Video of two great first ascents in Glen Nevis over the the lockdown period. Both I’d cleaned and briefly tried some years ago and I did enjoy going back and completing them. Both were way better than I’d remembered!
I did an interview with Steven for The Nugget climbing podcast here. We had a long discussion of many climbing related topics including fingerboarding and training in general, nutrition and use of keto, carnivore and other diets, navigating research in general, my own climbing progression and key things I did to advance it as well as various other things. Steven is releasing it in two parts so do check back for the second part in a week.
Something that has really helped us get through the lockdown has been doing big walks from the house with Freida. Over the weeks Freida has realised how far she can walk in a few hours and we’ve seen a great deal of sunshine, forest, wildlife and many other interesting discoveries in various corners of Lochaber.
One objective Freida had was to walk to school which is about 14 miles. We’ve done this a few times now by various routes. We made a wee video on Freida’s YouTube about our first walk to school. I’m highly biased but I think Freida’s commentary is great.
Check out the film I made about Fort William Pro downhill MTB rider Mikayla Parton. Mikayla is receiving the Scottish Youth Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture this year and for good reason. I thought Mikayla has all the ingredients needed to be a successful athlete and was really impressed by her clear vision of where she wants to go and organised approach of how to get there. The comments of both Mikayla and Miles in the film allude to what those ingredients are.
I’ve been making these films for the Fort William Mountain Festival for both adult and youth awards and shooting them has been a fascinating study in the common ingredients that underlie great achievements in life. These obviously take many forms - great literature, art, activism, filmmaking, and sporting success to name some. In most of the recipients, a driven and uncompromising nature seems either immediately apparent or not far below the surface.
Where does this come from? I feel that it can originate from many different sources. Influence from a parent or mentor can be important, or really strong experiences in nature at a young age. I have no doubt that some experience of hardship might be important in a few as well.
Another important ingredient is agency. The ability to take hurdles by the throat and solve them even if they seem impossibly big or complex at the outset. A question I still have; is this agency a separate ingredient for success that evolves separately from a driven nature, or is it a downstream consequence of it? Or is it a mix of both? Perhaps If I keep making the films one day I might have a more useful insight into this!
In the meantime, enjoy getting to know Mikayla in this film and remember the Fort William Mountain Festival is live online now and you can stream the festival films any time over the next month.
For several years I’ve made films about the recipients of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture. They are always fascinating to shoot and hard to edit because the people are so interesting and are often my heroes!
This year Dave Morris is receiving. Among many other environmental campaigns, Dave played a central role in securing the superb access laws we have here in Scotland that give us all reliable access to our mountains and wild places. Something I feel grateful for nearly every day, as I spend my life on highland estates that were not always welcoming places to climbers and walkers.
Check out the film I made about Dave. I’ve uploaded all the other films onto the Fort William Mountain Festival channel as well. If you enjoyed my Nevis Faces series you might like these films too.
The Fort William Mountain Festival runs over this coming weekend. This year It’s online of course. A lot of good mountain films will be showing so check it out.
Trying out the new Laspo Kneepad for the first time the other day, on the E10 project at Duntelchaig.
One of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while is make a video about how to kneebar and what makes a good kneepad. I made my first kneepad in 2008 and have a pretty big selection of them. As with rock shoes, I still do tend to use all of them once in a while for different specific use cases. All kneebars are different and getting the right pad makes a huge difference in how long you can stay in the rest and how relaxed you can be in it.
Like many folk, for a few years I’ve mostly used the Send pads which are quite good and very convenient to use and last really well. But I’m always on the hunt for something better and so was excited when I saw that La Sportiva were bringing out a pad. I had actually been toying with the idea of designing and making a pad myself, since there is still no perfect pad out there. Unfortunately the new Sportiva Laspo pad wasn’t available for ages but have just come back into stock. So as well as ordering a set for myself, I bought some in for my shop for you guys to try. They are available now, right here.
I’ve only had a chance to try them once but that went well! There is a crucial kneebar on the E10 project I’ve been trying with Robbie Phillips. With the Send pad I worked up to getting 6 seconds hands off, which was definitely worth it. But trying the Laspo, I could immediately get 14 seconds off which obviously makes a big difference. Just one data point. But it’s a good one! I’ll do a full review of the pad in my knee barring video soon. But so far I think this is the best one I’ve tried.
So often in Scotland with hard new trad routes I have to do the finding and cleaning myself. Thanks to Robbie Phillips I got to repeat this one. Nice route Robbie. Check out Robbie's video of the FA below.
I finished my degree! I celebrated with two E8 trad routes. I’ll do a topo of this brilliant crag soon.
The first in a series on how to climb trad, from the absolute basics right through to E11. Its a huge subject and not one where taking shortcuts tends to work out well in the long term. In this video, we start easy, and fun!
My research questionnaire: https://glasgow-research.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/dietary-patterns-of-rock-climbers THANK YOU so much for your time to participate. Note that the questionnaire will only be live for a short time in July 2020.
In the video I above I discuss some thoughts on my own study of nutrition over the past few years and the research I’m currently doing. To complete the research I need your help and I’m asking climbers over 16 who climb regularly to complete a questionnaire about their diet.
The speech by Austin Bradford Hill I mentioned in the post is here:
HILL, A. B. 1965. THE ENVIRONMENT AND DISEASE: ASSOCIATION OR CAUSATION? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58, 295-300. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14283879/
More information about how to participate in the brief video below:
I plateaued at around 7C+ boulder/8b sport for quite a few years in my twenties. Then I made a jump to 8c and then 9a in a surprisingly short period of time. In this episode I go through what I did. Yes it involved a hangboard! I'm not sure my intervention would have the same effect on most climbers these days, but I will suggest some other equally important training for climbing that should reach the same place.
Lots of climbing partners have said to me that they observe that I'm a very motivated climber, especially for completing hard projects. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to understand where this comes from and if it can be replicated. It can! And it's not complicated.
The first ascent of Lithium 8B+ (V14) and the hardest boulder I've climbed so far. Some more about the story of this ascent and many others in the movie Undisovered https://vimeo.com/ondemand/undiscovered
Unsurprisingly, the last three months of lockdown were not ideal for a professional rock climber. I tried to make of it what I could. I trained, I studied, I trained and studied some more…
A decent discussion of the principles I apply to structure my bouldering sessions, both during lockdown and at any other time.
One of my last days in the mountains before lockdown. It was a great one! Soloing Moonwalk IV,4 on Ben Nevis on a perfect day.
Many of you are getting to grips with the hangboard for the first time right now. Here is a deep dive on most of the priorities to think about to get the most out of the tool and stay uninjured. My Hangboard: The Edge.
In this video I reference a review of studies comparing high and low loads for strength training. If you would like to read the study, it is here.
In an age of lots of information about training for climbing, so many either get injured or fail to make progress because of the basics. Right now, as I come back from an injury, I am building a foundation of physical capability. A foundation of sleep, recovery, gradually increasing load and consistency.
A core principle of doing well in sport (or other things) is to find ways to turn bad circumstances large and small to your advantage as much as possible. So many training decision pathways start from this principle, or at least should do.
I got injured. So what do I do now? Some ideas for how to manage the recovery.