[laughs]. Not weird, as in weird, but I’m not gong to come in and adjust you, like crack your back and then send you out the door. I probably would say that I practice more like a physical therapist. I use a lot more exercise, I use a lot of massage therapy and other types of modalities, and probably the adjusting that I do, I would consider that more of a modality versus the majority of what I do in my practice.

My clinic is set up for that, so we have a full gym in our clinic, we have treatment rooms, we have physical therapy tables, we have a full squat rack, barbells, weights. We have all the pulley cable machines- we have basically a full gym set up there. I even have my hangboard there, a gripple, and some other types of climbing training devices there for my climbers.

Neely Quinn: And what kind of patients do you see? Are there a lot of climbers?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, I would say that my practice is probably 80% climbers, maybe a little more, I don’t know. I also see a lot of powerlifters, olympic weightlifters, and crossfitters, just because I’m involved in that community and I do barbell rehab, and they’re interested in that because that’s what their sport is all about.

I’m in involved in a network called Clinical Athlete- I don’t know if anyone has heard about it, but I post about it on social media sometimes, so if you follow me on there you may have heard about it. It’s a network of providers who actually participate in sports. Most of the people on there right now are barbell athletes, like crossfitters or powerlifters, or something like that, but there are some other types of athletes. I’m a climber and I’m on the network. So people can go on there and find provider who actually participates in sports, to help them rehab an injury or whatever. There’s massage therapists, physical therapists, a couple of medical doctors on there, chiropractors, stuff like that. So people can find someone in their area to go to.

Neely Quinn: Yeah that’s awesome. Man I wish I would have had that- well I guess I could use it now for PTs or whatever, for shoulder stuff for climbers. It’s really hard to find somebody who understands your sport, really, when you’re injured.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah totally. It’s a pretty new network, I think it’s only been around for maybe a year and a half. They’re still adding providers to it, there’s not someone everywhere, but it is pretty cool, because it’s nice to go to someone who understands climbing, or to go to someone if you’re a barbell athlete and doesn’t say “Oh you shouldn’t be deadlifting obviously, it’s bad for your back so you should just stop”. That’s not really an answer for most people [laughs].

Neely Quinn: So what kinds of things do you do with your patients? You do a bunch of different things, but can you- yeah. Can you just give me typical session that might happen?

Natasha Barnes: A typical session, we’re gonna take a look at whatever the problem is that the person is having. There’s probably going to be some sort of soft tissue therapy that happens, and I do a lot of different types of soft tissue therapy. I do active release technique, which is kind of a deep tissue technique that involves some movement. I do body tempering, which uses really heavy implements to basically compress trigger points and release them.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Natasha Barnes: Which actually feels pretty good- it sounds really crazy, but… And I do cupping- I do cup therapy. That’s kind of what people know in Chinese medicine. I do a little bit of that, and stuff like that. Usually there will be some sort of component of that in the session, and then usually we will do some exercises within the session as well, to strengthen. And I teach people strength training exercises for their rehab.

Neely Quinn: Okay- that they can do at home.

Natasha Barnes: That they can do at home, yeah. Because it’s not enough to go in there, find a tight muscle, release it, and then send you home. We actually have to release what’s tight and strengthen what’s weak. I try to do both of those things in a session.

Neely Quinn: I think when pope think of chiropractors, including myself most of the time, like you said- you go into a chiropractor, they crack you, they tell you to come back on Wednesday and Friday [laughs], and then you do that for the rest of your life. Did they teach you this in school, how to be more holistic, or is this just a Natasha thing?

My school did teach a little bit of that, because we did sports medicine, so it’s not just a crack ‘em and whack ‘em and send ‘em out the door kind of thing. And in school I don’t really remember them talking about how frequently you should see a patient- I think it’s just something that people figure out on their own, or they figure out by working wth another chiropractor that already does it. But I’m not trying to get people to come in like- if you’re coming in more than once a week in my clinic, you’re in pretty bad shape [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Oh really? You usually only see people once a week?

Natasha Barnes: Usually only once a week, maybe twice in one week of you’re real bad. My whole goal is ,like, in the first session, let’s get you out of pain. And then let’s get you some things you can do at home to help yourself with that, and then our follow up sessions are all about me teaching the person what they can do at the gym, or at home, to take care of themselves so that they don’t have to come into my office so frequently.

Neely Quinn: Hmm. That’s very different. That’s very different of you.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, it’s a little different.

Neely Quinn: That’s good. Um, so I have a lot of questions. I kind of want to go back to you, a little bit. How did you evolve from a climber to a powerlifter?

Natasha Barnes: That actually happened because I had an injury. I actually had two shoulder injuries, and climbing was just like- you know, I was trying to rehab it and stuff- but climbing was just not that fun at the time, because my shoulders were hurting. They felt weird, and it felt wrong to climb. I thought I was going to make myself worse, you know? There was actually a little personal training gym around the corner from where I worked, and I used to walk past it every single day. I used to see the guys in there doing barbell stuff, and kettlebell stuff, and finally one day I just walked over there and talked to them, and I was like “What are you guys doing over here, what’s going on? What’s all this about barbells and kettlebells?”.

I ended up doing sessions with them, because I felt like my weakness in climbing was actually my weakness. Like, I have pretty good finger strength. I would say my finger strength is probably my strength. I was lucky enough to have some pretty good climbing coaches growing up climbing, so I felt like my technique and my movement was pretty good, but what I lacked was overall brute strength. I was interested in getting stronger, and barbell seemed like a pretty cool, bad ass way to do it [laughs]. So I just went in there to try it out, and I got totally hooked. They guys that I ended up working with were really, really good at what they do, and they did a really good job explaining the principles to me, the ideas, and teaching me technique. I just got hooked on the beginner progress- like when you go and you make gains really fast, and it’s kind exciting, and it’s fun, and you get hooked on it. So I got hooked [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Would you say that you rehabbed your shoulders doing that?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, it was pretty- it changed my career, because I was rehabbing. I was doing the usual band stuff, I worked with physical therapists at the time, I was doing everything they were telling me. I was doing core strengthening stuff, I was doing band stuff, I was getting active released treatments, and it was helping, but it wasn’t really fixing it. I would go back to climbing, and I would feel like it wasn’t helping.

Weirdly enough- I guess not weirdly- but I started overhead pressing, and I started bench pressing, and suddenly my shoulders started to feel normal again. I stopped having some of the pain that I was having in my shoulders, and actually if I warmed up by doing some kettlebell overhead press before I started to climb, my shoulders would actually feel better. That’s part of what got me to stick with it- without even asking them to help me with my shoulders, the exercises that I was doing there was helping me with my shoulders.

Neely Quinn: Right. Well, that probably has helped you form your protocols for your patients too, knowing what really, really worked for you.

Natasha Barnes: Totally, yeah, definitely. It was career changing. I would have never worked with barbells if I hadn’t had the experience that I have now.

Neely Quinn: Was that before you went to chiropractic school?

Natasha Barnes: That was actually right after I graduated. Or actually it might have been during my clinicals. It was right when I was doing my clinicals, and probably right after I graduated as well, around that time. I got this internship at this sports medicine clinic in downtown San Francisco, so I interned there while I was still in school. When I graduated, they offered me a job as a chiropractor there, which I took. It was right around that time, as I was finishing up school and starting my career.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so a couple of little things. Where are you? Where is your practice?

Natasha Barnes: It’s in San Francisco, kind of near downtown, in a neighborhood called SoMa- south of Market.

Neely Quinn: And in your clinic, do you have other doctors that work there, or other practitioners?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, there is another chiropractor, and there is another physical therapist, and we also have a massage therapist there as well.

Neely Quinn: Again, a pretty holistic approach to things there.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, totally.

Neely Quinn: Alright, now. What do you compete in, really?

Natasha Barnes: You mean powerlifting-wise?

Neely Quinn: Yeah, powerlifting, sorry.

Natasha Barnes: So the way you compete in powerlifting, is you squat, you benchpress, and you deadlift. In a competition, you get three attempts at each of those lifts, and they take your top lift- so the heaviest thing that you lifted, and they combine all three of those numbers together- your top numbers- and that’s your total. You get scored based on your total. And there are actually weight classes, so you have to be in one of the weight classes. They basically use a formula that calculates strength to weight ratio, and they do the scoring based on that.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and how do you do in these comps?

Natasha Barnes: I’ve done- how many have I done? I’ve done like three local ones, and I think I’ve actually gotten second place every time I’ve done.

[laughter]

Natasha Barnes: It’s never the first place.

Neely Quinn: As a former competitive climber- and you did well. I remember watching you in competitions, and being like “Oh, yeah, that’s Natasha Barnes”. And then transitioning over to powerlifting competitions- you’re a pretty competitive person, huh?

Natasha Barnes: I am, yeah. I like competitions. I like the pressure, I feel like it helps me perform, and it’s also fun to have an event to train for, and have something to shoot for in the distance, you know?

Neely Quinn: It’s pretty crazy having watched you transform, even physically. Your body looks totally different now than it did before- you are clearly very strong.

Natasha Barnes: [laughs] Thanks. I mean, I intentionally gained probably about 30 pounds.

Neely Quinn: Was that to be in a certain weight class?

Natasha Barnes: Just to be better. Powerlifting, the more muscle you have, the more weight you can lift. Powerlifting is a numbers game. The more weight you can lift, the more competitive you are. So being a little heavier helps, having a little more muscle mass helps.

Neely Quinn: Was that hard for you to from being a climber, where it’s the opposite, where you want to be as small as possible?

Natasha Barnes: It was at first, because I think like most climbers, I was victim to a lot of the pressure that climbers have about wanting to be light. I used to be- I think competitively, my bodyweight was around 112, 115. I’m 145 right now. I’ve been 152 pounds. But yeah, it was hard at first, but my coach did a pretty good job of convincing me that it was a good idea to gain weight, and I don’t regret it. Actually, I climb now, at this heavier bodyweight, and I don’t feel heavy, surprisingly. I actually feel pretty strong, because my body is working for me, you know? Everything is stronger, so.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. I think it’s a good lesson for a lot of climbers.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, totally. I’m always trying to convince climbers to gain weight. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, especially if you’re gaining muscle. But yeah, I mean, if the muscle is working for you, you know. It’s not going to weigh you down. And I think a lot of climbers can afford to gain a little bit more weight, especially in their legs [laughs].

Neely Quinn: You think? [laughs]

Natasha Barnes: I don’t think it’s going to weigh you down at all. And also, like, you know, I think there is something to being light, especially if you’re an elite level climber, and maybe those couple pounds of body fat are really gonna make a difference in your competition, or on your project. But if you’re just a climber, and you just want to get stronger, and you aren’t an elite level competitor, then there’s no reason for you to try to constantly be super light, all the time. It’s actually really bad for your recovery, because being that light, all the time, is not sustainable, and your body eventually has trouble recovering from your training, if you’re trying to stay super light. If you look at a lot of professional athletes in other sports, bodybuilders are a good example. They know how to get really fuckin’ lean, excuse my french. Are we allowed to cuss on this? [laughs]

Neely Quinn: [laughs] It’s fine.

Natasha Barnes: They know how to get really lean, but they also know that if they want to train hard, they have to do it at a higher body fat, or a higher body weight. A lot of athletes will train a little heavier, they’ll eat a little more during their training season, and then they will cut weight for their competitive season. And they do it in smart way where they aren’t losing muscle mass, they’re just getting leaner- they’re just losing body fat.

Neely Quinn: Mhm.

Natasha Barnes: I don’t think that climbers know how to do that yet.

Neely Quinn: No, no. And that kind of brings me to my next question. I know there are a lot of bodybuilders out there, and powerlifters, who would have loved to have done what you did- was gain weight and gain muscle. Because it’s really easy to gain just fat, and so I’m wondering how you did that. And the other thing is, I think a lot of people, especially women, think of weightlifting as being bad, because then you’ll bulk up. So tell me your thoughts on all of that.

Natasha Barnes: Right. I mean, it’s hard to convince women to gain weight. It’s hard to convince climbers to gain weight [laughs]. The way that I did it- and I don’t think people talk about this enough- and again, we need to talk about body builders because they know how to do it. They know how to get really super lean for competition, and they know how to bulk up and put muscle where they need it for their next show, or next competition or whatever. The way that they do that is they actually track their macronutrient intake. It’s just math. You have to know how much protein you’re eating, you have to know how much carbohydrate you’re eating, you have to know how much fat you’re eating. If you can find the right numbers, then you can control your body composition. You can put on more muscle, or you can cut and lean down, without losing too much muscle.

Neely Quinn: So what are your numbers? What do you do, and if you ever want to lean out more, do you have a prescription for that?

Natasha Barnes: My coach does it for me. My coach is also my boyfriend, so if I’m not eating right, he knows [laughs], because we live together. But yeah, he gives me my macros, which I think right now, I am eating 150 grams of protein, and 140 carbs, and 50 grams of fat, on non-training days. Then on training days, I’m eating a little bit less than that. 130 protein I think, 200 carbs, and then 40 grams of fat. On training days I eat more carbs, and on non-training days I eat less carbs and more fat.

Neely Quinn: Okay. And when you were in the bulking up stage, did you eat a lot more calories, did you eat a lot more carbs and protein, or what did you do?

Natasha Barnes: You eat more protein, and carbs, actually. So my coach put me on- it’s called a reverse diet, so it’s what bodybuilders do right after a competition. So bodybuilders, to get that lean, they get pretty extreme with their diet. They’re eating very little fat, and very, very little carbs, and probably a lot more protein. If their competition was over, and they just started eating normal again, they would just put on a whole bunch of fat, because it kind messes with your metabolism a little bit to do that. Its the same thing with powerlifting, or if you are cutting to get lean. So what my coach has me do, is he puts me on a reverse diet, so we add 4 or 5% more calories in every week, to kind of build me me back up to a normal calorie range again.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Natasha Barnes: And it’s also something that you can do if you’re just eating normally and you want to cut. You can reverse diet up to increase your calories, so that you actually have something to cut from, so that when you’re training you’re not, like, starving yourself [laughs].

Neely Quinn: So you wold go up when you’re training and then cut down when you want to lean out? Or how does that work?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, so like you would figure out what your normal- you would track for a week or two and see what you are actually eating, and then you would add 4-5% in every week, until you got to a calorie range that you wanted to get to, and then you would cut from there.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Natasha Barnes: Especially for someone like me- I think I probably messed up my metabolism when I was younger, trying to do crazy diets for climbing and stuff. So I actually just under 2000 calories is a normal, or right around there, is a normal calorie range for me, and that’s not a lot of calories, but that’s where my metabolism is right now. I train with somebody who- she’s actually like 4’11”, and she is 107lbs, or something like that, and she eats like 3000 calories a day or more.

Neely Quinn: Oh my gosh.

Natasha Barnes: And that’s because she didn’t do what I did when she was 18 or 20.

Neely Quinn: Right, and you see that a lot with climbers who restrict a lot in their younger years. They go really hard all the time, and they’re stressed out, and they’re exercising, and then they just slowly start to put weight on- fat on- and they can’t take it off.

Natasha Barnes: Right, yeah. It messes with your metabolism, and then your body just gets really sensitive to the food that you’re eating.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, like your set point of how many calories you need is just lower.

Natasha Barnes: Right, and that’s kind of what mine is right now. We’ve been trying for a year or so to kind of reverse me up to a decent calorie range, so that I’m not having to cut like crazy. I think I did a cut recently for a competition- I’ve had friends who have done crazier and lost 30lbs or something- I think I only had to lose 8lbs or something. But I think the diet I was on, I was only get 80 or 90 carbs a day, which is like, not a lot. You just try not to eat carbs, and then by the time the end of the day rolls around, you’ve had 80 carbs [laughs].

Neely Quinn: And that worked for you though?

Natasha Barnes: It worked, yeah. But now I’m so used to it that I choose foods that don’t have many carbs, and at the end of the day I’m like “Oh my god I need like 100 more carbs, I have to eat a loaf of bread or something!”

Neely Quinn: Right, you really have to track it if you are being that persistent with it.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Okay, we could talk about this for a long time I think, but I want to talk about some of the most common things you see with your climbing patients and then how you treat those.

Natasha Barnes: Okay. God, I would probably say that a lot of us know that finger injuries are probably the most common. I do treat a lot of those- I don’t usually treat them in office, because a lot of times, that’s something that people just need to do on their own at the gym. I basically just give them advice on the first session and maybe have them check back in in a couple of weeks if it’s not headed in the right direction.

I actually just listened to your podcast with Esther about fingers, and I actually have a really similar approach to what she does with fingers. I actually tell people that if they can hang open handed on a fingerboard, that’s what they need to start doing. I have them hang- I think she has people hang in pockets, which is kind of a cool idea, I’m thinking about actually trying that. But I just have people hang open handed on the hangboard, and then I put them on basically like a hangboard program. Something that is going to progress them slowly, so that they can slowly load that tissue. The nice thing about doing it on a hangboard is that it’s a controlled environment, where as with climbing, it’s hard to say like “Oh, go to the gym but don’t climb anything harder than V3”. Because you can get on a V3 that is really crimpy, and that can screw up your finger. With the hangboard, it’s really easy to control the load that’s going onto your fingers.

So I’ll have people do a fingerboard plan- I actually use kind of a modified version of Eva Lopez’s hangboard plan, where we just do the weighted hangs, and not any of the small hangs for the finger injury. I might have people load even slower than they might if they were healthy and they were using that training program.

Neely Quinn: Can you explain?

Natasha Barnes: Well you start with bodyweight. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen her training plan that she has, but the notation is a little weird to understand, do you have to kind of explain it to people. But basically she starts with a very low number of sets- like I think the first week is two sets. You go in there, and you’re supposed to hang on an edge for ten seconds basically, but you leave a margin there, so you’r not trying to go to failure. There’s a little margin there, and I think on the easiest plan it’s 4 seconds. So you hang on an edge that you could hang on for 14 seconds, but that would be max, your hang would be opening up and you’d be falling off. You only hang it for 10 seconds. Then you rest for 3 minutes so that you are totally fresh, and then you do it again. That’s you first workout. You do two hangs for 10 seconds and that’s it. And everybody is like, “What? I don’t feel like I’m training”.

The whole thing about that hangboard plans is kind of an RPE based training plan, meaning it’s “rate of perceived exertion”, so you’re kind of deciding what the intensity is going to be on that day. I think that for a lot of people, there is some trial and error. So she starts you with very little sets, and then she adds more volume onto it as the weeks go on, because you are starting to kind of figure out what that means for you.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I mean how many times are they doing things? Once?

Natasha Barnes: Two times a week, for the normal hangboard plan. Sometimes I’ll have people do it three times a week.

Neely Quinn: When they’re injured, because they aren’t climbing?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah because they aren’t climbing. So, yeah. I use her plan. I think you have to buy the board to get access to the plan, but I kind of wrote up a modified version of the plan for people. So I see finger injuries. I also use- I don’t know if you’ve seen the Beast Fingers Gripple?

Neely Quinn: Can you explain what that is? I think I’ve seen it but I don’t know.

Natasha Barnes: It’s basically just a climbing hold that’s screwed onto this device that you can clip weight to.

Neely Quinn: Oh, Okay.

Natasha Barnes: So you basically deadlift the weight up, so it’s a little different than climbing. You’re not hanging, you’re deadlifting a weight with your fingers basically.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, like the Gripster is similar.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, kind of like that. This one I think looks a little bit nicer, and you can change the grip to whatever you want. You can make it a pocket, a crimp, a pinch, you can mix it up with whatever type of grip you like.With that thing, you can actually load a little more appropriately, so if I have a person who isn’t able to hang from a hangboard, from a full pad or a pad and a half or two pad edge, because the injury is so severe, then I can start them on that. We can literally load them with a pound if we need to.

Neely Quinn: Oh, right, okay. Because I was going to say that wouldn’t you just have them use a pulley and take off weight, but if it’s going to be that much weight that you are going to take off, then that makes sense.

Natasha Barnes: Right, yeah. If someone has a real bad injury, or if it’s real fresh, like a couple of days old, then it’s good to load after a couple of days, but it may not be able to take a lot.

Neely Quinn: So, I mean, so you’re doing this with them, but whenever people have finger injuries, they’re like “Can somebody just fix this for me?”. Is there anything that you can do to them, manipulate them in some way, I don’t know. Do some cracking? [laughs]

Natasha Barnes: Uh, I mean, finger injuries are hard. It’s a soft tissue injury, it’s not a joint injury. Unless you have a joint injury, which actually some climbers do have a joint injury. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen- I don’t have any of these types of injuries, but I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the middle knuckle swollen on some climbers?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Natasha Barnes: That’s a capsule injury, so there is stuff we can do for that, and I’ll do some soft tissue work to the joint capsule, and I’ll do some mobilization to the joint so we can break up some scar tissue in there, and get the joint moving a little bit better. A lot of the time that helps people. And I’ll show them how to do that on themselves, because that’s something that you can do with your own fingers. Or there’s a little tool- I don’t know if you’ve seen those Chinese acupressure rings that people use, but you can use that. So for something like that, yeah, you can do some manipulation to that joint- some gentle manipulation to get the joint moving better and kind of work on that capsule, break up some scar tissue so that it’s functioning better. For a pulley injury or tendon injury, those are soft tissue injuries, and we can do some therapy to them, but that’s a rehab situation, you know? You sprained your ankle, okay now it’s time to rehab it.

Neely Quinn: Okay, yeah.

Natasha Barnes: There’s not a whole lot I can do in the moment to fix it. I don’t think anybody can.

Neely Quinn: Why not, come on!

Natasha Barnes: I know, it’s frustrating [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Okay, that’s fingers. What else do you see?

Natasha Barnes: I see a lot of shoulders, actually. That’s probably the second most common injury, is shoulders. I see all kinds of different shoulder injuries, and joint derangements in the shoulders, from climbers. The whole goal with that when I rehab people for shoulder injuries is to loosen up some of the muscles that are kind of causing the issue, and to strengthen the overall shoulder girdle. I really kind of deviate from traditional physical therapy exercises there- I have a slightly different approach to shoulder injuries than most physical therapists. I might give you a couple of band exercises to do, but it’s not for strengthening, it’s more to get some blood flow to the rotator cuff, or whatever structure we are working on.

The real strengthening happens with a barbell. I have almost all of my shoulder patients overhead pressing, or doing some sort of pressing movement. I’ll get them bench pressing, I’ll teach them how to do it, and I like deadlifting for shoulder stuff, because it actually is a rotator cuff exercise if it’s done correctly, and it’s also an exercise that uses all of the other muscles that you are using in climbing. Your lats, your big back muscles, your gluten, your whole post chain. Climbing is a post chain dominant sport, and those are all the muscles we are using when we are climbing, especially if we’re climbing on a steep wall. I like to use exercises that incorporate the whole shoulder girdle, and look at the shoulder and the body as a system. Don’t isolate a particular muscle, because that’s not how it’s functioning when you’re climbing. You’re not on the climbing wall externally rotating your arm with your infraspinatus, that’s not really how it works. Your rotator cuff is there to stabilize your shoulder, so if we don’t do strengthening exercises that make it stabilize the shoulder, then you’re not really training your shoulder in a functional way.

A lot of the band exercises are great for isolating the rotator cuff and all that, but if you don’t teach your body how to be strong in a functional way and use all the muscles in your shoulder girdle, then I don’t really feel like it totally fixes the problem.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so if you have someone come in with a torn labrum, and a lot of biceps tendon pain, I mean that’s something that overhead pressing can really hurt. What do you do if it’s super painful for them?

Natasha Barnes: Well, it really depends on the type of labral tear, and it also depends on the severity of the labral tear. If an overhead press is done correctly, it should not irritate the labrum.

Neely Quinn: And when you say overhead press, and you’ve been talking about barbells a lot, I do shoulder presses with dumbbells. Do you prefer having people use both of their arms at the same time with a barbell?

Natasha Barnes: Yes, and that’s just because if you use both arms, there is less room for error. Like you can’t do funny stuff and compensate, but also because a barbell is probably the most ergonomic way to load an exercise. Because you are using both sides, you can actually progress an exercise longer, and you can lift more weight. If we are talking about getting stronger, then more weight is always better than less weight, and so the more weight I can have you use with an exercise, the better to me.

Neely Quinn: Hmm. So you are kind of compensating for your other arm.

Natasha Barnes: It doesn’t allow you to compensate, because both side have to be working equally to get the bar over your head, if you are doing it correctly. It doesn’t allow for compensation.

Neely Quinn: So you, for shoulder injuries, you’d have people do a whole program of overhead pressing, bench pressing, and deadlifting?

Natasha Barnes: Yes. Yeah.

Neely Quinn: And do you see people get better with that?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, totally. A lot of people get better. I actually have a lot of people who try traditional physical therapy first, and then they come and see me and we do these things and they actually start to get better. It works.

Neely Quinn: That’s pretty awesome.

Natasha Barnes: The thing is, you have to find someone who can teach you proper form. None of these exercises, if done correctly, should hurt you. If people learn how to do a deadlift correctly, they don’t have any back pain, or hip pain, or hamstring pain, or shoulder pain. And same thing with an overhead press, and same thing with a bench press. If you learn how to do these things properly, you’re using all of your muscles, and you’re using them in a way that doesn’t allow you to compensate, and you’re using them in a way that they are supposed to function. If you’re doing them correctly, none of these should hurt, especially- I’ll have people come in with acute low back pain, and I’ll have them deadlift, and it will make them better, and it doesn’t hurt them.

Neely Quinn: Right, and that’s so counterintuitive. I was talking to my brother the other day, and he has terrible low back pain. I was like “You need to go and do some deadlifting”, and he was like “What? That’s going to hurt me!”, and I’m assuming that’s what a lot of people think.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, it does have that stigma about it. But I think they’ve actually done research on powerlifting and olympic weightlifting, and those sports actually have lower incidents of injury than running, and soccer. So if they’re done correctly- that’s not to say that people don’t get injured lifting weights, because they do, but if you’re doing things properly, and you’re mindful of form, and you learn the correct way, none of this stuff should hurt you, even if you are in pain. The nice thing about the barbells that I have- I have a 15lb barbell. You can get barbells that are 5lbs. I have weights that are as low as a 1/4lb.

Neely Quinn: Oh my gosh. Amazing.

Natasha Barnes: So I can have an 80 year old woman come in and learn how to squat or deadlift. Actually my boyfriend has taught his Grandma, who is 83, how to squat, how to deadlift, and how to press.

Neely Quinn: And what does that do for her?

Natasha Barnes: It empowered her. She came to visit and she was using a walker I think, she was having trouble going up the stairs, and she felt really scared to- she had fallen before, and the only reason she was able to get up was because she was able to crawl over to a chair or something and drag herself up. So he taught her these exercises so she can get a little bit stronger. He used to wrestle in high school, and there are some wrestling drills you can learn to efficiently get up off the ground. He actually taught his 83 year old Grandma to get down on the floor and to get up properly, and stand up by herself, without using her arms. Without having to pull on something, just in case she falls down again, she knows how to get up.

Neely Quinn: Oh man, every elderly person should have that skill.

Natasha Barnes: Totally, and I think people are really scared of teaching old people how to lift, but if you know how to do it, and you teach them correctly, they may have some mobility issues, or some injuries, or something like that that doesn’t allow them to… you know, his Grandma doesn’t overhead press with super good form, because she has a big curve in her upper back from osteoporosis, being old. So she doesn’t look 100% perfect when she presses, but at least she is producing some force overhead, and getting her arms and shoulders stronger. She doesn’t squat all the way down, but she squats to a box and stand up- at least she can do that, so she can get up out of a chair, or sit down on the toilet without having to fall down. She actually sent him a video a few months ago, where his mom was there, and she got down on the floor, she got back up, and she waved to the camera [laughs]. His mom texted that to us.

Neely Quinn: That’s awesome.

Natasha Barnes: It was pretty cool. But anyway, we have weights, really tiny weights, that we can progressively load. Really small weights. So someone who’s really weak or really injured, they can still perform these exercises, and we can match where they are at and progress it from there.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, so I’m assuming that sometimes it takes a while, like they start really low, and then you have some sort of formula to take them through the weeks and progress them?

Natasha Barnes: Totally. I have a patient right now- I’v been working with her for three months. Now she is more in a performance- she’s just getting stronger and stronger. But when she came to me, she had hip pain and she had knee pain, and it would get aggravated by hiking, it would get aggravated by carrying her pack, it would get aggravated by climbing. I taught her how to squat and deadlift, and I think we had to start her with an empty, 15lb barbell, to a box that wasn’t even to depth, because she wasn’t strong enough to squat all the way down and come back up. We started her with a box and basically progressed her down until she was getting to depth in her squat, which is just below parallel. One she was able to get there, we started loading her, and recently she squatted 140lbs.

Neely Quinn: Whoa.

Natasha Barnes: Yup. And she deadlifted 150lbs, and I think we started her deadlift at 65lbs at the time.

Neely Quinn: That’s really impressive. And how is her knee pain and hip?

Natasha Barnes: Her knee pain is gone and her hip doesn’t bother her, unless she doesn’t roll it out and does some crazy hiking. She’s basically pain-free right now, and she’s stronger than she probably could have ever imagined.

Neely Quinn: So I have a feeling that a lot of women are like “And did she bulk up?”.

INatasha Barnes: don’t think she’s- I think she’s gained, like, a couple of pounds, something like that. It’s pretty hard to gain weight. Trust me. I gained 30lbs, and you have to eat a lot, and you have to eat a lot of the right things. Before I tried gaining weight, I think I put on maybe 4lbs from lifting at that was it. The way that we do it with people, is we keep the reps relatively low, and the intensity relatively high, so what you are actually doing is just making your muscle neurologically more efficient at recruiting more of the muscle, you’re not actually bulking up the muscle too much.

Neely Quinn: Right, and if you higher reps and lower weight, that’s how people bulk up.

Natasha Barnes: Right, and that’s what body builders do. But at the same time, bulking and cutting, the majority of that is diet.

Neely Quinn: Mhm.

Natasha Barnes: So you actually have to be eating a surplus of calories to bulk up. You’re not going to bulk up by just picking up a weight, especially if you are a woman, because you don’t have as much testosterone as a man.

Neely Quinn: It seems like people who are trying to bulk up eat a bunch of calories, gain some fat, and then a long with that they are building muscle, and then they lean out a little so then they are bigger and they have bigger muscles.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, totally. It’s hard to bulk up a lot without gaining a little bit of body fat. You have to be pretty comfortable with gaining a little bit of body fat, but it’s just as easy to lose it if you’re tracking. You can bulk up relatively cleanly if you track really well, but you’re still going to gain a little bit of body fat. I feel like the cool thing for me was starting to track and realizing that I had control, and that I could lean out or bulk up if I needed to. As soon as figured out like “Oh, this is controllable and I know how to do it”, then I felt a lot more comfortable gaining weight and gaining body fat. Then I was like “Well, if I want to be 10% body fat and super jacked, then I can, because I know how to control it”. Then you get less freaky about it.

I think when I was a climber, I didn’t know. I was like “How much cardio am I going to have to do, how much am I going to have to restrict my diet to get that lean, I don’t know!”. You don’t know how to do it, so you feel a little more insecure about it.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, so everybody just needs your boyfriend to make them a diet plan.

Natasha Barnes: [laughs] Exactly. The diet, or the thing that we do- you can look it up online, and it’s called If It Fits Your Macros. It’s just macro tracking, and you can literally eat ice cream and cake if you want, or you can eat chicken breasts and sweet potato. You just have to hit certain numbers, and it doesn’t matter what you eat to hit those numbers, as long as you hit the numbers. So if you want to waste a bunch of carbs on cake, then go for it, but then you’re probably going to have to eat chicken breasts the rest of the day, you know?

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Lesson learned.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Okay, we don’t have that much time left, and I want to know what- I don’t know- 3 to 5 lifts that you think are the most important for climbers, and how they should go about ramping up to those, who they should work with to do it properly, and all that.

Natasha Barnes: Sure. Well the thing about weight training and the thing that I think a lot of people don’t understand with climbing training, because it’s also hard to control, is this idea of progressive overload. So when you lift weights- let’s say you squat 150lbs, once you do 150lbs for 3 sets of 5, that is a stress that you are applying to your body, and over the next 48 hours, your body recovers from that stress and adapts to it. So if you go back in the gym, and you squat that same weight again, your body has already adapted to that stress, and it’s not going to help you adapt any further so that two weeks later you can squat 175lbs. You have to constantly- it’s stress, recovery, and adaptation. You have to stress your body, you have to recover from that stress so that your body can adapt, so that you can lift more weight the next time.

What I have people do is, whenever I have them lift, is we find a weight that they can do that is moderately challenging, and we add 5-10lbs every session. Usually like 5lbs. You can do that for 3 months. It sounds crazy, but that’s 15lbs a week that you are adding to your lifts, but that’s how your body works. You add a little bit, you do something, the next session you do a little bit more, you recover from it, the next session you do a little bit more. Then pretty soon, a few weeks down the road you’re lifting way more than you thought you could.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Natasha Barnes: We have to follow those principles when we lift. The stress also has to be high enough to cause an adaptation. So if you are doing rotator cuff external rotations, that’s not stressing out your body enough. That’s not a high enough stress to cause your shoulder to get stronger. You have to do something that’s heavier, that’s more stressful neurologically to your body, so that it causes your body to want to adapt to that. So like “Oh shit, if we do that again I better be ready”.

The best exercises for that, I think, are a lowbar back squat- and specifically lowbar, because it’s going to use more of the muscles. The difference between a lowbar and a highball squat has to do with where you place the bar on your back and in what position you get into when you are lifting. The lowbar back squat will actually stress all of the structures that you are using for climbing. It’s a mostly post chain dominant exercises, but it still uses your quads. And it’s actually one of the best core exercises you could ever do.

Neely Quinn: What is a lowbar? Can you explain what that looks like?

Natasha Barnes: Most people, when they get under a barbell, they just put the barbell right on top of their traps or shoulders. A lowbar back squat, you actually have to squeeze your shoulder blades together and slide the bar down so that it’s resting just below, on your deltoids basically.

Neely Quinn: So you’re kind of stressing out your shoulders to even hold it there.

Natasha Barnes: A little bit, yeah. A lot of people have a hard time with the position, because you need a little bit more shoulder mobility for the exercise. But, because you are having to squeeze your shoulders back like that and hold a lot of weight on your back, it actually helps your posture and your shoulders.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Natasha Barnes: I’ve had a lot of climbers who we weren’t even working with their shoulders, we were maybe doing a hip or knee thing, but they actually felt like their shoulders and their posture got better from practicing that position, because it basically pulls you from that classic climber posture into the opposite position, to balance a barbell on your back.

Neely Quinn: So you think that any climber would benefit from a lowbar back squat.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, definitely. And also you are using more muscle mass in a lowbar back squat than in a highbar back squat, and like we talked about before, you can lift more weight in a lowbar back squat, and more weight is always better than low weight if we are talking about getting stronger.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Natasha Barnes: So I like that exercise a lot, and it’s also, like I said, one of the best core exercises you can do. Your core has to be pretty damn strong if you are going to put 200lbs on you back, squat down with it, and stand back up. I think it’s better than any core exercise than anyone is doing in climbing right now. It’s kind of under celebrated as a core exercise, although Eric Horst mentions it in his latest Training For Climbing book, that it is a great core exercise.

Neely Quinn: Wow, yeah I’ve never heard anybody in any of my interviews say anything about it.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah. You have to learn how to brace properly, but yeah, it’s a really great core exercise. And then the overhead press for climbers is really great. I have a whole article about it on my blog about why I think it’s awesome. It helped me with my shoulders, and it’s the opposite of all the pulling down that climbers do- it’s pressing overheard, which helps with the stability overhead, which you need as a climber.

Bench pressing is also a really good one. A lot of people like to do push-ups. I see a lot of people say “I do push-ups for my oppositional training”, or whatever. Which is great, but how do you overload a push-up? You know? Once you can do three sets of ten, or twenty push-ups, then what? I guess you can put a plate on your back and do it, but eventually that starts to get really awkward. But a barbell- doing a benchpress, you can load that up for a long time, and you can do it in an ergonomic way. That’s going to be a little bit more comfortable than putting weight on your back and doing a pushh-up , so I think its superior- a benchpress.

Neely Quinn: I’ve seen a video of you bench pressing, and you do this thing where you arch the bottom of your back. Why do you do that?

Natasha Barnes: You arch your whole back. It’s a safe position, because it’s unloaded, so you’re not stressing your spine on an axial, compressive way, and you are bracing around the position, so you’re really, really tight. It helps me put some pressure in my legs, and transfer that tension to my shoulders. You’re making a big arch, a super tight arch, you’re keeping full body tension. My quads actually get a little bit tired from that position, because I’m contracting my legs so hard to stay really stable. The arched position actually puts your shoulders in a safer position for bench pressing.

Neely Quinn: Interesting, because benching kills my shoulder.

Natasha Barnes: Totally, and it’s probably just the flat position on the bench. If you lay really flat, in order for the bench press to be considered a complete rep, you have to bring the bar down to your chest and then you have to press it up. If you do that, you’ll notice- if you lay flat and do that- you’ll notice that as you get the bar low enough to touch your chest, the shoulder starts to round forward in the bottom of that position. That places a lot of stress on the bicep tendon and some other structures in the shoulder.

That’s exactly what you are trying not to do when you are climbing. You see people kind of roll their shoulders forward when they’re climbing- and when you lay flat on a bench and bench press, it puts your shoulders in that position. So by arching- you arch onto the top of your shoulders, and you squeeze your shoulder blades together and down. So you’re kind of pinching everything together and keeping everything in your mid back super tight. Then you bring the bar down to your chest, and your shoulder stays in a neutral position, in that position.

Neely Quinn: That is fascinating.

Natasha Barnes: So it’s a safer position for your shoulder, and it’s also a much tighter position, because it helps you keep tension in your shoulders and in the rest of your body, so you can lift more weight that way. In powerlifting, they do it to a little more of an extreme, because it’s also an advantage. The more you arch in a bench press for a powerlifting meet, the less the bar has to travel. So it saves you some energy, because you don’t have to move the bar as far. When I’m competing in powerlifting, I actually take a super wide grip and arch as hard as I can so the bar doesn’t have to move very far.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Natasha Barnes: Which for me, is still pretty far, because I’m a climber and I have long arms. But I have some friends who powerlift and have really short arms. One of the girls l that I know from powerlifting- I think she actually has the world or US record- she has a record in her weight class- and I think she’s benched like 265 or something like that. The bar literally moves like two inches.

[laughter].

Natasha Barnes: So… yeah. My bar moves like fourteen inches.

Neely Quinn: She has a really flexible back.

Natasha Barnes: She does, and she has a long torso and short arms, so, yeah.

Neely Quinn: So we have the lowbar back squat, overhead pressing, bench press-

Natasha Barnes: Bench press, and last but not least, deadlift. Also one of the best core exercises you can do, also one of the best shoulder and back exercises that you can do. It’s just the most pure strength exercises you ca do in the gym. It’s the one you can lift the most weight in, and it also uses a lot of the same muscles you use when you’re climbing. Most climbers are actually pretty decent deadlifters, because we tend to have longer arms, and we’re more built for deadlifting, and we are also used to pulling and using a lot of those muscles. Most of my climbers that come in and learn to deadlift are already decent at it.

Neely Quinn: Yeah and I feel like it’s a lot about body tension too, and you have to use so much of that when you’re climbing.

Natasha Barnes: Totally, so it’s kind of like a familiar sort of exercise I guess, because it’s similar to the body tension that you have to use in climbing, and it’s a pulling movement, and climbers are really good at pulling.

Neely Quinn: You said before that the reason for that- actually tell me the reason for bench pressing and the reasons for deadlifting for climbers.

Natasha Barnes: Same reason- bench press is a shoulder strengthening exercise. It still uses and ton of rotator cuff. The other thing that bench press does, is that it actually uses a lot of the scapular stabilizer muscles. You’re using the lower trap, you’re using all of those muscles that we are trying to get when we do the Is Ts and Ws- you’re getting that under load, under a much heavier load, with a bench press- if you are doing it correctly. It actually teaches you how to engage those muscles while strengthening the whole shoulder girdle basically.

Neely Quinn: Alright.

Natasha Barnes: And then deadlift- same thing. It’s actually a rotator cuff exercise, because you have to use a lot of shoulder and lat and all that stuff to keep the bar close to you when you’re picking the weight up. And you have to use a lot of core, and you have to use a lot of back and hip and hamstring, which are all muscles that you are using in climbing.

I see a lot of climbers who come in for knee injuries, and a lot of times, what it ends up being is actually a hamstring strain. A lot of people think like “Oh, my meniscus, or my LCL, I tore some ligament in my knee”, and they come in and see me, we do an exam, maybe they’ve had an MRI, we take a look at the MRI, and it turns out it is a hamstring strain. A lot of people’s hamstrings are just weak. A heel hook is a very, very hamstring-intensive movement to do, especially certain types of heel hooks. If you don’t have the hamstring strength to basically do a hamstring curl on the wall, then you can strain your hamstring. So the best way to train that muscle, along with the hip muscles and the core muscles, is a deadlift.

Neely Quinn: Not a squat, but a deadlift.

Natasha Barnes: Both, actually. Both actually, but especially a deadlift.

Neely Quinn: Okay cool. How often would you say climbers should do these things if they are climbing 3-4 days a week too?

Natasha Barnes: It gets tricky for climbers, because we also want to climb hard and we don’t want to be, like, powerlifters. I think what climbers have to actually do is commit some of their time every year to getting stronger. I think you have to kind of have seasons, and you have to have an off season where all you do is focus on getting stronger. Maybe that’s hang boarding and weightlifting, and very little climbing.

What I advise my climbers to do is take 3 months off of climbing a year, and if you can do this twice a year it’s even better. Take 3 months out of your year, devote it to getting stronger, do hangboard on the side so you don’t lose any fitness on your forearms or your fingers, because hangboarding isn’t very stressful and you can do it on top of powerlifting. And instead of climbing hard, focus on the technical aspects of climbing. If you suck at heel hooks, go and just practice the technique of heel hooking, or go and practice footwork on easier climbs. Whatever your technical issue is, that’s the time to do it, because you’re going to do it on something easy where you can control your movement, it’s not going to stress you out, and it’s going to allow you to recover from the strength training that you are doing.

It’s really hard to train- because strength training is hard. It has to be. We are trying to get your body to change, you know? And we have to do something pretty hard if we want to do that. It’s pretty hard to train this hard in strength training and climb on top of it. A lot of people who try to do that either run into walls strength training, or they run into walls on their climbing, because it’s too much stress for their body to recover from. We only have so many resources, and so much stress that we can recover from. If we are doing two hard sports at the same time, it starts to become really difficult to recover from both of those.

I think the smart way for climbers to do it is to have an off season, like other athletes. Every other professional athlete has an off season, and they use that time to train to get stronger, to work on other things, not just doing their sport super hard.

Neely Quinn: So during the sending season, would you suggest that they not weightlift at all?

Natasha Barnes: Yeah. You would just taper off of weightlifting at that point and focus on your climbing.

Neely Quinn: Cool. That’s different advice, that’s cool. I think my last question for now- I’d love to talk to you again actually- is about how to know who to work with on these things. People can’t just go in and do a proper benchpress the way that you just described it on their own. Like I’m not going to try to do it [laughs]. So how do you know who to work with? There aren’t many of you around.

Natasha Barnes: Right. The best way to figure that out is… I would probably trust anybody who’s on the clinical athlete database. So if you go to clinicalathlete.com, you can search your area, and you may be able to find someone who can help you with that. A lot of physical therapists and doctors do powerlifting, and weightlifting, and they know proper technique. The best resource I can recommend is actually Starting Strength, and I learned most of what I know from my coach, but most of what we know is from Starting Strength.

Neely Quinn: Dot com?

Natasha Barnes: Startingstrength.com, and there’s also a book called Starting Strength, and it’s by Mark Rippetoe. He wrote a very easy to read book- it’s basically the powerlifting bible. He goes through each individual excericise- the squat, the overhead press, the bench press, the dead lift. He even goes over power cleans, pull-ups. All kinds of other stuff- a few other accessory things that you might want to learn. And he goes through the biomechanics of each of those lifts, and how to do them correctly, and why to do them the way he’s describing them. He also goes through a little bit of programming for someone who is a novice and wants to incorporate strength training into their program- he goes over that a little bit. That book is a really good resource- Starting Strength. There’s also Starting Strength coaches, that you can look for. If you go to startingstrength.com, you can look up your area and see if there is a Starting Strength coach in your area, and that’s who I would reach out to. Those coaches are very, very highly trained in barbell training, and they also know a lot about programming, which is really important, because you want to make sure that you are dosing this stuff right.

Neely Quinn: Right, because if you go to a 24 Hour Fitness or something, and want to have a session with a trainer there, just to learn proper form, you may not be getting something that’s high quality?

Natasha Barnes: Right, and personal trainers… you don’t have to get a lot of education to be a personal trainer. It can just be some dude who wanted to train people, and they don’t necessarily learn how to do the exercises properly. You have to seek out somebody who actually knows what they are doing, and just finding a random trainer, you might not have luck with that. Clinical Athlete and Starting Strength are probably the most reliable ways. And I’m sure there’s people out there who know what they are doing, you just have to find them. Like, I’m not a Starting Strength coach, but I am on Clinical Athlete. But I know how to teach these lifts, and I’m sure you can find people out there who know how to teach them, it’s just really hard to know who to trust.

Neely Quinn: It is, it really is.

Natasha Barnes: That would be my recommendation- Starting Strength and Clinical Athlete.

Neely Quinn: Yeah those are helpful, it’s somewhere to start at least.

Natasha Barnes: Or you know, fly out to San Francisco and come see me [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Well yeah, that’s definitely an option too, and I think it would be worth a lot of people’s time. Do you have any other resources that you’ve created for people, like on your website or anything?

Natasha Barnes: My website- I need to update it a little bit- but my website has some good information. It’s natashabarnesclimbing.com. You can find a lot of my blog posts on there. I also have another website called climbingperformancetherapy.com, and you can find a lot of my blog posts on there as well. My Instagram, sometimes I post stuff up on there every once in a while. It’s just @natashabarnes. Clinical Athlete, like I said, is a good resource, Starting Strength is a good resource- you can go to startingstrength.com, or you can find the book on Amazon. Those would probably be my best resources.

Neely Quinn: Awesome. Thank you very much Natasha.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, thanks Neely.

Neely Quinn: Hopefully we can do this again, and I really appreciate your time.

Natasha Barnes: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Neely Quinn: Alright I hope you enjoyed that interview with Natasha Barnes. Again, like she said, you can find her at natashabarnesclimbing.com, and I will link to some of those articles on this episode page.

One cool thing that happened after I did this interview with her- because I did it last week- and then I went to the gym, and I did the bench press- just like she said I should do it, sort of like a powerlifter, and arching my back and all those other things. And it worked, I didn’t have any pain in my shoulder, and it felt much better in general to do it that way, so that was a really cool tidbit. I love learning little things from these podcast episodes. I always take something away, and hopefully you guys do too. She is going to be writing for us on the blog hopefully, at least one article. I’d love to have her write more, but I know she’s busy. So stay tuned for that on our blog on TrainingBeta.

Speaking of the blog, I actually wrote an article this week called “Three Common Nutrition Mistakes that Climbers are Making”. These three common mistakes are not necessarily the biggest or only mistakes, but they’re definitely things that I see over and over with all of my nutrition clients. I figured I would write an article about it so you guys can learn from their mistakes, and then I tell you how you can fix those mistakes. I’ll be writing a lot more on the blog, so stay tuned for that.

If you want any help for your training for climbing, we have a ton of training programs over at TrainingBeta. Something for route climbers, boulderers, people who just want to train finger strength, power endurance, endurance. So check those out at trainingbeta.com, there’s a tab at the top called “Training Programs”, and  you should find something for yourself in there.

That’s it for today, thanks for listening all the way to the end, and I will talk to you guys when I get back from Lander. Until then, take care!