up a whole new world of tactical awareness and advantage, or as an expert climber reminding yourself of all the tricks you could be using to get that crucial extra edge for your current goal, I’d recommend it. It’s a substantial subject and a substantial book too. There’s even a 30 minute DVD that comes with it to see the tactics in action. They have included some assessment forms and checklists in each section to help you get a clearer idea of where you stand with your use and prowess of different tactics or skills. This sort of thing maybe doesn’t appeal to everyone. But if writing things down isn’t your style, you can just skip them and simply read the advice. Just as with The Self-Coached Climber, the book is thoughtfully laid out, well illustrated with colour photos and thorough without being a mind-number. As a coach visiting ever improving climbing walls with stronger and fitter climbers, I’ve appreciated that tactics are the big deal for climbers these days. More and more often, climbers have the strength and fitness from many hours in the climbing wall. But without even knowing it, lack of tactical awareness has placed the glass ceiling above their head much lower than it ought to be. It’s a shame when that happens. You can get hold of a copy from our shop here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/redpoint.html)
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-8310477651697658399?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/kfAdwBaCBgI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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We have a sale on (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/yvW_1gAmwCw/we-have-sale-on.html)
13 June 2012, 11:13 pm
Our sale on slacklines has been super popular (we have one set left (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/slacklinepro.html) - be quick), so we decided to run a more general sale in our shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html). It's the first time we've ever done this! We’ll run it for one month and we’ve put some good discounts of 25-50% on roughly half of our products. Worldwide shipping as always and do be on the quick side in case our stock runs out. Here’s what we’ve discounted:
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/mountainheroes.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainheroes.html) Mountain Heroes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainheroes.html) - Lovely and substantial coffee table book of superb and iconic shots of many of the world’s most influential climbers. We sell a lot of these when we run stalls at festivals because as soon as folk pick it up they see it’s a lovely book. We quite often sell them two at a time becuase folk buy it for a gift and then decide to take a personal copy too! Previously £30 (like I said, it’s a big substantial book). On sale at £22.50 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainheroes.html). Folk at lectures often ask me to sign the page with my picture. Just ask in the checkout page if you’d like this. (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/extremealpinism.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/extremealpinism.html) Extreme Alpinism (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/extremealpinism.html) - Mark Twight’s seminal book on techniques and approaches to alpinism. A bit of a bible really. Was £20, now £15 here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/extremealpinism.html) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/Mountainequipmentknittedred.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html#clothing) Mountain Equipment Beanies (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html#clothing) - Warm, and comfy for anything from bouldering to winter alpinism. On my head about 250 days in the year! We have various colours in the branded version and the plain version. Was £15, now £12 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html#clothing). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/RockAthlete.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/rockathlete.html) Ron Fawcett, Rock Athlete (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/rockathlete.html) - Hardback edition of the great man’s autobiography. An interesting time in climbing and always much to learn from characters like Ron. Was £20, now £15 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/rockathlete.html). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/hostilehabitats.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/hostilehabitats.html) Hostile Habitats (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/hostilehabitats.html) - It’s a book that often comes out in conversation with owners of it, since it’s so full of fascinating details about the landscape, flora and fauna of Scotland’s mountain environment. If you are planning to spend your life in these mountains, it is frankly crazy not to make yourself aware of the richness of interest all around you, from geological features to the lichens that colour the rock so beautifully. I first became aware of the book when Tom Prentice appeared above me as I sat on my boulder mat at Dumby, He was taking pictures of the gas pockets in the Basalt I was climbing on. I had no idea they were gas pockets. These days I look at the places I go to in Scotland with a new pair of eyes, and take so much more from being there thanks to the knowledge in the book. Was £17, now £12.75 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/hostilehabitats.html). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/players.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/players.html) The Players DVD (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/players.html) - Dave Graham, Chris Sharma, Emily Harrington, Daniel Woods, Lisa Rands, Joe Kinder, Alex Puccio, Chris Lindner, and Ethan Pringle. 9as, Font 8cs, E10 trad, Deep water soloing. A ton of great climbing footage and a ton of learning from the best movers on rock. End of. Was £20, now £10 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/players.html). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/northernbeats.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/northernbeats.html) Northern Beats DVD (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/northernbeats.html) - Bernd Zangerl and friends on tour opening new boulders in Norway. Amazing rock, impressive movement, good music. A psyche hit! Was £10, now £5 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/northernbeats.html). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/mountainmarathon.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainmarathon.html) The Mountain Marathon Book (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainmarathon.html) - A hill racer’s bible. If you’re thinking of entering your first hill race, or trying to move up the rankings, it doesn’t make much sense lose out on to make one of the mistakes this book will save you from making. It’s a young sport and this is the first good instructional book on the subject. Was £20, now £15 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/mountainmarathon.html). (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/munrosinwinter.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/munrosinwinter.html) The Munros in Winter (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/munrosinwinter.html) - One way to look at it is ‘it’s a book about hillwalking’. So why is it so inspiring? Well something to note for starters is that it’s author the great North West Highalnds pioneer is now (in his 50s!) one of the best winter climbers in Scotland, regularly hillwalking grade VIII mixed routes and IX if he’s looking for a more serious ‘day on the hill’. This book is about an extra long day on the hill - he got in his van, drove to Scotland and did the first completion of the 277 Munros in a single winter season. I first read it as a 15 year old and was left utterly inspired to explore these mythical corners of the highlands. It’s a much, much better way to learn about these mountains than reading a standard guide book, that’s for sure! A great story about a great effort from the softly spoken man machine. Was £15, now £11.25 here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/munrosinwinter.html).
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6141279841058900627?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/yvW_1gAmwCw)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Love is the answer (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/vqDycXB6jiM/love-is-answer.html)
13 June 2012, 11:22 pm
Yes this is still a post about the usual subject; training for climbing. The old (but still just as important) mantra ‘work your weaknesses’ comes with some baggage. There is an undercurrent of “I know it’s a chore, but it’s good for you so make yourself suffer it”. The hardcore can even do it this way and muster enough discipline to actually get some significant work done in the areas of performance they would class as ‘chore, but important’. However, training zealots aside, weaknesses just don’t get worked because of this. It’s the same outside of sport. Over 90% of diets fail in the medium and long term because denial of food is just too painful to bear forever. Another approach to the problem is needed.
And it does exist. Instead of ‘work your weaknesses’, lets change the mantra to ‘love working on your weaknesses’. I first heard of this perspective on it in an interview with Marc Le Menestrel over a decade ago, and the comment has stayed in my mind ever since. As I remember, he said (about working weaknesses) something like “try to play a game with yourself so that you enjoy working on them”. An example of this: Think about when you’ve studied for an exam on a subject that seemed so uninspiring during your classes on it. Revising for the exam seemed like the last thing on earth you could make yourself do, even when it was time for panic stations as the date drew near. Your room would be spotlessly tidy, every file on your computer organised, every inane forum read, every biscuit in the cupboard eaten. But once you actually prized your reluctant ass into a last minute cram, it was actually ok, and for a fleeting few hours you suddenly started enjoying it. Perhaps you wouldn’t even admit that to yourself because you were so set in your will to hate the prospect of having to learn this stuff.
What if you could bottle that feeling and reproduce it? Exams, chores, diets, and working weaknesses might actually get done. It is hard to tame, but there are two big things you can do to make it happen much more often:
1. Love it. Love is a verb. You do it. So find ways to love working on the weaknesses you have. Sometimes just the act of breaking the cycle of viewing it as a chore that you hate (also a verb) is enough to trigger enjoyment.
It’s probably not enough just to love the feeling of the gains you make by actually working on your weakness. Gains in most cases happen to slowly for this to work and at a higher level will be imperceptible enough to be impossible to measure directly. For instance, your fingerboard PBs might plateau for several months, yet after a season of training you break a new climbing grade, as happened to me.
The task is to actually love the activity itself, regardless of improvement. However, the enjoyment you take could be quite tangential to the actual activity. Taking my fingerboarding again. I used to do it in my living room and watch tennis matches during my workouts and found it really relaxing. Similarly I hated running but used to love the focused time to visualise moves on my projects. These days I’m lucky to be able to explore new mountain glens on every run I do. It’s hard not to have a good time. It might even be that in working on a type of climbing (lets say it’s bouldering) you know you are awful at, you simply enjoy the freedom from any internal pressure to perform well. Maybe you simply even learned to enjoy the pain of being pumped!
Either way, make yourself attack the weakness, whatever it is, at first. Give it a good chance. Then reflect and think hard about any aspects however coincidental that made it enjoyable.
2. Once you know how to love it, amplify the things you love about it. Try to arrange it so you get more of the enjoyable aspect out of working on the weakness. If you enjoy the social craic of the bouldering wall, make sure you’re there on the right nights. If you know good music makes you complete your circuits, download and save a new album ready for each session. Etc etc.
Being human means doing more of what we love. The smaller the areas of our training jigsaw we don’t love working on, the better.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-5432393021747663609?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/vqDycXB6jiM)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Vertical Sailing & Welcome to the Hood (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/A7GciTcucew/review-vertical-sailing-welcome-to-hood.html)
14 June 2012, 9:03 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/betterbouldering.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/betterbouldering.html) We’ve just added three new products in the shop. Vertical Sailing and Welcome to the Hood DVDs, two of my favourite climbing films from the last few months. We also just added the much awaited new edition of John Sherman’s uber book on techniques, tactics and training for bouldering; “Better Bouldering (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/betterbouldering.html)”. I’m definitely bias in being excited to see it since I’m a co-author! I wrote the chapter on training, with some perspectives on gaining strength without turning into the ubiquitous steely youth you see in every bouldering wall who never seems to actually get V-Hard problems done on the real rock. I’ll do a fulle review shortly but for now let’s just say it’s a five star book and the best dedicated boulderers handbook out there. It’s in the shop here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/betterbouldering.html). Vertical Sailing (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/verticalsailing.html) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/verticalsailing.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/verticalsailing.html) Made by the best adventure big walling partnership on the planet right now’ Nico Favresse, Olivier Favresse, Sean Villaneuva & Ben Ditto, this DVD is the most entertaining climbing movie I’ve seen in a good few years. I’ve watched it several times, and in between laughing out loud at the hilarious situations they end up in, I’m awed, inspired and highly jealous of the adventure they take us on. The film starts of in fine style with hilarious team vomiting as Captain Bob Shepton’s tiny yacht sails them through rough waters up the Greenland coast. Over the course of several films, the team have perfected expedition filming like noone else I’ve seen. From the footage you would really think they had a film crew with them. But it’s just that they have it so dialled. Some footage of stunning granite fjords and onsight new routing of 400m E6 6bs follow. But that’s just the warm up for the impossible wall. 1000 metres, great granite, but this isn’t Yosemite. There are grassy cracks that look desperate, fulmars, loose rock days waiting out storms and a ridiculous wet chimney. You would think that footage of a wet greasy overhanging chimney pitch pouring with water would make for a laughable short clip but would be a lot more ‘entertaining’ to climb than to watch. But for me this is probably the highlight of the film. It absolutely captures why we climb routes like this instead of just going on chalked up sport routes all the time. It looks frightening, totally out there, dangerous and apart from all that, unclimbable. So watching Villanueva thrutching his way up it Gore-Texed to the hilt with water everywhere is excellent. Not many films could shoot this sort of terrain and make you wish you were there. There is the usual portaledge partying which the Belgian team have made their trademark. By the end you are left with a feeling that you could go to the most ridiculous corner of the vertical world, climb the most desperate and committing thing you can find and just have nothing but laughs all the way. Most uplifting. And your non-climbing friends could watch and be just as entertained and impressed. It’s in the shop here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/verticalsailing.html). Welcome to the Hood (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/welcometothehood.html) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/welcometothehood.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/welcometothehood.html) Fortunately, since bouldering is convenient to film and good cameras like the 5D are so well suited to this sort of filming, we get to see a lot of the worlds best ascents, well filmed often by the climbers themselves. And so it is with this movie of 4 of the strongest in the world just now; Daniel Woods, Paul Robinson, Guntram Joerg and Andy Gullsten. We get to see 8b+s in Font and then over to several Swiss venues. I was particuarly keen to see more from the lesser known venues of Murgtal and Silvretta. I was in Murgtal myself for a session in April and thought it was a lovely place with it’s bouldering potential being rapidly developed right now. The section in Chironico was a great highlight. Interesting as always to watch and learn from the contrast of movement style and strengths of the different guys. Even at their level their styles are quite different. The finale of Woods’ flash of Entlinge 8B+/8C (the hardest bouldering flash in the world to date) is jaw dropping. What a machine. Essential dose of viewing for boulderers. It’s in the shop here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/welcometothehood.html). If you didn’t catch my blog post last night we also have just put a good sale on with about half our products discounted by 25-50% for a month. It’s been super popular today and a few things are selling out or getting close to it. So do have a look (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html).
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-581396863874050508?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/A7GciTcucew)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Any excuses? (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/7I0iIyxUJgA/any-excuses.html)
17 June 2012, 9:47 pm
Can’t climb for a while? Injured? No climbing wall nearby, no crags? Sure it’s rough not to be able to do the real thing for a while. However, it happens to almost all of us every so often. You can moan about that, but one thing you cannot moan about is getting weak. Have a look at this video. Do you really have any excuse? Thanks to Beastmakers for pointing at this.
Dave MacLeod
http://vimeo.com/42893621#at=0 (http://vimeo.com/42893621#at=0)
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6541751004618573906?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/7I0iIyxUJgA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Funny stuff!
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Another good injury story (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/aIElgLDUe_g/another-good-injury-story.html)
5 August 2012, 1:34 pm
In the age of Facebook and Twitter, the good writing with some depth about our favourite subjects is sometimes a little less visible online than it was a few years ago. Here is a great story (http://robbiephillips.co.uk/natblog/?p=287) from Natalie Berry about her battles with a string of injuries over the past 12 years as a successful sport and competition climber.
I really felt for Natalie reading this, it brought back some of the worst moments from my own memories of ‘dark’ injury times. As I was reading, as a coach I was thinking “would there have been anything that could have been done differently?”. Possibly not if the design of the training progression was optimum, but the one thing on my mind was that a complete change of scenery while the appropriate rehab program was under way might help. Towards the end of her story, it turned out that doing just that seemed to improve the situation at least a bit. Nat's key quote of the blog was "The pain is telling me to change something".
Like Natalie, I also went through a long (5 year) period of having one finger injury after another. As soon as one pulley healed, another went. If I could go back in time and tell myself the lessons I learnt the hard way, I’d say this:
The string of injuries were caused by poor technique, training planning and tactics. I’m not talking about seriously bad technical errors. I mean the kind of thing that’s so subtle only a very experienced coach would spot - slight systematic errors in control of movement, body position, the way I took the holds, my tactics for avoiding injury situations etc. I should have taken more time to clock up the hours climbing in more different situations, with different climbers and with less pressure to perform. Instead I should have concentrated more on basic climbing skills to develop the kind of movement and tactical awareness that only thousands of hours on the rock gives you.
When I got the injuries I should have taken complete time out from trying to perform. Not just the practicalities of trying to do it, but the impatient mindset that goes with it. I eventually went back to VS and went trad climbing all over the place and actually learned to be a solid leader. The result was coming back onsighting E7 instead of falling off E5s. I ought to have done it much earlier.
I changed my technique to move more dynamically, reducing the stress and risk for my tendons. I gained some openhanded strength and reduced my reliance on crimping. I learned that I needed to take care of my body better, and started eating and sleeping better. Finally, I thought tactically about what today’s climbing decisions meant for tomorrow, instead of just thinking about right now. A big part of this was simply being very careful climbing in warm or humid conditions when the risk of injury was much higher.
All of these factors together worked. Better late than never. In the 8 years since I’ve had two minor pulley injuries that resolved in a short time.
If you are going through the same sort of experience, it’s very challenging to know what to do without the benefit of hindsight. The contributing factors for your injuries will be slightly different for everyone. At the end of the day, although advice from experienced sources is priceless, only you will be able to process that advice and sense what you should do differently. You must make yourself the expert and be prepared to cut through your own hang-ups, deep set habits and prejudices. N.B. I've been writing down all the possible avenues to look at in my injuries book which I'm still making steady progress with.
No easy answers, but it can be done. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-354324982373452730?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/aIElgLDUe_g)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Beastmakers in the shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/EPPuuFxdX4U/beastmakers-in-shop.html)
5 August 2012, 11:33 pm
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bm2XfRyFxys/UB5t-B5ZCbI/AAAAAAAAC5I/4RAnl-BNxaA/s640/IMG_3815.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bm2XfRyFxys/UB5t-B5ZCbI/AAAAAAAAC5I/4RAnl-BNxaA/s1600/IMG_3815.jpg)
Since this site is one of the main places on the web to get information about training for climbing and our shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html) sells all the best books on the matter, it was about time we started selling some of the best training equipment too. So priority number one was to get hold of the best fingerboards on the market right now; the Beastmakers.
Designed by Font 8b+ boulderers and made out of rather lovely skin friendly wood, their design is clearly a labour of love and that is why they have become so popular in the UK. Oh, and they make your fingers strong. Well, owning one isn’t enough on it’s own. It’s the numbers of hangs clocked up that get makes the jumps in grades we all want. But having a well designed and skin friendly hangboard is a good first step.
I started fingerboarding in summer 2005 just after I first tried Rhapsody. At the time I was climbing F8b and the odd 8b+ and about 8A on boulders. After a solid summer doing my deadhangs most days I got back on the sport climbs in the autumn and was blown away to discover I could now climb 8c. The following year I did Rhapsody and the year after that my first 9a.
That raw finger strength was obviously the ingredient that propelled me forward to grades I never thought I’d get to. There are of course many young strong lads I’ve seen and coached in walls up and down the UK who would wipe the floor with me on a hangboard yet can’t climb nearly as hard outside, since power is nothing without technique. And technique is just as hard won as finger strength.
So every climber needs to have a balance between learning technique and learning to pull hard. However, every climber who spends any time training or aspiring to harder grades should have and use a fingerboard. And if they are going to own any one, a Beastmaker is a pretty good choice.
We are stocking both the 1000 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker1000.html) and 2000 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker2000.html) models. The 1000 is designed with those new to training in mind (Font 5-7C) and the 2000 is a better choice for those already used to bouldering walls and basic strength equipment (7C-8C). They cost £75 with our normal £1.50 shipping. Shipping to Europe and the rest of the world are at normal Royal Mail rates.
Get hanging and get strong. The 1000 is here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker1000.html) and the 2000 is here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker2000.html).
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5ctN9BAjl0/UB5t-2Jxa3I/AAAAAAAAC5Q/G825u2yiqB4/s640/IMG_3820.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5ctN9BAjl0/UB5t-2Jxa3I/AAAAAAAAC5Q/G825u2yiqB4/s1600/IMG_3820.jpg)
The Milo of Croton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_of_Croton) school of training with Freida MacLeod. I wonder how long I can still manage this?
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RcI-9BJ3Jkc/UB5t-Te0hVI/AAAAAAAAC5M/CYtSVYMm_bM/s640/IMG_3816.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RcI-9BJ3Jkc/UB5t-Te0hVI/AAAAAAAAC5M/CYtSVYMm_bM/s1600/IMG_3816.jpg)
Freida getting started with some assisted hangs
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-4609733637699381601?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/EPPuuFxdX4U)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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A few Beastmaker tips (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/4Oj9_oaIst8/a-few-beastmaker-tips.html)
7 August 2012, 9:43 pm
At some point I’m still planning to write a small manual on the gory details of physical training for climbing for those who’ve already got all the ‘top level’ stuff sorted from 9/10 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). However, in response to popular demand since we put the Beastmakers in the shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker2000.html), here are a few important points about using your fingerboard:
1. It's a supplement, not a hiding place. Finger strength is such a key ingredient of climbing hard grades. Yet whenever I write advice telling people to get and use a fingerboard, I make a little cringe. This is because I have seen so often the problems it causes which cancel out the finger strength gains. As Beastmaker designer Dan Varian himself says, the world is full of strong folk who hang out on their Beastmaker every night, can perform eye watering numbers of one-armers on hardly any fingers. Yet they still can’t climb hard. Well, relative to their strength anyway.
I can’t even do some of the hangs considered Font 7b on the Beastmaker, and my top indoor grade is Font 7c+ish yet have climbed Font 8b+ on rock. Since I’m a rock climber, that’s the way round I like it! Lots of strong youths do it the other way round. If you want to be good at pull ups, that’s fine. But most of us want to climb hard on rock.
Sometimes the over-reliance on fingerboarding as a training Panacea comes from simply not realising how important technique is (see this post (http://www.onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/good-technique-bad-technique-and-not.html) for more detail). Sometimes the fingerboard becomes a comfort blanket - the only place you know you can perform well and consistently. If you are stronger than your mates but they still burn you off on Font 8a outdoors you think “I’ll go back to the Beastmaker”. Your hiding place. Hiding from the really hard training - learning to climb harder moves using less strength and getting more weight on your feet. As soon as you begin acting this out, you are no longer training, but just going through the motions.
The solution is to keep the real rock/basic training ratio high. Many of you will be watching the Olympics right now. Imagine if the gymnasts spent their time just lifting weights and not practising their routines. Could they win? Imagine if they only practiced their routines and never performed them in a competition setting. Could they deal with the pressures of the comp day and win?
Adding basic finger strength training is always a good idea, but only if the technique training is increased too.
2. Short frequent sessions are good. And they fit better into a busy life. Don’t skimp on your warm-up though. Develop a sense of when your fingers are warmed up and ready to pull hard. It’s not rocket science. If you are a new to fingerboarding, just be gentle and gradually experiment each session with what feels good. Once you are warmed up, working through all the different grip types constiutes your workout. The Beastmakers have a good App on the way to follow if you don’t want to use your imagination and plan your own workout.
The general plan is to train in a way that causes you to have fairly equal strength on all grip types. One of the great things about the renewed popularity of fingerboarding in the past few years has been that more folk have realised that openhanded strength is important. Often if you’ve never fingerboarded, your openhanded strength is so bad you can’t even understand how you could hold on with that grip. It’s not weird, you are just weak on it!
3. Be careful, very careful. Everyone get’s injured fingers and various other upper body tendons from climbing training. Your injuries will hold you back far more than tweaking your workouts will propel your climbing forward. So give plenty of attention to injury prevention. The weaknesses you start with and the length of your fingers relative to each other will dictate what will feel ‘tweaky’. If it means you can’t do something that your mate can, you’ll have to go with that in the short term.
A good example of this is doing one arm hangs with a full crimp grip. Contrary to hanging with two arms, when you hang on one arm, your wrist is held at an offset angle and the force is distributed differently through your wrist and fingers. If you aren’t used to it or weak on it, it’s very easy to get injured. So just progress very slowly. Start your progression from where you actually are, no matter how weak that is. Use plenty of support from the other hand or a chair on the ground. If you don’t try and do hangs which are too hard for you, you can progress slowly and steadily and in the months to come you’ll be able to do those hangs.
Some more safety warnings:
- Don’t hang with a straight, relaxed arm. ‘Engage’ your shoulder and arm muscles so the weight of your body is not hanging through the joint ligaments. Holding a slight elbow bend is the best way. - Deep locks are very hard on the elbows and a good way to eventually cause the onset of dreaded epicondylitis. Proceed with caution if you have healthy elbows and avoid the last few degrees of lock if you have bad elbows. - Training when tired or distracted is the fastest recipe for an injury. If you’re always tired and have a lot on your mind, at least have a coffee and take a few minutes to focus yourself before your workout. Treat it the same way as driving in busy traffic - it’s dangerous, so if your mind is not clear to pay attention, bad things are going to happen.
4. Vary the workouts. Do a session of testing your strengths and weaknesses on different grip types at the start and then every few weeks. Then you’ll know what your weaknesses are. Right now my ‘thumb on’ full crimp and 4-finger openhand is weak (because my little finger is weak and my pronator can’t control the rotation during a one arm hang). So you can spend the next few weeks doing more hangs on these grips to strengthen them, while maintaining the other grip types with fewer hangs. What grip types you want to focus on might also be dictated by what projects you have too and that’s fine, in the short and medium term anyway.
5. How much volume? There is a lot of conflicting advice about how many sessions per week is a good number. Certainly with the minimums it’s easy to say that one session per week will create only a small increase in strength from baseline which will level off. 2 sessions per week is also not that much to keep getting gains beyond the initial weeks. The debate starts when we talk about whether 3 of more sessions per week is optimum.
I don’t believe there is a correct answer to this because there are too many variables in the mix. Firstly, one man’s idea of a hard session is different from the next man. Some folk are great at really generating a maximal effort and creating a muscular stimulus from the session that actually justifies a rest day. Others need coaching to realise what a maximal muscular effort is. These folks could fingerboard every day with no problems.
Secondly, it depends on how much real climbing you are doing. If you’re doing a couple of wall sessions on routes a week and have a fingerboard at home you could be using of an evening, you could probably use it for 30 minutes (post warm-up) daily. But if you are doing three hard bouldering sessions a week and working on outdoor projects on weekends then 3 fingerboard sessions might even be a struggle to fit in without creating recovery problems.
The only reasonable answer is to do as much as your body can recover from at any given time. Here are two examples from my own history:
Before the days when I had a home board, I used to fingerboard 5 or 6 days a week during the summer. My real climbing would consist mainly of outdoor tradding which is less intense and I had no problem integrating the fingerboard sessions. In winter when I was bouldering 3 or 4 times a week I’d only do 2 or three fingerboard sessions and sometimes drop it altogether if I was really bouldering hard on projects.
These days, I have a board and lots of bouldering close to home. Most of the time I’ll do 3 sessions per week fingerboarding. In the Lochaber monsoon when it rains every day from October to February I’ll up that to 4-6 sessions a week at the start of my board sessions. But some of those fingerboard sessions will be just a few hangs before I get into the boulder session and I have 18 years of training behind me to absorb this level of work.
It comes down to listening to your body. Start developing an ‘ear’ for your general and specific recovery state.
6. Get motivators. Fingerboarding is not an exciting pastime. Get good training partners, good music, good TV etc and don’t hang the fingerboard somewhere that’s going to feel like a prison cell. Don’t be one of the countless people I’ve coached who tell me “I’ve had a fingerboard up for a year but used it once”.
If the entire concept of doing something as dull as deadhangs seems like a struggle but you still want to give it a go for the sake of the climbing gains, make sure you give it a good go. The strength gains you get and the ‘opiate effect’ of a good workout takes time to tap into but are probably the strongest motivators. Loads of people hang a board, do two or three sessions then give up. If you discipline yourself to do it for a solid month without fail, hopefully you’ll start to get the nice feelings of having done some real training, and got suitably addicted to the small but noticeable gains to keep going.
But the first thing of course, get a fingerboard (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/beastmaker2000.html) and get it up in your house.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7003445714298472021?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/4Oj9_oaIst8)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Sean McColl's training video (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/LzuEvy1vdC0/sean-mccolls-training-video.html)
8 August 2012, 9:39 am
Always interesting to see what other people are doing. Canadian climber Sean McColl sharing his regimen for endurance circuits and core. The core work is still fairly climbing specific on the whole which is good. Plus the press-ups seem to be good for preventing ‘Font elbow’.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-6971249392651187747?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/LzuEvy1vdC0)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Running uphill: 3 mental strategies (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/nBq0KAqUtcc/running-uphill-3-mental-strategies.html)
13 September 2012, 7:36 pm
‘Proper’ runners might laugh at this post, but for the majority of us, who find running uphill hard or even desperate, we have to find some mental strategies to make it easier. The post came from a discussion with a (non climbing) friend who had just started doing a little running and felt it was very hard to actually keep running and that hills were a ‘stopper’. He was under the impression that it would be different for me because I was a keen sportsperson, albeit in a different sport. I don’t think I convinced him that I had exactly the same feelings, every time, and that I found short easy runs harder mentally than big long hill runs.
Probably the main thing that keeps me running uphill is that I tend to do it in beautiful mountain scenery, often exploring new places I’ve never been before. Treadmill running in a gym is, for me, the ultimate motivational nemesis. I find it almost impossible to sustain it for any length of time unless I have a serious word with myself and feel it’s really worth it for my training. Even when I’m in a hotel in a flat place with no opportunity to do any other exercise, I can only clock-watch my way to about 30 minutes and then it all seems totally pointless. I think if you really have this feeling, it’s best not to fight it too much. Stick it out while you can for the sake of the fitness maintenance/energy expenditure or whatever your training requires and then go and do something more fun.
However, most of the time we are somewhere in the middle of the motivational continuum. We don’t hate it enough that it’s just not worth the gains, but we don’t love it enough that it’s no mental effort to keep going. What to do?
I have three strategies for keeping running uphill when I’m tired, unfit or just not really enjoying it. I just naturally adopted them without reading from anyone else so I’m sure these have been well described before elsewhere. Which one to choose simply depends on what kind of mood you’re in. It is also possible to use them all at once!
1. Gun to your head. You are running uphill and although you’re not collapsing with extreme fatigue and lactic acid agony, you are simply finding that the desire to stop and walk is getting much stronger than the desire to keep going and get a good workout. Imagine that someone is holding a gun to your head and will kill you if you can’t run another ten steps. Count them inwardly as you do them. Now if they repeat the threat for the next ten, could you keep going to save your life? Of course you could. And so on… Once you get over the ridiculousness of the idea, it helps you get perspective that the desire to stop isn’t nearly as strong as you thought and that you’re perfectly capable of overcoming it, if you really want to.
2. Absolutely no stopping. This one is not so grim as No. 1. One of the problems with keeping going on a hard run is that the decision to stop or keep going keeps presenting itself over and over. If you decide to keep going, the voice in your head asks “Will I just stop?” all over again in another few minutes or even seconds. So over the course of the run you have to summon the willpower to make the right decision many many times. This gets tiring, and leaves you open to make the wrong decision sooner or later. A compounding factor is the norms you set up for yourself. If you normally stop and walk by this point, you feel like you’ve ‘done enough’ as you have in the past and the temptation to give in gets even stronger. Making one irreversible decision at the outset is one way to cut away all of this decision making hell. Decide at the start where you are going to run to and that you absolutely will not stop to walk under any voluntary circumstances, at all. Then, simply adjust the pace to however slow it takes to uphold the decision. It might be dead slow. But it doesn’t matter, it’s still better than stopping. Quite apart from the physical training, it’s excellent mental training in self-discipline. In the event, the knowledge that there’s no way out of the task except getting to the end usually provides motivational stimulus to keep going as fast as fitness allows. The positive vibe of setting yourself up with such an iron cast decision and being able to fulfill it, no matter how slowly, also makes you feel good and tends to make you go as fast as you can. You have to really mean it though. If you allow yourself to negotiate with your own resolve and find reasons to overrule it halfway through, you might as well have stayed at home. That said, don’t feel too bad if you do fail to uphold the strategy. Just set a more modest goal next time and make a more steady progression.
3. Be somewhere else. ‘Detachment’ is a well known and effective strategy for dealing with fatigue and desire to slow down or stop in endurance sport. Think of those moments when you’re driving and suddenly realise that you can’t remember driving the past three miles. That’s detachment. It’s quite amazing how you can assess the road and traffic and respond accordingly while seemingly giving your complete mental focus to your daydream. Basically you wan’t to recreate the same effect while running to make the time pass quicker and the pain and fatigue seem much less noticeable. There are loads of ways to enter this state, and you should experiment to get better at it. For instance, one way is to think of a part of your body that feels good. Maybe your fingertips feel good after a rest day from climbing. Focus your mind’s eye on them and drift off into a word of daydreams about past and future climbing sessions. Another way is to focus on something mindlessly hypnotic, such as the trees going past, or the blocks of pavement, or the sound of your feet splashing on wet ground. Whatever seems nice. Good music in your ears is one of the easiest methods to detach and keep going. This is probably Apple’s greatest contribution to society! By contrast, attempting to enter into an analytical thought pattern about some question that needs serious brain power is a risky strategy and often pulls you right out of the ‘bubble’ and your fatigue hits you hard. If you’re used to it, fine, but for most people, a ‘go with the flow’ daydreamy type of thought pattern works best, even if your body is working at high intensity.
All of these are skills in themselves that take practice, just like it takes a lot of training sessions in a row to start feeling fit. So don’t kick yourself if it doesn’t work first time or even close to it. And finally, two things to remember:
1. Most folk find it this hard, it’s not just you.
2. Running back down the hill always feels great!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7670770721738210003?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/nBq0KAqUtcc)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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When there's nothing left to prove (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/sa6uJyqs-A4/when-theres-nothing-left-to-prove.html)
20 September 2012, 11:46 pm
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 specifically to find a reason to keep training. This is an interesting question for older athletes who have done all they ever dreamed of doing in their sport. Why would you want to spend huge amounts of time and effort chasing tiny gains when there is so much more to life there in the background?
In competitive sports I can see why it would end up being an ‘all or nothing’ relationship with training. But in climbing it’s a lot more complicated than that. For young climbers, competition and proving yourself might well be a strong motivator. Training is essentially easy when you are in your twenties too unless you really have some badass goals and don't accept less than getting them. It mostly feels like a flowing river of improvement. All you have to do is jump in and you flow along from training to results. So there is enjoyment just from going with the flow and gaining the gains that are there for the taking. Later, it becomes more like trying to swim upstream and takes a lot more effort for less gain. So you really have to want it.
So why would you? Motivation is obviously a personal thing and everyone news to have their own mindset. For me, training for competitive reasons has long dropped off the bottom of my list of reasons to do it. There are 2 reasons why I like to train these days.
First and foremost, it’s to climb the lines I’ve seen and want to climb. So it follows that without the lines to fire the inspiration, the motivation to train dries up. So it’s quite important to live in a place where there is one line after another to try.
Second, it’s because training itself is, or at least can be, enjoyable in itself. In recent years I’ve become more and more aware of that small changes how you train determine whether you really want to do it, or it becomes a chore. For instance, if I go for a run, I want it to be on a new mountain I’ve not explored, not a treadmill. So it kind of comes back to matching the training with my original motivation for starting climbing - to explore impressive and nice outdoor places. If I train indoors, I want it to be on nice holds, in a good temperature, with good people, and sometimes, on my own. To me, the feeling of having made a gain in training and having that sense of feeling light and strong is one of the most powerful feelings in sport. I still like it just as much despite the fact it’s more fleeting and much harder won than before. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-8014252965264366629?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/sa6uJyqs-A4)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Liquidgrip (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/NY1niUcAlU4/review-liquidgrip.html)
21 October 2012, 4:40 pm
(http://liquidgrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/liquidgrip.png) (http://liquidgrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/liquidgrip.png) Recently I spotted a new liquid chalk product called Liquidgrip on the market. I’m always keen to try new things out so asked them for a bottle to try and and review for this blog. It particularly piqued my interested since they make the following claims in their marketing:
“Liquidgrip is the only gripping agent in the world which works by binding to the fatty acids in your skin. This means a single application at the start of your session will last for hours without reapplying. Unlike regular chalk and liquid chalk, Liquidgrip leaves NO marks at all on clothing or equipment and is even anti-bacterial for improved hygiene. The harder you work, the harder Liquid grip works. It even works in the rain and isn’t affected by sweat.”
All this sounds pretty interesting. On trying it, it does indeed seem a little different to standard liquid chalk, with more longevity and less obvious deposit on the holds. Crucially, the grip itself feels different. On your skin it feels sticky. So far so good. On the rock, I had variable results. I tried it outdoors at first and initially rather liked it. Later I felt that it worked well on some types of holds and not any better than normal chalk at other times. Indoors, I didn’t get on so well and found it ‘rolled’ off my finger skin and didn’t improve the friction. However, I have really sweaty hands, so I’m a tough customer to please in that environment.
Overall, it wasn’t for me. I felt it filled the fingerprint ‘tread’ too much. The stickiness was good but although the product stays on your skin reasonably well, the stickiness doesn’t seem to last all that well. I was obviously keen to find out more about where that stickiness comes from. I asked the UK distributors but they couldn’t tell me. The ingredients list on the bottle is exactly the same as standard liquid chalk (chalk, alcohol, thickener). However, on the american liquidgrip site (http://liquidgrip.com/) it mentions having rosin in it. Rosin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosin) is commonly used by weightlifters for grip. Presumably the sticky feeling comes from the rosin? I doubt that in this form it would leave any residue on the rock, but who knows?
Some people might like it for climbing more than I did. Although I didn’t personally prefer it to standard chalk for climbing, I probably would use it in a weights gym, where you wouldn’t get away with using loose chalk. I’d also use it if I had a fingerboard in a room at home I didn’t want to cover in chalk dust. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-2987628374097602218?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/NY1niUcAlU4)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Armaid Elbow massage device (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/3jeL6IutjfQ/review-armaid-elbow-massage-device.html)
29 October 2012, 9:45 pm
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t93eJsvxi4g/UI70_pBI-OI/AAAAAAAAC7g/QVnuJGUXc90/s200/armaid.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t93eJsvxi4g/UI70_pBI-OI/AAAAAAAAC7g/QVnuJGUXc90/s1600/armaid.jpg) Richard from TCA (http://www.tcaclimbingshop.com/) asked if I wanted to try a new elbow injury treatment device that TCA are now retailing in the UK called the Armaid. TCA have started retailing it after seeing some impressive results on chronic golfer’s elbow. I must say, it’s a cleverly designed piece of kit and performs it’s task extremely well. But does it work? The answer, it seems, is ‘sort of’. Let’s go through some details.
How the Armaid works is pretty simple. If you want to see the details, watch the video below. Basically it provides an easy and effective was to give the flexor or extensor tendons and muscles of the forearm a good massage of various intensities. It’s very easy to use and control. Administering a good session of massage either as a therapist or by yourself is actually quite a difficult thing to do. It’s pretty hard on the thumbs, wrists, and elbows of the arm actually applying the treatment. So it can actually cause injuries as well as help them! Apart from that, your massaging arm gets tired before you’ve done enough.
So the first thing to say is that if I did want to perform regular massage on elbow epicondylitis, I’d definitely get one of these and use it.
This leads to the broader question of whether massage is actually useful for healing these injuries. That is less simple to answer. To attack the question, it’s first necessary to be clear that injury treatments fall into 2 broad categories; those that only reduce symptoms by reducing pain signals and those that reduce symptoms by actually altering the health of the affected tissue.
Obviously the latter is more effective in the long term and the more desirable type of treatment. At the moment, it seems like eccentric exercise therapy together with various other interventions (postural, training, technique, tactics) are effective in most cases for eliminating golfers and tennis elbow. Most people fail to recover because they don’t do the eccentrics, don’t do them properly and don’t make the necessary changes in their climbing to remove the underlying causes. So the condition becomes chronic.
It has been suggested that massage of various types can also be a useful treatment, either by directly increasing nutrient delivery to the degenerated tendons, breaking up disorganised scar tissue or adhesions, or by an analgesic effect. Deep friction massage is one particular massage technique that is aimed at breaking up adhesions in the tendon itself. It's not really known if it has any real effects beyond short term pain relief. DFM uses aggressive massage across the fibres rather than in line with them. I'm not sure if the Armaid could be used effectively for DFM?
Pain signals by various types of massage might be reduced in several ways such as breaking up the ‘neovessels’ packed with pain receptors that grow in diseased tendons, providing a ‘counter irritant’ that down-regulates pain sensation by the brain, or by releasing painful trigger points in the muscle belly. There is evidence that all of these aspects of massage help the injury feel less painful.
Analgesic effects are nice, but may not actually help the tendon heal directly. So there is an argument for not wasting your time on these and focusing on the treatments that will improve the strength of the tendon tissue. And this is where the rub of the debate is. Massage may not improve tissue health directly, but the pain relief may be worth it if it allows you to complete the therapeutic exercises that do.
So, I would use try this device if I had bad enough elbows that I was unable to complete a rigorous program of daily eccentrics (priority number 1), and do some climbing too. To use it as a pain reliever to just keep climbing and not address the underlying causes and tissue damage would be a very risky strategy. It’s true that pain relief allowing climbing to resume does sometimes allow spontaneous healing. I’d say this is more likely if the original condition was caused by a sudden increase in loading such as resuming climbing after a bit of time off. However, tendinosis of the elbows tends has a habit of being way more tenacious than that. Don’t underestimate it.
If you feel sure that elbow massage could be useful for you, you could try one of these. It’s most likely to be useful for particularly bad and chronic cases that are reluctant to respond to diligently applied eccentrics and technique changes.
You’ll find the Armaid for sale in the TCA shop here. (http://www.tcaclimbingshop.com/injury-prevention-rehab/armaid.html)
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-2168868878616473764?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/3jeL6IutjfQ)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Less waste (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/ohHnrvdLYaw/less-waste.html)
10 November 2012, 10:30 am
Just had another email from a climber with an amazing story of determination to break personal climbing barriers at a relatively old age and following the diagnosis of a serious health condition. The thought that crossed my mind straight away was ‘why can’t we all learn to be this determined and resourceful 20 or 30 years earlier’.
Of course, in the young, there is probably a classic ‘bell curve’ of athletes, some who develop great mental toughness, determination and general steeliness against problems at an early age.
As a coach dealing with climbers in their 40s and beyond, the advice needed is often practical; do this, try that and nothing more. You know that when pointed in the right direction, these hardened athletes will go off and work their backsides off to get where they need to go. Energy is maybe a little harder to come by, but it doesn’t have to matter because almost none is wasted.
Youth has a lot of energy to throw at things, but it’s too often poorly directed. Too focused on the fun stuff, ignoring the boring but important stuff. So much of that energy is wasted. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1227124293505259938?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/ohHnrvdLYaw)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Sweaty hands? - manage it (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/vJODjIUWpxk/sweaty-hands-manage-it.html)
16 November 2012, 11:34 am
For me and many others, sweaty hands is a serious pain in the ass for indoor climbing or in warm climates. It may be because your hands are sweaty, or because various aspects of individual physiology (e.g. body shape and size) make it difficult to maintain an even body temp during physical work. Most likely the problem is a bit of both.
It’s true there might not be much you can do to remove the underlying cause, but there is of course plenty you can do to make workarounds or offset the problem. Lots of folk accept they have sweaty hands and this limits their climbing in a few situations, but don’t do nearly as much as they could to mitigate this. So what can you do?
Well, it’s obvious as hell, but loads of folk still don’t do it; take clothes off! Although showing off might be a side effect for some, the reason those guys at the climbing wall take their t-shirts off is just to stick to the holds better. Shorts and vests are kind of out of fashion just now, which is a shame since they are good for keeping cool. Climbers used to be good at ignoring fashions. How good are they now at this?
Resting between attempts isn’t just for replenishing power. I also allows you to cool down again. If you are getting close to a boulder problem, you could go and stand outside for 5 minutes and speed up the process. Be careful with this though, it’s your fingers that need cooling ultimately. Muscles shouldn’t be allowed to get too cold or the benefit will be negated. If you are outdoors and you cant find cold air for sweaty fingers, cold rock can really help. Placing your hands on the smoothest, coldest bit of rock you can find will help silence the sweat glands and keep your skin from getting soft. The fact that the rock warms up so much that you need to move to another area of rock after a few minutes underlines just how much heat is transferred.
Thin skin also sweats more. If you’ve had multiple days on, you can plan for this and remember that your good attempts might be earlier in the session. Folk with really bad sweaty fingers have had success with antihydral, applied very carefully and sparingly after climbing sessions to the tip pads (never the creases, which causes semi-permanent cracking!!). I've heard some climbers tell me this transformed their indoor climbing experience to something much more pleasurable, but only once they refined just how little to apply. Overdo it, and you'll get the dreaded 'glassy' skin which is even worse than sweaty skin.
Keeping your hands from going too sweaty and soft during the session is also critical. A little chalk and generally waving your hands around during your rests helps keep skin dry and tough. On my own board at home, which I keep pretty cold with a fan and wide open window (my favourite bouldering temp is about -1 celcius) if I leave the board and go into my warm house for a few minutes, continuing on my hardest problems is a waste of time. Once skin is soft, I have to move to more powerful problems on bigger holds, or the skin friendly fingerboard.
Finally though, When there really isn’t any way to avoid the problems of trying to climb in the heat, accept it. I’ve driven myself spare so many times trying to climb in poor conditions. The best thing to do is climb in places or at times of year that will have good conditions. It’s a whole lot nicer! Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-3205118398710150200?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/vJODjIUWpxk)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Wise words, and those in the know are already busting out some serious vest action :2thumbsup: :strongbench:
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Wise words, and those in the know are already busting out some serious vest action :2thumbsup: :strongbench:
"Why do you old guys wear vests?"
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Nu-skool vests, get with the times.
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Nu-skool vests, get with the times.
(http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Alternative-Metal-Linkin-Park-Chester-Bennington-Unisex-Vest-Tank-Top-UnderShirt-/00/s/NDgwWDQ5Ng==/$(KGrHqN,!isE6Hevc-RcBOkyQipIhQ~~60_35.JPG)
Rockin'
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Nu-skool vests, get with the times.
(http://i.ebayimg.com/t/VINTAGE-RETRO-1980S-POLYESTER-MCDONALDS-COLLECTABLE-WORK-VEST-BROWN-SIZE-12-R-/00/s/OTcwWDc1MA==/$(KGrHqRHJBQE+Jd+Kq72BPzT)BPbgQ~~60_35.JPG)
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What to do at the crux… (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/TdjiH8Ga1Sg/what-to-do-at-crux.html)
21 November 2012, 9:06 pm
...And what not to do.
Movement technique, within a given climber, is not a fixed quality. It changes depending on the constraints the climber operates under, and how they respond to those constraints. Generally speaking, your technique is probably at it’s best when you are warming up or fully warmed up, relaxed, in familiar surroundings and feeling confident. It gets worse when we are nervous, scared, over aroused or distracted. But this post is more about how it changes during fatigue.
If you watch climbers at the crag on an onsight or redpoint effort, a common finding is that technique starts off well and errors creep in progressively as fatigue progresses. This is not consistent though. Some climbers’ technique deteriorates so markedly that their movements are completely different as the pump sets in. Foothold choice and accuracy goes down, fluid dynamic movement slows and becomes erratic, pacing becomes either rushed or hesitant. On the flip side, the best climbers can try hard, right on their limit of physical effort, with good technique maintained right to the moment of failure, even on dangerous trad routes.
This quality starts off as a simple choice not to let technique change in the fatigued state. When made over and over, it becomes a habit and eventually set in stone and resistant to the most stressful and rapidly changing situations in climbing.
Obviously, getting off the starting blocks with making that choice to keep the technical standard high right to the point of failure is easier said than done. For a start, climbers themselves don’t necessarily know what their good and bad technical habits are, or may not even be aware that they change. So it starts with an ambitious self-assessment at least. More likely a good coach will be necessary to get it right. Videoing your own climbing efforts is not just an exercise in entertainment or ego trip. It can provide a window to really understanding why you fell off (it might not just be because you weren’t strong enough).
Providing you can find out what negative changes are really going on as you get to the crux, you can make the choice to keep your technique ‘clean’ when it matters most. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-1512138944762705939?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/TdjiH8Ga1Sg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Davemacleod.com shop new stuff (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/ui7u8iey65Y/davemacleodcom-shop-new-stuff.html)
7 December 2012, 6:11 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/vertical.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/vertical.jpg)Over the past few weeks we have added quite a few new titles to the shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html). Of course as usual we are dispatching right up to and over the Christmas period. Early winter is of course the season for thinking about (and hopefully doing) training. As well as the full complement of the best climbing training titles on the market, our Beastmaker fingerboards (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html#equipment)are ever popular and we’ve just got another large pile of them in.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/echoes.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/echoes.jpg)First up we have Ines Papert’s rather lovely new book (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/vertical.html). It’s really an inspiration book full of great photography of her globetrotting adventures on steep ice, rock, mixed and big mountains, together with stories of her experiences.
Nick Bullock is a somewhat controversial chap who has a habit of provoking and polarising opinion on all things climbing and mountaineering. He caused a bit of a storm recently for making some pretty strong assumptions about the folk he passes in the street; “their lives are grey”. So you can imagine his new book (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/echoes.html) is not short of colourful thoughts and stories of mountaineering experiences all over the planet. He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s not elitist in his climbing philosophy, certainly not trying to be anyway… Essential reading really.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/boundless.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/boundless.jpg)Next up we have Karen Darke’s second book ‘Boundless’. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/boundless.html) It’s one thing to decide to take on a life of adventure following a life changing accident that leaves you paralysed. But what is the reality of living that life like? She shows us that fear and uncertainty do not go away, even if you decide to take life by the horns…
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/autana.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/autana.jpg)Finally we have Autana, Leo Houlding’s latest climbing adventure film (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/autana.html) to climb the great sandstone big wall on Cerro Autana in the Amazon jungle. It really is a fine adventure, full of some quite unexpected challenges that are both funny and renew your respect for Leo’s attitude to erm, trying new things (you’ll see what I mean). The cave systems high on the wall they visit are quite extraordinary and the whole thing is very well filmed as you would expect from an Alastair Lee DVD.
We still have a bit to go before last posting days before Christmas, so get them in. Te shop is here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html) Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-9165939279726671139?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/ui7u8iey65Y)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Christmas orders from our shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/SFMNP4dt2hI/christmas-orders-from-our-shop.html)
18 December 2012, 1:28 pm
We are dispatching every day via Royal Mail first class. Last posting day for Christmas delivery is Thursday 20th. So get your order in. If you don’t make it in time for Thursday, will be dispatching orders right through the Christmas period.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/wideboyzDVD.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/wideboyzDVD.jpg)I have just added two new climbing DVDs from Hot Aches Productions to the shop. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)
Wideboyz (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/wideboyz.html) tells the story of Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall’s crack climbing adventure from training in their ridiculous but effective home climbing wall to making the first ascent of the world’s hardest offwidth under the noses of the Americans. Good story! It's also available for download.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/odysseyDVD.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/images/odysseyDVD.jpg)Odyssey (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/odyssey.html) follows a hardcore team of James Pearson, Caroline Ciavaldini, Hazel Findlay and Hansjorg Auer on a trad road trip around England and Wales onsighting and redpointing many hard and famous trad routes. Also available for download. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31845824-7049649398029933596?l=onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/SFMNP4dt2hI)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Old school drills - foot off bouldering (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/icbNmU5cx6I/old-school-drills-foot-off-bouldering.html)
7 May 2013, 1:31 pm
I guess foot off bouldering was what folk did before campus boarding got so popular. It’s now pretty out of fashion as a strength training tool - campusing is cooler. But is it better?
In some ways it might be (since noones ever tested it properly, noone can tell you either way). It’s more basic which might mean you end up pulling harder. It’s on nice skin friendly rungs which might mean you get more high quality sets done. However, it’s main problem is probably that such a large proportion of climbers doing regular campusing lose all the gains and more by getting injured on it.
Although it’s currently uncool, foot off bouldering might be at least as effective for gaining strength since it’s varied, could be a little safer if you do it right and might be slightly less bad for your technique that campusing. The irony is of course that although foot off bouldering is out of fashion, some indoor boulderers footwork repertoire is so bad that their normal climbing isn’t that far off being foot off anyway.
Now, This post isn’t actually about getting stronger, I just wanted to get the above paragraph out of the way. It’s actually about technique. Foot off bouldering can be a useful technique drill for those who are seriously unaccustomed to movement on steep rock.
There still exists a cadre of climbers who do not like to move dynamically. There are different reasons why they got this way. Some are scared to fall off, so won’t slap for anything. Some are used to balancy, slabby trad climbing, or were brought up on outdoor vertical cliffs such as granite walls. Some simply haven’t done enough of the steeper stuff.
Without a coach, these climbers might never break their static habit on overhanging terrain. It’s just too engrained. Even if they try, they’ll still initiate the move by pulling up and locking off, rather than dropping down to leave room to accelerate. They’ll hesitate, hang on for too long, get pumped and come down. All of this reinforces the feeling that steep climbing is beyond them.
If there is no coach to break this habit down bit by bit, a drill is needed to force it. Moving statically is all but impossible with the feet off, so long as the holds are the correct size. Foot off bouldering on steep bouldering walls (45 degrees is good but anything between around 35 -horizontal will work) can forcefully break the habit of trying to find a static way, and start to build understanding of the balance required to move dynamically on steep ground.
This balance is hard to describe without showing you. But here is an example. When you start move dynamically on a 45 degree overhanging wall to a distant hand hold, your upper body feels like it is falling backwards. It feels unnatural. Your subconscious naturally wants to hang your ass down, making your trunk more vertical. But this takes weight off the feet. However, if you pull the ass in and try to reach the hold without the ‘falling backwards’ feeling, you have to stay too low to be able to reach the hold. If you watch relative novices climbing steep ground in climbing walls, you see this movement confusion happening constantly.
In a sense, bouldering foot off, breaks part of this unnatural feeling. It forces familiarity with dynamic motion between every hold. It no longer ‘feels wrong’. Second, it gets you used to the feeling of jumping backwards across the overhang, and help you realise that balance is restored when you grab the next hold.
Once you have mastered this, you can deal with the fact that keeping your feet on means your body stays more horizontal and the falling backwards feeling is even more pronounced. Steep climbing is a learned skill which is counter intuitive. For novices, it’s ok that it feels wrong at first, even if you are an expert climber on vertical terrain. Once you become expert, the feeling of staying more horizontal as you make the move that felt so wrong gradually becomes the part that feels right; it means you will have body tension to keep your feet on when you get the next hold.
A few carefully chosen foot off problems towards the end of your session might be all that is necessary. If jugs are all that you can move on, that’s fine. But as soon as you can, move onto good holds but slightly smaller than jugs. It’s probably better to do small moves on smaller holds than bigger moves on buckets. If you are climbing on set problems at the wall, you might need to tweak them by adding the odd different coloured hold because some moves just wont work foot off.
Rules of thumb:
- If you do this so much that it becomes your party piece, you are doing too much and doing more will become detraining.
- The idea is to move dynamically, but with control. Try to learn how to accelerate in the preparation for the move, make a controlled lunge for the next hold, and decelerate using both the arms and your swinging legs to absorb the swing.
- Violent thrashy moves are a fine way to get injured and throw away all your gains.
- Start small. It doesn’t matter if this is a single move to a hold 2 inches above. Progress from here.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/icbNmU5cx6I)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Injury case study: Knee ligament tear from drop knee (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/rW-DbcOnXd8/injury-case-study-knee-ligament-tear.html)
8 May 2013, 9:43 pm
Watch the video below with Dave Graham (which is entertaining anyway) and check out the knee ligament injury he suffered while doing a deep drop knee move.
This injury does happen from time to time in climbers without much warning, so all climbers should read this for prevention’s sake.
One month ago I suffered a very similar injury in an almost identical scenario while training on my climbing wall at home. The striking thing about the injury was that there seemed to be very little I could have done to foresee the injury. I’d just performed the same move several times (falling higher up the problem). The only difference was that my foot didn’t hit the foothold at the perfect angle. But this didn’t feel dangerous or painful until the moment of injury. So was it actually preventable? Well, thats debatable.
Prevention of sports injuries has two main strands. Firstly, by preparing the body for the demands of the sport, usually by strengthening the relevant areas and making sure they are the correct length (stretching muscles to make them longer is not always good). Secondly, by learning about the scenarios that cause the tissue to fail. In some injuries, like the one I’m describing, that’s acute tearing of otherwise symptom-free tissue. In others, it’s degeneration that builds up over years and gradually shows progressive symptoms.
Taking these strands in turn, is there anything that climbers can do to strengthen the knee to protect it from injuries in drop knees? I’d say it’s pretty difficult. The muscles most forcefully activated during a drop knee depend largely on the exact positioning of the foothold and leg. Moreover, much of the force on the foothold is generated by passively ‘sitting’ on the medial collateral ligament (MCL) that runs down the inner side of the knee. Ligaments are strengthened by general use of the joint. Thus, the best way to strengthen them against the stress they are placed under during drop knees would be to do a lot of drop knees. Albeit less aggressive ones.
The simple maxim when it comes to prevention of tendon and ligament injuries is “tendons don’t like rest or change”. When they are rested, they become weaker. When you increase the demands placed on them, they take a long time to adapt. So perhaps the best protection would be to keep the leg musculature and knee ligaments strong with regular climbing involving this type of move for as much of the year as possible. Supplementation with basic leg exercises with weights or body weight may be a good idea if a specific weakness has been identified that is relevant. But at least some of the time, these exercises are so much of a shot in the dark that they may have little real effect in such specific movement patterns as demanded by climbing. Only a really good physiotherapist or an expert in stability and functional exercises is realistically going to be able to identify these weaknesses through manual testing of an individual. Are you about to go and track down an expert and book a session based on this blog post? Thought not.
So that leaves mitigation of the injury scenario itself. It’s probably fair to say I use drop knees more than most. I’m weak and it allows me to climb things that I otherwise couldn’t touch. I previously irritated my right MCL by trying the crux drop knee on Ring of Steall (8c+) too many times in a row. You can see it in the video in BD's new catalogue here (http://catalog.blackdiamondequipment.com/climbing2013/en_us/index.html) (page 9) Bizarrely, the altered movement I was forced to do because of the pain led me to find the beta tweak I needed and it tipped the balance for success on the route. Most injuries have an upside, somewhere.
I think I’ve got away with only two fairly minor knee injuries in 20 years despite all those drop knees because I learned to take them seriously as a dangerous move. I always take great care to concentrate and ‘feel’ the feedback from the knee to see if I’m properly and safely set before making the hand movement. Also, as I make the hand movement, I remember to keep thinking about the knee so I’m ready to react and let go if the ligament starts to strain or tear. Finally, if it’s a really deep drop knee and and on a redpoint project, I’ll make sure and have a couple of non-committal tries at the move to get a feel for it before fully committing.
Fast movements in such a dangerous position as a deep drop knee are probably more dangerous. Ligaments are ‘viscoelastic’. If they are stretched quickly, they are stiffer. When ligaments are injured at slow speeds, they tend to pull off a chunk of bone (avulse) at their end. When the movement is fast, it’s the body of the ligament itself that tears. So movements where you drop the knee and then move the hand all in one rapid motion are of particular concern.
Another issue pertinent to climbing is the cold. Especially in bouldering, hard ascents are often done in cold conditions with the core body temperature and especially lower limb temperature rather low. Probably dangerously low. In my board I train in just a pair of shorts and my favoured training temperature once warmed up is about -1, with the window wide open to let the highland winter winds in for maximum friction. Ligaments and tendons are stiffer when cold as opposed to being more elastic or compliant when warm. Moreover, joint proprioception (movement and position awareness) is poorer if the joint is cold. Keeping your knees warmer might be a good idea. If you’ve been getting colder for a while, put your shoes back on and run up and down the hill with your duvet jacket for a while. You’ll probably get on better on the boulder too!
Taking all this together, perhaps I injured my MCL because I was cold, I’d just taken a break from rock climbing to do some winter climbing for a month, I was having a good session and may have got a little overconfident. Lastly, it was late in the evening. That is usually my preferred time to train as I’m a night owl. But that particular day I’d done some manual labour moving rocks and mixing cement, followed by a 13 mile run at a good pace, followed by 3 hours of bouldering at my limit. I was probably getting tired and might have been better to stop the session 10 minutes earlier (it was pretty much my last problem before I was going to stop and go to bed).
On the other hand, the tries immediately preceding the injury went without incident. This goes to show that we always tread a fine balance between training hard enough and injury. The right path is only impossible to see without hindsight.
I got away lightly, I had a partial tear of the MCL and a partial tear of the semimebranosus tendon (hamstrings) which I’ve already largely recovered from in just one month. A bigger concern in drop knees is that they often tear the knee menisci and or the ACL ligament with much more serious complications for the long term recovery and health of the knee. That little nightmare is too long for a blog post, but I’ve just finished writing about them for my injuries book Rock ‘til you drop. There will also be a little more on drop knee injuries in the book, since the MCL isn’t the only ligament hereabouts which can be injured by this move and some of the other ligaments are not so straightforward to rehabilitate.
In summary: Do drop knees, they are a killer climbing technique. But be careful. Concentrate, keep warm and do them year round to keep your knees strong.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/rW-DbcOnXd8)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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New stuff in the shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/iHJz2NjXV8c/new-stuff-in-shop.html)
13 May 2013, 2:01 pm
We’ve just added three new books to the shop, all very different.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/theboulder.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/theboulder.html) First up is The Boulder by Francis Sanzaro, published by the Stone Country Press. What does it mean for us to be involved in bouldering? How does it’s movement and sporting challenges relate to other activities like Parkour, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, or even art disciplines like painting. Are you doing it to engage in a sport? Simply play on rocks? Compete with others? Enjoy movement. Possibly all of these and many more reasons besides.
The boulder explores the philosophy of bouldering, what it can mean for boulderers and how we can use and examination of this to improve both our bouldering and what we take from it. For many readers, discovering bouldering will no doubt have changed your life. But surely starting out in a new found activity isn’t the end of the story? There are many life changes to be found as you learn more and more about what bouldering is doing for you. I would expect most readers to be helped along this path. It’s in the shop here (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/theboulder.html).
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/fiva.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/fiva.html) Next is Fiva by Gordon Stainforth, which is only recently out but fast accumulating a big reputation for a brilliant read. Gordon was previously more famous for his excellent photography books. Eyes to the Hills was one of the first mountain books I borrowed from my library as a 15 year old novice climber. We don’t tend to get many mountaineering stories in the shop, but Gordon’s big win with this book at the Banff Mountain festival in November prompted us to check it out and we were impressed. I won’t say too much about it other than it describes a death-on-a-stick epic on Troll Wall in Norway. If you know anything about how serious the Troll Wall is, the Fiva route sounds particularly toe-curling just to read about. Much recommended by us if you like reading about proper adventures. It’s in the shop here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/fiva.html)
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/scottishsportclimbs.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/scottishsportclimbs.html) Finally, and with some satisfaction I can finally report that we have the first stock of the new Scottish Sport Climbs guidebook by the SMC. I wrote a reasonable chunk of the text myself, and since I first had a draft of ‘my’ crags completed in November 2004, I can appreciate as much as anyone how long it’s been in coming. A more substantial introduction to the book is coming in another post in a minute, but for now the book is in the shop here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/scottishsportclimbs.html) Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/iHJz2NjXV8c)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Scarpa Instinct VS (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/IGFtuRTSPXA/review-scarpa-instinct-vs.html)
15 May 2013, 8:26 pm
(http://www.scarpa.co.uk/images/srv/product-enlargement/Climb_Steep_Line/instinct%20vs.png) (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/climb/instinct-vs/) I’ve a bit of backlog list of things to review on this and my main blog, but lets start with what will always be right up there in any rock climbers list of choices to get right - rockshoes. Scarpa have brought out a string of pretty awesome shoes over the past year, not just in rockshoes. The Rapids (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/alpine-trail/rapid/) are amazing for running and general wear, and look pretty damn good. Since I live in an ever so slightly wet country and spend my life in the outdoors, I still spend half my life with my feet in Baltoros (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/trek/baltoro-gtx/) (replacing the old ZG65s which were also ace) for walking around boggy mountains.
When the new Instinct VSs (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/climb/instinct-vs/) came out I was obviously champing at the bit to see what tweaks Scarpa had made to the balance of attributes that make up a good rockshoe. As always before reviewing shoes, I need to explain my perspective a little first. I’m 34, and a life of jumping around on mountains and falling from great heights has given me some quality battle scars. I’ve badly broken both ankles, have Hallux Valgus and sesamoiditis in both feet. Oh, and a touch of equinus. Sound bad? It is. I can barely walk for the first 30 seconds when I get out of bed in the morning. The last time I had my feet X-rayed, the doctor failed to spot my dislocated sesamoid because the bones of my feet were so out of alignment they all looked dislocated. All she could offer was a horified “your feet look weird!”.
The lesson? Get rock shoes that fit your feet well. Dont persist with a painful, ill fitting buying error. Don’t hit the ground from a great height and take your rockshoes off when you don’t need them on.
So you’ll understand if I have high expectations for the fit of rockshoes. Scarpa shoes generally fit my feet extremely well, the care put into the design and manufacture is obvious. However, everyones feet are different. The original Instinct slippers (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/climb/instinct-s-xsg2/) I found great on steep ground but just not supportive enough for me. That’s probably down to the physiological tale of woe I just described. I know from climbing with Tim Emmett that he felt they were perfect for him on long trad pitches or whatever else. I know a lot of folk are going for softer shoes these days, probably because of the proportion of time spent climbing indoors, but I still like the support. In this area nothing has yet surpassed the design of the Stix, which I still wish Scarpa would revive.
However, the new Instict VS does seem to have a little more support and I found them great on long sport onsights on vertical terrain. On 45 degree, tensiony climbing where grabbing small edges with the toes is the critical attribute, they are second to none. Other shoes in the Scarpa range such as the Boostic (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/climb/boostic/) are also unbelievably good at this though. The biggest performance development with the Instict VS is probably the heel, which has been completely redesigned. It’s compact, supportive and extremely powerful. I used to set aside a special pair of heelhooking boots for different types of heelhook on really hard projects. Magos (http://www.scarpa.co.uk/climb/mago/) for grabbing rough spikes or ripples, Spectros for raw power and stiffness on bigger more positive edges and a very small pair of Stix for rounded stuff. Now, the Instict VS does all of this at least as good as any other shoe I’ve tried. The story is exactly the same with toehooking - the VSs are as good as anything I’ve tried, and I toehook a LOT. One minor concern is that the glue holding the toe hooking rubber is not strong enough and peeled after a few sessions of a route with a full-on bat hang rest. It’s easy enough to glue them back on of course, but it’s an update to make in future for Scarpa.
The proof of the pudding is how much they get chosen for different types of terrain. I’ve been using them about 80% of the time on steep sport routes, any type of bouldering or indoor training. My first route in them was an 8c on the Costa Blanca in January. There was a heelhook rest just before the crux. I had two other pairs of shoes with me but kept finding my heel was sliding out of the thin, polished heelhook so I couldn’t really relax on the shake out. My VSs were quite small and were a bit tight for a Scotsman adjusting to the Spanish heat straight after shivering on Ben Nevis. But when I put them on, I could get much more bite on the heelhook and did the route soon afterwards.
Fit wise, they are prefect for me, barring two points. First, the toe hooking rubber running right down to the toes feels a little cramped and doesn’t quite give my toes room to expand. So they do need to come off quite regularly for comfort. Second, as with the Instincts, when standing on slabby terrain, big footholds or on the ground, there is too much weight centered over the sesamoids. However, those youngsters yet to grind their unsuspecting sesamoids to dust will wonder what the hell I’m on about.
The single velcro cinch works perfectly and doesn’t get in the way of any moves, especially toe hooking, which is the achilles heel for the Boostics which have a the second velcro tab set quite far down the shoe. Sizing wise, they seem to me consistent with the rest of the Scarpa range of rockshoes. I'm 41 in street shoes and use a 40 in VSs for training and also have a 39.5 for hard redpoints only. If I wanted to wear them all day on multipitch trad I might go for 40.5.
So I’d say they come with a full recommendation from me for any time of climbing. I think you’ll be very impressed. They’ll even be great on trad terrain unless your feet are as much of a mess as mine are.
A final more general note on rock shoes. I still hear from climbers in coaching clinics that they worry that shoes like the VSs and other ‘performance’ shoes that appear to have an aggressive turn down on the toe are not for them because they ‘look uncomfortable’. This is a misunderstanding. It’s true that turned down shoes can feel a little strange before they are worn in. But providing the fit hugs your foot evenly with no painful pressure points, they should be comfortable to wear once they break in. And when that happens they will no longer feel weird when standing on the ground, but retain the body tension power on steep ground. I’ve always felt that it would be nice if retailers had pre-worn pairs (not so much that they are minging though!) for people to try on so they can get over the initial novelty of how good rockshoes feel on the feet for the first time. Hence why if you ever have a boot demo at your local climbing wall - take advantage of it. You might just find that model that was designed just for your feet and will make rock climbing genuinely more pleasurable. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/IGFtuRTSPXA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Scottish Sport climbs guide is here (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/M3lSUlpnkDo/scottish-sport-climbs-guide-is-here.html)
15 May 2013, 8:27 pm
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/scottishsportclimbs.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/scottishsportclimbs.html) Finally, we have the first stock of the new Scottish Sport Climbs guidebook by the SMC. It’s in the shop here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/scottishsportclimbs.html) It has certainly been a long time coming. I first submitted a draft of the sections I wrote in November 2004! A lot of bolts have appeared across the lowlands, highlands and islands since then, so the book is a lot fatter than it would’ve been if it had been released at that time. So the wait has an upside.
Flicking through the guide as I took it out of the box, I was struck by the great selection of sport crags all over the country now. There are 1300 routes in the guide, on 100 crags. Who out of the slightly older generation of Scottish climbers would’ve thought we would have 1300 sport climbs in Scotland. That’s great! As you’d expect from an SMC guidebook it’s a nicely produced book with careful descriptions, good maps and plenty of nice pictures to inspire. So many of Scotland’s new routing activists have been very energetic over the past decade and the options now available for routes to enjoy has basically exploded. Now, there are sport crags for us to visit no matter what corner of Scotland you find yourself in or fancy travelling to. Also, the diversity of locations mean that I can’t see many days of the year where there won’t be some dry rock on which to clip bolts somewhere in the land.
Kudos to all who made the effort to open new sport routes, as well as all the authors and producers of the guide. It is so badly needed. Talking to the new generation of young sport climbers coming into climbing through Scotland’s climbing walls, it frequently nagged at me that so many are unaware of the lovely crags that are out there. Some of them in stunning, wild and far flung locations like Gruinard in the north west. Some of them just up the road from our major towns and cities.
The guidebook brought back some nice memories for me of places like Dunglas just outside Glasgow, where I did my first 6b (Negotiations With Isaac)and 6c+ (The Beef Monster). I remember being very excited when Andy Gallagher asked me to give him a belay on the first ascent of Persistence of Vision (7a+) after watching him bolt it. A year after my first 6c+, my first 7c+ (Dum Dum Boys) was a liberating experience and straight away I wanted to get to the ‘happening crags’ of the day.
I found myself at Steall for the first time shortly afterwards, abseiling down Cubby’s project (Ring of Steall 8c+) and being totally inspired by how poor the holds were. The whole ambience of hard physical climbing in beautiful highland surroundings was where it was at for me. So in the following years, we made after school/uni/work hits to Glen Ogle, Dunkeld and Loch Lomondside sport crags, with weekend trips to Tunnel Wall, Weem and the Angus Quarries.
Once I got involved in exploring new routes, under the influence of Dave Redpath and Michael Tweedley, I immensely enjoyed tearing about bendy roads in Argyll developing crags like Tighnabruaich and eventually the Anvil.
One thing that I like about Scottish sport climbing particularly is that the easier graded routes in the 6s and 7s are often so much better to climb than those on the continent. In Spain or suchlike, the majority of the time, the hard routes on big overhanging sweeps of limestone are the most inspiring lines, while the easier lines can sometimes be either a bit scrappy or, dare I say it, a little boring. As with our trad, the variety of rock types we have in Scotland often make for much nicer routes in the lower and mid grades too. However, if you are into hard stuff, the two hardest routes in the book (Hunger, 9a and Fight The Feeling, 9a) give as good climbing as you’ll get anywhere. Both were climbed in good conditions in the summer and you wont find any queues or some barky dog wondering about eating your lunch at the base of the crag. The only negative on offer from Scottish sport climbing is, of course, the midge. Just remember that the wind direction is as important as the rain when you look at the forecast. Choose a crag exposed to a breeze on the day, and you’re sorted.
Enjoy the guide, enjoy the climbing. It’s here. (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/scottishsportclimbs.html) Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/M3lSUlpnkDo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Video: Training during recovery from injury (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/jnDENoOEMXw/video-training-during-recovery-from.html)
22 August 2013, 12:50 pm
What’s your excuse?
PS. This programme might well not be the best for everyone. But the level of commitment definitely is. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/jnDENoOEMXw)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Year out (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/FXBmeaWV6ac/year-out.html)
22 August 2013, 1:09 pm
I’ve seen a load of climbers go through the same process. They have a good spell in their climbing and training. Goals are achieved, fingers get stronger, new horizons open up. But what does progress in your sport lead to? The desire to keep progressing yet more. And the higher you get, the more work it takes.
Sooner or later, those with demanding schedules of a western lifestyle bump up against time limitations. Train before work? Too tired. Train after work, too tired, too busy. Weekends? They get filled with things. All good things of course, but they get in the way.
At this point, the idea of a career break appears. A three month road trip. Or even a full year to climb full time. In some cases it might even work. But there are some problems and this is why as a coach I’d recommend it as a last rather than first resort.
First, what happens when you go on the first trip of the sabbatical and injure your finger and need three months off? A sudden increase in training is always the most risky time for injury. It happens, and it’s a bummer when it does. But that’s a minor concern. The bigger issue is how you are going to feel at the end of the journey? 12 months will fly by. If you make the progress you want to make, you might well just end up wanting to keep going even more than you do now. For many, going back to the old way of life just isn’t an option. So they find a new way of life. Thus, the sabbatical has been a much bigger success than just doing your first 8a.
My point here is that for the effort of arranging or saving for a year out of work, it might be less effort overall to find a permanent solution; a new career, or at least an altered one. Whatever - the world is your oyster. I just want to say that taking a short term break is not the only way.
Proper full time climbing might not even be possible unless your body is really ready for it. There is time left over. For most folk, only working for a portion of the year, either in one block or in intermittent blocks (what I do) is much better and is all that is needed to continue the upward progress of climbing achievement.
If you are prepared to walk out on a perfectly good job for the sake of climbing, why not negotiate a better schedule as your first resort. If you’re thinking of leaving anyway, what have you got to lose? Naturally it will be an easier sell if you offer the solutions on a plate or point to an example of when it has worked in the short term before. Since jobs come in infinite shapes an sizes, there is no universal solution. It’s up to you to use your imagination, and then just about every other skill under the sun to make it actually happen.
In the end it might be better than a year of fun with the clock constantly counting down. Whatever you choose, DO IT! Don’t leave it as a dream on the table. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/FXBmeaWV6ac)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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More on practice falls (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/16XdohfWtqg/more-on-practice-falls.html)
4 September 2013, 2:17 pm
Keri emailed to ask about clocking up her practice falls to gain leading confidence. In part 3 of ‘9 out of 10 climbers (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html)’ I detailed how essential falling practice is for a large swathe of climbers and highlighted the main reasons for lack of progress in confidence training.
One aspect that Keri picked up on that I hadn’t covered properly is what to do when you don’t have full confidence in your belayer for taking regular falls. I have of course learned the hard way not to be so trusting of belayers I’ve not climbed with before.
Keri’s point was that first, some belayers might not be the best at fielding your falls, but more importantly, even belayers who are pretty competent most of the time become distracted and might not hold your fall very well.
Like most training problems, liberal use of common sense is the solution:
- Although it’s important to get unanticipated falls in (i.e unanticipated for both leader and belayer), it ought to be fine to remind your belayer that during the session you’ll be taking some falls.
- ideally, fall off hard routes where both you and your belayer are expecting to see a fall. Do it all the time, year in year out.
- If you are going to take a planned fall, do take a squint at what your belayer is doing just before you let go. If they are making a sandwich (it’s happened to me more than once), then a gentle reminder to pay attention will help. You don’t even need to say ‘watch me’ if you don’t want to. Just a little tug on the rope, or a grunt of effort usually wakes them up. However, don’t get carried away. I’ve climbed with some climbers who become so worried about their belayers they hardly concentrate on the climbing at all.
- A related, but more subtle point is about the monotony of indoor leading. You do route after route, and familiarity with belaying breeds the tendency to become distracted. The skill of a good belayer is to allow themselves to pass the time of belaying without ever completely zoning out. It’s a bit like driving your car. Sometimes you daydream, but hopefully never that much that you can’t snap back into full concentration in a split second when a decision or action is required. Even if you have a conversation with the belayer next to you, a glance upwards every couple of seconds is essential and will go a long way to reassuring your leader too.
- If you are climbing with a competent, but less than expert belayer, you can choose your moments to take practice falls a bit more carefully. Falling from the second or third bolt might not be a good idea. However, you do have to ask yourself - if you don’t have confidence in them to hold your fall at the least favourable moment on the climb, what happens when a hold spins or you do simply slip off?
- Don’t be afraid to coach your belayer. If you feel they are not aware or understand key moments of danger for the leader such as clipping the second bolt, paying out rope effectively, or how to read their leaders body language to anticipate clips or falls, teach them. It might be a long process, so don’t go overboard. Many gentle reminders many be required.
- Communicate with your belayer before, during and after your lead. Things like “I think I’ll be clipping the third off that big sloper, so give me plenty of slack there” or “ I like a little more slack so I can clip quickly, but watch me up there at the crux”. So many problems are avoided by good communication between climbers. If you decide to clip early, shout for slack. If you are belaying and see your leader struggle or anticipate a clip or a fall, say something to remind and reassure them that you are watching. Even a quick ‘ok’ or ‘go on’ really helps. The belayer is still part of the climbing team.
Go to an indoor wall and you’ll see plenty of examples of belayers (and leaders) who are not really there. They are climbing to switch off. They pay out slack only when the rope tugs tight, they have no idea how their leader just did the crux so they know the sequence for their go. If you climb with someone like that, you have a few options; climb with someone else, practice your falls with someone else, or try to subtly gee your switched off climbing partner up a bit. Climbers respond to each other’s demeanor quite readily. If you are energetic, attentive and communicative during your climbing and belaying, your partner is more likely to be too.
A final point is that even when everything is perfect, the danger of both climbing and falling can’t be completely eliminated. This is balanced against the fact that practicing falls makes you a safer and better climber. Exposing yourself to some risk is inevitable. However, if you take all the precautions you can to make your practice falls safer, you can make it a perfectly acceptable part of becoming a better climber. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/16XdohfWtqg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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The individuality of injury treatment (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/xkKrDs6mEKA/the-individuality-of-injury-treatment.html)
12 October 2013, 11:28 am
Yesterday, I was having yet another conversation about golfer’s elbow with a fellow climber and sufferer of the condition (it happens pretty much every time I go to a climbing wall or popular crag). The climber was a highly experienced and skilled ‘lifer’ in the sport with extensive working knowledge of physiology and sports science.
It struck me afterwards how personalised advice about sports injuries needs to be, depending on where the sufferer is ‘at’ with their knowledge and approach. I’m trying to weave this idea into my injuries book Rock ‘til you drop (now finished writing and currently redrafting).
One of the fundamental points of my book is that everyone needs to make themselves an expert in as many of the relevant corners of sports medicine as we can. I’ve provided a road map to achieve this for climbers in the book.
However, the potential ‘weaknesses’ in your ability to successfully achieve recovery, as with performance weaknesses, are highly individual. In the discussion I was having the other day, the problem I anticipated with golfer’s elbow rehab is being too scared of the pain required for success in the rehab protocol. I don’t mean pain as in the ability to suffer. Almost the opposite. Someone with a good knowledge of sports medicine would quite rightly be wary of rehab exercises that caused any noticeable pain. Doesn’t pain mean overdoing it?
It depends on the injury, the stage of the rehab and the individual. In the case of golfer’s elbow (and other tendonosis conditions where large volumes of eccentric loading is the rehab protocol of choice), some moderate pain is desirable. The stumbling block for an experienced climber may be backing off due to even mild pain before the loading really has a chance to work. For someone less experienced, it might be the opposite problem; they may not be sufficiently tuned in to their pain signals and patterns to avoid overdoing it.
The subtleties of tracking pain signals and adjusting both your sensitivity to them and the loading placed on the body is both a science and art. All of this underlines the need to seek out expert opinion of the highest possible quality and preferably from more than one source.
PS While I’m on the subject of golfer’s elbow, I note that a lot of climbers are following a protocol outlined in a homemade video popularised by this article on UKC (http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=3614). Rather predictably, I've talked many climbers are not having success, since this protocol is appropriate when the tendon of Pronator Teres is causing the pain at the elbow, rather than the more commonly injured wrist flexor muscles. Before you use this protocol, make sure you get a specialist (i.e. Not your GP!) diagnosis to make sure you aren’t busying yourself with the wrong rehab program. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/xkKrDs6mEKA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Technique training: When to think and when to just ‘do’ (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/VrHbT6RVOIk/technique-training-when-to-think-and.html)
16 October 2013, 11:29 am
This blog post makes quite a basic but often overlooked point about technique habits. Over the past 5 years, the awareness of climbers in general of the importance of improving their movement technique has risen dramatically. More climbers, are thinking about their own movements, trying to analyse why the movements are working or not working. This is really good.
However, it brings a potential problem. Conscious thinking is very slow and clunky. The aim is for movements to progress from conscious to automatic. Doing specific technique drills, warming up and working moves for a redpoint are all great times to indulge in conscious self-analysis in real time as you actually move.
Yet, time has to be made for those movements to work themselves into your subconscious movement repertoire. Thus, there has to be time when you focus simply on climbing the route, without keeping your minds eye on how you are moving between the holds. Can you see the difference? There is more about the timing of self-analysis of movements in ‘9 out of 10’ too.
Some climbers become ‘stuck’ in the mode of thinking about their movements and forget how to just climb. In other words, they fail to learn how to switch from training into performance mode. Just a point to keep in mind. (It goes without saying that plenty of others have the opposite problem - never actually doing any worthwhile self-analysis of their movement).
In a normal climbing wall session, you might switch between training and performance mode many times. Next time you step off the ground, decide which mode you wish to be in for this attempt. Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/VrHbT6RVOIk)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Technique training: race face (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/Vh_lcX-MUD4/technique-training-race-face.html)
17 October 2013, 11:14 am
(http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/galleries/paciencia/content/images/large/20130814-paciencia-173.jpg) (http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/galleries/paciencia/content/images/large/20130814-paciencia-173.jpg)
A case in point. This moment was pretty much the closest I came to falling off all 23 pitches of Paciencia, Eiger North Face in the summer. I wasn't warmed up, felt my skin was 'glassy' with the cold and might slip off suddenly and hence wasn't getting much feedback. So instead of being relaxed I was climbing like a robot (and not in a good way). In this case, since the pitch was only 7c, the best thing was just to press on. If it had been a couple of grades harder or we weren't pressed for time since it was the Eiger nordwand and not a sport crag, It would've been better to come down and get myself better warmed up before continuing. Photo: Alexandre Buisse (http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/)
Biting your lip, sticking your tongue out and generally screwing up your face as you climb is pretty common. Most of us think a grimace is related to effort, but the experts in the balance and stability sides of sports science say otherwise. It’s true that our moments of greatest effort and concentration can feel at once effortless, yet require every ounce of focus we have. Sometimes, the one attempt where we didn’t feel we had to grimace was the time we topped out on the climb. It’s one of the great paradoxes of sport.
The stability experts say that we grimace when we need more control and we are not using our balance centres (vision, inner ear, and joint receptors) effectively. In some experiments, when athletes are asked to perform a technical movement and do so with ‘facial fixing’, once they are asked to perform the movement with a relaxed face, they are unable to. In others, a relaxed face can make a movement possible where it was not with facial fixing.
Because facial fixing is part of our motor routine for controlling movement, what you do with your face in training becomes part of your routine for that movement. Lets think about what this means; On one hand, why would it matter if you grimace on the fingerboard or on the circuits, and grimace on the real routes you are training for? That might be fine if the demands of the training and the performance were the same. But they probably aren’t.
In the training, you are isolating specific components of performance and working them - i.e. Getting pumped on an endurance circuit where you know the moves. Or pulling as hard as you can on a fingerboard, or trying to keep weight on your feet on a boulder problem. Yet in the real performance situation, you may be making all sorts of movement decisions that are different from the above training situations - reading the rock, finding protection and managing your effort. Many of these demands will benefit from maintaining a relaxed face. So the advice is to aim to maintain a relaxed face as often as you can in both training and performance. During the training, you’ll learn to produce maximal physical and technical effort without the need for facial fixing, and so you wont be reliant on it when it comes to performance.
NB: Lots of climbers who do facial fixing have no idea they do. You might well need to get a climbing partner to point it out to you so you realise just how often you do it and become tuned in to the times you do. I once asked a climber I know why he made a ‘click’ noise (quite loudly) with his tongue right before he initiated a hard move. He had no idea he was doing it! Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/Vh_lcX-MUD4)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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New titles in the shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/1GHDLq_K45E/new-titles-in-shop.html)
10 November 2013, 6:19 pm
I’ve just added a couple of new books in the shop. Both are must reads for anyone keen for inspiration and information on climbing, but both are very different. The last book is a long awaited guide to some of the finest lumps of rock in the UK.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/tearsofthedawn.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/tearsofthedawn.html) First up is Julian Lines autobiography ‘Tears of the Dawn’ (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/tearsofthedawn.html). I imagine most of you will not need introduced to Jules, who has been the ‘dark horse’ of the bold trad and free soloing scene in the UK for the past 15 years or so. I’ve done a couple of his routes myself such as Firestone E7 6c in Hell’s Lum which is archetypal of his climbs - no gear, not really any holds either. Just a deep breath and a lot of trust in the frictional properties of thin granite smears. Many of the nailbiting adventures he’s had over the years involve free soloing, by himself on the quiet mountain crags of the highlands. But he’s also well known for his deep water soloing exploits, not to mention jumping off cliffs and paragliding. He’s hit the ground from a long way up too many times to mention, but is either a very lucky man or has bendy bones. It’s a great window into the mind of an solo adventurer, but very much the opposite of an Alex Honhold type of character.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/artoficeclimbing.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/theartoficeclimbing.html) Next is The Art of Ice Climbing (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/theartoficeclimbing.html), a lovely book which is part coffee table inspiration book, part technical manual. It’s a great production with interesting historical and new photography throughout. It has excellent advice sections on sharpening ice tools, screws, ropework and techniques for ice climbing. I think just about any ice climber would learn something new here. In the past there have been some great books on ice climbing that every climber should have on their shelf. I reckon this is the latest in that line.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/torridon-bouldering-small.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/torridonbouldering.html) Lastly, I’ve added the new Torridon bouldering guide (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/torridonbouldering.html) which is finally out by local activists Ian Taylor and Richie Betts. It’s great to see this guide finally out. The rock at Torridon is the best I’ve climbed on in the UK. It’s truly amazing stuff, and many of the problems are amazing natural lines too. The guys have done a great job producing this guide which contains around 250 problems to go at, and of course many first ascents still waiting to be explored.
You’ll find all of these, along with the rest of the best climbing books, films and gear out there in the shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html). Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/1GHDLq_K45E)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Venezuela Jungle Jam DVD in the shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/X6hMBqbYEOE/venezuela-jungle-jam-dvd-in-shop.html)
3 December 2013, 12:16 am
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/venezuela-jungle-jam-big.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/venezuelajunglejam.html)Finally, we just got our copies of the new film from the crazy Belgians in the shop: Venezuela Jungle Jam (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/venezuelajunglejam.html). Nico Favresse, Sean Villanueva and their climbing partners are the undisputed kings of making expedition climbing movies. They are also pretty much the kings of making badass climbing expeditions. It’s a killer combination.
Their previous films Asgard Jamming (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/asgardjamming.html) and Vertical Sailing (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/verticalsailing.html) have been very popular with you and for good reason. They are two of the most fun climbing films you’ll ever see and full of all the ingredients of great adventure - big characters, thrills and spills and unexpected funny moments. Venezuela Jungle Jam is the latest in the line! It’s already picking up a string of awards on the film festival circuit. In this film they are off to the amazing 500m sandstone Tepuy of Venezuela to deal with sweaty jungles, wild animals, loose rock, falls, overhanging big walls and, always, jamming on the portaledge.
The climbing looks challenging, in just about all the ways it could (apart from being cold). The scenery is gob smacking and as you’ll just about see in the teaser (it really is a tease) Sean’s superb sideways plummet off a ledge is another one of those ‘oh my god’ moments we almost come to expect from these guys. Brilliant stuff. The DVD is 58 mins plus extras, Subtitles in English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish and German.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/Distilled.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/distilled.html)I’ve also just added the Distilled DVD (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/distilled.html) now we have our DVD stock, so you have the option of downloading it, or getting it for your winter partner for Christmas!Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/X6hMBqbYEOE)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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The difficult question of sports injuries and disillusionment in youngsters (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/v99KGrhJqvc/the-difficult-question-of-sports.html)
12 December 2013, 12:40 am
This good website (http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/) has some interesting information on the size of the problem of young sportspeople getting injured. Injury rates are going up, to uncomfortably high levels. A serious sports injury is not just a short term issue for a young climber, runner or other sportsperson. It’s one of a few important reasons why so many youngsters drop out of sport before they even finish their teens.
It’s so obviously ironic that parents and coaches both take satisfaction from encouraging kids to take part in sport to foster a lifelong habit of activity and enjoyment. Yet overdoing that encouragement is one of the main reasons behind them ultimately dropping out or getting injured. The number one reason youngsters give for deciding to quit their sport is pressure from parents, coaches or the setup of their sport. So, whatever we are doing, it’s wrong.
Lots of coaches are still wrestling with the idea of whether formal competition in sport is a good idea for kids. There doesn’t appear to be any straightforward answer to that question. The best answer might be ‘it depends’. If the environment is optimal, competition in sport may be quite healthy, if unnecessary. However, it rarely is optimal. There are potential sources of problems everywhere. Therefore, being realistic, maybe no competitive sport until beyond adolescence is better? That is definitely still an open debate.
It’s difficult for parents even to realise how pivotal their role is. For instance, who can blame parents for subconsciously rewarding competition results instead of effort, balance, maturity, sportsmanship and science based training in sport? The very best coaches in professional sport can hardly seem to achieve this, even though they should know better. It’s a tough challenge for parents to assume the role of sports philosopher, role model, coach, sports scientist and sports medic. On the other hand, if you are going to invest time, effort and expense in encouraging your child’s path in sport, you might as well do it properly, in a way that doesn’t leave them either injured or disillusioned and out of sport for good at 13 or 14.
It’s difficult for coaches too. Reliable and useful information on training program design and injury prevention is extremely hard to come by. Moreover, coaches often don’t have enough time with youngsters to provide individually tailored training. In this situation, I think it’s important that they emphasise to both parents and youngsters that the advice they give has limitations, and if they want to make sure they are training safely, they should consider training themselves to be informed self-coaches, or hire in some more personalised coaching.
In climbing, we are about to enter a dangerous period (in the UK at least) since some new coaching qualifications are coming on-stream. Qualifications, generally speaking, are of course a good thing. However, there can be problems if parents see the word ‘qualified coach’ and don’t think any more about what the qualification means. It’s possible to be a qualified coach in many sports on surprisingly little experience, and unfortunately, depth of knowledge. Parents should be careful to make themselves aware of the level of skill and experience of those coaching their children. Start from the assumption that the coaches are not suitably experienced or resourced to prevent injuries in youngsters, and that you’ll need to consult a range of sources to ensure the best chances of avoiding injury and ensuring youngsters have a good range of influences on their development in sport.
I must say, with my own child, I’d be equivocal at best about encouraging them to get involved in regular competitive sport before adolescence. Non-competitive sport offers so many of the benefits, if not more, without the inherent problems that competition brings. Taking injury risk in particular, non-competitive sports offer the opportunity for more variety and spontaneity in the yearly diet of training, important both physically and psychologically. They also push the focus of performance inwards, to messages coming from the body, rather than outwards, just doing the same training as your peers or trying to keep up with others unrealistically. In other words, they are often healthier all round.
I see advice for youngsters in competitive sport to take breaks in the year from competition. Good advice, although not if they simply stop training completely. Complete rest falls foul of one of the fundamental laws of tendon injuries: “tendons don’t like rest or change”. (http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2013/04/11/bjsports-2013-092329.full)
I’m talking about parents, coaches and the youngsters themselves so far. They have the immediate responsibility to improve the outcome for the youngster as they move forward with their own life. But what about those higher up, who are in charge of leading sport, spending our money to make sure the potential benefits for all of us are realised? What is the point in promoting sport if it is so hampered by a massive early dropout rate and millions (3.5 million in the US (http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/media/statistics.aspx)) of injured kids? The idea is that we foster lifelong involvement in sport and physical activity and that sport is something youngsters enjoy over the long term. It’s pretty clear that it doesn’t nearly meet these aims for a big chunk of the participants.
This is a big, serious question, that needs leaders of sport to go right back to basics. When we promote sport, how should it be done? What sports, or sporting practices are healthy in the long term? Should we be promoting entirely different sports and ideas around sport? Probably. I’d like to see data comparing dropout rates between competitive sports and non-competitive sports, such as those based around the outdoors and training. My hunch is that if sporting culture was less centred around rankings or winning/losing and more centred around simple fun, effort, resourcefulness and dedication, that dropout rate would go down.
What specifically should change? It’s a deep cultural change, so no single or simple thing can be targeted. I’d certainly like to see that a session at the gym/leisure centre/sports facility should always be cheaper than a can of cider. Getting an exercise high should always be cheaper than a drug high like alcohol for so many kids who have limited money. Unhealthy goods like cigarettes and alcohol are taxed more heavily to take account of their effects. Why not services? It seems a shame that new sports facilities are not given a more favourable financial climate in which to flourish. At big multi-activity centres, the pizza and cinema tickets could be £1 more expensive so that the indoor snow slope or climbing wall can be cheaper. The many threads of enjoyment of exercise and training for it’s own sake should be promoted over winning and losing. More could be made of urban spaces. Good incentives should be set up for running, cycling, parkour, skateboarding etc clubs to use these spaces. Everyday exercise and sport should be as conspicuous as possible. ‘No ball games’ signs could be banned. If the NHS is going to save money by encouraging us all to be involved in sports, at least some provision is going to be needed to offer proper sports medical care, in recognition that sports injuries do happen and are career ending if left untreated. Surely it’s cheaper to correctly diagnose and repair the ACL tear now than treat the arthritic patient in a couple of decades?
Of course there are countless possibilities along these lines. The cumulative effect would be that youngsters who we do manage to encourage into sport will have enough variety in their activity, so they don’t grow to hate their own sports before they are 15. Moreover, they’ll be less likely to feel the need to enter into serious competition until later, when they are ready. Their parents will be less likely to ‘hang’ their encouragement on success in one sport as well as measuring that success along different lines. And, the youngsters might become more physically conditioned from a longer background in sports before they launch into serious training and hence lower their risk of injury.
Young climbers I’ve met who have been involved in the competitive side of climbing are the only ones I’ve ever seen stop climbing at a young age. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing a climber who was focused on the other aspects of the sport decide to give up. That’s not to say I conclude that competition is bad. It’s just that it can tend to drown out the other reasons for doing sport and become a demotivator after a while.
Whatever is suggested as solutions, the first stage is to really recognise that the injury and dropout rates among youngsters in sport means that what we are doing now is not enough.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/v99KGrhJqvc)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Engaging the brain during your climbing sessions (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/IP7Z5sXIJZc/engaging-brain-during-your-climbing.html)
20 March 2014, 11:22 am
Every day I get emails from climbers who have had success in their climbing after reading 9 out of 10 climbers (http://davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). Thanks to everyone who lets me know how they are getting on. It is great to know the book is helping climbers get more out of their sport. This morning, Franco emailed to tell me of his recent improvements since implementing some of the ideas in the book. But he picked up on the challenges of concentrating during your climbing sessions, so that some actual technique learning takes place.
In 9 out of 10, I discussed the fact that some climbers progress in their technical skills much faster than others due to how they approach their climbing sessions. Some are pretty passive, without much mental recording, review replay of the details of their movements. This is understandable. There are lots of things we get out of our climbing sessions; relaxation after a stressful day’s work is one of them. One of the ways we can relax is to completely clear the mind and just enjoy the movement over rock without consciously thinking about anything.
I’m not saying this is bad for technique. In fact, this type of approach is one ingredient of successful technique learning, in order to make already learned movement patterns quicker and more automatic.
But if we want to improve, we cannot ignore the hard part of learning new techniques which requires deliberate recording and reviewing of movements and a real conscious effort. If you are tired and in need of a de-stress, you can have the best designed training program ever, but no progress will be made while the mind is not fully engaged.
How can these apparently competing needs be squared together?
There are some suggestions in 9 out of 10 obviously. But I just want to reiterate the point that this is all much easier if the problem solving and movement experimentation mindset is part of the joy of your climbing sessions, rather than something that gets in the way of it.
This issue of conscious review of movements feeling like a chore is less of an issue among climbers who boulder, since problem solving and repeated attempts are more centre stage in this discipline. So my first recommendation to those who mainly climb routes is to give bouldering a proper chance. Go to a good venue or boulder wall and climb with others who ‘get’ the activity. Sometimes it only takes one good session for the bouldering ‘lightbulb’ to go off in your head and suddenly you connect with the whole game of refining sequences and making subtle changes in position and force to achieve huge differences in how the move goes.
During your sessions, if you would like to have some switch off time to relax and shed the day’s stresses, there are plenty of strategies. Just be inventive and do what suits you best. For some that might be allocating particular sessions to technique training and others to purely mileage and relaxation. Being realistic about what you can achieve might help you organise your sessions better and get more from them. For others, splitting your sessions up and allocating your ‘best’ hour after a long, chilled out warm-up, to a short but effective session where you put in some real mental effort. Or perhaps you can get the required relaxation in other ways. I often sit for 30 minutes and just drink tea at the climbing wall before starting, just to forget the other stuff buzzing around my head, and allow myself to get into rock climbing mode.
However you choose arrange your climbing so that you are ready to put in some serious effort to recording, reviewing and practicing your climbing movements, don’t ignore it. Getting this right will make inordinate difference to your progress compared to worrying about whether you should have more or less rest days or what angle you should climb on etc.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/IP7Z5sXIJZc)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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What on earth? Does he mean me? No I didn't!
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Did you contact him? If not, amazingly, there may be more than one person in the world with a similar moniker to your.
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I don't think so, definitely not in the last year. Someone is misusing the brand!
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4 new titles in the shop (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/l6z0RcTaTYE/4-new-titles-in-shop.html)
26 April 2014, 3:04 pm
We’ve just added four great new books and DVDs to the shop (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html). 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.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/gimmekraftbig.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/gimmekraft.html)Gimme Kraft: (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/gimmekraft.html) 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.
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.
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.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/newalpinismbig.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/newalpinism.html)Training for the new Alpinism: (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/newalpinism.html)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.
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.
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.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/tradclimbersbiblebig.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/tradclimbersbible.html)The Trad Climber’s Bible: (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/tradclimbersbible.html)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.
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.
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.
(http://www.davemacleod.com/images/wideboyz2_big.jpg) (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/wideboyz2.html)Wideboyz II: (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/wideboyz2.html) 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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/l6z0RcTaTYE)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Holds finally going on, and venturing outside (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/xpPpHfDhniY/holds-finally-going-on-and-venturing.html)
26 April 2014, 3:17 pm
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4vEaBP9JOcM/U1vLI6Zu1hI/AAAAAAAADcU/LY_eglyyFvY/s1600/cw8.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4vEaBP9JOcM/U1vLI6Zu1hI/AAAAAAAADcU/LY_eglyyFvY/s1600/cw8.jpg)Some holds going on the climbing wall at last!
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.
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.
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 Citadel jacket (http://www.mountain-equipment.co.uk/citadel-jacket) 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.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-huD3CeZIh_c/U1vLKV6Ox6I/AAAAAAAADcg/lMTfd0ns2PU/s1600/7awall.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-huD3CeZIh_c/U1vLKV6Ox6I/AAAAAAAADcg/lMTfd0ns2PU/s1600/7awall.jpg)
A very very hard project to go back to.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/xpPpHfDhniY)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Four reviews (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/zZYrtiVnrp8/four-reviews.html)
7 November 2014, 5:57 pm
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.
Boot Bananas
(http://www.bootbananas.com/communities/4/004/011/115/874/images/4597615952.swf) (http://www.bootbananas.com/communities/4/004/011/115/874/images/4597615952.swf)I was given a pair of Boot Bananas (http://www.bootbananas.com/#/home/4568902309) 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.
YY Belay Glasses
(https://dpbfm6h358sh7.cloudfront.net/images/4283140/217901993.jpg) (https://dpbfm6h358sh7.cloudfront.net/images/4283140/217901993.jpg)YY sent me a pair of their new belay glasses (http://www.yy-belayglasses.co.uk/) 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 quick draws. If I was going to buy a pair of belay glasses, I'd definitely get these ones.
Bouldering Essentials
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kNCvL-52HeY/VF0GZ5z3DGI/AAAAAAAADqA/syIelRC3fuc/s1600/Boul+Ess.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kNCvL-52HeY/VF0GZ5z3DGI/AAAAAAAADqA/syIelRC3fuc/s1600/Boul+Ess.jpg)David Flanagan’s new book Bouldering Essentials (http://threerockbooks.com/index.php/bouldering-essentials/) 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.
Transgression
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H1oTeg8XPOg/TvSmZOso4-I/AAAAAAAAB48/0QVk6fWwoeI/s800/TRANSGRESSION%2520por%2520Eva%2520Lopez%2520y%2520JM%2520Climbing%2520Surfaces%2520400x621.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H1oTeg8XPOg/TvSmZOso4-I/AAAAAAAAB48/0QVk6fWwoeI/s800/TRANSGRESSION%20por%20Eva%20Lopez%20y%20JM%20Climbing%20Surfaces%20400x621.jpg)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 Transgression (http://en-eva-lopez.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/transgression-fingerboard-for-high.html) 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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/zZYrtiVnrp8)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Mental training, 3 simple mantras (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/3BWBd8NGAqg/mental-training-3-simple-mantras.html)
7 November 2014, 6:08 pm
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eL_beyanFyw/VF0KceRtPoI/AAAAAAAADqM/yRLYnO1XIyY/s1600/Natleading.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eL_beyanFyw/VF0KceRtPoI/AAAAAAAADqM/yRLYnO1XIyY/s1600/Natleading.jpg)
Natalie Berry stepping out on her first E4 trad lead.
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.
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.
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:
“If it felt easy, it wouldn’t be hard, and I’d want to try something harder”
“Nobody cares about this effort except me. So relax, you’ve got nothing to lose by just trying and trying hard”
“There are no prizes for holding back”
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/3BWBd8NGAqg)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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8b - 8c+ How? (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/KbnfAYt_Hms/8b-8c-how.html)
1 December 2014, 3:02 pm
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BmFey_k37Fs/VHyCFXMrDvI/AAAAAAAADrY/3UL1RIkEiQo/s1600/IMG_4670.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BmFey_k37Fs/VHyCFXMrDvI/AAAAAAAADrY/3UL1RIkEiQo/s1600/IMG_4670.jpg)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:
I started fingerboarding.
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 9 out of 10 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). However, personal stories are always helpful if you highlight how the results link back to the underlying principles.
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.
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 Dumbarton Rock (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/dumbybloc.html). 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.
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.
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 9 out of 10 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html)). 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.
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.
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.
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 this kind of stuff (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/GimmeKraft.html). 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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/KbnfAYt_Hms)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Changing the architecture (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/oZa2aO8hMoY/changing-architecture.html)
2 December 2014, 11:35 am
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SwyKaxtEtd4/VH2k7Mx-tGI/AAAAAAAADro/B6aFBn7MZUQ/s1600/wall+007.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SwyKaxtEtd4/VH2k7Mx-tGI/AAAAAAAADro/B6aFBn7MZUQ/s1600/wall+007.jpg)
One 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.
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.
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.
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.
Some examples:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- If you need to get stronger openhanded, set your wall accordingly (see photo above). Don't have a wall? Make one!
Everyone can think of instances in their own routine where they habitually make poor choices. In 9 out of 10 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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/oZa2aO8hMoY)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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I normally find Dave MacLeod's entries just plain boring, but this one really pissed me off.
It's so narrowminded that I found it offensive.
How one who's a professional could be so simplistic is beyond my comprehension.
Choose house and work accordingly to where you train???
Don't have an own wall, just build one???
What?
Just finding the time to type that not everyone has the chance to change house at will to gain a grade, or to even simply find the space to build a woodie, seems a waste of my time.
This was the last time I read one of his blogs.
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Nibs they're examples, not a prescription. I thought it was a good reminder of the little things one can do every day to improve climbing performance in the long term. I'm sure one as psyched as you doesn't need reminding of these sorts of things and they just happen automatically!
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Don't be so negative - quitters never win! I have printed off Dave's sage advice and will take it to my next workplace assessment. Instead of my usual submissive "please don't sack me" pleas, I intend to demand that my office is re-located from northern England to a camper van that will describe a yearly tour of the sport crags of Spain.
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I didn't take it for myself: I do have my own board and my will power is infinite. I just found it very presumptuous and disrespectful for those - and I bet they're the vast majority - who can't simply move house or build a wall or set their lifestyle around climbing regardless everything else.
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He's right about the biscuits though.
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For your own good ignore his post
" A 2010 study by Stanford University researcher Veronika Job, PhD,and colleagues found that individuals who thought willpower was a limited resource were subject to having their willpower depleted. But people who did not believe willpower was easily exhaustible did not show signs of depletion after exerting self-control"
www.apa.org/helpce.../willpower-limited-resource.pdf (http://www.apa.org/helpce.../willpower-limited-resource.pdf)
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Nibs
I didn't take it for myself: I do have my own board and my will power is infinite. I just found it very presumptuous and disrespectful for those - and I bet they're the vast majority - who can't simply move house or build a wall or set their lifestyle around climbing regardless everything else.
If I am respectful of the limitations of my situation how can I change them? Because everything can be changed, right?
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I normally find Dave MacLeod's entries just plain boring, but this one really pissed me off.
It's so narrowminded that I found it offensive.
How one who's a professional could be so simplistic is beyond my comprehension.
Choose house and work accordingly to where you train???
Don't have an own wall, just build one???
What?
Just finding the time to type that not everyone has the chance to change house at will to gain a grade, or to even simply find the space to build a woodie, seems a waste of my time.
This was the last time I read one of his blogs.
To be fair, for me, the whole 'no biscuits' thing was more unrealistic
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I find the will power thing works both ways as to night I had to will power not to train and head straight for the Pastis on getting in from work.
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I know lots of people who've chosen house locations (both in terms of which city (or even country) and where to live within a city) on the basis of fitting in with where rock climbing is or where training facilities are, and lots of people who've built boards. I don't think either of these things are particularly unreasonable things to suggest as being good ideas for people who like climbing and want to get good at climbing. DM's approach/view generally seems to be along the lines of 'if you want to be good then prioritize climbing', and this just fits with that.
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1) It's not about getting good at climbing and going along with your motivation. It's about finding motivation when you don't have it.
2) It's not about those who can, it's about the vast majority that can not follow that advice.
Anyway, I had written a long reply that got lost when my iPad battery died. Maybe tomorrow I'll find the motivation to type it again.
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Maybe tomorrow I'll find the motivation to type it again.
You can do it Nibs - I believe in you
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I'd be interested to read it Nibs because I can't see too much 'wrong' with DM's blog post. Although I think I get what you're getting at - I think you're saying that those who climb at a high standard or are very clued-up about their training don't really 'need' to read dave mac's stuff or stand to gain as much insight from it as more punterish climbers (although there must be plenty of nuggets in his writing for wads too). But more punterish climbers are unlikely to be either willing or able to do the sort of things DM prescribes because they're the sort of things only high standard climbers would bother doing. Chicken and egg?...
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1) It's not about getting good at climbing and going along with your motivation. It's about finding motivation when you don't have it.
The post is, in my opinion, about getting good at climbing and going along with an overall motivation, it's just about when that overall motivation gets sidetracked in the short term because you used up the days willpower on doing work etc. I know a few people who this happens to regularly. It happens to me all the time with going to bed too late - I'll come home from the wall thinking "I'll be dedicated andgo to bed really early to recover and be strong as fuck", then I end up going to bed 2 hours later than I should have, having watched shit tv or gone on ukb. The key strategy for me would be to break my laptop. I'm not about to smash it with a hammer, but I wouldn't object to a blog that suggested that it would be a good idea. (Other ideas on a postcard please)
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The key strategy for me would be to break my laptop. I'm not about to smash it with a hammer, but I wouldn't object to a blog that suggested that it would be a good idea. (Other ideas on a postcard please)
Frying pan?
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I'll come home from the wall thinking "I'll be dedicated and go to bed really early to recover and be strong as fuck", then I end up going to bed 2 hours later than I should have, having watched shit tv or gone on ukb. The key strategy for me would be to break my laptop.
This is a big nemesis for me (apart from the "strong as fuck" bit)
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My main reaction to that blog post was to go to the kitchen and look for a biscuit. Clearly I am a lost cause ...
My kitchen is distressingly biscuit-free at the moment too; I lack the willpower to go shopping.
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1) It's not about getting good at climbing and going along with your motivation. It's about finding motivation when you don't have it.
Only a slight difference in emphasis but I read it as making the path as easy as you can to help when you don't have motivation.
2) It's not about those who can, it's about the vast majority that can not follow that advice.
It's consistent with his book though, where he presents the same sort of extreme options (no biscuits!) if you want to improve your climbing. As he says there it depends how high you actually prioritize improving your climbing. Some people will be prepared to make the sacrifices (viz Kelvin, off to Spain next year and csl(?), just quit his job to go live in the mountains via 6 months in Spain) On the other hand, despite all my talk about wanting to climb better I obviously don't really want to that badly given it's taken 7 years to get round to building a board in the garage...
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I knew I shouldn't post in the beginning... anyway, too late now.
First of all, this is just to explain my point of view, nothing more.
That kind of advice is completely out of this world for 99% of those how ask for advice.
People struggling with motivation, will likely struggle even more if the solution you give them is to move house closer to a wall, or to build a woodie, because for the vast majority of people, these are not valid options.
Those who can, can move to Spain, quit their jobs, etc. It's not about this.
This is about a normal person, with - maybe - a job or a family or both, who's looking for advice and gets this answer. Change house. Build a board.
Not to mention the fact that these over rationals solutions, are absolutely useless: there are more pristine, unused cellar boards and climbing wall memberships in this world, than fishes in the sea.
Some professional climbers and coaches, tend to apply what they do in their specific fields, to others. Well, it doesn't work. What they do, the sacrifices they do, they do them because it's their fucking job, just like every one else for their specific work.
But for the vast majority of people who refer to a professional trainer, climbing is not a profession, so giving climbing the first place on the pecking order of your life, simply isn't going to happen. It's not real.
When I was working in Rome, I actually moved house to be closer to work. It was my job and that was worth. Same thing. But I couldn't move closer to work and to the wall at the same time. And I could not have a board.
If I refer to a professional for advice on motivation - a thing that is never ever going to happen - I don't want to hear such simplistic, unreal advice: Want to climb hard? Build your life around climbing. Move house. Sell the kids and build a board in their room.
Well, thank fuck for nothing.
When a man comes to the law firm I work for, to have advice on his divorce, we don't simply say: Give your ex the house, the kids, the car and all the money she wants, because it's the simplest way to deal with it.
We've got to think to something that is actually doable.
It's the way of thinking that in my opinion isn't going to work: the sacrifices that a professional is prepared to make for their profession, aren't often possible for not professionals.
Prioritize your climbing is a very very very cheap advice.
Like, prioritize it over your job? Over your family? Good call.
There are people who can give climbing the first place, but they're a rarity; the few ones that come to my mind, are either alone, or rich, or both.
If you're alone you can do whatever you want: you can quit your job, live in a van, etc. etc.
But these people don't need advice on how to get motivation.
Those who look for advice are those who can't afford to quit their jobs and move to Spain, or to simply get back home late from the wall.
So, maybe, putting a pull up bar at work could be a simpler start, before moving the house? Or putting a Beastmaker close to the kitchen or living room is easier than finding the space to build a woodie? Or talking your wife into doing some little training together, maybe yoga for her and fingerboarding for you?
Also: that post show a strong dichotomy between rational and irrational mind. MacLeod gives priority to the rational part. I give priority to the irrational mind. If I lack motivation - again, that is something that will never ever happen - it means that something deep is "wrong". Somehow the equilibrium between rational and irrational is lost. The solution must come from inside, not from rational thinking. It does not work. Not on the long run, at least.
In day to day life we are constantly dealing with needs, desires, obligations, etc. and we can't simply switch something on or off at will, we have to keep everything together and to exploit our possibilities at best in each field.
For years I've been having most afternoons free from work, at least from 4 pm onwards.
I could train at will.
Well, now I'm working double the hours, even weekends, and I am more motivated than ever. I am stronger and my mind works like a rocket, something that I had lost, before.
We function at best as a whole, and giving priority to partial aspects of our lives, on a rational basis to obtain specific results, can be done for very short periods, but is going to get you in big troubles on the long run. I speak from my experience.
Now I'd better stop before the battery dies...
I hope that I made myself clear. Again, just my thoughts and personal feelings about that entry.
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Sell the kids and build a board in their room.
i will suggest this to all climbing fathers i know. :yes:
(except one. his son -2 years old- does pullups on the table's edge, keeps asking them about going to "scalade" and looks at chicks pics on grimper, while dad reads the article.
In this particular case i'll suggest them to progressively quit climbing and accumulate enough money to buy the kid a van on his 18th bday)
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So, maybe, putting a pull up bar at work could be a simpler start, before moving the house? Or putting a Beastmaker close to the kitchen or living room is easier than finding the space to build a woodie? Or talking your wife into doing some little training together, maybe yoga for her and fingerboarding for you?
I dunno Nibs, I am that punter you're on about. I may be single, kids grown up but I'm self employed. Last week was over 70hrs and it'll be thirteen days in a row of slaving for the coin before I get a day off.
You've hit the nail on the head there - it's finding the path of least resistance to get to the place you want to be. In your case, it's to be strong and you've built a wall to make that easier. All the things you've suggested make total sense but so do Dave Mac's. No biscuits (read crisps for me) in the cupboard is pretty easy for anyone to follow, even if you have kids, it might even do them some good and it helps me to be less fatter than the fat man I am.
Back to me. I can't afford to clear off to Spain, not really, it makes no sense at all. !8 months out, buy a van, spending money... this trip is basically gonna cost me £40,000 or so. That's how much better off I'd be if I carry on working, the lost wages add up and people forget that. But Nibs, I am that punter who reads Dave Mac's blog, watches the vids you post and along with many others, you've both play a part in the punter I am and the climber I want to be. It's not about sacrifices, it's about choice, what we choose to do and that changes throughout life. Ebbs and flows, sometimes we swim against the tide and sometimes we ride it. I've decided to change the ocean I swim in I guess.
You and Dave Mac are both right - I think so anyway.
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Prioritize your climbing is a very very very cheap advice.
Like, prioritize it over your job? Over your family? Good call.
There are people who can give climbing the first place, but they're a rarity; the few ones that come to my mind, are either alone, or rich, or both.
Like you say it is a trade-off. But I think its fair to say we all make illogically bad choices in how we use our time and have more potential control over this than we think. There are people who do ridiculously long commutes or bend over backwards for their kids activities unnecessarily when changing job or doing taking turns with other parents are options. In business there is the idea of a balanced scorecard. Its no good if your product quality is 100% if your deliveries are late and your costs are too high - you have to score high in all areas (not necessarily 100%) to be successful. There is a concept called Lean which is applied in business which is to get rid of waste (muda) in all its forms - waste of materials, labour, machine time, process bottlenecks etc. We all have waste in our lives which we can get rid of to free up our time, give us more energy and enable us to be better climbers which is what Dave Mac is driving it so you can be 90% as good a parent/partner, 90% as good an employee and 90% as good a climber (or whatever else is important to you) as you are capable of potentially being. But it needs working at - continuously.
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Shark,
I think that yours is a very very edulcorated and flattering view of his message, that to me was very very plain and involved nothing of that "balancing" efforts. To the contrary indeed.
Maybe it's just me.
:shrug:
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Surely this post simply reflects DM's point of view, I thought the advice was terribly generic and blindingly obvious to anyone with an ounce of native wit, but he wrote with a large audience in mind. he has got good by prioritising climbing above all else and he is a full-time climber. He doesn't have (or has very limited) experience of fitting in climbing around life, so it is maybe unfair to expect any great insights for your (?above) average part timer.
Is it a possibility that Nibile is in fact far more effective at training (and is simply time poor) and better positioned to be giving advice to someone with a full-time job than DM?
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I find the will power thing works both ways as to night I had to will power not to train and head straight for the Pastis on getting in from work.
Pastis or pasties?
I can't possibly condone the former, but encourage any pastry encased meet product, for sure.
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My main reaction to that blog post was to go to the kitchen and look for a biscuit. Clearly I am a lost cause ...
Biscuits are my healthy snack. Deep fried mars bars are the unhealthy alternative.
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I find the will power thing works both ways as to night I had to will power not to train and head straight for the Pastis on getting in from work.
Pastis or pasties?
I can't possibly condone the former, but encourage any pastry encased meet product, for sure.
Pernod or some other cheap French supermarket version mixed with caffeine free diet coke so as to make it healthy.
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I find the will power thing works both ways as to night I had to will power not to train and head straight for the Pastis on getting in from work.
Pastis or pasties?
I can't possibly condone the former, but encourage any pastry encased meet product, for sure.
Pernod or some other cheap French supermarket version mixed with caffeine free diet coke so as to make it healthy.
Fine.
Acceptable if you're mixing the Pastis with water, as it means you're keeping hydrated.
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I find the will power thing works both ways as to night I had to will power not to train and head straight for the Pastis on getting in from work.
Pastis or pasties?
I can't possibly condone the former, but encourage any pastry encased meet product, for sure.
Meet or Meat?
If it's something pastry you eat when you are around other people, or one containing parts of an animal, either way, it's all gravy.
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If you're motivated enough your choices/priorities will reflect that. I moved 10 minutes from my favourite rocks. I could earn 3 times as much if I worked offshore but I don't want breaks from climbing. The willpower thing needs working on though...
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In this case his advice and PoV is clearly extreme isn't it? Imagine discussing ebbing psyche with your mate at the crag. "Well, it's hard for me to get to the wall and I don't go as often as I should". "Just fucking move then".
I imagine almost everyone would regard that as an extreme PoV and unhelpful advice. Indeed, I find much of what Dave Mac writes is predicated on the assumption that climbing is the most important thing in your life, when there are many people looking for advice as to how to improve for whom it's not even the second most important thing.
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The latest is a friend here in Squamish who is frustrated by his climbing performance. He sees that as mostly as something that could be solved by a different training approach, but I see it as much more a big picture issue. He has a demanding law job based in Vancouver, so has the usual problem of long commute times coupled with being too tired to train much on weekdays.
I agree that I see DM's comments as a 'nudge' thing designed to make you think about what it is possible for you to change in your current situation to help improve your climbing.
Sounds like your mate needs to move to the city and spend that wasted commuting time getting strong at the wall and then 'commute' to squampton on his free weekends!
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In this case his advice and PoV is clearly extreme isn't it? Imagine discussing ebbing psyche with your mate at the crag. "Well, it's hard for me to get to the wall and I don't go as often as I should". "Just fucking move then".
At risk of being pedantic: that was only one item of a five example list, where the other items are quite a lot less drastic (ie. biscuit guidance).
Well, at the risk of being pedantic back, out of the five item list, only two of them are what if call practical (don't buy biscuits and cycle to work). These two are also not very effective.
The remaining three fall into the "getting better at climbing is the most important thing in my life camp".
Move house. Yeah right.
Buy a whole new set of climbing holds, or build a home wall. Pfft.
Change partners. What if I like my partner, or my partner is my wife?
Effective, but most climbers will have really good reasons not to do these things.
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BTW - the one way I do see Dave's advice of this ilk as useful is that it can force you to be realistic about how important climbing actually is to you.
I thought exactly the same about a magazine article he wrote suggesting that if you wanted to get good at climbing you simply had to quit your job and make every life decision with climbing performance in mind. The article was unrealistic and, I think, wrong - but at least it encourages people to think seriously about how much they want to give up for the sake of climbing hard.
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DM is giving advice on how to improve your climbing, cause he apparently gets asked this question by punters up and down this fair land about four times a day, and all he is doing is just telling people what he did.
What else do you expect?
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Better advice.
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I think you're placing too much importance on a couple of extreme examples and not on the process, which is really the take-home message of the post IMO, even if he might not have articulated that perfectly.
The idea of altering 'choice architecture' something that I think is useful e.g. often when I plan on fingerboarding I get sucked into bouldering for too long. The solution based on the choice architecture process would be something like: don't take shoes to the wall except for punter warm-up shoes. This is probably actually a good idea, so I think I'll try doing that on those sessions where I'm supposed to just fingerboard.
The biscuit thing is surely how anyone without iron will diets? For me if it's in the house it's game over.
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Better advice.
Very good Stu even my non climbing missus tittered when I read that to her. The same
Bitch who ruined my evening on the board by saying " you look like you are waiting to go to pub for tea" :)
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Alex - you're right that the general idea behind the blog post is a good one, and your example about leaving your climbing shoes at home to make you fingerboard is an excellent idea, and the kind of advice I'd hope to see in an article like this.
The examples Dave chose are just more examples that I don't think he appreciates how different he is from the people who read his blog for coaching tips. That shouldn't distract from the general message of the blog, but it really did for me.
And Pete - spot on.
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Better advice.
Very good Stu even my non climbing missus tittered when I read that to her. The same
Bitch who ruined my evening on the board by saying " you look like you are waiting to go to pub for tea" :)
what sort of training did you need to get her to say stuff like that?
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You need to arrange your life to make it easier to train in the face of temptation. Why not build a board in the pub?
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And then live in the pub. And marry the landlady. And don't sell crisps in the pub.
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And don't sell crisps in the pub.
Good god man - what kind of a world would that be?!
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You need to arrange your life to make it easier to train in the face of temptation. Why not build a board in the pub?
Or a pub in the cellar? That way you are married to the landlady already. The no crisps thing all seems a bit too radical though.
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And don't sell crisps in the pub.
Good god man - what kind of a world would that be?!
One where you have to have Mini Cheddars instead.
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and pork scratchings
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I'm with the "both DaveMac and Nibble are right in certain ways" camp. I do agree with Nibbles that DM is usually guilty of basing his advice on being a very motivated, very dedicated, very scientific climber looking in to the mass of punterdom from the outside, rather than having actually lived and truly understood that punterdom.
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DM is only against biscuits, so scratchings and crisps are still OK. And I don't think that's unrealistic advice as biscuits don't go that well with beer.
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Back to me. I can't afford to clear off to Spain, not really, it makes no sense at all. !8 months out, buy a van, spending money... this trip is basically gonna cost me £40,000 or so. That's how much better off I'd be if I carry on working, the lost wages add up and people forget that.
See when I've done long trips, the cost (including paying my mortage and depreciation in the van [inc. insurance]) has been less than my outgoings would be, at home working. It cost me (well, both of us), considerably less than the above to spend over a year (in total) abroad. The second trip included my wedding, again, considerably less than the average wedding in the UK.
The worry comes from having financial commitments that are ongoing on your return without necessarily having the means (a job) to meet them.
The path of least resistance seems like a pragmatic approach (and going back to PeteJH's advice on jobs) that will work for the majority of climbers. I'm fairly sure that my 'career' path doesn't allow for this.
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DM is only against biscuits, so scratchings and crisps are still OK. And I don't think that's unrealistic advice as biscuits don't go that well with beer.
but shirley you might have a chocolate hobnob to go with your post beer single malt.
I'm begining to suspect that some folks have never experienced temptation.
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don't take shoes to the wall except for punter warm-up shoes. This is probably actually a good idea, so I think I'll try doing that on those sessions where I'm supposed to just fingerboard.
Funnily enough, this is what I did last night - took a chalk bag and wore my guide tennies to the wall. Warmup consisted of slightly overhanging and juggy boulder problems and then head for the fingerboards. I'd have got stuck into the new set otherwise, with my mates.
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I need to do this as well. I have poor discipline when it comes to what I was meant to do at the wall. On Tues night a bit or warming up on the board before finger boarding lead to a full on board session and a poor finger board session tagged on the end. This mornings endurance circuits turned in to a session on the comp bouldering wall :wall:
I kind of agree with what Dave is saying. If people really wanted to achieve their maximum potential then getting a career and/or a wife and kids is not the way to go about it. Granted there are some people in that situation who still climb extremely hard but they are few and far between. For the majority of people it is not going to work. Going back to his earlier post I think my problem is simply not climbing on rock enough. But then that is my fault as I have chosen to try and do a career. Again there are people who train really hard indoors and on the finger board and then climb hard things when they do get an opportunity on rock but they are again the exception rather than the rule.
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Probably off topic, but do people really go to a climbing facility just to use the fingerboard? Do you have a season pass?
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Yes, but I always have annual membership somewhere.
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Anyway, what's the point of fingerboarding at home? Nobody to showboat in front of.
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I'm quite happy to showboat on the bouldering wall (on the few problems I have wired).
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I'll often go to the wall for a finger boarding session or even just for a stretching and theraband session. I am more likely to do it in this environment than at home. The same reason I go into the office as opposed to working from home if I have a lot on! I have a monthly pass as well though.
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Monthly pass here too and I only live a mile and a half from the wall.
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Monthly pass, office less than 5 mins from the wall, I trained myself to hate women, and I don't allow myself to buy biscuits. :tease: I still have cupboards though, so room for improvement there.
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Anyway, what's the point of fingerboarding at home? Nobody to showboat in front of.
Because if the fingerboards in the kitchen you might have to go past the biscuit tin to get to it and who knows where that might lead.
The pub or even marriage.
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Pah - I have divorce papers in the cupboard.
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One minute you're a bachelor doing repeaters, then it's all "just a little biscuit for recovery," next thing you know you're down Ikea on a Saturday afternoon buying a cot for your third child.
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Yes. Not always but sometimes.
I have a yearly pass.
30 to 40 minutes easy to moderate bouldering is more fun and a much better warm up than a few sets of finger curls, so feels a lot safer if I really want to hit it hard on the board. At home I'm always worried about not being able to warm up adequately.
Well worn in boards are stickier; being able to do repeaters on BM slopers is at the wall is more ego-boosting than barely being able to max hang them at home.
I've only ever attracted a crowd of one admiring babe whilst attempting mono hangs, but even that's better than the typical "scorn and ignore" audience reaction at home. And one can always hope.
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For years I've been having most afternoons free from work, at least from 4 pm onwards.
I could train at will.
Well, now I'm working double the hours, even weekends, and I am more motivated than ever. I am stronger and my mind works like a rocket, something that I had lost, before.
We function at best as a whole, and giving priority to partial aspects of our lives, on a rational basis to obtain specific results, can be done for very short periods, but is going to get you in big troubles on the long run. I speak from my experience.
:agree: - Fucking brilliant nibs
When I had all the time in the world, I neither knew nor cared about "training", so i'd go climb - alot - and plateaued for many years. marriage, three kids (one special needs), a full time 9-5 job and starting my own consulting business, and I'm training harder and smarter than ever and climbing my best.
Success begets success, and failure begets failure.
Everyone is different in their "balance" in life. Some people need more secure finances, some need a solid home, some need a stable job. Learning and accepting what you need makes it much easier to set yourself up for success.
I used to be jealous of the guys taking a year off and roadtripping. Now I know myself better. I get lonely. I depend heavily on my social interactions with my family and friends to keep myself happy and grounded. I also really like my house. I actually rarely ever enjoy camping. It's so much work, and it's really a pain to get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom.... I'm glad that others love it. A part of me wishes I did as well, as it could makes certain parts of my life easier.
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Now I know myself better.
I guess both Dave Mac and Nibs both know themselves and that's the platform from where they both can offer advice, which may or may not be applicable to a punter like me.
I'm just too easily distracted, therefore the answer is go climb fulltime for a while. I hope.
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Anyway, what's the point of fingerboarding at home? Nobody to showboat in front of.
iPad or phone camera, Vimeo, problem solved.
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Probably off topic, but do people really go to a climbing facility just to use the fingerboard? Do you have a season pass?
Yes, but I always have annual membership somewhere.
Its good to have annual membership. Not only can you save time by waltzing past the punters queuing up at reception and feel like you own the place but also you never feel under pressure to get your money's worth.
Mind you this has backfired for me with the Schoolroom as I have yet to climb there since joining in June :-[
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I kind of agree with what Dave is saying. If people really wanted to achieve their maximum potential then getting a career and/or a wife and kids is not the way to go about it. Granted there are some people in that situation who still climb extremely hard but they are few and far between. For the majority of people it is not going to work.
I hoped I wouldn't get sucked into this, but oh well...
I disagree JohnM, I know quite a few people climbing to a very good standard, E7,8 etc :worms: and still manage to have a family and career, they're just uber focused and arrange climbing around career and family, take opportunities in early morning/lunchtime, combine activities, etc etc. It's not as uncommon as you may think, and DM is right in that location, ignoring the biscuits, cycling to work etc is going to get you on the right path.
He could have probably articulated it a bit less superficially as his post is ignoring the true complexities of the issue.
I know plenty of climbers who don't acheive their potential, but that's not because they 'got a wife/family', it's got more to do with climbing being a past time and not the entire focus of their existance.
Likewise if you want to reach your potential, you've got to make changes to your life to accommodate the extra effort needed to get you there... it's not rocket science.
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Climbing e7/8 doesn't need as much time investment as pushing your sport/bouldering grade though.
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E7/8 is not 8c or above which I thought was the standard Dave Mac was alluding to?
I just think he is trying to say there is no magic bullet that will get you to a very high standard especially if you have other priorities in life and that for most you would have to sacrifice everything for climbing.
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And I thought you'd manage to resist ;-). I guess we just have a different view about what constitutes an extreme dedication to climbing, and what would be considered normal.
Of all those things, the only thing I'd consider doing to improve is to build a wall. But then you're right - I'm lucky to have a job and a wife I love and I wouldn't neglect either, even if Doug so could make me a 9b climber.
There also seems little point arguing the toss about it. We disagree about what is realistic advice but we're both presumably happy with the way our lives are set up, so what's to be gained?
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Climbing e7/8 doesn't need as much time investment as pushing your sport/bouldering grade though.
I suspect it would if someone was doing it properly!
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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.
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I kind of agree with what Dave is saying. If people really wanted to achieve their maximum potential then getting a career and/or a wife and kids is not the way to go about it. Granted there are some people in that situation who still climb extremely hard but they are few and far between. For the majority of people it is not going to work.
I hoped I wouldn't get sucked into this, but oh well...
I disagree JohnM, I know quite a few people climbing to a very good standard, E7,8 etc :worms: and still manage to have a family and career, they're just uber focused and arrange climbing around career and family, take opportunities in early morning/lunchtime, combine activities, etc etc. It's not as uncommon as you may think, and DM is right in that location, ignoring the biscuits, cycling to work etc is going to get you on the right path.
He could have probably articulated it a bit less superficially as his post is ignoring the true complexities of the issue.
I know plenty of climbers who don't acheive their potential, but that's not because they 'got a wife/family', it's got more to do with climbing being a past time and not the entire focus of their existance.
Likewise if you want to reach your potential, you've got to make changes to your life to accommodate the extra effort needed to get you there... it's not rocket science.
E7/8 is not 8c or above which I thought was the standard Dave Mac was alluding to?
I just think he is trying to say there is no magic bullet that will get you to a very high standard especially if you have other priorities in life and that for most you would have to sacrifice everything for climbing.
Forget the grade, I was replying to your point about 'acheiving maximum potential'. (hence the :worms:)
Plenty of people reach their maximum potential and still manage to maintain a family, the two things are not mutually exclusive.
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What are you on about? Those people have almost certainly not got anywhere near their maximum potential.
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What are you on about? Those people have almost certainly not got anywhere near their maximum potential.
That's because it's such a definable concept right?
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It's definable as a concept. Presumably what you mean is that no-one knows what anyone's potential really is, which is clearly true. Still, taking that into account I'd bet anything that they've not reached their potential max in climbing. For you to be right, going full time would have to bring them no gains.. Do you really believe that's the case??
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It's definable as a concept. Presumably what you mean is that no-one knows what anyone's potential really is, which is clearly true. Still, taking that into account I'd bet anything that they've not reached their potential max in climbing. For you to be right, going full time would have to bring them no gains.. Do you really believe that's the case??
That assumes psyche level increases proportionately with work/family out of the equation. Personally I've made my biggest gains strength/grade wise only since having a demanding job, 2 kids and a wife because I've had to make every opportunity work for me.
I guess I'm saying that it can't be simplified to an equation: no job+no wife/kids = climb to max. potential... there are a lot of variables.
At the risk of upsetting Nibs, DM has quite an interesting post here, http://www.onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/year-out.html (http://www.onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/year-out.html)
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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).
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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. (https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xfa1/v/t1.0-1/c24.24.296.296/s160x160/40147_449187294239_7474200_n.jpg?oh=92085a9119b4dbc025fa3f357ad07b5a&oe=551457B2&__gda__=1427355616_acb74398cf5ccc8b524586d05a516fee) (https://www.facebook.com/douglas.so.75)
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:)
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 ;)
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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.
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Alas for me it's the lunchtime quarry bashing I have to make do with ;)
:offtopic:
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.
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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.
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(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7556/15765908600_6e8bf21412.jpg) (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/15765908600/)
image (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/15765908600/) by Nibile (https://www.flickr.com/people/70381658@N00/), on Flickr
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(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7556/15765908600_6e8bf21412.jpg) (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/15765908600/)
image (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/15765908600/) by Nibile (https://www.flickr.com/people/70381658@N00/), on Flickr
F*ck me can I come to your house to train Nibs?
:2thumbsup:
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Font 8 biscuits no less
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F*ck me can I come to your house to train Nibs?
:2thumbsup:
Yes you can.
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What's BCCA nibs? Love the 8 biscuits
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branched chain amino acids
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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.
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One thing out of your comfort zone (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/h-g2HNayucE/one-thing-out-of-your-comfort-zone.html)
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 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). 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 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html).Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/h-g2HNayucE)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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When the regime gets harder (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/pH2leqOeAsM/when-regime-gets-harder.html)
9 December 2014, 1:33 pm
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T9Sq12l7D04/VIb5A8hiXUI/AAAAAAAADr4/xHdhXD3uhUI/s1600/IMG_4712.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T9Sq12l7D04/VIb5A8hiXUI/AAAAAAAADr4/xHdhXD3uhUI/s1600/IMG_4712.jpg)
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 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/pH2leqOeAsM)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Where's Nibs?
:whistle:
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Where's Nibs?
:whistle:
:popcorn:
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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.
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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.
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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.
:agree:
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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.
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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?).
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Honestly, I think that latest blog post is designed to wind us up
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I did wonder about that. Lucky that it's priced accordingly.
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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.
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His advice on skin maintenance in his book was very good.
What? IRCC this was one of the weaker bits in an otherwise excellent book. No mention of sanding your tips, elizabeth arden cream or antihydral.
I'd marry him.
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I'd marry him too. Be great to have a coach for a husband.
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Honestly, I think that latest blog post is designed to wind us up
and win back Nibile's affections.
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DM strikes me as a no-compromise type of person. I wouldn't want to be married to him!
I wonder who really wears the kilt in that household..
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As in most houses, probably their child.
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Or the cat.
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Cats get in the way of climbing performance, get rid of the cat.
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Not Dave's cat, Dave's cat is the one-in-ten
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It gave up its career as manager of mouse-catching to focus on life as a sponsored tree-climber.
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moved from the city and its punter deciduous scene to be in the heart of hard coniferous climbing. Spends hours on his purpose built scratching post.
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anyone got a link to Dave's cat's blog?
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Dave is lucky that his cat was ok with his move nearer to climbing and allowing him to build a board. Our 3 cats ( Smarty, Poppy and Kitty) would only allow me to have a house with a board if we moved to Lincolnshire. So they could continue their campaign to annihilate Englands small mammal population.
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Like TB says this is just self promotion, as all blogs of professional sportsmen generally are, and i don't mean that in a derogatory way. Dave stated he was intending to run coaching sessions from his new wall ages ago, has got a new book out soon and hasn't done anything major on the rock this year (correct me if i am wrong). He is very good at keeping his name out there and therefore keeping his sponsors happy, as well as obviously a very good climber and this is what companies want.
Whilst i agree that he is just stating the obvious to people on here in his last few posts we are not who he is really talking too. However if i was a spotty youth living at home i would be lapping it up and showing my dad what he said to get him to move the car out of the garage.
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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).
This was way better advice than anything in DM's recent blog post's.
When I bought my house in May I really did want to find somewhere with a garage to build a board. But when faced with saving ~£20,000 for a place without a garage it was a no brainer. As much as I want to improve at climbing a cheaper mortgage and better quality of life is obviously a better option.
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What GME said.
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You haven't saved 20k Luke? You just haven't paid 20k for a garage that could put 30k on the house later on. You've just lost 10k for nothing :P Doylo would have paid to keep a board in there!
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allow me to have a house with a board if we moved to Lincolnshire.
is it true that if you live in Lincolnshire you can get a board on the NHS?
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allow me to have a house with a board if we moved to Lincolnshire.
is it true that if you live in Lincolnshire you can get a board on the NHS?
Ask Webbo...
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allow me to have a house with a board if we moved to Lincolnshire.
is it true that if you live in Lincolnshire you can get a board on the NHS?
This is true in as the money to pay for the board has come from the NHS ( In the form of my wages as an overpaid/over pensioned burnt out clinician )
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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.
There's an argument to say we're not an entity of free will.
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Who told you to say that?
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he could call his next book "I Chose to Climb" or something
maybe put a pic on the cover of him bouldering on the back of The Calf
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Who told you to say that?
The online climbing coach
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And another point about fear of falling (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/ldU6pFPLSuc/and-another-point-about-fear-of-falling.html)
15 January 2015, 2:33 pm
I’ve posted on this blog several times about fear of falling, and of course written a whole book section on it in 9 out of 10 (http://davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/ldU6pFPLSuc)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Hyperhidrosis and climbing (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/bdt0HQ20GCQ/hyperhidrosis-and-climbing.html)
15 January 2015, 10:32 pm
Over the years I’ve heard from a few climbers who summer 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.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.
Hopefully, most sufferers will already know about iontophoresis, but in case not, I thought I should write this post.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I hope this post provides some help to sufferers who have yet to hear of the treatment.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/bdt0HQ20GCQ)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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My climbing injuries book is up for pre-order! (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/aON8EEceE6c/my-climbing-injuries-book-is-up-for-pre.html)
19 January 2015, 12:32 pm
(http://davemacleod.com/images/make-or-break-800px.jpg) (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html)
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.
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 pre-order in the shop here (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html), 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.
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.
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.
Below is the table of contents, so you can get idea of the scope of the book. You’ll find the book in the shop here. (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html)
Section 1: Make or break
Why the treatments you have tried aren’t working, and what to do about it.How to use this bookThe real reasons you are injuredStress and injuryThe reason you are still injuredThe language problemThe practitioner problemThe sports medicine problemThe missing linkExceptional use: the luxury of doing your sport badlyPreventionYour visit to the doctor’sSummary
Section 2: Know pain, or no gain
Pain and how to read itSeeing the patterns in your painWhat is healthy soreness?Understanding your painGoing beyond reading only painSummary
Section 3: Removing the causes of injury for prevention and treatment
Are you only treating symptoms?What was the real cause?The big four: technique, posture, activity, restCorrecting techniqueCorrecting postureActivityHow to restWarm-up and injuryLifestyleNutrition
Section 4: Rehabilitation of climbing injuries - treating both causes and symptoms
Acute rehabilitationWhen to move beyond acute careGoals of mid-late rehabilitationModern understanding of tendon injuries and recoveryTherapeutic activity - basic exercisesTherapeutic activity - climbingProprioceptive trainingWalking the line of rehab ups and downsTherapeutic modalitiesSurgeryDrug and other emerging treatmentsWhen to stop rehab?Summary
Section 5: Psychology of injuries: dealing with the anguish of injuryFace it: it really is that bad!Take heartFinding motivation
Section 6: Young climbersWhat young climbers should knowToo much, too young: a warningWhat parents and coaches should do
Section 7: The elbowGolfer’s and tennis elbowBrachioradialis/brachialis strainOther elbow injuries
Section 8: The fingersDifferent grips in climbing and consequences for injuryPulley injuriesWhen and how to tape the fingersPainful finger jointsFlexor unit strainsDupuytren’s contractureGanglionsOther finger injuries
Section 9: The wristTriangular fibrocartilage injuryCarpal tunnel syndromeDe Quervain’s tenosynovitisOther wrist injuries
Section 10: The shoulderShoulder impingement/rotator cuff tearsBiceps tendon insertion tearsLabral tearsShoulder dislocationFrozen shoulderThoracic outlet syndrome Shoulder and neck trigger points
Section 11: Lower body injuriesFoot pain in climbersPlantar fasciitisHeel pad bruisingIngrown toenailsSesamoid injuriesHallux valgusMorton’s neuromaAnkle injuries in climbersCartilage/joint injuriesAnkle impingement syndromeAchilles tendon painKnee injuries in climbersMeniscus tearsAnterior cruciate ligament tearsMedial collateral ligament tearsHamstrings tearHernia
Section 12: Further readingFurther reading and referencesGetting access to good care
The author’s tale of woe and hope
Glossary of key terms
Thanks
ReferencesDave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/aON8EEceE6c)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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I am totally buying this book.
I want to continue making progress at 50+, but I'm already seeing that I'm sailing quite close to the wind with regard to what my shoulders and elbows can take.
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Yup - makes sense for me with the trip coming up, as popping to see the physio won't be an option.
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What we oldies need is a training book for the over 40s. I find it really difficult to know when to push and when to rest. Shoulders and elbows are the usual culprits.
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+1
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What we oldies need is a training book for the over 40s. I find it really difficult to know when to push and when to rest. Shoulders and elbows are the usual culprits.
+1
Now I'm hitting the big 40 this year I'm finally reading the books on good posture and movement mechanics that I really should have brought into my work outs 20 years ago. Probably a bit late to overcome all the ingrained dysfunction but the alternative seems to be an ongoing trail of shoulder and other joint problems...
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Probably a bit late to overcome all the ingrained dysfunction but the alternative seems to be an ongoing trail of shoulder and other joint problems...
My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is; several years of daily ashtanga yoga practice didn't achieve it.
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What we oldies need is a training book for the over 40s. I find it really difficult to know when to push and when to rest. Shoulders and elbows are the usual culprits.
+1
+1
[/quote]
Now I'm hitting the big 40 this year I'm finally reading the books on good posture and movement mechanics that I really should have brought into my work outs 20 years ago. Probably a bit late to overcome all the ingrained dysfunction but the alternative seems to be an ongoing trail of shoulder and other joint problems...
[/quote]
Any suggestions?
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In response to Seankenny,
I posted this in a few of the topic areas.
This may help/it might not?
But a good alternative to yoga and the like.
A good place to start is look at anything by Kelly Starrett.
http://www.mobilitywod.com/episodes/page/7/ (http://www.mobilitywod.com/episodes/page/7/)
There is a load of stuff on youtube as well as a few books.
He is massive in US, regarding stretching/ mobility, cross-fit etc.
He has performed in the US Olympic team in the canoe.
So knows a thing or two about stretching/training.
The foam roller is used mainly to aid recovery/increase range of motion
Hope this helps
jfdm
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Thanks, I have seen his site and actually own one of his weird blue crinkly balls (no sn**gering at the back of the class please). But find it a bit awkward to use, probably need to look at his page again.
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I just started Kelly Starrett's book 'Becoming a Supple Leopard', which seems to distill a lot of the mobilitywod website goodness into something suitable for those who still prefer to stare at paper rather than a screen (and like carrying a hefty doorstop around)... Cheesy title but good so far. I've gone right back to basics and started with standing up straight and air squats, problems with ankle and hip mobility right there for me to start working out... Also lots of different parts of the body to massage with foam rollers, massage balls, barbells.
I also started another book 'Overcoming Gravity' which is a weighty tome and very dry. Basically a progression book for gymnastics and bodyweight strength training. Just about the first book I've read though where they devote a chapter on why you should keep the shoulder balanced and include pushing and pulling exercises (most climbers probably need to do a whole lot more pushing to counteract the effects of climbing). I've started to include a couple of the really basic exercises such as wall handstands and L-sits.
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My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is; several years of daily ashtanga yoga practice didn't achieve it.
I spent maybe 2 years attempting this, not getting closer than maybe 20 degrees from the floor, also doing yoga. Then I saw a physio back in the autumn who put my shoulders in the right position to start off and I more or less did it straight away (along with gaining 20 degrees+ or outward rotation) - that's what started me off on this quest to work out all my bad habits...
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I just started Kelly Starrett's book 'Becoming a Supple Leopard', which seems to distill a lot of the mobilitywod website goodness into something suitable for those who still prefer to stare at paper rather than a screen (and like carrying a hefty doorstop around)... Cheesy title but good so far. I've gone right back to basics and started with standing up straight and air squats, problems with ankle and hip mobility right there for me to start working out... Also lots of different parts of the body to massage with foam rollers, massage balls, barbells.
Thanks for the recommendation, this sounds good. I must admit the title put me off. Or rather my partner's probable reaction to the title.
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My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is
I do for me: that boat sailed long ago.. and my methods are similar ....
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My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is
I do for me: that boat sailed long ago.. and my methods are similar ....
I recall Shark saying that he can, and he climbs considerably harder than me and therefore (perhaps) has stronger lats etc.
@shark: what did you do to achieve this?
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Probably a bit late to overcome all the ingrained dysfunction but the alternative seems to be an ongoing trail of shoulder and other joint problems...
My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is; several years of daily ashtanga yoga practice didn't achieve it.
Kind of like the debates about climbing coaches and what makes a good coach, I think Yoga instructors are the same deal.
I did Yoga off and on for 3-4 years and never really saw much out of it. Found my current instructor who is awesome (we call her the yoga dominatrix), and I've been seeing incredible gains. And generally in places I wasn't expecting. For example, I have ankle issues from years of playing footy. This led to overly tight calves as I was always protecting my ankles. This led to overly tight hamstrings. By adressing the scar tissue and fascia issues in my ankles and calves, my hamstrings have opened up considerable.
I recall Shark saying that he can, and he climbs considerably harder than me and therefore (perhaps) has stronger lats etc.
FWIW, I can't do this yet, but am working towards it. just shy of 40 though, so hopefully the ship hasn't sailed :)
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My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is; several years of daily ashtanga yoga practice didn't achieve it.
So I just tried this and can do it pretty easily. Got my 20 year old lodger to try (you met him at Torbryan Chris) and he's nowhere near!
What I have learnt from yoga is that the poses like the cobra, I can do easily but anything forwards - I'm utterly stumped. I'm a decorator and a lot of my work is above my head and bending backwards, so I guess I'm a creation of my work habits.
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You're right, it could well be more the work than the climbing. I've always had desk jobs, and I spend considerably more time at the office than I do at the crag.
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So I just tried this and can do it pretty easily. Got my 20 year old lodger to try (you met him at Torbryan Chris) and he's nowhere near!
Does he habitually stand with his shoulders slightly forwards?
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I'm a couple of cm from hand touchdown on this... Never done yoga.
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He's a climbing instructor and a smoker - hands in pockets is pretty standard ;-)
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I recall Shark saying that he can, and he climbs considerably harder than me and therefore (perhaps) has stronger lats etc.
Obviously different folk will have different issues but for me it was entirely putting the shoulders back into a neutral position in the joint before starting the maneouvre. In my habitual shoulders forward position the joint impinged and no amount of strength in the lats was going to pull one bone through another...
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Definitely muscular in my case. An assistant gently pressing my elbows down can easily get my whole arm flat on the floor - my son is becoming expert at this - but as soon as the asssistant lets go, muscular tension gently pulls them back up into the air.
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Interesting, tight pecs/front of shoulder?
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Interesting, tight pecs/front of shoulder?
I'm feeling the stretch more in the lower thorax / serratus region. Doesn't necessarily mean that the problem isn't coming from higher up.
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I recall Shark saying that he can, and he climbs considerably harder than me and therefore (perhaps) has stronger lats etc.
Obviously different folk will have different issues but for me it was entirely putting the shoulders back into a neutral position in the joint before starting the maneouvre. In my habitual shoulders forward position the joint impinged and no amount of strength in the lats was going to pull one bone through another...
Activating your shoulder and putting it into the right position is definitely the key to this. I had quite a bit of physio on my shoulders last year and the feeling of pulling my shoulders back and down was one of the key things that has aided recovery. One of the exercises was standing against a wall, putting shoulders in position, then trying to touch the back of my hand to the wall. So hard!
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Make or Break: Don’t let climbing injuries dictate your success (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/EOV3XWhi3Zw/make-or-break-dont-let-climbing.html)
6 February 2015, 12:18 am
(http://davemacleod.com/images/Make-or-Break-250px.jpg) (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html)
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.
I have titled the book ‘Make or Break’ (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html). 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, 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html), 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.
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.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eJ_JEL-Oej4/VNP1TYGkygI/AAAAAAAADuE/LNU7ssdKUHY/s1600/IMG_7710.jpg) (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eJ_JEL-Oej4/VNP1TYGkygI/AAAAAAAADuE/LNU7ssdKUHY/s1600/IMG_7710.jpg)
Claire MacLeod dispatching our pre-orders the other night.
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:
1. Tendons don’t like rest, or change.
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 quote (http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2013/04/11/bjsports-2013-092329.full.html):
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
2. Know pain, or no gain
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.
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.
Section 2 of the book is entirely devoted to understanding pain.
3. The luxury of doing sport badly will not last
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.
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.
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.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j6khbtuIlDA/VNQD_8FwAMI/AAAAAAAADvc/tl8jo4kpVho/s1600/IMG_4690+-+Version+2.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j6khbtuIlDA/VNQD_8FwAMI/AAAAAAAADvc/tl8jo4kpVho/s1600/IMG_4690+-+Version+2.jpg)
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!
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KbysBRk3TFc/VNQD8ZE_NWI/AAAAAAAADvU/jokrDavCiKw/s1600/IMG_4711+-+Version+2.jpg) (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KbysBRk3TFc/VNQD8ZE_NWI/AAAAAAAADvU/jokrDavCiKw/s1600/IMG_4711+-+Version+2.jpg)
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.
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.
I hope the book will help many climbers prevent their future injuries or overcome existing ones. You'll find the book in our shop here (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html), dispatching worldwide.
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/EOV3XWhi3Zw)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Make or Break reviews coming through (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/ntht_eWgico/make-or-break-reviews-coming-through.html)
26 May 2015, 10:56 am
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dX1PNe-8HaA/VWRC1Ux_BKI/AAAAAAAAD2U/4NuV3GZGaNM/s400/Make-or-Break-800px.jpg) (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html)
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.
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 here (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html).
Neil Gresham, writing in Climb Magazine (http://www.climbmagazine.com/):
“...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 training wrong and getting hurt, now that this fantastic book exists.”
“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.”
The full review was in Climb Magazine issue 122 (May 2015)
Duncan Critchley, Physiotherapist, lecturer and pain researcher, Kings College London, writing for UKbouldering.com
“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.”
“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.”
The full review is on UKB here (http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,25664.0.html).
There is also a review by Steve Crowe on Climbonline.co.uk here (http://www.climbonline.co.uk/make_or_break.htm).
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/ntht_eWgico)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Positive thinking is not necessary (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/A--51iqBAjA/positive-thinking-is-not-necessary.html)
2 June 2015, 4:25 pm
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-73dIloy2G_Y/UF-eaJP854I/AAAAAAAAC6I/zLLFIEk4jSo/s1600/2012-09-21_Dave_Macleod_Steall-_MG_2660.jpg) (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-73dIloy2G_Y/UF-eaJP854I/AAAAAAAAC6I/zLLFIEk4jSo/s1600/2012-09-21_Dave_Macleod_Steall-_MG_2660.jpg)
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: Lukasz Warzecha (http://www.lwimages.co.uk/)
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.
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.
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.
The cult of positive thinking, both in society and in sports psychology, 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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As an epilogue, here is a basic example of this thinking in action.
Thought example 1. (in training): “I’m not good enough, I’m going to fail.”
Positive thinking action: “You will succeed, you are strong and tough and you can do this.”
Critique: Note that if you really are 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 unrealistic 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.
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.”
Thought example 2. (at the last move of the redpoint): “I’m not good enough, I’m going to fail”
Positive thinking action: “You can do it, get the jug”
Critique: The thought offers no practical help. It merely starts an argument in your head at exactly the wrong moment!
Negative thinking action: “Be decisive, full commitment, pull down like hell on that crimp”
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/A--51iqBAjA)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Tendon Pain - Could your diet be a problem? (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/OPU6tc-wd9I/tendon-pain-could-your-diet-be-problem.html)
26 November 2015, 11:15 am
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2F9CzQ8E6lQ/VlbnfPJRg7I/AAAAAAAAD9U/sy07rMzwLhE/s320/0198529171.cholesterol.1.jpg) (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2F9CzQ8E6lQ/VlbnfPJRg7I/AAAAAAAAD9U/sy07rMzwLhE/s1600/0198529171.cholesterol.1.jpg)
Since publishing my climbing injuries book Make or Break (http://davemacleod.com/shop/makeorbreak.html) earlier this year, this (http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/23/1504.full) 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.
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.
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.
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.
If you want to learn just how messed up the situation is, read Nina’s book (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). 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.
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.
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.
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!Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/OPU6tc-wd9I)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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He's a bit late to the party over sugar but good to see a well-known climber discussing this.
The problem is, we can't wait for better evidence - I have to eat something, in two hours time! So what to eat?
Could support some of his professional climbing peers and have a over-caffeinated sugary drink company, with its 27g of sugar per can - v.close to the maximum recommended daily adult intake of 30g from all meals... ;D
(https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSq5gYl_QLu-vikOxd5uNukeWpIJVgn1lTOzYDcZ0njSTWtB83Z)
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Video: Basic movement technique on ice (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/PkJNmiTWLJo/video-basic-movement-technique-on-ice.html)
5 January 2016, 1:35 pm
Basic Ice Climbing Technique (https://vimeo.com/149167537) from Ellis Brigham (https://vimeo.com/ellisbrigham) on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/).
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.
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.
If you’ve not been training - it’s never too late to start!
Thanks to the staff at Ellis Brigham in Manchester for helping us have a good time shooting this video.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/PkJNmiTWLJo)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Review: Stonesmith holds (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/lt2GmYwO2M4/review-stonesmith-holds.html)
2 March 2016, 3:02 pm
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlnV8OXi6Pk/Vtb8u1nlhxI/AAAAAAAAEAI/05a1sqrmABg/s640/stonesmith+holds.jpg) (https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlnV8OXi6Pk/Vtb8u1nlhxI/AAAAAAAAEAI/05a1sqrmABg/s1600/stonesmith+holds.jpg)
Some new shapes ready to go on my wall ahead of my first masterclasses at my place last week!
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.
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.
Which brings me to Stonesmith holds (http://stonesmithholds.com/). 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.
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 Three Wise Monkeys climbing centre (http://threewisemonkeysclimbing.com/) in Fort William next month.
If you’ve got a wall, get some. (http://stonesmithholds.com/) I'm actually just off to order a set of their suspension training balls (http://stonesmithholds.com/product/suspension-training-balls-2/) 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!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/lt2GmYwO2M4)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Get some.... After you get Axis or Bleaustone or Lapis. Or if you have skin like leather, or are just getting the smooth training holds.
The Stonesmith designs are improving though.
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Reflections on beginning climbing coaching again (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/G0T7wbCNDe0/reflections-on-beginning-climbing.html)
10 March 2016, 11:06 am
A few shots of my own training over the past few days
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.
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.
1. The ability to try hard still trumps everything
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2. Time remains a key currency of improvement
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.
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.
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.
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 9 out of 10 climbers (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html). 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.
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.
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.
3. Protect your hard earned gains better
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 9 out of 10 (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop/9outof10climbers.html) but I think it bears reinforcing as I still think climbers undervalue its effects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/G0T7wbCNDe0)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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great blog
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It is interesting that some people may have a completely different concept of what trying hard is. Sort of reminds me of this TEDtalk; https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_balcetis_why_some_people_find_exercise_harder_than_others#t-668019 (https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_balcetis_why_some_people_find_exercise_harder_than_others#t-668019)
It always amazes me when I read all the dedicated strength training the people on these fit/powerclubs do and they haven't even climbed 8a sport, especially ones who've been climbing for many years. Surely at that type of level you don't need to be doing anything specific other than trying hard when you're at the wall/out on rock to achieve that.
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Then again, both you and I did very specific training to do our 8a routes, it just happened that the training was on many many failed redpoints on the route itself.
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Haha, yeh but that's not training - that's fun! Well, maybe not with the lengthy sieges we did but generally getting stronger by climbing isn't what i'd class as training. All this nonsense where you're dangling from your fingers on a piece of wood is! I accept that it's necessary at higher levels but not at our punter grades!
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I do think the same when I see the volume of some people's ancillary exercises but if you can't get to a wall or a crag regularly it's the best you can do
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Haha, yeh but that's not training - that's fun! Well, maybe not with the lengthy sieges we did but generally getting stronger by climbing isn't what i'd class as training. All this nonsense where you're dangling from your fingers on a piece of wood is! I accept that it's necessary at higher levels but not at our punter grades!
How does Sharma train? By going to the crag, bouldering, climbing and working his projects.
How does Ondra train? Predominantly the same, by going to the crag, bouldering, climbing and working his projects.
I've not found the article in the three minutes I've just spent looking for it, but a couple of years ago I recall reading an interview where he said he was going to start fingerboarding and campussing to improve his finger-strength, something upto that point he had avoided, yet had still climbed tons of hard routes.
Two extreme examples perhaps but it ties in with what yourself and Guy are talking about.
For me though you've hit the nail on the head in saying "its fun", going climbing and trying is fun, training is for me very dull in comparison but then I've limited time as it is between life and home and would rather enjoy myself than engaging in something I find dull, which is why I'll go bouldering everytime I've an opportunity over hanging from a fingerboard (and no putting the laptop/TV in front of it won't change how dull it is). Its also why I will never attain much beyond my current standard. but that is also linked to the fact that I don't need to climb grade X to feel fulfilled in my life or be happy with my climbing.
Theres one person who posts here on UKB who, if I remember correctly, said they enjoy the training more than the bouldering.
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Theres one person who posts here on UKB who, if I remember correctly, said they enjoy the training more than the bouldering.
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1688/25374486450_7320c6d8d3.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/EEfSMG)you talkin to me (https://flic.kr/p/EEfSMG) by Nibile (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/), on Flickr
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Theres one person who posts here on UKB who, if I remember correctly, said they enjoy the training more than the bouldering.
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1688/25374486450_7320c6d8d3.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/EEfSMG)you talkin to me (https://flic.kr/p/EEfSMG) by Nibile (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70381658@N00/), on Flickr
Sorry Nibs, forgot about you when writing that (although we've never chatted in person). Make that two then.
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Am I not alone? :dance1: :punk:
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It always amazes me when I read all the dedicated strength training the people on these fit/powerclubs do and they haven't even climbed 8a sport, especially ones who've been climbing for many years. Surely at that type of level you don't need to be doing anything specific other than trying hard when you're at the wall/out on rock to achieve that.
You have a short memory. Seem to recall you not finding it easy when you switched goal from 8A boulder to 8a route, having to try quite a lot of them before one suited and having to do some specific training with the help of these forums and Tom Randall to achieve it.
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You have a short memory. Seem to recall you not finding it easy when you switched goal from 8A boulder to 8a route, having to try quite a lot of them before one suited and having to do some specific training with the help of these forums and Tom Randall to achieve it.
I was struggling to find an 8a that suited because I was getting over a pulley injury and it was hard to find one without rat crimps on Peak lime. Whilst I'd love to accredit me getting up Powerplant to Tom, I can honestly say that the training was probably hindering rather than helping as it was mostly base aerobic training with shit loads of core and if anything I was usually VERY tired when trying the route. This isn't Tom's fault, as I told him I was more concerned with long term goals than the short-term ones and to be fair, I knew that I'd probably get the route done be sieging it. I'd also not climbed any routes for 2 years prior to getting on Powerplant.
2 years previous to that, I'd done several 7c+ routes (I'd never bothered trying anything harder) and that was after no specific training, just trying hard when I went climbing. I'd been climbing for 4 years. Hope that clears things up. ;)
EDIT: Also, I only add the part about how long I'd been climbing as reference to what I did, I know many people who were climbing much harder in a much shorter period of time with no specific training, that's the point of the comment.
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I'd also like to add that this wasn't a dig at any specific people who post on the fit/powerclubs, it was just something I found interesting after seeing all the additional strength training a lot of the people were doing on there and only climbing the sort of grades I knew many people were achieving by just going climbing. Obviously, if the training was replacing climbing because that person didn't have access to a wall, then fine but if the people have access to a wall then just go try hard down the wall in my opinion (though this is assuming you're not bothered how quickly you improve). I think you'd need to be wanting to climb fairly hard grades before that's not an effective method to improve.
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Where does having the worlds largest climbing shoe collection fit in with this. :whistle:
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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.
Can relate to this.
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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.
Can relate to this.
me too
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My ambition is to be able to lie on my back, with my lumbar flat on the floor, and lay my arms on the ground over my head. I have no idea how Long Term this goal is
I do for me: that boat sailed long ago.. and my methods are similar ....
I recall Shark saying that he can, and he climbs considerably harder than me and therefore (perhaps) has stronger lats etc.
@shark: what did you do to achieve this?
Sorry just seen this. It has taken a while. A few years ago I couldn't even lay my arms out flat to the side, or imagine I would ever able to do so. I do some sort of stretching stuff 3 or 4 times a week. Apart from anything else it makes me sleep more comfortably.
Two key things for me is getting shoulders into position. Usual recommendation is to do it double handed in a door frame pushing shoulder blades together (see below) but I quite often just lean into a door frame. The other thing is to get a little more mobility into your upper spine by lying on a yoga block at base of shoulder blades grasping both elbows with arms over head. Breathe out with each stretch. Picked this exercise up from Steph Davis' blog a while ago.
The other thing I am now able to do is move arms in a full arc whilst lying on my back keeping back of hand in contact with floor throughout the movement. Sometimes can stretch my arms out further by manipulating shoulder and massaging out upper pecs where it goes to the shoulder. Aside from injury prevention Im sure it is possible to gain a bit of extra reach doing this sort of thing as well as improve range of movement on cross through moves etc.
(http://totalback.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/chest-stretch.jpg)
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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.
Can relate to this.
I can't. What are strength gains?
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Where does having the worlds largest climbing shoe collection fit in with this. :whistle:
Wow, powerclub attacks! Do you and Nai deadhang a lot or something? :whistle:
:off: but I only have 5 pairs of shoes at the moment actually because I sell them on when I discover they don't fit, though I appreciate that I've gone through a fair few models over the years (25 odd :o) Unfortunately I have Morton's toe and get Morton's neuroma in my feet and I usually have to wear a new model for many weeks before the pain starts, so no chance of wearing them around the house to find out.
Dave Macleod won't mind anyway, he places huge emphasis on well-fitting shoes!
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It is interesting that some people may have a completely different concept of what trying hard is. Sort of reminds me of this TEDtalk; https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_balcetis_why_some_people_find_exercise_harder_than_others#t-668019 (https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_balcetis_why_some_people_find_exercise_harder_than_others#t-668019)
It always amazes me when I read all the dedicated strength training the people on these fit/powerclubs do and they haven't even climbed 8a sport, especially ones who've been climbing for many years. Surely at that type of level you don't need to be doing anything specific other than trying hard when you're at the wall/out on rock to achieve that.
as you said, we are not all equal in terms of our ability to "try hard".
thats the main point.
i was recently in st léger with two friends trying to climb their first 8a, and although they were giving it their best efforts, and both of them could have done it, both failed and could have benefitted from proper training, defined as a structured prepation to their specific goal.
one of them ironically needed to train his ability try properly hard: you could see he was fighting, although it was a battle against his own psychological walls rather than the route...
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You have Mortens toe? We've been looking for Pennils toe for years, have you got that stowed away or sold that on? Wouldn't think there'd be much call for it :-\
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Where does having the worlds largest climbing shoe collection fit in with this. :whistle:
Wow, powerclub attacks! Do you and Nai deadhang a lot or something? :whistle:
:off: but I only have 5 pairs of shoes at the moment actually because I sell them on when I discover they don't fit, though I appreciate that I've gone through a fair few models over the years (25 odd :o) Unfortunately I have Morton's toe and get Morton's neuroma in my feet and I usually have to wear a new model for many weeks before the pain starts, so no chance of wearing them around the house to find out.
Dave Macleod won't mind anyway, he places huge emphasis on well-fitting shoes!
I only deadhang when I'm injured.
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It always amazes me when I read all the dedicated strength training the people on these fit/powerclubs do and they haven't even climbed 8a sport, especially ones who've been climbing for many years. Surely at that type of level you don't need to be doing anything specific other than trying hard when you're at the wall/out on rock to achieve that.
Wow. Middle aged men with restricted free time in effective use of training time shocker.
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:D
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Climbing masterclass dates at my wall (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/aoutdrm6o98/climbing-masterclass-dates-at-my-wall.html)
2 September 2016, 1:13 pm
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ri3rLvUUrTM/V8lsrYDQKjI/AAAAAAAAEJw/KcSt6uaeceIF57yvj77o4PtqpYNqFP2WwCLcB/s640/circuit+time+%25281%2529.jpg) (https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ri3rLvUUrTM/V8lsrYDQKjI/AAAAAAAAEJw/KcSt6uaeceIF57yvj77o4PtqpYNqFP2WwCLcB/s1600/circuit+time+%25281%2529.jpg)
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 book your place (http://www.davemacleod.com/events.html).
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.
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!
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).
Full details and contacts to book a place are up on my events page here (http://www.davemacleod.com/events.html). See you there!
Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/aoutdrm6o98)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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Failure to sleep 8hrs = failure to train (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~3/FTSFCin0jnE/failure-to-sleep-8hrs-failure-to-train.html)
6 December 2016, 10:01 am
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:
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.
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.
3. Are you sleep deprived? It’s extremely likely.
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.
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.
6. Can’t lose/control weight? It may well be the sleep.
7. Injury risk skyrockets for the sleep deprived. Dose-response relationship.
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.Dave MacLeod
My book - 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes (http://www.davemacleod.com/shop.html)(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TrainingForClimbingBlog/~4/FTSFCin0jnE)
Source: Online Climbing Coach (http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.com/)
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aaaah that why Im so shit
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Can someone tell my employer this? Having to regularly get up at around 5am to travel and put in 12 hour shifts followed by me then trying to squeeze in a run, swim or very occasional boulder probably explains why I'm a bit crap at all of them. That said, just applied for a new job which if it comes off will mean me only ever having to work in Sheffield for probably the rest of my working life. That would be really good.
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Ah, I understand the plan now - ensure that as many medcs and nurses as possible are sleep deprived during training and early work life so that they fail to reach their potential and so are less attractive to foreign employers - so we get to keep them
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It all sounds a bit fishy to me, like one of those TedX talks where they're always quoting 'science' but it's actually a load of crap dressed up as fact.
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I haven't used an alarm clock or the like in years. I will go to bed about 10ish and usually wake up between 5 or 6 regardless whether or not I need to get up. Shirley if I needed 7.5 hours plus I would just keep sleeping.
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I haven't used an alarm clock or the like in years. I will go to bed about 10ish and usually wake up between 5 or 6 regardless whether or not I need to get up. Shirley if I needed 7.5 hours plus I would just keep sleeping.
Shirley 10 till 5:30 is 7.5hrs?
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I usually go to bed at 11, but rarely sleep beyond 6, often wake at 3 or 4 and take an hour or so to get back to sleep.
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Been away from baby for last 3 nights. Comfy bed - fairly quiet... slept 6 hours every night... no more...
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I haven't used an alarm clock or the like in years. I will go to bed about 10ish and usually wake up between 5 or 6 regardless whether or not I need to get up. Shirley if I needed 7.5 hours plus I would just keep sleeping.
Shirley 10 till 5:30 is 7.5hrs?
I know that but the article talks of having 7.5 hours plus. I didn't mention the frequent waking 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock and so on.
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But you can have afternoon nanna naps now.
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I'm too busy doing nothing to have time for a nap.
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This article stuck with me:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783)
The premise being that our 'natural' bodyclock segments sleep into two parts. The 8 hour sleep was invented in the Victorian era. I find this accords more with my natural rhythms than a block of 8 hours. In fact, often I feel pretty sluggish if I get more than the 7ish hours I'm used to. Might be worth a try over the holidays but in the working week I find it very hard to go to bed early enough to get 8 hours, and have any sort of 'out of work life'. Would rather pack more into the day and sleep less, even if this means I might not be training/recovering/performing at my optimum.
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http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=30153&utm_content=buffer1693f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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