32: Andy McVittie, Climbing PT
Andy is a climbing PT from Process Physiotherapy. He has been climbing for over 30 years, has coached in the past, and over time has noticed climbing injuries change as the style of climbing has evolved in the competition scene. In this episode, we'll debunk some training and PT myths, talk about the differences between male and female climbers and the types of injuries they face, and we’ll hear about why he thinks fingers are strong enough.
Timestamps
Timestamps of discussion topics
0:00 - Intro
1:30 - Mad Rock Shoutout!!
2:17 - Holidays
4:22 - Getting into climbing, coaching, PT
11:31 - Evolution of climbing injuries over time
19:24 - Is there any competition move that's too dangerous?
26:59 - Shoulders, hanging and catching one arm moves
36:11 - Fingers are strong enough!!
40:55 - World Cup climbers using KT tape, metal stickers, ice packs
51:14 - MYTH: Climbing ability declines as you age
1:03:00 - MYTH: Injuries happen from specific occurrences
1:07:14 - How injuries show up differently between male and female climbers
1:17:56 - Period cycles and injury
1:27:54 - DISCORD Q: How to deal with DIP issues/synovitis?
1:34:20 - Discord Q: How should an experienced climber integrate more training?
1:38:29 - A PT's new years resolution
1:40:09 - Closing thoughts + where to find Andy
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So finger strength is just sort of maxed out and that's not how you're going to be able to
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differentiate between athletes. I'm getting patients coming to me saying, oh well of course
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you know I can't boulder how I used to because I'm in my 30s now and I'm like what? Why? You know
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what happens in your 30s? Whereas you're still you know really young in your prime. So if you're
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expecting your period and it's late that is something that you should give some consideration
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to. Yeah there was a definite spike. Nothing interferes with improvement more than injury.
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You need consistency. So it's fine to step away a little early and finish feeling fresh.
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Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host Jinni and I'm
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excited to introduce my guest Andy McVittie. Andy is a climbing PT from Process Physiotherapy. He's
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been climbing for over 30 years, has coached in the past, and over time has noticed climbing injuries
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change as the style of climbing has evolved in the competition scene. In this episode we'll debunk
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some training and PT myths, talk about the differences between male and female climbers,
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and the types of injuries they face, and we'll hear about why he thinks fingers are strong enough.
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I hope you enjoy this episode with Andy.
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Real quick I'm excited to announce my new sponsor helping make this podcast episode possible,
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Mad Rock Climbing. I got fitted with their brand new line of high performance shoes,
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the D2.1s. They just came out December 6th but you might notice a few of your favorite
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GOM climbers are already wearing them like Oscar Baudran from Team Canada and also me.
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This is the first time I've gotten to wear their shoes for an extended period of time and I'm
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actually super impressed with the grip of their in-house rubber and of course the famous drone
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heel that everyone says is the cheat code to heel hooking small edges. Feel free to message me if
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you have any questions about the shoes or sizing and you can use the discount code notrealclimber
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for 10% off your entire Mad Rock order. Info will be in the description. Back to the show.
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How are you doing today? Excited for the holidays?
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Yeah, yeah. All set already. Got everybody's presents.
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Nice.
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One of those, I think I've had a good year this year for presents. We'll see.
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Yeah, presents stress me out so.
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Exactly. Yeah, it's just such a relief when you finally see that thing and you just like,
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ah, that's the thing. That'll do it.
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I can't do like a presents under pressure. If I see something in the moment, I want to get it for
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someone, but then if there's that deadline, it just, it goes out the window. I like don't,
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I can't do it.
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Yeah, presents under pressure. I like that. You can feel the stress exuding from that.
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Yeah.
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And then just like nothing good pops out to you.
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No, no, definitely not. And what about yourself? What do you do for the holidays?
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Um, not much really. I mean, I don't really celebrate any holidays just because it's like
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a lot of effort. And like, again, the whole presents under pressure thing, I just.
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I'm loving so many people now. I think one of the nice things about the climbing community is
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there's a lot of sort of intergenerational sort of mixing that goes on. So I spend a fair bit of
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time with people that are younger than my children, whatever that kind of thing. And people are just
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making such different choices nowadays. I mean, it may be a climbing thing as well. Climbing attracts
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a certain kind of person, doesn't it? But it's just, yeah, people are just like, no, that doesn't
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make me happy. So I'm not going to do that.
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Yeah.
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It's so refreshing.
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Yeah. I've noticed a lot of climbers just end up going climbing on Christmas or like climbing
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outside or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's even, yeah, career choices that kind of,
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well, not even career. They just, I want a job that's not too harsh, that gives me the income
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so I can go and climb or do the things that bring me pleasure. And I'm not lying awake in bed at
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night worrying about work. It's like, wow.
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I mean, as someone who's unemployed, yeah, that is what it's like.
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Okay. Yeah.
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Okay. So yeah, getting into the climbing stuff and I guess the culture and community,
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how did you get into climbing and then coaching and then eventually becoming a PT?
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Yeah. Yeah. It's been, yeah, I suppose when I look back a little bit of a journey, a bit longer than
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I thought. Yeah. So it's like 31 years of climbing now, I think.
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah. I know. Yeah.
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Congrats.
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Yeah. But also makes me think, oh, wow, maybe I'm older than I think I am.
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But yeah, I got into it. It was an activity at school that we did on a school trip where you
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went away into the countryside and did various things. They have these, the residential,
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they're called quite common in the UK. We'll go away for a week with the school and yeah,
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you do lots of different adventurous kind of activities. Tried climbing and I can still
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remember it now. I wouldn't be able to pick the climb or anything. I know which crag and
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or not heavy it was, but I can still remember. Yeah, it's totally like, wow, this is the thing
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for me. But I was quite young then, didn't know anybody else who climbed, didn't really,
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wasn't able to get into it. And so really it was when I got to university and they had a
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mountaineering club and it was like, oh right, there's my way in. It's all there for me.
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Yeah, so climbed recreationally, but I was actually, when I left university, I joined the
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police was my first career. Oh wow. Well, what was your degree, I guess? I guess I kind of assumed
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that your degree was going to be in physiotherapy. Yeah, but the first one basically was sports
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coaching, sports science. So I've always had that kind of within me. At that time, I was considering
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joining the armed services, the REF, and so it didn't matter what degree I did. They just said,
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pick a degree that you're interested in. So I thought, yeah, cool, sports science, coaching,
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that sounds good. So I did that. Then decided not to join the armed forces, went into the police
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and continued to climb through that time. And then had a career change, became an outdoor instructor.
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And this is back really before coaching was a thing. It was instruction, safety instruction,
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that kind of thing. Coaching wasn't really around. You mean in general or just for climbing?
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For climbing, yeah, for climbing. All the other sports for climbing, they're still quite resistant
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to it. It would be like, well, that's not how we do it in climbing. That's frowned upon,
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but like training, people used to train in secret because you didn't know what they were doing.
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You didn't want to admit that you were training to get better. It may just be a British thing.
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You know, there's people at school who claim that they never do any revision or homework,
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but they get poor marks in all the exams. Yeah, a bit like that, but nobody could admit that they
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trained. I wanted to give a little bit extra and Neil Gresham was the first person to start up with
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like an actual coaching qualification. So I went down to London where he was at the time and spent
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the week there and got some basic coaching input from him. Then I moved to Spain and was working
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on performance at climbing holidays where people would want to improve their grade. So they would
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come on a one week, two week holiday and get coached basically to improve and sort of covered
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everything. I came back from Spain then. I ended up working in climbing balls while I finally
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retrained again as a physiotherapist. That's when I did get my physiotherapy degree and continued
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there. That sort of grew, ended up starting a competition squad there and helping run that.
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Then eventually going off self-employed, myself and my coaching partner at the time early,
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formed a competition squad. Now, although physiotherapy is my main part of it,
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I've been coaching for nearly 16 years. I still have a couple of people that I coach. That's more
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just interesting, fun, psych rather than being on the ground of competition coaching.
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So you no longer have a competition squad?
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No, no, no, not anymore. Once the climbing physiotherapy grew, I've been in physio for
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a while, but only full-time climbing physio for the last three years. That was never going to be
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a thing a few years ago. You couldn't support yourself. There weren't enough climbers around.
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There wasn't the attitude as well that you would go and see a physio for an injury. Again, I think
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things potentially changed. That used to once be a badge of honor as to how many injuries you had,
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but you were still climbing.
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Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess that still is kind of a thing.
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It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, the climbing physio has come about. The usual,
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the usual, most physiotherapists who climb will treat friends and help friends, that kind of thing,
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advise or what have you. And then that just grew.
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When you started out with sports science back in the day, did you do other sports or what?
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Yeah, so rugby to a reasonably okay level, played for the county. We did well at university as well
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at rugby. We got through to high level national competitions and running actually. I don't do
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that so much nowadays, but long distance running. I was a sprinter when I was young, but then get
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ultra mountain marathon. Oh really?
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Yes, I ended up with that. That takes quite a lot of time, quite a lot of energy.
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And that's come to the conclusion that I couldn't keep us going.
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Yeah, I only learned about ultra marathons like probably within the past few months. I couldn't
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believe it at first. I didn't know it was a real thing that people could actually do.
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Yeah, it's amazing. The human body is just fantastic. When I think actually having just
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said all that of all the different things I've done with my body and that it's adapted to,
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it wasn't like any of these I was like super gifted at. And now that have I done them to an
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amazingly high level, but it's like if you give it the time and the space and the correct information
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to work with, your body will do most things. Absolutely amazing. It's a fantastic, fantastic
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bit of kit. Yeah, so yeah, you mentioned that you've
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been climbing for a long time. You kind of touched on like the evolution you've seen over the years.
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How does that kind of affect the injuries that you've seen people come in with?
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Yeah, so originally treating friends, that type of thing, often like at the crag where
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something would happen, somebody would come over holding their finger, compared by that,
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this has just happened, but what do you think this is? And it was predominantly fingers.
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People would worry, I think, about fingers. Fingers would cause them enormous pain.
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Fingers would cause them enough anxiety that they wanted to reach out for some help.
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Whereas if they fell off and badly sprained their ankle, they would just be like, well,
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that just happens. It will get better. It will be okay. Or shoulders, similarly. Elbows,
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that type of thing. People just certainly used to, still do to an extent, just not
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seek treatment for it, just tough up and get on with it. But fingers was always the most commonly,
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and that's backed up from research back then, not about people accessing help or treatment,
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but which parts of you injured over that, whatever. Yeah, fingers, definitely the majority,
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I would suggest, the things that you'd see. Now it's everything, which is really nice,
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because if you just saw fingers all the time, as interesting and as great as it is working with
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climbers, and every finger injury is a bit different, yeah, I think I'd be a little bit bored
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if it was just fingers all the time. Okay, yeah. And so I guess, specifically in the competition
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scene, they don't really set crimpy, fingery stuff too often. I mean, that's definitely part of it,
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but I don't think the limiting factors, people's finger strength a lot of the times when it comes
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to competition climbing. So yeah, do you feel like you see other stuff in the competition space?
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Yeah, absolutely. And it has been an interesting and very rapid evolution within the competition
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space, definitely. And yes, you're right, athletes this generation have just got to the point where
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you can't really make a hole small enough for them not to be able to crimp it. They're using bolt holes,
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aren't they? They're using screw holes. They're using the side of volumes to dig into it with the
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fingernails and that type of thing. So finger strength is just sort of maxed out, and that's
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not how you're going to be able to differentiate between athletes. That combined with what became
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the fantastic sort of visual spectacle of the 2020, 2021 Olympics, the way to differentiate
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athletes became about that uncertainty of movement, didn't it? The ability to read a problem,
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get it right first time, have the movement literacy and the confidence in the competition
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scenario to be able to go for these low percentage moves and pull them off, as opposed to how hard
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can you hold? Then you have the big colorful holds, big dynamic moves, all this type of thing
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that look spectacular and drew the crowd. And it worked, didn't it? Because climbing absolutely
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exploded after that and obviously is now included, hopefully long-term in the Olympics.
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But it's that type of movement, much greater peak loads. If you're jumping to something
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and actually going for it, hitting it with one hand, whereas often in the past you would still
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have the other hand on, so there's much more stability through the body. A lot more rotational
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forces, both sort of intentional and unintentional. You've got the 360 moves now that everybody likes
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to see, that kind of thing. But even just hitting something, when you look at what happens in
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Yan Yur and whatever, and the Cobra kick that she really almost kicks us up in the back of her own
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head, doesn't she, when she's doing that? The ranges that the body is tested through. A lot
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more single arm work, which then upsets wrists as well, because you're having to control through
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the wrist. Just a great difference in the movement patterns. There was a narrative review rather than
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a true research project done in 2020, 2021. Looking at that, I'm predicting that was
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Chris Lutter, who's a orthopedic surgeon who works with Volker Schoffel. I don't know if you've ever
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heard of him. He's like the... has been for ages. Super keen climber, German orthopedic surgeon,
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runs a surgery that specializes in outdoor related incidents, accidents and surgery.
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They looked at the movement patterns, the changes, and they predicted actually what we're now seeing
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three or four years later, because obviously what is in the Olympics then feeds through into local
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competition and local setting in climbing walls, because everybody wants to have a go at that type
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of thing. Much more shoulders is the biggest change, really. A lot more shoulders. The other
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one, pushing as well. Never used to push. Now there's all of this going on in some real
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positions that when you get your biomechanical head on and you look at what somebody's doing,
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and I'm going like, oh man, how could you hit? Yeah, some of the push moves are definitely pretty
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extreme. Yeah, yeah. I've chatted with people before about in competition, youth competition,
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you get some feedback, often from slightly unhappy parents of the third child. But my child got
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injured on that problem. It was dangerous. Why have you set it? They set it on the other. Often
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there will be something underlying why they ended up getting injured on that. They might have had a
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shoulder injury and that push move then injured them. But I really believe that setters set a
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challenge. As long as it's not overtly dangerous, which I've never seen, it's up to the athlete
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to decide whether they accept that challenge or not. That's part of being a competitive,
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high-level athlete. You have to be aware of yourself. Is that for me? I have to have that
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discipline, that talk within for youth, coach, climber, caregiver. How should I be doing this
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competition? That type of thing and injuries that come out of competition are not the root setters
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for. There's really no move that you've seen set in competition locally or in the IFSC where you're
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like, oh, I really don't want to see that again or you think it's a little too far. I can't bring one
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to mind. No. What I often say is I certainly see things that I think like, wow, how are they able
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to do that? If I even attempted to do that, that would injure me. But so would playing a game of
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professional soccer. That would injure me. I'm not trained in that way at all. What's the injury rate
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in IFSC competition? I guess I don't know. Actually, in the competitions itself, yeah,
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good point. Sorry if that's kind of why I'm here. It's not that high. There is always
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likely to be a higher injury rate in competition than in practice. But yeah, but it's not off the
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scale. I can't think of a problem or a route where it's been like, oh, athlete A has been injured.
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Next one, oh, athlete B has been injured on that problem and can't continue or is noticeably now
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limping after doing it or holding their feet and that being a common thing on a particular problem.
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Interesting. Okay. Oh man, I wish I had thought of, tried to look through some old comps and see if
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there was anything that was super dangerous. I guess the only thing that comes to mind most
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recently is maybe the Salt Lake World Cup where there was a jump onto a dual-text slide onto a
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little chip thing. I feel like I maybe remember an injury or two there. But also like Natalia was
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already kind of injured. So yeah, my memory's a little foggy. Okay. Yeah. And that potentially
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then is the, you know, route setters have got to set for what they, you know, for fully fit athletes.
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They can't start accounting for, oh, somebody might have this or somebody might have that.
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And then it's up to the athlete, whether they accept that challenge that their setters have
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set. And sometimes that will feel unfair because sometimes you will have something that limits you
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and you might not be able to do that. But that's, again, that's part of being an athleteism,
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unfortunately, but you're not going to be a hundred percent all the time. Okay. Kind of a
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surprising take to hear from a PT. That's interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I don't
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think we're, as a whole, you know, particularly in sports, physio, I don't think we're very,
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you know, we're trying to help people become robust and strong and to be able to do these
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amazing things with their body. And if you're like, oh, oh, I don't think you should or, oh,
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crap, no, we better be super, yeah, they're not going to get there, are they? Yeah, that's true.
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Obviously not if they've just been injured, you know, if they've got an acute new injury,
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you're not going to say, oh, we're going to ignore that and just put it on. But, you know, rehab is
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finished when they're able to do those kind of things with no anxiety. That's a huge factor,
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especially in competitive athletes. And, you know, there's, again, a fair bit of research showing
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that a lot of people who, I'm going to rough figures here, but about 90% of people following
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a moderate level injury, you know, something that's taking you out of the sport for a while,
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about 90% of people will regain all their physical abilities that they had before that.
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But only about 60, I think it's about 64, 65% of people actually make it back to the same level
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that they were before. And that, they believe, is anxiety around that injury, recurrence, and
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yeah, that type of thing. So it's amazing that the high level athletes do. Well, I guess they have to.
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Which is interesting in itself, isn't it? Yeah, their drive and, yeah, is that a good thing?
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That they have to, you know? Yeah, we know from lots of other sports, don't we, that people are,
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okay, we're just going to give you an injection to get through this game. No, that type of thing.
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That's the trade-off of pro athletes. I mean, yeah, I think that's a really good way to
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look at it, that like anything can kind of be overcome. Is there any move that you see that
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really just, it just like kind of scares you? I just want to know. It's just something I really
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want to know. I don't think so, no, because they're all so amazingly prepared. Like for example,
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when they get around these curve balls that happen every so often, like when suddenly like
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cracks start appearing, you know? Oh gosh, when there was, I don't know if you saw this one, but
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there was like a kind of jump into like a crack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that set in
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local final balls, you know, that kind of thing. And you could look at that and think like,
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wow, that's a bit, yeah. But again, it's there and it's for people to choose whether they
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do it or not. And yeah, but they adapted within a handful of months. They'd become like masterful
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crack climbers. You know, they're just so adaptive and so amazing at what they do. And now with all
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the incredibly dynamic movements and the timing and the coordination and such that goes on,
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I think they can just see. And they also know what their bodies can do. They're quite a lot more
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aware, I feel, than say your standard climber of, you know, can I do that? No, I'm going to have to
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adapt it and try and, which is why you see them trying to work around things sometimes, isn't it?
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Because they almost don't want to do the version of it that they may be kind of getting funneled
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or forced into doing for whatever reason it might be. And sometimes that's just, yeah, it might feel
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like I've not got the ability to do that. Yeah, but no doubt, yeah, sorry, I haven't seen anything
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that I can think of at the minute that makes me, I'm sure someone somewhere will be able to come up
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with something or find something, send me a clip and I'll send you a video back of me going,
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oh, but yeah, because I couldn't, my shoulder, for example, could probably not deal with a lot of the
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moots and things, the giant leaps and stuff that they do. Yeah, but there's can. Yeah, I mean, I
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guess speaking of shoulders, so this is kind of like a, this is a personal thing for me. My shoulders
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have just been messed up for like years now. I can't even really like hang on one arm without
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pain at this point right now. And I see so many comp climbers landing like one arm dinos where
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they're just like flying back, hanging on one arm. And I desperately wish I could like rehab myself
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to get to that point again. How, I mean, they make it look so easy too. It's not even the
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like they're putting any strength into it. It just kind of looks like they're hanging off of it.
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Yeah. And I just, how do I get to that point where my shoulder isn't messed up so I can do that?
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So if we were both to break down what they're doing and also to look at what kind of a plan might look
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like for somebody. Yeah. And that's quite common. And that's also an example of people give quite
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often. They'll say, I can climb, but I can't hang one hand. And I really don't like the thought of
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going for a dynamic move and having to hit it. So it's something that they come across quite often.
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And really for me, why it looks effortless for them is because they're relaxed when they do it.
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So they're not already full of tension and movement. This is what we've said before about
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the difference with anxiety and why people don't get back to where they were going or where they
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previously were. Their timing is impeccable. And by that, I mean, as they hit the hold,
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it's at that dead point. This is where the term comes from, isn't it? Where they're not moving up,
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they're not moving down. They have that time and space to hold it. So the peak loads
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are shooting up there. Whereas perhaps when myself and yourself grab one of these holes,
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yeah, we'd sort of snatching for it. We've not got it quite so well. And there's a great big
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shock that comes through. We don't know how to control our body, like the scorpion kick,
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cobra kick, whatever you might want to call it, whatever. That's all about absorbing that energy
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and then bringing it back in, in a way that doesn't pull you off the wall. But I probably
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wouldn't do that. I'd just try and grab on as I could. And my solution to coming off would be to
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hold on harder rather than relaxing into it. So there's a look at the actual mechanics of what
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goes on and that needs to be understood. But then it's finding what the issue is with the shoulder,
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obviously, and there can be numerous things. It may be structural, there might be a joint issue
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going on. I could take a stab and if this is something that's been going on for quite some
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time, your words have messed up for years, which I would also address the use of the language there
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and say, come on, it's made, yeah. It turns so negative on yourself. I'm sure they're not,
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you know, that you're still able to do things with them. They're functional. And I find a lot
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of this, you address that underlying issue. So we might have a rotator cuff injury from a long time
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ago. And let's say for argument's sake, that was from trying to do a dyno and a Matt classic,
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oh, I've wrenched my shoulder. It didn't really like that kind of thing. There's a lot of muscles
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that insert into the shoulder and they all work in wonderful coordination to create movement and
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also to hold the ball and the socket nice and stable in the joint. If through injury, some of
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that is a bit totally non-technical turn out of whack. Yeah. That coordination has been affected.
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Things are not working how they should. So climbing on it is actually causing irritation.
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The body's great at protecting itself. Yeah. It will dial down the ability of a muscle to
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output force in order to protect itself. What the body's not so great at doing is bringing that
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muscle back into full use. The nervous system will kind of check in with the shoulder and go,
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is it okay? Yeah. Okay is good enough. It doesn't know you would really like to do a one-armed dyno.
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Yeah. It's like, are we under threat? No. Okay, then we're just going to leave the shoulder
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how it is. And you can correct that through strengthening. You can get your external
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rotation working, correct the shoulder. What's often missing at the end is that bringing it back
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into coordination in sport specific movements and patterns essentially. And that does two things.
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One is it tells the nervous system, we need this shoulder to work in this way, make that happen.
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Yeah. Bring everything back. And it also builds your confidence at the same time. So your movement
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patterns are natural and relaxed and how they should be, which gives you more head space with
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programming and such that rather than worrying about your shoulder. So often what gets missed,
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even if somebody's strengthened or healed, you're treated the underlying issue is that last part of
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bringing it back into a sport specific kind of environment, if you like. And that's where this
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further down the rehab you are, the more it should look like training, basically. Yeah.
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There could be drills, technique drills, strength drills, warm up recruitment work to do.
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I guess the hard part is kind of like when it comes to these more extreme moves where
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you're landing on one arm or you're like landing this intense move where you just get a lot of
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load, it's kind of hard to build up to it. It kind of seems like it's zero or a hundred in terms of
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like if you're going to land it or if you're going to be able to hold it or something like that.
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Yeah. And people don't, you might warm up, you might have climbed quite a bit in the session
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already on climbs of a different character, a different nature to them. And then you suddenly,
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you know, pew moves into this problem that maybe you've not looked at properly and you're like,
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oh wow, okay, big day, no. Or you may have chosen it to go to. Do warm that up. Yeah. You can
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go to find a bar, fingerboard with big jugs on it, that type of thing. Stand on a chair,
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drop your feet off the chair in a really nice controlled way. There's a thing I had called
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foot up catches, which if anybody's listening to this who's worked with me, we'll probably know.
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And it's a way of gradually shot loading either fingers, wrists, shoulders. So you go under a bar
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or a fingerboard, pull on it with feet on the floor. If you take roughly, because this is done
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by feel, half of your body weight through your arms and then you're going to be able to do a
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round and then pick your feet up off the floor quickly. You've just shot loaded in effect,
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your system with 50% of your body weight. That's a nice starting point and you can progress in
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there, depending on what your level is. I get people doing this, you know, single arm, sometimes
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single arm on an edge, sometimes on the bar. There's work you can do on a TRX, you know,
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rings where you're dynamically pulling yourself from catching yourself on the rings as you fall
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backwards, that type of thing, but done with feet on the floor, leaning backwards, you pick the angle,
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you pick how big the move is, all done by feel. There's jump and catching a bar that feels nice,
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scared. Jump and catch a bar and swing. Jump and catch the bar, swing, then come into a pull-up.
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Yeah, all this, it's just creating lots of, you know, you've got that, the move started to coordinate,
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catch, then swing through, then bring it under control and turn into a pull because that's what
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we do in climbing. So there's that, that's off the wall and then there's getting on the wall.
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If you're getting things like, yeah, on spray walls, symmetrical boards, that kind of thing,
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drills to be, it's a technique. You can't expect to just go, all right, I'm here, that hole's there,
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I've not really done much of this. Yeah, suddenly I'm going to be able to do like Yanja does it.
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You know, she does it how she does it because she's done it thousands of times.
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Yeah, actually, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't think about warming up in that way, but yeah,
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I should probably start doing that a little bit more.
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Yeah, or even partway through a session. I often see people, so pockets are quite an injury seam
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at the moment and an open-handed work and people will warm up. They might be pulling on edges,
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you know, other, and that kind of thing, warming up going through, but they've not pulled on pockets
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and they'll get halfway through a session and setters do have a bit of a habit of, it's like
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they find a pocket in the holes they're working with and then they go and they'll create a line
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of pockets. I don't know if it's just a UK thing. Yeah, they do. There's just like a theme, isn't
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there suddenly? And it's like, oh yeah. It's never just one.
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No, no, it's a bit of them. And so you'll go from, yeah, okay, you're quite warmed up,
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but not for pockets, which is a totally different mode coming through the fingers.
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And then suddenly you're expecting to be pulling quite hard on pockets. Yeah, go find the
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fingerboard, go do some hanging, you know, three finger, two finger, that kind of thing,
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warm it up, then go back and crush. Don't just jump on it.
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Yeah. And I guess I kind of wanted to touch on something that you had mentioned
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before we were doing this interview where you said that you think fingers are strong enough.
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Yeah. Yeah. There is now the ability to measure how hard somebody is pulling on a hold while
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they're doing the problem. We've got the gadgets now, technology, things that used to cost
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thousands now cost hundreds or less. It turned out, yeah, I was doing a
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workshop with some coaches a while ago and quite a while ago, he'd made something himself,
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like a good few years ago to see, he was actually using it for feats to see the
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weighting that was going on within his feet and it would get a live readback on a little screen.
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Oh, interesting. This is like, you know, he's made it himself from some computer bits and all this kind of
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whereas now, yeah, you can get, you know, the force gauges that you can attach into a hold
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and look at and read. And what we see is that what people are able to, you know,
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these kind of feats of strength where somebody might be taking the middle bottom rung on the
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Beastmaker 2000, body weight, lock off, holding other, you know, weights in the hand and that
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kind of thing. So able to, you know, 70, 80, 90 kilos through one arm and not hitting anywhere
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near that when we're actually climbing. And so you definitely need to train
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beyond what you're going to experience in performance. Yeah, because if you've only
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trained to this level and performances at this level, your tissues are going to struggle with
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that and you will get injured. But yeah, so we definitely need to be a little stronger than we
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need to be. But as these are still just about the most commonly injured part of our body, then maybe
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we could afford them a little more space and not hammer them quite so hard and look at other
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aspects. It's also quite easy for everybody to think, I fell off. What feedback have I got? Well,
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my hands came off. If my hands were stronger, I would be able to stay on. And so we go down a
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line of only strum the fingers as opposed to thinking maybe it was my hip position. Maybe,
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yeah, I was hanging out at the hips and that pulled me off the wall. Did my foot slip, you know,
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whatever it might be, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we just go towards
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the fingers. I mean, I think people are going to want to know like a number of like,
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once I hit this, I can stop training my fingers. Oh my gosh. Right. No, that's a terrible question.
374
00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:17,680
No, no, I don't have a number in mind. So this is like, you know, deadlifting.
375
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:27,040
We know this is beneficial for climbing, great overall body strength, exercise, we'll get triple
376
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:34,400
extension, all of this kind of stuff that feeds into your, have to help your climbing. But where
377
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:42,480
do you stop? Is a body weight deadlift okay? Do you need one and a half times? Do you need two times?
378
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:49,760
Do you need two times? It's all quite individual and relative. And so, yeah, I'm not going to be
379
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:58,320
able to say. But I would suggest for most people, you know, if you can hang body weight off a 20
380
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:05,760
mil edge on one arm, yeah, you know, you're probably good. And the interesting thing then from that,
381
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:14,080
and I say that a 20 mil edge, that won't necessarily relate to you being able to hold a 6 mil edge.
382
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:21,760
That's different. That's recruitment. That's contact strength. That's coordination of the
383
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:29,040
strength to be able to get in on a little edge. So you then train on a bigger edge, but then
384
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:36,480
climb and use small edges to gain the ability to use small edges. There's a lot more timing
385
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:43,280
and coordination involved on small edges as opposed to just the strength. So yeah, even within that,
386
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:49,040
it's always good. Yeah. Lots of gray areas, no straight answers. Sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of
387
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:54,720
nuance. I just know, yeah, I feel like people would want me to ask. So yeah, for sure. I've got to
388
00:40:54,720 --> 00:41:03,600
cover that. So back to the World Cup circuit real quick. I was thinking about some of the,
389
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:11,840
I guess, like PT things we see on World Cup climbers. I know in like commentary, people
390
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:19,440
have mentioned seeing like KT tape or those like metal stickers that some athletes wear. I still
391
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:24,720
don't really know what those are for. Or just like wearing ice packs all over their body or cupping
392
00:41:24,720 --> 00:41:31,280
or stuff like that. Any of those, like, do you have thoughts on any of those things? If they're
393
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:39,520
helpful or not? Many thoughts. So please excuse this brief intermission, but if you're interested
394
00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:44,880
in deleted scenes from this episode where he debunks another PT myth concerning push-pull
395
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:50,640
muscle imbalance and what training should look like for comp climbers, do consider helping support
396
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:56,800
this podcast on Patreon. Some other perks include a membership pin shipped to you after two months,
397
00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:02,640
prioritize guest questions or the ability to submit video questions and more to come. The
398
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:07,760
proceeds go back into the podcast to help me break even and they help me improve the experience of
399
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:12,640
the guests. If you'd like to help out non-monetarily, liking, commenting, and sharing
400
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:19,280
helps a great deal as well. Back to the show. We have to differentiate in some ways. It's a bit
401
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:26,240
like that when people try and follow the training plan of a World Cup climate. Yeah, it's not going
402
00:42:26,240 --> 00:42:32,720
to be suitable for them. And because they're, as well as pushing themselves super hard, probably
403
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:41,840
to a level beyond what most of us can, they're also after marginal gains. These marginal gains
404
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:49,440
are super important. So they will do things in their training. They will use things to give them
405
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:58,400
an extra 1% because they're already doing all the basics really well. They're getting enough sleep.
406
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:07,120
They're eating a good diet. They are not drinking too much alcohol. They've got that discipline. All
407
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:14,480
those foundational building blocks are there. And so if they've got an injury, they're already doing
408
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:20,080
all the things that I normally try and encourage most people to do actually. The biggest impact
409
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:28,560
you could have on your injury is not to be using KT tape or an ice pack. It's to make sure you get
410
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:32,720
enough calories and protein so your body can rebuild itself. It's to make sure you sleep so
411
00:43:32,720 --> 00:43:37,840
your body can rebuild itself. It's to make sure you stay off things that will affect your body's
412
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:48,080
ability to rebuild itself. So KT tape is an interesting one. It provides no support whatsoever
413
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:57,600
to a joint. You can stretch it. We're talking about how much force, how much pressure that
414
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:02,560
all these athletes are dealing with and these huge peak loads and that kind of thing. A bit
415
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:07,760
of stretchy bandage is not going to hold that shoulder together if their shoulders and liniments
416
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:18,160
and such aren't able to. But also interestingly, neither really does rigid tape. A PC might run
417
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:24,480
on a sports field and quickly tape somebody's ankle up and put that free rolls and tape around
418
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:30,640
it and build this almost like cast around the ankle. That provides support for about 20 minutes
419
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:36,800
and then it also then starts to slacken off because the forces are so huge that are going
420
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:44,880
through the body. What it does, they believe, is it draws the nervous system's attention to that area.
421
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:51,840
The nervous system is aware something funky is going on there. Let's give it a little
422
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:59,440
bit more attention. That's at the subconscious level. So essentially more brain computing power
423
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:05,280
is going towards looking after that ankle or shoulder now than it otherwise would have been.
424
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:14,560
That they believe has a positive effect. It doesn't matter what colour it is. It would appear,
425
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:20,640
it doesn't matter what pattern it's put on and that type of thing. Is it going to
426
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:28,080
physically protect that joint? No. Can it have a positive effect that means a re-injury or a
427
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:37,440
worsening of the injury that may otherwise have happened won't? Probably, yeah. There's no very
428
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:42,400
rare side effects to it. Sometimes some people are allergic to the glue in it, but that's easily
429
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:51,920
tested out. As long as they don't believe, oh, I can just carry on using my shoulder however I want
430
00:45:51,920 --> 00:46:04,560
now, then yeah, no side effects. All good. Ice, yeah, as an acute treatment is good.
431
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,600
Professional athletes would likely use that slightly differently than we would. They're
432
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:16,720
potentially using that as a way of numbing the signals that their body is trying to give their
433
00:46:16,720 --> 00:46:23,360
brain to say, hey, maybe you shouldn't be running around on this ankle. But they've got a game to
434
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:27,520
get through or they've got a competition to get through and that kind of thing and they'll deal
435
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:33,360
with it later. That's their decision-making process, not necessarily for us when we actually need to be
436
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:41,440
able to show up for work on Monday, that kind of thing. Yeah, different decisions for different
437
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:52,080
people really and all these, except for cupping, which I believe from having looked at literature,
438
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:56,480
et cetera, et cetera, can't find anything that says it actually does anything whatsoever. It's
439
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:02,000
just bruising yourself and I'm not sure why people would do that. I think it's a good thing
440
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:12,160
why people would do that. Okay. Okay. But there we go. Does it have a placebo effect? Yeah,
441
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:19,280
yeah, maybe. Is that correct to be having that placebo effect? As in, is it giving somebody some
442
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,920
false confidence that they otherwise shouldn't have? That would be bad. Is it making somebody
443
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:29,600
feel able to do something that they otherwise would have felt, oh no, I don't think I can do this?
444
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:37,120
And if that's appropriate, then that's okay. Sports teams and pro athletes will use massage
445
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:47,840
a lot. It doesn't do physiologically as much as most people think. Yes, it can move fluid and
446
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:55,120
blood around a bit and that type of thing, but not hugely, but does it make you feel an awful lot
447
00:47:55,120 --> 00:48:02,160
better? Yeah. Does it feel nice? Yeah, yeah. Is that priceless sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
448
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:08,720
I'm an advocate for it. One of the places where I work, they have a sports massage there and I will
449
00:48:08,720 --> 00:48:16,320
say, yeah, okay, yeah, go get that. Go make that feel nice. Yeah, that can be priceless because
450
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:21,280
then somebody feels like, oh, I can use this. I want to use it. This is okay. I was shying away
451
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:26,240
from it before. And so for pro athletes, yeah, in sports teams and things, they will have
452
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:32,720
full-time employed masseurs, won't they? Yeah. Yeah, because it can make the difference between
453
00:48:32,720 --> 00:48:39,520
them feeling like they don't want to play that day to be in like the camp. And what about the
454
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:46,960
medal stickers? I never got a clear answer listening to the commentary on what it is
455
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:55,600
or what it's supposed to do. Yeah, I don't know is the only answer. I have heard and seen and thought,
456
00:48:55,600 --> 00:49:05,600
hmm, right. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Maybe I got to ask a Japan... Yeah, yeah. I have seen from
457
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:14,560
a patient in a previous role I had, it was a neurological physiotherapist for quite some time,
458
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:25,600
and she used to buy these little metal stickers that she would have one on the nape of her neck
459
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:30,400
at the back there. And I forget where she had the other one. And they would last sort of like two
460
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:36,800
or three months. And it was some traditional medicine thing from, yeah, Asian country.
461
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:41,200
This is all swirling around in the back of my head now. I can't quite exactly remember where.
462
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:47,840
They were quite expensive, but she swore by them and they didn't appear to be having any side effects.
463
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,840
Yeah. No, in terms of, right, I'm going to make a note,
464
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:58,960
metal stickers. I'm going to find out. So yeah, I guess the moral of the story is kind of like
465
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:07,200
for the average person, just the basics are very important. But then when we're watching
466
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:12,640
what people are doing on the big screen or in competitions and we're kind of seeing them do
467
00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:19,600
it's not necessarily something that you should be doing. They're just doing it because they really
468
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:26,560
need to at that moment. Yeah, yeah. And if you've got a sore shoulder as well, don't think, oh,
469
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:31,840
they've got a sore shoulder and they're doing that. That's likely the thing that will help me.
470
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:36,960
Yeah. Because yeah, as I say, they will have all the basics done. They will have been doing all the
471
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:44,000
basics for years. Yeah. And you're likely still going to climb after work, finishing late,
472
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:49,600
rushing down a hurried meal on your way home. Yeah. Getting back home, getting self-sorted
473
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,760
the next day, not getting enough sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that.
474
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:59,520
Okay. That's a good thing to keep in mind. So that kind of leads me into, I guess, like other
475
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:06,080
PT myths that you have. Right. Do you want to go into some of those? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I love
476
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:16,160
talking about that. I don't mind talking, but education, I think is really powerful and really
477
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:24,240
important. And my big one at the moment is about aging. And I'm getting patients coming to me saying,
478
00:51:24,240 --> 00:51:31,120
oh, well, of course, I can't boulder how I used to because I'm in my thirties now. And I'm like,
479
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:39,280
what? Why? What happens in your thirties? You're still really young in your prime.
480
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:47,520
Yeah. And now I'm aware, yes, aging happens and it affects everybody differently. So these are
481
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:57,280
generalized statements, but there's quite some information that gets rehashed quite often is this
482
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:05,440
that you start losing muscle mass from when you're in your thirties. And so you're in a decline,
483
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:11,840
you've peaked. That's it. You're done for. It's all downhill from here. And those are in themselves.
484
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:18,560
There are studies done on the general population, the vast majority of whom don't meet the health
485
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:25,680
recommendations for that, the cardio, strength, this and the other. So already by being active
486
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:35,200
people, we're way ahead of the game. Yeah. And yes, that does start to happen, but it's not a genetic
487
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:44,320
thing or a physiological thing. It's thought now to be a lifestyle thing. So what happens in your
488
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:51,040
twenties, people tend to have more spare time in order to do things that they wish to do. And they
489
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:57,200
often happen to be physical as you get into your thirties. And again, this is generalized to the
490
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:02,400
general population. There are many people who won't do these things, but this is, say, for the
491
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:11,280
general population. They tend to find a partner, have a family of some sort, get a proper job,
492
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:18,080
a career that comes with stress and that type of thing. A commute probably rather than just working
493
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:22,880
in the bar that was just down the street because that's all you needed to do at that time. And all
494
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:30,080
that eats into your time and your energy reserves. And so it's small behavior changes where instead
495
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:38,240
of being active three times a week, you're now only active twice a week. That's the difference
496
00:53:38,240 --> 00:53:43,520
that starts to happen. And then you get into your forties and your fifties and maybe responsibility
497
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:48,640
at work is getting on. Maybe now your children are teenagers and they're taking up quite a
498
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:57,280
lot of your time, shall we say. Then you can get into your fifties. I nearly am now. And I'm spending
499
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:06,400
quite a bit of time looking after my parents now, which I don't begrudge. But life gets more
500
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:12,880
complicated. Often the older you get as well. But it's been shown many times as well that you can
501
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:18,800
keep what you've got really quite easily. That it isn't an inevitable decline.
502
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:26,880
And it's not so much about aging, I suppose, but the story that you said,
503
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:32,320
these have been, our shoulders have been annoying me for ages. People will be like, I've got sore
504
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:40,240
knees. When I go walking in the mountains, my knees are really sore. So I should not go walking
505
00:54:40,240 --> 00:54:47,680
in the mountains anymore rather than let's get those legs strong enough and robust enough.
506
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:53,920
And certainly in the UK, that is often, not always, but often a story that people will go and see their
507
00:54:53,920 --> 00:55:02,160
doctor and say, it hurts when I do this. And it's almost kind of a joke response is that, well,
508
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:10,240
stop doing that then and then it won't hurt. And that's the solution. So people's activities
509
00:55:10,240 --> 00:55:18,720
and such that get taken away from them and their opportunities to be active. And it's not both
510
00:55:18,720 --> 00:55:24,720
from the aging point of view and the rehab point of view is just, yeah, there's pretty much always
511
00:55:24,720 --> 00:55:31,040
solution that we shouldn't stop fence. Do you feel like that's even the case in the comp scene?
512
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:35,920
Because I mean, we definitely see these are really high level athletes. They're definitely
513
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:41,680
very active and probably, well, I guess you can't say that they all have access to like a
514
00:55:42,240 --> 00:55:48,160
good like doctor or PT or something like that. But a lot of them definitely do have access,
515
00:55:48,720 --> 00:55:53,920
but they still, I don't know, once they hit around the 30 mark or even like late 20s,
516
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:57,920
they're kind of starting to think about like, oh, I probably can't do this for much longer.
517
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:07,520
Yeah. And so why do those people, sometimes it's mental burnout, competition is stressful,
518
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:13,680
the travel, the time it takes you away from your family and maybe in your late 20s, 30s or whatever,
519
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:17,680
again, looking at this general population thing, maybe you've got a family now and you're not
520
00:56:17,680 --> 00:56:22,320
enjoying being away from them. Whereas when you were young and single, it was super exciting to
521
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:28,000
go travel in the world and that kind of thing. But now you're fed up of the 10th year of just being
522
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:33,440
in a hotel for 48 hours, doing the competition and going back home and lots of, yeah, that type of
523
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:40,080
thing. Or yeah, the physical side of things, but what they put themselves through is greatly
524
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:46,560
different to what we put ourselves through. The amount of training, the amount of volume,
525
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:55,520
they truly are pushing their body to the end of its limits. And so yeah, that can take its toll,
526
00:56:55,520 --> 00:57:03,440
both physically and mentally. Then there are the sort of the outliers, aren't they? The people that
527
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:10,400
are competing for years and years. I know one of the guys who's set in the UK, Dave Barons, I think
528
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:16,640
he was on the World Cup circuit for something silly, like 18 years or something like that.
529
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:23,280
Yeah, anyway, yeah, there are people that can keep doing it. They absolutely love it and the body
530
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:29,200
holds up. Every sport has these people that just seem to be good. But then if you look at who's
531
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:36,560
performing really well outdoors, then there's still lots of people in their 30s and their 40s.
532
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:42,320
But you know, Sean is not doing too badly at the moment, is he? To me, just observationally,
533
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:49,920
it seems like outdoors, you can kind of keep doing that forever, pretty much. Yeah, you hear some
534
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:56,800
incredible feats outdoors from people who are much older, and it seems to work fine. And the
535
00:57:56,800 --> 00:58:05,760
competition scene, it just doesn't seem as easy to still be competitive once you're past a certain
536
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:14,800
age, and more so in bouldering compared to lead as well. Yeah, and there can be numerous reasons.
537
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:23,920
Yes, I don't feel actually it's going to be the genetic sort of like, oh, you are now 30.
538
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:31,680
I feel it's more the cumulation of what you've potentially been doing for the last 20 years
539
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:37,440
and the effect that has on the body and the mind and your psyche, your determination.
540
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:41,280
Lots of people, when you hear sports, people talk about retiring and they say,
541
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:47,520
I just knew it was the right time for me to go. I was still performing okay and that kind of thing,
542
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:55,040
but I'm just like, I've not got the psyche to do this anymore. And it is really tough. It must be
543
00:58:55,040 --> 00:59:02,640
really, really hard competing the stress. And I'm sure they love it in equal measure, but everything
544
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:09,120
that goes on and everything I have to do. So yeah, who's probably the oldest? Jakob Schubert?
545
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:15,360
Apologies in advance to him if he's not the oldest, and I just called him out for being old,
546
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:21,600
because he's not old, but he's maybe old compared to his contemporaries.
547
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:25,280
Definitely up there. I mean like, Jai and Cam obviously.
548
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:32,480
Yeah, yeah. Still absolutely, but yeah, I was absolutely smashing it. Yeah, and just seems to
549
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:41,360
have been around forever. I can remember watching them when things sort of found their way onto the
550
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:48,560
internet and you could be watching some grainy footage of a competition from somewhere. Yeah,
551
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:58,480
yeah, amazing. But I think maybe we're not, it's only been structured and seen as a career
552
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:04,720
in some ways. We're a relatively short time, hasn't it? I think there's still really very few
553
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:13,120
professional climbers who earn their money. I mean, do any of them earn their money just from
554
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:22,640
the competition scene? Likely. No, no, yeah. Not a chance, I would have thought. Yeah, the competition,
555
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:31,280
the money's not that unprimely and such, is it? It's all about influence and such. But yeah,
556
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:38,720
but it's just not being there as a long-term career that people might do. So it would be
557
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:42,880
interesting to see, I think we're going to really have to say, well, maybe let's wait another five,
558
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:47,840
10 years before we can start seeing what happens to people, what are the patterns that are forming,
559
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:56,000
go for competitions, what is the average age for leaving and the reasons why. Yeah, true.
560
01:00:56,000 --> 01:01:00,960
And then the true reasons why, because many people in their retire will announce they're retiring for
561
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:05,920
this reason, that reason, or actually there might be a reason behind it seems.
562
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:12,960
Is there, because I feel like I've heard of it before, but like any research about like
563
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:18,400
power or like speed in particular in aging, because I feel like you can keep the strength,
564
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:26,480
but maybe like the recruitment is not so fast. Certainly there's a link to that and aging.
565
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:37,760
There's a fair body of evidence that says that's kind of the first thing to start going. But we
566
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:45,600
also know, and this is how competitors keep going in different sports. And what I expect to start
567
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:54,640
seeing in climbing is your tactics get better, your mindset gets better, you're able to, if it's a
568
01:01:54,640 --> 01:02:00,240
team sport or what have you, or even in individual, but you're able to read the game better and be
569
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:04,960
where you need to be before the other players have figured out what's going on. So although you might
570
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:12,800
not be as fast, you're still in the right places at the right times. Now for something like climbing,
571
01:02:12,800 --> 01:02:18,880
yeah, and as you say, particularly bouldering. I think that's a really interesting question.
572
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:27,040
I know we hold on to what we have a lot better than people think. Again, going back to what I
573
01:02:27,040 --> 01:02:34,080
was saying about aging, it's not just this that will happen at this age. Yeah, I don't know of any
574
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:40,320
actual studies relating that to, because most of the power type sports and that type of thing that
575
01:02:40,320 --> 01:02:48,240
we think of and the research within that will also be lower limb based. Which can be quite
576
01:02:48,240 --> 01:02:53,120
different. That's another one I'm going to make a note of. Come back with any information and I'll
577
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:58,800
put it in the description and people can follow up on that. Do you want to go into, I know you had
578
01:02:58,800 --> 01:03:02,960
mentioned a couple of other myths. I also know that I just want to keep an eye on the time.
579
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:10,160
Yeah, I guess if we're going to look at one other myth, it would be that that injury that happened
580
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:19,040
to you that night was caused that night. There's been some recent research now coming into climates,
581
01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:25,920
good quality. There's a lot that's not great quality, but some really good stuff. It's a bit
582
01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:31,600
of a shame because we've got as a relatively new sport that's getting new research into it. We've
583
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:36,800
got the opportunity to learn from all of the mistakes that other sports have made. And not
584
01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:42,320
necessarily mistakes, but just almost like admin errors where they don't define a variable
585
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:49,360
accurately. Anybody else who's doing some research in that area, you can compare the results.
586
01:03:50,240 --> 01:03:55,760
It'd be nice to think we'd do that, but we're not doing. We're getting lots of research that might
587
01:03:55,760 --> 01:04:00,880
all be in the same area, but when you try and compare them, you can't. It's apples and pears,
588
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:06,240
basically. You can't do these comparisons. But where we do have some really good results,
589
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:13,680
some really good research is into the fact that, and this staggered me, is that up to 94%
590
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:23,440
of injuries in climbing are chronic injuries, not acute. So that overuse, overload, under recovery,
591
01:04:23,440 --> 01:04:29,600
whatever else you might want to think of it as. So pulley injuries being the most common,
592
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:35,120
that people think, I was trying that problem, I didn't warm up properly, I tried it too many
593
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:43,120
times that night. It was that move. Actually, unless there was a whole break, a foot pop,
594
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:50,640
and an opening of the hand under unexpected shot load, the pulleys should be able to deal with
595
01:04:50,640 --> 01:04:56,320
us pulling on them as hard as we can. If the pulley's in good order, it should be able to
596
01:04:56,320 --> 01:05:02,880
deal with pretty much whatever we throw at it. There is often, when you look back and talk to
597
01:05:02,880 --> 01:05:08,240
somebody about the six to eight weeks previously, they'll be like, oh yeah, I have been pushing it
598
01:05:08,240 --> 01:05:13,280
hard. I've been training, got Tripp coming up, got this project, whatever. Yeah, they'll have
599
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:19,440
stepped something up or vice versa. Yeah, I've kept my training and everything the same, but life's
600
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:24,640
got really busy at work, big project on at work, or got some family stress going on at the moment,
601
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:35,120
and that kind of thing. Yeah, 94% of injuries in climbing are overuse based, including a lot of
602
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:42,800
the ones that we think aren't. It really is about just keeping an eye. I encourage people I work
603
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:49,200
with to have a weekly check-in with themselves. I don't mean like have a word with yourself,
604
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:55,280
so it's off out, but just a quick top to toe. Maybe that too. Yeah, if I have you a good idea.
605
01:05:55,280 --> 01:06:00,800
A quick top to toe is like, how am I feeling? It's like, all right, yeah, yeah, you're a bit
606
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:04,000
of a niggle in my life. You'll pop out in your training diary, make a note on your phone or
607
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:14,400
something. Next week when you have your check-in, that's still there. Third week, ah, it's still
608
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:21,520
there. I need to give this some attention, because what often happens with injuries is
609
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:29,440
with the benefit of hindsight, people will go, oh, that's what it was. Yeah, I saw that.
610
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:34,560
I did have a little bit of, I remember last week, it was just a bit sore after I was climbing.
611
01:06:35,440 --> 01:06:39,600
A lot of the time, injuries don't shout that they're coming. They don't send you a
612
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:45,520
letter. They don't say, I will be arriving. They don't shout at you to say, this is going to happen.
613
01:06:45,520 --> 01:06:52,240
It's a whisper. It's a very small whisper. Yeah, and we miss the signs because of that. It's really
614
01:06:52,240 --> 01:06:59,440
easy too. So just this little check-in every week is five minutes of just what bits are a bit sore.
615
01:06:59,440 --> 01:07:04,720
Yeah, and bits do get sore, but if it's only sore for a week and then it goes,
616
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:11,360
that happens, doesn't it? We get niggles. But if it's hanging around for a while, then it's
617
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:15,680
like it's being an injury and it needs cooking up. Well, thank you for sharing those myths.
618
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:22,720
Hopefully we can spread the word. But yeah, you mentioned that you want to go into some of
619
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:29,360
the current research out there between male and female climbers. Yeah, I'm definitely really
620
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:33,600
interested in that as well. So yeah, what are some of the issues that they did research on?
621
01:07:33,600 --> 01:07:39,680
Yeah, and this is one of the areas where, although I said before that in some ways climbing isn't
622
01:07:39,680 --> 01:07:44,080
doing itself any favours in the research world because everybody's researching it, but we're all
623
01:07:44,080 --> 01:07:54,160
doing it separately and it's not comparable. But there are some people, one unfortunate enough to
624
01:07:54,720 --> 01:08:03,520
know and call a friend, Gudmund Grunhaug, who's from Norway. He's a full-time researcher in climbers
625
01:08:03,520 --> 01:08:10,640
and absolutely fantastic that we've got people like that looking into it. He does a lot of
626
01:08:10,640 --> 01:08:14,960
qualitative research or a lot of kind of like questionnaires to people, that type of thing,
627
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:19,920
asking about injury and this or that. And then within that, he's able to differentiate, he's able
628
01:08:19,920 --> 01:08:27,840
to get the message out there and to get comparisons between male and female or just do female specific
629
01:08:27,840 --> 01:08:35,280
research. And I'm aware that the terms are a little interchangeable, men, women, female, male,
630
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:43,440
that type of thing, which can be quite rightly a sensitive issue. Now, my sort of rule for this is
631
01:08:43,440 --> 01:08:49,280
I use the language that's been decided on within the research paper. They have decided how they're
632
01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:54,720
going to categorise people within that and within research. Again, I stick with that.
633
01:08:54,720 --> 01:09:00,640
So, yeah, two really, really good papers that he's done. One in particular was,
634
01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:12,000
it was called, the main title is called Painfully Ignorant. And it was a female only. And looking at
635
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:23,360
elite IFSC competitors, asking them about their injury history, how often they get injured.
636
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:31,600
And then there was almost an incidental question within it around eating. And I've made a couple
637
01:09:31,600 --> 01:09:38,720
of notes to make sure I'll get the numbers right. 32% of those questions, I think there was a couple
638
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:46,160
of hundred who answered the questionnaire, felt that they had disordered eating of some sort.
639
01:09:46,160 --> 01:09:47,680
It's a lot.
640
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:53,840
Yeah. And that's people who are prepared to admit it, although it was an anonymous questionnaire.
641
01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:54,400
True.
642
01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:59,920
And people who are aware enough themselves that they have that, that aren't in denial,
643
01:09:59,920 --> 01:10:05,760
that aren't even aware that what they're doing is it might be some form of disordered eating.
644
01:10:06,320 --> 01:10:16,000
And that doubled the people within disordered eating. It doubled your
645
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:23,360
chance of injury. Yeah. If that makes sense. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you,
646
01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:28,960
it's one of those statistical things within research. It's not actually that hugely
647
01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:33,440
significant. It's like saying something is doubled, but it's gone from one to two.
648
01:10:33,440 --> 01:10:33,920
Sure.
649
01:10:33,920 --> 01:10:38,400
Yeah. It's not huge numbers wise and that kind of thing. So it's not necessarily,
650
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:46,800
yeah, a huge correlation there. But I thought, yeah, really, really interesting. So that one,
651
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:54,880
I was just talking about, about the IFSC climbers was called top of the podium at what cost.
652
01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:59,840
And the second one is painfully ignorant. And that was looking at the impact of gender
653
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:06,080
and training on injury in climbing. Looking at the fact that we all climb at the same time,
654
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:13,680
looking at the fact that we all climb the same routes. Yeah. And are there any significant
655
01:11:13,680 --> 01:11:20,800
differences between injury rates, injury types between the genders? And again, that showed
656
01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:27,200
shoulders a different population. So this wasn't IFSC climbers again. Yeah. This was like general
657
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:34,640
climbers. But again, yeah, shoulders came out top for women, whereas for men, it was still
658
01:11:34,640 --> 01:11:38,560
significantly fingers. And then-
659
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:42,240
Do you mean like just in terms of injury rates or-
660
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:50,640
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. So for women, shoulders, 35% of them reported a shoulder injury
661
01:11:50,640 --> 01:11:58,640
and for men, it was 21%. So a big difference there. Whereas for men, fingers is 43%. And
662
01:11:58,640 --> 01:12:08,160
for women, it's 33%. So the shoulders and fingers, that's 35% for shoulders and 33% for fingers,
663
01:12:08,160 --> 01:12:15,200
very close. But it's the first time we've seen this, all previous research has just been fingers,
664
01:12:15,200 --> 01:12:20,640
fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers. And then just suddenly, since this is 2024, this peak,
665
01:12:20,640 --> 01:12:26,560
since this change in setting that we were talking about earlier, we're now getting shoulders. And
666
01:12:26,560 --> 01:12:34,160
an increase in knees, their ankles, that type of thing that's well from falling more. Yeah,
667
01:12:34,160 --> 01:12:39,920
it comes back to what we were saying before really about movement, different movement patterns,
668
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:46,240
rotational forces, higher peak loads, bigger moves, jumps, more one-armed stuff, that kind of
669
01:12:46,240 --> 01:12:59,840
thing. And although there are female problems and routes, male problems and routes, in general
670
01:12:59,840 --> 01:13:07,600
training, everybody climbs the same stuff. So these IFSC climbers, when they go to Innsbruck
671
01:13:07,600 --> 01:13:12,080
to train, it's not, these are the women's routes, these are the men's routes. And then that feeds
672
01:13:12,080 --> 01:13:21,680
in, not only has there been this change, and as we know, generally speaking, men have more muscle
673
01:13:21,680 --> 01:13:29,360
mass, yeah, more of that up top. Whereas it's the other way around, generally speaking, for females.
674
01:13:29,360 --> 01:13:34,720
So potentially their shoulders could be a little bit more susceptible anyway, just genetically.
675
01:13:34,720 --> 01:13:42,080
But when you're training, you're training on generic routes that everybody, and the vast majority
676
01:13:42,080 --> 01:13:50,640
of setters are men. And so there will be likely a slight reach, you are more likely to be shorter
677
01:13:50,640 --> 01:13:56,640
as a female, you're more likely to be taller as a mate, than not. Nobody's doing it on purpose,
678
01:13:56,640 --> 01:14:04,240
but maybe more thought might need to be given. Have you ever, have you ever been to a climber
679
01:14:04,240 --> 01:14:12,320
that followed or seen Kimbrough climbs? I have. Yeah. Not too familiar though.
680
01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:18,240
Right. He's the philosophy professor who's also like super keen climber,
681
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:24,640
guidebook writer, that kind of thing, real climbing activist. But I think he's also quite tall.
682
01:14:26,400 --> 01:14:32,320
But his whole thing is about personal grades, is that you cannot for a minute say that like,
683
01:14:32,320 --> 01:14:38,720
you know, some boulder problem that's famous for having a great big span on it is going to be the
684
01:14:38,720 --> 01:14:43,040
same grade for somebody who's five foot tall than it is for somebody who's six foot tall.
685
01:14:43,040 --> 01:14:48,480
And so why are we, yeah, a slight digression for what we're talking about here in comp climbing,
686
01:14:48,480 --> 01:14:53,920
but it's, yeah, it's really interesting, yeah. Really interesting way of looking at things.
687
01:14:53,920 --> 01:15:01,840
Interestingly though, in both of those studies, females were not getting injured more than
688
01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:10,240
men. Just differently. Yeah, just differently. And it didn't appear to be of a greater severity either.
689
01:15:11,120 --> 01:15:15,440
Based on those results, like what do you take away from that? Like, what do you think is the
690
01:15:15,440 --> 01:15:25,200
learning there? Well, as I sort of suggested, and it is only a suggestion, perhaps the, you know,
691
01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:32,160
you know, the generalized genetic makeup, female versus male, might make females more susceptible
692
01:15:32,160 --> 01:15:38,160
to this type of thing with the modern style of setting. Is the modern style of setting going to
693
01:15:38,160 --> 01:15:43,280
change? There's no sign of that happening. So people are going to have to adapt and so
694
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:48,160
strength, more strength and conditioning work for the shoulders. But we also doubt,
695
01:15:48,160 --> 01:15:56,640
well, I was going to say probably not at the elite level, but maybe the facilities are often not there
696
01:15:56,640 --> 01:16:02,800
for female athletes. The spaces where you go to strengthen and condition, you know, train and that
697
01:16:02,800 --> 01:16:09,440
kind of thing, are not very welcome often for female athletes and that type of thing. So there's
698
01:16:09,440 --> 01:16:14,960
historical barriers there and that might be what we're seeing now. So in football, for example,
699
01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:21,680
they feel that in soccer, a lot of the knee injuries that are happening to the professional
700
01:16:23,520 --> 01:16:29,760
women's soccer players, like loans of them, you know, there's absolutely loads of them. And
701
01:16:30,800 --> 01:16:36,880
there's various things they're looking at, one of which is as they were growing, they didn't have
702
01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:45,200
access to strength and conditioning. So whereas the boys at the end of a training session might be
703
01:16:45,200 --> 01:16:50,800
encouraged or would go off to the gym and do some strength work and that kind of thing, it wasn't
704
01:16:50,800 --> 01:16:57,920
when these girls, these now women were girls like 15 years ago, society just wasn't thinking, oh,
705
01:16:57,920 --> 01:17:04,800
we need to get them in the gym. So as the boys grew into men and went through puberty whilst doing
706
01:17:04,800 --> 01:17:10,720
weights, they grew that kind of a body, their body responded to that and they missed out on that.
707
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:19,520
And one level below the women's soccer elite, they've got the nutrition advice, they've got
708
01:17:19,520 --> 01:17:23,280
the weight training, they've got the strength and conditioning experts, they've got all that.
709
01:17:23,760 --> 01:17:28,080
You go a level below that because the money's not really in the game, it's there in the top level,
710
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:33,360
not below. They don't have the strength and conditioning. So when these players come up
711
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:40,640
through the ranics, they don't get that kind of input until the very top. And it'd be interesting,
712
01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:52,880
I think that there's facilities now, but there are societal norms, expectations, just, yeah,
713
01:17:52,880 --> 01:17:59,600
behaviours that decide about encouraging women to get into strength and conditioning.
714
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:05,280
Good to keep in mind. I also definitely wanted to touch on this. This was like one of the
715
01:18:05,280 --> 01:18:12,160
discord questions that had come in as well. Have you seen any research out there about
716
01:18:12,160 --> 01:18:16,080
how a female athlete's menstrual cycle affects their strength and injury rate?
717
01:18:16,080 --> 01:18:23,040
It's going to be another grey area, it depends, answer from me. What we do have now, I'll probably
718
01:18:23,040 --> 01:18:31,440
provide a few links to what I feel are good quality resources on this that are also easy
719
01:18:31,440 --> 01:18:37,680
to follow. So people are out there doing the research, some super professional, amazing
720
01:18:37,680 --> 01:18:44,320
researchers who are also putting it into practice, but then putting it out on insta. So it's nice,
721
01:18:44,320 --> 01:18:48,880
easy, yeah, it's not going to be sending people dense research papers and that type of thing.
722
01:18:48,880 --> 01:18:59,920
And the answer does seem to be, it depends. You can't foresee that your cycle will definitely
723
01:18:59,920 --> 01:19:07,600
do this. It may change from month to month in how it affects you. The length of cycle, etc.,
724
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:13,520
may change from month to month, so you may not be able to plan. It's all so irregular
725
01:19:13,520 --> 01:19:20,720
that it's incredibly hard to figure out. But you certainly can't say as a population,
726
01:19:20,720 --> 01:19:25,840
this is what will happen to you through your cycle. It's incredibly individual, same as when
727
01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:32,720
it comes to menopause and post-menopause, very menopause, hugely individual experience.
728
01:19:32,720 --> 01:19:38,560
And so it's about tracking for you. So yeah, track your cycle. There are
729
01:19:38,560 --> 01:19:44,720
there's apps out there and Sequence is a climbing training app that I like. I have no
730
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:51,200
affiliation with them at the moment. But within that, they're the first one I've seen. It's
731
01:19:51,200 --> 01:19:56,640
actually built in a menstrual cycle tracker into a climbing training app. Yeah, I think it's great,
732
01:19:56,640 --> 01:20:02,640
especially as it's run by two guys, I hope they don't mind me saying, yeah, the computer nerd
733
01:20:02,640 --> 01:20:08,800
guys. So brilliant that this message is getting out there enough that people are thinking this is
734
01:20:08,800 --> 01:20:16,000
needed. And so to see if there is a general pattern that follows for you. And yes, then
735
01:20:16,000 --> 01:20:23,600
there is some basis of thinking that you may feel less confident at certain points. You may be
736
01:20:23,600 --> 01:20:29,440
better off doing some strength training at a certain point. And so you may be able to
737
01:20:29,440 --> 01:20:36,640
do some strength training at a certain point or some physical and some aerobic fitness training
738
01:20:36,640 --> 01:20:42,320
at some point, or you might need more carbs at a certain point, this type of thing. But it's not
739
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:49,680
written in stone. And I say to people, imagine if you know that every Friday is a really busy
740
01:20:49,680 --> 01:20:54,400
day at work. Yeah. And you could never be able to go and climb it after all you finish too late to
741
01:20:54,400 --> 01:21:02,320
go climbing, for example. But if you don't have your stuff in your car for after work, yeah,
742
01:21:02,320 --> 01:21:08,080
who knows? Like every so often a Friday might not be busy. And then you just miss out, don't you,
743
01:21:08,080 --> 01:21:15,200
if you've not prepared for the fact that it might not be. And so it's more about checking in with
744
01:21:15,200 --> 01:21:25,280
how you are at that time on that day and responding to that and not feeling bad about doing that,
745
01:21:25,280 --> 01:21:30,800
if that makes sense. If you've got to change your plans around something or whatever, that's fine.
746
01:21:30,800 --> 01:21:34,400
That's what your body's telling you. If that's what your body needs to do that day, then
747
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:39,840
that's what needs to happen. Yeah. I mean, I guess in terms of like the injury risk,
748
01:21:39,840 --> 01:21:50,080
was there like a certain, I don't know, time? So yeah, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's still muddy,
749
01:21:50,080 --> 01:21:56,000
partly because a lot of the research hasn't been of great quality and the reason to great deal of
750
01:21:56,000 --> 01:22:02,560
it, it's coming through now. One of the best ones I've seen was done by the women's at the
751
01:22:02,560 --> 01:22:09,760
soccer, the football association in the UK, where they looked at from youth football all the way
752
01:22:09,760 --> 01:22:18,000
through to the women's premier league. And there's like many, many hundreds of female footballers
753
01:22:19,040 --> 01:22:24,400
and tracked blah, blah, blah, that they sat and looked at the injury rates. There wasn't really a
754
01:22:24,400 --> 01:22:32,960
hugely clear pattern apart from when they were late for their period. So if you're expecting your
755
01:22:32,960 --> 01:22:39,760
period and it's late, that is definitely, but that's a big word to use in research. That is
756
01:22:39,760 --> 01:22:45,600
something that you should give some consideration to. Yeah. There was a definite spike. Yeah. At
757
01:22:45,600 --> 01:22:54,880
that point, more than anything else. Yeah. That was the one thing that really came out of that.
758
01:22:54,880 --> 01:23:05,280
But this idea, I know people like Lattice, they're sort of like messaging when this first started
759
01:23:05,280 --> 01:23:09,040
becoming like, oh gosh, we need to look at this. This is a thing. How can we have overlooked this?
760
01:23:09,040 --> 01:23:18,000
51% of the population is female. A lot of women climb. What are we doing? And so the big messages
761
01:23:18,000 --> 01:23:23,760
that were coming out was almost like, you will feel this in week one. You will feel this in week
762
01:23:23,760 --> 01:23:30,160
two. You will feel this in week three. And as we've learned more and they've learned,
763
01:23:30,160 --> 01:23:37,200
they're messaging now, Liz, and they've got some good output and it's on their websites and their
764
01:23:37,200 --> 01:23:45,360
social media. You can go and have a look and it will be like, this may be what's going to happen
765
01:23:45,360 --> 01:23:51,200
or this might be how you feel or it's likely that you may feel like this at this time. Yeah. And
766
01:23:51,200 --> 01:23:57,360
that kind of thing. But yeah, again, their advice is track. Find out what happens with you because
767
01:23:57,360 --> 01:24:06,080
not everybody's different. And then don't plan for, but don't expect that to happen every month.
768
01:24:06,080 --> 01:24:14,320
Yeah, I think that's a pretty pivotal part of it. But with those watches that track your vitals and
769
01:24:14,320 --> 01:24:21,920
stuff like that, or if it tracks your sleep, I think sometimes it will tell you that you slept
770
01:24:21,920 --> 01:24:31,840
poorly. And so then you go about your day acting like you. Yeah. Yeah. And so then I just had to
771
01:24:31,840 --> 01:24:37,600
stop doing that because I was like, okay, maybe I did sleep poorly, but then it telling me that I
772
01:24:37,600 --> 01:24:42,160
slept poorly just makes me feel even worse. So it's not really helping. And there's been,
773
01:24:43,680 --> 01:24:48,160
yes, yeah, absolutely. And that's definitely seems to be a thing, doesn't it? We get told
774
01:24:48,160 --> 01:24:53,360
this objective information and we're like, oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So therefore this is how I'm
775
01:24:53,360 --> 01:24:59,680
going to be today. But yeah, the information side of things can be fantastic. There's also some
776
01:24:59,680 --> 01:25:09,360
research I found as an aside once looking at, so athletes who were really well-educated and knew
777
01:25:09,360 --> 01:25:16,320
that they needed a certain duvet or a certain room temperature and a certain mattress type in order
778
01:25:16,320 --> 01:25:21,360
to get their best night's sleep in order to perform up. And these are those marginal gains that these
779
01:25:21,360 --> 01:25:26,080
teams and athletes and stuff go for. What happens if they don't get that because they're in a
780
01:25:26,080 --> 01:25:32,480
competition in some country they've never been to and they've not been able to arrange that.
781
01:25:32,480 --> 01:25:38,080
And the teams that don't either know that or don't have the ability to have that. So they just get in
782
01:25:38,080 --> 01:25:44,400
on doing it. They don't mind, but these other teams can fall to pieces because they've not got
783
01:25:44,960 --> 01:25:49,600
all of these things that they feel they need or that should happen. And without that, then I'm
784
01:25:49,600 --> 01:25:55,200
not going to be able to do this. Yeah. There's an awful lot of auto-regulation of checking in with
785
01:25:55,200 --> 01:26:03,200
yourself. And it's hard, but you've got to learn to do it. Yeah. I was just thinking, because also
786
01:26:03,200 --> 01:26:08,720
part of the question they mentioned when Yanya said that she had won most of her medals while
787
01:26:08,720 --> 01:26:15,200
on her period. So it's kind of like, I guess sometimes you just need to ignore it and
788
01:26:16,160 --> 01:26:21,600
maybe it'll be fine. Well, what choice did she have? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, if that's when it's
789
01:26:21,600 --> 01:26:27,440
scheduled. But going back to what we were saying before, sometimes, yes, the setting is going to
790
01:26:27,440 --> 01:26:33,200
be unfair for somebody at some point because they've got an injury or something happening.
791
01:26:34,400 --> 01:26:39,600
Yeah, they can't schedule competitions around all the individual athletes, period, can they?
792
01:26:40,480 --> 01:26:44,720
And so it's, yeah, somebody, yeah, I suppose when you look at it,
793
01:26:44,720 --> 01:26:52,160
within all those competitors that come out at an IFSC, yeah, many, well, maybe not many of them,
794
01:26:52,160 --> 01:26:59,920
but yeah, a few of them have got to be on a period at that point. Yeah. And yeah, I once gave a talk
795
01:26:59,920 --> 01:27:06,880
basically on the menstrual cycle and the menopause, which was obviously attended by women
796
01:27:06,880 --> 01:27:13,760
and no other men. And yeah, I started by saying, the irony is not lost on me. I'm a middle-aged,
797
01:27:13,760 --> 01:27:17,680
middle-class white man who's going to stand here in front of a room of women and tell them what
798
01:27:17,680 --> 01:27:24,880
their experience should be. I am purely talking from the research and the papers and that kind of
799
01:27:24,880 --> 01:27:31,200
put, it's kind of nice that the overwhelming, what seems to be coming from that now is, yes,
800
01:27:31,200 --> 01:27:36,480
we have this information, but that's not your destiny. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
801
01:27:36,480 --> 01:27:43,520
Okay. Well, I guess we can just go into the discord questions then. I think that was a good place to
802
01:27:44,640 --> 01:27:48,080
end things off there. There were still so many other things I wanted to ask, but
803
01:27:48,640 --> 01:27:53,840
you know, maybe another time in the future. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, going into a couple of
804
01:27:53,840 --> 01:27:59,840
discord questions, the first one, most people seem to talk about PIP injuries. Do you have any
805
01:27:59,840 --> 01:28:07,280
advice for dealing with a dip issues, I guess, DIP issues in particular, synovitis or capsulitis?
806
01:28:08,080 --> 01:28:15,360
Right. Okay. Yeah. The first, I suppose, whether it be dip, PIP, but if we talk synovitis,
807
01:28:15,360 --> 01:28:20,400
capsulitis, it's a little bit semantics as to, you know, which is it, that kind of thing.
808
01:28:20,400 --> 01:28:30,320
It's an overuse of that joint in a certain way. You are not going to win unless you give it some
809
01:28:30,320 --> 01:28:42,320
space. And it is a process that is going on. It's like a negative cycle, I suppose, really of
810
01:28:43,040 --> 01:28:49,920
irritation, sensitivity. The body's response to that actually sets it up for being more reasonable
811
01:28:49,920 --> 01:28:55,840
and more easily set off the next time with this inflammatory process that's going on within the
812
01:28:55,840 --> 01:29:03,600
finger. And so, yeah, obviously usually crimping and such like is the thing that does it. This is
813
01:29:03,600 --> 01:29:11,760
one that it's all the interventions in the world of penguin fingers or, you know, this and the other,
814
01:29:12,640 --> 01:29:19,200
which has its place, it's a good thing, isn't going to do it. It is the basics. It is, you know,
815
01:29:19,200 --> 01:29:24,880
listening, finding what it's able to do because I'm a big believer in, you know, let's kind of keep
816
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:32,240
climbing. I sometimes, how some people are aware of themselves enough to monitor their own crimping,
817
01:29:32,800 --> 01:29:38,960
you know, and reduce that and start climbing open-handed. I find if somebody's quite new to
818
01:29:38,960 --> 01:29:46,160
climbing and we go to crimp for a reason is it is stable. It's not necessarily the strongest hold,
819
01:29:46,160 --> 01:29:51,680
but it's stable. You can move around a crimp, yeah, and we're on it and we feel like we're
820
01:29:51,680 --> 01:29:57,360
not going to slip off it, whereas like open-hand stuff and slopers. So asking somebody to go
821
01:29:57,360 --> 01:30:02,080
open-handed if they've not got a great deal of movement experience in climbing can feel
822
01:30:02,080 --> 01:30:05,920
just like starting all over again and it can be really hard for them to manage.
823
01:30:06,960 --> 01:30:14,480
So sometimes I actually just, I call it anti-crimp taping. I had to say, get some cheek tape,
824
01:30:14,480 --> 01:30:19,600
wind it down the finger, wind it back up the finger again, or most likely the middle finger
825
01:30:19,600 --> 01:30:24,800
will be, yeah, literally to stop you from being able to bend the finger because of the bulk of
826
01:30:24,800 --> 01:30:30,640
the tape. It doesn't provide any support. It doesn't do anything magic. It just stops you.
827
01:30:31,120 --> 01:30:39,440
In an open position, the forces on the finger are distracted. It's when we come up into 90 degrees,
828
01:30:39,440 --> 01:30:46,320
90 degrees most often for this type of issue. Yeah. And the bones then are pushing against
829
01:30:46,320 --> 01:30:51,440
each other. It becomes compressive and it's those compressive forces normally from crimping that
830
01:30:51,440 --> 01:30:56,560
sets it off. So you can continue to climb, but you just got to really back off.
831
01:30:56,560 --> 01:30:57,680
That's hard to hear.
832
01:30:57,680 --> 01:31:02,640
It is. It is. But there's loads that you can do. Look at all the open-handed climbing that
833
01:31:02,640 --> 01:31:06,960
there is now. This is what we're talking about, the change in style. It's not all about crimping.
834
01:31:06,960 --> 01:31:14,880
And it's a bit like the picture I use of people. It's that oil tanker that you put the brakes on
835
01:31:14,880 --> 01:31:21,360
and it takes a long time to stop. Then you've got to put it in reverse and it takes a while
836
01:31:21,360 --> 01:31:28,400
to get going for reverse. And then it comes out. Yeah, it's quite a slow process. But with
837
01:31:29,440 --> 01:31:36,400
the right approach to it, you are able to keep people climbing, keep people in climbing,
838
01:31:36,400 --> 01:31:40,240
which I think is super important because for most of us climbing becomes,
839
01:31:41,600 --> 01:31:46,960
we'll quite say everything, but it becomes super important in our lives. It's your social
840
01:31:46,960 --> 01:31:52,720
interaction. It's your escape maybe from family stress, work stress, where you can just,
841
01:31:52,720 --> 01:31:57,040
you could either go and be sociable and chat to everyone, or you can put your headphones on and
842
01:31:57,040 --> 01:32:01,920
just have some lovely time to yourself, that kind of thing. It's engaging. It's physical challenge.
843
01:32:01,920 --> 01:32:07,280
It's a mental challenge. It's people's mental health space. So the last thing I say to people
844
01:32:07,280 --> 01:32:15,200
is stop climbing. Yeah, personally, I had it really bad a year or two ago because I was climbing at
845
01:32:15,200 --> 01:32:20,880
a gym that just crimps all the time and everything was always crimpy. Sounds great. I want to go.
846
01:32:22,320 --> 01:32:29,680
Yeah, it wasn't super interesting, but I'm doing a little bit less crimping now, more just open
847
01:32:29,680 --> 01:32:35,200
headed stuff. It's not always crimps and it's improved a lot. There's active things that we
848
01:32:35,200 --> 01:32:41,040
can do. It isn't just about taking away. There's strength in the rest of the chain, shoulder, elbow,
849
01:32:41,040 --> 01:32:46,000
wrist, that kind of thing, working on the muscles within the hand that formed the control and
850
01:32:46,000 --> 01:32:51,840
foundation for the fingers, that type of thing. So yeah, it's not just a passive treatment.
851
01:32:52,720 --> 01:32:58,320
Well, I also have these things. It's kind of like penguin fingers, but you can also put it in the
852
01:32:58,320 --> 01:33:07,360
microwave. I love heat on my fingers. If my fingers are cold, it hurts so bad.
853
01:33:07,360 --> 01:33:15,520
Right. Interestingly, there's as many research papers saying that heat is better than ice as
854
01:33:15,520 --> 01:33:21,360
there is the other way around. When you look at that, they've both been heavily researched.
855
01:33:21,360 --> 01:33:25,680
There's just as many London on one side, they're the other. Neither with big margins. It's like,
856
01:33:25,680 --> 01:33:31,600
we think heat is a bit better than coal. Kind of draws you to the conclusion that they're both
857
01:33:31,600 --> 01:33:36,240
as good as each other. They both end up in the same place just through different mechanisms.
858
01:33:36,960 --> 01:33:44,160
They provide pain relief through the novel stimulus that they give to the nervous system,
859
01:33:45,280 --> 01:33:50,640
similar to when you rub something that's sore. Yeah. And it can kind of stop it hurting a little
860
01:33:50,640 --> 01:33:57,040
bit. It's that kind of effect. They both do that. And they both encourage fluid exchange,
861
01:33:57,040 --> 01:34:02,640
which is good for healing, but through different methods. So it's very much kind of personality
862
01:34:02,640 --> 01:34:07,840
led. Some people really want to stick an ice pack on it and feel like they're hammering it down and
863
01:34:07,840 --> 01:34:12,080
they're beating it into submission. And they're like, yeah, that can be, I'm with you. I'd like
864
01:34:12,080 --> 01:34:18,480
a nice hot water bottle. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, it feels nice. Okay. Yeah. Let's
865
01:34:18,480 --> 01:34:25,120
just do one last discord question. This one is from Erica. She asks, how should an experienced
866
01:34:25,120 --> 01:34:29,840
climber start integrating more training into their routine? For me, it can feel overwhelming
867
01:34:29,840 --> 01:34:34,080
and directionless because there's so many options and I don't know what's best or most needed to
868
01:34:34,080 --> 01:34:42,080
improve my climbing. And so I guess doing it in a safe way and yeah, preventing injury. Right. Okay.
869
01:34:42,080 --> 01:34:47,360
Yeah. Because that costs you, yeah, whatever your goals, wherever you're trying to improve,
870
01:34:47,360 --> 01:34:52,640
what are your weaknesses, that type of thing. But yeah, you are at your starting point,
871
01:34:52,640 --> 01:35:00,240
if that makes sense. If you are at a load that you are happy with and your body is dealing with,
872
01:35:00,800 --> 01:35:06,640
then you can start increasing that load and you're much better off doing that in a way that is going
873
01:35:06,640 --> 01:35:12,160
to be consistent for you. As we're recording this, obviously it's coming towards the end of 2024,
874
01:35:12,160 --> 01:35:18,560
New Year's resolutions. Everybody goes, wow, I'm going to train eight times a day. I'm going to
875
01:35:18,560 --> 01:35:22,160
do this and that. I'll do that. Yeah. And two weeks later, the wheels have come off and we're
876
01:35:22,160 --> 01:35:28,400
not managing it. And we get peaks and troughs and peaks and troughs are not good. Yeah. Not doing
877
01:35:28,400 --> 01:35:32,640
very much. And then you've got trip coming up and going mad at it for two weeks. Not good.
878
01:35:34,400 --> 01:35:41,600
What we need is slow, gradual improvement, small, small steps that over the course of a year,
879
01:35:41,600 --> 01:35:48,800
add up to quite a big change. It's something like, I think with compound interest, if you improved
880
01:35:48,800 --> 01:35:56,080
something by 1% a week, which is not a lot, by the end of the year, it adds up to something like 60
881
01:35:56,080 --> 01:36:02,560
or 70%. And if you could improve, and it doesn't work in this linear fashion, but if you could
882
01:36:02,560 --> 01:36:07,600
improve your climbing by 70% in a year, that's amazing, isn't it? And you've only got to improve
883
01:36:07,600 --> 01:36:13,520
things by 1% a week in order to do that. So gains do not come quickly. They are hard won,
884
01:36:14,560 --> 01:36:23,760
but that's fine. If we take this small step approach and track what you do, it doesn't
885
01:36:23,760 --> 01:36:29,520
have to be a hugely detailed training diary. One that I quite like for people that are just starting
886
01:36:30,240 --> 01:36:36,640
is to write how long the session was, say two hours at the climbing jib and how hard they
887
01:36:36,640 --> 01:36:42,160
tried, say eight out of 10. It also starts getting you thinking about how hard you're trying.
888
01:36:42,160 --> 01:36:46,800
If every session you go to says eight out of 10, eight out of 10, eight out of 10, eight out of 10,
889
01:36:46,800 --> 01:36:56,320
there's something going wrong with your training. You need some variety. So you times two hours
890
01:36:56,320 --> 01:37:01,760
by the eight out of 10, you've got 16 punts. This is not my system that I came up with,
891
01:37:01,760 --> 01:37:09,040
it's been around for a while. It's arbitrary units. They don't mean anything. It's just 16 load
892
01:37:09,040 --> 01:37:13,280
points if you want to look at it like that. And then add that up over the week. So if you do three
893
01:37:13,280 --> 01:37:19,520
of those sessions, you've got 48 load points in a week. So what you don't want to do next week
894
01:37:19,520 --> 01:37:28,400
is increase that to 70 load points. You want to make that up to maybe 53, 55 load points,
895
01:37:28,400 --> 01:37:35,040
just a small little increase. These rules are often around 10% a week, that kind of thing.
896
01:37:35,040 --> 01:37:41,840
Not too bad. But if you went 10% a week every week for the next year, that would end up being,
897
01:37:41,840 --> 01:37:46,320
when you start, you can maybe take some bigger steps, but you're always better
898
01:37:48,320 --> 01:37:55,920
under training by 10% than over training by 1%. So it's small steps. Trap what you're doing in
899
01:37:55,920 --> 01:38:01,440
some way that works for you. Some people love a spreadsheet and love numbers and that kind of
900
01:38:01,440 --> 01:38:06,800
thing. That totally does my head in. I can't do that. I'm much more of the, yeah, write down in
901
01:38:06,800 --> 01:38:13,520
a notebook. Yeah, that's it. Don't overthink it too much. Don't be like, well, it was a two-hour
902
01:38:13,520 --> 01:38:19,360
session, but actually I was only climbing for half of that because I was resting for the other half
903
01:38:19,360 --> 01:38:26,080
of that. Don't overcomplicate it. It matters too much. If you have had a big long route session
904
01:38:26,080 --> 01:38:31,520
and actually you did spend, you met some friends, had a coffee halfway through, met some other
905
01:38:31,520 --> 01:38:35,840
friends, went for some cake, you know, all that, I don't like that. Then maybe change it. But if
906
01:38:35,840 --> 01:38:41,360
it's just a normal session, then just keep it as it is. Don't overthink it, but trap what you're
907
01:38:41,360 --> 01:38:48,560
doing and increase things by less than you probably think. Great advice. So any New Year's
908
01:38:48,560 --> 01:38:53,440
resolutions for you? Ed, but you know what, I'd actually said this to someone earlier today.
909
01:38:55,040 --> 01:39:00,880
I'd step in away from the whole New Year's resolutions. The time to start making changes
910
01:39:00,880 --> 01:39:05,520
is now, not some arbitrary date in the future and that kind of thing. You don't get any extra
911
01:39:05,520 --> 01:39:12,960
motivation because it's January the 1st, but it's actually to make sure I under train this year
912
01:39:12,960 --> 01:39:21,520
rather than over train. Physios and coaches need physios and coaches because we are human
913
01:39:21,520 --> 01:39:29,040
and we do the things that we tell everybody else not to do. This year I went hard at it trying to
914
01:39:29,040 --> 01:39:33,920
perform three times a week, despite talking with my partner at the start and saying,
915
01:39:33,920 --> 01:39:39,840
we've got the chance to go climbing outdoors three times a week. We mustn't try and red point three
916
01:39:39,840 --> 01:39:45,440
times a week. That would be a really silly thing to do. Within two months, we were red pointing
917
01:39:45,440 --> 01:39:50,960
three times a week. Absolutely loving it. Having some successes, ticking lots of things. It's all
918
01:39:50,960 --> 01:39:58,160
going well and then it all didn't go well. Injury or? And the camp burn out basically. Yeah,
919
01:39:58,160 --> 01:40:04,160
yeah. Just like I am absolutely knackered. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
920
01:40:04,160 --> 01:40:10,240
So thankfully no, not injury. And so this year I am going to, yeah, and I'm going to under train
921
01:40:10,240 --> 01:40:15,920
by 10%, not over train by 1%. Take your own advice. Okay. That'd be good, wouldn't it? Yeah.
922
01:40:15,920 --> 01:40:20,320
Okay. Well, I think that's all the questions I had. Thank you so much for joining me.
923
01:40:20,320 --> 01:40:23,680
No problem. Any last words that you want to get out there?
924
01:40:24,560 --> 01:40:30,880
I don't know. It is just, yeah, if you want to improve at climbing, then injury is the one thing
925
01:40:30,880 --> 01:40:35,920
that is guaranteed to stop that improvement. Yeah. Nothing interferes with improvement more
926
01:40:35,920 --> 01:40:42,960
than injury. You need consistency. So it's fine to step away a little early and finish feeling fresh.
927
01:40:42,960 --> 01:40:46,160
Perfect. Want to let people know where they can find you?
928
01:40:47,360 --> 01:40:54,320
Yeah. Yeah. It's process physiotherapy or one word.co.uk is my website and I'm on Instagram
929
01:40:54,320 --> 01:41:02,160
at process.physio are the two main places that you'll find me. Perfect. Yeah. I'll leave those
930
01:41:02,160 --> 01:41:07,120
links below. Lovely. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was amazing to talk to you.
931
01:41:07,120 --> 01:41:12,480
Yeah, no problem. No problem. So thanks. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast.
932
01:41:12,480 --> 01:41:18,560
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed. Otherwise you are a super fake climber. If you're
933
01:41:18,560 --> 01:41:24,000
listening on a podcasting platform, I'd appreciate if you rate it five stars and you can continue the
934
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discussion on the free competition climbing discord linked in the description. Thanks again for listening.
