For about 6 months I’ve been working with Magnus Mitdbø on a course for his platform Altitude. My course is on movement technique for climbers and it releases in a few days time. If you’d like to see a free video series from the course, focused on footwork, you can check it out here.

Anyway, Magnus said he wanted to come over to Scotland for a couple of days climbing. Despite a stormy forecast, I was determined as always to climb outside. I also really wanted to get on some new routes. We had a wild day trying some projects in Arrochar. I didn't expect the wind to be quite that strong!

It has been a while since I’ve made a how to climb trad video. I think what the series really needed next was a collaboration with someone learning to lead. Mike Boyd had done a short lead on gritstone before, but is still very much in the early stages of his climbing. We met up at Polney Crag and had a great day climbing and the video was a good opportunity to highlight the key aspect that holds most new trad leaders back: solid and consistent movement technique.

It's been a long time since I bought some new holds for the board. It was time for some fresh circuits and I go through my process for setting and designing the layout of the board.

Trad grades - they are inexact, hard to pin down and cause folk lots of confusion. In this video I discuss how I grade trad routes and how I insulate myself from the controversies that often accompany them. I also offer a grade for Echo Wall on Ben Nevis.

A few weeks ago I picked up a mild A2 pulley injury in my finger. As many of you know, I wrote a whole chapter in Make or Break about finger injuries, but I thought I would make an episode showing you how I work around it to keep training despite the finger injury. Obviously, copying exactly what I do here is not the objective - every injury is different. It's about the general principle of working around injuries and how you might go about that. I hope it comes across in the episode that finding workarounds allows you to stay in better shape and remove a lot of the psychological pain of getting injured. I’ll make another video further down the recovery process, and if you have questions, do leave a comment and I’ll try and address them.

The 'quality' of recovery from training will determine the size of your gains. But this is a tricky thing to pin down. In this video I explain what makes a good rest day activity and why rest quantity is always a moving target.

I thought it was about time I made some videos related to your questions about climbing/training. I asked my supporters on Patreon for their questions and picked a few related ones to tackle first:

What would I change or revise in my book 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes?

How I organise and keep track of research?

How I deal with moderation and fuelling on high and low carb diets and the highs and lows of diet experiments?

Some controversial territory as expected. I’ve tried my best to tackle it head on in this episode. There were more questions of course, and I’ll put together some more episodes on them shortly. Thanks everyone for the support and happy new year.

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.

Here is the first of several videos I’d like to make on supplements I don’t take and why. First up is collagen. I’ve seen sports nutritionists say that every climber should be taking it. In this video I take a look at the research and explain why I don’t.

Below are the references from the video:

1.         Thompson, J.C., et al., Origins of the Human Predatory Pattern: The Transition to Large-Animal Exploitation by Early Hominins. Current Anthropology, 2019. 60(1): p. 1-23.

2.         Blasco, R., et al., Bone marrow storage and delayed consumption at Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave, Israel (420 to 200 ka). Science Advances, 2019. 5(10): p. eaav9822.

3.         Stefansson, V., The Fat of the Land. 2016: Youcanprint.

4.         Meléndez-Hevia, E., et al., A weak link in metabolism: the metabolic capacity for glycine biosynthesis does not satisfy the need for collagen synthesis. J Biosci, 2009. 34(6): p. 853-72.

5.         Montagna, C., et al., Autophagy guards tendon homeostasis. Cell Death Dis, 2022. 13(4): p. 402.

6.         Yeung, C.-Y.C., et al., Disruption of day-to-night changes in circadian gene expression with chronic tendinopathy. The Journal of Physiology, 2023. n/a(n/a).

7.         Gersovitz, M., et al., Dynamic aspects of whole body glycine metabolism: influence of protein intake in young adult and elderly males. Metabolism, 1980. 29(11): p. 1087-94.

8.         Gibson, N.R., et al., Endogenous glycine and tyrosine production is maintained in adults consuming a marginal-protein diet. Am J Clin Nutr, 2002. 75(3): p. 511-8.

9.         Shaw, G., et al., Vitamin C-enriched gelatin supplementation before intermittent activity augments collagen synthesis. Am J Clin Nutr, 2017. 105(1): p. 136-143.

10.       Praet, S.F.E., et al., Oral Supplementation of Specific Collagen Peptides Combined with Calf-Strengthening Exercises Enhances Function and Reduces Pain in Achilles Tendinopathy Patients. Nutrients, 2019. 11(1).

11.       Jerger, S., et al., Specific collagen peptides increase adaptions of patellar tendon morphology following 14-weeks of high-load resistance training: A randomized-controlled trial. European Journal of Sport Science, 2023: p. 1-11.

12.       Balshaw, T., et al., The Effect of Specific Bioactive Collagen Peptides on Tendon Remodelling during 15 Weeks of Lower Body Resistance Training. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 2023.

13.       Lee, J., et al., Collagen supplementation augments changes in patellar tendon properties in female soccer players. Front Physiol, 2023. 14: p. 1089971.

14.       Aussieker, T., et al., Collagen Protein Ingestion during Recovery from Exercise Does Not Increase Muscle Connective Protein Synthesis Rates. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2023. 55(10): p. 1792-1802.

15.       Hijlkema, A., et al., The impact of nutrition on tendon health and tendinopathy: a systematic review. J Int Soc Sports Nutr, 2022. 19(1): p. 474-504.

16.       Holwerda, A.M. and L.J.C. van Loon, The impact of collagen protein ingestion on musculoskeletal connective tissue remodeling: a narrative review. Nutrition Reviews, 2022. 80(6): p. 1497-1514.

17.       Farup, J., et al., Whey protein hydrolysate augments tendon and muscle hypertrophy independent of resistance exercise contraction mode. Scand J Med Sci Sports, 2014. 24(5): p. 788-98.

18.       Lis, D.M. and K. Baar, Effects of Different Vitamin C–Enriched Collagen Derivatives on Collagen Synthesis.International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2019. 29(5): p. 526-531.

An evening on the Ben cycling from the hoose and soloing a fantastic long route (Left Hand Route, VS) on the north face.

I was worried about returning to the Mournes with Kev to try Tolerance (E8) for about 17 years LOL!

Hard to imagine a better morning’s climbing than this.

Planning endurance training, like any other aspect of physical training demands that you consider basic physiology, individual characteristics, resources available and the demands of the task you are training for. With all this considered, precise prescriptions are not always possible. In the main, I try to err on the side of identifying key priorities and arranging things to make sure those are well covered. My routine when I was training for Rhapsody was one of the simplest plans I’ve ever followed and was also a time in my climbing when I made some of the most sustained progress (excluding ‘noob gains’ as a beginner). In this video I describe what I did and possible reasons why it worked so well.

I managed to lead the Gorge Crag project in Glen Nevis. I’d seen this line years ago but various things put me off trying it earlier. It’s in the sun too much in summer, seeps a bit in winter, top pitch seemed to have no holds etc… But Julian Lines encouraged me to get on it. As always with projects, once you start…

In the spring, we have to get our leading head back on. Depending on how you choose your routes, mileage can either train or detrain your confidence. In this video, I take you through how I choose climbs that get me ready for bigger leads as the season progresses.

Many climbers are unaware just how much their ability to swap feet efficiently is holding them back. Poor technique tends to make climbers search for alternatives, which usually make climbs a lot harder. In this video I go through the handful of things you need to know to swap feet accurately and extremely consistently.

Failure on projects has been the most important training tool I’ve had. But as with any tool. It’s all about how you wield it.

I thought this for many years.