I plateaued at around 7C+ boulder/8b sport for quite a few years in my twenties. Then I made a jump to 8c and then 9a in a surprisingly short period of time. In this episode I go through what I did. Yes it involved a hangboard! I'm not sure my intervention would have the same effect on most climbers these days, but I will suggest some other equally important training for climbing that should reach the same place.
Lots of climbing partners have said to me that they observe that I'm a very motivated climber, especially for completing hard projects. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to understand where this comes from and if it can be replicated. It can! And it's not complicated.
The first ascent of Lithium 8B+ (V14) and the hardest boulder I've climbed so far. Some more about the story of this ascent and many others in the movie Undisovered https://vimeo.com/ondemand/undiscovered
Unsurprisingly, the last three months of lockdown were not ideal for a professional rock climber. I tried to make of it what I could. I trained, I studied, I trained and studied some more…
A decent discussion of the principles I apply to structure my bouldering sessions, both during lockdown and at any other time.
One of my last days in the mountains before lockdown. It was a great one! Soloing Moonwalk IV,4 on Ben Nevis on a perfect day.
Many of you are getting to grips with the hangboard for the first time right now. Here is a deep dive on most of the priorities to think about to get the most out of the tool and stay uninjured. My Hangboard: The Edge.
In this video I reference a review of studies comparing high and low loads for strength training. If you would like to read the study, it is here.
In an age of lots of information about training for climbing, so many either get injured or fail to make progress because of the basics. Right now, as I come back from an injury, I am building a foundation of physical capability. A foundation of sleep, recovery, gradually increasing load and consistency.
A core principle of doing well in sport (or other things) is to find ways to turn bad circumstances large and small to your advantage as much as possible. So many training decision pathways start from this principle, or at least should do.
I got injured. So what do I do now? Some ideas for how to manage the recovery.
While my daughter Freida has been off school with the virus situation, we have been doing Joe Wicks’ morning workouts. Joe asked kids to think of their own workouts and post them up. So we came up with this and posted it up on Freida’s channel, An Koala Pinc. I thought Freida did a nice job of entertaining at the same time as leading the workout. If you like it, do join in and do share it with Joe! He says he’ll pick one to do on his livestream.
Its taken a while but we had a big delivery of Edge Hangboards today. Thanks to everyone who waited patiently. UK orders will go out tomorrow.
https://www.davemacleod.com/shop/edge
Over the coming weeks I’ll be discussing my thoughts on hang boarding during the current lockdown situation and the routines I use. They are quite simple really.
Due to the current situation we are only shipping to the UK at the moment. As soon as we can be confident that international post services are running a reliable service we’ll restart international shipping.
I’ve been visiting this great boulder on and off over the past few weeks. Yesterday I put up a really nice new 8A, despite struggling a bit to get it in climbable condition recently. Well, that, and I couldn’t actually climb it. I’ve been trying a much harder project going straight up from the same start. Its a really good line and worth persisting with. At present I cannot do one move even after about four sessions on it. But I am getting closer. One thing is for sure, I’ll not get closer to unlocking it if I don’t show up and try. That is the subject of the vlog episode above (Vlog #42).
My blogging frequency has dropped a bit of late since I have been back at university studying lately. Although actually the main sink on my time has been a he task I’ve been putting off for over two years. I’ve been gathering scientific papers related to nutrition for four years now. There are nearly 2000 in my library at this point. I’ve avoided the hard labour of sorting them into buckets so I can easily make sense of them. But I’m attacking that task now. It will take me ages! But there is no short cutting it, and it will be worth it in the end.
I have spent a long time perfecting how to send hard projects which are above my level. Here are five of the most significant top level factors that I use constantly, either consciously or otherwise to make the send happen.
The warm up for climbing is fairly simple and there's no need to overcomplicate it unless you have poor conditioning or injury. But there are definitely some basics to get right. This episode (Vlog #35) goes through them.
Many of you then asked how I warm up at the crag, especially when there are few options for warming up. In this episode (Vlog 36) I warm up on the crux moves of my 9a project. Just take it step by step!
Lots of you buy my Edge Hangboard together with one or both of my books. For a few days we are running a bundle discount - all three together for GBP140, saving GBP24. Shipping worldwide as usual. We'll run it for a few days or while the current stock of the Edge lasts. You'll find it here.
Solo ascent of the classic Ben Nevis ice climb The Curtain IV,4. I shot this a few seasons ago but thought it would be nice to post it up now since the ice climbing season in Scotland is not far away. I shot this a few seasons ago with my old GoPro. I didn't actually intend to solo that day, just decided to go up and do it on on the way down from doing something else on the hill. Hence the image and audio are pretty bad. I'm hoping to do a few more solo missions like this over the coming winter. I'll see if I can make something a little better with my new cameras. Although shooting video and soloing without any help still has its challenges. Any suggestions for classic ice lines to shoot?
People ask me over and over 'what's your secret?' to climbing hard, maintaining level into my 40s, balancing climbing with work and family etc etc. So I felt I should address this 'meta question' of secrets of training directly.
After climbing Hunger, I took a short break. Now time for a new 9a project!
In this episode (Vlog #32) I put in a day setting the men's final for the Ice Factor's drytool comp in Kinlochleven. Trying not to impale myself with sharp tools and hopefully getting some fitness together as winter approaches.