If you are stuck at a plateau in your rock climbing and you would really like to break through into the five 12 grade consistently, we have something for you that will help you. So back in January, coach Alex Steiger did a series called the five 12 Breakthrough Series, and it was a series of four presentations and one big q and a session on how to break into climbing five 12 through 18 years of climbing and thousands of hours of coaching in the gym, coach Alex has seen a lot of people who are capable of climbing five 12 and they’re just not doing it. It’s almost never a strength issue. It’s so much more than that. It’s often about mindset when approaching the grade and the technique and skills required to climb that grade, like knowing how to stay focused and use good technique. When you get pumped.

(00:55)
In this series, Alex will tell you how to structure your climbing sessions. To break into the five 12 grade or climb it consistently, she’ll go into strength training a bit and give you sample workouts for finger strength, core strength and shoulder strength. To support climbing five 12, she’ll go over how to approach endurance training so you can hold onto worse holds for longer and make clips even when you’re pumped. She’ll provide drills to help you safely practice using worse handholds and footholds and how to make longer reaches and more technical and committing movements. If you’ve been struggling to get out of a plateau in the five 10 or five 11 range, you’ll be taught by an experienced climbing coach exactly what you need to do in the gym and outdoors to up your climbing game. Alex will help you shift your mindset so you believe that five 12 is possible.

(01:45)
You’ll also find out the solutions to the six most common mistakes five 11 climbers are making, and she’ll provide concrete tactics for projecting to make the process more efficient. When you purchase the five 12 Breakthrough Series, you get immediate access to four recordings of the 90 minute Zoom calls that she did back in January when she ran the first cohort of this. It’s $97 rather than the original 147, just because they’re recorded and not live. But you will get live support. She’ll have a Slack channel that is available until August 28th where you can ask questions, give her videos to critique, and to answer people’s questions yourself. She’ll also be doing a live q and a session on August 28th where you can ask her any questions that you have. You can find this all@trainingbeta.com slash 5 1 2 as in five 12, but there’s no.in there. So training beta.com/ 5 1 2, you’ll get all of the information on it, uh, all of the details of what you’ll get. In each of the calls, you’ll see a bunch of testimonials from people who loved the program when they went through it, and you’ll be able to, uh, start right away when you purchase. You also have the opportunity to add on a one hour coaching call with Alex one-on-one if you feel like you need more help. This is only available to purchase until Friday, July 28th, 2023. So if you wanna get your hands on it and start learning right away, you can go to training beta.com/ 5 1 2.

(03:39)
This is the Training Beta podcast, and I’m your host Neely Quinn. Thanks for joining me again for another episode, all about training for climbing and all things climbing. I don’t have any updates really for you about my own climbing. I haven’t been climbing outside at all lately for the last few weeks I’ve just been climbing in the gym. It’s been awesome. Sometimes I really like to take a break from outdoor climbing and projecting just because it lets me relax and have like weekends to just chill and do housework and other little projects that I have. And so that’s been great and it’s also allowed me to focus a lot on training beta. So I’m making some progress on the route training program and it’s almost done, and I will have it out to you in August, uh, hopefully by mid-August. And I’m really excited about it because it means that both our bouldering training and the new root training program, these are both subscription programs that give you many days of training just spelled out for you, and three levels of training for each program.

(04:54)
Um, and it means that they’re updated to, to reflect our, our evolving philosophies on training, um, compared to the original programs that we had put out in 2013 and 14. So I’m excited about that. Stay tuned for more information about it. You can, you can always check out our bouldering training program. It’s on the site on training beta, but um, yeah, so that’s really what I’ve been working on. And yeah, so in this episode today I have coach Alex Steiger. I’m not really gonna do much of an intro. I know that you know who Alex is and um, you’ve probably heard her episodes before and they’re always really organized and she puts a ton of thought into these episodes, uh, and she just puts a ton of thought into her job as a climbing coach and as a climber herself. And that really shines through in this episode. So I’m just gonna let her get to it and I will talk to you on the other side. Enjoy. All right, welcome back to the show, Alex. How are you doing?

I am doing so good. I rehabbed my shoulder and I went to rifle and I got on my project and there was zero sharp pain. I was so excited.

That’s incredible. Yeah, it seemed like it was kind of a bad injury there for a while. I mean, not like super bad, but bad enough that you were having complaints often while you were climbing on any grade, right?

Yeah, it was a, a tweak. I think a tweak is a good word for it. And the PTA I went to was super helpful. I feel like my fitness is terrible, but I know that comes back super quick, so I’m not worried about it.

Yeah. Yeah,

It was just so nice to be pain free climbing

And I know that there are people out there who are like, well, I have a shoulder injury and I haven’t been able to to rehab it. So can you just describe really quickly what the injury is slash was and what you did for it?

Yeah, so I’ve had a grumpy shoulder for a while, which is kind of label labeled as superspinatus tendinopathy. So I was rehabbing that starting in like February and it was pretty good until I start doing hard things and then it comes back. And when I was in rifle for the first time, post it closing and opening, I got on my project, I was super fatigued at the top, got to the top, was running the top over and over on top rope, and I decided to try and like reach across my body down to my other foot to see if I can clip a clip that I have to skip. And I felt a sharp like twinge in my shoulder when I did that and I was like, oh, darn. But I ignored it for a couple weeks and um, it just kept getting worse to where anytime my arm would cross my body I would get a sharp pain. So I went to the PT and got needled, got things loosened up, got a simple rehab protocol of like two or three exercises in a stretch to do on a daily or every other day basis. And the big thing is I dialed back my intensity in climbing. I stopped getting on stuff that was hurting it and just let it heal. And that took about three weeks. I’m about six weeks out of when I tweaked it, but about three to four weeks into just being really diligent about doing my rehab stuff.

Yeah. Well good job being proactive about it. You’ve had enough injuries now that you know, like, you know, you need to go get help and actually do the work that they tell you to do. So nice work. I’m happy for you.

Yeah, cuz the healing time, the rehab time doesn’t start until you start doing the right things and you stop pissing it off

<laugh>. Yeah.

So it could have been a shorter thing than it was except that I was in denial for a few weeks just showing up, being like, I’m gonna try anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

So then are you gonna keep going while it’s hot to your project?

We went last weekend and we’re going this weekend, and I think that is a yes, maybe not every weekend, but I feel I’m not coming off of feeling like I have a big base from the early season and I I wanna get that.

Yeah. Right. Cool. Well good luck out there.

Thank you. I love it. Even if it’s hot.

Yeah, I know. It is pretty great.

And it’s not like we’re surprised by the temps. It’s not like you’re going and you expect it to be awesome and it’s not and you’re super disappointed. It’s like, you know what you’re signing up for,

Right? Yeah. And if you’re just trying to get a base like you’re not even expecting to send or anything.

Yeah. It’s kind of nice. Yeah. How are you?

Uh, I’m good. I am just climbing in the gym. We’re about to go on a little retreat, not a retreat, I call it that. And then that seems like we’re going on like a guided retreat, but we’re just, my husband and I, Seth and I are going to Taos New Mexico and got this really cool Airbnb for four days and we’re just gonna like day drink and look at the pretty view <laugh>.

That sounds amazing. You’re going on a romantic getaway.

Yes, we’re going on a romantic getaway. That’s what it is. Yeah, I, yeah, so that’s been happening. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with work, um, trying to figure out just work stuff. It’s kind of a hard balance sometimes, like figuring out how to do all the things that it requires to run training beta and like get my coaching off of the ground and all of the other things I’m trying to do. So a

Lot of keep Matt and I going all of our stuff. Yes.

Yeah, all of it. It, there’s a lot to juggle, so, um, but yeah, I’m, I’m excited for this episode. Um, why don’t you, why don’t you introduce what we’re gonna talk about today?

Yeah. So our topic today is learning from the best and I really wanna talk about how to utilize YouTube specifically watching World Cups, watching climbing media, various sources, professional climbers, and then also just ways of actively watching good climbers in your gym. Like how can we learn from this massive resource we all have at our disposal in front of our couch so that we can take valuable lessons to our own climbing.

Yeah, and I mean, I asked you for a topic the other day for a podcast episode and this came out like very quickly. So it was really on your mind it seemed like. Uh, can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, so it’s World Cup season, the bouldering has finished, it’s now sport climbing. I watch all of them. I watch all of semis and all of finals for every single comp and I love it. And I’ve been doing that for years and I just feel like I’ve learned so much from that experience as well as just get a lot of enjoyment out of it. And with my clients, because I’ve been so involved in World Cups, a lot of my teaching examples, I’ll pull from a certain World Cup or something like that. I’ll just share my screen and be like, look at this. Yeah. Like, this is how you manage your heel and a heel hook or something because it’s there and there’s some great resources just available.

Yeah, it’s awesome. And it seems like you get a lot of, um, personal growth and motivation from it as well,

So much for years. And so if people are not currently investing in like following the sport on that level, I recommend it and I want this podcast to a, maybe prompt people to start watching and b, give them some tools of how to actively watch if they wanna really learn.

Yeah.

Cuz I’ll assign clients to actively watch something and that’s not the same as passively watching. And I wanna go into all that.

Cool. Yeah. And before we do, I just wanna bring up like, this isn’t new for you. You’ve done this with chess, I’m sure you did it with break dancing. Like tell, tell me about how you’ve used this in your life before.

So I am a hero lover. When I get into a sport, the first thing I do is I find heroes in it and I just immerse in that bigger picture because it really helps me pull from feeling so kind of alone in a journey to entering into a community, into a bigger scene, into a world. And that is an endless source of motivation for me. And I just find it’s free education. Yeah. Like when you watch the best, even if you’re not actively watching, you are still soaking in information that is only good. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So it’s what define it’s a defining factor for me between a sport and an activity. It’s like exercising and training. It’s, oh, I am now taking part in a sport, therefore I need to learn the history of it. I need to learn the players. I can have this deeper experience if I connect to like the World Cups Yeah. Competitions in soccer. Right. The leagues and basketball, the games. It’s, to me, it’s a key element.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I love that. And I also love watching the World Cups and competitions in general. I always have. And I also learn a lot from it. And I feel like for me, one of the biggest things I take away is, one of the things that we’re gonna talk about is like Brooke Rabbit Two is small, she’s a small person and she’s short. And so when I’m trying to do something that’s hard for me that’s reachy, I like try to imagine all the things that I’ve seen her do that were incredible. But she did them and try to like channel her basically. And all the other

Shorties. Absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and there’s so many, so as a short climber, I’m like, oh, anytime I start feeling like this isn’t fair, I’m just like, well, five of six female athletes were around my height mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the finals of the World

Cup, which is crazy out that it’s last weekend moving that direction. So. Awesome.

Yeah.

Okay. So we as always have a giant outline to work through, so thank you for that, um, for making these talks always so organized. Um, so my, one of my first questions is what do you get out of watching the World Cups?

Yeah, so I have a list of items here that I’m just gonna go down and elaborate on a little bit. But the main theme is that a, I’ve been watching these for years and I’m still amazed at how much I can learn. So I, I learned what really amazing climbing looks like, so I can strive for those things because when you watch the best, you’re seeing years and years and years and years of dedicated movement, practice and experience and all of that come together in a moment where there’s typically a lot of stressors for them. Like they want a World Cup medal, they’re competing, there’s lots of people watching whatever, they’re

Jet lagged,

They’re jet lagged, they’re tired, all these things, but they still show up and they climb so well. And I think just watching good climbing is a key to becoming a good climber. How are you going to become a really good climber if you don’t know what good climbing looks like? So that’s number one. Number two is visually seeing over and over what trying hard really looks like. And that it looks different for so many athletes. It’s not always the same, it looks different. You, your try hard could be your own image, but you’re literally seeing people try as hard as they can to get one move further mm-hmm. <affirmative> or to make forward progress for one move, which to me is exactly what we should all be striving for. And a lot of us don’t get there, but just watching it 28 times. So if I watch semifinals and finals, I’ve just watched 50 plus climbers try as hard as they possibly can and really think one move at a time.

(17:38)
Hmm. So when I think of a World Cup mentality, I’m thinking, oh, they’re fighting for their next hold just as much as they’re fighting to get to the next clip or the top of the route. And so many of us, just normal non World Cup athletes, non-competition climbers, I call it anxious climbing style, we’re often looking up and being like, can I get to the next bolt? Can I get to the top of the route? Oh, there’s no way I can get there and be able to clip that clip so I might as well take here mm-hmm. <affirmative> or I shouldn’t try or I’m not ready to do that, or whatever. And so watching climbers who are truly in the moment only looking at what’s in front of them, trying to solve it and trying to get that one more move, I think is so valuable.

Yeah. It is. And it really is a different mentality because every move does count literally for something. Whereas in outdoor indoor climbing for normal people, it doesn’t necessarily count for anything.

Yeah. But it could imagine how much better, um, you could be. I could be, and all the people around us could be, if that was our mentality. Right. Like we would surprise ourselves so often mm-hmm.

<affirmative>

And, and then constantly be rewriting our narrative of what we think we can do.

Yeah. You,

Which I think is helpful.

You said earlier that you get to see people try hard and that it looks different for everybody. What do you mean by that?

Some people look so composed and then when they fall off it looks so surprising. Mm. You’re like, how did that happen? Um, and it doesn’t mean they didn’t try their absolute hardest, you know, they did. And then there’s people who look like they’ve been trying hard and about to fall off for the last 10 moves. Okay. <laugh>. And yet they’re still hanging in there and you’re like, wow. Uh, some people trying hard, looks like they rest more. Some people it looks like they speed up. It’s, it’s really interesting to see that there, there isn’t a wrong of how you try hard. Well, okay. There absolutely is. A lot of people when they get additional stressors do bad things for their climbing. Like they start hesitating, their footwork gets sloppy, their foot slips, like all of those kind of things. World Cup athletes are really good about staying composed when they’re ti tired so that their try hard can really come out. Mm. But even then, like I would argue 95% of all foot slips are a controllable.

What do you mean?

Um, a lot of people when their foot slips, they’re like, oh my foot slips. That sucks. I, I had so much left in me. But if you were actually thinking about your foot when you placed your foot and you maintained focus on your foot and you were fresh and or like fresh enough or whatnot to be able to do that, you probably wouldn’t have had a foot slip. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like was it truly an uncontrollable? And in World Cups you have a higher chance of an uncontrollable foot slip than we normally get ever in our own climbing because there are on a lot of dual techs and a lot of really sloppy holds and things like that. But even then, right. It’s like, oh, as we get tired, as we start to lose focus on our feet, it’s easier to have a foot slip. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

So what else do you take from watching all the World Cups?

So I get braver and more confident in my own climbing. I’m a very fearful person. But again, watching people, almost all of them fall and like take big falls. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and not even be thinking about falling. You could tell they are not thinking about the fall. Right. That is not something that even crossed their mind. And they’re taking these falls and they’re fine and some of the falls you’re like, Ooh, that looked rough. And they’re fine. Yeah. So, so just seeing that over and over when I show up I’m like, I got this.

If if they can do it, I can do it sort of.

Yeah. And it just soaks in. You’re like they’re focused and composed on their next move even though their bolt is like way below their feet now. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they’re not even thinking about it and they are totally fine.

Well yeah. And a lot of times when we’re up there and imagining the fall it’s way worse in our minds than it actually is in reality. And so when you see it actually happen, you see the physics of it, you’re like, oh, that’s what would happen. Okay.

Yeah. And you just get to see it. You get to see it over and over and over where they’re like taking big falls and they’re totally fine. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And one of the big reasons for that is I see a lot more really sketchy falls in the gym just in a normal session because people freak out and they do bad things before they fall cuz they’re not in the right space. Mm. Right. They’re like, they get scared and they make really bad decisions. Um, and then yeah, it just kind of can look a little weird where you could just see that the more confident you are, the actual more safety you have in your falls and the better decisions you’re making in and around it.

Can you gimme an example of something that a person would do to make a fall less safe because they got anxious?

Yeah. So they start getting scared and then they death pause. So they stop moving forward, their feet are really low and they start trying to shuffle around their hands. And then they keep trying to clip and then not clip and then keep trying to clip and then like fall while trying to clip.

Mm. Yeah.

Like a World Cup climber is going to be like, can I clip in this position? Yes. Okay. I’m gonna try and clip mm-hmm <affirmative>, can I not clip in this position? No. Okay. I’m gonna keep going. And so what if they take a big fall a little later? Right. It’s, it’s okay and you just see that it’s okay but that there’s this decision making that happens and I can’t actually seeing a World Cup, cup climber fall while clipping. So it also shows that it doesn’t have to be this thing that happens to us. Yeah. Even when we’re trying our hardest.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally true. Uh, what else do

You get? You could see ’em make really bad decisions with where they clip, which is also helpful. Yeah. <laugh>. Right. <laugh>. But they usually struggle, you know, it’s like if they make the decision to clip, they’re going to get the clip. Um, for better or worse and then they might fall off after.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah.

What

Else do you get outta them? Okay. I also learn, this is a me specific, I have a really hard time with rope awareness when I’m climbing. Like my partner usually has to tell me if I’m heel hooking, if my leg is in the right position oriented to the rope. This is scary slash embarrassing to talk about because I’ve been climbing for a long time. You’d think I would know when my leg is behind the rope. But for whatever reason, I don’t understand. My brain can’t figure it out. Just like I don’t really know left and right. I have a left hand freckle. Mm. So I look down at my freckle and I’m like, that’s the left. Yeah. So whatever awareness that is, I don’t have it. Um, but it’s gotten so much better watching World Cup climbers, heel hook and their rope management and just seeing it over and over and being like, oh, I get it now. Hmm. And I’ve used that a lot with clients too when they’re like, I don’t understand when the rope where it should be. If it’s a danger, if it’s not, I’m like, let’s just watch a couple World Cup athletes on this section. Oh that’s

Awesome.

And be like, their foot is behind the rope. Okay. Their, this is correct. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, did you see how they switched it? Did you see how they didn’t know right away? Here’s one of the best climbers in the world and they’re still confused about it, so don’t feel like it’s this big inadequacy. That’s

Really lovely. I like that you do that.

Yeah. It’s helpful. Cool. Okay. Um,

(25:52)
How to appreciate and see that there are many ways of doing a Boulder problem or a specific move even we can get so caught up in that. Like there’s only one way to do it and I need to find the way. And when you see every other athlete do a move, a really hard move or a really hard boulder in a completely different way that the setters really wanted to be done in one way. So it’s, it’s like they were even thinking about that. It just shows you that if one way doesn’t work for you, I guarantee there’s another way that will

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You see people do some crazy stuff.

Yeah. And look at, look at us as an example. We’re about the same size. We should have the same beta on moves. We almost, we almost never

Do

<laugh> never do. Never. I know, right. And, and it just goes to show you that there’s always different ways, but actually seeing that in the World Cup format when you’re like they’re back to back with each other all on the same climb all at a really high level. It really helps me internalize that.

Yeah. Sometimes, well often honestly, when I’m watching World Cups, I’m like, I wish that they would put like a normal ability climber on some of these climbs just to show like how hard it is or I don’t know, to give us some sort of relativity with it so that we can understand what they’re actually doing. What do you think about that?

I think it would be amazing, but that normal climber would have to be pretty dang strong.

I know, but but even if they were just falling all over it and just,

Just Yeah. Bolt to

Bolted. Yeah.

I would love that. Yeah, I would love that so much. And there’s been a couple videos where um, some of the athletes will project the final boulders or something after the competition. Um, that’s really cool cuz you’re like, oh, how do all these other climbers who didn’t make it to semi-finals or didn’t make it to finals, how do they do on these boulders?

Yeah.

And you can see that a little bit, but it’s not like the normal climber.

Yeah. Right. I also wish, this is totally an aside by the way, but I also wish that sometimes they would let, like, let you see the females try the male problems and vice versa.

I would love it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. And I, I have a really probably a pretty good hunch that several of the top female World Cup climbers would actually do pretty good. Yeah.

That’s

Why I wanted say on a lot of the male stuff. Yeah. I think it’d be really cool. Yeah. Um, that’s something I used to see Brooke Rabbits who actually do a lot as a youth climber. We would have a competition, let’s say at the spot or whatever it was a, whatever kind of competition it was, she would immediately go and be on all the finals problems. Not just the ones for the women, but like trying them all and doing actually really well on ’em. So I’ve actually gotten to see that in at times and it is really cool. You

Mean like at an a at a, when would she do this?

At what, like a citizen’s comp or? Yeah, like the spot would have these competitions like for a year or something like that where the youth could come and the, but they take finals, it’s a red point comp, but then they take the top eight people to finals mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the evening. And from that moment you could be like, oh well this person is a special competitor cuz they’re still climbing. Right. Like finals is already done and they’re still trying the men’s finals Well and doing really well on them. Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah. It’s, it’s cool.

So which,

Oh, go ahead. A lot of gyms have comps, local competitions and if people aren’t taking part in that, I highly encourage them to because they have different categories for all levels. Mm-hmm <affirmative> starting from like if you climb V one to v3, there is a category for you. So it’s, you’ll still learn a lot

From your experience. Yeah. I know you’ve talked about this before, how you feel like competitions really put you in a different mindset. They make you try harder, they make you mm-hmm <affirmative>, braver,

All these things. Yeah. Yeah. So another thing, and we’ve already mentioned this, but confidence in our own individual bodies because of watching so many different sizes and types of bodies performing at a very high level. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, there are so many examples of this where I’m just like, they’re completely different and they’re still climbing so well this is so amazing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and you just see how they could do things differently and find their own unique ways of doing it. But just seeing that really helps separate from the I am to this, to do this.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah.

Headspace.

Yeah. And I don’t know about you but whenever I’m watching they put up the, the athlete’s uh, height and I wish they would put their, their ape index up as well. But I always look up cuz I don’t know what centimeters mean. So I like convert the centimeters to

Inches. I do too. Every single time. Every

Time.

And you think I’d have figured it out by now or conversion.

Yeah. And then um, sometimes I’ll even Google their ape cuz usually you can find that um, or on eight A or whatever and wait, do they have that on eight a? I feel like you can Google it a lot of times and then it gets you a even a better idea of who, how, what this person is working with in their body and how it compares to you and how it compares to other competitors.

Yeah. I just constantly get, um, out of my head by watching the different, like people my size or people bigger or just seeing the differences in just that oh, there’s no best body to be, yeah. We can all do our best. So that is a key one for me because you can also take certain things that are qualities of a particular, like the smaller athletes and just be like, well what do they all seem to be good at and what can I get better? Like all the short climbers I watch tend to be pretty dang mobile. They tend to have some flexibility going on so they can use those higher feet so they can really get into those end range of motion. Which is so helpful to me because I could be like, I’m gonna prioritize mobility in my training because if I wanna be performing at the highest level I can, that looks like a no-brainer low hanging fruit.

Right. Yeah. And I recently understood fully I think how strong brook rabbit’s three fingered drag is and I have started working on my own because it’s terrible. Like it’s awful. I can’t do anything with a three finger drag.

Exactly. Exactly. Perfect

Example. Yeah. Like when I see her hold onto the holds that she’s holding and then move off of them off of a three finger drag, I’m like okay, that could be pretty helpful to not have to reel it in every time.

Totally. And just extra inches.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. Uh, what else? Um,

Okay, so I have here that it’s really helpful to normalize the full range of feelings that everybody is experiencing at these things because you see success fails, mistakes, disappointment, elation, you see it all, you see annoyance, you see all the things come out. And it just helps me be like, oh, I’m not alone in having feelings mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which we all know, but to actually see it in your sport and be like, here’s one of the best climbers in the world and they just got disqualified because of a silly mistake and how they handle that. Because I’m like, how many times have I made a silly mistake on my project and fallen off and felt so disappointed? And to me, one of my favorite things about climbing, and I don’t think you get this in a lot of sports, is that your feelings when you are climbing can be the exact feelings that one of the top climbers in the world has when they’re climbing. Mm.

Like

We, regardless of our level, can be having these same experiences. And so just watching those emotions, watching those reactions, watching the successes and fails, especially over the season. Cuz when the season starts, you’re like, well who are the players gonna be this year? And I don’t feel like I’ve bonded really at that point, but then by the end of the season, you have your favorites, you have your, your stories that you’re really attached to and it’s so fun to be part of that journey.

Yeah.

And it just provides perspective to your own journey. Yeah. And I think that’s really key

For sure. And I think that a lot of these competitors are really incredible at dealing with their emotions. Like you can see them get really disappointed and actively so it’s on their face, it’s in their body and then they like compose themselves. Or you can see them take a deep breath and just be like, all right, I need to see this more clearly. Like what is this boulder problem? And it’s to me is really cool to watch.

Yeah. Cuz they have to let it go. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So whatever happens on one boulder or one route, they have to let that go as quickly as possible and they also have to process it. So it’s interesting. Yeah, it is because it’s like, oh, they have to do both, but they’re really good at being like, I’m gonna process this later, but right now I need to just like move on. Yeah.

Yeah. Like Ted Lasso says, you have to be a goldfish.

I love that <laugh>. Yeah. And you could see the goldfish come out in, in practice in climbing and we could practice that in our own climbing. Like we can give ourself five minutes on a climb on a boulder problem and then no matter what happens when that five minutes is done, we have to move on and we have to go to something else. How do we handle that? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, do we take that with us? Do we take a lower confidence or a higher confidence or a particular disappointment? Like what does that look like for us?

Yeah. It’s a skill for sure.

Yeah. And, and it’s a skill that I think we could all develop. Yeah. But seeing it as the first step, right. It’s like the first step of anything I think is watching it. And that’s why I think this’s so important.

Yeah. I mean there’s a, there’s a reason that these people are at World Cup and on podiums and it’s not just because they’re strong, it’s because they have really good mindsets and, and tools and skills.

Some of the strongest climbers in the world are terrible comp climbers and some of the not strongest climbers in the world are really good world cup climbers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it just, yeah. It’s cool. Yeah.

Okay.

So, okay, so

Yeah, we went through that part of the outline and then the next part is, um, about actively watching climbing versus passively watching. Like you can just passively watch a basketball game and just be really psyched to see people doing their thing. Um, but there’s a difference when you are a climber and trying to get something out of it. So tell me about that.

Yeah, I use these words a lot because passive watching is awesome. You will absorb subconsciously things, but if you really wanna learn, you have to actively watch and actively watching definitely looks different. So how I define the difference is,

(37:55)
Um, it’s kind of in terms of like, let me think about this. Are you partaking in the experience or are you trying to learn something? And here’s some things that I mean by actively watching. I mean, are you watching with the intent of learning? Are you asking yourself questions while watching? Such as what does that climber do that I don’t do? What do I do that that climber does not do? What do I do that that climber also does? Hmm. Those three questions can just open so many doors of learning. So what do I do? What does that climber do that I do not do? What I mean by that is like, oh, I realize that they’re resting before they clip. They decide if a position is good enough to clip by just seeing if they can shake out a hand first or oh, I can tell that they handle feeling confused by immediately trying to settle into a position that’s more restful.

(38:59)
So when they get surprised and don’t know how to figure out a certain move, they don’t stay tight in trying to figure it out with action. They sink back down into a position and they start looking, they start thinking they’re not just like blindly moving their limbs around, hoping for something to work mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. Which a lot of us do <laugh> when we get confused, we just start feeling and putting our limbs all over the place hoping something will just magically happen. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they don’t do that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So can I draw attention to that? Or I recognize that they’re, um, falling without looking down. Like before they fall they don’t look down. Okay, cool. So can I start trying to do that? Mm. What does that process look like for me to get from not doing that to doing that? And when I say like, what do I do that, that climber does not do, it’s like, oh, I take like two bites of the rope to clip and they often clip in just one fell swoop.

(40:00)
So they’re grabbing the rope blower and clipping in a really nice smooth manner as often as they can. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, can I start doing that? Does that make sense? Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So examples I put here is breathing like, oh look, they’re really breathing and I’m not breathing or I am breathing like that. That’s awesome. Micro rest. So they’re often shaking out a hand in between moves. They’re finding little places to get a shake that is not a full rest. So they’re really managing their pump reg gripping. So you see very, very little habitual reg gripping. And what I mean by habitual reg gripping is kind of like just the bad habit of grabbing something and then re grabbing it, trying to make it better. They’re really good at like one touch climbing mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they grab a hold, they stay in that position, so they’re really mindful of how they grab holds and then they really commit to how they’re grabbing them.

(40:56)
So good is good enough. They’re not trying to search for better mm-hmm. <affirmative> where a lot of us do that now, they’ll also intentionally readjust. So they’ll grab a hold in a certain way and then recognize that it needs to be changed and intentionally change that grip. But it’s really intentional. It’s not this like random pawing thing right. Going on. Um, balancing dynamic and static climbing. They tend to be really good at it. There will be times when they move really static and there’ll be times when they just understand that a move needs to be more dynamic. And you see the experienced climbers do that way better than the non-experienced climbers, which is really cool because you can have a young super strong climber who is physically probably pretty superior to some of the more experienced athletes on the field fall way lower because they’re not as fluid in that transition. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Well, and you can see the, the that in the differences between some of the, the, uh, sport climbers and the boulders or the, um, the specialists basically like co how do you say? Say her name, s e o show.

Yeah. The Korean climber. Um, Shaun. So

Yeah, Uhhuh like, uh, last year she would get on these boulders that were really dynamic and she would kind of struggle and I was like, she needs to work on being more dynamic and doing the things that everybody else is doing. And you can see this year that she has done that work and she is being more dynamic and she does have better skills and it’s really cool to watch. Isn’t

That cool? Yeah. Yeah. You see the progress too, which is magical because yeah. She was really static. If there was a jump, you would see her really hesitate before it. Right.

Um, same with Laura Ra. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, she’s a really static climber, but

Yeah. Um, they put a lot of work in on that, but you could see the really experienced athletes just really thrive with that and it’s really cool Yeah. To see. Okay. Um, other examples here, because I think this is helpful and very action item oriented is, um, finding resting positions. They can find resting positions that the setters like had no idea existed. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like their minds are blown. They’re like, what? How did they find that? And it’s so cool to see how clever they are while they’re climbing. Like you can see that we all have that capability if we’re not thinking about being scared or like all the fluff in our head if we were just like, oh no, we are climbing purely in the moment. It opens up the door to being really clever and finding really unique places. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, really principled footwork. And it’s really cool because you have an athlete who will fall somewhere and then you’ll see another athlete come through and use better footwork. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when I say principled, it’s kind of like, oh, if they’re moving their right hand, they find a really awesome way of unweighting that right hand before they move it with a really unique right foot situation or just up right foot situation. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like they don’t rush hand moves. They’re really good at setting up with their feet before they move. Right.

Well, and the other thing is knowing how to use footholds properly. Because you can see that some of the less experienced climbers will put their toe onto a slabby foot, like a really sloppy slabby foot and then they’ll fall off and then the next climber will come along and they’ll put their foot on it and have more of their foot on the hold and they won’t fall off. And I’ve been climbing for like 25 years and I’ve just started like after watching that so many times I have started implementing that more in my climbing and definitely see a difference.

Me too. A hundred percent. Me too. Um, that is so helpful in watching because you’re watching amazing footwork, but you’re also watching when they mess up their footwork and then somebody else comes along and makes it look 10 times better. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative> and you’re like, you know, they’re roughly the same strength. One of ’em just really trusted that foot and the other didn’t mm-hmm. <affirmative> or one of ’em found a completely different foot sequence than somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. Um, heel hooks, toe hooks, knee bars, any of the funky kind of stuff, they set a ton of them in World Cups because all of these athletes are physically really strong and if you wanna make something pumpy, you just have to make it so people can’t put a lot of weight in their feet. And one of the easiest ways to do that is you have lateral feet. So a lot of the feet are not directly under them, they’re off to the side, which in my mind lends itself to a lot of, um, heel hooks, toe hooks and knee barss. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Does that make sense? Oh

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of people, I hear this a lot in the gym is, I don’t know why this climb is so hard. The holds are huge. Well look at the feet <laugh>, and you’re like, oh, all the feet are off to the side. You’re like, okay, that’s harder. Right. And maybe you’re missing heel hooks, you’re missing toe hooks, you’re missing these things. But when you see a hundred heel hooks in a single sitting of watching, all of a sudden your brain starts to recognize that there may be opportunities to heel hook in your own climbing.

Yeah. Well, and I mean, even watching you the other day when we went to the gym, I don’t trust my heels heel hooking very often, especially on really small holds. And you and Seth are both really good at heel hooking and do it often. And so just seeing, and obviously World Cup climbers are too, and just seeing it that it’s possible, it makes me try a little bit more.

Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. Thank you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, thanks for noticing a heel hook. Oh yeah. Um, yeah. Okay. Having goals while watching is the next big thing. Okay. So we just talked about asking yourselves questions while you’re watching. The next one is having goals from watching. Like what is one takeaway from this competition that I wanna implement in my own climbing? So last week I was so impressed with this young amazing up and coming comp climber, Toby Robinson. And I was like, my only goal and my takeaway from watching this competition is to try as hard as I see Toby try on at least one attempt this weekend on any climb, but on some climb. I wanna try hard like Toby tries and I did. So I was on my project and normally in the bottom, like, if I don’t get this certain hold very good, I’m like, there’s no point in trying and I just let go. Mm. And I barely got this hold, but I was like, I’m gonna try like Toby. And I just like made a noise and tried and I got my feet back on and I made it quite a few more moves.

That’s amazing.

And I had no idea that was ever possible. Mm. So that one action item from that World Cup opened a door in my brain. Mm. Amazing. To what I can do. Right. Um, one action item could be, uh, I’m recognizing that they’re not regripping all the time, so this week I’m gonna really try not to reg Gripp. I’m gonna go and I’m gonna really practice this one thing. Or Oh, I’m noticing that they’re heel hooking all the time. So I’m gonna go to the gym and I’m gonna try and find heel hooks. Mm-hmm. Today. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I have an action item. Yeah.

You have to be more observant when you’re watching and then be reflective on what you’ve observed.

Yeah. And say it out loud. Like I said it, I said that before I climbed. My only goal is to try as hard as Toby. Right. And so that solidifies it, it makes it a real thing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we learn so much more from stuff I think when we do that. Yeah. Um, I used to give assignments to some of my athletes when I was working with competition climbers. And I would say, I, what’s one of your favorite climbers? If they said, I don’t know, what do you think my response was, go

Watch the World Cups.

You figure it out, you better come back to me in a week with at least three people who you admire. Like, like this is a whole Right. You need to have some, some people that you resonate with. So go find them. Yeah. Okay. Most of them knew if like most people who really wanna get better at their sport will tend to have heroes. So if you wanna get better at your sport and you don’t find some mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, then I would say pick one of your favorite climbers and I want you to study them. I want you to watch at least five to 10 videos of them and I want you to come up with one to three things that you think they do really well or that is particular to their style of climbing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then I want you to tell me what those things are and I want you to spend like three to six sessions a part of each session, really trying to climb like that person in those ways. Try and work on those skill sets that make that person to you climb like them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, does that make sense? Yeah,

Yeah. Definitely. I’m

Really curious. It’s such a fun drill. Yeah.

Like what, what came of those conversations and what they learned or honestly, I’m curious about what that is for you. Like who is your hero and what do you try to emulate about them?

Yeah. So my current hero is Salme Romaine. She is a French climber and we are the same height. And she also has a body type that I can just really feel comfortable watching where I’m like, she has muscle. I’m like, I can, I can like, I just like, yes. Her. Um, so one of the things I noticed that she does really well is she is maybe one of the best climbers I’ve ever seen at committing to big moves without hesitating. Mm. And a lot of smaller climbers, their endurance is often really good, but they’re also really hesitant sometimes cuz they’re like, do I have to do a big move? Do I not have to do a big move? And she just does it and it is so cool how big a moves and how spread out she could be on every single move and how that doesn’t seem to affect her endurance like you would expect or how far she gets because she doesn’t hesitate.

(51:46)
Mm. So I’ve been practicing no hesitations. Nice. Um, when I had athletes who were like, I really admire Alex Puccio. So it’s like, okay, well what do you think is one of her biggest strengths? And they’re like, her strength. I’m like, okay, in what way? Okay, let’s do some really awesome strength workouts this week. Let’s prioritize our pull power. Let’s prioritize showing up to our training sessions. Let’s prioritize like feeling empowered that we can get stronger in our bodies. Yeah. If, um, if I wanna climb like Yana, what does that look like? And I’m like, well, she’s so confident and she’s really confident in looking relaxed while she’s climbing. Like she does really hard moves, but she looks really relaxed. So how can we practice that? We can pick a boulder that’s kind of hard for us and we can do it multiple times, aiming to look more relaxed and confident every single time. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative> because looking more relaxed means that you are more relaxed, which means that you’re not wasting much energy.

Yeah. And just like, how can you feel confident? How can you practice feeling confident and climbing confidently? And by doing that, we’re practicing climbing like Jana. That’s good. Or you, Yana also has, is really good at arm swings. Mm. So she often drops her arm and then swings it up to her next hold and just kind of floats through movement. So you can, anybody at any level could practice that. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s something you do too. And I know that you’ve made an, uh, like a conscious effort to do that.

Oh, absolutely. And it’s really cool because now you’re, you’re seeing, um, anybody is short is really good at arm swings. Yeah. Because it is a technique in and of itself. Like if, if you try and lock off to a move that’s far away, it’s gonna be way harder than if you just drop that arm and you swing it up towards your next hole. It’s, it’s a technique. It’s

Often Yeah. It’s kind of like a applicable pogo for your arm.

Yeah. It just forces you to start a move from low, it forces you to commit to a move and it forces you to drive from your feet. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I mean, I started doing that because of Jana. I didn’t start doing that because I was like, I’m short, I need to get better at doing dynamic moves, so I’m gonna just drop my hand before going to my next hold. I was like, oh, Jana does this, so I’m gonna start doing this. And then I was like, whoa, I could do way bigger moves <laugh>. That’s great. Yeah. And, and it’s mind blowing and then you’re like, then you start seeing it, you’re like, oh, all these short strong climbers that I’ve been watching have been doing this for ages and I just never saw it.

You’re so observant.

I try. Yeah. It’s not

Always really cool.

Um, this is also my job.

I know. And I, I just really always admire how seriously you take your job.

Oh, thank you. I really love it. That helps. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So actively watching climbers in person is something I put also because it’s really, really interesting to me. But a lot of people don’t do this and I just see it all the time. This

Is beyond like how we can learn from other climbers on YouTube. And this

Is just you and the gym. Yeah. Right.

Or outside

You at the crack. Yeah. Or outside. Right. Um,

(55:08)
Here is a big example. We go outside, we are climbing, we are so in our own head space that we don’t even realize that there is a top level climber climbing or even if we know they’re climbing, I see people talking to their friends. Mm. I see people looking at their own climbing objective and I’m like, um, don’t you realize that that’s Colin Duffy right there mm-hmm. <affirmative> and he’s climbing right now. And you could be learning so much because it is one thing to watch a top level climber on something you’ve never been on or a wall angle you don’t understand. And it’s a completely different thing to watch somebody on something that you could actually get on. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> even an easier version of it on the same wall. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>.

Right. Um, so it’s so interesting, but a lot of the people who should be watched are never watched because they’re sneaker, like they’re sneaky. They’re climbing so good that they’re not drawing attention to themselves.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.

Like, they’re not screaming, they’re not like, um, one of my favorite climbers of all time, I’m very fortunate, is my partner Luke. And I would say 90% of the time he sent stuff nobody knows he sent it, even if they were at the crag. <laugh>

Because he makes no noises,

He doesn’t make noise, he just looks so smooth while he is climbing. And then people just like, they’re not even watching mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then there’s a person who’s like grunting and screaming and like struggling their way up something and all eyes are on them. And I’m like, well what are you learning? You’re learning that that’s what good climbing looks like cuz it doesn’t mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Right. You’re learning something that you shouldn’t be learning. Um, you should be watching the, the people who are looking really smooth that you’re like,

Oh,

What’s going on over there?

Yeah. Yeah. And even if they aren’t like top, top level, if you’re a five 10 climber, they don’t need and you’re around a five 12 climber who’s making the five 12 look easy, like watch them,

Watch them. Or if somebody comes over and they’re going to get on a climb that you’re working on, maybe even as a warmup or whatever, they’re just a couple grades of a higher level climber than you watch ’em.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know what is so funny is I have done, uh, Irene meditation as my warmup probably 500 times in my life in Rifle. It’s UN 11 D. And for some reason I decided to watch a person on it the other day, which I don’t ever do. I don’t care. And I got new beta that made it a completely different climb for myself. Can you believe that?

Exactly. Exactly. And not only that, but you opened up brain patterns. Yeah. Right. You opened up these new brain pathways of like, oh, there’s a different way.

Yeah, yeah. Cuz sometimes you just can’t see it for whatever reason. It was amazing. I was like, this is so much more fun now. <laugh>.

Oh my gosh, that’s so perfect. Yeah. Uh, yeah, exactly. Watch people. And I find it’s really interesting because there’s some weird social thing that goes on. Like often people are shy to watch somebody or they’re like, oh, I shouldn’t be watching. So maybe you shouldn’t be cheering without asking if somebody wants cheering, but watching is totally fine,

Right? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Silently. Yeah. Lurking, uh, like down the street or something.

Yeah. Like I’ve, and I’ve even seen this in the gym where I’ve seen so many of my clients in the gym while I’m climbing and I’m getting on their project and they’re making a point not to watch because I think they feel awkward watching. I’m like, what are you doing? I’m like, demoing this for you right now, <laugh> for free. Like you’d pay me a hundred dollars an hour to do this for you and you could watch it right now. <laugh>.

Everybody watch me <laugh>.

That’s not what I’m saying. I know, but you get what

I’m saying. I know. Yes, I totally do. Yes.

It’s this weird, awkward thing, which is why I find it interesting and I’ve never found it awkward. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. You can respectfully watch somebody for sure.

Yeah. Um, and I think that’s a strength of mine. Like even at chess tournaments, like I don’t feel embarrassed going up and watching the top games mm-hmm. <affirmative> and standing there for an hour. Yeah.

Cool. All right. That is really valuable advice, I think, to watch people in the real life. Um, what

Else? And something else I said there is, it’s unrealistic to ask yourself to watch people when you’re immersed in your own activity in your own sport for the day. Which is also wonderful because for those people out there who are like so afraid, people are watching them and judging them, if that person is climbing, I guarantee they’re not.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

They’re in their own head about their own situation, their own things, their own struggles. Um, so go visit crags on your rest day when you’re tweaked and can’t climb. Go climbing with your friends and just watch. Um, moving on. So the thing from World Cups in these moments I’ve talked about is that they’re defined. So it’s like what can you simulate in your own climbing to have more defined learning moments? I’ve talked about this in other podcasts, so I’m not gonna go into it too much, but can you have a session or many sessions dedicated to mock competitions or things where you are videoing with the intent of watching and getting better? So watch your own climbing. Yeah. That’s the point of this is watch the pros, watch your own climbing. Get eyes on it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because what you feel like is not what you might look like. And when you start actually objectively seeing what you look like, climbing, that helps me and my clients almost more than anything make actual productive changes in, in the way we climb.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that’s, that’s a tricky one I think because even I will watch myself climbing and unless there’s some particular move that I’m focused on doing better or being able to do it all, it’s hard for me to know what to even look for in my own climbing. And so I think that we’re not gonna go into that right now necessarily, but I think that that’s where a coach could come in, including you to like teach somebody exactly what to look for. Especially given people’s specific weaknesses and

Strengths. Yeah. That’s what I, one of the things I can help with the most actually. And um, if you are interested in that, there’s a hundred dollars offering right now regardless of what level you’re climbing. My five how to, um, five 12 breakthrough. If you watch all six hours of recorded lecture, you will walk away understanding more of what you can look for in your own climbing guaranteed. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Like yeah. That’s, that information is available to you right now actually. So yes. Right now, right now, um, also the question I mentioned earlier, what is that professional climber doing that I am not doing? So the moment you actively look for one thing, like I’m gonna watch this finals of World Cup and I’m only gonna look at how they’re grabbing holds, then I’m gonna pick one thing to look at my videos for and see if I’m doing that thing.

(01:03:00)
Mm. What does mine look like in comparison to them? Because then you can answer your own questions without a coach. Yeah. Right. Because that’s what I’m comparing. I’m like all the massive amounts of good climbing I’ve seen in my brain when I’m watching a client video, I’m comparing to that. Like, what do I know good climbing looks like and what are you not doing? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really helpful actually. Um, yeah. And then so I wanted to give some specific resources, but it was my intention today to a not say a lot of names of people because I can’t pronounce them very well. And also I would just be missing others that mean just as much to me. But they just didn’t come to my head when making this outline. Um, but I did wanna give some specific resources that I really like.

(01:03:53)
Okay. So the I F S C, international Federation Sport Climbing Channels, that’s where I watch all the World Cups. So after every World Cup they have them on there. So you could watch years and years of World Cups and you could watch semi-finals and finals. So they typically only live stream and have commentary for semi-finals and finals of the World Cups, not quali qualies. So there’s a coup, there’s one resource in particular that I’ve become really fond of. And that’s Toby Robinson’s YouTube channel. He is a World Cup athlete. He’s one of the ones that I’m like, his try hard is amazing. He, his YouTube videos are awesome. He shows his training for the comps, he shows videos from qualifications and it’s really cool to just get that athlete perspective from the climbs because that can also help you learn hearing their own analysis of their own climbing.

(01:04:51)
Yeah. That’s cool. Um, the next one is comparison videos of World Cup athletes. So there’s one or two channels that actually compares, um, one climber to another climber like Yana versus Jane Kim on the exact same climb. Those are so educational mm-hmm. <affirmative> because you could just see different ways of moving and those are great. So there’s, I think at least a couple, I could be wrong, but there is at least one, um, YouTuber out there who does great comparison videos. So you could just Google that. Okay. Athlete YouTubes, um, Tammy, it’s, um, to moa Narasaki, Akio Noguchi and Mechi. I think. Um, they have a YouTube and Te MOA and Akio are two of my all time favorite climbers of ever. I like absolutely adore them and I learned so much from watching their climbing in general. I think they’re amazing climbers. It’s such a valuable resource that they have a YouTube channel. And every time I watch one of those videos, I have an immediate takeaway that I don’t even have to ask myself for. I’m like, I don’t even have to actively watch. I’m just like, yep. Cool. That’s it. That’s my thing.

So the account is just called Tammy? Yeah.

Okay. And if in doubt, just Google to moa naski YouTube, you’ll find it. Um, other video media I really like is elite climbers climbing their projects, climbing hard things. There’s several videos that I like, however I like to say, be really careful here because you typically don’t get a full picture of their process. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> you often just see them sending, or there’ll be a couple like, this is me falling, but you don’t see what it actually went, like, what went into actually sending that particular climb. How many times they showed up to it. How many times they showed up and nothing good happened, <laugh>. And they walked away. And you often don’t see them on top rope on a boulder, which almost all of ’em do. If it’s a high boulder, they’re, they’ve been on it on top rope, I guarantee it. And yet we expect ourselves to go out to a boulder and do something scary up high without safety. Right. Yeah. So, so just be really mindful that you’re not seeing the full picture. That’s what I love about watching World Cups is you’re seeing their entire experience on an, on a climb. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you’re not seeing like, there’s nothing you’re missing. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Yeah. Definitely. I I um, I think that Mellow sometimes does a good job of, of going through the whole process.

I think they do a better job. There’s one for

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m sure a lot of other people do, but I’m just thinking about these two videos, one of which was Daniel doing one of his hardest sends and it, it took you through like all, I think it was like 60 days on it. Amazing. And how

Frustrated he

Got amazing and like him just being out there by himself. And so that, that I think is really

Valuable to us. I think you’re right. Melo I think does that better than any media I’ve ever seen. Yeah. It just shows them like, this is me sitting in the cold. This is me. I’m sitting in the cold being mad. Yeah. My project is wet. So today is all about just putting a tarp on it. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. Um, amazing. So mellow, fantastic Magnus, MIT Bow’s channel and others like it. I really like those. I wanted to give some disclaimers of what I’m careful of when visually consuming. Um, a, I just put body image insecurities. A lot of professional climbers tend to be pretty thin. Not all of them, but there are some. And I just wanna, I don’t think it’s good to have this conversation without saying that if that triggers you to think that your body isn’t good enough to be doing what you want it to do, um, don’t go there.

(01:09:01)
Be careful. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, be careful with that. Um, and maybe dive into that a little deeper on your own. And cuz I have to do that, I have to be very careful cuz a lot of the really short climbers, I’m like, whoa, they’re really skinny and that may be way skinnier than I ever want to be or will ever be. And how is that affecting me? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> when I see that. And then, um, and then I just make sure to steer my attention towards an athlete I really admire and I’m like, I think they’re eating, just to put it bluntly. Right. <laugh>. Okay. Um, that’s the thing. Consuming lots of how-to slash you should content and there’s so much of it out there. Right. To me that’s an analogy for that is if you were to be taking a massive standardized test and you study by just looking at all the answers there ever was, is that a good way of studying for something? Or do you need to take a couple practice tests and be like, I think this is the area I need to focus, focus on and this is the specific topic I’m looking at improving.

Yeah, that’s a really powerful

Analogy. Yeah. It’s like, who does that? That’s not a good way. Like you’re not gonna do good. Um, and you’re gonna be overwhelmed. So, um, try not to do that. Like I, I don’t watch content and even as a coach that’s just like endless, like how to train for this, how to do this or just I don’t follow those channels. What I do is if I have a question that I wanna find out more about, I’ll search for that topic and then I really appreciate what comes up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I don’t just randomly go to down that rabbit hole because I don’t think it’s good for our brains. Yeah. That’s me being opinionated, but

Yeah, it leads to paralysis by

Analysis. Yeah, totally. Um, and feeling like you should be doing more or doing exactly what the pros are doing. Be very careful with what you see the pros training and how often they’re training the volume, they’re training all of that. They are not you, they are there at their own level. You can take concepts and be like, what are the layers here and what’s the most basic layer that I can imply implement into my own training? But be very careful with specifics because they have a whole team and the whole base training, they have so much behind the scenes going into how they can handle the loading, they’re handling

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That’s a tricky one. Like, especially even on the podcast, I’ve had so many pro athletes on describing their training and it’s like so much more than what an average human or even like an average climber could handle or should handle. I have to,

They don’t need to do that to get better.

Right. And so it’s, it’s a fine line there.

It is such a fine line. And that’s why again, I’m really careful. Like I love watching World Cups, like 95% of my media consumption is world cups where I’m not seeing their training. I’m not, like I said, I I really enjoy watching that on Toby’s, but I also just really like seeing the thing and taking does Yeah. People get it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Um, well that’s the end of your outline. Uh, but is there anything that you wanna add to this topic?

I think that about covers it. What do you think?

I think that was, I mean I’m going to watch the World Cups differently now and so I learned something. I’m sure people learned something. I love talking about this with you, so thanks. This is an awesome topic for you to come up with.

I love it. And I love actively watching all things. Um, when I get into a sport, I immediately start consuming vast amounts of just watching people do the sport. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I’ve gotten into a lot of sports, so I’ve done this a lot of times and it’s so wonderful.

Yeah. When you were in, into horse, like into equestrian stuff when you were a kid, I bet you didn’t have resources like this

No. For yourself to watch. No, it was such a bummer. Um,

Yeah.

And you had to pay like $200 for this packet of DVDs. Like you had to sign up for all the, like the special things where it’s like, watch this person work with their horse. Like, and and they would like, I would actually get a DVD in the mail <laugh> of somebody just wanting and that was my consumption. But I think it also made me realize how valuable that is.

Yeah.

Right. Because like I would pay, I would invest, I would search for how to get this information and I would go to clinics and go to competitions just to watch, like, just to watch. Um, because that’s so important sometimes more than participating.

Yeah. I think that this is a really humbling talk too. You know, we, we tend to focus mostly on ourselves in our sports and you’re just asking us to focus on others and really learn from others, which Yeah, it is. It takes some humility.

Yeah. And I think it also, um, strengthens a sense of community

Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. And um, I have a good friend who, it’s so fun because she loves watching the World Cups and I love watching the World Cups, so anytime we climb it’s like, did you see this? Did you hear what the commentator said? Did you? And it’s just like, it’s, it makes every climbing session that I have with her like and it’s an extra layer of Awesome. Yeah. Because it’s like we’re talking about climbing in a really uplifting way while we’re climbing.

Yeah. Yeah. We definitely have watch parties for World Cup. Yeah.

It’s really fun. So good. And then when you see these athletes or you or a World Cup is coming to your area and you go and you watch, it’s really cool just to be like, whoa, there’s that person just walking around and you’re like, when’s the last time you felt that in climbing? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Like I think that’s a good thing to feel in your sport cuz it gives you that Yeah. Sense of belonging or like that bigger picture.

Yeah. Cool. Well thanks for your wisdom on this. I d I wanna keep you here for just a few more minutes cuz I wanna talk about the five 12 breakthrough series that is available right now until next Friday, which I will come up with the date of that. Oh, it’s the 28th. July 28th. 2023. Um, can you tell me a little bit about what the five 12 Breakthrough series is and what people will get out of it?

Yeah, it is the favorite course I have ever done. I really, really liked it. It was, um, pretty comprehensive. It is pretty comprehensive. So all, there is four recorded discussions in the course that when you buy it now it’s not a live course. So you could watch it at your own time, completely at your own pace. They’re just included in the course and all of those are at least an hour and a half. Most of them are like an hour and 45 minute calls. So there’s over six hours of just educational content and discussing things and people ask questions throughout. And I also have a q and a at the end of every one of those calls where climbers of a specific level. But one of the big feedbacks I got from the course was, yeah, I’m only, I’m a five 10 climber climbing five 11 and I decided to take this and I found it super valuable. Mm. And I actually have climbed a lot of five twelves and I’m working on five thirteens and I still found it really valuable. Like a lot of the concepts are like transcend what level you’re climbing at. But it was really helpful for me in making the course to pick topics that I thought were really relevant to breaking into climbing five twelves.

And what were those topics? Or at least some of

Them. Yeah, the first call is, um, all about perception of grades and difficulty and just giving a really, um, defined actionable way of approaching different grades and rewiring, rewiring how we think about grades. So a quick summary of that is I had people stop thinking of the number and start thinking about grades in terms of how many attempts it takes them and one of the biggest takeaways was that everybody who was there was like, I spend the majority of my time climbing stuff that I can climb or climb or climbing on stuff that I can’t climb and I spend the least amount of time climbing stuff that takes me two to three attempts. And I was like, well that’s where the magic happens my friends like, so recalibrate where you’re spending your time in the gym on what difficulties mm-hmm. <affirmative> and how to think about that differently.

(01:17:51)
The next call was all about the most common mistakes I see five 11 climbers making, which was really fun, really great conversation. And I give like six to eight different points there of like, this is what I see people making, are you making any of these? What can we do about it? The next call was all about projecting. So when you wanna start climbing a harder grade and you need to invest in projecting, and I define projecting as something that takes you a multiple sessions or B like a route over six attempts mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what is the process there? How can we set ourselves up for success in approaching projects? And all of these calls like yeah, they have a theme, but I talk about a lot of stuff randomly in them too. So you get a lot more than just that topic and each one of them too as questions come up. Yeah. And the fourth one is on supplemental training. Like what supplemental training matters for you and what is some, like what are principles you need to understand about supplemental training off the wall training like barbells, dumbbells, suspension, like all these things, like what are the principles to help you understand what you should or shouldn’t be doing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Great.

And you said that it’s all recorded. I know the answer to this question, but do they get any live support

From you? They do. So from now until August 28th, I’m running a Slack page where they have access to all of the questions the first cohort asked and I answered, which was a lot. I was spending at least an hour a day answering questions and I loved that and it was the most involved I’ve ever had A course B in terms of community and participation and questions and sharing things. So you have lots and lots of value there alone, but you also have the opportunity to post your own videos and get feedback and ask your own questions and get feedback. So that is built in into the offering. So if you were to do this not at the pace of the course, you could still get a lot out of that slack page. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, just by checking into it once a week and asking a question or reading through some of the stuff. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> then

And then they, yeah. Also get the live q and a at the end.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yep. August 28th I’ll be doing an hour, maybe an hour. It’s always a little longer than an hour q and a call where people can actually show up live to Zoom. I’ll be there answering live questions if they can’t make that, they can message me their questions and I’ll answer them live. And then that recording will go into the course and you’ll have access to the course for three to six months at least maybe ever. Yeah.

Forever. Great. Cool. And you can find it@trainingbeta.com slash 5 1 2, so five 12 but without the.in there. So five 12 and it’s gonna be available to purchase for $97. It was originally 1 47, but because it’s all recordings, we decided to cut down the price 97 and again, you can get it until July 28th, 2023.

I got no negative feedback from this course.

Yeah. And a lot of positive feedback factors, a bunch of testimonials on that page, on the signup page that were like pretty incredible. So, and that’s the feedback that you always get. It’s

Awesome. Well I just really care about helping people enjoy their sport more and get better at it. And I think this course, um, is absolutely one of my favorites ever because I feel like those two things happened.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s a lot of what people say is like Alex gets it and she makes me feel seen and heard and I now can do things that are actually like practical in all of my sessions. So yeah, good job with that and for summing it up so, uh, thoroughly, um, succinctly. Um, and I think that’s it for today. So thank you very much.

Thank you Neely. And thank you everybody who listened and watched and also I am going to watch this YouTube and be like, oh my gosh, your face was down into the left. So I’m looking down into the left the entire time. This is our first one we’re putting on YouTube, so, um, we’ll get better at it. Thank you for watching. Yeah,

We’ll try. Okay. All right. Thanks Alex. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

(01:22:19)
All right. I hope you enjoyed that talk with Coach Alex Steiger. Again, you can find that five 12 breakthrough series@trainingbeta.com slash 5 1 2. It’s only available till July 28th, so that’s in about 10 days. It’ll go off the market again and I don’t know when we’ll, we’ll resell it, so if you want it and you want help and you wanna learn from Alex training beta.com/ 5 1 2, I think that’s all I’ve got for you today. So I really appreciate you listening all the way to the end and I will talk to you in either a week or two weeks. Um, I’ve, I’ve been sort of oscillating between doing every week and every two weeks and then I took two months off <laugh>, so I’m kind kind of all over the place. It just really depends on how busy my schedule is. But that’s something I’m working on too right now is trying to find a balance and trying to find ways to like offload some of the tedious work of the podcast to somebody else in an efficient manner and some of the other things that I do at training Beta so that I can work on making it better all around from like, uh, a bird’s eye view instead of me being engulfed in the tedium of everyday stuff.

(01:23:43)
It’s hard running a business sometimes, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of everything and sometimes it can be overwhelming. So I’m really trying to work on making it be more, uh, manageable for myself. So I’m not sure that you want to even hear about that, but that’s what’s really going on in my mind lately. So thank you as always for listening to this episode, being patient with me, with getting episodes out. I really appreciate you and I’ll talk to you soon.