Wednesday 9 December 2009

9 out of 10 is in the post to us



Our of stock of my book 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes has been shipped and on the way to us, with any luck the DHL man might be at our door with a pallet soon. Thanks to all of you who pre-ordered already!

(click on the pic for a bigger image of the cover jacket)


After I posted the contents list a couple of days ago, various comments on the post were curious and eager for me to give more details on what a couple of intriguingly titled sections were about. Briefly:

To anonymous commenter - The book is definitely about climbing, but improving at climbing goes fastest and farthest when the climbing fits well with many other parts of life. A lot of improving at sport is about setting up the right circumstances, attitudes and approaches to clear the path in front of you. So I wouldn’t say the book is about life, but it does make several observations about the elements of life that lead to good performance in sport. Some them are extremely subtle or small, but have huge effects. So many books on training, sport science, coaching, sports medicine and other aspects related to sport miss what seemed to me the biggest single thing I learned from 6 years study of sport science - that the athlete is a person, and to improve in sport there is no area of the person’s life that does not influence the performance.

To second anon. - ‘The first thing to understand’ section is about change in any aspect of your routine, be it massive (like your career or base) or miniscule. It describes how climbers and people in general deal with change or the possibility of it, and how this accelerates or stunts their progress.

‘The truth about famous climbers’ section is clears up a massive misunderstanding about top climbers that is extremely easy to make without seeing more than we normally get to.

‘Fingerboard rules’ is a comprehensive run down of good practice, routines and common errors in using fingerboards, who they help and in what circumstances, and how some simple errors kill off the potential benefits.

‘How to get light without pain’ refers to the correct way to lose weight to reach an ideal body composition without the constant hunger, frustration, dejection and ultimately failure that accompanies most attempts to adjust weight downwards.

Haston is a very old (in athletic terms) climber performing at world class level and Oddo is an extremely young climber performing at a similar level. This doesn’t happen nearly so much in other sports. I’ve explained why it’s this way in climbing, and how you can take advantage of this.


7 comments:

  1. I have just ordered the book. I always value your words in blog, and so I have no doubt your book is excellent, Dave!
    Now I have a comment: it would be better to state the title of the book (instead of, or perhaps better in addition to, "My Book") in the shop section of your website, partly because that would give the search engines more discrete information, and partly because that would give the vital information for the people who reads the website in more restricted environment, such as, that disables the image loading.
    Congrats for your book again,
    Masa

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  2. Thanks for answering the questions I posted (anonymous #2).

    your honesty about climbing and your relationship to it is appreciated I'm sure by many more than just myself. props to staying inspired and persevering, and communicating this process to others.

    question: how long would a book order to the US take to get here?

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  3. I'm really looking forward to reading this
    Cheers
    Iain

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  4. dave,
    you have got to make some t-shirts with that Gorilla on the front! Awesome.

    Ben

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  5. Dave,

    This sounds very interesting. I'm really looking forward reading this. I've had great benefit (and still have) from your injury articles. I really like your thorough and thoughtful style of writing so my expectations for the book are high ;-)

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  6. Hi Dave, looking forward to the book, always value your opinion.

    RE: Other parts of life affect your climbing...but also vice-versa. From climbing I've learnt the value of staying positive. I've started applying this to my squash game and found the results surprising. Just being bright and positive makes things happen I didn't think possible. Beat a guy last night I never used to get a game off; just buy assuming everything I did was right.

    Look forward to your reflections on similar ideas in the book.

    Cheers.

    Evan

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  7. I think you should make a t-shirt with that guerilla on it too! That would be awesome!

    Jordan

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