8/19/24
Madison is a boulderer for Team Canada and you may have seen her Youtube videos with her husband Zach on their channel, Richardsons Climbing. In this episode, we'll learn about the issues the Canadian climbing team faces such as not having a head coach, her “lose” streak when it comes to Canadian nationals, Youtube and deleting social media, and we’ll get her take on getting married young and relationships among climbers.
8/5/24
Sebastian is a German paraclimber. He is also the chair of the paraclimbing commission, and he worked on filing the application to get climbing into the Paralympics for LA 2028, which only recently got approved! In this episode, we'll learn about his journey accepting that his disease would affect his body and climbing forever, what the process was like for getting climbing into the Paralympics, the drama behind the paraclimbing classification process, and we talk about his harrowing 1000km journey to the Innsbruck world cup on just a solar hand bike.
7/15/24
Noah is the Assistant National Belay Coordinator of USA Climbing and has volunteer belayed at events nationally and internationally at IFSC youth worlds in 2022. In this episode, we'll learn about how to get into volunteer belaying, some interesting tidbits on belay devices and catching falls that you may not have thought about before, what the differences are belaying different paraclimbers, and some bad falls that he has had to witness.
7/1/24
Ross is a boulder and lead climber on Team USA and you may be familiar with his Youtube channel where he documents his climbing adventures and shares coaching tips. In this episode, we'll learn about his bikepacking adventure that he skipped the first half of the 2024 world cup season for, hear about his struggle trying to balance competitions with his desire to travel and all his other hobbies, the importance of mindset and meditation, and if you're a USA bay area gym climber, maybe close your ears when he starts trashing the bay area gym scene. This episode is full of training and mindset tips!
5/28/24
Erin is a boulder and lead climber from team GB who has been having a stellar 2024 season so far, making finals for boulder in Keqiao, lead in Wujiang, and getting bronze in Shanghai OQS! In this episode, we’ll get some insight into how she seemed to rise out of nowhere, her brutal off-season training, we’ll learn a bit about team GB, and stay for the end to hear about where the Erin McBeast nickname came from.
5/14/24
Eddie is an ex-IFSC photographer, who worked with them from 2014-2020. In this episode, we’ll get his thoughts on the ethics and purpose of photojournalism, hear about the chaos behind the scenes traveling around for world cups, and discuss ideas on how to get athletes better paid.
4/22/24
Chloé is a boulder and lead climber competing in the world cup circuit for the Belgian team! This is my first time talking to a Belgian climber, so in this episode we’ll learn a lot about their fairly newly established national team and how funding works, and we also talk about body image with being a more muscular climber, as well as the difficulties that come with being a female climber.
4/1/24
Charlie is a broadcaster and writer who preceded Matt Groom as an IFSC commentator and EpicTV host. In this episode, we’ll learn about his rough start to IFSC commentating in 2016, ways that he thinks the IFSC could improve competitions, and get some insight into what it’s like traveling around with athletes. He also shares his unique story about traveling to North Korea!
3/18/24
Cloe is a French/American boulderer who has competed for team USA in the international youth and elite circuit. In this episode, we’ll learn about how she “accidentally” ended up competing in lead world cups, the difficulties of trying to make it onto a highly competitive US national team, and we give some love to good old gym climbing and plastic pulling!
3/5/24
Tyler is a fellow competition climbing nerd and podcaster, who has been involved in the space much longer than I have, and you may be familiar with his channel, Plastic Weekly! In this episode, we’ll talk about what it’s like MCing at a world cup, commiserate on the hardships that come with climbing podcasting, go over some climbing HOT TAKES, and talk about the upcoming 2024 season!
