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 som ..read more

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 ma ..read more

My annoying tennis elbow improved enough to start bouldering regularly again a month ago. Since then I feel like its stronger every session. A good feeling. In this session I keep on with working through the established problems on my board, building up to starting on the projects. At the end I’m getting close to my Pjs on the fingerboard, which is kind of surprising to me, but great! I also go through some of your questions about training from my last full session vlog episode. If you have more, leave a comment here on my YouTube. BTW Did you subscribe to my YouTube channel yet? Lots more vi ..read more

The ketogenic diet had a large impact on my life and my climbing. Here is a detailed discussion of 6 years of my own experiences with the keto diet for sport performance as a pro rock climber, with references to 150 scientific papers on the performance, health and other effects of the diet. You can find all the references below. I’ve also published an audio version of the piece on my Patreon page as a thanks to my Patreon supporters. I thought that might be useful for folk to listen to it on the move since it’s a long and detailed piece. Bibliography 1. Hyppönen, E. and C. Power, Hypovit ..read more

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 ..read more

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 EN ..read more

I’ve been visiting this great boulder on and off over the past few weeks. Yesterday I put up a really nice new 8A, despite struggling a bit to get it in climbable condition recently. Well, that, and I couldn’t actually climb it. I’ve been trying a much harder project going straight up from the same start. Its a really good line and worth persisting with. At present I cannot do one move even after about four sessions on it. But I am getting closer. One thing is for sure, I’ll not get closer to unlocking it if I don’t show up and try. That is the subject of the vlog episode above (Vlog #42). My ..read more

Many of you have emailed me over the past week to ask what I think of a big budget movie just released on Netflix called The Game Changers. The movie promotes the idea that a plant-based diet will be beneficial for health and sport performance. It also suggests that eating meat will have the opposite effect. In this episode (Vlog #31), I watch the movie and offer some quick thoughts on its content and a look at some of the evidence presented in the film. Below is a list of references I discuss in the episode. I encourage you to read all of them, not just take either the Game Changers, or my ow ..read more

In 2007 I gave up on the idea of climbing Hunger, 9a. Over ten years later, I returned as a better climber and finished the job. But not without a carefully planned and executed preparation ..read more

Celebrating a send with junk never seemed to work for me. I go through what I do instead. The original blog post that inspired this episode from 2009 ..read more