Online Climbing Coach

What to do when overtrained?

2008-06-18T14:44:00.001+01:00

training hard and strange things are happening to your motivation and mood. What can you do to get the ship back on course? Before I look at this question, lets start by looking at the more common possibility – you aren’t really overtrained at all! I suspect that most climbers with symptoms of overtraining are not doing more volume than their bodies can handle. Instead they are often suffering

Muscle loss - don't be distracted by it

2008-05-02T11:15:00.001+01:00

In the comments to my previous post on reasons for lack of improvement, Ian asked: “I understand how to lose weight, but is there any specific way to ensure that as you lose weight you reduce fat% and not just body mass?” With a weight loss program there isn’t any way to guarantee you lose only body fat, but you would almost never want this anyway in climbing. Most climbers could do with losing

Common reasons for zero improvement despite seemingly getting everything right

2008-04-30T20:55:00.000+01:00

So, you eat well, sleep well, climb three+ times a week and mix up the training venue/activity/angle/rock type etc, but you STILL don’t improve. What’s going on?! Here are the top two reasons why this happens in climbing: 1. You aren’t trying hard enough. Yep, that’s right, you just don’t give it 100%. Most people simply don’t realise how hard they can try. Don’t believe me? It’s been proven

How much training can you handle?

2008-04-30T20:46:00.000+01:00

Something that people ask constantly is how much training should I do? How often can I climb? Of course the main worry in the back of folk’s minds is injury. It’s a constant trade off between training hard enough to make an overload and giving your body too much to recover from between sessions and descending to the point of chronic tissue damage. The answer is of course ‘it depends’. It depends

Breathing in climbing

2008-03-13T00:54:00.002Z

Something that people occasionally ask about in climbing is breathing during difficult climbing – how important is it and how can it help your climbing? Obviously we need to breath almost constantly and during exercise of any kind its even more important to fulfil it’s most basic function of delivering enough oxygen and removing carbon dioxide so metabolism can keep happening at the desired rate

Start reading the rock (and never stop)

2008-01-24T12:28:00.000Z

Coaching is really great fun. I don’t have experience coaching other sports but I’m guessing climbing must be pretty interesting as sports go. In climbing there are so many skills and abilities that create the performance. Meeting climbers who are at a high level you see that many of these skills are a prerequisite and don’t even need mentioning. With these climbers the challenge is to get them

Alcohol and training

2008-01-24T12:05:00.001Z

Brendan asks… “I've just read your reply to an OCC question about how drinking coffee affects endurance training. Something I've wondered about is how another drink - booze! - affects performance. I assume drinking is not beneficial to climbing full-stop, but is it particularly bad to drink soon after a session/on the same day? I often climb on a Friday then go out for a few beers that evening,

Five year Audit

2008-01-23T16:41:00.000Z

Following on from my last post about setting up the conditions to get to work on your climbing, and enjoyment of it, here is a practical one minute step to deciding whether your training is correct. It's so brain dead obvious you might scoff. Be warned. Write down a very brief description (or just think back) of where and how much you climbed, what type of activities this included and who with.

Planning your training - rule 0

2008-01-23T15:34:00.000Z

Freedom > success (not the other way round) Planning your training starts with organising your time to allow time and space to improve at the skill of climbing. Don’t work now to get freedom later. It won’t happen. Find work that gives you the freedom now, and that at least gives you the chance to start now and not later (later is too late). Understand that this is not a mythical easy option.

Lactic Acid woes

2008-01-16T20:31:00.000Z

Nik asks… is there any way of decreasing the production of lactic acid? I’ve heard that drinking a lot of water while doing a long climbing session flushes the lactic acid out, shaking your arms, breathing deeply while on a route, not drinking caffeine as this dilates the blood vessels, Any thoughts or advice? The answer to this, frustratingly, is that it’s not really the question that needs

Top 5 ways to avoid pully injuries

2007-12-18T23:41:00.000Z

I've seen that my posts on A2 pulley injuries on my sites are really popular and get loads of feedback and extra questions. During next year I'll be writing more on this subject and really welcome your case studies either by commenting on the posts directly or emailing me. Phil emailed today to ask about good way to prevent finger injuries. I've written some advice in an extended article on my

Davemacleod.com new stuff

2007-12-15T22:46:00.000Z

Some of you will know that I recently wrote an e-book called ‘How to Climb Hard Trad’. I spent a long time on it trying to explain clearly the mental, physical and practical tactics you can employ to climb harder trad routes, whatever your level. Its got detailed sections on how to be bold, how to climb safely, even when really close to your limit on trad climbs and how to tip the scales much

3 Periodisation Pitfalls

2007-12-15T22:39:00.001Z

Following on from my last post you can see that the raw basics of how to plan a spell of training are pretty simple. Here are some common ways that people go wrong with planning their training: 1. Taking avoidable detraining periods – No training at all is bad news. You lose all the gains you worked so hard to get. When life gets in the way for a spell, maintain your current level with just a

Periodisation in 4 sentences

2007-12-15T22:37:00.000Z

‘Periodisation’, or the rather fancy term for planning your training over days, weeks or even years is something lots of folk ask me about. Either you have a trip in 6 weeks, 6 months or you just want to mix up your training so you don’t plateau and stop improving. Most people with an interest in training know that it’s important to make temporal changes in the training activity you do to avoid

24 pull ups

2007-12-15T22:34:00.000Z

Last time I checked, I could do 24 pull-ups on a bar. A tiny amount for a climber at my grade. Fortunately, being super strong at one strength measure is not so important as being equally strong at holding onto any type of hold. Last time I checked, I could do 24 pull-ups on a bar, on crimps, on slopers and on openhanded pockets. Those who are super strong in one area but weak on another might

Notes from my Training Diary

2007-12-07T01:35:00.000Z

Feeling light on A Muerte 9a, Siurana I don’t often talk much about my own training on this blog, but in my ongoing long term experiments on myself I’ve seen a really interesting trend this year. I’ve always held the view that having a low body weight was really important for hard climbing, especially sport climbing. It used to be in fashion but then seemed to go out of fashion for a long while

Deciding about specificity

2007-12-07T01:25:00.000Z

Alex just sent me an email: “Obviously you'll get loads of questions so probably can't reply to most but both a question and article suggestion.. Specifity is often mentioned in talk about training, but so is working weaknesses. Obviously weaknesses are often the aspects we use least in our outdoor climbing, so how would you advise splitting time between each of these? Eg. I mainly climb onsight

Cold Treatment revisited

2007-12-05T21:31:00.000Z

A great many of you have commented, emailed etc to say that my videocast and articles on finger pulley injuries were helpful – thanks to all of you. It’s been really interesting that so many of you have tried the cold treatment I suggested with such positive effects. I thought I’d let you know that I’ve heard feedback from someone who has used the cold treatment (same protocol – 30 mins immersed

Fear of Falling

2007-11-30T18:32:00.000Z

One of the main things I hear again and again from climbers I coach or climb with is that they are limited by fear of falling. In fact I’d say that maybe 2 out 3 of these climbers could walk out and climb their short-medium term goal routes tomorrow if they could eliminate this excessive fear in their heads. What a waste of ability. Let’s take a look at the issue. When we talk about fear of

Ken asked about translating strength training

2007-09-30T18:14:00.000+01:00

Ken asked: “I'd like to know your comments on adjusting to the improvements and effects of training. I've been following a training program for about 4 years now, and I've noticed a repeating pattern: When I find that I've gotten myself into a new power zone following a training cycle, it seems like I have to relearn my body. Even though I'm foremost a technical climber, the added sense of power

Potential vs Track Record

2007-08-20T20:35:00.000+01:00

What happens if you focus all your energy on getting strong and putting hours in at the climbing wall? People say “Wow, that guy/girl has so much potential. They are so strong, they could do something really hard” What happens if you balance your energy between training and fine tuning your performance tactics and risk losing training time by staying out there and finishing projects or trying

Energy - cycles

2007-07-29T16:37:00.001+01:00

You may have noticed that the posting frequency on this blog has gone down recently. Sure, it's partly because I had some other work that needed to get done (I've had some major changes in my life to adjust to recently). But partly because I needed the time to think, and not write about my ideas for a wee while. I've made a bit of progress in this area, and you'll here more on this blog when

New research review - Audry Morrison interview

2007-07-06T22:33:00.000+01:00

Audry Morrison and Volker Shoffl have just published a review of the available research relevant to young climbers in the British Journal of Sport Medicine As well as collating some interesting data on studies carried out within climbing, it also draws on other useful sources of information to give us a better picture of the effect of climbing and training on the young body. Not everyone has

Eccentric training notes

2007-06-13T10:57:00.000+01:00

Phil just emailed to ask: “Dave, I have been reading about DOMS and eccentric loading being a cause, which lead me to look up eccentric exercises (EE). Being a triathlete and climber I was mostly interested in exercises for the legs, but it got me thinking if there was a good case for climbers to find arm exercises. Clearly with down-climbing the muscles are being loaded eccentrically,

Dieting - eating more with less calories - how to manage it

2007-06-11T16:22:00.000+01:00

Climbers who are trying to lower their weight to climb better are rightly always on the lookout or strategies that actually work to make the process any more achievable. The appetite is a powerful adversary against will to get to a low body fat percentage, and for most they’ll never win the battle. A lot of the weapons in the dieters armoury focus on the fat and carbohydrate composition of food