[laughs], although it felt like surgery for the first 36 hours or so- it was super painful. I had PRP done. PRP is a type of prolotherapy, and you can look up all these words to find out more about them. But PRP stands for “platelet-rich plasma” therapy. Basically what they do is take blood out of your own body, and then they spin it so that it’s rich in platelets. Platelets are really healing for your tissues. Then they inject that platelet rich plasma into your shoulder, knee, hip, or whatever it is that’s hurting. Ostensibly, it makes the healing process faster. They’ve seen rotator cuffs actually heal tears, labrums actually heal from this. I heard about it from a friend last week, and immediately got on the phone with the doctor that she had used. It’s kind of expensive, but this doctor in Boulder at CU Sports Medicine- his name is Dr. Glowney- he does it for $600something dollars, as opposed to $1800-$5000, which a lot of companies are charging.

Anyways, I figured it would be my last ditch effort along with dong PT to try and heal my shoulder, because I have a couple of tears in my labrum, and some bone spurs in there. I went in, and he said “Okay, maybe it will help you, it’s worth a shot”- literally. They put two injections in, one under my acromian and one in the joint capsule itself, to try and chill out some of the inflammation that’s going on.

So, I will keep you guys posted. I don’t know how it’s doing, but I do know that the extreme pain is going down, and I feel like I can climb tonight. So I’ll keep you posted next week in the podcast and the weeks after and tell you how it’s going, so that maybe you can do this yourself. Again, it’s prolotherapy, and PRP, and it’s similar to stem cell therapy so you can look that up to.

Last announcement is that I want to let you know, once again, about our great sponsor, Friction Labs. They have the best chalk in my opinion, and some other really great products. You can find them at frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta, or just at frictionlabs.com. You can also find their products all over climbing gyms, now, REI, and other gear stores. So check them out, they’re great.

Okay, so now, on to our interviewee, which is Mercedes Pollmeier. Mercedes has been on the show before, but that was before she was our official in-house online trainer for you guys. She’s been seeing clients now for a couple of months here at TrainingBeta. She’s out of Seattle, and she works at the Seattle Bouldering Project. She has a masters in human movement, she’s super knowledgeable about the human body and how to train for climbing. She’s a boulderer herself, and she’s done Nationals, and has almost gotten into World Cup level competitions, and she climbs really hard outside. I wanted to talk to her about how she trains people, some success that she’s had, some challenges she’s had with training climbers, and how she trains people online and how she overcomes the hurdles of training people online as opposed to being in person with them. I’ll let her speak for herself- here is Mercedes Pollmeier, I hope you enjoy this interview.

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the show again Mercedes, thanks for being with me today.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Thanks Neely.

Neely Quinn: You are our new official online trainer for TrainingBeta. Welcome to the team, officially, even though it’s been a few months. We should have done this a long time ago [laughs]. But how does that feel? How are you liking it so far?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Oh it’s awesome. I really appreciate being part of TrainingBeta. I think that TrainingBeta serves the bigger community and I really want to be part of that, so I’m psyched to be a part of this. So far it’s been really awesome. I’ve had a couple of really great clients so far, and things are going really well.

Neely Quinn: Good! So for people who didn’t hear your first interview, or for people who don’t know who you are, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Currently I’m based in Seattle. I work at the Seattle Bouldering Project- I’m the fitness and training manager there. I also train people online, I do some one on one training, and I also teach classes on movement. Some of my backround- I was a tennis player and played semi-pro and I played college. Right around when I was 21 or 22, I started climbing a little bit. When I was 24, I decided to quit tennis and try climbing full time. I started doing more competitive climbing, and kind of started doing Nationals. That was awesome- it was a really good experience for me to go through that training and experience that first hand before I started training people. It wasn’t until I went through that that I decided that I really wanted to do this as a career. I actually went back to college to get a degree in exercise science, so here I am today, doing what I love.

Neely Quinn: Nice. How long ago was that? How old are you now?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I’m 33. How old was I when I competed?

Neely Quinn: No- I just wondered, I should have been clearer about that. I meant how long ago did you start climbing? You said when you were 24? So you’ve been climbing seriously for about 9 years now?

Mercedes Pollmeier: 9 years, yeah. And I would say, I’ve been trying to climb for 9 years, but I had a couple of pretty serious injuries that set me back for about a year each. But still, mentally preparing myself to climb even through those big injuries.

Neely Quinn: What were those big injuries again?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I actually tore my left ACL in 2007, and then my right ACL a year later. It was almost two years in a row that I had to kind of stop doing everything. I pretty much just worked on my pull-ups for two years [laughs].

Neely Quinn: You probably got good at pull-ups.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah [laughs].

Neely Quinn: So you started climbing seriously at 24- when did you start competing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I started competing about a year later. I was fairly old when I started competing in terms of comparing myself to the age of everyone else I was competing against. I think the last Nationals I competed in I was 26 or 27, and I was the oldest competitor.

Neely Quinn: Right- super old.

[laughter]

Mercedes Pollmeier: But then you look at these 16 year olds who are just crushing. But it was inspiring mostly.

Neely Quinn: Mostly why I brought that up is because you took yourself from being a climber to a competitive climber in a very short amount of time. How did you do that?

Mercedes Pollmeier: You know, I think I wanted to compete just because I think it’s in my nature, being a tennis player for so long. And being able to train at a high intensity- I think that because of my tennis background I was able to push through all the suffering. But I had to hire a coach. I hired Dave Wahl- he’s actually in Denver, working at Movement. He really taught me everything that I learned during that time, and got me super strong. I trained with him almost every day. It was climbing, and lifting, and that’s really all I was focused on.

Neely Quinn: Were you not working at the time?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I was a student.

Neely Quinn: Wow, that’s really cool. That’s not something that many people have, working with somebody every day.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, that’s true. I think I was very lucky. Also I think that Dave saw a lot of potential with me, and he did a lot of charity work with me pretty much [laughs]. He was like “Oh, I’ll help you”. I’m always grateful for that- he helped me a ton.

Neely Quinn: Are you still competing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I compete at a very local level. It’s not something that gives me a lot of joy these days. At least not competing at the higher level. You have to put that time in- you have to be climbing 15-20 hours a week, plus all the cross training. I work full time now, so I have enough time to at least improve my climbing outside.

Neely Quinn: Do you feel like you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish with competing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, definitely. I did have my eye on the World Cup, competing for Australia. I was really close to getting on the Australian team. I was one spot away. I went to Australia, because I’m actually from Australia, I should probably make that clear. You can’t just go to any country and start competing for them.

[laughter]

Mercedes Pollmeier: So I went to Australia to compete in their Nationals. I had to first compete at the state level and then go to Nationals. I did that, and they take the top 4 as their World Cup team, and I came in 5th. It was so close- I gave it my 100% effort. I didn’t make it, but I was still pretty psyched about just even trying.

Neely Quinn: That’s pretty cool. So close.

Mercedes Pollmeier: So close!

Neely Quinn: And then outdoors, how do you feel about your climbing? Do you feel like you’ve accomplished what you have set out to accomplish so far?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Well, yes and no. Recently I’ve been focusing more on becoming a better overall climber. Before I used to be just really good at overhanging crimps, and now, you know, moving to Washington from Denver, I realized that overhanging crimps don’t really exist out here. I kind of had to start again and learn how to be a better overall climber. Like climbing slab, climbing slopey things, or compression. That’s kind of been my focus the last few years and getting better at that. It’s starting to come together. I’m definitely climbing a lot harder than previously. Just overall, I can get on a lot of different things and have success, so I feel fairly accomplished in that. But double digits… I’ve been close several times in double digits and still haven’t quite got it, but I’m going to keep trying.

Neely Quinn: Good, don’t give up. I wanted to talk about your training philosophies and how you work with clients, and what you think about the differences between training somebody in person and training them online. I know you went to school for exercise science, but that probably didn’t teach you too much about climbing training, right?

Mercedes Pollmeier: No.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Not at all.

Neely Quinn: Right, so how did you learn about that?

Mercedes Pollmeier: In school I also got my masters in human movement, and you learn the general overview of how to train athletes. You kind of know at what level- like if you get a beginner or someone who is intermediate- how much to push them. But in terms of specific climbing training, I learned a lot of what I know from Dave Wahl.

Unfortunately it’s a lot of trial and error- most of the time it’s all been really positive but I’ve definitely made mistakes along the way. But that’s really how I learned specifically how to train climbers. It’s just a lot of trial and error, and having people stick with me and try things and experiment, and even today I’m still experimenting with different ways of training. Whether we should be training the fingers all the time, or currently I’m more into movement training and is that a better way to target cross training, instead of just lifting. I would say a lot of it has been experimentation.

Neely Quinn: Can you tell me about a couple of your biggest mistakes you made in the beginning?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say that in the beginning I had a lot of ego, and I was like “Oh, I can totally make these people suffer”. I think that that was really dumb, and I think as a trainer, especially when you’re beginning, you want to show people that you can make them work. Like “Oh you’re getting a really good workout and you’re suffering and you’re dying”. I think that ended up not being great because I did have people who got injured. That was purely all ego. I didn’t know that that was my ego coming into play there, but I realized that it wasn’t smart. Yes they might be getting a really good workout and they feel totally fatigued, but is that the right thing to do?

It took me a little while to transition away from that, because it kind of feels like if you’re not pushing them that you’re not a good trainer. I realize now that that’s totally not who I am anymore. I try to make it fairly clear to the people I work with that we’re going to ramp it up as slow as possible and be as smart as possible.

Neely Quinn: So you saw some people get injured?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. Yup.

Neely Quinn: That sucks.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yup.

Neely Quinn: It must have been really hard.

Mercedes Pollmeier: But you know, I think going through those mistakes, that’s when you become a really good trainer. But unfortunately you lose some people along the way.

Neely Quinn: Was there anything else that you learned about what didn’t work for rock climbing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Hmm. What didn’t work… Specifically, I think right now I’m training mostly boulderers, and I used to consider high intensity conditioning training. Something that all boulderers, or at least climbers, had to do. But I’d say in the last three years I have not been getting people to do that, and the results are maybe even better, by not pushing them in that high metabolic rate. That’s maybe something- I wouldn’t rule it out, I wouldn’t say that it didn’t work- but I don’t think that it’s necessary.

Neely Quinn: Can you be more specific? So for boulderers, are you not having them do circuit training?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say that… I guess circuit training is a good description of it. Like you do something for 30 seconds as hard and as fast as you can, and then you get 30 seconds break. Then you do something else that’s really high intensity, and you just keep working through that circuit. I think for building fitness in the beginning, I think that’s really important. But in terms of building the long term strong climber, I don’t think that that has really been necessary for a lot of people.

Neely Quinn: What have you found that is better for boulderers?

Mercedes Pollmeier: So a lot of the stuff we’ve been working on now is this movement training where it’s very intentional, instead of just balls to the wall, it’s really going deep inside and thinking about every single movement, all of the details, so you can increase body awareness. I think that the body awareness training- there’s greater gains in that long term.

Neely Quinn: Can you give me an example of that? I know you just did a presentation on this, right? Give us the highlights.

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s actually really hard to describe in just a few sentences, but movement training is anything. Climbing is a movement, Tai Chi is a movement, Yoga is a movement, but movement training, this umbrella term, encompasses all of that. Really what it is, is that if we focus too much on one skill, we tend to lose out on all these other motor patterns that we could potentially be learning that would enhance the current skill that we’ve developed. It’s kind of like building your toolbox of skills. Working on cartwheels, that will improve your proprioception, your shoulder strength, body awareness. Working on backbends, that increases your spinal strength, spinal flexibility, and also body awareness. You just work on all of these little things, and try to get somewhat good at it, and try and move on to something new.

What I’ve noticed is that the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more you can problem solve. Especially for climbers, and mountaineers when things get a little difficult, especially when it comes to safety, they have more tools to pull from. Especially for climbing, you’re constantly solving problems. I think the more tools that you have to pull from, the better overall athlete you’re going to be. That’s kind of the general overview of what movement training is. You can build a skill for a month and then move on to something else, and this would be done in conjunction with your climbing training.

Neely Quinn: It’s like Mr. Miyagi- you’re having them wax on-wax off and then putting it to use on the wall.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Totally.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Because when you said movement training, that’s not what I imagined. I’ve trained with you, and I’ve seen the kinds of things that you have people do. But when you say movement, I thought you were saying like “We’re going to practice flagging today, we’re going to practice pogo-ing today”, but you’re talking about cartwheels.

[laughter]

So how do your trainees respond to this?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Well, it’s been interesting. I think the folks that have been wth me for a little while, they understand. For new people who come to me, if they’ve never seen me train, it is a larger conversation about why we are doing it. I do kind of have to sell people on it, and it’s nothing that you can really talk about. It’s something that you have to feel and experience. Folks who see me in the gym doing this stuff, they approach me and ask me “Oh man, I really want to learn that stuff”. They all end up improving in their climbing.

Neely Quinn: Are there any other movements that you have people do in general? Is everybody different?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, I think it does depend on kind of where you are starting. I try to get everybody to do some sort of hand balancing, because you’re still working on flexion of the forearm and the fingers, but in a straight position. So you’re working the fingers in a different position, but it’s still the same force. I think for climbers especially, this is wonderful. The hand balancing will also increase your body awareness because you’re inverted, and being inverted you’re body kind of freaks out a little bit the first time you do it, because you’ve never really been in this position or it’s been a really long time, maybe since you were a kid. Not knowing where your feet are in space, it’s instant feedback. Like “Oh, I can’t feel my feet, I really need to work on this, where are my feet?” and then you start to get those motor patterns working for you, inherently increasing your body awareness.

Neely Quinn: So you can see how doing a handstand would deal with so many parts of your body, from your hands all the way to your feet. That makes sense.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yup.

Neely Quinn: Is there something else that you have a lot of people do?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Recently it’s been a lot of locomotions, so animal walks would be the best way to describe it. It’s not all animal walks, but you’re doing… like you’re on all fours, and you do a lot of different patterns, so this is building coordination. Then you’re also working on flow, trying to move as smoothly as you can through one movement to the next. If you can control this, then you’re also building strength and your flexibility while you’re going through these routines. That has been something that I’ve tried to get everyone to do, even as a warm up. It’s almost like a meditation in the beginning, where you focus 3-5 minutes on these patterns and these movements. It’s not a specific routine that I get these people to do, I just say to do these three movements in whatever order they want, and to just play around with these movements and try to make it as smooth as possible.

Neely Quinn: I was doing those with our training program, and it did feel like you wanted me to move smoothly. That was one of the main purposes of it.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: So you’re walking around sort of like a gorilla sometimes [laughs]. How would you say that it affects your climbing besides want to move smoothly on the wall?

Mercedes Pollmeier: For me, specifically, it has helped my mindset. Being very intentional about my movement, and like I said it’s almost meditative. If I warm up that way, then the rest of my day, or the rest of that session will be more mindful. I think just that in itself will help climbing. It’s definitely helped mine. I went through- I pretty much didn’t climb for 3 months this summer- sorry last summer. I pretty much only focused on movement training, and I came out a lot stronger and climbing a little bit better than I was before. I didn’t have to climb very much to get back.

Neely Quinn: Wow.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah- and that was actually really surprising. I didn’t expect that I didn’t know that that was going to happen, but it was an experiment that I wanted to try. And my hand strength was very good, considering I didn’t do any hang boarding.

Neely Quinn: So you did that as an experiment, or because you were injured?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I was not injured. It was an experiment and I wanted to commit to this, learning it, because even for myself, doing movement training is right now kind of secondary. I wanted it to be something that I devoted myself to for an extended period of time, so that I understood it. I still don’t really fully understand movement training- there’s so much to it. But I had a really good glimpse inside of what movement training could mean for other activities.

Neely Quinn: So for 3 months you were doing a bunch of handstands and moving around like an animal.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yup [laughs].

Neely Quinn: That’s pretty cool.

I’m just gonna pause here for a second and let you know a little bit more about our sponsor, Friction Labs. Friction Labs wouldn’t be a sponsor of this show if I didn’t truly love their products. I’m personally a fan of their Unicorn Dust blend of their chalk, because it’s super fine and it coats my hands really well, and for much longer than other chalk does. I also regularly use the file that they have, that’s made by ClimbSkin, and I love it because I can file down my callouses, and my tips, but I don’t ever have to throw the file away, because the sandpaper is replaceable. I appreciate that. They have a bunch of other products, and you can find a lot of their stuff at REIs across the country, and in climbing gyms all over the place, and of course you can find them online at frictionlabs.com. For you guys only, you can get special discounts at frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta. I hope you enjoy their products as much as I do, and now we’ll get back to the interview.

Neely Quinn: Okay so let’s talk about some of your clients. Can you tell me about some notable clients who came to you and how they started and where they ended up?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. One client, he came to me a few years ago when I was working at Vertical World. He started with me, doing something called Elite Performance Training, which is a 12 week program that I ran people through. I think he was pretty strong when he was younger, and then he hadn’t climbed in a while. He was struggling to get motivation back for climbing, and so he went through my 12 week program. He came out pretty strong, and then I actually stopped working at Vertical World and came over to SBP, and didn’t really do that kind of training anymore. He wanted to do online training with me, and essentially over the two years he went from climbing 5.11c to completing his first 5.13 in August. That was super cool to see him progress like that, and he was so consistent and so committed, and I think his motivation came back full swing.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s quite an improvement. How long did that take him?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say about two years? He worked with me for about two years.

Neely Quinn: How long had he been climbing before he came to see you?

Mercedes Pollmeier: think he’d been climbing for a while. I think he was a pretty decent younger climber. He definitely moved fairly well, so you could tell that he put some years in. Honestly I don’t know how long he had been climbing- I’d say at least 5 years. Through all of that he’d never had a coach before, I was really his first coach. I know that he stuck with me and he’s actually still training with me, because he likes the daily habit of checking in with me, doing the workout, staying consistent. I think that that is really what helped him the most. Yes the programming is always helpful, but having a coach to kind of check in with keeps his motivation going.

Neely Quinn: That seems to be a common trend among people who want a coach, or even for me as a nutritionist, I get a lot of people who just want accountability.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, yup.

Neely Quinn: When you’re training somebody online, you use Trainerize. Do you feel like that gives you the opportunity to do that with people?

Mercedes Pollmeier: It does. They check in every time they do a workout, and I get to see it. I’ll say “Good job, nice work”, and just that for most people is pretty good. Online can be challenging because I’m not seeing the person in real life, to actually check in, so some people also need that extra step. Everyone who’s training with me right now, that accountability has worked for them.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I bet. So I want to talk a little bit more about that, but first lets talk a little bit more about this guy who went from 5.11c to 5.13. What kinds of things were you doing with him?

Mercedes Pollmeier: In the beginning it was a lot of fitness, climbing fitness. We did a lot of endurance training. During the 12 week initial program, because I got to see him that was really awesome, and I was able to push him a little harder. For a few weeks it would be mostly just endurance training-

Neely Quinn: Meaning arc training?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, like arcing. But in the gym we can’t really arc very well, so it was like you have to do 30 boulder problems in the next hour. If you don’t have a tread wall or a gym that isn’t busy, you kind of have to make drills up like that instead.

Neely Quinn: What does that actually mean? If you’re doing 30 problems in an hour, that means a problem every 2 minutes- that’s not very much rest.

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s not a lot of rest. And the difficulty of the boulder problem needs to be flash or just under your flash grade so that you can keep going. It’s endurance training, so you want it pretty easy.  You should be tired because of the volume, not because you’re pumped.

Neely Quinn: Right, your skin should be tired more than anything.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Your skin should be burning- we get jug rash, that’s a problem for sure. So yeah, I kind of had him go through endurance, and we go through endurance phases with him every time we start a program now. Actually with him, he does his own endurance training because it’s fairly easy to do on your own. When he’s done with an endurance phase, he’ll come to me and say “Okay, now give me the good stuff”. So that’s a phase that has to happen a couple of times a year, I would say.

Neely Quinn: And how long is that phase?

Mercedes Pollmeier: It just depends on your level of fitness I think. Some folks it’s taken 6-8 weeks, some is maybe 3-4 weeks. I’m looking more for time on the wall, and capacity- workload capacity.

Neely Quinn: When do you have him do this in terms of his performance phase? If he wants to send something in June, when would you have him do that?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say, probably March.

Okay, so then you would do endurance and then what?

Mercedes Pollmeier: And then we kind of go through… it’s a pretty standard periodization model, where it’s strength endurance, strength, power, power endurance. It’s not always so linear. It really does depend, but the thing that I think changes the most is the hangboarding and the campusing. For him specifically, he can do that stuff, so we have him hang more in the beginning. Then we change his intensity as time goes on. It’s more hanging in the beginning, less intensity, and as time goes on we start to increase the intensity and decrease the volume. Sometimes we will have him campus before, sometimes after the hangboarding.

Neely Quinn: On the same day?

Mercedes Pollmeier: On the same day. And then he’ll do maybe a power endurance drill afterwards.

Neely Quinn: Holy moly, that’s a huge day.

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s a pretty huge day, yeah.

Neely Quinn: Would you do that for a lot of people? Like have them do all of those things on the same day?

Mercedes Pollmeier: No… I’ve really only had a handful of people do this. That’s because of how long they’ve been climbing, and their fitness level. It’s not really grade dependent, but it ends up being that they can all climb at least v7, to be able to handle this kind of workload.

Neely Quinn: Yeah it seems like they have to have been training for a long time too. Like their body needs to be used to that kind of load.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yup. And if people do certain protocols really really well, and they have no issues and they aren’t getting super fatigued, then we might try a little bit of overloading of campusing, hanging, and power endurance drills in one day. But very few people are able to do that when they start training with me.

Neely Quinn: How often would you have them do such a huge day?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Once a week.

Neely Quinn: Was he just crazy tired the next day?

[laughter]

Mercedes Pollmeier: He didn’t really mention how tired he was. I think he definitely said he felt worked, but he wasn’t totally dead. Which is also part of it- going back to my biggest mistakes, that’s not my goal. If he was, I’d probably back it off a little bit.

Neely Quinn: Yeah there is this whole philosophy, especially when you are strength training, that you shouldn’t feel worked, you should feel like you haven’t done enough.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Well you should feel tired sometimes, and sometimes you want to feel fresh when you are done. I think getting to the point where you are constantly fatigued, as in you can’t do any more, doing that too much… you run into burn out, injury, motivation. Your motivation depletes. I don’t think that’s any good, and you aren’t recovering enough, so you won’t see any gains. You might actually go in reverse for a while, you know?

Neely Quinn: Right, yeah.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Ideally you want to train just enough so you feel a little tired, so that you can be recovered for the next training session.

Neely Quinn: One of the things that I was surprised about with you, is that it’s not like people have these four week sessions with you and then they get a week off. You have people training consistently, all the time.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, all the time.

Neely Quinn: Can you tell me about that?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I don’t really believe in taking any time off. I think you can always be doing something. I do change the volume. It’s maybe about every three weeks, we decrease the volume. That’s kind of like your rest week, but you’re still working. That’s how I have people recover, but still working through that whole phase, that whole process. I don’t think that you need to stop doing the training. Also I think if you’re kind of a creature of habit, working on your habits for four weeks and then all of a sudden you stop doing that- it’s going to be really hard to get back into the swing of things. I know for me that happens a lot, like traveling really throws off my schedule and it takes me at least a week and a half to get back on schedule. So it’s also to help people maintain a really solid schedule, because consistency is the biggest secret ingredient for getting better.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Do you always have people in the weight room?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yes.

Neely Quinn: And always climbing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Always, yeah.

Neely Quinn: You don’t see many injuries with training people- the people that you train consistently?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Very, very rarely. People will get tweaks, but that doesn’t last very long. It’s like “Oh, I can feel this, okay”, and then as long as they communicate that to me, we will work with it. I might give them a couple of extra workouts, or tell them to stay away from this and that, and it ends of working itself out. Tweaks will happen to everybody. As long as they are aware of it, learning when to push through it, when not to push through it and let me know, I think that’s really important. They’re doing a lot of cross training.

Neely Quinn: One of the things I noticed with you too, is that you, more than any trainer that I’ve ever worked with- and I didn’t even work with you in person, this is through videos- is that you’re super concerned with how people do certain exercises, like form. The form that you told me to use was different in a lot of cases, like with Is Ys and Ts, and a few other things, than anyone else had told me. And it felt better to do it that way. So my question is, how do you know so much more than other trainers, and do you think that’s what keeps people from getting injured with you?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I wouldn’t say that I know more, I would say that maybe I am so focused on technique that I try to relay that as much as possible. I think a lot of trainers know the technique, it’s just not as important to them. For me, if you know how to control your body, and if I tell you “turn your hand down”, and if you can do that and still to the exercise, you’ve increased your body awareness just a little bit more. For me, form is number one, for anything, especially when you’re climbing. You have to know what your body is doing, and tell your body what to do. I think that’s critical.

Neely Quinn: Why do you know so much about injuries? It seems like people come to you with injuries and you rehab them. In a lot of your testimonials from previous clients- like why do you know about that? Because you aren’t a physical therapist.

Mercedes Pollmeier: I’m not, no. Honestly, it’s because I’ve been injured a lot. Because I never did enough cross training and just working way too much, more than I should be, and I just went through a ton of finger injuries. I had shoulder surgery, two knee issues, I’ve sprained my ankle a million times because of tennis. I’ve had some back issues, I’ve had a back issue since I was 13. I have had so much therapy, that I understand the process. I don’t know specifically the things you have to do to get better, and I can’t test people, like diagnose them by any means, but I do understand the process and what it takes to get back to where you were before you got injured.

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of that just because of my own experience. And I’ve learned a lot from my friends who are physical therapists and chiropractors, they’ve been kind enough to share a lot of information with me over the years as well. All of the people that I see in the gym that are like “I’m injured!”- these aren’t my clients, these are just people I see in the gym- and I refer them to my friends. What’s nice is that I get to talk to the PTs and chiropractors about their injuries, and so that’s even better because I’m still learning about that.

Neely Quinn: Well in any case I think that you are more vigilant about it. You just pay more attention to it than a lot of other trainers that I’ve seen, which I appreciate, and which is one of the reasons why I asked you to be with TrainingBeta, because so many of us are injured. I appreciate it.

Mercedes Pollmeier: No, thank you, that’s awesome. Thank you.

Neely Quinn: Do you have another client that you want to talk about? What he or she came into you as and where they are now?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. I do have one fellow, he’s trained with me a couple of times. He actually came to me already very strong, climbing double digits, and mostly his goal was to become a better athlete. I thought that was really cool to hear, that he wasn’t at lest outwardly telling me “I want to climb harder”. I think that his process of wanting to become a better athlete helped him just become a better climber.

Mercedes Pollmeier: What I did with him… he’s probably the one that I’ve pushed the hardest out of everybody, because he’s already climbing really strong.

Neely Quinn: When you say double digits, you mean bouldering?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, sorry. He’s bouldering double digits, he’s not a sport climber as far as I know. But what has happened is that he is able to onsight or flash harder climbs. He worked with me on two cycles, so two four week programs, and he ended up being able to flash harder grades than he was before, and able to jump a little higher. We’d been working on his handstands a little bit, at least hand balancing. Some L-sits, a little bit of ring training in there as well. I think he just really enjoyed it, it was fun for him to not worry so much about climbing, and doing some of these fun exercises.

Neely Quinn: And so how do you feel like L-sits and ring work helped his climbing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: He had a really good- he’s so strong in his core, but he wasn’t, still isn’t, his footwork is what is lacking for him the most. He can do one arm pull-ups no big deal, but his footwork was I think the biggest factor for him. By doing L-sits and the ring work where I was actually getting him to point his toes- he has to have straight legs and point his toes, and that way we created that awareness in his lower body. We also did specific systems board drills where he had to point his toes and kind of engage that system on the wall as well. It’s just another method for him to work on his footwork even though we aren’t on the wall.

Neely Quinn: So on the systems board you were mostly focusing on his feet, his footwork?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, his footwork. I made him climb slab a lot as well. He didn’t like it at all [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Did you do anything else with him to help his climbing?

Mercedes Pollmeier: We did try some fingerboard stuff. I know that he’s trained with Steve Maisch, or at least used his programs. We kind of used a little bit of Steve’s protocol, and we added a little bit of mine to it. He seemed to do really well with that. It was a little bit- because he’d already been doing that, so I didn’t ask him to do even more fingerboard training or campusing- we just tweaked it a little bit.

Neely Quinn: That’s cool- so you take these things that you know they aren’t super good at, and you try to make them better at them, even if they are little. I mean, not that footwork is little.

Mercedes Pollmeier: I think for him because he climbs so strongly, that you don’t always see that. It’s not so obvious that his footwork needs help, you know? But for me it was glaring for sure.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] You were like “You suck!”.

Mercedes Pollmeier: You’ve gone from suck to kind of good!

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: I’m sure he will love to hear this. Any other people who stand out in your mind?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, I have a gal who started with me, she was climbing consistently v4s, some v5s, and I think just had a really hard time on the mental side. She was super strong and she looked super fit, and she’s so dedicated to climbing, but really had a mental block and had plateaued for a while. Even I think emotionally it was hard for her to push on days when it felt like she just wasn’t doing any better. That was really interesting for me to work with. We worked through it, and we had a lot of conversations about mental practice and not being so hard on yourself, and just keep working, and remembering that training at a higher level you’re going to have good days and a lot of bad days. It’s continuing to work through that. She was able to climb v7 in a fairly, I would say, short amount of time. Took about 6 or 7 months. She’s feeling a lot better about it, herself, her climbing. That was more stand out to me, her process, than any other client so far, because it was more of a mental issue. She was strong, super strong. That was really cool, to work with her.

Neely Quinn: Were you working with her in person or online?

Mercedes Pollmeier: It was online, but she is in Seattle so I get to see her once in a while. A lot of these conversations happened over e-mail, even on the phone. I didn’t really get to see her too much in person.

Neely Quinn: Was there one takeaway from that, that you think can be used for other people? Like people who are plateauing and they’ve lost their confidence? Is there some thing, or two things, that you did with her?

Mercedes Pollmeier: A lot of it is just talking through it. You can’t know, because you feel so terrible about yourself. If you just keep working, good things will happen. You have to put the work in, though. If you put a little bit of work in, and then quit for a little bit, and then put a little work in, that’s not going to help at all, and maybe even make it worse. I think that for her, some of the movement training stuff, I think again that changes what you are doing, you know? You kind of get out of a rut by doing something new. I think that if you can find something that is enjoyable, that can complement climbing, that’s what I would suggest as well, to help you keep going through this process.

Neely Quinn: To get you psyched to go to the gym, or train.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, yup.

Neely Quinn: It’s interesting how people get into those ruts, and they just thing “Well if I just do the same thing over and over and over, eventually it will work”. I have this with nutrition clients too, and I have to say to them “What you’ve been doing obviously isn’t working”. Do you have to have that conversation with people who are stubbornly stuck in their ways?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Normally people who are coming to me are already thinking about changing their program, you know. We do have that conversation, about “So what have you been working on?”, and they tell me, and I ask “Well how is that working for you?”. It’s always asking them “How is that working for you? It’s not working. You have to change it!”. And it’s not like they’ve just been doing it for a month. It’s what you said- they’ve been doing it for a very long time. You just kind of have to reassess, am I doing the right thing?

Neely Quinn: Yeah, in life, in general.

Mercedes Pollmeier: In life, yeah.

Neely Quinn: One question about online training versus in person training. What are they challenges and what are the benefits?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Online training, I think the biggest benefit is that you can follow a program and stay consistent, that accountability, checking in, doing the work. I think that that is probably the biggest thing about online training that works really well. One thing that it does lack is this in person relationship that I don’t really get to have, as well as form correction and maybe a little bit of technique stuff. Sometimes you can’t see someone move quite right while they are climbing, if they sent me a video of them climbing. It’s way better if I see them in person.

However, the folks that I see in person, they aren’t really following a program. They’re coming to me maybe once a week, once every other week, and they’re doing some of the technique work, but because they aren’t following a program, they’re not where I want them to be. I think having both is the best thing.

Neely Quinn: Do you do both with people?

Mercedes Pollmeier: The people who are in Seattle, I have them come to me at least once a month so we can take a look at how they are moving. Ideally, it would be nice if I could see people once a week, but I actually can’t do that, just because of my work situation. But that would be the best thing for sure.

Neely Quinn: So if someone works with you online- I mean I kind of know this- but tell everyone the sequence of events. How do you begin the process and how does it get maintained?

Mercedes Pollmeier: So once you sign up on TrainingBeta, you get a link to have a phone call with me. Really what I want out of the conversation is for you to have a greater understanding of what you need, and a little bit about my process. We do have you fill out a questionnaire before you sign up for a phone call, just so I understand the basics of why you are coming to do online training. But the phone call is probably the most important part. It’s to create a relationship, so we kind of know each other, and also to just get a deeper understanding of why you want training and what it is that you need.

Then maybe it takes about a week for me to create a program, and you get a log in request for Trainerize, and you start the program. Honestly, the first week is the hardest week, because you kind of have to get through the software glitches. I wouldn’t say it glitchy- it’s more like you have to press certain things, you have to learn the software. The second part of it is watching all the videos.

Neely Quinn: Yes and there are a lot of them.

Mercedes Pollmeier: There are so many videos, and I wish there was an easier way, but you do have to kind of learn those exercises. So you are sitting there, watching the videos for a while. The first week is kind of tough because the work outs take a little longer, and you may get frustrated with the software, but it gets better. After the first week you know all the exercises, and you can always go back to the video and re-check if you are doing it right. It kind of flows once you get over that first week.

Neely Quinn: Yeah and just to clarify, the videos that you are talking about are all made by you, which was also really cool to see you actually doing them, and that’s what I was talking about with you being super diligent about form.

Mercedes Pollmeier: I try to make as many videos as possible, and often times I might not have one, especially if there is a one-off movement that is like “oh you would really benefit from this”, I’ll try to find something. If it’s not me, it’s a video of someone I know, or of someone that has the best form. They’re not just any video. I have looked through so many technique videos and the ones that I give to people are the best form. You really have to look at those videos to get an idea of what you are doing.

Neely Quinn: Then how do you deal with the form issue? I see a lot of people in gyms doing things that I know are really bad for them. Do you ever do video analysis of people?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I do. Within the first week or just before, the time that lags between the phone call and me making up the program, I actually ask people to do a video compilation of some basic exercises like squats, push-ups, pull-ups. Sometimes I get them to a couple of climbs if I don’t know them. Then there is a series of flexibility photos that you take. Like can you touch your toes for the hamstring stretch, or back flexibility, neck flexibility. I get to see a very basic overview of you as a human being, moving correctly or incorrectly. I try to give that feedback before the program starts. The program is not dictated off that form check, though.

Neely Quinn: Then do you check in with them about their form later on?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I tell people, “Send me videos so I can look at you!”. Not a lot of people take advantage of that. I’m not sure why. It might just be kind of annoying to take video, but some people have, and it’s been awesome. They get that feedback almost immediately. Ideally you are sending me something at least once a month, and I do request that once in a while, but I don’t make people do it because I know it can be a little irritating.

Neely Quinn: So they do the program for four weeks, and they can check in with you. You don’t have any other phone conversations after that, correct?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Correct, unless there is something that we really need to talk about. But I do e-mail quite a bit, I’m always open to talking more on phone though. That’s totally fine. But it’s not always necessary.

Neely Quinn: And when people message you on the app, how long does it usually take you to get back to them?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Fairly quickly. Trainerize is nice because it’s almost like an instant messenger. If I’m not working, I can reply same day, for sure.

Neely Quinn: Cool, and I know that you like to work with people long term. What does long term mean to you?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Minimum three months. I think we can get through a lot of really good stuff in three months. But some of my clients have been working with me for a couple of years, and that’s ideal. They’re not relying on me, that’s not what I want. I don’t want people to rely on my training. But the reason why people stay with me is that they keep learning new stuff, and they keep seeing the benefits of that. I don’t really like to just make a four week program and say “Here you go!”. Nothing might come of that if it’s just four weeks. I’m not made of magic. I think if I see you in person, and we just work for four weeks, it might work. But otherwise three months, you’re going to get the greatest benefit out of that. And then if you’re really psyched and want to keep pursuing your athleticism, just keep going and I can teach you a lot of really cool stuff.

Neely Quinn: Some trainers, if they’re doing a month long training program, they’ll give you a weeks worth of training and they’ll say “Just do this for the next month”. What do you give people?

Mercedes Pollmeier: It’s similar. It’s about a weeks worth, but the volume and intensity changes, so it’s not the same. It shouldn’t be the same anyway. You have to learn the exercises the first week, so the intensity and the volume will be pretty low. For the second week we ramp it up, the third week we bring it down again, and then the fourth week is the hardest week. It also depends on the program- sometimes the fourth week is the less intense week. The reason why I don’t want to keep changing the exercises every week is because it would just take so long for you to learn the exercises again that there’s no motor pattern integration if you keep changing things up. I have a similar set up, so you have to at least be familiar with the exercises after four weeks and do them fairly well before we move on.

Neely Quinn: And then if you do move on to a second month, do you just gradually add things in?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, we either add stuff in or change it up, depending on what you want, what your needs are. Sometimes life changes within that month, and you’re like “I’ve decided this is what I want to do”, and that happens. It might look totally different, or it might just build on itself as time goes on.

Neely Quinn: Okay, I think this will be at least one of my last questions. We get a lot of e-mails from people who say “I want to train, but I only have such and such equipment. Can I train?”. What is the least amount of equipment that a person needs to train with you?

Mercedes Pollmeier: I would say you need at least a pull-up bar, or something to pull on. That is it.

Neely Quinn: No climbing wall?

Mercedes Pollmeier: So I actually have one person who doesn’t have access to a climbing gym. We are going to be doing an interesting finger strength protocol that I’ve never actually done before. I’ve never had someone who’s never had access to a climbing wall. We’ll see how this goes, but I think you have to have access to climbing, at least outside.

Neely Quinn: This person who doesn’t have access to climbing, will he or she have access to a fingerboard at least?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. It’s supposed to be a traveling fingerboard, and I found one. I forget the name of it now- one of my clients forwarded it to me. I think it’s the Problem Solver? I have heard some good things about it, and it’s portable, so we are going to try that.

Neely Quinn: Interesting. Cool. So basically access to climbing whether it is inside or outside and something to pull on.

Mercedes Pollmeier: Something to pull on, yeah.

Neely Quinn: And people can come either with injuries or without injuries, right?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah. If you have an injury, we will have to deal with that first, and make sure that you are actually ready to do a training program. That’s the only thing about people with injuries, we will have to kind of work through that first, and kind of get that out of the way before we start something intense.

Neely Quinn: And for our Seattle listeners, is there anything exciting going on at the gym right now?

Mercedes Pollmeier: Yeah, totally! I’m actually teaching a dynamic movement clinic next Wednesday at 8pm at SBP, and you can come check that out. I’ll be doing some summer classes, hopefully outside for free, just some movement classes.  You can follow me on Instagram, I’ll probably be posting that information on there. But yeah, any time time if you are at SBP, come talk to me. I’m happy to chat and answer any questions. I love doing that, and that’s why I work at a gym- so I can keep talking to people about this stuff.

Neely Quinn: Cool. Well I’m really excited to have you on board, and you’re full of wisdom, and it’s a different kind of knowledge that I think we can all use as climbers. So thank you!

Mercedes Pollmeier: Thanks Neely.

Neely Quinn: Thanks for talking to me today. And you just said to find you on Instagram, but how do they find you on there?

Mercedes Pollmeier: My handle is @modusathletica. You can also find me on Facebook, except that I don’t have a person of interest… I don’t know.

Neely Quinn: Athlete page?

[laughter]

Mercedes Pollmeier: Whatever- you just have to friend request me, it’s just my name- Mercedes Pollmeier. That’s the best way.

Neely Quinn: Alright well I hope you have a great day at work, and thanks again for talking to me.

Mercedes Pollmeier: You have a great day too, thanks Neely.

Neely Quinn: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Mercedes Pollmeier. As she said, you can find her on Instagram at @modusathletica, on Facebook as Mercedes Pollmeier, and she also has a website, modusathletica.com, and she has some great resources over there. If you want to train with Mercedes, you can go to trainingbeta.com/mercedes, and that’s spelled just like the car. She has a couple of options- one is a month program for $200, and that gets you the four weeks of programming plus access to her Trainerize, and e-mails, and phone, and everything that she just discussed. She also does 3 month programs, and you can get $20 off by doing that, and that is $580. She knows what she is talking about.

If you have any questions for us about her training, you can go ahead and e-mail me at neely@trainingbeta.com, or info@trainingbeta.com and we will take care of you.

Coming up on the podcast we have Madeline Sorkin. I just interviewed her the other day about her big wall ascents, her alpine stuff, and basically being a huge masochist and badass. That will come out next week.

Other than that I just want to remind you that we have three new training programs for finger strength- one for beginners, one for intermediate, and one for advanced climbers. They give you two workouts every week, unless you are in the advanced program and then you get three workouts every week. They are just focused on finger strength and forearm strength, with a little bit of injury preventions stuff. You also get supplemental core workouts, which will crush you, I promise. They are Kris Peters’ core workouts, and he does not mess around with that. People have really been liking these programs, they like the structure, they like knowing exactly what to do when they go into the gym. You can check those out at trainingbeta.com/fingers.

So that’s it- thank you very much for listening all the way to the end, have a great week, and I will talk to you soon!