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.

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.

I thought this for many years.

A guide to how to actually learn climbing technique, from hard practicalities to underlying principles.

Coaches and sport scientists are often trying to quantify aspects of sport and there’s good reasons for this. But climbing technique is hopelessly complex with endless variation in movement. How could we go about quantifying it, or even thinking about it in any kind of structured manner? With difficulty. In this video I introduce some simple ideas for the way I think about technique that helps me to learn it and monitor my learning.

People ask me over and over 'what's your secret?' to climbing hard, maintaining level into my 40s, balancing climbing with work and family etc etc. So I felt I should address this 'meta question' of secrets of training directly.