Dave MacLeod: Life Outside the Box, Part 1

Today I’m thrilled to bring you the first in a two-part series from the climbing and training legend, Dave MacLeod. Dave has an impressive and varied climbing resume, including countless top-tier first ascents, F9a sport routes (5.14d), V15 boulders, Scottish XII mixed routes, and E11 trad. Dave is nails strong — mentally and physically — and that’s no accident of good fortune. In this interview, Dave offers a glimpse into what makes him tick, and why it’s essential to live life outside the box if we desire exceptional results.

Introduction

So, why am I breaking this into a two-part series? Well, in classic Dave MacLeod style, he supplied no less than 4,000 words to my ten questions.

Dave lives with his wife Claire and 8-year-old daughter Freida in the Scottish Highlands. His impressive climbing career aside, Dave is also known as an author and filmmaker. His books include the must-have titles of 9 out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes and Make or Break: Don’t Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success.

As usual, I don’t host these interviews to talk only about climbing. I’m far more interested in learning what drives excellence in sport, career, and life. I want to know how individuals push through discomfort, live life differently, and come out better human beings on the other side. And as you might imagine, Dave MacLeod doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

But first, a clerical note: Dave is Scottish, and for obvious reasons, embraces the British (and arguably correct) spelling of certain words over the American alternative. “Favour” is spelled correctly, as is “realise.” Please don’t leave any angry comments or email me over alleged spelling errors! Thanks.

Without further ado, let’s jump in on the life and times of Dave MacLeod.

Scottish Highlands: It’s That Good

I know I said this isn’t a climbing interview, but I had to give Dave the chance to brag on Scotland a bit.

CC: It seems with your work and climbing, you could live anywhere. Many climbers move to the areas of great weather, great climbing, etc. What keeps you in the Scottish Highlands, where the weather is often questionable and the rock is seemingly not world class?

Dave: Yes, I could live anywhere, but there is a very short list of places I know about on the earth with the same qualities Scotland has to offer for an all-round climber. The rock definitely is world class.

But really Scotland’s key strength is the diversity of our rock types in a small area. Within a couple hour’s drive of my house, I could climb top quality first ascents on excellent granite, micro granite, gabbro, gneiss, granodiorite, schist, sandstone, quartzite, basalt, dolerite, limestone, slate, rhyolite and andesite.

Moreover, I think it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever run out of new routes to climb in my lifetime. I could also climb new routes on any of those rock types in trad, sport, bouldering or ice/mixed disciplines, on sea cliffs, valley crags or remote multi-pitch mountain cliffs. Quite a variety of climbing there. You’d have to travel quite a lot further to get that same amount of climbing in other areas of the world.

Scotland Weather

The weather is only really an issue if you are either not an all-rounder, or have a 9-5 inflexible schedule, or both. There are some brief periods in the seasons when the weather dictates that mixed climbing is the only option. Sometimes it’s bouldering, sometimes it’s high mountain trad. If you only do one of those disciplines, you might find it challenging at times. But this doesn’t really apply to me unless I want to be a temporary specialist. If you know how the seasons work here you can easily get plenty of good conditions days.

Last winter season was really poor for mixed climbing, but great for sport climbing, so I mostly did that. It was great. I just tend to work and train when the weather is poor and go out climbing when it’s good.

I should also add that it’s our weather that really makes Scotland such a scenic place. This scenery is definitely a component in being inspired to go out and climb in the first place.

Climbing Media on Scotland

The climbing media has always generally been quiet about Scottish climbing. It’s just never really come into fashion with the exception of ice on Ben Nevis. The other aspect is that nearly all of the 5 million people who live in Scotland live in the central belt cities. I know that it’s reasonably common even among these folks to assume that the weather in the highlands is poor, or the crags won’t be dry. The numbers of climbers living here actually in the mountains is tiny. So, there aren’t so many people to shout about it.

…What defines a successful athlete…someone who is willing to do what others are not.

-Dave MacLeod

Dave MacLeod’s Approach to Progression in Climbing

CC: How has your approach to progression in climbing changed over the years?

Dave: Well broadly I’d say it hasn’t changed all that much. I still spend my days doing very much the same things – pulling on small pieces of wood in my garage, and then going out and trying hard on hard projects that inspire me to train and push myself. That said, I have continued to learn new things and they have significantly changed some areas of my practice.

Avoiding Injuries

Anyone who progresses through an athletic career eventually comes to appreciate how important it is to avoid injury. It’s important to be able to be resilient in the face of everyday knocks of pushing your body hard.

After several years of suffering with elbow injuries, I eventually put some serious study into injury prevention. I already had a master’s degree in medicine and science in sport and exercise. However, I knew nothing like what I needed to in order to maintain my climbing into my 30s and 40s without my body breaking down.

I shared what I’d learned by 2014 in my second book, Make or Break. There are many details which are hard to summarise in a sentence or two, but the overarching theme was building a resilient, healthy body as a foundation.

Sport Science: The Long View

I think its fair to say that sport science — until fairly recently — was overly focused on short-to-medium term (tomorrow-1 year) objectives. There was comparatively little discussion of the factors affecting continued athletic performance over several decades. Perhaps there was an element of assuming this was unrealistic anyway (this idea is easily falsified just by looking at climbers).

Perhaps the increasing numbers of athletes in their 40s-60s going for it and training hard to surpass previous performance levels have fuelled a bit more interest in this. Either way, there is a better understanding of the importance of high-quality sleep, maintenance of basic strength and conditioning, avoidance of excessive stress and mitigating various other problematic aspects of the western lifestyle.

Nutrition

Nutrition is another aspect that is discussed in ever greater detail in the sport discourse. I’ve certainly focused on it much more, particularly over the past three years. I’m really glad I did. By making some radical changes to my own diet, I solved some quite serious health problems I’d had for decades in one month. I also managed to climb my first V15. I honestly did not think I could see such a huge jump in performance in myself again.

My experience with nutrition experiments has certainly reminded me more strongly to try to step aside from unconscious dogmas in all aspects of sport performance and training, and ask ‘why do we do it this way?’. Often when you look for the evidence for a commonly held belief about training, it is just that – a belief.

The Big Picture

Studying training in detail can lead you into some intense details about things. But I would say that all the major steps forward in my climbing have come from stepping back and looking at the big, basic things I’d never thought to question. This was part of the overarching idea behind my first book, 9 Out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes. And yet, several years after writing it, I’m still learning that lesson myself, over and over again.

Defining a Successful Athlete

I’ve thought a lot about what defines a successful athlete. So, I am at least trying to line up at the right target. My favourite definition is perhaps someone who is willing to do what others are not. This notion is often interpreted as a willingness to show up earlier at the gym and train later, or to endure more pain in the moment of an endurance set. It can be that, but it can also be a willingness to test and possibly falsify one’s deepest held beliefs or habits. These things are game changers for athletes. It’s tough to face up to these things sometimes. Much easier just to go and do another fingerboard session instead.

Molding Life and Career Around Climbing

I wouldn’t take a deal from Red Bull if it was a million pounds. Ethics are worth more.

Dave MacLeod

Dave: My primary source of income is my books at the moment. I do have some sponsorship income too, but there’s no way I could live on it unless I was living out of a van on my own.

I’ve never really gone hard after sponsorship deals. I’ve developed long-term relationships with a few climbing brands. These brands are well-aligned with what I do and I’ve stuck with them.

In earlier years I saw sponsorship as a target to increase my income in the future and become a fully professional climber. But I did not feel I had done enough in my climbing to justify bringing in some professional help to seek out bigger sponsorship deals. I’ve never really changed tack on this and perhaps that has been a mistake on my part. It’s hard to know.

I suppose another issue with sponsorship is which brands would be suitable for me? I wouldn’t take a deal from Red Bull if it was a million pounds. Ethics are worth more.

A Shift Towards Writing

I was pretty focused on writing my blog and then my two books for several years. The books were so much more successful than I anticipated. So, there was never an urgent need to go after more sponsorship in order to feed myself tomorrow.

I suppose it’s partly accidental that I’ve kept my focus on the ideas I’ve written about in my books etc. They have helped my own climbing which is a big priority, and I’ve shared them with climbers in a form I’m happy with. This has worked well for me in return via the popularity of the books.

Respecting Money

Dave: In my twenties I lived on virtually nothing. I certainly benefitted from being in a sharing partnership with my now wife from my mid-teens.

Our first mortgage was £80 each per month (a small flat in Dumbarton, five minutes’ walk from the boulders). I did the odd bit of writing and leveraged a photo-incentive deal with Five Ten since I was doing new routes constantly. I got all my climbing gear from Black Diamond, I didn’t run a car and my local climbing wall was a crag. It worked great.

Understanding a Mortgage

Probably a key good decision I made was to actually understand how a mortgage worked when I first took one. I’d already decided that owning a house and living with a partner was the route I wanted to go down, so you might as well do it properly!

I was pretty shocked by how much the pattern of interest and capital repayments was skewed in favour of the lender. I also realised that choosing the product carefully and overpaying in the early years was a great way to game the system (i.e., return it to something like fair!).

This obviously comes at the cost of having spare money to travel at first, but with a monumental saving later on. So, I didn’t climb abroad much for several years and pumped every spare pound into my mortgages.

As we moved through three successive houses, we were in a stronger and stronger financial position each time. It was one of the best decisions I made. It allowed me to have the freedom to take all the time I needed to research and write a book. And of course, this freedom allowed me to climb and travel much more later on.

The Gifts of Relative Financial Freedom

Often people cannot make time for high value work, because the need to pay immediate bills requires them to do low value work right now.

Dave MacLeod

Dave: Now I’m a father but I have time to have a family life, work on projects as and when I like, and still have plenty of time to climb. If I wanted to lock myself in the climbing gym for a full year, or a room to write a book, and not do a single bit of work, I could do it no problem.

That freedom is pretty valuable. It’s not just valuable personally, but also financially. I can give myself the space to actually get some high value work done. Often people cannot make time for high value work, because the need to pay immediate bills requires them to do low value work right now.

In my view this sort of thing is the missing first step in many athlete’s training periodisation plans. Usually when planning training, the first step is to look at the available time for training in the week/month etc and go from there. I think it’s better to take a further step backwards. Can we change the schedule altogether, to create significantly more time?.

Voluntarily offering to earn many tens of thousands of mortgage interest for a lender is unnecessary for most folk. It’s possible to bend the rules significantly in your favour just by adjusting the pattern of repayments from the default they offer you. Of course, the default option is weighted in their favour, not in yours.

Self-Publishing Books

I guess I took a similar approach in writing books. I spent three months before starting my first book just researching how the book business worked. The standard approach seemed like a terrible deal for most authors. Again, it seemed clear to me that the system was weighted in publisher’s favour and not in mine.

Self-publishing books has a reputation for signalling failure to achieve a publishing deal for an author. That may have some truth to it for some individuals. But it also seems like a convenient image for publishers to keep alive.

I decided to self-publish, which was undoubtedly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. For niche books such as mine, it’s essential to take more than a small percentage of each book. I did have to do several years of work to build a following via my blog, which helped me actually sell some books. This was far more work than actually writing the books. But it still wasn’t really hard because it didn’t feel like work. It’s exactly the same as what people voluntarily do on social media today.

Other Sources of Income

I occasionally do some climbing coaching, some setting, some writing and some lectures. But although I enjoy all of these, my preference is for book writing. Writing helps you to learn at a deeper level, and then to share that learning more widely.

In recent years I’ve earned significant slice of my income from filmmaking as well. I don’t have any training in this but I think I’ve been asked to make many films because I just try and do the basics well and not overreach.

I’ve learned about choosing shooting angles from working with other photographers and shooters who were filming me over the years. I try to focus on human interest in stories in films. Shooting in the mountains in winter can be physically quite hard work. So, it doesn’t always fit all that well with my own training. But I try to limit the amount of film work I do anyway. Editing fits in really well. I can do it when it’s raining or I need to rest from training.

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Check Back Next Week For Part 2

That’s it for this week; there are far too many good nuggets for one post. In the meantime, Dave has provided some links below to his website and social media platforms. I really recommend his Vlog series on YouTube if you are remotely interested in training or general self-improvement.

Quick, take me to Part 2!

Dave MacLeod website: www.davemacleod.com
Dave’s YouTube Channel
Dave MacLeod on Instagram
Dave MacLeod on Twitter

Dave’s essential books:

Remember, the best laid plans mean nothing if you can’t take action today. Have questions? Need some feedback? Hit us up on the Contact page.

Thanks guys, see you next week.

Note: all photos are the property of Dave MacLeod and are used with permission.