A short video exploring whether carbs are essential for high intensity sport and training, and how people on keto or carnivore diets appear to defy the rules of sports nutrition. References mentioned in the video are listed below. 1. Burke, L.M., et al., Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit from intensified training in elite race walkers. J Physiol, 2017. 595(9): p. 2785-2807. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28012184/ 2. Burke, L.M., et al., Crisis of confidence averted: Impairment of exercise economy and performance in elite race ..read more

Stetind, a mountain I’ve wanted to climb for many years, hopefully via a new route. I was last in Norway for big wall new routing almost a decade ago. A new route on the excellent rock spire of Stetind was next on my list. But soon afterwards I decided I should stop flying for environmental reasons, so a return trip never happened. I thought perhaps if I one day saved up for an electric car to replace my old car as it aged, I might road trip there. This year, it came together. I charged up the car, drove to the north of Norway and did a brilliant new route on Stetind with Calum Muskett. A wee ..read more

A few years ago I bolted a brilliant line across the big roof on Beinn an Lochain, but never got round to trying it. After I returned to the crag on a flying visit with Magnus Midtbø, I was a bit captured by the crag and bolted and climbed several other new lines, cleaned several more of the existing lines, and then got to work on the big roof. It was as much a battle with the terrible summer rain as anything else. But I was delighted with the end result - No Remorse, a really cool 8c. This video shows it off, looking good in even the worst of the July Monsoon. Thank you so much to all of yo ..read more

I’ve always tried to be an all round climber in terms of performance. But just because you spread yourself thinly across disciplines in performance doesn’t mean you should do the same in training. In this video about a lovely and hard project, I explore the results of an adventure in specialising to try and improve my skills as a generalist. It was a rough ride! My course on climbing technique is out now on Altitude. As part of the launch week, I’m doing a live Q&A tomorrow night (August 5th). Please do join us ..read more

Some climbers don't believe me when I say I don't get nervous before attempts on hard routes. Here I explain how I do it. If you are interested in some more coaching content from me, my course on climbing movement technique on Magnus Midtbø’s platform Altitude is about to open: https://altitudeclimbing.com/davemacleod ..read more

Should you drink the green supplement drink AG1? Or is the obvious alternative actually far superior? In this episode, I discuss several papers linked below: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3026(23)00160-6 10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00367-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-019-04157-y https://doi.org/10.3390/life13102007 10.1016/j.jsams.2019.12.027 https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/ 10.1113/JP270654 PMC6413849 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.806566 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2022.10.016 ..read more

Social media is geared up to distort the realities of training, detraining and breaking through plateaus. Sure, skills and milestones can be acheived quickly and it's important to see demonstrations of how effective a singular goal and plan to achieve it can be. However, some plateaus (not those caused by lack of training) are not generally broken in this way. I just posted up a new YouTube video exploring my own efforts to break a plateau, with a few very simple ideas that I try to keep in mind, which in my view are underrepresented on social. All told through the story of a winter of serial ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more