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.
Here is a short clip of me climbing Paradise Lost 8B/+ in Switzerland. I’m a real fan of this type of boulder - long, intricate roofs with some opportunities to find good rests and gymnastic movement generally. I spotted a Marmot dotting about in the talus around the boulder when I was there. So a few days later I came back with my daughter (we were staying down in the valley for a month last summer) and bivvied under the boulder to see if we could spot it. When we woke up in the morning, it was sitting right beside the boulder. Too easy!
This boulder was put up by Japanese climber Dai Koyamada, a climber I have always admired for his technique and focus. It was on one of his videos that I first saw it. I have a couple of things to go back for in Sustenpass, but not this autumn. So many other, harder things to do in Scotland right now.
I had a severe (grade 3) AC joint separation in 2017. I followed a careful rehab programme and was back to reasonably hard climbing (8b) in six weeks and normal climbing (V14) in 12 weeks, well ahead of schedule. In this episode, I share what I did, when and why.
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 #19 Elbow Tendonosis, Golfer's Elbow, is a very common injury among climbers. In this episode, I go through ten ways you can both prevent and/or treat this very troublesome condition. I suffered with Golfer's and Tennis elbow for many years before finally resolving it completely three years ago.
Andrew MacFarlane interviewed me on his YT channel, discussing many aspects of how to stay healthy as an athlete, avoid injury and keep progressing in climbing over the long term.
A few weeks ago, Ally Houston of the Paleo Canteen Podcast interviewed me. The podcast focuses on guest’s attitudes to food and diet. I spoke about my experiments with various diets and their effects on my climbing and various aspects of my health. Given that Paleo Canteen is based in Glasgow, the city in which both myself and the hosts grew up, we also talked about what it’s like to grow up in Glasgow’s food environment. If you like the podcast you’ll find all the episodes here. I also mentioned the study I published in the Journal of Sport Sciences several years ago. You’ll find that paper here.
If you listen right through, you’ll see that we go into some themes around carbohydrate dosing/restriction in sport training and performance. I give a casual discussion of some of the scientific evidence in this area of physiology research. I get a lot of questions about this. I will soon (I’m not sure exactly when I’ll get it finished) post up a long vlog + blog going into some detail about the evidence along with some speculation on how it may be applied to climbing.
Vlog #18 The first of my Binnein Shuas projects for the summer went down! This one is around E8 7a. Loving climbing at this place so much.
Vlog #16 In preparation for my climbing goal for later in the year, I reset my whole board to sharpen my best training tool. In this episode I get into why I did it and what the strategy was.
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
"What gets measured, gets managed". Measuring aspects of performance in sport is a good thing, but only if you are measuring the right things and interpreting the data correctly. In this vlog, I draw attention to potential problems with performance metrics in climbing, especially related to basic finger strength, both at an individual level and with normative group data.
A comment after Vlog #11 prompted me to do a whole episode exploring the pros and cons of physical versus sedentary jobs and their interaction with your training for climbing. Folk in physically demanding jobs are often strong and resilient, but can be overtired if they don't stay on top of their routine.
People are busy, including me. This post goes through how I manage busy work periods from a training point of view. I also discuss a common theme related to failure to recover from climbing injuries which I've discovered through the many thousands of messages I've had from climbers worldwide since I published Make or Break.
Here are three strategies I use in my own climbing to reflect on the previous year and plan for better results in the coming year, with some examples of how to implement them. Near the end of this video, I discuss some supplementation I do while recovering from tendon/ligament injuries.
Vlog #9 In depth interviews are not so common in the climbing media these days. I know I have many burning questions I'd love to ask the best and most knowledgeable climbers out there. So here is the first of what will hopefully be a series of interviews with really interesting climbers: Neil Gresham.
Vlog #8: Winter is coming. Are you ready? In this episode I go through the fundamentals of what I do to prepare for the mixed climbing season. Dry tooling, cardio training, and some other important points that lead the dry tooling beasts to still fail to achieve their potential on the actual winter routes.
In climbing or in life in general, I discovered the hard way that its possible to be way more scared for someone else than it is for yourself. It's kind of weird going over climbing accidents I've had. I certainly hope it's a long, long time before I'm as scared as the night I describe in this vlog.
Why is it that some climbers have a badass home training setup and plenty of time to use it, yet they are not improving as fast as some who don't? Set it up and use it sub-optimally and your home wall can be just another source of plateaux in your climbing performance.
We all think wooden hangboards are a no brainer. They are nice to use, they save your skin. They allow you to do more training. More folks are thinking the same about wood holds for the actual climbing. They are not a new invention of course!