About Zahan Billimoria

I met Zahan at Steve Bechtel’s coaching seminar in Lander, Wyoming in May of 2017. I was struck by his friendliness and his willingness to learn more about coaching and training. While “Z” is an adventure skier, climber and mountain guide, based in Jackson Wyoming, he’s also a dedicated trainer and coach to mountain athletes of all kinds.

He started Samsara Mountain Training in 2015 to offer his clients an individualized approach to training for the vertical world. He creates training plans for people all over the world, and he recently released a comprehensive Bodyweight Training Program for mountain athletes that focuses on the core. I wanted to talk to Z about his bodyweight program (meaning no weights are involved) and how we can incorporate more sport-specific core work into our own training.

Zahan Billimoria Interview Details

• What the core is and how we use it in climbing
• New core training program for climbers
• How we can train our core better
• Why he uses floor exercises and not TRX
• How core training has improved his climbing
• Sample workout

Zahan Billimoria Links 

• Zahan’s website: www.samsaramtntraining.com
• New bodyweight training program
• Climb with Zahan as your guide: exumguides.com
• Instagram

Training Programs for You

Do you want a well-laid-out, easy-to-follow training program that will get you stronger quickly? Here’s what we have to offer on TrainingBeta. Something for everyone…

• Personal Training Online:  www.trainingbeta.com/matt
• For Boulderers: Bouldering Training Program for boulderers of all abilities
• For Route Climbers: Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities
• Finger Strength : www.trainingbeta.com/fingers
• All of our training programs: Training Programs Page

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Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and I want to remind you that the TrainingBeta podcast is actually an offshoot of a website I created, trainingbeta.com, which is all about training for rock climbing.

Over there we have regular blog posts, we have training programs for boulderers or route climbers or people who just want to train finger strength or power endurance. We also have online personal training with Matt Pincus as well as nutritional consulting with myself. I’m also a nutritionist. Hopefully one or more of those resources will help you become a better rock climber. 

You can find us at trainingbeta.com and you can follow us on social media @trainingbeta.

Welcome to episode 142 of the podcast. Just a couple little updates. One is actually not a little update; it’s actually kind of a big deal. We are adding a sports psychologist to TrainingBeta. Her name is Christina Heilman. She’s been on the podcast a few times. I teach with her at the Performance Climbing Coach Seminars and she is in private practice. She’s a sports psychologist and she has a PhD. She’s also an athletic trainer and a climber and a skier. She’s got a lot of experience. 

I worked with her last year and I love her. I really, really like her as a person but also she helped me a ton with my own climbing. I think I talked about it a little bit on the podcast but anyway, she has joined us and so that means if you want to work on anything to do with sports psychology, with fear or anxiety or anything, performance anxiety with climbing or any other sport, you can go to trainingbeta.com/mindset and you’ll find a bunch of information about Chris there. You can sign up to work with her there and generally she works with people on a session-by-session basis. We’ve set it up so you can buy packages of four sessions or eight sessions. Enjoy that. 

Like I said, she really helped me. This part of our climbing – our mindset – is generally ignored. There aren’t many training programs that are based on mindset and it’s because it’s a really individual thing. Hopefully, if you work with her she’ll be able to help you break through any barriers that you have and just become a calmer, more successful climber and human.

Again, you can find that at trainingbeta.com/mindset. 

Second announcement is that I’m going to Vegas! I love Vegas. I have really good friends there. My dream has always been to live part time in Vegas and part time in Colorado and this year we got the opportunity to house sit for some friends from February 10 – March 4 so I’m psyched about that. I get to enjoy the warmer weather, get to climb outside in Red Rock and maybe Potosi a little bit, and hang out with people mostly. I’ll be podcasting from there but I think from here on out I’ll be podcasting every other week so you can expect to see something from me every couple weeks now. 

Moving on, this podcast episode is with Zahan Billimoria. He’s been on the show before. I actually met him at a Performance Climbing Coach seminar. He’s a Wyoming climber, he’s a coach, he’s a trainer, he’s a mountain guide, and he recently created this new training program that’s all body weight and it’s focused on the core and is for mountain athletes of all kinds, including rock climbers. I wanted to talk to him about core training specifically because I’ve never done a full length episode just on core training. It’s so important. I know that last year and the year before when I started training it I noticed improvements in my climbing and I’ll talk a little about this in my interview. 

Zahan has created this whole, very thorough, video program for how to train your core and how to do it differently and maybe better than we’ve done in the past. You can find that all at samsaramtntraining.com. It’s the first thing that you’ll see when you go to that site. I looked over it, I checked it out, the videos are really clear, they’re very well laid out, and he does a really great job of introducing exercises, introducing the program, and then showing exactly how to do it. They’re really high quality.

Here’s Zahan, or as people know him, Z. That’s why I called him that in the intro. I’ll talk to you on the other side. Enjoy!

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the show again, Z. Thanks for talking to me today.

Zahan Billimoria: Right on, Neely. It’s great to be here.

Neely Quinn: For anybody who doesn’t know who you are, can you describe yourself?

Zahan Billimoria: Sure. I’m a mountain guide and a coach for human-powered sports: climbing, backcountry skiing. I live in Jackson, Wyoming and that’s the short of it. 

Neely Quinn: You’ve been on the show before talking about training for mountain athletes. Today we’re going to get a little more specific. You reached out to me and told me that you had this new passion about core training which I thought was really interesting because I’ve never just focused on that in a podcast episode. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been working on?

Zahan Billimoria: Absolutely. About a year ago I started to really try to apply a lot of the lessons that I had been integrating into other parts of my training into core training, which I feel like in the world of climbing has been less of a focus. There’s been so much development and evolution in the way that we think about training fingers and the way that we think about training pulling muscles but the core is complex. It’s complex in the way that we use it as climbers and also how we measure it, but I think there’s an enormous amount of core training that is also neural so it has to do with the brain because so much of the foundation of our movement and how we coordinate lower and upper body movements comes from the core. That’s really where it began, with a curiosity about how we think about how we use the core as climbers and consequently how we train it. 

Neely Quinn: Alright, and you got so into this that you started and are almost finished with creating a core training program.

Zahan Billimoria: Yeah, that’s right. It’s been a long journey. It started with just that curiosity I was talking about and then I ended up going out to LA and working with a guy who is a movement specialist over there called Roy Corwin [sp?], going to the RedBull headquarters and seeing what they’re doing on that front, and then coming back and just starting to apply some of my own lessons from training other muscle groups and developing a movement pattern that is entirely body weight focused.

I’ve always been really keen on body weight training and when it came to core training I think it’s especially relevant. That’s the gist of it all. It’s a body weight program that’s very core-centric.

Neely Quinn: By the time this episode goes out the program will be available and I’ll give you guys details about that in the end. 

Let’s go back a step and let’s define core because a lot of times when people think of their core they just think of the front of their body and their abs, basically, but tell me what the core is and tell us about how we do use it in climbing.

Zahan Billimoria: That’s such an important distinction and I’m not sure that I can give one definitive answer to: ‘What is the core?’ I think that word can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people so I’ll just say what I’m referring to when I speak about the core. For me, I’m using the very broadest conception of what the core is so that’s everything from abs to obliques, traps, even lats, diaphragm. I’m interested in the posterior chain, so that’s the backside of our body, as well as the anterior chain. If that seems really, really broad it is but ultimately, coming into your second question of how do we use the core as climbers, I sort of see the function of the core as having two functions and the first is providing stability. 

Climbing being a sport that occurs on natural terrain, by nature there is so much time in climbing that is spent in these off-axis movements. Any kind of movement where your feet aren’t directly under your hands or if your hands are facing the wrong direction you’re in these off-axis positions. By nature of that you’re in an unstable position and the role of the core is to provide this corresponding stability to your position. If you think about grabbing an undercling, especially an undercling at shoulder height or above, or twisting into a sidepull or backstepping, all of those movements and resulting body positions are very unstable and having not just a strong core but I would say an intelligent core that is able to provide stability in those positions is kind of the function of this program. 

The second is coordination. What I mean by that is we spend so much time training our fingers and our pulling muscles but ultimately, elite level climbers aren’t just stronger than the rest of us. They don’t just have stronger fingers and are able to bang out more one-arm pull-ups. They are able to coordinate these movements between their upper and lower body into one seamless and efficient movement and all of that requires this really high level of engagement of your core muscles because in order to transfer force away from your fingers it has to go through that posterior and anterior chain down into your feet. Coordination – that power transfer from your hands to your feet – and thinking of the core as a critical link in the critical chain and that’s how we want to train it really helps us think about how we should develop strength in our core.

Neely Quinn: That was very thorough yet succinct. I really appreciate that. It’s cool. I bet a lot of people are like, ‘Yeah, okay. That’s a really good description of the core and how we use it.’

It sounds like you’ve given this a lot of thought and done a lot of research on it. What do you think are the best ways to make the core stronger or how do we get better at using our core?

Zahan Billimoria: Maybe even before diving into that I think one of the other foundational questions I was asking when I was developing this program is of the ways that climbing can be so different than a lot of other sports. I was thinking: if you’re a basketball player you get to hone your game every day of the week, if you want. It’s a very accessible sport. 

Climbing is a very inaccessible sport. Certainly today with gyms – like if you live in Salt Lake you can pick from six or seven different gyms, but for the rest of us living all across the country who either don’t have access to good year round climbing or don’t have access to a gym – we often find ourselves training in a way that helps our bodies produce more force but as far as the application of that force and as far as the skill development side of the equation and developing the athleticism to harness that force into really sports-specific movements, we don’t really get to do that. Part of what I wanted to do with this program was bridge that gap and start to integrate these sports-specific types of movements and these unique stresses that we put on the core into the way that we train. 

Leading from that into your question, what I’m really passionate about is developing movement patterns that replicate the way that our core is stressed in climbing. A large part of that is rotational. So much of the way that we produce a stabilizing force in climbing is by reducing or countering that torque that results from your feet not being straight under your hands and having to backstep and twist. I think that’s one, and probably a major, function of this body weight core training.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so let’s go into how we have trained our core up to now and what you think we could be doing differently. 

Zahan Billimoria: Sure, that’s a great question. I’ll speak for myself and I think that it’s representative of the climbing community at large. We have largely trained our core by moving our feet around in the air. We spend a lot of time on a bar doing movements like windshield wipers or leg raises or ankle-to-bar in which we’re using our feet as a lever or our legs entirely as a lever and we’re repeating relatively simple movements over and over again with our feet unweighted. That replicates really well the challenge of when you stick a big dyno and you latch the hold and your feet come swinging off and then you’ve got to recruit the muscle fibers of your core in order to bring your feet back up and onto new holds, but in reality for me and I think for climbers at large, that’s maybe 10% of the function of the core. 

Much more often the function of the core is: how can I keep my feet on when I’m making big moves? Like when I’m really extended, how can I produce more force in my feet to reduce the load on my fingers and also reduce the likelihood that my feet are going to come swinging off and then I put them back on after I finish that move? Certainly that can sometimes be the right move but the more I’ve observed elite level climbers, more often they’re making those moves with their feet on. I’m really interested in how we produce more force through our feet and how we use our core as that critical link in the kinetic chain so that when I’m about to make a dynamic move I’m actually really, really engaged in my core to keep my feet on.

Instead of doing exercises that involve my feet swinging around in the air and lifting my feet up and putting them back down or swinging from side-to-side, I’m really interested in how I can reduce the stability in my position and produce more and more force at my toes. 

For me, that started with this baseline plank position. Planks are nothing new to climbing but the problem with the plank is that it’s too easy. Climbers are too strong to really get much out of being in four points of contact on the ground. That’s a good place to start but we want to move out of there to produce more instability and also the requirement of more force, so the progression kind of starts with being in that plank position and then lifting one arm. If you lift one hand off the ground you can immediately feel the slight tendency of that shoulder to drop and that corresponds with my hip. Then the opposite hip kind of drops so there’s this need to apply more stabilizing force to return to that baseline plank position but without that hand. If I move that hand, like if I stretch it out and push it out past my ear and I’m going straight up so I’m almost in a one-handed Superman position, now that arm is acting like a lever and it’s producing even more destabilizing force. If I keep that hand outstretched and I swim it all the way down so that it’s coming down past my hip, then I’m moving through a plane of movement and as that plane of movement is changing, the way that my posterior and anterior chain have to respond to that changes through that movement.

I’m very into this slow and controlled movement in which you’re really dialing into: how does that change my body position? How did that change the way in which I recruit those muscles to provide stabilizing force? 

So that would be a very good step one movement.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it’s not something I’ve ever seen in a program before.

Zahan Billimoria: Cool.

Neely Quinn: Is that something that you’ve seen, too? I’m sure you’ve looked at core training programs or methods or whatever. Is this novel?

Zahan Billimoria: You know, I couldn’t speak to whether it exists anywhere else but I haven’t seen it. 

What I’ve tried to do is build a progression. I want to start in that baseline plank position but then I want to compromise it and I want to do it in this tiered way where there’s a path to, ‘Okay, now I can execute that movement and now I can execute that movement slower, and now I can execute that movement with more stability, now I observe my body is not even shifting when I release that hand.’ I’m really into the small, small details of tuning into the body and tuning into the way the body is responding to that changing movement plane. So then let’s put that hand back down and the next obvious move would be to release a leg. A leg is just a much bigger and heavier lever arm that is connected to the hip. The hip is the joint that is going to collapse or sag if I can’t produce the corresponding stabilizing force. Then we go through this series of movement patterns with one leg.

Neely Quinn: So this is on the ground and not on a TRX, right?

Zahan Billimoria: 100%. I spent the summer traveling around Europe and I was moving from hotel to hotel for two months and that was a really great time to refine all this work because I had basically no equipment at all. What I found, and I measured it this morning because I wanted to say it definitively, is I need 6’x7’ of ground space. That’s all I need. I don’t need any equipment. With that much ground space I can do the entire program.

Neely Quinn: That’s really attractive for a lot of people, I think.

Zahan Billimoria: Yeah, I think so.

Neely Quinn: Also, is that the only reason it’s not on the TRX or do you think that the TRX is valuable?

Zahan Billimoria: I would say gymnastic rings more so but I think suspension training is enormously valuable. I spend a lot of time suspension training and I’m really into it.

Neely Quinn: Is that something that is part of your program?

Zahan Billimoria: It’s not because I wanted to build this program as an entirely zero equipment program and I really wanted to explore the boundaries of using the human body on the floor in its most fundamental state. This program is entirely body weight and it’s no equipment but that’s not to discredit the use of the TRX and especially gymnastic rings and weights. I’m not exclusive in my adherence to body weight training but I am very passionate about it and very fascinated by it. It sort of forces you to really explore the idea of leverage because that’s all you have to increasingly make the movement more difficult.

Neely Quinn: Right. I think people probably want to know, ‘Is this worth my time?’ We’ll talk a lot more about details but I think that people want to know that spending time to strengthen their core is going to make them a stronger climber. Can we take a moment to talk about results you’ve seen maybe in your own climbing or in your clients’ doing this kind of work?

Zahan Billimoria: Just in the interest of total authenticity, I’m not going to say that I’m climbing letter grades harder. I think I am climbing better and making quicker work of hard routes but the biggest thing I can stand behind that I’ve really noticed is that I am onsighting better. It’s hard to put a finger on it but I think I’m adapting to natural terrain quicker. I’m responding to it quicker. 

I’ve spent a lot of time, like most climbers, watching elite climbers in videos. You watch a really great climber and I would say that one of the most distinctive features of elite climbers on the rock versus the rest of us is that they spend way more time de-tensioned than tensioned. The lower level the climber, in general, the more time we spend under way too much tension. I think that idea of tension and release and, ‘When do I produce tension and when do I release tension?’ – elite level athletes in all the sports I’m interested in spend way more time relaxed than the rest of us. 

That is also a big component of this type of work. You really feel like, ‘When I’m in these compromised positions I’ve got to produce so much tension to maintain stability but as I move through the movement plane, much less tension is required here.’ That’s something I’ve really noticed transfer to my climbing. I’m much quicker to de-tension. I’m much quicker to latch the hold and be like, ‘Okay good. I got it. Boom,’ and go back into this really relaxed, deep diaphragmatic breathing kind of state rather than latch the hold and bare down and try to launch into the next move with all that tension. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how strong we are because we’re mammals and we’re going to run out of juice after about 10-12 seconds of maximum effort. 

So that’s something I’ve noticed in my own climbing. I can produce tension and I’m timing my tension release better.

Neely Quinn: That makes a lot of sense. Have you had any of your clients do this kind of work?

Zahan Billimoria: Yes. On the training platform that I am now using I’ve uploaded about 50 new movement videos but because the program hasn’t fully released I haven’t been able to roll it out in the way that I really, really want to in this systematic unfolding of these steps and progression. That’s going to be really key because a lot of this movement, you could look at it from afar and be like, ‘Oh yeah, I got that,’ but if there was somebody standing over you helping coach you, you’d be like, ‘Oh, I see. That small adjustment actually makes it much more difficult or much more effective or much more engaging to these muscles.’ I’m really looking forward to releasing this whole program in this tiered, stepped progression, if that makes sense.

About three quarters of the athletes I am training are using it and all of them are extremely psyched on it. They’re really enjoying it. That’s another thing I would say that is hard to quantify but I’m finding that I’m just really, really enjoying training the core in ways that I didn’t before. I think the athletes that are applying it, that is one of the main feedbacks I am getting. They’re like, ‘I’m so psyched on this. It’s so much fun,’ so that’s cool.

Neely Quinn: I can say for myself, when I started training my core a couple of years ago I definitely improved my climbing and I could tell. I would be bouldering on steep terrain and I would go for a big move and normally when I would do that I would just kind of noodle off but I can now grab holds and keep my feet on, like you’re talking about, and just feel tighter to the wall and able to do the next move and able to grab the next hold and control it and move better off of it even from an extended position because my core was so much stronger.

Zahan Billimoria: That idea of moving in those extended positions is massive. I think that’s so important because a lot of core training that we do occurs at pretty shortened muscle lengths. Not all of it, like front levers have been roaming the world of climbing training for a while but that’s a pretty elite level movement and that’s certainly a long muscle length contraction, but your run of the mill core exercises like L-sits and things like that occur at these short muscle lengths. When we’re compact and tighter in our position on the wall it’s much easier to transfer weight to our feet. If there’s more than about 30° I can press into my feet just fine but if I’m going to huck and get really long and stick that hold and still have my feet on, that’s pretty hard. 

I think you’re absolutely right. I think if you were finding that you were more able to keep your feet on during really long moves and in really extended positions then you’re probably doing something right.

Neely Quinn: I’m scanning all of the core movements I can think of and the ones that sort of simulate those long movements are maybe the ab roller or a saw on the TRX but how are you simulating those moves?

Zahan Billimoria: In a lot of different ways but here’s one that is pretty easy to describe. One of the baseline movements that I started with is you start in that baseline plank position and you want to be on a pretty sticky surface like barefoot on a wood floor or rubber mats work well but carpets don’t work well. 

From there, you start crawling your hands out so you’re releasing one hand and you’re just putting it, say, six inches further ahead. As you do that, with every crawling movement you can feel your body just start rocking from side to side and that’s when you have to get really tight in order to just maintain a super stable plank position as you get more and more outstretched. You walk yourself out into this position where you’re bearing down on your toes and your hands are way out in front of you and your forehead is almost touching the ground. Then you hold that position isometrically, pulling towards the midline, pulling your hands together and your feet together and pulling hands and feet together and hold that for about 6-8 seconds. That’s very intensive long muscle length contraction.

Neely Quinn: This sounds like some Pilates type of intensity. [laughs]

Zahan Billimoria: I think that’s probably true. For me, it’s an effort to take some of these things that I’ve learned over a decade of strength training and then apply them to the core and apply them specifically to the movements in climbing. 

Neely Quinn: It’s so interesting to me because when we climb we’re on the wall. We’re standing upright and gravity is working below us, below our feet. When we’re doing so many of our core exercises we’re on the ground where gravity is working below our whole body. I don’t understand totally how it even translates. Do you have an understanding of that?

Zahan Billimoria: I would say I have an evolving understanding of that. I think those kinds of details are really important but ultimately what matters is the direction of the force that we’re producing. When you’re in what I call the Mega Plank, which is that position I just described, that sense of having to produce a ton of force in your toes as they’re bearing down and pushing into the ground has really good crossover to being on the wall even though you’re right and it’s kind of flipped. 

Neely Quinn: I guess working on it on the ground is almost even better because it’s so much harder on the ground and we’re strengthening more than we would in an upright position.

Zahan Billimoria: Certainly the more you compromise that position the more that’s happening. I think another nugget to chew on that I’ve been thinking about a lot is that it’s quite difficult to measure improvement in core strength. If we’re talking about pull muscle training, Tyler is a huge advocate and I’ve really gotten on board with the one-arm isometric training. You grab the pull-up bar at a long muscle length and you lock it off and hold it for 6-8 seconds and then you repeat it. If you think about a movement like that and a muscle like that it’s really easy to understand and conceptualize improvement. I could do it for six seconds and now I can do it for eight seconds and now I can do it for six seconds with 10 pounds and so on and so forth. 

When we’re thinking about the core, the way that we use it is so three-dimensional so it’s really hard to be very specific about seeing improvement. 

One of the things that I recognize is that a big part of improvement in the way that we use the core is neural. It is the brain and the brain’s ability to anticipate a movement and recognize that on this movement that I’m about to do, that’s going to be say a huck, our brain is so focused on fingers and biceps and, ‘Pull! Pull! Pull!’ that rehearsing and teaching the body that at the same time that you pull, you have to keep that foot on. The way that you do that is correct alignment of the hips and driving that force all the way through the kinetic chain and through the core. That’s something I’ve noticed on the Moon Board, which I have here at home. I’m just much better at keeping my feet on because my brain is much more tuned into firing those critical core muscles to produce more force at the foot. 

If the foot becomes even slightly unweighted, boom – it’s off, the more extended we get. Like we said, when we’re folded in half I can keep my feet on all day but when I start getting long, half the time I just look at my foot and I’m like, ‘Dammit, why is it off? I don’t feel like I’ve let it come off. I didn’t mean for it to come off.’ There’s this disconnect between my brain and that foot, and that foot is an awful long way away from the brain and I just can’t seem to speak to it. 

Now I feel like I have much better body control, especially in those long muscle length positions. 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and I experienced some – it was pretty obviously a neural pathway or however you say that. When I first started doing TRX saws you’re on your elbows and you’re trying to move back so that your arms straighten, so you start from 90°. I know you know this but other people might not.

Zahan Billimoria: No, that’s great.

Neely Quinn: I would start and I could hardly move back at all and then the next session I could move back double the amount, then the next session it was even farther. It wasn’t that I was getting immediately stronger, it was just that my body was like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, we can do this.’

Zahan Billimoria: Absolutely. I have another great example of that same thing. We were beta testing these workouts last week and a friend of mine came over. The workouts involve part as core and part as pistol squat progression. A lot of that is developing balance and also engagement in the muscles in the hip. It was the very same thing where he tried the first set and was just falling over and was like, ‘I’m just not strong enough to do that,’ but by the time we’d been through a few sets he was seeing this rapid improvement like you’re saying. That obviously can’t be muscle growth in that kind of time frame but it’s that neural component and trying to develop that in the way that we train and not just train forced development but also train that athletic dimension of the movement.

Neely Quinn: Which just takes practice, right? Like we’re both saying, just actually doing the movements.

Zahan Billimoria: That’s exactly right. A lot of people in the strength training world like to use the word ‘practice’ rather than ‘training’ and I think words do matter and I think that makes a lot of sense. The way I think about it is looking back on the way that I have trained strength for a really long time and my brain, the way it was sort of organized, was like, ‘Training is for the purpose of developing more force and climbing is for the purpose of learning to harness that force into the sports-specific movement that rock demands.’

Now I’m thinking, ‘No, not really.’ Training has to bridge that. It has to bridge force production, which is always going to be the primary function of training, but it has to bridge that athletic dimension of sport. It has to integrate the athletic demands of the way that we move on the rock and in the mountains. Otherwise, coming back to that basketball analogy, we just don’t get to practice enough. We don’t get to climb as a part of our day-to-day lives. I know I certainly don’t. I get to go on a couple climbing trips a year and I’m psyched about that but if all I do is train force and train tension then all I’m going to bring to my climbing is more force and more tension, but that’s not my evolution as a climber. It’s how I harness and execute these really specific movements using force but also timing that tension and release and also being able to coordinate movements that are really three-dimensional and involve a lot of rotation and torque and things like that.

Neely Quinn: Right. Let’s talk about that. How do you do torque on just body weight and no TRX?

Zahan Billimoria: Here’s a visual for you: let’s go back to that baseline plank position and we’re going to release one arm. As soon as I release the one arm I start to feel a little bit of that torque because that shoulder is collapsing and the opposite foot is weighting because I’m kind of spinning. Does that visually make sense, as I stretch that hand out in front of me?

Now, if I lift the opposite leg so now I’m posted up on just my left hand and my right toes, there I start to feel a lot of that rotational torque and the need to resist it. Taking that to another level, if I take my free leg – and this is probably hard to see on audio but I’ll send some videos so that you can see it and people can visit the site and see it – but if you start rotating and spinning that hip so that the hip is almost grazing the ground and you’re rotating so now you’re looking sideways, and your free hand instead of being outstretched in front of you facing the wall is now spinning and pointing up towards the ceiling. I’m still on the toes of that target leg and I’ve got either my fist or my hand underneath my shoulder and my whole body has done this rotation with my leg outstretched and my hand up towards the ceiling. I’m calling that a pivot plank and it’s very balance intensive but it’s also very rotation and torque intensive. 

Neely Quinn: That makes sense. When you say plank you’ve not on your elbows, you’re on your hands.

Zahan Billimoria: Yeah, the baseline plank that my whole program evolves from is on your hands.

Neely Quinn: Do you want to take us through a sample? For me, my ab routine is nine minutes long. From a conversation we had before this I learned that your sessions last 30-50 minutes. Is that right?

Zahan Billimoria: 40-50.

Neely Quinn: Can you tell me about how they’re structured?

Zahan Billimoria: Absolutely. A workout is structured into three parts. There’s the warm-up and that’s 10-12 minutes. That’s going to be like lower load exercises that can be done in higher repetitions, so maybe you’re doing 60 seconds worth of movement or 10-12 reps worth of movement or you’re taking very short rests and you’re moving from movement pattern to movement pattern. Those are going to be quite athletic and quite three-dimensional because we’re trying to do things that are unstable and really trying to tune the brain into the body. We’ll go through two circuits of warm-up and that lasts about 10-12 minutes and then there’s a short break.

Then we’re going to pick three exercises that are going to be quite difficult. We’re going to cycle through those three exercises with about a minute of rest in between each one. Each exercise is going to be done for 10-12 or maybe 15 seconds. You’re doing 2-3 repetitions so they’re short, they’re hard, they’re unstable, and we’re going to cycle through those exercises three times. There’s quite a lot of resting in there which there really needs to be in order to achieve that really high level of recruitment and to be able to execute those really, really difficult movements. You can’t just be sweating through it and repeatedly doing lots of movements like most exercise videos would involve. There’s a lot of rest, there’s a lot of body control involved, and then we take a pretty long rest. 

In the workout program it’s actually scheduled for a full five minutes and I really encourage people to take that full five minutes to sit and drink. We really do throw in some balance exercises in there for people who just can’t sit still but really, you want to use those five minutes to do some pretty serious recovery.

Then we’re going to go into a second circuit that’s three exercises done three times over with one minute rest in between. We’re alternating between hip and lower body exercises and core/plank-based movements. There is a lot of squatting, there is a lot of movement toward the pistol squat, and the purpose for that is I think it’s essential to really retrain that end range mobility in our hips. I think that’s something that a lot of climbers – I especially notice a lot of male climbers, myself included – really lack, the ability to produce force and to be movement intelligent with our feet through a wide range of hip angles. That has a big impact on heel hooking and toe hooking.

Neely Quinn: You definitely don’t think of pistol squatting as a core exercise but it is. When you think about it, when you’re way down there you have to engage your core to get back up. 

Zahan Billimoria: I’m not so much saying that a pistol squat is a core exercise. I would put that in the ‘other’ category as a leg or a hip exercise but I think, as you were alluding to earlier, ‘How can I do 40-50 minutes of extremely difficult core movements? That sounds impossible.’ It would be and that’s where alternating back and forth between these hip and leg intensive movements then coming back to core intensive movements. 

Neely Quinn: So there’s the warm-up, there’s the first circuit, there’s the second circuit, and then is there anything else?

Zahan Billimoria: That’s it. That’s 40 minutes right there. 

Neely Quinn: I mean, that’s a lot. [laughs]

Zahan Billimoria: Totally. What some people are talking about and it totally makes sense is, ‘Well I’ve only got a 30 minute window so I’m going to do the warm-up and the first circuit.’ Say it’s Monday and I’m going to do the warm-up and the first circuit. Because the work is very strength intensive, that could also be a great place to throw in your hangboard routine. I’m going to do this max hangboard routine. I’m going to do a pistol movement, I’m going to do a core movement, then I’m going to do a hangboard movement. People could integrate other strength work that they’re doing on that day. You’d cut it after the first circuit so when it goes to that five minute break you’re like, ‘Boom. I’m done.’ That’s your Monday workout.

On Wednesday you do the same workout but instead of doing the warm-up and the first circuit, you do the warm-up and the second circuit. Then maybe again you integrate whatever strength intensive exercises you’re doing. On the weekend or on a day when you have more time then you can do the full 40-50 minute program. 

Neely Quinn: Is there any variation in the program structure or are they all pretty much the same?

Zahan Billimoria: The structure is the same. I want the athlete to be able to anticipate it but the movements keep changing. There are four different levels and you start with the first level. Once you can complete 6-8 repetitions with good body control – without your hips collapsing and without a lot of tremor – then you’re ready to move on to the next level but the next level is going to repeat itself in terms of structure. There will be a warm-up, different movements, and the first circuit will be different movements and the second circuit.

Neely Quinn: Okay. That makes sense. Are the exercises that you’re doing sort of varied or are you having people do sort of the same things?

Zahan Billimoria: No, the exercises are totally varied. If we take a step back from just talking about the workouts, the workouts are about half the program and the other half of the program is movement progressions. 

I think there are about 36 different movement progressions that are built around three movement patterns. One is the one we’ve been talking about the most which is the space line plank movement. Another one is this pistol squat progression which involves a lot of eccentrics and isometrics in order for people who can’t do a pistol squat to move through this 10-step movement program towards executing a full pistol squat. Then the third exercise movement pattern is on a stability ball. That’s the one exception to the, ‘Hey, there’s no equipment needed.’ The stability ball work is not included in the workout so that people can do full workouts wherever they are, traveling or at home with no equipment. For people who do have a stability ball there is some really, really cool balance intensive core and hip work that happens on the stability ball. 

Neely Quinn: The kinds of things that you’re doing on the stability ball, I’m assuming some is with your hands on it and some with your feet on it. What else do you do on there?

Zahan Billimoria: It kind of follows that same idea of a progression. There’s a baseline position for each of these movements. The baseline position for being on the stability ball is you bring the stability ball until it’s pressed up against your shins and you gently press your knees into it so you can feel a little bit of that responsive tension in the ball. Your hands are 4-6 inches in front of your knees, depending on how tall you are, and you’re going to just gently roll the ball forward with your hands and that’s going to smoothly pick your feet up off the ground because your knees are pressed into the ball. Does that visually make sense?

Neely Quinn: So you start with your knees on the ground but with them pressed up against the ball and then you move?

Zahan Billimoria: Your feet are on the ground with your knees pressed into the ball.

Neely Quinn: Oh. 

Zahan Billimoria: Does that make sense? I’m standing upright. I’m going to bring the stability ball into my knees. I’m going to forward bend into my knees to push into the stability ball. You want to do that in shorts so you can really feel your skin on the ball so you have that good contact on the ball. Then you can be like, ‘Oh yeah, I can feel my knees on the ball.’ Now I’m going to press the ball forward with my hands and I’m going to roll and be on all fours, somewhat equally balanced between my knees and my hands. Immediately I can feel where my weight is and where my hips are and increasingly what I want to do is transfer more of that weight out of my hands and onto my knees. In order to drive the ball with my knees I have to be hyper-aware of where my hips are and where they are over my knees. 

So then again, there’s this 10-step progression. I’m going to start on all fours there and I’m going to start by very gently rolling the ball forward and rolling the ball back but I’m not touching the ground, I’m all on the ball and I’ve learned to control the ball backwards and forwards. Then I’m going to roll it from side-to-side and I can immediately feel when I tip it off to the side that – boom – my obliques are immediately firing to provide stability in this otherwise off-axis position. Otherwise, my knees are now way off to one side but I’m trying to stay upright on the ball and roll it to the other side. 

Neely Quinn: That makes sense. It’s like a gigantic ab roller. 

Zahan Billimoria: It’s like a gigantic ab roller, yeah. Then you’re going from there to slowly releasing one hand and you release the other hand and then start by having both hands on but releasing one leg, which is actually really quite hard. The leg represents so much weight and is really destabilizing.

Neely Quinn: What is the difference between the levels of the program?

Zahan Billimoria: They just get more difficult. Level one would be like a baseline intro but to be frank, I don’t think there’s anything in the program that would serve a beginner terribly well. All of the movements are relatively difficult. It kind of picks up at an intermediate level of athleticism, I would say.

Neely Quinn: So for instance, in the first level you said that in the first circuit they would do three difficult exercises. What would those exercises look like?

Zahan Billimoria: It’s going to really depend on what level of workout. On level one, it’s going to start with what I’m calling the One-arm Swimmer. I’m in my baseline plank position, I’ve got both my hands under my shoulders, I’ve got a slight bend in my elbows, my toes are pressed into the ground and I’ve got a slight bend in my knees. I’m kind of in this athletic stance and now I’m going to lift one arm and I’m going to swim that arm down to my side and I’m going to push it straight back up and repeat that a few times. That would be a level one workout.

Before that, the way it’s structured is that you want to start with these movement progressions that teach the movements in these very controlled step-by-step instructional videos. That’s a 2-3 minute video that introduces the movement and then it shows a couple variations on the movement, you hear a couple common pitfalls of things you may not see or may not realize you’re doing, and it really helps you to hone the movement. I really want to teach movement. All of this is movement dependent and it’s very much about how you control your body in three-dimensional space which ultimately I think is also what, to me, is very much the next frontier in rock climbing.

This week I saw that Climbing Magazine posted this article about Jonathan Siegrist and the quote that Jonathan had totally struck me. Climbing requires strength but of equal importance is skill and if it’s truly that, if it’s truly 50/50, are we training that? Are we training skill? Are we training movement? Are we training our body’s ability to control itself in three-dimensional space as much as we’re training just force production?

Neely Quinn: It seems like what you’re doing is training all of it.

Zahan Billimoria: That is the goal. Exactly. I want to increase my body’s ability to produce force but I want to do it in ways that are specific enough and athletic enough that when I get on the rock I feel like, ‘Oh yeah,’ and I am. That’s the cool part for me. When I get on the rock I’m like, ‘Oh my god I love this move. I love how I’ve got to twist into that or explode out of that.’ I feel like my body has developed the movement intelligence to do that better.

Neely Quinn: I mean, that brings me to my next question about priorities in training. I was saying earlier that we only have so much time. For me, I have these certain things I would spend that time on in terms of getting stronger and better at rock climbing. What you’re saying makes me think that maybe your priorities have changed. Is that true?

Zahan Billimoria: I think so. Changed as in I ditched what I was doing before and started something new? No, but I’ve definitely evolved. 

I’ve come from a very strength biased kind of mentality. I’ve always been really interested in and passionate about strength training and with you I went to Steve Bechtel’s Performance Climbing Coach, the very first one, and I’ve always really been into Pavel and the whole world of how the body develops strength. I’ve never been terribly interested in exercise routines that involve jumping up and down and bounding and sweating and just feeling tired. I’ve always been particularly bent towards and biased towards strength and I’ve really brought that into the way that I’m interested in training the core but the dimension that I’m really adding now and really exploring is this dimension of stability or instability, coordination, and how we bring coordination-intensive and unstable body positions to this very, very strength intensive movement pattern. Does that make sense?

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it does make sense. It sounds like you’ve prioritized these things a little bit more than you have in the past but does that mean that you’ve just kind of added it into your program and put another 40 minutes into your training three times a week? How does that work for somebody? How do I know when to do this and how often? What’s a good amount to do? What’s worthwhile?

Zahan Billimoria: That’s a great question and I think ultimately that’s going to depend on, to some degree, the degree to which the individual feels like that’s a missing dimension in their performance. If they feel like, ‘I do have strong fingers and I do have reasonable pulling strength but I’m just not flowing, I’m just not moving well, I’m not linking and tension and releasing, I climb stiff as a piece of cardboard,’ then probably this is going to have a really big impact on your climbing. Maybe you’re a dancer or an acrobat and now you’re coming to climbing and you’re thinking, ‘No, no, no. I move well. I flow, I just don’t quite have the finger strength to hold onto the holds.’ Then maybe finger strength is really where maybe you need to invest more time. 

I’m thinking that my philosophy around this movement is consistent with where I’ve always been in the sense that if there’s one thing that I think we can all agree on as so important is this idea of specificity. This summer I read Chris Beardsley’s book called Strength is Specific. Anybody out there who hasn’t read that I totally, massively recommend that book. I thought I was so passionate and so into specificity and he really kind of blew the doors off of that. It really contributed to my thinking of: okay, it’s really easy to think about specificity in terms of pulling and fingers but it’s really difficult to think about specificity in terms of the core because the core has so many functions and movement is so complex and all that movement has to go through the core. 

The spine is kind of the skeletal structure that supports the core and the spine is just a series of joints that rotate and flex and bend in flexion. It’s so complex, the way that that part of our body can move compared to a bicep, which is largely supported by this elbow which is a pretty two-dimensional movement pattern, comparatively. 

The reason I think I’m going down this road of pursuing how we integrate the athleticism of the sports that we do into the way that we train is because the core is the foundation for athletic movement. 

I don’t know if this is on topic or off topic for your audience but I am totally fascinated by MMA and the UFC in particular. I’ve never been a fighter. I don’t fight and I’m actually fairly pacifist in my bend but I’m really into cage fighting these days. I know – it’s totally insane. My kids are like, ‘Dad, are you serious?’ I’m just so mesmerized and fascinated by the movement perfection of those athletes. 

One of the things that I’ve come to realize is that the smaller the venue of your sport, the more movement intelligence is required. The less room you have to navigate, the faster, the quicker, the more reactive you have to be. MMA and cage fighting occurs in this tiny, tiny venue. Observing not so much exactly what they’re doing in their movement patterns, because I’m not trying to be a fighter, but their behavioral patterns around their movement, specifically around this idea of tension and release, like if someone is about to punch me in the face, man, I’d be so tense. I’d be so tense the whole time but these guys who are at the most elite level – Israel Adesanya is this guy I’m really fascinated by. He is just like asleep at the wheel. He is so relaxed and he is head-to-head, maybe 4-4.5 feet away from a guy who is trying to kill him. They are so loose and so relaxed and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that is universal to elite level performers.’

I watch my friend BJ Tilden and I was scrolling through his Instagram and watching his repertoire of 5.14 sends in the last 12 months. Just watching how quickly he will execute these really hard moves and then – boom – he’s back in this really relaxed state. All of that happens or doesn’t happen in the core.

Neely Quinn: That makes sense. I see what you’re saying. That’s why we say that pro athletes make it look so easy. They’re not tensed up like we feel or look.

Zahan Billimoria: That’s totally right. We all know that feeling when you get on the rock and you’re strong as hell but you’re like, ‘Pffff – it’s never going to go down today because I am so stiff and tense. I’m doing all the holding on part, I’m just not doing any of the letting go part.’

Neely Quinn: Yeah. How do we train that? What you’re saying is the stronger we are – for me, at least, I know the stronger I’ve become the more confident I am and so moves that used to feel hard don’t feel hard anymore so it gives me this confidence like, ‘Okay, I’ve got this.’ I think it allows me to relax a little bit more. I think that confidence and ability to relax comes with increased strength, which is what you’re trying to get us to do. 

Zahan Billimoria: Yes, and it increased strength but it increased three-dimensional strength, like the body’s natural movement patterns. If we got on a machine in a gym and just did crunches, I could do crunches and move that pin down the rack until I could crunch 500 pounds but that’s not contributing to me developing that kind of confidence on the rock, you know? What you’re saying there and the way you described it totally resonates with me. I feel today like the way I walk around and the way I move, I just have this higher level of confidence in my body that I’m really digging right now.

Neely Quinn: When you said earlier that your clients say to you, “I just love doing this training,” I wanted to laugh because core training is just so hard, right? Whenever you see people in the gym doing a core routine – including myself – you’re breathing hard, you’re maybe making some noises.

Zahan Billimoria: Maybe not breathing. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Right. Maybe not breathing but at the same time, you get done and you’re like, ‘I just did something. I know that I just did something hard,’ so it’s really rewarding, I think. 

Zahan Billimoria: Yes, and I think part of that is because that’s an enormous amount of muscle tissue that’s under contraction. The systemic effect on the body is kind of monumental.

Neely Quinn: Right. It’s like a deadlift.

Zahan Billimoria: A deadlift would probably be a great parallel to that. I notice that I can go to my absolute max on some kind of pulling exercise and I feel spent but I’m like, ‘I’m good, I’m coherent,’ but when I’m done with something that’s really, really hard in the quads, whether it’s a heavy single-leg squat or something like that, I’m incoherent for a couple of minutes because all the blood that is required for service in that much muscle tissue just leaves the rest of our body feeling warped and spent. The core is like that, too. You’re talking about a very, very high demand in terms of a lot of muscle tissue.

Neely Quinn: Right. It isn’t just those abs.

Zahan Billimoria: Exactly. It’s not just the abs.

Neely Quinn: I did want to go back to the progression because I think people are probably curious what level one, two, three, and four look like. I’m just curious if you can give me – you started with the level one swimmer and I would love to know how that progresses through your program.

Zahan Billimoria: Level one swimmer is kind of a first step in the progression. Another step from there is a knee-to-elbow, so you’re going to be in that same baseline plank position with a slight bend in the elbows, slight bend in the knees, tight core engaged, and then I’m going to really slowly release one foot off the ground. The reason I want to do it slowly is because I want to feel whether my body is totally stable and immobilized as I lift that leg. If I feel like as soon as I unweight that foot that I’m spinning into a collapse then I’m not ready for that move and I need to spend more time on the one-arm circle. 

You release that leg and get stable there and you should be in that really stable neutral plank position and then I’m going to bring that knee up to the corresponding elbow. That’s going to be a really slow, controlled move and ideally I want to bring that knee high on the elbow. I want to control that hip mobility and really teach my body to produce force at the end range of my hip because when my knee is up against my elbow that’s getting a pretty acute angle, at least for my body. Really control that knee as it approaches and touches the elbow or even up towards the tricep. Then very slowly, keeping that knee level with my hip and not letting it drop back down towards the ground, so the knee is planing parallel to the ground all the way back until my leg is totally straight. That is a knee-to-elbow.

Another step in the progression from there would be instead of bending that knee I’m going to extend that knee and transfer all the weight onto my target leg, which is going to be my other one. This leg is going to be totally outstretched and now I’m going to side kick that leg, keeping it straight, and I’m going to use it like this giant lever arm and I’m going to swing it out to the side. Now it’s 90° to me, sticking way out there, and the further out it is obviously the more lever it represents and the more torque it’s producing and the more stabilizing force my core has got to apply in order to keep my hips really stable. 

When I get as far out as I can accentuate that hip then I’m going to lower slowly into a single push-up. I’m slowly changing that movement plane and as I slowly lower into that push-up I’m trying to not let that hip collapse and trying to not let that foot drop. I’m trying to keep my ankle, my knee, and my hip all at the same level so when they’re 10 inches above the ground they should all be about 10 inches above the ground. As I lower into that push-up I’m really recruiting all the muscles in my core to keep that my body into that super neutral position and lower in unison, all together, until my chest grazes the ground and then slowly push back up, lock that off at 170° because I’m trying to never lock my elbows out, and then slowly bring that foot back into the baseline plank position and touch down.

Neely Quinn: So some of these are with one arm and some of these are with two arms. 

Zahan Billimoria: Yes. The idea is that you’re constantly compromising your position. When you get to the point where you’re releasing one hand and one foot that starts to get quite difficult. That starts to get pretty advanced.

Neely Quinn: So that was all the levels?

Zahan Billimoria: No, that was just the first three steps of the progression. There are 12 steps.

Neely Quinn: Woah.

Zahan Billimoria: This is massive. My friend Adam Worth who shot this whole program, we started shooting in July I believe and we’ve shot every single week. We scrapped the entire program a bunch of times. This is a huge amount of work for the athlete, for sure. I’m fairly confident that for most advanced level athletes this would be years and years of work. This represents years of development, movement progression, and core strength for most athletes.

Neely Quinn: Great. You’re keeping us busy, or busier.

Zahan Billimoria: I’ve kept myself busy. The idea is that people start with these movement progressions so you learn the movements. I really want people to take time and hone in the movements in the same way you would hone in a new sport. If somebody wanted to teach you how to surf you would practice surfing, you would practice doing all the drills to stand up on a surfboard, and I really want people to bring that level of athletic focus to the movements. 

Once you’ve got about the first three or four movements down then you go to the level one workout and that would integrate all of those movements. Then you would be like, ‘Okay, cool. I feel like I can do 6-8 repetitions of each one. I feel like I have good body control during each movement.’ Then go back to the progressions and learn steps 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. Get those honed and then go back and work on level two. Back again to the progressions then back to the workout then back and forth. 

Neely Quinn: It’s awesome. I think it sounds like a really cool program. Where can people find it?

Zahan Billimoria: It will be on my website which is samsaramtntraining.com. 

Neely Quinn: And they can find it in the programs area?

Zahan Billimoria: Yeah. I’ll put it up on the homepage for a while. It’s definitely what I’m most excited about right now so it will be front and center. 

Neely Quinn: Is it mostly a subscription program or how do they access it?

Zahan Billimoria: No, it will be a one-time purchase. It’s entirely video-based so everything is explained in these videos. There is an intro video that orients you to the whole program, like, ‘Where do I start? What do I do? How do I know what level I am?’ Then there is an intro to each of the three movement patterns that are in each of the progressions. The movement progressions have three movement patterns, like I was saying. It’s stability ball, plank, and pistol squat. There’s introductions to those and how to develop in all three of those. Then there’s some 36 movement progressions and four, 40-50 minute workout videos.

Neely Quinn: Wow. I’m excited for it. I’m going to try it and see what it’s all about.

Zahan Billimoria: Right on. 

Neely Quinn: I really appreciate you coming on and talking about sort of a novel concept, for this podcast at least. I feel like people will appreciate knowing a little bit more about the philosophy of core training and how we can do things a bit more differently. Thank you so much. 

Zahan Billimoria: Absolutely, Neely, It’s been really fun. Thanks so much for having me.

Neely Quinn: Take care.

Zahan Billimoria: Take it easy.

Neely Quinn: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Z. He is obviously super passionate about what he is doing and, again, the program is available. You can check it out at samsaramtntraining.com. You can also find him on Instagram @samsaramtnexperience and he puts up some cool posts there. 

Hopefully you learned something about core training and hopefully you’ll start to incorporate more of it into your training program. I know I have just started back up and it is painful at first but then, like he said, once you get into it it can be super enjoyable to move your body in those ways. 

Coming up on the podcast in two weeks I will either have Pete Whitaker or Chris Heilman on the show. I have this interview that I did with Pete Whitaker, who is one of the Wide Boyz. He is a super, very good crack climber and we talked about his pretty ingenious and clever ways of training for crack climbing. That will be coming up or an interview with Chris Heilman, the new sports psychologist who has joined TrainingBeta. In that interview we’re going to basically do a session on me. We’ve worked together, we know that we have a good rapport and she has helped me, and of course I have some new goals and new barriers for my climbing this year so we’re going to do a little session so you can see how she works and what kind of benefit having a sports psychologist, or even just thinking about your own sports psychology and mindset can do for your own climbing. That will be coming up in a couple of weeks.

For now, you can check out all the training programs that we have on TrainingBeta. We have created a bunch of stuff that makes it really easy for you to just go into the gym, not have to think about anything, follow instructions, and just get stronger. Magic. Go to trainingbeta.com/programs and everything is in there, including subscription programs. If you prefer eBooks we have those. We have programs from Steve Bechtel, we have injury prevention and injury healing protocols from Doctor Jared Vagy, and then you can also train online and do remote coaching with Matt Pincus. 

Normally I do nutrition but at the moment I am taking a break from seeing any new clients so that I can create some more nutrition products so that you don’t have to see me in order to get nutrition information. I’m on there but I’m not available at the moment and I’ll let you guys know when I am. Probably in March of 2020 again.

Anyway, thanks so much for listening. You can find us on social media @trainingbeta. I really appreciate you listening all the way to the end. I’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

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