#202 Tom Randall — 5.15 Urban Climbing, The Three Types Of Endurance, and Building Flexibility That Actually Helps Your Climbing

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We should really consider the brain a muscle also. And I feel like this is something that the climbing industry, the training industry needs to get their head around a little bit more, because we're really good at understanding a muscle as a muscle and how that behaves. But really, the brain is very similar. It has capacity, it has volume, duration, intensity, all these different things. And if you are having an expectation of how much, in this case, intention you're wanting to put in your training across the whole season, be realistic to your brain. It still needs training to adapt to applying even that attention.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Welcome to the Test Piece Podcast. This podcast is about all things high-level climbing. How to go from good to great. I'm your host, Joshua Horsley. I've been climbing for over 30 years. We recently updated our Patreon, and now you get exclusive content from the guests that you love. You get your episodes before everyone else, and they're ad-free. Try it out now at patreon.com/slash test piece with a free seven-day trial. Okay, let's start the show. Tom Randall. Great to have you back on the podcast, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

How you been? Yeah, good, thanks. It's it's been a while, but here we are again chatting on a late evening in the UK. Uh probably I was a late evening last time as well, but that's the whole UK-US meetup thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:41

It is, but I feel like you just have the willingness and the psych to just work all day and then chat about all the things you do all night. How do you keep it all together? I know you're still climbing. I mean, you're running Lattice, which is just I I mean, it was already the biggest training company in climbing last time we talked. And I feel like you've just been hitting the gas since then. So how do you juggle it all, man?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Well, I mean, it's definitely a lot of juggling. And I'm not gonna lie, I do have some burnouts. Some of them are relatively major, some of them are minor and controllable, and I can kind of recoup relatively quickly. But I think under underneath it all, I am really, really intentional. And it's not to say I get it perfect, but I get it about right in spending every day of my week, more or less, doing things I want to do and I'm really, really passionate about. And it and it's easy to turn up very long days and do the thing if you freaking love it, even if it's hard work. And so yeah, I think that's that is having a good passion for doing what you're doing. And I don't think much of what I do sucks. So it's straightforward.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

A long time ago, I used to work jobs that did suck that I hated. And I remember talking to a friend, and he basically pointed out that I equated suffering and being unhappy with success, like that I had to always like be miserable, like do the job you hate and just have more discipline and just work harder. And he just was like, What if you did stuff that you liked? And even when it got quote unquote hard, like it's still you had that underlying joy beneath it. And I mean, it's uh it's easy to say it's uh it's hard to do. It's it's hard to actually find that thing that you're willing to stick with and enjoy and make a career out of it. So good job. Good job.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah. I mean, you definitely have to stay focused on what your purpose and your point is and not get too distracted by others around you, or I call them like shiny new objects. You know, all of us are distracted by these things like side quests and whatnot. Um, and that's hard to do because ultimately we're all in a relationship of some sort with all the people around us, and people have their own expectations and their wants and needs, and they can kind of make you meander all over the place until maybe one day you aren't actually doing what you want to do. And it's you're doing something that someone else wants you to do. I think that's what you have to be careful of.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

I'm really competitive, and I find that sometimes I get sucked into competing with people on things that I don't even care about just because I want to be competitive with them. Like, do you know what I mean? That's what dice and cards are for.

How To Know When You're Pushing Past Your Limit

SPEAKER_03 4:30

I definitely struggle with burnout, but I also struggle with almost being too psyched. I find that sometimes in my life, but especially in my training, uh, maybe this is because I'm getting older. Sometimes my desire to perform and train outstrips my capacity to recover from it. Like, how do you know when even if you're psyched to like kind of pull back? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, I mean, I think I completely resonate with you now in my mid-40s. This is a totally recurring problem that my my mind is outstripping my body. And it is a little frustrating because I think my mind remembers what I was like in my mid-30s. Now, probably my mid-30s was my peak of my climbing, maybe. And now 10 years later, it's definitely not my physical peak. And I think the journey that I've been on with it, and I'm still finding my way with it, is trying to recognize the early markers for when I'm going a bit too far, and what a, you know, a one or two out of ten signal marker is for Tom. You're overcooking it, but just have a little watch out versus a five out of ten of put the brakes on right now. And if you don't do something within the next few days, you are gonna really suffer to you're having a meltdown and you can't even climb something five grades under what normally you can climb. And yeah, you need to sit back and think, what did you do wrong?

SPEAKER_03 6:05

In work, it's been simpler for me, where when you have to just show up and and ship week after week, like for the podcast. I yeah, it's been two years since we've done a podcast together, Tom. And pretty sure I've released a podcast every week. And so whether I am psyched or not psyched, just having to show up for that cadence, I feel like kind of smooths me out. You know, I don't necessarily do heroic sprints where I do eight podcasts in a week because I'm super psyched, because it just doesn't work out like that. In climbing, it's trickier for me because when I get psyched on something, I almost feel like I have limitless energy. Like I just go into this state, I feel like I'm not sleeping much. I maybe even like am uh sharper with my diet. And like I just go into this phase where I just am so excited, which I think really was helpful to me when I was young, and it let me push myself to really my my limit. Now it almost feels like a liability, and I have to do these logical things versus trust my gut, which is not what I'm used to.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

I mean, I suppose the way I visualize it within climbing training, whatever age the person is, whether it's me or you or someone who's in their early 20s, for example, is I think there's a degree of training tolerance, elasticity or plasticity. And I think when you're younger, you have a greater elasticity to pushing the boundaries around harder and bouncing back from pushing it. So it's whether it's under training or over-training, you just have more tolerance to that in terms of your performance and how you're you're on your sort of upward trajectory of where you're aiming for. As you get older, that elasticity gets more and more rigid. And that's why we end up, as we get older, having to use our experience and systems and logging things, writing a journal, keeping a diary, putting a spreadsheet down that tends to put some boundaries on that elasticity because I don't know whether as humans they were that great at understanding where at what point is that kind of elasticity at in any given decade. And it just takes a bit of time to acknowledge it and go, okay, now we're we were at where we're at.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

Yeah, I used to really encourage people to listen to their intuition, develop that sense of when can you push a little bit more and when do you need to pull back? But I've kind of changed my tune on that now that I'm getting older. And on the flip side of pushing it too hard, I find that often if I have pushed too hard, I'm feeling burnt out. I often wait too long to kind of get back on the horse too, you know, and just like if I just show up and do, I don't know, like isn't it better to show up and do two pitches versus nothing? And the the difference between doing nothing and two pitches is a huge margin. And now I feel like I'm better suited to kind of keep an eye on myself more objectively than trust my intuition. So yeah, logging, uh, having a coach seems like it might be a good tool.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, they they do tend to work, or at least some format of it, because I think, yeah, the whole logging thing or tracking or or being coached or running structured training brands can it is like an entire spectrum, all the way from intuitively keeping it in your own brain and having a reasonably good track on it, which is absolutely fine when you have this sort of high degree of plasticity. I think you can get away with it more. But as you get older, I think having it more documented, being able to reflect on it and being a little more fine-tuned is really, really useful. But it can be, in all cases, an A-star, you know, logging of what you do, all the way from a really good journal written down on paper and good colour coding, you know, well done, to a superb spreadsheet and just numbers to logging something in an app, you know, they will all work. It's just what works for you and you enjoy and you're consistent with and you put good quality information into it.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

How do you make sure when people are doing sets and reps of uh, you know, whatever, pull-ups, hangboard, but whatever the case, even even climbing itself, I feel like there's intention that there's a there's a big gap between just showing up and doing a rep and the intention that you put into every rep. Like I'm thinking about when I unfortunately had shoulder surgery and I spent months doing rehab, and I was very committed to my rehab, and the focus and effort I put into my little stretchy band doing my rotator cuff exercise was huge. It was as if I was lifting a million pounds when I was really lifting, you know, a hundred grams, uh, probably. And yeah, how how do you help athletes know like when to put extra intention into a specific exercise versus just maybe kind of showing up? Or should you always be putting every little iota of effort and will into each set and rep you do?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

I suppose the answer is that you you want to have appropriate intention, maybe, because like the exercise that I would say demands the greatest intention, the greatest quality is explosive, high-speed power work. And the intention behind that I would argue is more or less impossible to keep up for an hour of practice, you know, taking one minute between each rep, but putting in that hundred percent on every rep for an hour and an hour. You just haven't got the mental capacity for it. So it's realizing that certain sessions require a star intention, but others is more about just showing up and covering the terrain, the mileage, you know, classic being thing being arc training, continuity, endurance type stuff. Um, so there's an appropriateness thing there, which I think is super important. And then I also think when you do any of this training, it's really thinking about where is it sitting within your day, your week, what capacity do you have to be able to put in the required thing? Um, and where does it fit in with the grand plan of what you're trying to achieve? Because as you said, sometimes just showing up is perfectly okay. And that can be fairly critical in base training periods. And I would argue, you know, S and C types of strength and conditioning work off the wall in a base period, even if it's not the best, it might have some reasonable value in base period training. Um, but in peaking and trying to be in that, you know, preparing for your goal or whatever, I tend to say just turn up when you're ready and getting that right. Um, I think that's a little more critical then.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

This makes me think maybe I put too much effort into some of my training. It's why I don't always find myself as consistent as I should be. I, you know, when you're burnt out, but then you're just like, I'm gonna show up anyways, and I'm doing like a wrist extensions. I've been having a bad wrist for for years, and I really don't want to go and do it. And you know, it's late at night or really early in the morning. And then I finally show up, but then I get warmed up and then I'm like all in. I just like put my all my effort into that moment and I find it like surprisingly exhausting. And it's just interesting for me to think about that. Perhaps I should better categorize the why of what I'm doing and then show up appropriately for it versus just always giving it my all every session because then the bar is so high to even start, I feel like. And yeah, when you're saying strength and conditioning, maybe you don't always need to put your all into every moment of each of those sessions. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yeah, and and I would also um say to like anyone who's kind of thinking about this in their own training is that we should really consider the brain a muscle also. And I feel like this is something that the climbing industry, the training industry needs to get their head around a little bit more, because we're really good at understanding a muscle is a muscle and how that behaves. But really, the brain is very similar. It has, you know, it has capacity, it has volume, duration, intensity, all these different things. And that if you are having an expectation of how much, in this case, intention you're wanting to put in your training across the whole season, is don't expect to be able to produce world-class intention every single week across 16 weeks. If this is your first season of training, like be realistic to your brain. It still needs training to adapt to applying even that attention. I think if you give yourself a bit more like acceptance and kindness to, hey, I've just started, so maybe it would be cool if I just once a week turned up with really high intention, see how that went, and then maybe next year I improve it and slowly add that up. Um, which is another thing that you know you'll see of guests on this podcast is when you work and talk to world-class athletes, they generally didn't get there mentally in three years. Mentally, when they're world class, it's like 10, 20 plus years. That's where the real excellence is because the brain is a muscle essentially as well.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Gosh, that puts more credence to the idea that a lot of people are hitting their physical peak and probably then their mental peak a little bit later in life. Yeah, you said maybe your mid-30s. I I had just come off a shoulder surgery. I actually was extremely strong in my mid-30s, and I felt like I had more tactics, more confidence, um, more patience probably too. But uh we are seeing some incredible people do things at very young ages. And uh I did an episode with Mr. Matt Mendez, who I found out you are coaching, not just, you know, kind of by way of lattice, but really hands-on, which he said he loved working with you, Tom. Uh and Matt just climbed his first 9A of V17 at the young, young age of 20 after climbing for like five years. Uh how how has it been working with Matt?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

It's been really good. It's uh it's been a really, as ever, kind of like a learning experience for me as a coach and one that I've I've definitely enjoyed so far. And I guess the trajectory of where I've had my coaching and I would say it's a blend of coaching, coaching, training, and mentoring with Matt. Um, I try to nowadays have a bit of a blend of all those things because I think it produces more potential for sort of like, let's call it world-class

Coaching Matt Mendes To His First V17 In 5 Years Of Climbing

SPEAKER_00 17:18

performance rather than just a sort of strict training plan. I think you need a little bit more to come in with it. And this journey kind of started with me essentially doing a piece of kind of like talent ID work, I guess. And I I was aware of what Matt was doing in his climbing, and I was watching some of the videos and things, and I just had a few little alarm bells that went off from you know, watching climbers a lot, testing climbers a lot, and I thought, I'm like 90% sure I'm watching someone here who's really quite unique, but he's like a bit of an unpolished diamond, and I would like to see if it'd be work well for us to work together. So I sent a message to him and said, Do you and your mum want to come up to Sheffield and just meet up and I'll I'll do some testing and um we'll chat about whether we could work together. And it kind of just kicked off from that. And uh one of the things I was actually saying in the office today uh to one of our staff was having worked with both adults and juniors over the years, I used to work a lot more with juniors actually, um, sort of my early formative coaching years, is I recognize a certain type of parenting that you see in youth athletes, which is like really good. And you see how they talk to their child and the way that they support them. And I also saw that with Matt and his mum, and it was sitting down that first half an hour or so on the mats and things, and I went, okay, if I get some good test results back from this, plus the fact of what his mum's like, I reckon this is gonna be spot on for a great, great climber coming out of here.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

Well, you gotta tell me more about why she is such a good parent for a biting athlete.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, so um I actually saw the first example I saw of this was exactly the same from Will Bosey's dad when I met him. And the way I think I would encapsulate this style of parenting is what I would call maybe relatively hands-off parenting, which sets the responsibility of the athlete for their own progress, success, um, setback, you know, just everything they're doing on the child themselves, and doesn't try to sort of like nanny state them and always pick up the pieces immediately. They kind of just step back a little bit and they're quietly observing and saying, so and so's gotta get on, they've got to put the hard work in. I'm gonna be here in the background if they're needed, but I'm not gonna be overbearing. I'm not gonna ask every question, I'm not gonna stick my nose in on every session, what's going on, or any of that. But I will be around if things aren't quite right. And it's just a particular sort of, yeah, like flavor of parenting coaching that you see. And it's really hard to kind of exactly describe it, but I know it when I see it. And it's for me, I think it's a really healthy thing.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

So, how does that then inform your role as a coach? It because you know, a parent is different than a coach. Does that mean that you can get more into the details? Because they've kind of almost got that unconditional love and support uh you know, plate covered?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Um yes, I think what it the way it works in terms of coaching is the youth has often learnt a high degree of responsibility for their own actions already from the parenting. So then when you actually give them training to get on with and that they need to be self-motivated and disciplined to do it, but also need to feed it back to you proactively if they need more, they need to change things, because the parenting is often like that. It's just not nannying them, babying them. You then have this really great uh working relationship quickly that feels like essentially working with an adult, but you're working with a youth. And I think that's why this tends to work quite well. Um, because I've seen the exact opposite and great climbers of, I'm not gonna say being destroyed, but I don't think they've reached their potential because of some of the parenting, which sometimes happens.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Oh, that's interesting. It makes me almost think of the athlete then seeing the coach and and the parents and all of that as a support system, but that fundamentally the onus is on them to do everything they need to use. And then, and sorry, this almost sounds like uh derogatory, but it's almost like you're a tool for them to lean on and to utilize to to help them either see something objectively or or hone whatever they need to hone, which is kind of a better way to look at than I always use this. Phrase. Uh, sometimes I think climbers think that a coach can marionette them up a climb and that, you know, it's it's almost just like, tell me what to do, coach. Like I'm just, you know, I'm a vassal for you, versus you can help me realize my potential, which is a a little bit of a shift there.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah, yeah. And that is very much my flavor of coaching and training. I am very much a facilitator towards things. I want very, very self-sufficient climbers to come from my school of training or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Um, because I think they stay in the sport longer. I think they're happier, they're more content. I think mentally it's healthier as well.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Can I ask you to say more about the thing you led off with about how when you are coaching someone who you're hoping will become a world-class athlete, that there's more to it than just focusing on their strength or that kind of narrow physicality. Uh, you you mentioned more mentoring and maybe something else there.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah. Um, so I think what it comes down to is you have training, so sort of training plans, structured, organized scheduling. And then I think you have coaching, which is essentially working with someone one-to-one and having that feedback relationship, uh, more like teaching, lecturing, whatever you want to uh call it when you work together. And then you have mentoring, which is very much more of a sort of like an ultra-long form conversational journey that you have with someone, where you you discuss loose ideas, you you help and you guide someone towards what is their goals and their way of wanting to do it, rather than being a little bit more directed, which is what you tend to do in training and coaching, where you, as the act as the coach, kind of know more or less what's the right thing to do. And you you're not telling them, but you're guiding them to the right result. Whereas I say mentoring is helping that person see their own vision and their own future for where they want to go. And personally, I love doing that stuff because I really like seeing people do well with what they're passionate about.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

And when we're talking about world class and the best of the best, those people chart their own path. Like there, there is no answer. There is no right way. If you're gonna be the one who does the first ascent of a new grade or explores a new discipline, like when Sharma really made deep wire soloing like a thing unto itself, like there was no path. Like that's actually what I admire about the greyest people is that they are almost by definition doing something new. And that's what I'm really inspired by.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Yeah, yeah. And it's an amazing place to be. Yeah, it's such an opportunity if you can carve out a pathway in your life that can spend time in that kind of zone. Um, but it also can be quite scary, it can be quite lonely. There can be a lot of setbacks because you you're often the first trying something or exploring a limit of something. And it's it's really good to have supportive people there that can help you keep your vision to where you where you're going because that outside perspective I think is still useful.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

I gotta point out that with Matt, you recently did a little interview that I saw a reel of on Instagram. I I know it's coming out on your newsletter or your blog. I I I looked, haven't seen it uh yet. But it seems like also part of what you are doing with Matt and I'm probably some other athletes is that part of being a professional climber and there's being in the limelight. You know, there's being on Instagram. And and you all have, I mean, you specifically have done a great job with YouTube. You're really early to not just doing it, but kind of being the drum that like this is an important part of climbing now. And yeah, I think that's cool to also see. It's cool to see with Matt. I had a great time chatting with him on the last board talk I did. And just I think that's a it's a necessary part of climbing now, whether you like it or not. If you want to be a pro, you want to be world-class, you gotta have someone uh pay for that trip to that, you know, area that has a project that you want to do or you know, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah, I mean, I I tell most young athletes who are keen to have a professional uh career in climbing that you've probably got to see it as more or less in the long run, around 50% of your time is spent climbing and doing your, you know, your actual doing thing in the sport, and probably 50% of it is networking, admin, communication, and everything like that. And I'm sorry, probably lots of people think that it's it's 90-10, but actually, in reality, if you really want to make a career that works for not just five years but decades, it's it's a decent amount of work behind it. Um, but of course you can make that fun and enjoyable, engaging, as long as you stick to what you like. Otherwise, you know.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Well, well, first of all, I gotta point out 50-50 doesn't sound so bad. Whatever profession you go into, there's there's a high burden of overhead to, you know, just yeah, doing the mundane, even if you do get to do a small sliver of what you love. Uh, and then I always think about this with climbing, where when I, you know, had shoulder surgery and I'm doing my my rehab, definitely wasn't fun. Doing those rotair cuff exercises is not fun, but somehow I did enjoy it in that I could connect it to that larger goal. And I always think of Arnold Schwarzenegger uh wrote an autobiography, or probably was helped to write an autobiography, and he wrote about how when he was doing push-ups and it was hard, he got joy out of the tiredness and the pain because it was directly correlated to his success. Like he knew that this was what it took, and so he was like, Oh, that's what I was looking for. And I thought that was a cool way to frame it, that when it gets hard or tiring, if you know it's connected to your goal, it's it's enjoyable, it's it because it's connected.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I and I think this going back to like the mentoring thing is the really useful perspective that you can provide for any athletes that are a little bit younger, but you've got some experience with being a bit further in on the game, if you want to call it that. And and that's what I enjoy doing as a coach because I've been really lucky to have a professional athlete career, but then I've also had a coaching career, and I really enjoy being able to give my sort of hybrid experience of both of those things. Um, because if I can just share as much knowledge and know-how as possible, I feel like then someone else gets a decent chance of doing well with it as well, uh, which is a good outcome.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

Yeah, I think all of that is really why we keep seeing growth in the ability of our climbers, standing on the shoulders of those who came before and were willing to share and and and literally show the way. Um I was I really enjoyed that video you did with Matt on that Lattice did with Matt. It wasn't just you in there, and it was really the impetus for me bringing him on board talk because it was such a fun video, and there was a lot of boards in there. I know it wasn't boards, but you know, I couldn't all these. Yes, yes. But you were in there too. You were in there too. Um and something that blew me away. Well, there was the the title of you know, the strongest fingers that we've ever tested. Uh and what really surprised me after talking to Matt about that is that when he was tested, it was surprisingly early in his climbing career. I it was not, it was not yesterday uh after doing, you know, a 9A. It was, I don't know, a few years in when he only had been climbing for a few years. Uh do you remember testing him? And like, just what does that say about finger strength that someone could kind of have that elite level finger strength so early in the career?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

I mean, I will never forget that moment of when I uh saw him finally kind of getting to his max in that session and going, holy shit, that's surprised me. Um because he's not a big guy, he's not really tall. And you can often get really good strength to weight ratios in some of the shorter, lighter climbers, just through almost in a way like mechanics of what's going on. But the absolute force he was pulling was also really high for a relatively untrained individual and young climber. And I saw those numbers and went, right, okay, uh kind of game on. Let's that was kind of early on in the testing session that we did. But normally when I do that and I see something that really, really surprises me, I'll go, right, let's now let's dig and let's find the areas where we have got subpar results and where's the bits where if we put in a relatively moderate route of effort, we're gonna see pretty quick improvements and the whole the sort of the holistic view is gonna really rise up and we're gonna see performance gains quite quickly on it. And uh not surprisingly, uh a number of the other things that we looked at, we we straight away saw some kind of massive glaring gaps. Um, one just being the the overall work capacity of his forearms, um, finger flexors, whatever, however you want to term it. Um, work capacity was surprising, was you know super low. Uh, which for me, I was going, he was probably thinking, oh, this exercise is so hard. I was thinking, great, this is so, so trainable, so excellent. Bring on five years now. And and then also flexibility was just,

Building Usable Flexibility For Climbers

SPEAKER_00 32:14

you know, it needed work.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

It's surprising that his flexibility was so poor because of his gymnastics background, which I've I've done a bit of gymnastics when I was young, and gosh, they are they aggressively stretch you, maybe to the maybe not always the best way, but they, you know, sit on you, trying to get you to do the splits. Um, and so I was surprised to hear about that. I was also wondering if that was potentially somehow related to his strength. Like it I do not know what I'm talking about. I'm not a coach, I'm not a physiotherapist or anything, but it does seem like there's an element of like strength and stiffness on one end of the spectrum, and then kind of laxity and mobility on the other end of the spectrum. And it's why actually gymnasts are often so impressive, or why probably really anyone in any sport at a high level is impressive is that they're incredibly strong through an incredible range of motion.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah. Uh, and I think you you correctly identify a pattern there, but there isn't really a physiological reason for why those should be tied. I think what you see in reality is that people who spend a lot of time focusing on strength work tend to logically not spend so much time on flexibility work because we only have a certain amount of time, psych, energy, etc. Um, flexibility training is also pretty hard work. And mentally you you may well have burned a reasonable amount of your mental try-hard capacity with that stuff. So it just feels like it extra sucks now. And then also you see with climbers who are uh not as strong, I think they see improvements come from doing flexibility training and think, oh, this is great. I'm seeing improvements on the wall. I'm gonna do even more flexibility stuff. And we end up in these weird pockets of non-logical uh performance metrics in front of us, which actually, if we could just combine everything and have strong but flexible, strong but mobile, however you want to term it, climbers. That's our elite performers, which I'm sure you know you will find in the isolation zone in an IFSC com. That's where you find that.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

I think stretching is underrated and it's hard and somehow a bit boring. But I I just I guess I always think about I I have a lot of reverence for gymnastics as someone who did it. And I think that when you look at gymnastics, you see a sport that's relatively mature and relatively figured out. Like there is a right way to do a backflip. I just I'm just gonna tell you you can do backflips a bunch of way, but if you want to jump the highest and spin the fastest, gymnastics will tell you. It's a it's a figured out technique. And I'll tell you what gymnasts do, they stretch a lot. Like I have so if they do it, might be something to it. Uh one thing I'm curious about is that my flexibility is decent. Um, but what's interesting is that if you look at my passive flexibility, it's surprisingly close to my ability on the wall. Like I don't exhibit necessarily like a big gap in my middle splits compared to what I can do in like, say, stemming. And how do you think about that difference between what someone can do off the wall in a passive state versus apply to the wall? Or am I just um making a separation there that probably that doesn't need to be separated?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Uh no, I think it is an important distinction, actually. And I think what if I'm hearing you right, what you're getting at is um a sort of a usable flexibility here that you can actively put yourself in that split position on the wall rather than someone cranking your feet apart and slowly spreading them in a box split or whatever. Exactly. Um and yeah, I think there's there's a really important distinction between those because what we will often see in the general climbing population, their practice of flexibility training is they spend a lot of time doing passive stretching, pushing themselves into positions either with gravity, weights, therabands, a friend who's sort of supporting them. And that's a part of the flexibility equation. But really, what we need to develop is strength through the entire range of mobility that we're trying to use when we go climbing. And this is important for two reasons. One is that it actually increases your flexibility to be strong through the entire range. And secondly, is that it means that you can use the outer ranges of your flexibility in a functional way on when you're on your wall. So if your feet are really far apart, if your shoulders are pushed really far back in a stemming position, if you're catching something like big deep gaston moves, like dynamic moves, pressing moves, if you have that shoulder flexibility that goes with it, you can actually use it end range motion. And that's where when we look at the flexibility training that we'll do with any athletes, is probably I'm gonna say around 75% of it is actually strength-based flexibility training. And maybe 25% is the more passive or dynamic stretching. Um, because that's like the bit that really you want to work on.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

What are some of the positions that correlate most with climbing when you're testing people's flexibility?

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Uh so one of the most important ones is the ability to uh so if you imagine you're standing facing the wall in what would be like a we call it like a horse stance. So this is not full, uh your feet would probably be double shoulder width apart. And you're standing facing a wall, and you start to squat down and your knees are turned out and frogged. And what you want to see with a high-level climber or an ideal climber is the ability to be able to keep the knees splayed out really wide and turned outwards, but keeping the hips close to the wall. And as you drop lower and lower from your natural waist position towards the floor, is that your hips are able to stay as close as possible to the wall rather than doing this arc away from the wall and back down. So a lot of people, when they sit deep on their haunches, almost like you're doing a deep squat, they can come back close to the wall again. But if you look at them, they're doing a big arc away from the wall. And what you want is a clear, sort of a parallel plane of movement in an ideal sense. That's hard to work and that does require strength training.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

Horse dance is just a good position to practice as like a strength move. Just holding a deep horse position is exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Yeah, yeah. But get it with some weights in your arm. You know, goblet squat uh style movements um are really good. Um, pulses are another thing that are really good, working certain ranges where you have a sort of stretch intolerance. I think that's a really nice way to do it. Um, like classic uh way to kind of break into pancake style. Um, so when you're straddled and you're pancaking forward, so forward bend, is actually pulses. It's such a really tolerable way to break into positions that people will find really effective.

SPEAKER_03 39:49

So probably just stating the obvious, but bear with me and correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the reasons why it's so important to have that flexibility is that if you have your hips close to the wall, it basically makes every hold as good as possible because you get to pull down on it as close to, I guess, perpendicular of the hold compared to pulling out on it. Like if your hips go out, then you're almost kind of you know having to access an in-cut and pull yourself back in. I know I'm doing a podcast, so audio only is kind of tricky, but am I explaining why it's so valuable to keep your hips close to the wall?

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Um, yes, that's part of the equation. But also the other part of the equation is if you imagine the full range of where your feet can be in relation to where your hips are. So one foot's low, what the other foot's high, one foot's wide, one foot's narrow, one's drop kneed, one's splayed out, and you're sort of frogging. If you have the ability to travel through all planes of movement when your knees are both narrow and wide, it gives you every position that you can optimize for for center of gravity. And that's why it really matters that when you start projecting things, or perhaps you're a very, very good on-siter, you can find the perfect trajectory for the center of gravity. And that is where you'll go, holy shit, I just gained two grades just by being more intelligent with my hips, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

I always think about this thing that Adam Andre said on the podcast, and I'm paraphrasing, it's been a while, so if I get it wrong, forgive me. Uh that we overemphasize the position of the holds and don't pay enough attention to moving between the holds. And you can imagine if you can access all the planes and not just access them, but do it in a way where you can create force and stability through them rather than kind of whipping between it, you just open up everything. I mean, then you can be in the perfect position in the infinite amount of frames that go between each move. And that's that's what Adam looks like when he's moving. So I'd like to do that too.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we should there should be a t-shirt out there. We should all move like Adam. What would Adam do? How would Adam move? You know, like he's a total master of it.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

But now we're getting these people who are showing up with just unbelievable genetic predispositions towards strength. I mean, Adam's fingers are incredibly strong. I mean, he's Alamandra, but I just I don't know if it's because we're casting this net wider, but just seems like if you're paying attention, you see phenom after phenom with potential is probably the right way to look at it. And and it makes me wonder if you take someone like Matt, uh, and he was tested three years ago and now he just climbed his first 9A. Are his fingers stronger now? Like would you have any uh desire or interest to test him now and see, you know, has he gained a lot of strength in this time, or did he kind of just show up with that inherent potential already?

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Uh so yeah, so one, uh, you definitely have to recognize that he has a uh a genetic advantage compared to many climbers out there. Um there is a reason why when I first saw him and looked at how he's climbing, I was like, yeah, there's something going on there. Uh and that's kind of like the genetic lottery that you get. And everyone's gonna sit in a different place with that. And it's really what happens with the work that you do over the next 10, 20 years, which really sort of says where your potential goes. And I would I would strongly argue that Matt has a much greater bouldering potential than Adam for just where his baseline sits right from the start and how far he's come with his training already. Um, what's interesting with Matt is that since I started working with him, he's gone from his uh late teenage boy body into now his sort of younger adult body. So he He's a reasonable amount heavier. And so his his strength to weight ratio, you wouldn't have seen a great deal of increase over that time. But the absolute force that he's generating is improving through for strength training. And that's something that you always have to kind of take into account as you have growing bodies and people are sort of maturing into their adult body. And that's a another good reason to always work on the strength. But what we'll see now with Matt as an athlete is as he stabilizes in his body weight and he has the muscle mass in the right the appropriate places in his body in the appropriate amounts, is that that sort of ramp of strength training now accelerates and goes over the top of the muscle mass gains. And then you start to see increasing levels of performance. And that's where it gets interesting. And that's why coaching and training is like is ultimately a long-term game. Um and that's the stuff I love. I'm a long-termist. I I love that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

You gotta be. Uh this just it takes a long time to be your best. It doesn't happen overnight. Uh out of curiosity, when do people kind of seem to completely grow into their bodies? And just anecdotally, I noticed in myself and in some other other climbers that I feel like even when I was 25, I continued to get stronger in like pinches. I don't know, like I just felt like I remember having like a leap in performance, and you would think 25, I was full grown, but I felt like bodies continue to change maybe longer than you know, 16 or 18 or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh your bodies will continue to adapt at a pretty fast rate well into your 30s. And you look at a professional climber's body when it's 25 versus 35, and it will look very different, it will function very differently. Uh I mean, you only have to look at my, you know, main climbing partner, Pete. I've known and climbed him for 20 odd years, and he looks very different at 35 versus 25, but he was definitely an adult at 25. So yeah, it it it keeps going, it keeps adapting. And that's the great thing. And what I try and remind people who come to climbing at 25 years old and they go, Oh, I'm so late. Oh, I've got no potential, I'll never be able to reach these higher grades. And I remind them that you've got at least 10 years in your absolute prime here to be able to make your first initial adaptations. And you can still build on that considerably well into your mid-40s and not even have issues as such. Um, so don't worry, you've got plenty of time. Might not climb 9A, but you can do a lot.

SPEAKER_03 46:52

I was just gonna say that it that sounds like what I'm saying now as I'm getting into my 40s, it's like, oh, I'm just too late, can't uh, you know, can't get any stronger, but it's amazing. I I always have this kind of theory that one of the reasons why people get older and feel like they can't make progress is just because they don't recognize the demands that life often places on them, and that despite being busy when you're 20 and in school and you know partying or whatever, you're actually just the amount of demands on your body and time and even psyche are much lower than when you get older. And yeah, this kind of almost goes back to that thing we were first saying about burnout and doing the right amount of things. You know, I think if you just took a 40-year-old and said, okay, like you got no responsibilities, you're just, you know, out there climbing non-stop, that your ability to adapt is actually probably still quite high.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that'd be a fascinating experience to take the climbing population of the world in their 40s and say, uh, right, you can hand back your kids, you can, you can hand back your full-time relationship and your job and your mortgage, and uh go back to your 18-year-old responsibilities and have five years at this. And I reckon we'd see some, we'd see some good results on 8AN U.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

I'm I want to say, like, oh, I volunteered, but the truth is, and this is a secret. I've been like I just did a podcast with uh Ethan Pringle, who has a little one, his first kid on the way. And I'll just tell everyone that even though you have more responsibilities as you get older, honestly, they're usually pretty fun responsibilities. Like I like the work I do. I like my family and kids. I don't like my mortgage, uh, but everything else, um, you know, you could sacrifice it all and just climb more. But honestly, uh, you know, getting older and having some of those things isn't so bad, I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Yeah, well, I don't remember if you remember back in the day. Uh I think it was Dave McLeod came out with some really uh big wind-up comment. I think it might have been it's either in one of his books or in a blog post where he essentially told everyone, you're just not committed enough. You just need to give up your job and just stop all this nonsense because it's distracting you from your goals. And oh, it really divided people. I mean, I thought it was hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Um, but he had a point.

SPEAKER_03 49:19

I mean, he totally has a point. Like if you put it on a pedestal and you want to, you know, put your all into it, your actions have to reflect what you say. Uh I I do like something that Dave said where maybe this is a little like toned-down version of it, but well, two things happen as you get older. I feel like you get a little more disciplined, you know. You're like, I'm gonna eat right, I'm gonna actually show up for training, we show up with a 10, I'm gonna log things. Uh but also you, I know from one being like a junior kind of corporate guy, I didn't have a lot of uh ability uh to handle my schedule the way I would have liked. But as you get older and more senior, you know, you can say, well, mornings are for training or wherever the case may be. And I I thought that was a good insight that as you get older, you typically given a bit of forethought, you can actually kind of schedule your life to uh hit those priorities if you want to, maybe even easier than when you're younger and don't have as much control over your life.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yeah, I I think so. I mean, you're you're certainly more practiced by the time you get into your 40s with a career and managing your work diary and probably a family diary. And I don't know, I feel like I'm I'm like a 9A diary guy these days for the amount of juggling I do on it. So, in essence, I should be quite good at planning and scheduling things. So yeah, there isn't really much of an excuse of doing it. I just don't always prioritize enough my training and climbing over some other things because I think other things in my life can uh shout, scream at me a little louder than my climbing sometimes. And that's maybe where my downfall is, and probably lots of others as well.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

Well, the last thing I'll I'll say on this is that it's probably because you and and and me as well. Yeah, you've got something you do that you really love that's not just climbing. And so it's saying, hey, hey, Tom, like everything's going great at last. Like strike while the iron is hot, like things are fun here. You've got family that you're like, your kids are only here for so many times. You're come spend time with them, be a be a good parent. Uh, and then you also have your climbing, you're like, my window as an athlete is closing. Like, you should put all your time in here. So, you know, uh basically what that says to me is that life is going so well for a lot of people out there that they have things that are demanding their attention, and it is hard to prioritize when everything has a pretty good argument for why it deserves prioritization.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yeah, yeah.

How To Use Replica Training To Send Your Projects

SPEAKER_03 51:49

Well, one way to uh have successful trips is to create replicas before you head out to send. And we talked about a little bit our last episode, many, many, many, many episodes ago. Uh and I know you're a fan of replica training, and I still haven't totally wrapped my head around when to use it, how to use it. And so I just want to hear how you put it into both your regimen as well as the athletes that you work with.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Yeah, uh, so you're right. I'm I'm a big fan of replica training. Um, I've used, I mean, both me and Pete have used it loads over the years of the trips that we've done. And, you know, that that's often been a very crack specific manner. But then I've also used it a lot with the athletes that I've trained at Lattice. Our own coaches use replica training with lots of their athletes. We we have sessions that are all based around replica training stuff. Um, so yeah, I'm I'm really into it. I think it's very successful uh, you know, across the board, whoever it is, if it's used well. And I think the way to uh think of it or or break it down is that I feel like you have two parts to replica training. One is what I would class as being slightly lower specificity base training, replica training. And then the other is high specificity peak prep training, you know, sort of peak cycle. And in your base training, what you're doing is you're tending to work on broader, less refined movements in climbing, which uh, if you're taking a sort of reductionist approach of the demands of the problem, the crux, the root, whatever you're doing, you're breaking down all those different parts of how your shoulders are working, your core, your hip, a particular style of movement. And doing those moves or those particular planes of movement on things which may not actually be grabbing a hold that looks anything like what you'd be doing on the movement. You may be putting your foot on a ball on the ground or a box on the wall whilst pulling on a bar or a theraband. Um, but you're mimicking and you're you're working on all these sort of small parts and building blocks of the replica. And then as you move into the peak part of your training for your goal, then you're getting on things which are as close as possible to replicating exactly the demands of your goals. Uh so you know, wall angle, hold size, hold type, speed of movement, texture, you know, everything as close as you can you can possibly get it. Um I think that distinction is important to make because I am not a fan of overusing replica training. I think it has uh it has risks associated with it, um, both physically and mentally. And so I don't want people to take it as being, oh, Tom loves replica training. He used it for the last 20 years with great success, and that I'm there using replica training 12 months of the year. No, that's absolute nonsense. I use probably replica training three or four months of the year at most, sometimes less. Depends on the year.

SPEAKER_03 55:05

Is this something that is a tool that can be used for anyone at any stage in their climbing, or is this something that you reserve for people who are advanced in whatever that means for them? What we you know, I don't want to put a grade on it. It could just be that they're advanced, you know, and have a good base as opposed to just uh, you know, someone who maybe would benefit from any kind of climbing.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

And no, I think it can be used across the spectrum. Of course, there should be a caveat in there in terms of the complexity of replica training that you're using within it and the training experience of the individual. So if they don't understand their body that well, they don't have understand how to adapt a wall, um, they don't have the ability to be able to maybe shape their own holds or use gym equipment creatively, and you can't trust that they're not going to do something really silly, then yeah, you of course you have to be a little careful. But I would say that, yeah, I think most climbers should be able to consider this as a potential tool to use within their own training. Just almost in like, think of it in the simplest sense is you have someone who uh is fairly new to climbing and they have a route that they're doing down the local wall that they're really inspired by that just got set. It's gonna be up for a couple of months, and it's got two big holes on the lip of a roof, a foothold over on one side, and they're having to pull up and lock off to the next jug. It's V3. It's not, you know, immeasurably hard in the grade. But where let's call it replica training can come up useful from that, it's actually just going to the gym and working on a bar, setting it up so that you might have the two holes in the bar, you put a theraband off to the left, you put a foot in the theraband, you create something which mimics and looks like that kind of um uh sort of like lock-off and pull movement on the lip. You can start to work that, you can get assistance from someone, you can change the resistance. That's replica training in its most basic, basic

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SPEAKER_00 57:06

form.

SPEAKER_03 57:06

Quick break while I tell you about today's sponsor. Thank you to all the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join them so you can get episodes early before anyone else. And those episodes are ad-free. As a patron, you also get to submit questions for upcoming guests. The answers to those questions are only available to patrons. Follow the link in the show notes to join now. You also get access to a private Discord where you'll find me and other people who want to go from good to great. Okay, back to the pod. It's interesting because oftentimes when we think about climbing and what we covet is being a quote unquote good climber. And I would just argue that my definition of that is typically that if you pick some climb out of a hat anywhere in the world, that you can more often do it than not, you know, just like whether it's sandstone or a roof granite, you know, I don't know, just like that. You are capable. And it's this interesting idea that you have this like base ability across a wide range of climbing. But then climbs themselves are unbelievably specific. And as hard as you try, you actually can't really replicate what a climb is. And you know, burden of dreams was, you know, they did the 3D scanning. It seemed like a very replicable climb. But I'll tell you what, just because you can do the replica doesn't mean you can do the boulder, because the boulder has its own idiosyncrasies. And it's such an interesting thing about our sport that we want to get better as a whole, but then the challenges are ultra specific. I just find it like an interesting dichotomy, but that the way to get a broad range of abilities and tools is by exposing yourself to those specific demands. And so it's you know it's a it's a juxtaposition that I find fascinating. And I feel like replica training is something that when I've done in the past, the way I've handled it is that it's it's almost uh something that I worry about injuries and um, yeah, like I say, I've had shoulder surgery. And sometimes you see a climb, and oftentimes they're famous because of a single interesting move, you know, whether it's a the rose move, um, the one I always think of is I can't ever remember the actual name of it. There's a climb, it's like skeleton or skull, something in Joe's Valley. It's a V11 or an 8A, and it it's a crux first move where you do a dynamic move into a very extreme gasto cling. And as a person who has a shoulder that got hurt doing that, I always look at it. I think never that one, but the way I would approach it, and the way I've approached moves in the past is you you can kind of set up a very general replica and start slowly exposing yourself to that extreme range of motion before you take a big trip, go out there and then blow your shoulder out on the first try.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's another part of um I mean, two bits I was just thinking about as you're chatting there that I think are really good benefits to replica training that I maybe feel like people underestimate or don't realise is one, yeah, is that kind of injury resilience and being able to condition the soft tissues of the body ready for the specific demands of what you want to go and do, especially if there's real extremes of movement. I think it's superb for that because it conditions you in such a specific way. Um and conditioning occurs through time. It doesn't, you don't just suddenly get it over two sessions, two weeks, whatever. And then the other one is the mental improvements that I think that you'll the mindset improvements you'll make through replica training. Um, I feel like repeatedly doing something and exploring your limits in a very niche part of how your body functions opens up doors to all the other parts of your body and understanding what it can do. And I would really encourage anyone to take just one really specific skill within climbing and just work it for a really decent amount of time and look back over a year and go, huh. That was pretty interesting. How far, like, let's say that's kind of like big move into like a shoulder gaston thing is after a year, you would be, I think anyone would be amazed at how good they'd actually got at that move. And now for the next, like mentally, this is not just physically, and for the next 10 years plus that you ever go out bouldering on a route and you see that same move, and I'm promise you your mind will go, oh yeah, yeah, I know that one really well. I'm pretty much guaranteed, I think I'm gonna flash that uh or on site or whatever. And you have this real confidence and preparedness in your mind. And um, I've definitely experienced that exact same thing for the replica stuff I've done over the years. Like I can think of it like I go on a crack, and if I see any kind of insert finger, undercut mono-style move that I did on Cobra and spent so much time, it's just no question in my mind. I'm like, well, I've done one of the harder routes around in the world of that style. I'm pretty certain I'm gonna be able to do this move straight off because I know what it requires.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:23

How do you deal mentally with, or maybe how do you set athletes up mentally for when they go to the thing that they've been either replicating very generally or very specifically? And then they get there and it is different. Um, and they're maybe a bit jarred where they thought that they would do it easily, but they, you know, I mean, it's hard to replicate climbs. Um, you know, do you have like a mental state that you try to either prepare them for or yourself for that just because I've done all this training doesn't mean I get to flash this move. It just means I've done my training.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

Yeah. Um so it's a bit of a mix in here. One is I think part of the replica process should be that when you're in this peaking phase, you should create variation in your replicas. So let's say, let's really break it down super simple. You've got a big jump move up and left, one meter 20 span to a to a 20 mil edge at 45 degrees on your replica training. Set something that's 125 centimeters, 130 centimeters, set something which is uh 18 mil, a 22 mil, slightly slope it, slightly adjust the angle, and make sure you've gonna got all the variations covered. I think that's a really important part of sort of addressing that bit of, yeah, is my replica training right for the thing that I turn up to do? And then the other part of it of what I try and do with athletes is set them in this mindset of not low expectations, not high expectations, just zero expectations. So turn up with a like essentially like an open mind and see what happens. Like this is this is all about learning when you first turn up to that route. You've done your work, do your best and focus on actually being in a mindset where you can deploy the hard work that you have put in, but go into it in an open-minded way. Because as a coach, I need you to have that open-mindedness because we're gonna have a conversation of feedback afterwards of well, how was it? And if you're not open-minded and you're not ready to learn and be curious, then you're probably not gonna pick up as much information and little nuances and minute differences to what you expected. And that's the yeah, that's the important part, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:46

Something I've always found when I go out to a climb, I've watched lots of videos on and been really excited about, is that especially for harder climbing, everything is always just a little turned up in a way that you didn't expect. Like the hold is a little smaller, it's a little further, the foot's just a little turn the way you didn't expect it would be. Like everything's always just a little uncomfortable. And it took me a while to accept that where I wanted things to be like the gym where we typically, or at least historically typically, set things like very comfortable. Like this side pole is right where your wrist wants it to be versus like just a little off. And I was talking to a competition coach, and they told me that one of the things they do is they'll set a boulder problem. And you know, it's like a jump move. And then they, you know, take the foot and move it just a little bit off or a little bit under you in a way that just a little bit uncomfortable in how much that changes how you have to generate. And it's still a similar move, like it's you know, it's not outside the the realm of almost like a replica of that move, just a little variation. I just think it's like a good reminder that, you know, especially outdoor. Like it's always just yeah, turned up a notch in a way that's not so comfortable. That's kind of what makes them special too, and what makes athletes special that can adapt to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

Yeah, yeah. And I think uh an important equation within all of this is you need to try and as much as possible be self-aware of who you are, like mentally as an athlete. Are you a really calm, chill, just turn up and see how it goes type person? Are you more of an anxious, high performer, always put pressure on yourself? Perfectionism is everything. Um, you're really affected by external pressures and things like that. And I think that is a big part of the equation with all of this when it comes to performances is the self-knowledge part of it. Um, because we're not all the same at all. Like a classic example is myself and Pete. We've done so much stuff, which is so similar over the years. Me and Pete mentally, as two climates, are very, very different from each other, although lots of people will see some similarities in us, and we both have adapted our own approaches to our performance. And the reason why we've got up things is because we've sorted out a method that works for each of us. We haven't just copied each other's method and applied it blanket because it whatever worked for Pete works for me. That's not how it is at all. And I think that's a good message for anyone who's either coaching or being coached, is to think I'm an individual, I'm unique here, and I can't just copy what my mates do or what anyone else does. Make it work for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:33

I'm definitely that latter version of I show up and I think, oh no, like I can't do this. This hold is smaller than I thought it would be. Like that jump is bigger than I thought it would be. I have, in some sense, overrode that by um just having like a deep belief that I will do it anyways. Like I just, okay, it doesn't feel good, but I can do it. Um yeah, uh, what are some tricks for people who don't come in so open-minded? And actually, conversely, too, are there people who are too laxadaisical, like where they um, you know, lack conviction? Like, is you know, is there sides of the spectrum um that you can kind of guide us to probably somewhere in the middle is probably the best typically?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Yeah, I I think a decent amount of this can be achieved through like mental practice or visualization away from the goal or the event or whatever it is. And if you have that degree of self-awareness and of where you're at right now and where you want to be to be able to achieve more or better, is it's spending time dozing in the morning in bed when you're catching the train into work and you're just listening to music, going out for a walk, waiting, resting in your next rep and thinking through a sort of a fantasy version of how you want to think and on the day of when you're there at the project. And this coming comes back to this whole thing about you know, like that sort of plasticity of uh muscles. I think that you have this sort of neuroplasticity where if you get your brain to practice or role play in different ways of thinking away from the event, I think you see a degree of success with translating that to actually how you turn up to it. So a classic of example of this would be for me is that when I try something really, really hard for me, I know to achieve, I have to be very committed. Like there's a special space that I can get into when I can really pull out my last one or two percent. And actually, before I go to do the climb, and I'm getting, you know, the last week, two weeks before I think it's about ready, I will spend time just in my mind, recapping and visualizing that total focus, total and utter commitment zone. I won't spend a lot of time in it, but I'll visit it regularly before I go into it. Just knowing what it feels like. How does my body feel at the same time? It's a yeah, it's a very particular feeling. And then it's much easier to get into when you actually get to the event and you you know what it feels because you practiced it. And I think everyone can do that. Very cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:26

I like this quote that's the body can't do what the mind can't imagine. And it's something that I will sometimes like be stuck on a move. And if you kind of like can't imagine actually doing the move, like if you can't see yourself grabbing the hold, it's really hard to achieve, like you don't accidentally latch a hold, usually. You know, it doesn't happen like oops, like I did that really hard move. You know, uh, and it's why also I think sometimes being pushed through a move, you know, having some assistance or getting into that position can be so helpful, is because it's almost like this end state is just a mystery. And spending time in your in your mind being there ahead of time, uh, you know, I I know I applied that, what what you're saying to a specific move, but I think it's still the thread is still there. So I thought that was yeah, really

Building Different Types Of Endurance

SPEAKER_03 1:11:18

interesting. Uh, Tom, I gotta ask you a little bit about endurance stuff because you mentioned three types of endurance and how people often neglect one of them. I think I might be one of them, but I I just want to present you with something that I have that I see a lot in people like me who have done a lot of bouldering, done a lot of bouldering, not as much, well, not as much anything, but bouldering, especially on the boards. Um I've found and I I actually grew up sport climbing. It's not like I don't know how to sport climb and I love clipping bolts, um, but boy, do I have a bad um, I think it's called like a floor. Like I can do, I I I remember a very specific time. I was doing this 13 plus, I was very proud of myself. And I believe I fell off on 510 terrain, um, which is really embarrassing because everyone was already cheering for me and they thought I was done. But the truth was, I was done. My farms were absolutely blown. I just I find it interesting that the best in the world will talk about you know 14 minus, you know, you know, like eight, eight C terrain as being like, and of course, like like of course they will just do the 514 after their, you know, after the crux. And I would love to hear about these three types of endurance, but I also just want to cover that issue where I think a lot of people who are maybe getting older, maybe not bouldering as much or and trying to do more endurance-oriented things, maybe also lacking a floor as I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:51

Yeah. I I suppose this is the time where I kind of get on my um endurance soapbox and whether we call it endurance or localized aerobic capacity. So just to be clear, this is not to do with cardiovascular um fitness, you know, more running, cycling, swimming, etc. Um, this is what's going on in our forearm muscle when we go climbing. And the reason why I like semi-regularly getting on this soapbox is I think a lot of climbers are not realizing or they're forgetting. Um, because I don't, I don't see loads of information out this out there regularly on Instagram or YouTube or blogs going out. That when it comes to endurance training, really, really good quality endurance and the power endurance which kind of comes with that when you get into peak parts of your year, comes when you tackle your endurance training from three different fronts. So there's three very different forms of endurance training that you really need to do in any form of climber to build whatever, I don't know, like click baity title you want to give to it, like bullet roof endurance, whatever bullshit. Like I want to just call it good, you know, exceptional endurance.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:16

Um and you want to do all three of these because when it comes to endurance and the power endurance that you get off the end of it, you have a number of different kind of pathways um or mechanisms by which you're you're achieving good endurance. And that's why you need to kind of work it in these three different areas. And I feel like I see this in friends that I have, people I watched on the walls, how I hear people just talking about how they're structuring their training, and they keep on missing it. Um they do one or maybe two of them. Um, and the three different types in that is your very at low end, super high volume, well not super high volume, but pretty high volume, very low intensity, classic arc continuity work. So that's your sort of your bottom bracket, which is like the general workhorse of all of your aerobic capacity. And this has to be done with everyone if you really, really want to have good endurance. It's boring, it takes a lot of time, it can be quite tiring, it takes a bit of time to also make it work on the wall at the right intensity and volume and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:25

Before you go on to that next one, can you just kind of sketch out like kind of super simple what an arc session would look like? Just I think I know what it is, but I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Yeah, so um uh an arc session, continuity session, however you term it, is anything where you are operating at an intensity of climbing where you can comfortably talk, chat, chill, just do whatever you want on the wall. And I would describe it as something like a two out of ten intensity. Something that realistically you could probably do seven days a week and it wouldn't really impact the rest of your climbing and training. You could do it as a warm-up, you could do it as a warm down, you could most definitely operate at that intensity if you um were like toasted as anything after a session. You could probably put your mum on that level of climbing. She probably could still get around it. Um, unless you're in like a 9A climber, but because your arc training would probably be relatively high. But it's super easy and high volume. So that looks like total time under tension, ideally of somewhere of 30 minutes and upwards. Um proper endurance trimers. You want to be really fit, I want to see an hour really. Um that's where you'll start to see really high levels of endurance.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

I I think that one of the problems I have with doing it is that I've well, I have two problems. Like either I want to make it harder, like I don't know. Like I just am like, I'm not tired. No, but down the flip side, I'm like, maybe this is too easy. Like, how how do you kind of hone in on what the sweet spot is? Because two out of 10, honestly, like hard for me to tell you that's not a one out of 10 or a four out of 10. It's it's uh it's like almost too easy for me to have the intuition that I'm on the right track.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:21

Yeah, uh it's a good question and one that get often gets asked. And I think the easiest way to um understand this is to know the adaptation on the effect that you're looking for in this type of training. So what we're looking for is capillarization. So that increase in the blood supply network to the forearm right at the end of the blood supply. Um and the sort of the technical term for this is angiogenesis.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:48

And the improvements that you see in that angiogenesis or capillarization is down to the time under which you see sheer stress forces in the capillary bed. So the more time that you see sheer stress forces and shear stress forces are caused by blood flow, just blood flow, doesn't need to be anything else, just blood flowing past those walls of the capillaries, that is what causes your angiogenesis. So if you're doing your exercise and you're like, is blood flowing in my forearms? Yeah, it is. It's really easy climbing, but blood's flowing, you're doing the right thing. And that is kind of all you need to get your head around. And that I think stops people going, oh, but maybe I should be doing like a 5'10C rather than a 5'10A, because they can just look at their forearms, they can see they're filled with blood, they can feel they're warm, they know they're doing some form of exercise, they know they're contracting. You're fine. You can probably do it on 5'9, you can probably do it on 5'8, probably do it on 5'7.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:51

All right, that's helpful. That just that idea of like the mechanism is that there's blood flowing and that that leads to new blood formation, which is angiogenesis, the creation of new blood vessels. Uh and it's funny because in my uh kind of search for being generally healthy as I get older, I'm like a I'm just a big fan of walking. I feel like people don't don't give just walking credit. Not like not walking with a 50-pound pack and sprinting uphill. I just mean walking. And it kind of seems like there's a uh almost a somewhere there. It's like just get on with it, just kind of climb a bit, no big deal. Okay. Um, thank you. I I needed that detail. Uh, I don't know, the next type, which I don't know which way we're heading, to uh type two uh of uh endurance training.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:37

Yeah, so you uh so next heading up in the spectrum is what I would call as threshold training. And this is where you're doing endurance training, which feels like you're just about in control. So you're on your threshold of keeping it all together. Um you're pumped, but you're not super pumped, but you're definitely not down in that arc range. You're shaking out, you're moving. Um, this feels like quite challenging terrain. It's interesting, it's mentally stimulating, it's physically stimulating. I would say it typically fits in around the two to four grades under your on-site limit. Something like that is kind of perfect threshold terrain. Um and it's also terrain that you're not likely to fail on unless you start stacking a lot of them back to back. And really what you're looking for here is changes in the mitochondria, which is sort of like the workhorse of the of the cell, and um enzyme efficiency that you also see within the muscle cells. And that's the kind of thing here that we're aiming for, and that comes from working at that kind of intensity and and volume as well that goes with it, which obviously has to be much lower than what we just talked about. Total time under tension of that session would be anything from maybe 15 to 30 minutes, maybe 45 minutes in elite level climbers. But wow, 15 minutes. 15 to 30 minutes, I think time under tension is about right for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:20

Okay. Uh what's the last one? Then which one uh are climbers typically lacking or are typically uh you know shirking responsibility on?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:29

Uh so the last one is uh interval training. Um so that's higher intensity, much shorter efforts in little blocks um where the uh duration or the volume of the set, or the or rather the rep is not very high, but then you're taking a short rest and then you're getting back on. So classic one that I everyone uses all over the world, one-on-one off. That's high-intensity interval training. Um and this is the sort of the last piece of the puzzle, and it's really important to um factor in with your endurance training. But I would say the missing part of the puzzle nowadays, and maybe it's just a fad or fashion or what you find on Instagram is actually the middle part. I think there's not enough people doing the threshold training. Um, I think people are pretty good at doing that high interval stuff because it's it's convenient, doesn't take very long. I mean, a 10-minute on, 10-minute on session takes 20 minutes, basically. Um, really convenient to do after work or at the end of your session. Arcing, I think arcing's got a pretty good rep nowadays. People are even into the karking thing. And yeah, they're getting it done. It's threshold, not that fun. It's kind of a hard slog. It tends to affect a lot of other training. That's the one that's missing if I had to put my finger on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:46

It's probably because the train that you're climbing on is like almost interesting, but not quite interesting, but not so boring that you can kind of like zone out, you know. I I betcha the just that, yeah, where where it is as far as fun, probably not not as enjoyable as either of the others.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:04

Yeah, yeah. So all three of them has to be done if you want really, really good endurance.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

All right, I need to go buy a treadmill. I feel like I have never done the arcing whatsoever. I gotta tell you, I was climbing with uh Alex Honnold, um, and something I noticed about him, and I I bring him up because I remember us talking about his metrics and how how well he does for his metrics. And he just climbs nonstop always everywhere. Like we were out in Fontainebleau, and I just I was like, dude, my skin's tired. Like I don't want to climb anymore, dude. And he just he would climb 20 boulders before even putting his climbing shoes on. He was just kind of non-stop, always climbing, day in and day out. And I thought, wow, like this work capacity was just something I don't have. Uh, and I'm sure I would benefit from it because you can't skip anything really. If you really want to be good, you you need every layer of uh of you know those physical adaptations.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

Yeah, yeah. And and you'll see this kind of ability on the work capacity side to really differentiate some of the uh elite competition climbers. And behind the scenes, if you get someone who's regularly podiuming in World Cups versus someone who's making semis versus someone that's just about on like the national team, put them on stuff like anaerobic capacity training on a on a circuit board, not on a circuit boards, rather, on a system board. So like things like four by fours, um three by fours, the the world-class athlete will tend to outperform, even though on the singular bold problem, they're very evenly matched.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:43

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:44

Uh like Toby Roberts, absolute beast in that that style. His work capacity was uh yeah, phenomenal.

The LatticePlan App

SPEAKER_03 1:24:52

Since I last spoke to you, even since I spoke to Ollie, Lattice came out with an app that is available to everyone versus just listening to a podcast with you giving us great information or flying all the way out to see you. And tell me more about how the launch has been and you know, just your ability to reach people across the world instead of those lucky few who get to come and visit you in person.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:17

Yeah, it's been it's been challenging, actually. Um, you know, properly building an app which really served the needs and the demands of our um elite level climbing base of clients, as well as um the more sort of keen amateur and making sure that it all fit for them. And what what sort of really happened, I guess not all people are aware of, is that we actually built an app for all of our training plan clients a couple of years ago, and we kept it kind of a bit more on the sort of the down low and tested that system out and really refined it with everyone in that manner initially, and making sure that it worked always with a direct coach working one-to-one with a client or athlete through the app. And you know, the chat function works well, the video exercises, the loggers, the timers, everything like that. And over time, we always had a plan that we wanted to basically be able to take the way that our coaches write and design training programs and basically systemize it or build it into an algorithm, like a deterministic model, and be able to take all the inputs that you have from assessments or uh a pre-assessment form, call it a quiz, whatever you however you want to term it, build those into a model, say what training you have, what standard you're at, what are your goals at, and then it will build you a plan based on the systems that we used with our coaches themselves, but to be able to roll it out to people at essentially a much, much lower cost because for most people, being able to have a personal coach is really expensive. Um, I know we charge people for it, but I see how much it costs people and I think, yeah, this is a real investment for most people. And $1,000 plus a year is not affordable for everyone. And we really wanted to basically give the ability to be able to access our training know-how and our systems and then the experience, but at a much lower cost um, because we could kind of systemize how we we did things. And that's what we aim to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:34

Yeah, the reason I brought it up is I was just hearing you tell me about the three different kinds of endurance training. I was like, well, I do none of those. Um, and I didn't even know there was three different kinds. And it's just, I guess the older I get, the more I want to offload the knowledge and stress. Like theoretically, I can figure it all out, but then I also get lazy and I, you know, don't do the thing that I probably. Don't like doing, or maybe I don't even realize that there was an energy system that I was missing potentially between just 20 minutes on the wall or one minute on the wall. And so I just find it interesting uh having someone, whether it's you or your team, or assisted by a tool, kind of having eyes on me that you know make sure that I don't drop the ball really. And make sure that when I get tired and I want to sit on my couch or I get burnt out, that someone's kind of nudging me like, hey, don't sit around too long. You know, don't just keep eating that ice cream, come in and get at least one session in. And so yeah, it's important.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:40

I mean, it goes back to that whole thing we were saying at the start about how we want to be able to log and track what we're doing with our climbing and be able to put, you know, slightly tighter boundaries on how we're doing that and our body's responding to the training we're doing and how we're recovering and how prepared and ready we are for training sessions coming up. And whether you're doing it in an app or in a spreadsheet, but in our case, you know, it's an app that we've built so that's specifically set to do that, is the whole concept. And I think the bit that I feel really proud about what we've built is as far as I understand, I I don't think I've seen this anywhere else really, is that we've built in an ongoing adaptability of all the plans that come out. So they're customized right from the start in terms of who you are, what you need, where you're at now. But then every single week it asks you about how's your week gone, your preparedness, how are you feeling, and then it adapts everything on a weekly basis. And you often may not actually see that ability to be able to even do that with a human coach always, depending on the the price you're paying and the quality of service that you're getting, to be able to get individualized edits on your plan every single week because you just dropped one session or suddenly you got ill or you're feeling crappy for a couple of sessions. And that adaptability, ongoing flexibility, I think is really cool. And I feel really proud of it. And also just the amount of data that we're collecting on the back end from that of how climbers now behave and respond to that adaptability within plans, and then the results they get from it is essentially setting us up to hone everything down to more and more effective training. And it's yeah, it's really interesting. It's um it's cool what's being built at the moment. And um, it's not like I can claim it's any of my intelligence, it's it's the guys in the developer team that are being really clever about this. It's you know, I'm just plugging out a few videos on Instagram and doing some podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:46

Well, the whole crew and all the athletes along the way to really help develop a system. Seeing, I mean, you've seen thousands of people, I'm I'm guessing over the years. And I the the adaptability part is interesting where this is where I'm saying that I find that often when I don't sleep well or I don't know, just yeah, something goes awry in life, I want to just like do nothing. Um, because I look at my to-do and I just like don't want to do it. And yeah, I I guess the ability to put that feedback in and then have it way scaled down is I think more important than most people realize. Because if you break that habit of showing up to, like again, better to show up and do something at 30% than just then zero. It's so bad. Like that's what happens to me. And I just I had a a finger training, you know, block that I was doing in the summer. And then I kind of I want to say I hurt my fingers. They just weren't feeling great. And so then I stopped. And I probably could have taken off a day or two and then come back at reduced volume. But instead, I just started again like two days ago. I'm like, well, those four months, I'm like back to back to square one, square zero, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:00

Yeah, it uh I mean that's life, isn't it? And for sure, once you you have a job, you have a family, friends, and bodies don't always do what you want to do, that's a a really important factor within it. And whether it's yeah, like a a deterministic model that adjusts this for you, or it's a friend who's helping coach you, or a professional coach, um, or just your mate who goes to sessions with you every single week, I think that feedback and that recognition that you might need to scale things back is really important because your body only has as much capacity as it has to be able to deal these things, no matter how psyched you are. And the whole game of getting better in climbing is about finding that sweet spot of pushing yourself a little bit, sort of like challenging yourself. You're knocking just a little edge off, and then you bounce back that bit stronger and that bit fitter. But it's hard to be consistently in that kind of Goldilocks zone, and most of us regularly overcook it or undercook it and spread that out over 10 years, and there's quite a big difference between people who got it regularly right versus regularly wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:20

Like you were saying, you gotta play the long game. Uh, what's the thread that you see between the people who have success, either with you guys in person or on the app, or conversely, like what are some flags that you see where people drop out? Just, you know, like I just want people to know kind of what they should either be watching out for in themselves if they're doing training that you guys often go, like, oh, this person might drop out. Or, you know, on the other, on the more positive side, what do the successful people have in common?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:52

Um yes, I think a common behavior that I see in those that struggle with their training is there is a a cohort of the population, a bucket of the population who are who I would call the overthinkers in climbing. And there's nothing wrong with thinking about your climbing plenty, but the problem comes is when you ruminate too much and you use up too much of your mental energy on just overthinking everything to do with your climbing and your training and your performance. And now you've got no energy left to just get on with the thing. And I have really regularly seen that group over the years have difficulty that I've had a number of clients who have been in that exact category, and you will find me receiving a long email, just worrying about all these different things, and I will reply back, I'll give some some reassurance and I'll say, look, whoever, we just need to get on with things this week. Um, I hear what you're saying, but let's just get on with stuff. And I would really encourage all that group to just try and get your brain out of the rumination and the overthinking part and put it into high-quality work, good power training, good strength training, visualization of where you want to be. That's where your mental energy wants to be. And I think that's a classic issue. And then I would say the other bit that can be really hard is for anyone who wants to do well with their climbing, training, performance, and stuff of that, is not finding a way to surround yourselves with like-minded people. So if you want to be that person that turns up to the wall three times a week, gets on with trying hard on the wall, and probably does some ancillary exercises in the gym afterwards, go and hang out with other people that behave in that way. It's like the best ever shortcut hack to actually being that person. I'm like it. And I'm really motivated. If I hang out with good, disciplined people who are doing the thing and behaving the way that I want to be, within a couple of weeks, I'm suddenly behaving like them. We're, I don't know, we're like sheep in the nicest possible way. And it's really, really effective.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:16

By the way, you can be that person that starts that group too. Yeah, you can reach out and be like, hey, like I've done, I literally start these textmaster threads. It's like, hey, let's make Tuesday nights like a hard, bouldering night. You know, just and and just be the one who starts that group. Like if you can't find it, start it. And I I don't know if this is exactly no, this is probably overthinking. I'm overthinking whether or not it's overthinking. Um I I think I have gotten into a trap of thinking I'm a special snowflake, like, oh, these basic exercises don't work for me, like I'm unique or I have this issue. And I may be part right, but typically we are more the same than we are different. And you know, you if you're not checking those basic things, I and I I even would give advice. People come to me like, Josh, like, how do you get better at climbing? I'm like, can you do 10 pull-ups? Can you just do 10 pulls? If you can't do 10 pull-ups, maybe you should do 10 pull-ups. It seems like pull-ups might help climbing. And it's like, oh, but my finger strengths, let's just do 10 pull-ups. Um, and you know, it's just it's something that I often I I actually learned this also through some of my shoulder injury stuff is that again, I was so unique. The truth is, is that a lot of shoulders are unstable for a lot of the same reasons. And maybe I have little tweaks and nuances that I need to specialize in, but you gotta still put in the basics, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

Yeah, exactly. And it's like I've been asked many times, um, what is it that the really, really good athletes that I've trained over the years are doing? Like, is this just special shit that lattices and releasing? And oh, have you got, you know, like some evil, you know, like doctor evil type things that are going on, or special protocols that we don't know about and everything. And it's just not at all the truth. All of those athletes that you see, they're training in a very, very similar way, but they're extremely consistent, they're really good about managing injury, they're good at managing their energy, their mental capacity. Um, they're good at reflecting, they're good at taking feedback, they're really curious, they love learning, they have good support mechanisms around them, and they do it like year after year after year, and they stay true to what they're trying to do. They don't get too diverted, you know, distracted with random things. And that's yeah, for sure they most of them have pretty good genetic predispositions at the starting point. But the common factor amongst all those is fairly similar stuff. And and I see it when I go to you know, professional like athlete meetups for my sponsors and things, and you meet all these other professional climbers around the world and you go, uh, we're all pretty similar. We have the same attitudes, we've done the same stuff, more or less.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:13

Managing injury. I'll leave that one for a whole nother podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:17

Yeah, yeah. Or get a different person on.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:19

I I will say my number one tip on injuries is don't get injured. Just don't get injured. Um,

Tom's Experience With Urban Climbing

SPEAKER_03 1:39:26

I gotta ask about one more thing, and that's urban climbing. Uh yeah, you've done yeah, you've made videos. There's you're climbing on man-made structures. Tell me more about urban climbing, like how long you've been doing it, how you got into it, and what the current scene is like for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:46

Yeah, so urban climbing, I have been into ever since I first started climbing. Uh, I actually started climbing on buildings because I grew up in a place where there was no, that's how old I am. There was no indoor climbing wall in the city that I grew up in. Because, you know, back then there weren't that many climbing walls in the country. And I climbed on the on brick edges on the outside of buildings. Um, even in my parents' back garden, we had a brick wall down one side that was only about four meters wide. And I went out with a chisel and I like chipped little crimps and pockets and stuff, and I used to traverse back and forth. And when I got in the evenings, I'd go and in the dark, go and climb up sides of buildings. We had a little guide um for the local city where I grew up that had problems on different arets and cracks and features and everything like that. So, yeah, it was right there from the start. Um, obviously stepped away from it in a fairly significant way when I started going into outdoor climbing more and got access to all of it, and then really came back to it uh around the lockdown years because we discovered that there were a whole number of roof cracks underneath bridges that I don't know, for some reason never spotted them. And that kind of became a bit of a thing. Um, I suppose we we filmed that thing for real rock where we climbed this multi-pitched thing underside um a bridge in the UK that was like eight or nine hundred meters long. Yeah, massive. And and that that was a bit of a phase, really got into it, went really well. And then in recent years again, I've been going over to Berlin and sort of like half-hybrid living between the UK and Berlin, and had noticed that there was a lot of cracks just naturally between buildings out there. And I suppose because there's no outdoor climbing available in the city. There's really super good indoor gyms, which is kind of one of the reasons why I like going there a lot. Um, but there was no outdoor climbing, and it kind of just filled this need for a bit of outdoor crack climbing. So I just started climbing around these buildings and soloing these lines that looked really good. And I think it's like anything, you you start getting into it, other people in your scene go, Oh, it seems pretty cool. I'll come out and do it a bit. We built this crack training facility, uh, like a private one in Berlin as well, that then created its own community of very, very keen, obsessed crack climbers within the city. And it's just sort of snowballed in a way into its own sub-genre within crack climbing. And I've just come back from Berlin two weeks ago, and they've made a whole guide for the entire city of crack climbs to be done. There's FA projects for all the way up to 515 on it.

unknown 1:42:44

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:45

It's amazing. It's it's really inspiring, actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:48

Tell me some of the logistics there. Like, can you just use any old gear to protect uh these you know these cracks on buildings?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:57

Um so the vertical ones, no, they nearly always have to be soloed. And I think you could maybe get away with some of them, but some of the materials that you're dealing with in terms of building, I don't know whether they would hold with camps. And you could also maybe damage the building. I'm a little bit averse to doing that. And and in a way, I quite enjoy the the proper adventure and commitment style of on-site soloing in an unknown environment, there's no chalk on it. You really, really have to be on your game. There's you know, you know, you know what soloing involves. Um so I enjoy that part of it. Um, it's it's really, really challenging. And then on the bridges where you're uh climbing on concrete, um, mostly the cams are great, like they hold really well. Every now and again you come across a bit of a funny surface and you have to do a bit of testing and just check they don't rip out, and it happens, I don't know, one in fifty bridges would be my guess. And uh and sometimes you just can't climb them because the the concrete isn't quite right. Um, but mostly, yeah, you've then got some very hard uh trad lines which are essentially the future of crack climbing. I think I even saw Andra had written it on his Instagram post recently that he thought it was the future of crack climbing. And I was like, yes, Adam's finally getting into it as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:16

Makes me think of that post. Pietro did the second ascent of Jester's Escape, uh world's first 515, which is great. And then Ethan Pringle reposted it and said something about how the hardest part of 515 trad climbing is finding it. And uh that's an interesting idea that maybe it's literally surrounding us right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:38

Yeah, I mean, we found a project out there in Berlin which is 515 for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:42

That's so crazy. I I'm also blown away by how much attention uh the videos are getting where you know Adam and Pete did a video, it's been out for a week or something. I I think it had almost like 400,000 views. Like clearly there's something there that is sparking people's interest. You have to pay attention to that. It makes me think you never know what the next discipline is gonna be. Like it almost makes me think of climbing gyms where people probably looked at climbing gyms, they're like, what are you guys doing? Like you're just indoor on some plywood, some plastic hold, what are you thinking? And actually going outside and climbing on beautiful structures that are imposing and aesthetic. Like that makes a lot more sense to me, actually, as like a fun playground.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:28

Yeah, I mean, this is the thing I've been arguing for years is that a huge percentage of our population lives in urban environments and we spend so much time traveling to these adventurous places around us to try and find our kind of fix on, you know, rock or adventure or adrenaline or whatever. And a lot of the time it's right there on your doorstep, especially if you're talking about that kind of on-site soloing style. But, you know, aside from that, you can obviously do the safer stuff under the side of bridges or you can do bouldering on buildings. And the adventure is, you know, way more accessible than you think. And I felt like we just needed, and I think we're getting there a little bit, we just need to make a mental step over this is dirty, or I might get in trouble, security guard might tell me to move on. Um, maybe I look stupid because I've got a bouldering pad on my back in the middle of the city, and people are gonna wonder what I'm doing. We just need to kind of get our heads around that a bit, and I think a little bit further in the future, and people will go, huh. Well, this is always obvious. Why haven't we been doing this for years? And uh it's I don't know, it's just the way things go.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:40

Yeah, I gotta ask. I mean, is it legal in Berlin? Yeah, what do people do you get chased off? Like, yeah, like what what are what's a crazy story where you had a run-in with either uh you know a building owner or the security or the cops or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:55

Uh I mean, in in Berlin, over there, I've I've got a lifetime ban from one of the stadiums because uh me and Pete turned up to film for a Wide Boys episode and there were like crowds going on to this concert, and they were just APSy everywhere. And I was thinking, oh, this is just typical, the one day that we've turned up to do this filming. And then I thought, you know what, fuck it, like I don't think that many people are watching. I feel like I might be able to get away with this. And then I started climbing and people started spotting that I was up there, and it sort of attracted a bit more attention, and then the the security guards came by and and they weren't very happy at all. And I think half the issue was that the the pop star that was playing was um super famous. Uh I didn't really realise it was such a big name that was playing there, so they were really on it, I think, with the the event security and and what was going on. I think maybe if it had been a little bit more low-key, probably would have been fine and not had such an issue. But in the end of the day, they I came down, they were really annoyed with me. I had to give them my ID. They said they'd call the police. I said, look, just take all of my forms of ID. Don't worry, you can ban me for life. I'm I'm not stressed about it. And just took the kind of slap on the hand. Um and and then we went our way. And they're generally fine. Mostly, as long as you're not an idiot and you respectfully deal with them, then I think it's fine. Um you could play a different game if you wanted to. I mean, that'd be a laugh if you wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:30

Dude, you were the opening act where you went wrong, is you should have charged people to come and see you. Maybe that's the that's what uh Honnell did with the type. It's like instead of uh trying to sneak around, just make it the main event.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:44

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:48

Well, uh, I will be paying attention to all that. I I think that there is something there. Also, I gotta tell you, I think also the buildings you get to climb in Europe are a lot cooler looking than in America. I don't know. The architecture there, I feel like begs to be climbed where I think we have a lot more sterile uh looking skyscrapers and stuff that aren't quite as cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:10

You know where has got some really good lines, and I've been sent them a number of times now in New York. New York, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:15

Well, if we're gonna have it, it's gonna be New York.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:17

Yeah, New York's has got some really good lines. Um, I'm gonna take a trip there sometime to do it. I'm just a little more concerned with the police over there. I don't know whether they're quite as chill as European, UK police.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:30

Yeah, no promises. You do have the cool accent that I feel like you could just play it off as, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. We climb buildings all the time in Europe. It's okay. Um fascinating. Yeah, I well I appreciate you sharing that and kind of leading that charge because I just always love seeing new things in climbing. Like that's I mean, I guess it's not brand new, but it's there's a little zeitgeist around it right now. And I think it's interesting. So keep making those videos. Um, I'll come out and spot you in New York. And yeah, thanks for thanks for staying up late with me, Tom. I'm gonna I'm gonna move on and and do a quick uh bonus question for our our Patreon supporters. If you want to hear that Q ⁇ A and other extra behind the scenes content from this episode and others, head over to patreon.com slash test piece to sign up now. Patrons also get their episodes early and ad-free. There's hours and hours of bonus content there to help you on your own path of going from good to great. Still not sure? There's a free seven day trial for you to check it out. And to help the show grow, please share this episode with someone who would love it. Okay, see you next week.