Back when you started climbing, finding motivation wasn’t really a big deal for a lot of folk. Yet for some, it becomes a real issue later on. In this episode I explore this and offer a simple (not not always easy) solution.

In June I had my fourth ankle surgery. I managed to get back to climbing E10 in a few months with a few key strategies and tactics I describe in this video.

In this discussion with Joe French, we explore what Joe did to recover from post traumatic stress and mental health issues. In my mind, the simple activities he describes, which can be practiced in many different forms, are a big missing piece of many athlete’s training programs and also of mental health therapy.

We cover why the ‘barefoot’ part of barefoot running is only half the picture, cold water, the two disasters he suffered on Everest which killed many of his colleagues, the ethics of film making and social media and epics while new routing on Ben Nevis.

Joe’s excellent book Out of Mind is available in the shop here.

My annoying tennis elbow improved enough to start bouldering regularly again a month ago. Since then I feel like its stronger every session. A good feeling. In this session I keep on with working through the established problems on my board, building up to starting on the projects. At the end I’m getting close to my Pjs on the fingerboard, which is kind of surprising to me, but great! I also go through some of your questions about training from my last full session vlog episode. If you have more, leave a comment here on my YouTube.

BTW Did you subscribe to my YouTube channel yet? Lots more videos sharing climbing, training, nutrition and nice routes and mountains coming in 2022.

Something that has really helped us get through the lockdown has been doing big walks from the house with Freida. Over the weeks Freida has realised how far she can walk in a few hours and we’ve seen a great deal of sunshine, forest, wildlife and many other interesting discoveries in various corners of Lochaber.

One objective Freida had was to walk to school which is about 14 miles. We’ve done this a few times now by various routes. We made a wee video on Freida’s YouTube about our first walk to school. I’m highly biased but I think Freida’s commentary is great.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Celebrating a send with junk never seemed to work for me. I go through what I do instead. The original blog post that inspired this episode from 2009.

I have made a decision to lead my E10 project in two days time, if the conditions are right. I'm uncomfortable and fearful. But I think it's the right decision and in this episode (vlog #25) I go through why.

I am a quitter and in this episode (vlog #24) I go through why perhaps you should consider tactical quitting, as well as discussing the difference between tactics and strategy for achieving your goals.

Trying hard projects, hard goals, hard training all means encountering problems, setbacks and the mental challenges these bring. How you respond to them determines whether they upset your progress, or propel it. In this episode (Vlog #22) I go through my approach, which is pretty simple.

I thought it would be nice to take an overview of the priorities and common mistakes for training for bouldering generally. I’ve pitched this video at climbers who’ve been climbing from a few months to a few years. But I also think it may an idea for much more experienced boulderers to watch it, since the challenge for this group tends to be spotting and unlearning bad habits they’ve developed over time. I go through how to use a bouldering facility to train strength and technique, how to choose good goals and manage your resources to train well.

Vlog #15 I had mild/moderate depression for over 20 years. I tried many (non-drug) treatments but was unable to make any impact on it beyond managing the symptoms. Three years ago I made some dramatic changes to my diet for completely different reasons. An unexpected event that followed four weeks afterwards was that my depression completely resolved and has not returned. I will never know if the change caused the resolution. But as I discuss in this post, with reference to the evidence, it is at least plausible that it may have been causative. Nothing in this post is advice. I just want to share what I did. I should also urge anyone considering changes to their treatment regime for mental health issues, pharmacological or otherwise, to do so in consultation with their doctor.

The scientific references that accompany this post can be found below. I encourage interested viewers to read them in full rather than take them at face value.

References

1. LaChance, L. R. and D. Ramsey (2018). "Antidepressant foods: An evidence-based nutrient profiling system for depression." World journal of psychiatry 8(3): 97-104. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30254980

2. Mattson, M. P., K. Moehl, N. Ghena, M. Schmaedick and A. Cheng (2018). "Intermittent metabolic switching, neuroplasticity and brain health." Nat Rev Neurosci 19(2): 63-80. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29321682

3. Brietzke, E., R. B. Mansur, M. Subramaniapillai, V. Balanza-Martinez, M. Vinberg, A. Gonzalez-Pinto, J. D. Rosenblat, R. Ho and R. S. McIntyre (2018). "Ketogenic diet as a metabolic therapy for mood disorders: Evidence and developments." Neurosci Biobehav Rev 94: 11-16. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30075165

4. Pinto, A., A. Bonucci, E. Maggi, M. Corsi and R. Businaro (2018). "Anti-Oxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Ketogenic Diet: New Perspectives for Neuroprotection in Alzheimer's Disease." Antioxidants (Basel) 7(5). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981249/

5. Gao, Y., M. Bielohuby, T. Fleming, G. F. Grabner, E. Foppen, W. Bernhard, M. Guzman-Ruiz, C. Layritz, B. Legutko, E. Zinser, C. Garcia-Caceres, R. M. Buijs, S. C. Woods, A. Kalsbeek, R. J. Seeley, P. P. Nawroth, M. Bidlingmaier, M. H. Tschop and C. X. Yi (2017). "Dietary sugars, not lipids, drive hypothalamic inflammation." Mol Metab 6(8): 897-908. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28752053

6. Akhtar, S., A. Ahmed, M. A. Randhawa, S. Atukorala, N. Arlappa, T. Ismail and Z. Ali (2013). "Prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in South Asia: causes, outcomes, and possible remedies." Journal of health, population, and nutrition 31(4): 413-423. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905635/ 

7. Spiteller, G. and M. Afzal (2014). "The action of peroxyl radicals, powerful deleterious reagents, explains why neither cholesterol nor saturated fatty acids cause atherogenesis and age-related diseases." Chemistry 20(46): 14928-14945. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25318456

8. Pepe, S., N. Tsuchiya, E. G. Lakatta and R. G. Hansford (1999). "PUFA and aging modulate cardiac mitochondrial membrane lipid composition and Ca2+ activation of PDH." Am J Physiol 276(1): H149-158. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9887028

9. Treadway, M. T., J. A. Cooper and A. H. Miller (2019). “Can't or Won’t? Immunometabolic Constraints on Dopaminergic Drive." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23(5): 435-448. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30948204

10. Gerster, H. (1998). "Can adults adequately convert alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) to eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3)?" Int J Vitam Nutr Res 68(3): 159-173. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

11. Hibbeln, J. R., K. Northstone, J. Evans and J. Golding (2018). "Vegetarian diets and depressive symptoms among men." J Affect Disord 225: 13-17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28777971 

Further notes

In the video I discuss differences in plant/animal forms of vitamins and their precursors. This relates to the concept of bioavailability. For a discussion on this, see this paper:

Gregory, J. F., 3rd (2012). "Accounting for differences in the bioactivity and bioavailability of vitamers." Food & nutrition research 56: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22489223

How I motivate myself to train. It's very simple. My books, training equipment are here: https://www.davemacleod.com/shop My Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/davemacleod