32: Andy McVittie, Climbing PT

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,880
So finger strength is just sort of maxed out and that's not how you're going to be able to

00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:11,040
differentiate between athletes. I'm getting patients coming to me saying, oh well of course

00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:17,920
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

00:00:17,920 --> 00:00:25,120
what happens in your 30s? Whereas you're still you know really young in your prime. So if you're

00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:30,400
expecting your period and it's late that is something that you should give some consideration

00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:37,040
to. Yeah there was a definite spike. Nothing interferes with improvement more than injury.

00:00:37,040 --> 00:00:43,200
You need consistency. So it's fine to step away a little early and finish feeling fresh.

00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:49,760
Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host Jinni and I'm

00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:56,320
excited to introduce my guest Andy McVittie. Andy is a climbing PT from Process Physiotherapy. He's

00:00:56,320 --> 00:01:01,600
been climbing for over 30 years, has coached in the past, and over time has noticed climbing injuries

00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:07,760
change as the style of climbing has evolved in the competition scene. In this episode we'll debunk

00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:13,040
some training and PT myths, talk about the differences between male and female climbers,

00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:19,280
and the types of injuries they face, and we'll hear about why he thinks fingers are strong enough.

00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:21,760
I hope you enjoy this episode with Andy.

00:01:30,960 --> 00:01:35,840
Real quick I'm excited to announce my new sponsor helping make this podcast episode possible,

00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:40,160
Mad Rock Climbing. I got fitted with their brand new line of high performance shoes,

00:01:40,160 --> 00:01:45,200
the D2.1s. They just came out December 6th but you might notice a few of your favorite

00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:51,120
GOM climbers are already wearing them like Oscar Baudran from Team Canada and also me.

00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:56,160
This is the first time I've gotten to wear their shoes for an extended period of time and I'm

00:01:56,160 --> 00:02:00,880
actually super impressed with the grip of their in-house rubber and of course the famous drone

00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:06,240
heel that everyone says is the cheat code to heel hooking small edges. Feel free to message me if

00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:11,360
you have any questions about the shoes or sizing and you can use the discount code notrealclimber

00:02:11,360 --> 00:02:17,760
for 10% off your entire Mad Rock order. Info will be in the description. Back to the show.

00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:20,400
How are you doing today? Excited for the holidays?

00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:24,560
Yeah, yeah. All set already. Got everybody's presents.

00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:25,280
Nice.

00:02:25,280 --> 00:02:30,080
One of those, I think I've had a good year this year for presents. We'll see.

00:02:30,080 --> 00:02:32,160
Yeah, presents stress me out so.

00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:36,240
Exactly. Yeah, it's just such a relief when you finally see that thing and you just like,

00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:40,080
ah, that's the thing. That'll do it.

00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:48,880
I can't do like a presents under pressure. If I see something in the moment, I want to get it for

00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:54,000
someone, but then if there's that deadline, it just, it goes out the window. I like don't,

00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:54,800
I can't do it.

00:02:54,800 --> 00:03:00,000
Yeah, presents under pressure. I like that. You can feel the stress exuding from that.

00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:00,480
Yeah.

00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:02,880
And then just like nothing good pops out to you.

00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:06,400
No, no, definitely not. And what about yourself? What do you do for the holidays?

00:03:06,400 --> 00:03:13,040
Um, not much really. I mean, I don't really celebrate any holidays just because it's like

00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:17,760
a lot of effort. And like, again, the whole presents under pressure thing, I just.

00:03:18,320 --> 00:03:25,520
I'm loving so many people now. I think one of the nice things about the climbing community is

00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:32,000
there's a lot of sort of intergenerational sort of mixing that goes on. So I spend a fair bit of

00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:37,520
time with people that are younger than my children, whatever that kind of thing. And people are just

00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:42,880
making such different choices nowadays. I mean, it may be a climbing thing as well. Climbing attracts

00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:48,560
a certain kind of person, doesn't it? But it's just, yeah, people are just like, no, that doesn't

00:03:48,560 --> 00:03:52,000
make me happy. So I'm not going to do that.

00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:52,240
Yeah.

00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:53,840
It's so refreshing.

00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:58,560
Yeah. I've noticed a lot of climbers just end up going climbing on Christmas or like climbing

00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:02,800
outside or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's even, yeah, career choices that kind of,

00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:08,640
well, not even career. They just, I want a job that's not too harsh, that gives me the income

00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:13,840
so I can go and climb or do the things that bring me pleasure. And I'm not lying awake in bed at

00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:16,640
night worrying about work. It's like, wow.

00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:20,720
I mean, as someone who's unemployed, yeah, that is what it's like.

00:04:20,720 --> 00:04:21,520
Okay. Yeah.

00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:28,000
Okay. So yeah, getting into the climbing stuff and I guess the culture and community,

00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:33,200
how did you get into climbing and then coaching and then eventually becoming a PT?

00:04:33,840 --> 00:04:39,200
Yeah. Yeah. It's been, yeah, I suppose when I look back a little bit of a journey, a bit longer than

00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:46,000
I thought. Yeah. So it's like 31 years of climbing now, I think.

00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:46,720
Oh, wow.

00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:48,000
Yeah. I know. Yeah.

00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:48,640
Congrats.

00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:53,600
Yeah. But also makes me think, oh, wow, maybe I'm older than I think I am.

00:04:53,600 --> 00:05:04,400
But yeah, I got into it. It was an activity at school that we did on a school trip where you

00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:09,360
went away into the countryside and did various things. They have these, the residential,

00:05:09,360 --> 00:05:16,160
they're called quite common in the UK. We'll go away for a week with the school and yeah,

00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:22,640
you do lots of different adventurous kind of activities. Tried climbing and I can still

00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:26,960
remember it now. I wouldn't be able to pick the climb or anything. I know which crag and

00:05:26,960 --> 00:05:31,280
or not heavy it was, but I can still remember. Yeah, it's totally like, wow, this is the thing

00:05:31,280 --> 00:05:36,400
for me. But I was quite young then, didn't know anybody else who climbed, didn't really,

00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:41,920
wasn't able to get into it. And so really it was when I got to university and they had a

00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:49,280
mountaineering club and it was like, oh right, there's my way in. It's all there for me.

00:05:49,280 --> 00:05:54,880
Yeah, so climbed recreationally, but I was actually, when I left university, I joined the

00:05:54,880 --> 00:06:02,160
police was my first career. Oh wow. Well, what was your degree, I guess? I guess I kind of assumed

00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:08,480
that your degree was going to be in physiotherapy. Yeah, but the first one basically was sports

00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:15,920
coaching, sports science. So I've always had that kind of within me. At that time, I was considering

00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:22,240
joining the armed services, the REF, and so it didn't matter what degree I did. They just said,

00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:27,360
pick a degree that you're interested in. So I thought, yeah, cool, sports science, coaching,

00:06:27,360 --> 00:06:33,280
that sounds good. So I did that. Then decided not to join the armed forces, went into the police

00:06:34,400 --> 00:06:42,560
and continued to climb through that time. And then had a career change, became an outdoor instructor.

00:06:42,560 --> 00:06:50,960
And this is back really before coaching was a thing. It was instruction, safety instruction,

00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:56,640
that kind of thing. Coaching wasn't really around. You mean in general or just for climbing?

00:06:56,640 --> 00:07:01,200
For climbing, yeah, for climbing. All the other sports for climbing, they're still quite resistant

00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:06,000
to it. It would be like, well, that's not how we do it in climbing. That's frowned upon,

00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:10,640
but like training, people used to train in secret because you didn't know what they were doing.

00:07:10,640 --> 00:07:16,240
You didn't want to admit that you were training to get better. It may just be a British thing.

00:07:18,560 --> 00:07:23,120
You know, there's people at school who claim that they never do any revision or homework,

00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:28,880
but they get poor marks in all the exams. Yeah, a bit like that, but nobody could admit that they

00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:36,800
trained. I wanted to give a little bit extra and Neil Gresham was the first person to start up with

00:07:36,800 --> 00:07:42,640
like an actual coaching qualification. So I went down to London where he was at the time and spent

00:07:42,640 --> 00:07:54,400
the week there and got some basic coaching input from him. Then I moved to Spain and was working

00:07:54,400 --> 00:08:01,200
on performance at climbing holidays where people would want to improve their grade. So they would

00:08:01,200 --> 00:08:09,680
come on a one week, two week holiday and get coached basically to improve and sort of covered

00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:14,720
everything. I came back from Spain then. I ended up working in climbing balls while I finally

00:08:14,720 --> 00:08:22,160
retrained again as a physiotherapist. That's when I did get my physiotherapy degree and continued

00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:30,640
there. That sort of grew, ended up starting a competition squad there and helping run that.

00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:35,600
Then eventually going off self-employed, myself and my coaching partner at the time early,

00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:43,840
formed a competition squad. Now, although physiotherapy is my main part of it,

00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:50,880
I've been coaching for nearly 16 years. I still have a couple of people that I coach. That's more

00:08:50,880 --> 00:08:59,840
just interesting, fun, psych rather than being on the ground of competition coaching.

00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:02,320
So you no longer have a competition squad?

00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:10,240
No, no, no, not anymore. Once the climbing physiotherapy grew, I've been in physio for

00:09:10,240 --> 00:09:19,440
a while, but only full-time climbing physio for the last three years. That was never going to be

00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:24,560
a thing a few years ago. You couldn't support yourself. There weren't enough climbers around.

00:09:24,560 --> 00:09:33,920
There wasn't the attitude as well that you would go and see a physio for an injury. Again, I think

00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:38,960
things potentially changed. That used to once be a badge of honor as to how many injuries you had,

00:09:38,960 --> 00:09:40,000
but you were still climbing.

00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:44,640
Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess that still is kind of a thing.

00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:52,240
It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, the climbing physio has come about. The usual,

00:09:52,240 --> 00:09:58,000
the usual, most physiotherapists who climb will treat friends and help friends, that kind of thing,

00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:01,600
advise or what have you. And then that just grew.

00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:07,840
When you started out with sports science back in the day, did you do other sports or what?

00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:19,840
Yeah, so rugby to a reasonably okay level, played for the county. We did well at university as well

00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:29,040
at rugby. We got through to high level national competitions and running actually. I don't do

00:10:29,040 --> 00:10:36,320
that so much nowadays, but long distance running. I was a sprinter when I was young, but then get

00:10:37,040 --> 00:10:40,800
ultra mountain marathon. Oh really?

00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:46,880
Yes, I ended up with that. That takes quite a lot of time, quite a lot of energy.

00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:51,840
And that's come to the conclusion that I couldn't keep us going.

00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:57,440
Yeah, I only learned about ultra marathons like probably within the past few months. I couldn't

00:10:57,440 --> 00:11:00,480
believe it at first. I didn't know it was a real thing that people could actually do.

00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:06,240
Yeah, it's amazing. The human body is just fantastic. When I think actually having just

00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:12,880
said all that of all the different things I've done with my body and that it's adapted to,

00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:17,840
it wasn't like any of these I was like super gifted at. And now that have I done them to an

00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:23,760
amazingly high level, but it's like if you give it the time and the space and the correct information

00:11:23,760 --> 00:11:30,320
to work with, your body will do most things. Absolutely amazing. It's a fantastic, fantastic

00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:33,520
bit of kit. Yeah, so yeah, you mentioned that you've

00:11:33,520 --> 00:11:38,480
been climbing for a long time. You kind of touched on like the evolution you've seen over the years.

00:11:38,480 --> 00:11:42,080
How does that kind of affect the injuries that you've seen people come in with?

00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:50,320
Yeah, so originally treating friends, that type of thing, often like at the crag where

00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:56,160
something would happen, somebody would come over holding their finger, compared by that,

00:11:56,160 --> 00:12:01,280
this has just happened, but what do you think this is? And it was predominantly fingers.

00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:07,120
People would worry, I think, about fingers. Fingers would cause them enormous pain.

00:12:07,120 --> 00:12:12,720
Fingers would cause them enough anxiety that they wanted to reach out for some help.

00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:19,280
Whereas if they fell off and badly sprained their ankle, they would just be like, well,

00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:25,360
that just happens. It will get better. It will be okay. Or shoulders, similarly. Elbows,

00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:34,640
that type of thing. People just certainly used to, still do to an extent, just not

00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:44,160
seek treatment for it, just tough up and get on with it. But fingers was always the most commonly,

00:12:44,160 --> 00:12:50,080
and that's backed up from research back then, not about people accessing help or treatment,

00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:57,760
but which parts of you injured over that, whatever. Yeah, fingers, definitely the majority,

00:12:57,760 --> 00:13:02,960
I would suggest, the things that you'd see. Now it's everything, which is really nice,

00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:09,520
because if you just saw fingers all the time, as interesting and as great as it is working with

00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:16,480
climbers, and every finger injury is a bit different, yeah, I think I'd be a little bit bored

00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:22,960
if it was just fingers all the time. Okay, yeah. And so I guess, specifically in the competition

00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:30,080
scene, they don't really set crimpy, fingery stuff too often. I mean, that's definitely part of it,

00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:36,480
but I don't think the limiting factors, people's finger strength a lot of the times when it comes

00:13:36,480 --> 00:13:43,200
to competition climbing. So yeah, do you feel like you see other stuff in the competition space?

00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:53,200
Yeah, absolutely. And it has been an interesting and very rapid evolution within the competition

00:13:53,200 --> 00:14:00,400
space, definitely. And yes, you're right, athletes this generation have just got to the point where

00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:07,600
you can't really make a hole small enough for them not to be able to crimp it. They're using bolt holes,

00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:12,960
aren't they? They're using screw holes. They're using the side of volumes to dig into it with the

00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:18,640
fingernails and that type of thing. So finger strength is just sort of maxed out, and that's

00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:24,560
not how you're going to be able to differentiate between athletes. That combined with what became

00:14:25,280 --> 00:14:39,120
the fantastic sort of visual spectacle of the 2020, 2021 Olympics, the way to differentiate

00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:44,400
athletes became about that uncertainty of movement, didn't it? The ability to read a problem,

00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:49,040
get it right first time, have the movement literacy and the confidence in the competition

00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:56,880
scenario to be able to go for these low percentage moves and pull them off, as opposed to how hard

00:14:56,880 --> 00:15:03,440
can you hold? Then you have the big colorful holds, big dynamic moves, all this type of thing

00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:09,600
that look spectacular and drew the crowd. And it worked, didn't it? Because climbing absolutely

00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:15,760
exploded after that and obviously is now included, hopefully long-term in the Olympics.

00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:25,360
But it's that type of movement, much greater peak loads. If you're jumping to something

00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:30,240
and actually going for it, hitting it with one hand, whereas often in the past you would still

00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:36,000
have the other hand on, so there's much more stability through the body. A lot more rotational

00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:45,200
forces, both sort of intentional and unintentional. You've got the 360 moves now that everybody likes

00:15:45,200 --> 00:15:51,360
to see, that kind of thing. But even just hitting something, when you look at what happens in

00:15:53,760 --> 00:15:59,120
Yan Yur and whatever, and the Cobra kick that she really almost kicks us up in the back of her own

00:15:59,120 --> 00:16:08,480
head, doesn't she, when she's doing that? The ranges that the body is tested through. A lot

00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:15,440
more single arm work, which then upsets wrists as well, because you're having to control through

00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:28,560
the wrist. Just a great difference in the movement patterns. There was a narrative review rather than

00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:37,840
a true research project done in 2020, 2021. Looking at that, I'm predicting that was

00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:44,800
Chris Lutter, who's a orthopedic surgeon who works with Volker Schoffel. I don't know if you've ever

00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:55,920
heard of him. He's like the... has been for ages. Super keen climber, German orthopedic surgeon,

00:16:56,960 --> 00:17:06,160
runs a surgery that specializes in outdoor related incidents, accidents and surgery.

00:17:06,160 --> 00:17:14,320
They looked at the movement patterns, the changes, and they predicted actually what we're now seeing

00:17:14,320 --> 00:17:20,000
three or four years later, because obviously what is in the Olympics then feeds through into local

00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:26,800
competition and local setting in climbing walls, because everybody wants to have a go at that type

00:17:26,800 --> 00:17:35,120
of thing. Much more shoulders is the biggest change, really. A lot more shoulders. The other

00:17:35,120 --> 00:17:43,840
one, pushing as well. Never used to push. Now there's all of this going on in some real

00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:52,640
positions that when you get your biomechanical head on and you look at what somebody's doing,

00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:59,360
and I'm going like, oh man, how could you hit? Yeah, some of the push moves are definitely pretty

00:17:59,360 --> 00:18:10,800
extreme. Yeah, yeah. I've chatted with people before about in competition, youth competition,

00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:23,600
you get some feedback, often from slightly unhappy parents of the third child. But my child got

00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:31,840
injured on that problem. It was dangerous. Why have you set it? They set it on the other. Often

00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:37,440
there will be something underlying why they ended up getting injured on that. They might have had a

00:18:37,440 --> 00:18:44,960
shoulder injury and that push move then injured them. But I really believe that setters set a

00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:53,200
challenge. As long as it's not overtly dangerous, which I've never seen, it's up to the athlete

00:18:53,200 --> 00:19:00,240
to decide whether they accept that challenge or not. That's part of being a competitive,

00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:06,400
high-level athlete. You have to be aware of yourself. Is that for me? I have to have that

00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:15,600
discipline, that talk within for youth, coach, climber, caregiver. How should I be doing this

00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:24,720
competition? That type of thing and injuries that come out of competition are not the root setters

00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:32,000
for. There's really no move that you've seen set in competition locally or in the IFSC where you're

00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:38,240
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

00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:48,880
to mind. No. What I often say is I certainly see things that I think like, wow, how are they able

00:19:48,880 --> 00:19:58,480
to do that? If I even attempted to do that, that would injure me. But so would playing a game of

00:19:58,480 --> 00:20:12,560
professional soccer. That would injure me. I'm not trained in that way at all. What's the injury rate

00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:18,800
in IFSC competition? I guess I don't know. Actually, in the competitions itself, yeah,

00:20:20,320 --> 00:20:27,920
good point. Sorry if that's kind of why I'm here. It's not that high. There is always

00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:36,080
likely to be a higher injury rate in competition than in practice. But yeah, but it's not off the

00:20:36,080 --> 00:20:45,760
scale. I can't think of a problem or a route where it's been like, oh, athlete A has been injured.

00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:53,760
Next one, oh, athlete B has been injured on that problem and can't continue or is noticeably now

00:20:53,760 --> 00:21:01,280
limping after doing it or holding their feet and that being a common thing on a particular problem.

00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:07,200
Interesting. Okay. Oh man, I wish I had thought of, tried to look through some old comps and see if

00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:13,120
there was anything that was super dangerous. I guess the only thing that comes to mind most

00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:23,280
recently is maybe the Salt Lake World Cup where there was a jump onto a dual-text slide onto a

00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:30,880
little chip thing. I feel like I maybe remember an injury or two there. But also like Natalia was

00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:36,720
already kind of injured. So yeah, my memory's a little foggy. Okay. Yeah. And that potentially

00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:44,240
then is the, you know, route setters have got to set for what they, you know, for fully fit athletes.

00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:48,720
They can't start accounting for, oh, somebody might have this or somebody might have that.

00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:54,240
And then it's up to the athlete, whether they accept that challenge that their setters have

00:21:55,680 --> 00:22:01,440
set. And sometimes that will feel unfair because sometimes you will have something that limits you

00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:07,520
and you might not be able to do that. But that's, again, that's part of being an athleteism,

00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:13,520
unfortunately, but you're not going to be a hundred percent all the time. Okay. Kind of a

00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:19,120
surprising take to hear from a PT. That's interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I don't

00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:26,640
think we're, as a whole, you know, particularly in sports, physio, I don't think we're very,

00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:31,680
you know, we're trying to help people become robust and strong and to be able to do these

00:22:31,680 --> 00:22:38,400
amazing things with their body. And if you're like, oh, oh, I don't think you should or, oh,

00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:43,360
crap, no, we better be super, yeah, they're not going to get there, are they? Yeah, that's true.

00:22:43,360 --> 00:22:47,440
Obviously not if they've just been injured, you know, if they've got an acute new injury,

00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:51,680
you're not going to say, oh, we're going to ignore that and just put it on. But, you know, rehab is

00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:59,200
finished when they're able to do those kind of things with no anxiety. That's a huge factor,

00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:06,160
especially in competitive athletes. And, you know, there's, again, a fair bit of research showing

00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:14,640
that a lot of people who, I'm going to rough figures here, but about 90% of people following

00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:18,960
a moderate level injury, you know, something that's taking you out of the sport for a while,

00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:25,760
about 90% of people will regain all their physical abilities that they had before that.

00:23:25,760 --> 00:23:32,080
But only about 60, I think it's about 64, 65% of people actually make it back to the same level

00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:40,000
that they were before. And that, they believe, is anxiety around that injury, recurrence, and

00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:46,480
yeah, that type of thing. So it's amazing that the high level athletes do. Well, I guess they have to.

00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:54,880
Which is interesting in itself, isn't it? Yeah, their drive and, yeah, is that a good thing?

00:23:54,880 --> 00:24:00,960
That they have to, you know? Yeah, we know from lots of other sports, don't we, that people are,

00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:06,880
okay, we're just going to give you an injection to get through this game. No, that type of thing.

00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:11,680
That's the trade-off of pro athletes. I mean, yeah, I think that's a really good way to

00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:18,560
look at it, that like anything can kind of be overcome. Is there any move that you see that

00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:23,920
really just, it just like kind of scares you? I just want to know. It's just something I really

00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:30,560
want to know. I don't think so, no, because they're all so amazingly prepared. Like for example,

00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:36,320
when they get around these curve balls that happen every so often, like when suddenly like

00:24:37,360 --> 00:24:43,360
cracks start appearing, you know? Oh gosh, when there was, I don't know if you saw this one, but

00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:51,920
there was like a kind of jump into like a crack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that set in

00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,840
local final balls, you know, that kind of thing. And you could look at that and think like,

00:24:55,840 --> 00:25:01,360
wow, that's a bit, yeah. But again, it's there and it's for people to choose whether they

00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:08,800
do it or not. And yeah, but they adapted within a handful of months. They'd become like masterful

00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:16,880
crack climbers. You know, they're just so adaptive and so amazing at what they do. And now with all

00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:23,280
the incredibly dynamic movements and the timing and the coordination and such that goes on,

00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:29,360
I think they can just see. And they also know what their bodies can do. They're quite a lot more

00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:39,280
aware, I feel, than say your standard climber of, you know, can I do that? No, I'm going to have to

00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:43,520
adapt it and try and, which is why you see them trying to work around things sometimes, isn't it?

00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:51,040
Because they almost don't want to do the version of it that they may be kind of getting funneled

00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:55,600
or forced into doing for whatever reason it might be. And sometimes that's just, yeah, it might feel

00:25:55,600 --> 00:26:01,120
like I've not got the ability to do that. Yeah, but no doubt, yeah, sorry, I haven't seen anything

00:26:01,120 --> 00:26:05,440
that I can think of at the minute that makes me, I'm sure someone somewhere will be able to come up

00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:10,480
with something or find something, send me a clip and I'll send you a video back of me going,

00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:21,440
oh, but yeah, because I couldn't, my shoulder, for example, could probably not deal with a lot of the

00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:29,840
moots and things, the giant leaps and stuff that they do. Yeah, but there's can. Yeah, I mean, I

00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:34,640
guess speaking of shoulders, so this is kind of like a, this is a personal thing for me. My shoulders

00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:41,680
have just been messed up for like years now. I can't even really like hang on one arm without

00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:48,640
pain at this point right now. And I see so many comp climbers landing like one arm dinos where

00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:56,240
they're just like flying back, hanging on one arm. And I desperately wish I could like rehab myself

00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:02,800
to get to that point again. How, I mean, they make it look so easy too. It's not even the

00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:08,000
like they're putting any strength into it. It just kind of looks like they're hanging off of it.

00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:15,120
Yeah. And I just, how do I get to that point where my shoulder isn't messed up so I can do that?

00:27:15,120 --> 00:27:22,240
So if we were both to break down what they're doing and also to look at what kind of a plan might look

00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:28,320
like for somebody. Yeah. And that's quite common. And that's also an example of people give quite

00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:34,960
often. They'll say, I can climb, but I can't hang one hand. And I really don't like the thought of

00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:40,480
going for a dynamic move and having to hit it. So it's something that they come across quite often.

00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:47,840
And really for me, why it looks effortless for them is because they're relaxed when they do it.

00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:53,280
So they're not already full of tension and movement. This is what we've said before about

00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:58,800
the difference with anxiety and why people don't get back to where they were going or where they

00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:06,000
previously were. Their timing is impeccable. And by that, I mean, as they hit the hold,

00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:11,600
it's at that dead point. This is where the term comes from, isn't it? Where they're not moving up,

00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:16,240
they're not moving down. They have that time and space to hold it. So the peak loads

00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:23,200
are shooting up there. Whereas perhaps when myself and yourself grab one of these holes,

00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:27,440
yeah, we'd sort of snatching for it. We've not got it quite so well. And there's a great big

00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:33,280
shock that comes through. We don't know how to control our body, like the scorpion kick,

00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:38,160
cobra kick, whatever you might want to call it, whatever. That's all about absorbing that energy

00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:43,440
and then bringing it back in, in a way that doesn't pull you off the wall. But I probably

00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:48,320
wouldn't do that. I'd just try and grab on as I could. And my solution to coming off would be to

00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:54,080
hold on harder rather than relaxing into it. So there's a look at the actual mechanics of what

00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:59,680
goes on and that needs to be understood. But then it's finding what the issue is with the shoulder,

00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:04,720
obviously, and there can be numerous things. It may be structural, there might be a joint issue

00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:10,320
going on. I could take a stab and if this is something that's been going on for quite some

00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:18,000
time, your words have messed up for years, which I would also address the use of the language there

00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,960
and say, come on, it's made, yeah. It turns so negative on yourself. I'm sure they're not,

00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:30,960
you know, that you're still able to do things with them. They're functional. And I find a lot

00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:38,080
of this, you address that underlying issue. So we might have a rotator cuff injury from a long time

00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:43,360
ago. And let's say for argument's sake, that was from trying to do a dyno and a Matt classic,

00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:50,800
oh, I've wrenched my shoulder. It didn't really like that kind of thing. There's a lot of muscles

00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:57,760
that insert into the shoulder and they all work in wonderful coordination to create movement and

00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:06,000
also to hold the ball and the socket nice and stable in the joint. If through injury, some of

00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:13,840
that is a bit totally non-technical turn out of whack. Yeah. That coordination has been affected.

00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:18,320
Things are not working how they should. So climbing on it is actually causing irritation.

00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:26,640
The body's great at protecting itself. Yeah. It will dial down the ability of a muscle to

00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:33,680
output force in order to protect itself. What the body's not so great at doing is bringing that

00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:41,280
muscle back into full use. The nervous system will kind of check in with the shoulder and go,

00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:48,320
is it okay? Yeah. Okay is good enough. It doesn't know you would really like to do a one-armed dyno.

00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:55,120
Yeah. It's like, are we under threat? No. Okay, then we're just going to leave the shoulder

00:30:55,120 --> 00:31:01,600
how it is. And you can correct that through strengthening. You can get your external

00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:07,760
rotation working, correct the shoulder. What's often missing at the end is that bringing it back

00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:15,840
into coordination in sport specific movements and patterns essentially. And that does two things.

00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:21,840
One is it tells the nervous system, we need this shoulder to work in this way, make that happen.

00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:28,480
Yeah. Bring everything back. And it also builds your confidence at the same time. So your movement

00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:33,440
patterns are natural and relaxed and how they should be, which gives you more head space with

00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:38,240
programming and such that rather than worrying about your shoulder. So often what gets missed,

00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:45,120
even if somebody's strengthened or healed, you're treated the underlying issue is that last part of

00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:50,400
bringing it back into a sport specific kind of environment, if you like. And that's where this

00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:58,000
further down the rehab you are, the more it should look like training, basically. Yeah.

00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:05,200
There could be drills, technique drills, strength drills, warm up recruitment work to do.

00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:09,920
I guess the hard part is kind of like when it comes to these more extreme moves where

00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:15,920
you're landing on one arm or you're like landing this intense move where you just get a lot of

00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:23,280
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

00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:27,200
like if you're going to land it or if you're going to be able to hold it or something like that.

00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:32,640
Yeah. And people don't, you might warm up, you might have climbed quite a bit in the session

00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:39,360
already on climbs of a different character, a different nature to them. And then you suddenly,

00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:45,600
you know, pew moves into this problem that maybe you've not looked at properly and you're like,

00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:51,280
oh wow, okay, big day, no. Or you may have chosen it to go to. Do warm that up. Yeah. You can

00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:58,720
go to find a bar, fingerboard with big jugs on it, that type of thing. Stand on a chair,

00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:03,920
drop your feet off the chair in a really nice controlled way. There's a thing I had called

00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:08,240
foot up catches, which if anybody's listening to this who's worked with me, we'll probably know.

00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:17,360
And it's a way of gradually shot loading either fingers, wrists, shoulders. So you go under a bar

00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:25,360
or a fingerboard, pull on it with feet on the floor. If you take roughly, because this is done

00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:32,000
by feel, half of your body weight through your arms and then you're going to be able to do a

00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:39,120
round and then pick your feet up off the floor quickly. You've just shot loaded in effect,

00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:45,520
your system with 50% of your body weight. That's a nice starting point and you can progress in

00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:50,160
there, depending on what your level is. I get people doing this, you know, single arm, sometimes

00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:57,440
single arm on an edge, sometimes on the bar. There's work you can do on a TRX, you know,

00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:03,440
rings where you're dynamically pulling yourself from catching yourself on the rings as you fall

00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:08,400
backwards, that type of thing, but done with feet on the floor, leaning backwards, you pick the angle,

00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:14,880
you pick how big the move is, all done by feel. There's jump and catching a bar that feels nice,

00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:21,520
scared. Jump and catch a bar and swing. Jump and catch the bar, swing, then come into a pull-up.

00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:28,560
Yeah, all this, it's just creating lots of, you know, you've got that, the move started to coordinate,

00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:34,480
catch, then swing through, then bring it under control and turn into a pull because that's what

00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:39,840
we do in climbing. So there's that, that's off the wall and then there's getting on the wall.

00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,760
If you're getting things like, yeah, on spray walls, symmetrical boards, that kind of thing,

00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:52,880
drills to be, it's a technique. You can't expect to just go, all right, I'm here, that hole's there,

00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:57,920
I've not really done much of this. Yeah, suddenly I'm going to be able to do like Yanja does it.

00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:02,320
You know, she does it how she does it because she's done it thousands of times.

00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:07,440
Yeah, actually, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't think about warming up in that way, but yeah,

00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:09,120
I should probably start doing that a little bit more.

00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:18,720
Yeah, or even partway through a session. I often see people, so pockets are quite an injury seam

00:35:18,720 --> 00:35:26,720
at the moment and an open-handed work and people will warm up. They might be pulling on edges,

00:35:26,720 --> 00:35:30,720
you know, other, and that kind of thing, warming up going through, but they've not pulled on pockets

00:35:30,720 --> 00:35:36,320
and they'll get halfway through a session and setters do have a bit of a habit of, it's like

00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:42,160
they find a pocket in the holes they're working with and then they go and they'll create a line

00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:48,000
of pockets. I don't know if it's just a UK thing. Yeah, they do. There's just like a theme, isn't

00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,960
there suddenly? And it's like, oh yeah. It's never just one.

00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:56,160
No, no, it's a bit of them. And so you'll go from, yeah, okay, you're quite warmed up,

00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:00,240
but not for pockets, which is a totally different mode coming through the fingers.

00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:06,080
And then suddenly you're expecting to be pulling quite hard on pockets. Yeah, go find the

00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:10,480
fingerboard, go do some hanging, you know, three finger, two finger, that kind of thing,

00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,280
warm it up, then go back and crush. Don't just jump on it.

00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:17,360
Yeah. And I guess I kind of wanted to touch on something that you had mentioned

00:36:18,240 --> 00:36:23,440
before we were doing this interview where you said that you think fingers are strong enough.

00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:36,640
Yeah. Yeah. There is now the ability to measure how hard somebody is pulling on a hold while

00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:42,560
they're doing the problem. We've got the gadgets now, technology, things that used to cost

00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:49,600
thousands now cost hundreds or less. It turned out, yeah, I was doing a

00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:57,440
workshop with some coaches a while ago and quite a while ago, he'd made something himself,

00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:02,560
like a good few years ago to see, he was actually using it for feats to see the

00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:07,280
weighting that was going on within his feet and it would get a live readback on a little screen.

00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:11,280
Oh, interesting. This is like, you know, he's made it himself from some computer bits and all this kind of

00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,160
whereas now, yeah, you can get, you know, the force gauges that you can attach into a hold

00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:23,440
and look at and read. And what we see is that what people are able to, you know,

00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:28,800
these kind of feats of strength where somebody might be taking the middle bottom rung on the

00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:35,680
Beastmaker 2000, body weight, lock off, holding other, you know, weights in the hand and that

00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:42,960
kind of thing. So able to, you know, 70, 80, 90 kilos through one arm and not hitting anywhere

00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:49,360
near that when we're actually climbing. And so you definitely need to train

00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:59,040
beyond what you're going to experience in performance. Yeah, because if you've only

00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:04,480
trained to this level and performances at this level, your tissues are going to struggle with

00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:10,080
that and you will get injured. But yeah, so we definitely need to be a little stronger than we

00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:20,000
need to be. But as these are still just about the most commonly injured part of our body, then maybe

00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:25,440
we could afford them a little more space and not hammer them quite so hard and look at other

00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:32,800
aspects. It's also quite easy for everybody to think, I fell off. What feedback have I got? Well,

00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:40,160
my hands came off. If my hands were stronger, I would be able to stay on. And so we go down a

00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:46,880
line of only strum the fingers as opposed to thinking maybe it was my hip position. Maybe,

00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:52,160
yeah, I was hanging out at the hips and that pulled me off the wall. Did my foot slip, you know,

00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:57,040
whatever it might be, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we just go towards

00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:03,840
the fingers. I mean, I think people are going to want to know like a number of like,

00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:10,880
once I hit this, I can stop training my fingers. Oh my gosh. Right. No, that's a terrible question.

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.

00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:27,040
We know this is beneficial for climbing, great overall body strength, exercise, we'll get triple

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

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?

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

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

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,

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.

00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:21,760
That's different. That's recruitment. That's contact strength. That's coordination of the

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

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

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,

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:39,520
helpful or not? Many thoughts. So please excuse this brief intermission, but if you're interested

00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:44,880
in deleted scenes from this episode where he debunks another PT myth concerning push-pull

00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:50,640
muscle imbalance and what training should look like for comp climbers, do consider helping support

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,

00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:02,640
prioritize guest questions or the ability to submit video questions and more to come. The

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

00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:12,640
the guests. If you'd like to help out non-monetarily, liking, commenting, and sharing

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:48,080
ability to rebuild itself. So KT tape is an interesting one. It provides no support whatsoever

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

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

00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:07,760
of stretchy bandage is not going to hold that shoulder together if their shoulders and liniments

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

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

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

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

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.

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

00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:59,440
bit more attention. That's at the subconscious level. So essentially more brain computing power

00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:05,280
is going towards looking after that ankle or shoulder now than it otherwise would have been.

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,

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

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

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

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

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

00:45:51,920 --> 00:46:04,560
now, then yeah, no side effects. All good. Ice, yeah, as an acute treatment is good.

00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,600
Professional athletes would likely use that slightly differently than we would. They're

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

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

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

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

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

00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:52,080
people really and all these, except for cupping, which I believe from having looked at literature,

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

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

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,

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

00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,920
false confidence that they otherwise shouldn't have? That would be bad. Is it making somebody

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?

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

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

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

00:47:55,120 --> 00:48:02,160
better? Yeah. Does it feel nice? Yeah, yeah. Is that priceless sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

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

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

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

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

00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:32,720
full-time employed masseurs, won't they? Yeah. Yeah, because it can make the difference between

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

00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:46,960
medal stickers? I never got a clear answer listening to the commentary on what it is

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,

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

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,

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

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

00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:36,800
or three months. And it was some traditional medicine thing from, yeah, Asian country.

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.

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.

00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,840
Yeah. No, in terms of, right, I'm going to make a note,

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

00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:07,200
for the average person, just the basics are very important. But then when we're watching

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

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

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,

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.

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

00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:44,000
basics for years. Yeah. And you're likely still going to climb after work, finishing late,

00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:49,600
rushing down a hurried meal on your way home. Yeah. Getting back home, getting self-sorted

00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,760
the next day, not getting enough sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that.

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

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

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

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,

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,

00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:39,280
what? Why? What happens in your thirties? You're still really young in your prime.

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

00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:57,280
generalized statements, but there's quite some information that gets rehashed quite often is this

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,

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.

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

00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:25,680
recommendations for that, the cardio, strength, this and the other. So already by being active

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:18,800
keep what you've got really quite easily. That it isn't an inevitable decline.

00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:26,880
And it's not so much about aging, I suppose, but the story that you said,

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

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

00:54:40,240 --> 00:54:47,680
in the mountains anymore rather than let's get those legs strong enough and robust enough.

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

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,

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

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

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

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?

00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:35,920
Because I mean, we definitely see these are really high level athletes. They're definitely

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

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,

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,

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.

00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:07,520
Yeah. And so why do those people, sometimes it's mental burnout, competition is stressful,

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,

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

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

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

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

00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:40,080
thing. Or yeah, the physical side of things, but what they put themselves through is greatly

00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:46,560
different to what we put ourselves through. The amount of training, the amount of volume,

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,

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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,

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:37,440
and the effect that has on the body and the mind and your psyche, your determination.

00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:41,280
Lots of people, when you hear sports, people talk about retiring and they say,

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,

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

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

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?

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,

00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:21,600
because he's not old, but he's maybe old compared to his contemporaries.

00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:25,280
Definitely up there. I mean like, Jai and Cam obviously.

00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:32,480
Yeah, yeah. Still absolutely, but yeah, I was absolutely smashing it. Yeah, and just seems to

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

00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:48,560
internet and you could be watching some grainy footage of a competition from somewhere. Yeah,

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

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

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

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,

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,

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

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,

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,

01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:56,000
go for competitions, what is the average age for leaving and the reasons why. Yeah, true.

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

01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:05,920
this reason, that reason, or actually there might be a reason behind it seems.

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

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,

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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,

01:02:12,800 --> 01:02:18,880
yeah, and as you say, particularly bouldering. I think that's a really interesting question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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,

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

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

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

01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:42,320
necessarily mistakes, but just almost like admin errors where they don't define a variable

01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:49,360
accurately. Anybody else who's doing some research in that area, you can compare the results.

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

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,

01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:06,240
basically. You can't do these comparisons. But where we do have some really good results,

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%

01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:23,440
of injuries in climbing are chronic injuries, not acute. So that overuse, overload, under recovery,

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,

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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,

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.

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

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

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

01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:21,520
there. I need to give this some attention, because what often happens with injuries is

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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,

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

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.

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

01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:29,360
the current research out there between male and female climbers. Yeah, I'm definitely really

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?

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

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

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

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

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

01:08:10,640 --> 01:08:14,960
qualitative research or a lot of kind of like questionnaires to people, that type of thing,

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

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

01:08:27,840 --> 01:08:35,280
research. And I'm aware that the terms are a little interchangeable, men, women, female, male,

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

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

01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:54,720
going to categorise people within that and within research. Again, I stick with that.

01:08:54,720 --> 01:09:00,640
So, yeah, two really, really good papers that he's done. One in particular was,

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

01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:23,360
elite IFSC competitors, asking them about their injury history, how often they get injured.

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

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

01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:46,160
of hundred who answered the questionnaire, felt that they had disordered eating of some sort.

01:09:46,160 --> 01:09:47,680
It's a lot.

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.

01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:54,400
True.

01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:59,920
And people who are aware enough themselves that they have that, that aren't in denial,

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.

01:10:06,320 --> 01:10:16,000
And that doubled the people within disordered eating. It doubled your

01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:23,360
chance of injury. Yeah. If that makes sense. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you,

01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:28,960
it's one of those statistical things within research. It's not actually that hugely

01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:33,440
significant. It's like saying something is doubled, but it's gone from one to two.

01:10:33,440 --> 01:10:33,920
Sure.

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,

01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:46,800
yeah, a huge correlation there. But I thought, yeah, really, really interesting. So that one,

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.

01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:59,840
And the second one is painfully ignorant. And that was looking at the impact of gender

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,

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

01:11:13,680 --> 01:11:20,800
differences between injury rates, injury types between the genders? And again, that showed

01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:27,200
shoulders a different population. So this wasn't IFSC climbers again. Yeah. This was like general

01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:34,640
climbers. But again, yeah, shoulders came out top for women, whereas for men, it was still

01:11:34,640 --> 01:11:38,560
significantly fingers. And then-

01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:42,240
Do you mean like just in terms of injury rates or-

01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:50,640
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. So for women, shoulders, 35% of them reported a shoulder injury

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

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,

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,

01:12:15,200 --> 01:12:20,640
fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers. And then just suddenly, since this is 2024, this peak,

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

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,

01:12:34,160 --> 01:12:39,920
it comes back to what we were saying before really about movement, different movement patterns,

01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:46,240
rotational forces, higher peak loads, bigger moves, jumps, more one-armed stuff, that kind of

01:12:46,240 --> 01:12:59,840
thing. And although there are female problems and routes, male problems and routes, in general

01:12:59,840 --> 01:13:07,600
training, everybody climbs the same stuff. So these IFSC climbers, when they go to Innsbruck

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

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

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.

01:13:29,360 --> 01:13:34,720
So potentially their shoulders could be a little bit more susceptible anyway, just genetically.

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

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

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,

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

01:14:04,240 --> 01:14:12,320
that followed or seen Kimbrough climbs? I have. Yeah. Not too familiar though.

01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:18,240
Right. He's the philosophy professor who's also like super keen climber,

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.

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,

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

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.

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,

01:14:48,480 --> 01:14:53,920
but it's, yeah, it's really interesting, yeah. Really interesting way of looking at things.

01:14:53,920 --> 01:15:01,840
Interestingly though, in both of those studies, females were not getting injured more than

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.

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

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,

01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:32,160
you know, the generalized genetic makeup, female versus male, might make females more susceptible

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

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

01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:48,160
strength, more strength and conditioning work for the shoulders. But we also doubt,

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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.

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

01:17:19,520 --> 01:17:23,280
the weight training, they've got the strength and conditioning experts, they've got all that.

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,

01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:33,360
not below. They don't have the strength and conditioning. So when these players come up

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,

01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:52,880
I think that there's facilities now, but there are societal norms, expectations, just, yeah,

01:17:52,880 --> 01:17:59,600
behaviours that decide about encouraging women to get into strength and conditioning.

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

01:18:05,280 --> 01:18:12,160
discord questions that had come in as well. Have you seen any research out there about

01:18:12,160 --> 01:18:16,080
how a female athlete's menstrual cycle affects their strength and injury rate?

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

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

01:18:31,440 --> 01:18:37,680
to follow. So people are out there doing the research, some super professional, amazing

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,

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.

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

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.,

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

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,

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

01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:32,720
it comes to menopause and post-menopause, very menopause, hugely individual experience.

01:19:32,720 --> 01:19:38,560
And so it's about tracking for you. So yeah, track your cycle. There are

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

01:20:29,440 --> 01:20:36,640
do some strength training at a certain point or some physical and some aerobic fitness training

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

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

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

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,

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,

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

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,

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.

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

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,

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:22:39,760 --> 01:22:45,600
something that you should give some consideration to. Yeah. There was a definite spike. Yeah. At

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.

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

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?

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:26:27,440 --> 01:26:33,200
be unfair for somebody at some point because they've got an injury or something happening.

01:26:34,400 --> 01:26:39,600
Yeah, they can't schedule competitions around all the individual athletes, period, can they?

01:26:40,480 --> 01:26:44,720
And so it's, yeah, somebody, yeah, I suppose when you look at it,

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,

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

01:26:59,920 --> 01:27:06,880
basically on the menstrual cycle and the menopause, which was obviously attended by women

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,

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

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

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,

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.

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

01:27:44,640 --> 01:27:48,080
end things off there. There were still so many other things I wanted to ask, but

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

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

01:27:59,840 --> 01:28:07,280
advice for dealing with a dip issues, I guess, DIP issues in particular, synovitis or capsulitis?

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,

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.

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

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

01:28:43,040 --> 01:28:49,920
irritation, sensitivity. The body's response to that actually sets it up for being more reasonable

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

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

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,

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,

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

01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:32,240
climbing. I sometimes, how some people are aware of themselves enough to monitor their own crimping,

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

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,

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

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

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

01:30:02,080 --> 01:30:05,920
just like starting all over again and it can be really hard for them to manage.

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,

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

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

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.

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,

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

01:30:46,320 --> 01:30:51,440
each other. It becomes compressive and it's those compressive forces normally from crimping that

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.

01:30:56,560 --> 01:30:57,680
That's hard to hear.

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

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.

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

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

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

01:31:29,440 --> 01:31:36,400
the right approach to it, you are able to keep people climbing, keep people in climbing,

01:31:36,400 --> 01:31:40,240
which I think is super important because for most of us climbing becomes,

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

01:31:46,960 --> 01:31:52,720
interaction. It's your escape maybe from family stress, work stress, where you can just,

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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,

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

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.

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

01:32:58,320 --> 01:33:07,360
microwave. I love heat on my fingers. If my fingers are cold, it hurts so bad.

01:33:07,360 --> 01:33:15,520
Right. Interestingly, there's as many research papers saying that heat is better than ice as

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.

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,

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

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.

01:33:36,960 --> 01:33:44,160
They provide pain relief through the novel stimulus that they give to the nervous system,

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

01:34:25,120 --> 01:34:29,840
climber start integrating more training into their routine? For me, it can feel overwhelming

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

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.

01:34:42,080 --> 01:34:47,360
Yeah. Because that costs you, yeah, whatever your goals, wherever you're trying to improve,

01:34:47,360 --> 01:34:52,640
what are your weaknesses, that type of thing. But yeah, you are at your starting point,

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,

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

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,

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

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

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

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.

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,

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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.

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,

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

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,

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

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

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

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,

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.

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,

01:37:41,840 --> 01:37:46,320
when you start, you can maybe take some bigger steps, but you're always better

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

01:39:12,960 --> 01:39:21,520
rather than over train. Physios and coaches need physios and coaches because we are human

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

01:39:29,040 --> 01:39:33,920
perform three times a week, despite talking with my partner at the start and saying,

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

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

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

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,

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.

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

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.

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.

01:40:20,320 --> 01:40:23,680
No problem. Any last words that you want to get out there?

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

01:40:30,880 --> 01:40:35,920
that is guaranteed to stop that improvement. Yeah. Nothing interferes with improvement more

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.

01:40:42,960 --> 01:40:46,160
Perfect. Want to let people know where they can find you?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

01:41:24,000 --> 01:41:38,560
discussion on the free competition climbing discord linked in the description. Thanks again for listening.