Road to the Olympics: Exclusive Interview with Ollie Torr

In this episode of the Lattice Podcast, host Josh Hadley sits down with renowned coach Ollie Torr, who has guided multiple Olympic athletes and collaborated with national teams worldwide. Together, they delve into the rigorous and strategic training required for Olympic climbers, revealing what distinguishes potential Olympic medallists from other elite international competitors—both in terms of personality traits and training approaches.

Key Takeaways:

• The key differences between international competition climbers and those poised to win Olympic medals
• The vital role of a strong support network, including parents, coaches, physiotherapists, and media managers, in an athlete’s journey to success
• The importance of physical training focused on building resilience, cultivating the ability to push limits, and embracing challenges
• How training cycles, including deliberate "training holes" and super compensation, push athletes to their peak performance
• The significance of dedication, sacrifice, and trust in the training process for achieving success at the highest level
• The role of genetics and body type in climbing performance, alongside the impact of lifestyle choices and the joy of training

Don’t miss this latest episode and elevate your climbing knowledge with expert insights from Josh Hadley and Ollie Torr.

And best of luck to all the GB athletes in Paris 2024! 

The Lattice jingle is brought to you by Devin Dabney, music producer of the outdoor industry who also hosts the American Climbing Project.

Transcript

Josh (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Lattice Training Podcast. Today I'm sat down with Ollie Torr Today we're talking about training for the Olympics and we're going to try and frame this conversation around the difference between your typical international competition

and what it actually takes to be the upper elite so that the cream of the crop when it comes to competition climbers and the difference between elite and some of that's potentially going to medal at the Olympics because there's a difference, right? Totally. And I think this is a really timely conversation where we're going to put our thoughts down now.

Yeah. So Ollie, my first question is why am I talking to you today about training for something like the Olympics?

So training athletes for the Olympics, for World Cups and

Probably the peaks of my experience are working with two athletes in particular, Toby Roberts and Erin McNiece. So Erin I still work with, Toby I worked with up until his sort of breakout season in the World Cups. So I've taken athletes to winning World Cups and qualifying now. So I've seen that journey all the way through, as well as advising several other athletes at the Olympics as kind of a training consultant and some national teams as well.

So this is going to come from my experience, which is just one view on how to get there.

So my first question, which I want to get into, which I think really, and from my reading, separates your world class climbers to the ones that actually win the medals. What it goes into their personality traits, what are we looking at as a person that's actually going to make it to the very top of the sport and qualify for something like the Olympics? Yeah, it's a funny thing in sport, isn't it, where you've got elite athletes that are in their local gyms, their

in their national competitions and they're performing really well, then internationally they just can't seem to break through or they're semis or trying to get into finals for the peak of their career and then those that seem to go over to the next level. And I, for me personally, there's a couple of key traits. Like one of them is real standard in high performing individuals in sport and outside sport is overcoming adversity. So a lot of the people I think are really good.

and really consistent at the top have had to overcome some form of adversity low on. I don't think they've been the most gifted most of the time. And I think they have just been a slow burner. So they've built up. And it seems a bit weird saying that, where you've got some people that hit their senior season and they hit the ground running and they've done amazing. They've won medals, but you've not seen the 10 years before.

The fact that they as a junior, they really struggled. They might have struggled in certain types of movements and comps. And it could be like, you know, bigger adversity effects than that, like in terms of family or whatever they've had to deal with. But I have seen it a lot in climbing where the climbers that aren't necessarily the best, really obviously the best as juniors, they tend to just keep coming through whilst the ones who do really well early on tend to drop off.

And I think exactly that, that they are used to challenge. But also, one thing I've noticed, I've noticed this actually with, within GB climbing, so here in the UK, I've noticed this with the athletes I work with in Europe.

not so much in America but in Europe in particular, you become really insular within your nation and you compare yourself to the best people in your nation and if you're one of the best you want to maintain being one of the best and you are constantly looking around you at your peer group and they are your peer group and you start measuring yourself against them. So as long as you're better than them you're feeling good and I think that creates a bit of a problem where you then go to internationals and you're like whoa this is a different level.

And it's, yeah, it's definitely, you see some athletes really thrive on that and the international scene becomes the peer group. And then you look at some of the athletes that just focus on the national level and they get into their comfort zone there. So I think it's when you come from behind, you're always looking ahead and you're always looking at the better people. always assume there's better people, but if you're used to being ahead, you're not used to that. So you tend to look at the crowd that provides a more comfort zone for you. that partly why?

you'll have nations which stay on top for so long because that naturally is going to happen within that nation. And you have something like the Japan team where like the people they're climbing around are literally world -class every day. So they're constantly pushing against that rather than something that maybe isn't top level. Yeah, absolutely. mean, the like Austrians as well, where they've got such a good history and so many people going there that they get to compete against the best. So their peer group is the best at all times, like say in Japan.

their competition system where they have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of competitions and, regionals and then nationals and so on. It's a bit of a war of attrition. You, know, the people that make it are going to make it and say in Austria, like the history of their climbing in competition, all the athletes from different nations in Europe that didn't have people to compete with the York, the havens of the world, they would go over to Austria and train there and

that created this melting pot of talent and melting pot of effort. And I think that becomes the international standard. So right now, for anyone who's kind of unaware, there is a couple of key points in Europe where all European athletes go to train, and that is Paris for the bouldering and now some of the league because the walls there are, the gyms are really pushing the setting. And a lot of the World Cup setters work there.

Innsbruck is your obvious for the leading and it's just an amazing lead. The walls here and the gyms don't have loads of 9a climbs on, but Innsbruck does. And when you are there, you're spending all your time talking to other athletes that have been there. I've been on coaching trips there and there's always national teams. Got training camps almost. Yeah, mean, think the Norwegian team has a in Innsbruck now so they can go and stay there. cool. Yeah, exactly.

they create that melting pot and that new peer standard. So I think that is one of the things that those who are at the top, they can overcome challenge and adversity, but then they put in the effort to use the international and the world's best as their peer group. So the athletes I've worked with and a lot of the athletes I've spoken to in the Olympics right now or in the World Cups, they are going to these places to be around those people and around the setters.

I actually heard, I think it was Sean Bailey saying the same thing for Japan at the minute. And he was going there for the bouldering and it was kind of the attitude of the route setting there. He was saying it's the one place you can go and just keep getting stronger by just climbing. And saying, if someone tops the hardest boulder in the gym, the set's not hard enough. And so you've got like some of the best boulders in the world there. And the route setting mentality is like, if that boulder gets topped, need to set it harder, it's too easy.

That's exactly what you need, isn't it, to be pushing the level continuously? I was thinking about how would I make that melting pot here in Sheffield. I've thought about this quite a lot, whether I would go into making a team again of junior athletes going through to World Cups. The way I would do it is making sure our own facility was the primary facility in use. That was the measuring stick and your minimum grade was really hard.

Like you say, the maximum grade is inspiring, but not possible. And you would have the world's best in their genre going in and out of that place to apply the measuring stick. So by that, mean, a good example is Aidan Roberts, an athlete of mine who has come and trained with me and the competition athletes I've worked with during the winter periods. He would outperform the competition athletes on a lot of blocks.

like particularly the basic ones, like not... mean, to be fair to Aidan, he actually outperformed them on almost everything anyway. Yeah. But on particularly basic stuff like crimpy stuff where it's about strength, like a World Cup athlete generally can't keep up with him. Like I would say that across the board, there's only a few of them that could. And that means that the competition athlete has to be good in all these areas.

And all of a sudden, okay, you're second best in this area. So you've got something to aspire to. That's now your, your measuring stick. So now I need to find an amazing person who's just good on slabs, who's a world expert on slabs. Get one of those athletes in, okay, that's your measuring stick. And you just constantly put them second best. Yeah. Because that's another trait that comes out of these, in my experience, the people that really perform consistently is they have a second place.

humble mentality is always something to improve on. The ones who I have seen who are extremely confident, are, you know, they're really thinking that they are the best of the best. I think the holes suddenly start to appear when, cause you can't be. It's competition climbing. The whole thing is variety. And I think if you create an unstable foundation of your ability, I'm not saying you should be unconfident.

you should always be confident in your ability and have self -efficacy. But I think with that humble mentality of there's always something to learn, there's always something to improve on and someone to chase, it really builds that drive to carry on. And Erin McNiece one of the athletes I train at the moment with some other good coaches as a team, is perfect. When she came third in the last AQS in Budapest, I was there watching.

And when she finished, she got her award and stuff. And within about 10 minutes of her coming out, she was talking about training. We were listening, going through the notes of all the things to improve on and she was next. What next? Like I was just not good enough on this problem. And she wasn't being down on herself. She was psyched. She was like really motivated, but it's always, I can improve here. I'm not the world's best in that bit. And I think that takes you to the next level.

rather than finishing and being like, yes, I've smashed it. And I think again, you can enjoy the fact that you've done well, but she enjoys the process and the training and the improvement more than necessarily just kind of smashing it in the event as far as I can see. Which I think is one thing that makes people consistent. It's quite an intrinsic motivation thing, isn't it? Yeah, there was a really nice...

way of describing this to do with resilience. And this is internal psychological resilience. And a really good definition, I can't remember who it's by is resilience is your ability to return to baseline after a high stress or triumph. And the reason why it's triumph as well is you imagine, say someone like Chris Hoy or Chris Froome, know, world's best cyclist.

when they've won, if they just rode that kind of victory for ages and they just, they could hang their hat on that for the rest of their career. They could retire and go into the sunset. Yeah, one medal is like enough for most people, it? Yeah. So they could do that. And it means that they wouldn't get back to training. They wouldn't get back into the grind and it'd be long until they did. They wouldn't adapt. would detrain. They'd probably struggle to get back into the rhythm. But if you can win a medal,

And you can really appreciate that and you can enjoy it. And then you go back to your baseline, which is like your happy state of normality. Then you can get back to the hard work. Same with high stressful periods or failures. If you do really badly in a competition or badly on a, on block one in your bolder competition, and then you can move past that, you can get back to the baseline. Okay. What's my normal reality? Then you can move on and focus on the next thing. So I think that resilience.

and being happy in your baseline of living is really important. Because I think if we spend too far away from that, enjoying the triumphs for too long, or not getting over the stresses for too long, then I think we will struggle, you struggle to have consistency. Yeah. Is the resilience come into the hardship thing? I kind of wanted to revisit the hardship for a second,

And if they didn't overcome that hardship, then they, didn't like basically what I'm saying was, that habitual? Is that something that they had, which they made it through the hardship? Or is that something that they learned?

because of hardship?

I personally think that there's a lot of elite athletes I've worked with that are being chased by demons quite badly and I do think it's probably underappreciated. I know a lot of people will admire

elite athletes and want their lifestyle and stuff, but I do think you've got to realise there's a lot of sacrifices around the lifestyle itself, but to have that level of drive takes something usually. And in an ideal world, it's just one enjoying performing in that one area of your life. And in the more negative sense, it's often being chased by something or having overcome a real hardship and feel driven by something internally.

That sounds like quite a negative spin on it, but it's actually, if you see it as kind of that Phoenix effect of, you know, coming out of the ashes and getting through something and having this greater drive than you could have had before. I think that is a nice way of putting it. Yeah. I mean, being an elite athlete is not necessarily the healthiest lifestyle, although sports looks like it's good for your health. Like there's a certain level where it starts getting pretty poor for both your physical and mental health.

I've seen a lot of athletes that have kind of made it into semi -finals and competed at quite a high level.

that have other elements of their life they really enjoy and have balance and usually stuff like outdoor climbing as well. And they kind of flip -flop between focus quite a bit and the ones who tend to do really, really well are far more like tunnel visioned and really, really focused. And I think some of the people have got around that by being a professional athlete for a lot of years, but I

think too many people are trying to get too much balance whilst they're trying to perform at that upper level and I think if you are really really trying to perform at the top you can't have that much balance. Even outdoor climbing is going that way where outdoor climbers now can't really get away with I I know there's a bit of an American scene that is still trying to push that but for a lot of the really top best that I've worked with

they do have really dedicated periods of their life where they're so focused on their climbing. They go to bed early, they do everything in a healthy manner. And I think that's what it needs. And in competition climbing for the Olympics, that's even more the case. You can't have one foot out the door and one foot in the door. I know a lot of the Olympic athletes are performing outside. know, Jakob Schubert going to Norway and stuff, he's clearly performing outside.

imagine what he could do if he just completely focused on outside. You know, he's an Olympic athlete and he's doing this stuff because he's at such a high level. Like Max Milne, he's a good friend who competes in the World Cup. He unfortunately just missed out on his spot, but he flashed the ace. Like for him, that's an amazing achievement, but that was literally him turning up and flashing a problem. He's not had to dedicate loads of time to climbing on grit.

get amazing at that. Imagine what he's going to be able to do outside if he fully dedicated, but he's not. He's a really high level competition athlete and he's dedicated towards that. Yeah, I really like that question of like what if, because people kind of use those examples to say, these things must be really in line with each other? If you train for comps, must be, it must be really good training for outdoors. But I don't think that's the case. I think that they're just amazing athletes and you'll have to ask the question, what if they actually just dedicate all their time to comps or what if?

They actually dedicated all their time to outdoor climbing and the chances are they'll probably get even better at those certain things. Yeah, I mean, it's light and day watching some of the more outdoor athletes in the comps at the moment for me in terms of the moves they do better and the style. Sorry, the indoor athletes are just so much more all around. They're amazing at the competition style movements, the coordination. And you can say, I look at people like Anjo, but he's even said multiple times

you know, his body is not enjoying the new style of movement. And he does have to adapt between the two, but he's made a priority for that period of time, but he's not climbing silence at the same time as trying to do the new Olympic format, for example. So, and he's an exception, he's the world's best. So we can't use that as a baseline, but. He is such an exception. Yeah. It kind of like sits outside of what you expect from an elite climber in a lot of ways. Yeah.

I want to go back to the nature versus nurture thing. We've kind of spoke about a lot of personality traits that probably have been nurtured, through often through childhood and probably a lot of nature there too. So maybe something that you don't have a huge hand in as a coach, but as a coach, what are you doing to nurture the mindset and the personality traits of an Olympic athlete? What, what do you have to do to help them make it to that level? I think it is kind of working with whatever.

whatever the athlete needs for that personality type and what's already in the system. I very much believe that the athletes have done really well. The system around them, the bubble that they're in makes a massive difference and the parents usually have the biggest element of that, the biggest responsibility. They do most of work, let's be frank. They're the taxi drivers, they're the...

the coaches, the marketing managers, everything. And I think they play a massive role in that athlete's personality. As they get older and older, they play less of an impact. And I think a coach can support more, but then the athlete is usually far more independent anyway at that point. So as a coach, I have to ride on what the parents have already instilled in the athlete, if they're younger, or the journey that the athlete's on themselves. So if they are someone

thrives on the process and they are all about improvement, then I'll kind of go down that route with them. I'll focus on that with them. If there's someone who needs to be able to keep working on their psychology by remembering successful events and gaining self -efficacy on that, then that's kind of what I'll do in the training. I'll try and make sure that I create training which provides a lot of success and like stepping stone success all the way through so they can feel their improvements really obviously.

rather than chasing an athlete that's slightly better than them in all these areas, like I said before, the whole way through. And then all of a sudden they come out of this bubble and they're better than everyone else. And then they're surprised by that and they can perform. So there's loads of different tactics. One that I've used over the last few years quite a lot as well is just priming the athletes with the type of words, the type of training they're doing to create a feeling and performance at the right time.

So a good example, it works for indoors and outdoors is if you know that a certain type of, I don't know, a test or a feat of strength or a style of movement gives an athlete a lot of confidence, even if it's not that relevant to their performance, you provide a training stimulus to peak that at a time where they go, cool, I can do this.

and then all of a sudden they're primed to think they're stronger and then they climb slightly differently. And the same with like the wording you use around that in terms of making sure you use the right words with them. Make sure. you can do your superpower that like, yeah. And then they feel like, actually if I've got a superpower, I'm unstoppable sort of thing. Exactly. And then you avoid the things that are negative in terms of if someone doesn't think they're a fit route climber is making sure that anything you talk about to do with fitness.

that's very much a, let's build this narrative that they can have confidence. So I think it's very much adapted around the athlete and you're using what they've come to you with, but there's a lot of tactics like priming and training things at the right time to make sure that you are maximizing their confidence at the right time. think I've heard you talk about this in respect to potentially doing some sort of, and I think this is kind of what you're saying with even feats of strength.

your training for something which doesn't necessarily on paper look like it's that useful to them climbing a complex sport route in the Olympics or something, but it's gonna change their psychology. So with the, like four by fours, something that I think you said you had Toby doing is that you had sessions for a long period of time where you were just getting in to try really, really hard, like boulders after boulder after boulder, like really pushing in because it was, that was the feeling he needed when he'd be on the head wall.

of a sport route. And actually, I think you can see that in his climbing now, where like, he just looks like he fights to the absolute living end. And that's something you would maintain for, or maybe bring into the training well before performance, just say you're really instilling that, like being able to fight, being able to try hard. Is that kind of what you're saying as well? Exactly. Yeah. It's like, it's building this ability to cope in the moment and figuring out what you want to work on. the training might not directly look like what's going to happen,

you're looking for an effect in that. I've used that same thing with multiple people. And I think that's actually, all right, we're going on a tangent here, but I think that is one thing that is missed by a lot of athletes. And I think it is not, those athletes I think don't do as well. They're doing well. They go into world cups and they're trying to get into semis and so on. But the ones that don't perform that well in my eyes are the ones that don't know to fight that well and can't fight and dig deep in the moment.

When I say dig deep, I don't mean just trying quite hard. I mean like really, really hanging on to the living end, like that real 'a muerte' style. And this comes back to that hardship again, is that's what I tried to build in to the training, that hardship, your overcoming hardship, and you're not allowed to just fall off. Because with the type of movements, there's this feeling that you should climb smoothly, you should climb nice, you should feel floaty and strong.

you can really tell when you watch comp, the ones who are willing just to hang in there, they're on the last hold. You know, they're not going to be able to move and, but they're still just, they're just holding on because they're trying to figure out something and they're moving their body weirdly. They tried to get shakes out and sometimes it can go a bit too far, but the opposite way. But I think those who just really know how to dig deep, it makes a massive impact. And I see that happening quite a lot with boulders that are now doing the combined format.

that don't know how to fight on a headwall. British climbers that are used to climbing on 30 move climbs, so they're used to trying to get through onto the headwall, but they're not used to that fight on the headwall. And those that just can't seem to rest and stay into really uncomfortable positions because they're to climbing smoothly, and they're to doing poppy moves and stuff, rather than really just digging deep and trying to get mini shakes back.

And if you do that in the training and you get them used to that feeling when they go onto a competition climb, they almost go, my God, I've got time to think here. And this is way less awkward and way less hard than what I did in training. We had, we saw that the season with Erin, she tried so hard this winter in terms of her training. And one of the things we did was just push that endurance, push the fight more than ever in her, really force her into that fatigue state.

And you could see it this year where she actually said she was climbing and she kept resting, assuming it was going to get really hard. And she was actually resting on some of the bits that weren't rests. Yeah. Because she was so used to resting in awful positions that she kept assuming it was going to be hard. And it's taken a long time for her to believe she was as fit as is. Yeah. And then seeing her on the headwall in AQS, which is phenomenal where she just had time to think. Yeah. And she's got so many gains still to make,

she earned that fitness through forcing herself to be in that position throughout the winter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.

Yeah. top of the level, the top of the game, people just keep going. we mentioned something about like, we kind of started to go into the support network with the coach and obviously the parent playing a huge role. what else is there in the support network at this level?

Because I think when we're going to Olympics, we've probably got physios, we've got other coaches. Like what's the support network look like and what is the optimal support network for someone that is going to medal at the Olympics? That's a big question. I would say, caveat again, most of my experiences with younger athletes, not just the ones I've worked directly with, but other national teams have often spoken to me about younger athletes. but I have been around the competition so I can kind of give an idea.

I think a big element is obviously that main support, that emotional support, that social support, often comes from the parents. They do so much of that work. I think it then comes from partners, husbands, wives, as they get older. And I think that plays a huge role. I think the coach obviously plays a few role or coaches. Like say with myself, I'm really lucky to work with people

Rachel Carr in terms of who's on the GB coaching team and she provides a lot of the stuff that I won't do in terms of not having time for or she's better at that than me. So I think you can have multiple coaches for different roles and then I think stuff like having physios like Huffy on board that just give you that confidence that if someone's got a niggle, someone's got an issue which athletes, I mean it is their whole career.

on hand with the expert advice to get them back to health is really, really important. And just to talk to them about it and to be able to give them confidence on what it is. A lot of the time it's uncertainty and having someone to listen to and identifying what a problem is as soon as possible. think it makes a massive difference. So I think having that on hand is huge. And then there's all these other components now of like you've seen the guys recently.

the GBE team, Molly Hamish and Erin who recently qualified. Even since they've qualified, was it four weeks ago now, the amount of media they've had to do is massive. So having someone, whether it's the parent again or a marketing manager or someone to help with that is huge. Like it just takes all of that away from them. And I think they should do it. It's their job. It's part of the sport. know, they get their paid athletes,

they need to reduce as much stress as possible. So someone in it as a media expert or taking over that really helps. And again, if you've not got the budget, like a lot of climbers don't, the parent might do it or the partner. if you're, know like Shauna works with Banderbirds, like fantastic kind of marketing firm, media team, that say Matt's done a lot of work for her. And I think again, it's a lot of this network that doesn't get seen that makes a huge difference towards an athlete.

Yeah, I mean, it's, I guess, pretty stressful stuff as well. they're unlikely to have done that. And the way it feels like sport works is you do something that's notable for the first time, and then suddenly you're smashed with a bunch of media straight away. Like it just all happens at once. Once you've done like qualified for the Olympics or something before you would have probably done very little. And now you need to do loads, especially with the Olympics. Yeah. And I think the national governing bodies try

support that but then they also need the athletes to do it. So I think like say the BMC and GB Climbing they've been juggling so much over the last few years and we know in the media they've made several mistakes but they're also, you know, they're chasing their tails as well in this new world of competition and the amount of money coming in and media and that side of things. So I think yeah it's just constantly juggling but you need the athletes to be focused on what they're good at because at the end of the day if they don't perform

All of it goes away for everyone. So everyone should be in line with getting the athletes focused on what they do best because inherently it is them that is performing. We can do all our best. Me as a coach, can do my 110%. I can give everything possible. And I've done this with athletes and it's not worked out because it's got to come from the athlete at the end of the day. They're the ones that do the hard work. Yeah. Yeah. So let's get into the juicy physical stuff. Like how do you train?

What's the difference between training an athlete which is going to make it into the World Cup series, get selected by the national body to compete on the World Cup, versus someone that goes to the Olympics? I would say the training is often the same, but the execution is different. And that's from my experience of having trained not just GB athletes, but international athletes where I've tried to use a similar formula. And obviously it's very individualized.

but there is a formula that I've used and I think works. And it has certain steps where you build up the amount of intensity, the amount of volume, and the ones who don't make it are the ones that often something gets in the way. Whether it's their energy, like slight niggles of injury, their robustness, their motivation, I would say is actually 90 % of the reasons why we see it not working. Can I dig into the motivation quickly? Because

what motivation do they have? Is it fully intrinsic or is there an extrinsic element of this too?

Yeah, I always think there's a mixture for everyone. I think the ratio, don't, I think there probably is a very extreme ratio where it's unhealthy, but I think it's more about awareness of your motivation, which makes the big difference. And I often find that when I've seen athletes that seems to be really, like again, this comes back to this hardship, the ones who seem really talented or seem to be on a really good path, but then they seem to drop off and then they get motivated again and seem to drop off.

The motivations often come from someone else, a parent or expectations or something. And that's where you see the lack of consistency. Whilst I think if it's more balanced with that, I want to be here, regardless of who's involved. I think that's where the consistency comes in. But the actual motivation can always be mixed.

There's a few people in climbing that I know of. I can think of one in the States in particular who are climbing harder than anyone else. there's someone who's in the like the Boulder, Colorado scene. He's climbing as hard as all of the best guys in America, bouldering.

doesn't tell anyone about anything. Doesn't want to be known, doesn't want any media. And everyone knows he's like really shit hot. That is fully intrinsic and they are very guarded against it becoming not intrinsic. But that is a real exception. And these are these dark horses that you hear about. And I think they get a lot of kudos and I think fair do's to them. I think it's a little, in the UK scene it's probably put on a bit of a too higher of

pedestal in my eyes because some people are just trying to make a living as well. I think that's really important though because if you're a dark horse and you don't talk about it but you're also at the top of your game in that, you clearly have a lot of time and lot of resources to not need to speak about it and say you're in a really privileged position to be able to climb really hard and not need to say anything. Most people want to make a living out of it and need the time to do that. They're going to have to speak about it. They're going have to do some media aren't they? like, you know. Yeah and you think about, say like you look at the Olympic gold

in athletics in particular, how many of those people are doing it to make money because they've come from poor backgrounds and stuff. So you can't say that it doesn't, extrinsic alone, won't get you to the top. Like a lot of athletes from Africa, the running athletes, they'll obviously, there'll be intrinsic motivation of you're probably enjoying the training, being part of a group. But there's multiple athletes that have literally, they've made their money and then

been able to pay for their family and they've created a life for themselves, I don't think that's any less noble than having this, I've got this intrinsic motivation, I'm the one who's really important here because realistically these guys are doing an extrinsic looking for money, but they are doing it to give to families and give to create a life for themselves, which they wouldn't have otherwise, which one's more noble. And so that's why I struggle with some of the chat around this because we talk about in climbing intrinsic and

because we're all relatively privileged. Climbing is generally a relatively privileged sport. It's not cheap to get into. If you want to get into football, can buy one football with a bunch of your mates go to a field, kick it around, it costs you like five, 10 pounds or something. It costs more than that to go into just any gym in Sheffield right now, once. Yeah, and I think those who have, if they're extrinsically motivated and they're willing to put in the graph.

and really try hard. It's the same with some of the YouTubers right now in climbing. I've got a lot of respect for them because it's a nails job. And I think some people in climbing look down on that, but they're playing the game because they want a life for themselves. Like why would you ever put that down? Well, you wouldn't say, you've worked really hard in your career. That's that's awful. Like you would say, great job. You've really created this life. You've created wealth for yourself. So.

I actually don't think, I think that conversation about who's going to make it the most, I think it really is dependent on where someone's coming from and what they want for themselves in their life. And I don't think one's better than the other. I just think that you have to be aware of the positives and negatives of both. Okay.

It's awareness of that extrinsic motivation. So you can control it, I guess. Yeah.

big tangent on the motivation side, but I thought that was interesting. Let's go back to this whole idea of execution and physical training. So we were talking about the actual training, maybe let's say like the training plan or the routines, they don't look too different. What's, what do mean by execution then? So, I guess the, I'll say the end point of the training, the style of training I've done. this is again, biased opinion.

had an insight into what other athletes do in the Olympics and from winners of world cups and stuff over the years and then the athletes I've worked with but I would generally say from my experience what I've been taught through in a base season in the winter you'll see athletes training somewhere between 30 and 40 hours a week everything included but a lot of that on the wall yeah I have heard different to that in terms of

I know some of the heavier male athletes will train less. I think one of the US athletes, think Nathaniel Coleman it might be, was looking at around 12 to 15 hours a week plus some extra conditioning. But the athletes that I have worked with that are really good combined athletes tend to look at doing 30 to 40 hours a week. And a lot of that is hard. Look at the Japanese athletes, they are at the wall.

at the gym and they're bouldering for really long periods of time, so eight hour sessions. And you can say what you want about that being play, it's still training. At the end of the day, it's still training. know Shauna had a bit of an insight into her training in the past, but also speaking to her, like play is a huge element of her training, but it's still training. She's aware of that. She's at the wall. tries and climbs. It's still deliberate practices in it when you're playing. There's still like a lot of cognitive stuff going into

practice and designing what you're actually playing on. Absolutely, yeah. It's all mental, tactical, technical training. that, you can do those things for a long period of time. But it'd be silly to underestimate the training load on that. They've built up to being able to do this. So when I was talking about the motivation before, that's kind of your end point in the base season for me. And I've pushed people pretty hard into that and done.

And that's the formula that I think I've now repeated several times and supported others doing. the motivation drop off and the people that haven't made it. Obviously I don't go, okay, November starts 35, 40 hours. is, you build it. Yeah, you build up, you build the hours up, then you build the intensity within those hours up. And I've been there in person for seasons, multiple seasons with athletes. And then I've also supported coaches working with athletes

doing more of the in -person work and I do the physical programming and overview of the entire training plan and then I've also supported teams doing that. I've also supported teams doing that as well and the ones who, athletes I've worked with even directly and we'll get, I don't know, quarter of the way through, they do one training cycle of feeling good, they go into another training cycle

or this felt niggly or I've not been able to get to the wall this week or something's come up. I'm feeling a bit busy, a bit stressed.

It's not that I ever look down on that at all. Everyone's an individual. I'm exactly the same. There's other things going on in lives, but those athletes that make it, they make that work. They will prioritize everything else. Absolutely. And they will, they will turn up day in, out. They will feel like tired to the point of crying. Like some of the training holes that I've put some athletes in, and we do call it a training hole where you're digging yourself down.

You're chucking mud out of the hole, but you don't climb out of that until we're ready. And sometimes we'll allow a little bit of a climb out to get your head above the hole, just to see where you're at. Delay of land. It's super compensation, I suppose. it following that principle or is it more of a long -term thing? It's super compensation, but really, it's not just getting back to baseline after every two days. It's not strength training on day one, two days rest, leave the adaptations. You can't do that. Yeah.

you need to build the work capacity for this format and be the best. So it's kind of like super compensation, but it's kind of multiple days and cycles of down and down and down. We might add in a week of recovery, deload to let themselves get their head up. Okay, I can see what it would be like when I'm fully recovered. Okay, let's carry on, get back to the bottom of the hole, keep digging. And then by the time you're ready to perform and you taper, you can climb out the hole.

and then climb up the pyramid that you made with the excess. And I think you get to a new height and that's the visual I always have every time. But it takes a real dedicated, high grit, determined athlete to stay in it and trust the process. And I've had athletes come into me and say, I can't believe I've just been training with all these other people that I compete with nationally. Do you think Tomoa feels like this? Do you

this athlete feels like this, I feel awful, they're better than me now, we're doing it wrong. And I've had to say, just stay with it, this is the right path, you're on the right track. And the athletes who bail on that process or can't see it through tend to perform pretty well. But the ones that see it through tend to perform really well. And that's my experience of it. And I think that gets missed. And it takes years and years

building that trust with athletes and building up over time to get there. Is it fair to say that if you want to be the best of the best, you need to able to tolerate a huge amount of training volume? I personally believe so, even from a mental standpoint of, you know, you're into climbing gym every day and you've got to be, that's where that intrinsic side of you, you want to make the enjoyment of that process.

the more people you can be around in training, like the Japanese have such a good laugh together. know like Shona had Leah with her a lot of the time where she enjoyed being around her, but fundamentally you're still turning up, you have to turn up every day. So you have to have a lot of robustness to that, but then also physically, yeah you do. And again, I think that, I think a lot of people can have that. I don't think there is as much of a genetic ceiling as some people think. I think there's a lifestyle ceiling.

Okay, yeah. If we're trying to learn from this is again, it's that whole sacrifice and what we said earlier of having one foot out the door is I've trained with some of these athletes in the winter periods and tried to keep up with them and I've done the same training days and I've done the same workouts as them and pretty much on the climbing obviously an easier level but on the weightlifting I've done exactly the same and the weeks where I'm not working as much.

It's not too bad. And I do about 50 % of their training week and then 50 % of my own working week. The weeks where I'm back to like a normal full -time job. And then I train with them on top of that for two, three days at the same level as them, all the same hours and stuff. I completely break. I think I could train like an Olympic athlete. And I'm not saying that is like a bragging term. I'm saying most people could do that, but I wouldn't be able to work. I think I would.

struggle to maintain a good relationship for me personally because I think I give a lot of energy to my wife. I think I would struggle to do any, I wouldn't do any socials. I wouldn't go to the pub, I wouldn't drink, I wouldn't travel. How many Olympic athletes have partners? I wouldn't be able to say actually. think, and that's the thing, I think the ones who do and they're climbers and stuff, I think they make it work. It's like having a parent, isn't it? Yeah. But I think they will have a, I'm pretty sure.

pretty sure I'm happy saying this is their partners are aware of the sacrifice and they have to make up to them and there's an agreement and I'm hoping they're having open conversations because that is that support network. But to be a great athlete you have to sacrifice something. yeah for me it's that the ones who can get into that training hole and stay in it are the ones who are willing to put all their eggs in that basket and they focus on themselves and they are.

focus only on themselves and during that time and they see it through and then they come out the other end really good and then throughout the season obviously throughout the season after the base season the best thing to do in my eyes is making sure you're feeling recovered for the comps but you maintain enough training for the whole season because it's such a long season and then you add one or two mini holes training holes within the season just to make sure you top up that work capacity.

and high performance. Yeah, yeah. What does a what's the week of an Olympic athlete look like for training? Depending on the week and where you are in the season, but say let's go for a really hard week. Yeah, let's go base season when we've got really high volume and we're digging a hole. What does it look like? For a current athlete, so this combined format, an example of what I've done in the past is you'll spend

I'm trying to think about the numbers. So I might be off here on the numbers, but you'll spend maybe three sessions a week for several hours on slabs and movement practice where it's not too intense, but it's, you you're practicing skills. Yeah, high skill practice. Yeah. So it's all, the rest of the training will be skill -based, but that's like really particular skill -based. So you've got that, that can be added onto training at the end or the start. You've got some high intensity.

climbing to build strength power that could be board climbing, could be max effort boulders, could be doing strength repetitions on boulders, like maybe several sessions of that. In a base season, I'd have them doing some form of power endurance still to keep that fight. Whether it's anaerobic capacity. at the beginning about constantly being able to like fight because you need to maintain that. Yeah, so if they're great lead climbers, they can do it on the circuit board boulder wall a lot easier.

If they're in Innsbruck, obviously they'll be on a lead wall. If they're not as good a lead climber, I think they need to be on a lead wall as often as they can to maintain the skills and the fight on lead. So they'll do a session of that, maybe two sessions of power endurance, three sessions of high intensity bouldering, three sessions of skill bice bouldering. They do some endurance around their training, so arcing to warm up, interval style training. So in a base season,

Like say for Erin, for example, we did a lot of endurance training. so that's like again, several hours actually climbing. they'll work on their grip strength in certain ways. So pinch training, edge training, and then two to three, usually three S and C sessions a week, weightlifting plus auxiliary conditioning. So shoulders maintaining health, maybe doing some particular pulling sessions.

So what the week would normally look like is six days training. Friday is usually off because you can train with other people on the weekend. You're looking at kind of zigzagging, like doing mini pyramids of the highest load within the week to try and add recovery. So you might have a really long training day from 10 till six one day. Then the following day you might go from 12 till four. And then the next day you'd probably go for like.

one till eight. So you move it around to increase recovery and then you might have the rest day. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so you're constantly trying to manipulate that. So you're not just playing with days, you're playing with the 24 hour window within a day too. Ideally, yeah. And this is where I've either worked with other coaches to do it or tried to program that. But sometimes like the athlete just prefers to do what they want to do. Might have a certain time of day where they feel best and they perform best in that.

Yeah. then, so that would be...

an average week and then within that you would look at, okay, what type of movements do I think is gonna come up in the future sets? A lot of people don't like doing this, they just focus on all around movement. You see patterns in setting, why wouldn't you use that? okay, I want you to focus on this type of movement during your play session. I want you to focus on which could be... Can you give me an example of this? So an example would be standing on volumes

really shiny dual tex nubbins. I actually wouldn't like I used to put in for people spending 10 minutes on the slab on the wall. Yeah. So they build toe strength. Okay. Or I want you just to focus, find any terrible foothold and when you just go over and over and over it. And you might be on the same sequence just time and time again until your toes hurt. One of the moves that we've seen a lot is doing like a dyno from a big slopey hold into

upside down, gassed on, so you're pressing above your head, and you're pressing downwards as well, so palm to palm, vertically, and your body goes out like a flag, is that, okay, this is your power session, I want you to find anything like that, and I want you to work on it, then your SNC session, you're going to make sure that you're doing some kettlebell overhead squats with one arm, Cossack squats or something, so you get that shoulder stability. We'll chase these movement patterns because you get buy -in for it, it feels really...

attributable to your performance. Same with a lashing swing, swinging movement into a position which if anyone watched the Comp at Budapest, absolutely destroyed that in the final. You were like fist bumping in the air at that point, you were like, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's something I've been asking her to try loads. And again, Rachel's been the coach kind of executing on this with her in person.

But we've just seen them come up time and time again. If you are not good at swinging, you need to be swinging as often as possible at the start of every session and as many play sessions as possible. Swing, catch, swing, catch. Okay. What happens if I do this with my feet? What happens if I do this with my arms? So a training plan looks really simple, but the thought that goes into it is execution. Yeah. There's loads of variability within the movement. Yeah. Loads of intention. So imagine that focus again, coming back to our original points

That is really hard to do. It's like super tiring to focus that much. The more that everyone else can take stuff away from you around that, like the parents, whatever, the better, because then you can just focus on this. And also the less you have to focus outside of training and performance, the better in terms of social engagements, all of that kind of stuff. And then also the people that don't make it, the ones that tend to struggle to focus on this loads.

I know I spoke to Cam yesterday about latest research on internalizing thoughts during a training session. So the most elite athletes will think about what they're doing and internally process every rest attempt. So a good example, two people on a board, one person who's really elite will try and move and then they'll be looking at the holes, brushing holes, thinking about the movement, thinking about what they could do better.

and they're like really into it, they're like really present and the other person who might be elite or but won't be as good often will sit down and scroll through their phone or be chatting and then they'll chat to the point of then getting back on the wall and it's not that both won't be social but the people that are internalised and focused and present are often better and I think that does require a lot of mental energy which you can't spend elsewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.

I want to come back to the grip strength training bit as well. Something that's, it's just so varied, but also more complex. Is there anything different you do when it comes to grip strength training for these athletes? Because you have like, I just have so many more big macro holds these days. You're doing more wrist training with these kinds of athletes because they're on bigger holds. you, do you need to prepare for everything? Cause you just don't know what they're going to set. Like even like, I guess we had

a flurray of hand jams and stuff, don't we, but pockets, what are you doing with these athletes which is maybe slightly different? Well, what I've done recently, say with Erin and then others in the past, I look at their weakness in particular and I try and target that. So it could just be something basic like a pinch strength is something to work on a lot, but you are right, working on the wrist is massively important these days.

working on really basic pinches, like wide shallow pinches is really important. I actually think front three drag is really, important because particularly on lead, because you often see small nubbins on volumes where it's only got enough space for three fingers, because if there's space for four, they can usually type right. Yeah. So you end up dragging loads. So I'll do way more dragging with competition athletes and outdoor athletes. Okay. And

I still think you need to work on high angle in front of your face because you often see good comp athletes are great on these other things where they're compressing between holds. But when it comes to like basic basic, they struggle a bit more. And I think that's where the outdoor athletes suddenly get a step ahead. So I do look at the whole picture, but compared to other climbers, more wrist, more front three drag and more pinching.

Yeah, that makes sense when you look at the setting. Yeah, I think if like to the point, you said Sean Bailey had said about Japanese walls and gyms is the better the holds are in the gym and more variety they have, the less they need to train off the wall for grip strength. I think we do a lot more grip training here in the UK because we don't have access to as many good holds and like boards and stuff are great, but the type of pinches on boards and the type of

wristy holds in particular we don't get as much. Yeah I think definitely seen this on Instagram that there's a lot of good Olympic qualified athletes that train on like really big spray walls with loads of macros on and like we have most of our gyms have really good like woodies or moonboard or kilp or something but we don't really have many like massive high volume spray walls which seems to be the way to go. So a good good example of where the strengths differ.

Say you're on a kilter board or a moon board, you've got a couple of different options for your legs really. You put your toe on, you push down on a hold and you maintain tension through the push and your heel's relatively dropped. You could toe in, you put your big toe in, you torque it and then you pull outwards away from the board. You have your foot high and you put your toe on and you torque it where you like rock over, you dig your toe in, heel's being raised through the calf.

And again, you're pulling away from the board. And there's obviously a few variations on that. It's all either push or pull away from the board. On macros and on splat boards, what you often do is you see athletes using the sides of their feet a lot more. So you put your foot on a big, slopey hold that's facing away from you. Like the inside edge, kind of like a Copenhagen plank sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. And that's why that's an exercise they use all the time is.

you constantly compress against whatever other hold you've got available. So say you've got just a left hand hold up and left, your right foot's out to the side, you're pulling downwards, slightly outwards and inwards all at the same time. it's that, or if you've got something facing away from you, two away from you, you're pushing them against each other. There's all this kind of hip adductor strength being used with heel hooks and so on. It's all about opposition because if you've got opposition,

it's going to fatigue the athletes, it's more likely they're going to slip off and it means you can use worse holds because as soon as you have a positive edge these athletes are really strong and they can use it. So you have to create opposition and that's what competition climbing is all about. So I think the spray walls teach them about opposition and movement. Right, okay. Does this also mean that a physical quality which is probably even more important

Maybe not just Olympic athletes, but in general competition climbers, as lower body strength is now so much more important after the last five years of change of setting. I think so, yeah, massively, and particularly with like the dynamic movements and bouldering. Like you saw some of the shorter athletes in the recent comps where they couldn't even reach the next holds. some of the female athletes and it is just requires so much dynamic strength in the legs, but also like you say, that compression

Like you watch, soon as Adam's got hold of something with his, cause he's got such strong calves, Adam Andra, like he totally looks chill compared to other athletes cause he's so strong there. And there was a couple of boulders I've seen him do recently in comps where he's compressing with his lower body and his toes so much because he's used to climbing on granite and he's renowned for that. I would say the lead climbing, what we're seeing is there's more waiting on lead right now in combined format.

I still think there's a preference or it's easier for athletes to have really light legs and not strong in lead because they can get away with being lighter. So it's not needed there as much, but the bouldering kind of neutralizes that at least. Okay, so while it's still combined between lead and boulder, leg strength is still going to be really important. But you think if there's, and actually you might know this or maybe I've just heard rumors that in LA,

the next Olympics, they're thinking of separating it again. So we'll just have Boulder and just have lead. Do you that's going to specialise the training even more? Yeah. Yeah. Which I, think is a good idea and I'm really psyched to see that, but I actually really like the current format. And I do worry that right now, bouldering, how do I put this? think bouldering create, cause of the movement styles creates healthier athletes and more all round robust athletes.

I think the lead climbing is amazing to watch. And I love the fact that they've gone more to this resistant climbing end where you can watch people fight. But there is obviously a preference again for a lighter and lighter climber. They have strong legs, but they're definitely not as strong as the boulders usually. So I think we'll see more specialization in terms of body type as the lead becomes separate again.

I hadn't considered that potentially this whole like ultra specialization of making it individual disciplines could potentially be a bit unhealthy as well because people start striving for like the you know quotation mark here like perfect body type for a certain style. Well I mean so purely let's look at the athletes against the Olympics now. Sorry the ones who went to Tokyo. You separate speed out. Let's compare speed to the boulder and the climbers. Completely different athletes. It's going to be the

Again, and I think you will see Boulder and LEED climbers competing in both in LA still and they'll do well. like you see the combined people that do really well in Boulder and LEED. But I hope that LEED climbing will become more more burly and great to watch and dynamic and stuff. Just to make sure we don't go too far down the route of going back to the old days of the French style competitions of real resistance, crimpy climbing.

Yeah, because I think that does reward a really specialized body type. Yeah, isn't necessarily the best look for the sport. So let's look at Paris Olympics. I've got some stats here that I was looking up. So basically we've seen over the past 30 years in sports that have been around for a while, body types specialize or morphology specialized for certain sports. So within rhythmic gymnastics, the average height of

female competitor was five foot three and now it's gone down to four foot nine. And this is because the shorter levers help you with like aerial acrobatics and like spinning and stuff like that. And in ice hockey, the average height 30 years ago was five nine and it's gone up to six one. So they're getting taller and getting heavier. And so it's interesting to see sports that have been well established in something like the Olympics for this long. We are seeing some these body types specialised, but I feel like in climbing currently,

What's quite nice is you don't really see a typical body morphology or body shape because it's so varied. Like, of course, with outdoor climbing, it's hugely varied, but even with competition climbing, it's still pretty varied. Is there an ideal morphology? there like the right kind of build for climbing? I think this studies show there's definitely the most common high performing. Yeah. I think it is male athletes around 100

70 to 175 centimeters, large ape index, 185 plus centimeters. I think you do see that and obviously the light for their height and weight. The differences between climbing and these other sports, which I hope continues, particularly as we specialize, is ice hockey is against other athletes. there's a direct, depending on the height, weight type of person of the other athletes will change your.

interaction with them. Gymnastics is stationary objects that don't change. So the specialization of the body becomes more important. You're adapting for, you're trying to adapt for the apparatus you're like climbing on, or sorry, performing on it. And in gymnastics it's always the same, but in climbing it's constantly changing and moving. And the best setters are the ones that make the field chase them in terms of movement style, what's coming up. So I think you've even seen this neutralized a little bit in the last two years is

if a certain style of athlete and movement is dominant, too dominant, like the Japanese were about two, three years ago, and they're obviously still amazing, the style of setting can change slightly to stop that happening. And I think what we'll see is if we start seeing really tall climbers constantly performing, then they will change the type of movement to make it bunch, poppy, dynamic, like catching in hard boxes. And then

the really short climbers constantly win, they'll make it harder again. And I think the one problem is it is always going to be biased towards the short because if you make something, like if the short athletes start to dominate, the only real way to make it easier for the taller athletes is to make it further apart. But then you're directly just making it too morphological. Like they just can't reach the holds and it's like a light and day difference.

There'll be a lot of criticism for a route setter taking that approach. Yeah, whilst if it's the tall climbers doing really well, you can make it more dynamic or make the hold smaller. The tall climbers technically could still do it and they would if they had more than four minutes on a boulder or on a route if they needed to work it. But it's always going to be more preferential to the short. So you'll always seem biased towards short athletes, but I don't think you'll ever go that short because again, it will make it too morphological.

So I actually think we're probably there already in some ways. The one thing is, is whether they start pushing certain types of movements more. So extreme flexibility. For example, everyone in the field now is really flexible. And we've that already to the most part, we? Yeah. And then extreme act like having more finger strength test testing. know, like they do the campus rose moves and stuff. It's like that is

success or no success. Most of them can do it, but maybe they'll make that even harder. So it's like a light and day difference between those who are strong enough. So then that might come down to body type again. But it doesn't mean that anyone who's different to that can't do it. It's just they will struggle to do it if they're heavier. And again, the lead climbing, it depends where they take it. I think that's the one where you'll start seeing lighter climbers like Jane Kim.

absolutely tiny and she's still performing so well in that but if they move lead climbing more towards bouldering style she's not going do as well. Yeah. So I think it depends on because she started doing really well again partly I think because we've gone more towards resistance. So yeah I hope we actually don't become too defined because at the moment I think that most climbers or most kids starting out

can gain a ticket to the Olympics if they dedicate like these athletes do. It's not like swimming where you need like broad shoulders, a thin waist, you need huge feet. And what's it, double jointed. Yeah. Yeah. Ankles and shoulders a lot of the time. And asthma, supposedly. Yeah, yeah. All these inhalers. If you want to get into the Tour de France, you need asthma for sure. yeah, exactly. That's what I think is the best thing about climbing is, outdoor climbing, you can be any body type and you'll find some way to play that to your strengths.

Yeah, and there's so many ways to train and we have our methods of training here and, but there's like so many ways of getting to a high standard, just finding what works with you as an individual, both psychologically and physically. And I think you see that massively across the sport because it's so varied. So I think we will see more specialization in LA, but hopefully not too much more. Yeah. Yeah.

I think a nice topic we can wrap up on is about the one percents. So if you've not heard of the rule of like one percent on marginal gains, I'm pretty sure it was popularized in

the London Olympics 2012 by British Cycling, where they spoke about marginal gains or the 1%. And there were, it was just all of the things they're doing outside of normal training. like having them wash their hands all the time before and after training sessions, just so there was like more germ control. People had a few less colds each year. Small tactics around everything to their lifestyle, which was these tiny marginal gains.

which means they would have one week more training because they didn't get a cold that year or something like that. What are the 1 % you think rock climbers are doing right now or could be employing? Yeah, it's funny. I find this quite an interesting topic because I've definitely gone down that rabbit hole. Probably went too far down there at some point. I'm a massive Dave Brailsford fan. he's the one who sort of became, was the hero that sort

popularized it, the figurehead I should say. It's interesting though because the reason why it started was in 2009 I think it was when British cycling really got some funding, was the idea of winning Olympic medals and being like, you know, trying to dominate the sport like they did so far away. There was just too daunting a goal. It's like most athletes, most climbers saying I want to climb 9a. It just seems too big. So, okay, what can we do tomorrow that's better than today?

and then what can we do the next day that's better than today? And they just kept chipping away. So wasn't even just the small things like the pillows or whatever they were using to sleep on. It was just literally day to day. But it's quite interesting that Bradley Wiggins came out and they said very publicly, like the 1 % thing is bullshit because at the end of the day, we were the ones on the bike doing the hard work. So it was down to the athlete. That stuff just was the tip of the iceberg. So I think,

I think Dave Railsford's agreed with that and so would I. So I think it's the way I would probably think the best way of looking at it is what can I do tomorrow that's better than today. Saying that, the things I have tried, and there's loads of stuff that climbing athletes don't do, and I think I've tried it with some athletes, but they find it too much to focus on. Again, I'm alongside everything else. I think it's overwhelming. so stuff like wearing compression garments during long flights to Asia.

because if you wear compression garments, it means that you're more likely to have less edema in your system. If you're walking up and down the plane, means you'll be able to train quicker and recover faster from the flight. It's making sure that your sleep times when you're traveling are totally on point. You prepare your body for the next time zone so that you've got less adaptation time there. It's making sure you get up in the morning. If you know your comp isolation zone opens at 6 a .m.,

and you're also when he wakes up at 10 a .m. all the time, you either need to make the decision to just absorb it on the day or start getting used to your body clock, used to training earlier and warming up earlier in the day. I've seen people training in like down jackets on a climbing wall to prepare for like competitions in Asia when it's gonna be really hot climates. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like using alcohol on your shoes before you go out, having a rag there, stuff like that

They're all small things, but they take a lot of focus and add on. And I've potentially pushed athletes too far in that direction sometimes because it's easy for me as a coach just to try and give them as much as I can. So I want them to do as best as possible. But you've got to think about what they can balance as well. And at the end of the day, like Bradley Wiggins says, it's them on the wall and on the climbs that make the difference. And you need to choose what one percent actually make a difference for you.

The biggest ones are don't get ill right now. If you're traveling, wear a mask. Yeah. Cause COVID's going around again. So make sure you don't get ill. Make sure you're eating really well, making sure you're looking after your healthcare. You know what clothes and things you like to travel with. So it's this controlled normality as much as possible and systems in place. But beyond that, it's just a case of trying to reduce shock on your body.

Yeah, I'm big fan of it but I think it's a, what's the word, it's like a really cool focus point for coaches and people that are supporting athletes. It made a cool headline I suppose as well and it's probably not as cool as it sounds. Yeah, I think it's all about increment, it's more about incremental gains when you're able to do those gains without a cost to something else.

Because if you constantly make one percent difference, like, you know, it suddenly becomes a 10 percent difference, which could be amazing, could translate straight away. But the likelihood is it's going to cost your energy somewhere else. And has it taken from the other 90 percent? Yeah. Because the 90 percent's probably going to get you there. Not the last 10. You need everything else consolidated to the point where it's not causing any stress. And then you can maybe make one change. Yeah. Maybe the temptation is like, well, I can make several one percent, but then it's just overwhelming.

Yeah, it's kind of like I see this in outdoor climbing a lot and I get asked stuff about this is what about doing this exercise? This would be a really good training exercise for me to do. we've not been consistent with your other ones for the last month. Why did like, let's stick with those first. This is a, if it gets you by in a motivation, that's great, but you'd be better off figuring out why am I not, why have I not got bought buy in and consistency with the other bits when you're at the crack.

is like, what do you think about this particular type of chalk or, you know, what about this food instead of this food and stuff? You're like, well, you didn't really warm up properly. What's your warm up routine? Does this happen at an Olympic standard? Are people still messing up with like warm up routines and rituals? Are they still dropping the ball on like the kind of stuff we would drop the ball on? Yes, but not because it's their fault. So a good example, Budapest Olympic qualifiers again.

It was really hot, like really, really hot. And then they had the warm up zone with brand new holds in the sun. athletes had to go there. They were putting ice blankets on themselves in between. They climb on the wall a bit, then they put ice blankets on. And the ones that are less experienced, like maybe got a bit too warmed up too soon. They got themselves a bit hot. You could see them coming out to compete and they were like flushed.

So I think there are mistakes, but I think it's because the variables change. You still do see some really silly mistakes. You see it in the Tour de France. Anyone who watches the Tour de France, there's a guy called Jasper Philipsen, Jasper the disaster they call him, because he just makes so many mistakes in his packing and there's all the other stuff going on. He forgets his helmet. You'll always have that kind of stuff, but generally speaking, I think they have their systems and they enjoy what they're doing.

Again, Budapest, think 40 athletes turned up late because of the taxes were so bad. They really into isolation. It's kind of not their fault. But at the same time, it's, you know, they've done it enough now. But stuff's always going to happen. So you've got to be you've got to reduce the uncertainty, have your systems, but also be flexible because it's not always going to go your way. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's all my questions. Is there anything

I want to talk about anything to training. Yeah, I think it's probably one thing that I've kind of alluded to in this is I do think that if anyone's aspiring to perform at the top level, whether it's indoors or outdoors, competition, juniors or adults, is you can probably think about your lifestyle and everything else that's around the climbing.

spending more time at a gym and making that experience as fun as possible is really, really important. And even if it just means going and playing on a slab for an extra 20 minutes at the end of a climbing day, so you've gone on the board, you train, your fingers feel tired, that time of going handless climbing on the slab, even if you're like an outdoor climber, doesn't do as much, it does make a big difference. And there are all the gains that you can make is what can I, can I spend another 20 minutes this week?

training and that can literally just be messing around and playing and learning movement and just keep taking those slow steps forward and then just keep analysing whether you are not able to do that because of your body, your motivation or because of other lifestyle factors. I think that's what the best way to make real gains is just keep making slow progress and don't underestimate the extra bits that you can do.

the extra play time and the extra stretching, all of those things. Because I think people can do a lot more than they think if their life allows them to do it. Do you think this like bolder play kind of open exploratory climbing stuff is the difference between someone that might make it to an elite climber climbing in the high eight versus someone that's actually world class?

Yeah, I would say the people that can enjoy that will do better generally. Like the people that do the training that I give them, I'll always include that sort of stuff to be fair in any training plan. Whether it's board climbing is effectively boulder play on a steep board. Realistically. Like those who will go into a gym and they'll go, I'm going to do five by three, like three times boulders, five times. I'm going to warm up, do that, leave. And then

no point in the week that they explore movement patterns will not go as far because they won't learn the process of understanding their body more and I think they won't get as much enjoyment out of it and it's the enjoyment and finding the environment that you're training in fun and relaxing not relaxing but fun and nice to be in and you really buy into that that means you'll be consistent it means you'll train more and you'll keep going back so yeah I think

adding in bolder play and learning to enjoy it, whether it's putting on some horrendous techno, putting on a podcast, doing it with your friends, doing it at a new gym every day or doing it on exactly the same board. Finding that way for you to explore movement and train where it doesn't cost you mentally, but gives you energy rather than takes it away, I think is massive. Yeah. Cool. I guess my

thoughts on the Olympics. Good luck to all the GB athletes. Yeah, might have heard it. Everyone can become an Olympic athlete because Ollie's told you all of the secrets. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Right. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye.