"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.
In the video I talk a lot about fingerboarding. The fingerboard I designed and I'm using in the video is this one, The Edge.
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. The paper I reference is this one by Keith Baar and colleagues.
5 weeks ago, I had an accident playing with my daughter and separated my shoulder. I did it properly as well; a grade 3 separation tearing all three ligaments which join my right collar bone to my scapula. It was a classic shoulder separation scenario - diving into a roll but instead landing on the point of my shoulder. Seeing my reflection in the car window was all I needed to know what had happened (it was obvious!), but nonetheless I headed off to get an x-ray and exam to confirm. My clavicle was elevated with a marked deformity across the top of my shoulder.
I’ve always counted myself lucky not to have had any traumatic shoulder injuries. There is a first time for everything. On the first two days it was so painful it took me 30 minutes to get sat up in bed. Taping it had me yelping like a kid! Obviously at this point I was not too happy about the situation.
But even by the third day I was able to make some tiny movements. By the beginning of the second week, the immobilisation of my arm in the sling had devastated my arm and shoulder muscles, which looked (to my eye at least) tiny. It is always shocking how fast immobilised limbs waste away, especially when it is your own limb.
Step deformity at the AC joint (the end of my collar bone)
With my daily exercises, I did everything I could to progress the return of range of motion, strength and muscle mass. At first, I could only really do 1-2 hours per day, but by the third week that was more like three in total. Early on I was just doing a ton of grip and pinch exercises, biceps curls with my arm supported, internal/external rotations with tubing or my other hand for resistance, isometrics at different angles and many more.
It got noticeably better every day, although there were of course still some mornings when I felt rotten, and some evenings when I sloped off to bed exhausted and sore at 7pm. Speaking of bed, the exercises were as always only half the picture. These days I am rather more careful to enforce a minimum amount of sleep, go after a far higher maximum and I’m much more careful with my diet now I have better knowledge on what I’m optimising for. While its not possible to know just how much all of these things make a difference, here is the output so far.
At five weeks I have fairly decent range of motion, but still a bit to go to achieve the last few degrees of pre-injury flexion and especially crossing my arm across my chest. I can manage about 12 pull-ups pain free and can now tolerate short climbing sessions on a 45 degree board doing moves which are fairly easy for me.
I can’t yet tolerate long training sessions, any really hard moves at 45 degrees, forceful ‘gaston’ press moves, very dynamic jumps on steep ground, or other heavy loading of the AC joint with my arm overhead. To me that feels like excellent progress, and I’m still seeing daily improvement. I’m sure I’m not the first climber with this injury so I’ll report back as a few more weeks pass and see what I can manage or cant manage.
Although it’s obviously a massive pain in the ass to have an unexpected traumatic injury I could have done without. But once it has happened, it’s happened. You have to deal with it head on. Its a good opportunity for me on three fronts. First, it allows me to test out the principles I detailed in Make or Break and continue to build on them. Second, it’s allowed me to work on some other projects that needed done. Thankfully the weather has also been rotten for the past month anyway, so there is no FOMO for the mountain crags going on. Finally, as always it allows me to go back to square one and assess my weaknesses to work on in training, and put some proper time into addressing these without the constant drive to just go out climbing all the time.
So let’s see what the next month brings. It would be doing well to be worse than the previous one.
Completing my hard yellow circuit on the board for the first time yesterday. A small training milestone for the summer. If you would like to join me for some coaching at my own wall, I just announced some dates for coaching in December, and then in February. The details are here.
As the wet summer continues, my plans of mountain trad projects continue to wait in limbo and my body is broken on a daily basis with tough training. This is all good, I am fit! I've also used the time to tie up some other skills I've wanted to learn and am now a qualified drone pilot! I got a day in Binnien Shuas and revisited a potential project I tried to abseil down about 5 years ago but gave up on. I say tried to abseil down - the line goes through a huge barrel shaped too system, and I couldn’t get any gear in to pull myself into the wall and get a look at it. Now armed with better aiding skills and kit, I managed fine this time and cleaned it up. It looks around 8a with fantastic moves and a thank-god cam near the crux, although the crux will be placing the cam and managing to keep going!
I was hoping to get in there today for a lead, but it was rain 15, dave 0. Meanwhile, back in the wall where I have been racking up the circuits each day, I have been making some progress, It’s always hard to tell how much progress, since I have not had a rest day in some time, but you get clues. The clues seem promising but not mind-blowing. The main issue has been the need to eat some carbs to fuel the anaerobic sessions. My body does not get on well with this and so I’ve been working hard to arrive at a strategy to keep these to an absolute minimum required for specific sessions. Manipulating the amounts and timing has been tricky and the trial and error process has contained a lot of error! I’ll get it right yet though and I continue to learn much about this, and about how my body responds to different regimens.
Eating in my own personalised formulation of a ketogenic diet while I was only bouldering was both highly effective and very easy for me (once I had learned quite a lot of prerequisite knowledge and corrected various early mistakes). I know many people don’t get on well with it. My hunch is that this is down to lack of knowledge or planning in many cases rather than inherent unsuitability of the strategy. Managing inclusion of some CHO in the diet for CHO-based anaerobic training is probably very easy for some, but not for me, and even small amounts kicks on many of the problems that led me to the ketogenic diet in the first place. I did wonder whether maintaining this style of eating would actually be the better end of the trade off for me for sport climbing too. At the moment, it looks like the optimal route for me will be some sort of periodised balance between minimal carbs during anaerobic sessions and moving back into ketosis as quickly as possible at other times could be the best. I emphasise ‘could be’ - I am not yet sure. What the optimal regimen will look like I’m not sure either. I am sure that it will take fairly meticulous planning though.
The trouble with experiments of any kind in sports science, especially when they include both training changes and nutrition is that so many variables are moving at the same time. Attributing an effect, positive or negative, to one change is an exercise in something between futility and careful guesswork. Was it the sleep, the protein, the fat, the carbs, the type of food, the training, the conditions, your mental state or a whole host of things you hadn’t even thought of that were responsible for what you observe?
Overall, it’s fair to say I have stepped up my game in all aspects of the organisation of my training though. One thing can always throw a spanner in the works regarding training is life outside of climbing. I’ve had a couple of ups and downs outside of climbing lately. Being totally honest, I’ve stopped a couple of training sessions after warming up purely because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to train (putting it mildly). Sometimes training can actually be an outlet for difficulties in ‘real’ life. In fact I’d say climbing has been utterly essential in getting me through some tough times. Sometimes though, I’ve just not been able to do it.
Completing my hard yellow circuit on the board for the first time yesterday. A small training milestone for the summer. If you would like to join me for some coaching at my own wall, I just announced some dates for coaching in December, and then in February. The details are here.
As the wet summer continues, my plans of mountain trad projects continue to wait in limbo and my body is broken on a daily basis with tough training. This is all good, I am fit! I got a day in Binnien Shuas and revisited a potential project I tried to abseil down about 5 years ago but gave up on. I say tried to abseil down - the line goes through a huge barrel shaped too system, and I couldn’t get any gear in to pull myself into the wall and get a look at it. Now armed with better aiding skills and kit, I managed fine this time and cleaned it up. It looks around 8a with fantastic moves and a thank-god cam near the crux, although the crux will be placing the cam and managing to keep going!
I was hoping to get in there today for a lead, but it was rain 15, dave 0. Meanwhile, back in the wall where I have been racking up the circuits each day, I have been making some progress, It’s always hard to tell how much progress, since I have not had a rest day in some time, but you get clues. The clues seem promising but not mind-blowing. The main issue has been the need to eat some carbs to fuel the anaerobic sessions. My body does not get on well with this and so I’ve been working hard to arrive at a strategy to keep these to an absolute minimum required for specific sessions. Manipulating the amounts and timing has been tricky and the trial and error process has contained a lot of error! I’ll get it right yet though and I continue to learn much about this, and about how my body responds to different regimens.
Eating in my own personalised formulation of a ketogenic diet while I was only bouldering was both highly effective and very easy for me (once I had learned quite a lot of prerequisite knowledge and corrected various early mistakes). I know many people don’t get on well with it. My hunch is that this is down to lack of knowledge or planning in many cases rather than inherent unsuitability of the strategy. Managing inclusion of some CHO in the diet for CHO-based anaerobic training is probably very easy for some, but not for me, and even small amounts kicks on many of the problems that led me to the ketogenic diet in the first place. I did wonder whether maintaining this style of eating would actually be the better end of the trade off for me for sport climbing too. At the moment, it looks like the optimal route for me will be some sort of periodised balance between minimal carbs during anaerobic sessions and moving back into ketosis as quickly as possible at other times could be the best. I emphasise ‘could be’ - I am not yet sure. What the optimal regimen will look like I’m not sure either. I am sure that it will take fairly meticulous planning though.
The trouble with experiments of any kind in sports science, especially when they include both training changes and nutrition is that so many variables are moving at the same time. Attributing an effect, positive or negative, to one change is an exercise in something between futility and careful guesswork. Was it the sleep, the protein, the fat, the carbs, the type of food, the training, the conditions, your mental state or a whole host of things you hadn’t even thought of that were responsible for what you observe?
Overall, it’s fair to say I have stepped up my game in all aspects of the organisation of my training though. One thing can always throw a spanner in the works regarding training is life outside of climbing. I’ve had a couple of ups and downs outside of climbing lately. Being totally honest, I’ve stopped a couple of training sessions after warming up purely because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to train (putting it mildly). Sometimes training can actually be an outlet for difficulties in ‘real’ life. In fact I’d say climbing has been utterly essential in getting me through some tough times. Sometimes though, I’ve just not been able to do it.
During July I was mostly to be found here in my wall, running many a lap.
After a successful couple of days in Early June visiting the lake and climbing Return of the King (E9), I returned for another quick trip of three days. On the first day I made the most of the uninspiring weather and repeated The Keswickian (E8 7a) in a couple of hours work. Unfortunately I was rained off the other two days.
I decided not to go on an alpine big wall trip this summer and instead stay in Scotland to try and climb some of the great mountain trad projects I have here, especially on Ben Nevis, where I have not climbed on in summer since I did Echo Wall way back in 2008!
Unfortunately, I have picked the wrong summer, and my gamble has not paid off. The last part of June and all of July has been very wet and poor and I’ve not been able to get on the projects in the west. Never mind - I’m used to being adaptable and trying to make the best of the situation to get ahead for the next goal.
On my horizon is the sport climbing season in the late autumn. I always like to set myself various all-rounds challenges that are fun to try and focus my energies. After last winter’s successful focus on bouldering, I wondered if I could climb an 8C boulder, 9a sport route and a really hard Scottish mixed route in one year. I’m not at all confident I can do it (no climber ever has, to my knowledge), which is the point - I want to push well out of my comfort zone. With the 8C boulder ticked, next up I would like to climb a long endurance 9a, probably in Spain, if I can turn myself into an endurance climber quickly enough.
I know I’ll have to train in a very organised way to manage this, so I have written myself a very detailed training program. Although I’ve done this many times for other climbers, I’ve generally trained myself on a flexible basis because I’ve focused on going outside climbing whenever the weather is good as my first priority, and just fitted in training whenever it rains. This can work well up to a certain level and is a good option if you are able to keep a good working record of your training load and priorities. Not many people can/do.
Perhaps the awful weather in July has galvanised me to take a more long term view focused on the trip. Not to mention the success I had with doing my winter goal of climbing an 8C boulder with this approach. During July itself, I trained most days on my board, building a base of endurance and general conditioning, on which to build upon during September and October.
Full stretch on the reach crux of Nuclear Nightmare 8a+ on Creag Nan Cadhag near Gairloch.
I’ve snatched the rare dry days in the west of Scotland to tick off some of the harder sport routes in the north west. First, Remember to Roll (8b) and Stalks 8a+ Creag nan Luch. In the past week I had a couple of days at Creag nan Cadhag and ticked off Game Over (8a+) and Nuclear Nightmare (8a+) as well as flashes of the other 7cs on the wall. All great routes and great to be able to just turn up and climb sport routes in Scotland without having to equip and clean them first! Kudos to the equippers.
I can definitely feel my month of base training has done something and I have made some progress already. Looking at my training program is slightly terrifying though. I’ll just have to see if I have judged the training and recovery correctly. Already I am running into some issues; my right brachioradialis is complaining a little. I do get some aches here on and off, maybe every couple of years, and usually it passes if I take my recovery seriously and make sure I complete my antagonist workouts. Ongoing monitoring and adjustment is essential for any training program, since life never works out as planned.
I’ve planned the training as far as my sport climbing trip in November, and have a first crack at some hard routes then. If I get on well, I’ll switch straight onto tool training for the mixed season. It seems so far away, but it’s not. On with the training!
Climbing Stalks 8a+ on Creag nan Luch. I also climbed Remember to Roll 8b just to the right, back in June. Both fantastic routes which can be climbed in the rain.
Blair Fyffe on Whip and Ride, 7c, on Creag Nan Luch. I managed to get the flash of this great route shortly afterwards.
Video still of climbing Practice of the Wild (Font 8C) in Magic Wood last week.
The footage of Tyler Landman doing the second ascent of Practice of the Wild was what first inspired me to visit Magic Wood in 2012. Obviously I’d already heard about it, as ‘Chris Sharma’s hardest boulder problem’. I’d heard about Chris’s method for the last move - a wild all points off dyno across the roof. Landman looked so dynamic and strong on it and the climbing looked so good. It it was an exemplary piece of hard climbing. I had to go there.
But not for Practice of the Wild - at Font 8c and one the hardest problems in the world according to Daniel Woods who also repeated it, it was too hard for me. Although I do boulder for quite a few months in the year, sometimes as much as 6, I’ve never got much beyond a handful of Font 8Bs. On my 2012 visit, feeling in good shape for me, I did manage two 8B+s (New Base Line and Mystic Stylez) which I was very surprised and delighted with.
Of course bouldering grades do tend to be a bit stiffer in the UK and neither of these felt as hard as some of my own problems in Glen Nevis such as Seven of Nine. But operating pretty much on your own, it’s easy to get lost with grades, and I frequently do. I’ll give myself the excuse of not doing one climbing discipline for long enough to get an idea, and stick to it.
In 2012 I did try Practice of the Wild for a session, and confirmed that it was indeed far too hard for me. I couldn’t do any of the crux moves. None. But that was sort of irrelevant. Because I was inspired by it, which is all that really matters. I’m fully accepting that when you try something hard, you might never succeed. If that wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be hard, would it? So who cares whether it’s too hard, so long as it drives your motivation.
I visited Magic Wood again in 2013 for a week (of warm and wet weather). The hardest thing I climbed was 8A. Ridiculous as it is to say, the best thing about the trip was just to stand and look at Practice of the Wild again, and think.
Climbing Dark Sakai (8B) last week. I'd tried it before in October but tweaked my finger on a nasty pocket at the start. This time I could do it first try after a quick reacquaintance.
In the past year or so, I’d gone through two ankle surgery rehabs, a big chunk of the year on crutches and was looking at another surgery. I was 36 and after so much time just trying to be able to walk and climb anything, the idea of reaching a new level of Font 8C seemed laughable. A joke. I looked at the problem and even in my dreamy inner thoughts I felt there was no chance, ever. Don’t kid yourself on MacLeod.
For quite a while I accepted this. Actually it was part of a wider shift in my thinking at the time. I was really trying to come to terms with my loss of form after the surgeries. I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it and was trying to find the best way forward. For a time it seemed like I should accept that upward progress in sport climbing or bouldering was just over for me. As I wrote in Make or Break, I do feel that almost every serious battle scar you pick up in life changes your constraints. It changes the rules of the game for you, sometimes tipping the scales against you. If you are unprepared to push back against this and still fail, it may be better to leave the game. Eventually I realised this was not me. I do still enjoy trying to improve at climbing so much, that playing against poor odds is still worth it for me.
Given some time to recover from the surgeries, I naturally felt this black and white way of thinking melt away a bit. The reasons why I couldn’t keep improving seemed less important when I could get on with a daily routine of actually training and going climbing, ticking routes again, even if they were not hard ones.
Some footage of me climbing my model of Practice on my board in March
So with some positive feelings returning I made a statement of intent by building a model of Practice of the Wild on my board. It was a pretty good one! At first, I couldn’t do any of the moves. After several sessions, I could do two of them individually, then another, then another. But that’s where the progress basically ended. By last September, at my strongest I could string two moves together (of seven). At this rate, I’d maybe climb the model when I was 45?! I’d have to hope it was harder than the real thing. Actually I knew it wasn’t.
And so I knew I needed another ingredient, not an edge, but a supercharger on my climbing standard. You don’t get many of them at 37 (without crossing boundaries of legality and sporting fairness). But you do if you are not thin. I’ve never been a thin climber, and always struggled to keep my body fat % below about 15% (putting me firmly in the outlier category at the high fat end of the Font 8B+ or harder cohort). For reasons I couldn’t fully understand (even now I still only have fluid hypotheses) it was getting harder and harder for me to even tread water in this battle. I still had a hunch that somewhere beneath my tyre was a potential Font 8C climber.
So although this aspect of my preparation clearly would be the linchpin, the trouble with it was that I’d already thrown every single piece of advice coming from sports nutrition at it already, and failed. I’d slowly, depressingly failed for two decades. So how might I suddenly succeed? I’m sorry to break the narrative and potentially spoil the read at this point, but the ‘how’ what came next I’m going to save for a dedicated blog post (well, actually massive essay). Please forgive me for this, but it’s such a controversial topic that I am very concerned that I might be taken out of context, or seen as being flippant or glossing over important details in such an important issue. Also, and not least because the approach I took was precisely the one that many nutritionists warn is a path to outright failure in sport performance. So if you are interested in the ‘how’, it’s coming. For now, here’s what happened:
Phase one of me intervention was reading around 20 books and many hundreds of scientific papers and hundreds more webpages, so I had a handle on what I was doing. In phase two, I easily lost 3.5kgs in less than one month and my climbing standard took an immediate jump. I didn’t really get to test this other than on my board since it was the start of the winter. In phase 2, I maintained my new lower weight and felt great in training with much better energy and much to my surprise a few other long term health issues cleared up as well. During this time I managed to climb my model of Practice of the Wild. So I made it harder so I couldn’t do one of the first moves again and built up to being able to just climb it once at my limit.
In phase three of my dietary changes I dropped another 2.5Kgs, still feeling great and just before my trip to Magic Wood in April I could run laps on the model! When I arrived in Magic Wood I headed straight for Practice. I was somewhat bleary eyed after the long drive across Germany, but I could immediately feel I was much stronger on the moves. But it was on the second session, after a night’s sleep that reality hit - I could link it straight away to the last move! A huge leap in progress, and more than that a realisation that this was not a joke project. I could do this.
Since the start holds were still quite wet I spent time practicing the finishing big dyno a few times. On the third time I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder while holding the swing. “Oh no! Surely I’m not going to get injured now. Not now!!!” It didn’t feel that bad, but not good either. In hindsight I think I just scraped a rotator cuff tendon a bit. But I was worried it might be a SLAP tear. Either way I was terrified of doing the move that way again.
So one night while it snowed about a foot, I broke trail into the wood, set up my lights and worked out another method. A huge cross through stab to a crimp, and then I could get the jug statically. It was maybe a tiny bit harder, but I could do the move several times in isolation.
I had one more session of redpoints to the last move every time. One time I held it and my lower hand pinged off. I knew it could happen next session. But I also knew this could get harder psychologically - playing defensively creates pressure. When all you have to do is not blow your chance, somehow this becomes much harder to avoid!
Sure enough, next session I felt inexplicably a few % weaker. Two mistake riddled brawls to the last move, falling weakly. One fall from lower down. Then a hole opened in my finger. It was unravelling! I’d surely need two days to let the hole heal up, then the rain was coming. Practice of the Wild can stay wet for weeks at a time. I spent half and hour repeatedly doing the last move, systematically trying every tweak in the movement I could think of. I came upon a small improvement. If I pulled up a little higher and went for the move without dropping down so much (more of a snatch than a lunge), it felt a tiny bit more solid. I went for a walk. Looking at my shredded fingers, I figured I wanted one more try that day from the start. If I was going to take two days off and potentially more after the rain, what did it matter if my fingers were totally trashed?
Whatever happened in that moment, the pressure of anticipation for that session dissipating, the walk warming me up a bit, my skin hitting that sweet spot of friction just before it gets too thin, whatever, everything clicked. As soon as I pulled on I felt good. The moves flowed by and I arrived and the last move not feeling anything. It wasn’t until I felt my fingers bite into the crimp that I woke up and realised it was on. I breathed to force me to take my time setting my feet, and then grabbed the massive jug.
Done.
Video still of going for the jug on the last move on the successful attempt. I'll post up a video of it when it's ready.
None of this matters to anyone except me. And only two things about it really matter to me. Firstly, Practice of the Wild is a brilliant piece of climbing, and by being hard enough to give me a good battle, I was able to enjoy it all the more. Secondly, I had to make real progress in my climbing to do it. Well okay one more thing matters, I had to use my brain to figure out how to make the progress. The battle was won while sitting on my ass at 2am with square eyes reading obscure papers on cellular metabolism. There is more to climbing than just pulling on holds.
Footnote: I’m always a bit sensitive writing about weight and climbing. Personally, I think writing about it and being open is much better and healthier than being secretive. But I know disordered eating and inappropriate food restriction happens in climbing and it’s a problem. In my view we’ve got to be open about when it’s appropriate to look at weight as a priority for training for climbing. As I said above, I have a post coming on the ‘how’ of my training intervention. It’s a highly controversial and polarised topic that needs handling with care. So even in that post I’ll be urging you to listen to the whole body of research out there, not just one voice. But from this post if you take anything away from it regarding weight in climbing, let it be these three simple points:
1. I spent months and probably 1000s of hours studying vast quantities of scientific research and discussion before doing anything.
2. I used a strategy for weight loss which does not involve being hungry, or anything other than eating high quality real food.
3. I am a 37 year old male who had a tyre around my waist. My individual story is relevant to me, not you. Fat loss tends to be effective in climbers with excessive amounts of fat. It can be seriously performance negative (at the very least) in those who do not carry excess fat, or people who are growing or have other health conditions. This leads back to point one - start from an informed position.
Judging by the number of books we’ve been stuffing into the wee postbox in Inverroy since January 1st, there are a lot of climbers out there with new year’s resolutions to change your habits and up your level. Great! Let me know how you get on. I would say ‘good luck’, but that would be irrelevant. You’ll make your own luck, or you won’t.
Both 9 out of 10 climbers and Make or Break are in part behavioural science books. They explain how having willpower is not really the centre of behaviour change that leads youth better climbing performance, or getting back to full form after an injury. Rather, changing the environment helps you to make the changes you need without having to constantly force it by willing yourself to do something against your natural tendencies.
My own new year’s resolution is pretty simple - to get more sleep. 8 hours minimum and 10 hours after a heavy training day. I think it has been the missing link in my own training for a long time. I’m ashamed to say I’ve probably squandered the effort of many a training session by not giving my body the chance to benefit from it in recovery, simply by not sleeping enough.
As not-so-subtly hinted in 9/10’s title, this training error might be something you should think about too. I dare say there are tons of climbers out there who spend ages researching and doing different training regimes, only to waste all of that time and effort by under-sleeping and missing out on the gains from that training.
Depending on what mood and mindset you apply to the problem, you could see it as a super simple thing to change. Just go to f**kin bed early! Simple. But of course real life is not so simple. You have to be organised. Being organised requires stepping back from the actual schedule and taking a dispassionate look at what activities there are in your life that are unnecessary. Stepping out of your own bubble is essential to do this. For instance, a lot of folk would have more time for all sorts of things simply by deleting the Facebook app from their phone.
Is Facebook undermining your performance in sport? is commuting time? Is the fact you haven’t build your training board at home yet? Is your commute, or your phone (or whatever it is in your life) really more important to you than your climbing dreams? It’s your choice.
When I designed and built my climbing wall last year, I had two purposes in mind:
1. To get ridiculously strong.
2. To coach other climbers there, in a nice environment with everything I’d want to be able to give good coaching.
I was too busy writing Make or Break last year to start offering coaching again, and this year has been rather taken up with recovering from surgery and then going on climbing trips to make up for the lost time.
But finally I’m excited to say I have my first MacLeod wall climbing coaching sessions arranged. I’ll be running them over three days of the Fort William Mountain Festival in February 2016. I’ll run two days of sessions on rock climbing technique and one day focused on dry tooling/winter climbing technique. The content is aimed at any climbing ability level and there will be up to 6 climbers in each session so you can come with friends and partners as folk often do. In the video and pics you can get a taste of the wall.
Afterwards I hope you’ll join me at the excellent Fort William Mountain Festival for speakers and films which are always totally inspiring. All the workshop (and festival) details are on the festival site here. Best book a place soon, they do tend to sell out.
Post surgery day 2. Anaesthetic drip disconnected, time for the training to start again.
I’ve been getting really motivated for training lately. Which is just as well, because I’m about to have a 6 week solid block of it during the spring. The reason? Ankle surgery.
Yes, more ankle surgery. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve had surgery on both ankles in the past two years. In both cases this was for damage to the edge of the cartilage surface of my ankle joints. By far the worst injury was happened in this accident when I was lowered off the end of a rope. The microfracture surgery I had did work to an extent, but the nature of doing tons of walking on mountains has meant the lesion, although small, has not remained stable and has got a little worse. Knowing what I know now, I also suspect that some of the advice I was given for the post operative period was, well, sub standard and could well have contributed to it not working as well as it could have.
So I’ve tried to put my money where my mouth is and follow my own advice in my book, seeking the opinion of the best ankle surgeons in the world to see if there was anything else that could be done to protect my ankles from getting any worse. And there is. After speaking to surgeons based in Cambridge, Malaysia, Newcastle and then Munich, I’ve established that a newly developed procedure has a good probability of making the ankle feel better and protecting its health in the longer term.
All of this has taken 6 months to organise and considerable research and legwork on my part, not to mention working to meet the costs of the treatment. But now I approach the start line and I am in Munich and had my surgery yesterday. It all seemed to go fine and I feel ready to hit the fingerboard today. Nothing is certain in sports medicine and I know there is always a chance it won’t make much difference. But I still feel I ought to do the best I can now to keep myself well serviced so I am still in good form in the years and decades to come.
The sacrifice in the short term is that I have to do foot-off bouldering only for 6 weeks. Not too much of a sacrifice really. Foot off bouldering has always helped me feel really strong. So now I have a chance to have a good uninterrupted spell of it. During the recovery from my last surgeries, I thought it was good to place my focus onto writing my book. This time, I will have ample time to complete organised daily training as well as draw dinosaurs with Freida. It is kind of ridiculous that it takes leg surgery to make me train properly, but I just like going climbing too much. So let's see what I can do with this opportunity.
As I’m sure you can tell, I’ve set out a plan to make this a positive step in both the short and long term. There is really no reason why I shouldn’t be stronger and fitter for my rock projects by the start of May than I would otherwise be if I’d just been going out winter and rock climbing based on the weather.
The process of organising this treatment was at times demoralising. Having actually arrived at the treatment stage feels like I’ve already come through a tough challenge in many areas. Just trying to get my MRI scans from the NHS was a bureaucratic shambles. Then even in the private sector things although good, were still frustratingly slow. The hardest part however has been finding sources of encouragement.
While I’m recovering I’ll be training 7 days a week on my board, fingerboard, campus board, rings, floor exercises, One foot cycling, swimming, general flexibility work, oh and the surgery rehab work itself! Not sure how I’ll fit it all in. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be in good shape after it. At least I start from a reasonable base of built up fitness. It will be interesting to see if the problems in the video below are no longer hard for me in a couple of months time. One way to find out...
Having come out of the other side of my massive book project and starting to climb regularly again, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of my need to climb and what I take from the activity. I’m aware that for some readers these comments may sound ridiculous, but they are my feelings and so you can take them or leave them - they simply are what they are.
My deprivation from climbing over the past months and years during this project has been relative. I have still climbed more metres of rock and ice than many people have the chance to and I am grateful for that. I’m also aware that the book project has had still greater disruption for my family. This post is not a moan. I understand that everyone has choices to make in their life which have a big mix of positive and negative consequences and then live with them. Nonetheless, whether it seems self-indulgent or not, the relative lack of climbing over the period had a huge effect on me. A negative effect.
Wanting to make the most of each and every possible opportunity in life can be both an advantage and a big problem. Being drawn in several different directions at once is destructive for success at most things that require work and application. I could write posts about all these directions, but in this I’m just writing about the climbing aspect.
Several years ago a climbing journalist interviewed me soon after I climbed Rhapsody at Dumbarton Rock. I remember him commenting after the interview that he still wasn’t really clear why I liked climbing so much. I think he was not seeing the wood for the trees. I don’t climb to notch up first ascents, to complete hard projects, or to be better than anyone else. Spending my time doing these things is the means, not the end. The end is simply the climbing. The hard projects, training and the pushing yourself simply intensifies the experience. If I’ve pushed myself harder than someone else, it’s simply because I enjoy the climbing that much.
So this need to climb is not something that has to be linked to achievements or grades etc. They merely assist in getting the most out of the climbing. In trying to find an analogy for this basic need to climb, I felt it was similar to the need to have the correct body heat. Imagine you were deprived of the heating or clothing to stay warm. You can still function in your activities of daily life, even enjoy good things. But it is just harder to enjoy them while you shiver. If exposed to this over time, you might even adapt to this state to an extent. The discomfort may fade to a dull hue, no longer at the front of your mind. But it is far from eliminated. At the extremes of deprivation, the discomfort would be strong enough to cancel out satisfaction from meeting any other basic needs or comforts.
Over the past three weeks I have been building back up my basic strength and fitness in my climbing wall. I have found that even when feeling rusty in my movements and weak on the small holds, climbing makes me feel that I can deal with the all the other problems in life. But as I’ve got stronger and fitter, I’ve noticed the effect is stronger. This is more than it being nice to be able to climb things I couldn’t before. The actual climbing feels better. More agility, control and confidence, as well as strength.
The book project has been a reminder that since I’m lucky enough to have opportunities to climb, I should take them wherever possible, not just for the direct enjoyment, but for the effects in all parts of life. It's also reminded me to take the time to train and build up to a good performance.
The past few weeks have been varied; film work in front of camera, behind camera, voiceovers in studios, training for summer in the alps, researching for my injuries book and finishing getting all the holds on my wall.
It sounds a bit stupid, but I underestimated how long it would take to actually get all my holds on the wall. And I was grateful to be gifted lots more from friends. Being the slightly maladjusted character I am, I was anxious to finish the project completely before starting to climb on it. I just didn’t want to be climbing on it when it still felt like a building project. So it was really nice to get it all perfect and then start to climb. The only pieces of the puzzle left are the mats which are being made right now. It feels just great to be training. It’s just over a year since I dismantled my wall in my old house, and it’s only after starting to climb on the new one that I’ve truly realised how much I’ve missed it.
Ahhhh. I do like to see projects, of all kinds, complete. Now, what shall I do now? Oh yeah, I was writing a book on injuries wasn’t I...
Between days of setting, training, and book work, we have been making a film for a Glasgow based Geology company called Midland Valley. They make software for structural analysis of geology and have produced a smartphone app for digital mapping in the field. We had a nice couple of days running around the north face of the Ben shooting with them and me abbing down cliffs and getting my phone out instead of doing what I normally do!
Readying the crane above the CIC hut. Photo: Jenny Ellis
Finally needing a climbing rest day I went for another fasted run before breakfast. The weather was fine so I opted for Ben Nevis, straight up the slope from the Glen Nevis road end in a brutally steep glycogen burning continuous climb straight to the summit. Going as fast as I could, I could start to feel the glycogen tank emptying after only 45 minutes, motivation to keep slogging dying off and being replaced by a strong desire to lie down and sleep.
Having a few of these runs in the bag recently is meaning I can now keep going a fair bit better once the tank is empty and I’m making glucose out of body fat. The next 45 minutes to the summit felt predictably hard work, but some good tunes got me through it and all of a sudden strolling over the plateau to the observatory.
I sat down in the cool breeze among the crowd of summitteers, for a few minutes. I couldn’t stay though, I was pretty damn hungry and the sound of many sandwiches being munched all around me was deafening. Get moving!
My legs felt worked but were still strong to bounce back down the boulderfields in a good run and off into Coire Gubishean and onto to upper Steall. Running through Steall I could really feel I was burning fat and stopping running even for a moment to clamber over rocks on jelly legs gave me an overwhelming urge to lie down. So I cruised on happily down the familiar path back to my car and an egg roll in town.
Today, I’m 34. Birthday itinerary: Swimming with the girls, book writing, feeding midges at Steall.
Looking down on Glen Nevis from the slope of justice side of Ben Nevis.
Going for a hill run before breakfast has been a fun and not so serious way to get outside on rest days, look at new crags and burn some ‘Jabba’ as they say in Glasgow. However, in order to run on this type of fuel, one needs the right enzymes. Normally it takes a good four or five runs on jelly legs in a cold sweat to build up enough to be able to keep going without liver glycogen eventually getting raided and everything coming crashing to a halt.
But every year I forget that the body needs some time to produce the right biological tools to run without sugar. I didn’t help myself by doing writing work until 4pm either. So I had a sandwich breakfast to ‘prime the pump’ and headed for the slope directly up the side of Ben Nevis above Polldubh. It’s the highest slope in Britain, no path and steep tussocky heather and boulders all the way. So I figured going in a straight line right up it would be a fine way to cancel out a fair number of cakes.
Swimming up through the bracken of the Polldubh crags passed quickly and I go onto the monster slope above, trying to keep a good heart rate. Everything was fine until fairly high on the Ben I got that tell tale all consuming desire to sit down. I’d made another rookie mistake in timing my tunes wrong for dealing with this situation. I was listening to Bridget Kendal’s World of Ideas. Great food for the brain but not exactly listening to push you through the lactic barrier. I should have known that this kind of thing is for dancing along ridge tops, and that thrash was made for 1300 metres height gain at near max heart rate.
It’s quite amazing. Without the enzymes to turn fat into ATP, nothing happens. You can keep trying to go up, but when the glycogen tank is empty and the reserve fuel pump is not connected, legs don’t work, simple as that. And so I turned on my heel and slithered down crags and boulders into the mugginess of the Glen far below.
Some calories burned at least, if mostly sugar. And the view and the feeling of being actually hungry for your tea is really nice too.
I also wanted to recce this route for a crazy idea I have. And I answered some questions about it! i.e it's not the way to go! As I ran and felt so unfit, while thinking about how unfit I feel on my Steall project. It became clear to me that endurance is really my nemesis. And since endurance is gone before you can say 'bouldering phase', it's a nemesis that keeps coming back.
It would be easier for sure if Scotland had more steep sustained sport routes to keep me going. But that's not really the issue. The problem is that I've had to spend so much time trying to get stronger fingers to be able to do the moves on the routes I want to do, there isn't much time left over to get fitness. For a few brief moments in my climbing career, I've been faintly stamina fit. But most of the time I grunt my way through on sheer tenacity, pumped solid all the way.
I'm feeling the need to experience that feeling of 'le resistance' again, even if it's only for a a couple of special routes.
Hill running was always a discipline I couldn’t get my head round. For the last ten years or so I’ve done a little every year, for one reason alone - to lose weight for hard rock climbing. Left to it’s own, my body settles at a stocky build well too heavy for anything harder than 8c. So a couple of times a year, I tend to do a bit of running to get in shape for something hard in sport climbing or bouldering.
Although it doesn’t even come close to the enjoyment I get from almost any type of climbing, I still enjoy running for a few different reasons. When I lived in Dumbarton in the mid 2000s and was training to get strong enough to climb Rhapsody, I used to do my fingerboarding and endurance circuits each day and then go running on the streets late at night. I used to use it to switch off and remind myself why I was doing all this training. I wasn’t doing the run in a particularly scenic place, so the enjoyment was purely internal. At that time, I used to think of hill runners as crazy. It just seemed so hard and relentless. How could you ever be fit enough to be able to enjoy it. Only later I understood how slowly hill runners (except the real pros of course) run uphill.
Now I live in the mountains I enjoy running primarily for the scenery and terrain. A great formula for me has been to use my runs to explore potential new bouldering spots in the more remote highland glens. Sometimes there are great boulders, sometimes there is just nice scenery and weather. Either way, it is enjoyable and answers a curiosity.
Nice big boulder, a few good easier climbs to go on this.
I particularly enjoy these hill runs if the terrain itself is quite technical; rough paths, rocky ridges or slabs and even some scrambling. I don’t think I could ever sustain long runs on open trails, forestry tracks or roads since having experienced the hill running in the Scottish Highlands. Wild mountain areas all over the world have this opportunity to explore really interesting mountain terrain, unfolding I front of you as you move quickly through it.
Running the other day in Glen Ceitlin on my first run of the spring season, I was reminded that the feeling of running on open mountainside (apart from the real uphill parts) is like floating. It takes so much concentration to move at speed between rocks, tussocks, holes and over streams without falling over. Yet it is not thinking - just immediate, subconscious reaction to the movement sequence demanded from split second to second. Despite having to focus hard, your conscious mind has the chance to sit back, relax and enjoy being there.
Hill running suddenly makes sense when you think of it in these terms - a feeling of flying over the terrain with little conscious effort. It’s obvious really that it would have to hold an enjoyment that was very strong, to be worth all the hardship that goes with it for those who do it all the time. Proper training for top performance in any sport has it’s fair share of grinding hard work doing boring exercises for the rewards. Hard climbing training, despite it’s hardships (lactate, finger skin destroying circuits and repetitive finger strength exercises) still probably has nothing on endurance running in this respect.
It’s true though that such feelings are fleeting. Just as I was floating along, dreamily pondering these ideas while running back down Glen Ceitlin, I misjudged the consistency of the bog ahead and dropped up to my knees in slurping peat porridge, lunging forwards with my momentum to land on my knee on a granite boulder beyond. After rolling around, clutching my knee and moaning for a few minutes, I limped off down the glen. Brought back down to earth.
