The Evolution of Training in Climbing - 10 Years of Lattice

In today's Lattice Podcast, host Tom Randall sits down with coach Maddie Cope to delve into the evolution of education and training in the climbing world. They discuss significant changes in three key areas: energy systems, female athletes, and strength and conditioning. Tom and Maddie share insights on how understanding and approaches have transformed over the years, leading to positive outcomes in climbing performance and training effectiveness.

Main topics include:

➡️ Energy Systems: Improved categorisation and understanding of energy systems have enhanced training effectiveness and load management.

➡️ Female Athletes: Education on the menstrual cycle and female physiology has empowered female climbers, improving training structure and performance.

➡️ Strength and Conditioning: Shifts in attitudes towards strength and conditioning now emphasise specificity, progressive overload, and injury prevention, with a focus on core and upper body strength.

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know in the comments below!

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

Transcript

Tom (00:00)
Hello to everyone who is tuned in on the Lattice Training podcast today. You have myself, Tom Randall, and also Maddie Cope joining us today. Yep. Hello everyone. It's been a while since we did a duo podcast, I think, maybe a year? Yeah. I actually can't even remember what the last one was. We usually get together to chat, maybe like mindset or something like that. Yeah. I think it might've even been in a really tiny little cramped office in our warehouse surrounded by t -shirts and sweaters.

Yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing that we would do here at Lattice. Yeah, yeah, it does. Well, today is going to be a... I'm going to say it's a bit different actually to some of the other podcasts, especially ones that me and Maddie have done in the past. And the reason for doing this is that we have very recently launched our second educational package, an online course all around flexibility training. And we're really aware that...

At Lattice over the years, we've had a really big emphasis on education and sharing the know -how and expertise that we have as a company and individuals as well in terms of anything to do with climbing training. And what we wanted to do for all of you listening is take you through some of the key kind of, I suppose, educational, theoretical, practical landmarks that we've tried to cover over the years at Lattice and then frame that up.

in respect to the education course that we're doing for flexibility training now, and really explain and show you why we've chosen to do an online course in this way, what you're gonna get from it, some of the contents, and also the kind of key issues that we're trying to solve within this flexibility training. Yeah, sounds good. It's been an exciting evolution at Lattice, and it'll be nice to show a little bit of behind the scenes and I suppose the different formats that we...

try to provide educational content in that hopefully build on each other year on year to improve it and move with the different kind of platforms that are out there as well. Yeah, I mean, it's been a really consistent thing. And just before me and you started recording, we were saying that we were talking about energy systems years and years ago, but we haven't stopped doing that stuff internally within a company in terms of our education or the way that we work with clients.

is very, very consistent with what we do and it will be the same with flexibility training. Yeah, definitely like some of the topics we're gonna chat about today. In the time I've worked at Lattice, they have become maybe more prominent, but what I really love is that we never let them go. And the great thing about having the team that we have is that there's often always someone who can be somewhat assigned or passionate about a certain area.

keep up to date with that and then bring it back to the rest of the team. And, you know, a lot of this that we'll talk about today will be kind of outward facing, you know, what have we put out there? What changes have we seen from that? But there's also a whole kind of internal ecosystem going on where like the coaches are sharing it. And, you know, like just last week, I led a kind of coach education session about the menstrual cycle and menopause, which is one of the things we'll cover today. Yeah. I mean, there's no way I would be the coach that...

I am today in terms of the knowledge, if it wasn't for everyone else becoming experts in what they do, I just couldn't cover that amount of topics with the amount of time that I've gotten to be able to read and remember it all and everything like that. So it has been cool. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think you can't expect anyone to do that. And flexibility, which we'll come on to is think is one of the standout areas for that. Like the team here at Lattice who are, you know, really focused on it, led by Josh, who people probably know from YouTube and our social media.

has really done such a good job of sharing that expertise with everyone. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we're gonna do three kind of, I suppose, educational, theoretical, practical landmarks across the history of Lattice, first of all, and then we're gonna go into the flexibility stuff. And I think this is gonna almost be like a little mini history lesson. And some of you that are listening who maybe have joined Lattice in the last couple of years via whatever math that is with a...

you know, a YouTube watcher or via our social media might think, wow, I didn't realise this is what that is covered back in the early days, but hopefully this will be interesting itself. And what we're going to try and formulate this as, as being we're going to talk about topic and the kind of issues that we tried to educate and solve at the time. And then how did we try and do this? And then also the changes that we saw in climbers that we either worked with.

or the climbing culture that came off the back of that. Just to kind of give you some reference and framework to how much training has changed in climbing in the last 10 years, there's a lot, there's a lot gone under the bridge. Yeah, yeah. And you know, because there is a lot out there on training as well, I think it's really easy to kind of get homed in on one area and not realize how much like the rest of it, the rest of it has changed as like a whole kind of.

and the really interesting thing I think is that it changes kind of our culture and perceptions and how we think about things as well. So it's not just the changes in the sort of physical training protocols or how people think about it. What I think is really cool is it kind of seeps out into what I think is like a more kind of open climbing community, a more empowered climbing community. Yeah, yeah. None of this training is cheating rubbish that we used to get 15 years ago. So at least that's changed.

Okay, so we have three topics. One is energy systems. The second is female athletes. And the third is strength and conditioning for climbers. We thought those were the big headline changes that were seen in climbing training. I think we'll probably just start - Apart from flexibility. and flexibility, which is coming up. Yeah, we'll round up with that. That's our next mission. The one that we're gonna look back in five years and go, now we know what's changed in it. Yeah, that's the mission of the course. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so if we start with...

energy systems. I've got written down in my notes that I felt like the sort of the key things that we try to educate and change within climbing was one, the definitions and compartmentalization of energy systems themselves, because way back when it was literally just power endurance, endurance and strength. And that was it. We didn't break things down any further.

Then I also saw back then an issue around people didn't quite understand stamina versus endurance and then power versus strength. They were all just blended up into this big mess of no one knew what they were quite doing. And then I also felt like looking back, there was just this real status of just linear training structures and just following this one, two, three approach all the way through to a trip, never comboing things up.

train things in the same kind of ways? Yeah, definitely. And I think if we start with the first point of categorizing endurance training and I suppose why we thought that was even important or why it is important in training and a big takeaway for me here as well as how we changed it was if you go into a training session, you need to know the intention of that session that comes with kind of...

the intensities, the durations, like, you know, the protocol that you're doing. And essentially, if you have a good understanding of the category of training you're aiming to do, you can understand that intensity and how to get the effective and the desired stimulus that you want, as well as how to kind of progressively overload it. So as much as like we're not here to kind of debate language, and we've probably evolved that a bit over time and tried different things.

And because let's face it, the most important thing is that no matter what naming system people use, they understand how that relates to their different training sessions and what they want to get out of them. But I guess essentially what that allowed people to do, I think, was better approach their sessions, know what they need to get out of it, especially when it comes to intensity and therefore manage load overall, rather than just, I guess, this view of energy systems and endurance training that was just...

get really pumped or get really tired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was old school. Yeah. So I think that is probably one of the big benefits of even thinking about how we categorise it and educating people on that. I think that was the same thing to be said for that stamina versus endurance and then strength versus power is that people weren't being as defined in terms of the intention that we're going into those sessions and thinking about.

how does this work physiologically? So I'm going to train in this way to get this outcome. So for example, like a really basic error that is still being made to this day, admittedly, but was very bad then was this power training is people would try and execute power training at the ends of sessions. And there was such a culture of going on a campus board right at the end of sessions because it was the last thing that you would do because it was nothing to do with.

climbing on the wall because everyone wants to have fun doing that, but then they do their power train at the end. But nowadays people are really aware that if you don't have that speed element and it's so critical, you're just going to not see a degree of power improvement because you have this intention and you're not meeting that in terms of the outcome that you need physiologically. And I think that's very, very different now. Yeah, I think, yeah, understanding whether it's going from kind of terminology, knowing the clear intention of things.

the sort of stimulative intensity you need to get the outcome. It really helps you build a structure. Yeah, like you said, maybe within a structure, within your week, but also kind of more zoomed out than that as well.

Tom (10:03)
Hey everyone, we have an offer for you, which gives you 20 % off our flexibility deep dive course and our flex cork mat. So that is the online e -learning course that we have just been talking about in this podcast. And also our premium cork flex mat.

which has all of the markings on it set up to specifically target any of those climbing specific stretches that we go on about all of the time. And importantly, links in with our MyFlex free assessment that you can also do via our website. So if you go onto our website and look up the flexibility course bundle, you will get 20 % off on that price there.

Tom (10:49)
Yeah, yeah. And same for the stamina versus endurance, is I feel like we have this good understanding nowadays that one is more around the aerobic work capacity. So how much work can be done?

across a training day, a performance day or a week versus something which is just an endurance aspect, which is what kind of intensity can you perform at for a given duration in an exercise or a performance set? And I think that has now been more split out because as you said a bit earlier on, it just, it was just get smashed, get really tired, go and get really pumped, but no real consideration on whether that was working on the overall work.

or was that trying to raise that threshold? So for example, that threshold between aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. Yeah, and I think there's actually an interesting part of that, which is, I suppose, a little bit more removed from the physiology, but it's kind of these component parts. It's basically understanding the component parts of your climbing and being able to see them as building blocks that you're bringing together, rather than just pushing your performance efforts until you hope.

and hope that your ceiling keeps going up. And that goes back to what you said before about the kind of structure of people's sessions within a session over a week is that I think people have come to understand that a really effective approach to training often means letting go of just pure performance in every session. And so it's kind of completed a nice circle of understanding the physiology.

what's the intention that you want to get and also kind of being able to shift the mindset in that way as well and let go of the fact that everything has to be about getting to the top or performance or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And I suppose that comes down to this fundamental thing that we've been trying to do with education over the years is that climbers have always been really aware of what they wanted out in the results at the end, which was performance. They wanted to climb better, but there wasn't enough knowledge and know -how how to...

inform the intention. And that's the bit that we're always trying to do with this education thing, isn't it? Is give them the two ends of that part of the journey. Because once you know what you're trying to do and why, then you get on with it because we're all trying to get better at climbing at the end of the day. Yeah. And it's a real process, I suppose. And, you know, say in the first course that we've got out there, our flagship course, A Climber's Guide to Training, there is a section on, it's a really comprehensive course, but there's a section on...

Energy systems is a section on plan writing creation. And I think it's the next step along from that kind of foundation of knowledge, but then also what do you do with that and how do you apply it to yourself? And throughout our courses, we've got, I suppose you'd almost consider them like step -by -step guides. That makes it sound maybe overly simplistic, but they are the steps that you can follow to apply all this knowledge to yourself as well. And I think that's where we've probably seen.

a lot of kind of progress within our coaching and how coaches are educating just their clients on that one -to -one basis as well. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, you can view the stuff that we've been doing with our online courses as a way of bridging that gap where a climber can't necessarily have a coach that's there one -to -one, paid to support them all the time, which can be for some people, out of budget, not an option to do.

but this is a way of being more informed from a passive educational sense and going away and working with that knowledge to then look after your own training, really. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, I think that the reason that online courses are even valuable in this space is that unlike Instagram or YouTube or things like that, the platforms just allow you a lot more remit for flexibility and how you go about that.

You know, you can have video lessons, you can have resources, you can give exercise examples, you can do quizzes, you know, it's all things that just don't, you can't do that on YouTube and especially with the format it is now. And obviously YouTube can maybe be quite distracting in and of itself. But yeah, you're right. I think it allows people to go away, learn, see that process and almost have those check -ins that are laid out within the course to get you to reflect.

on how your training might be going, how did that endurance session feel, the sort of conversation or back and forth you might have with a coach. Obviously it is not the same as having a coach and that's not the aim, it's just not the same package. But I think it helps create another step along from the type of educational content that is just possible to get out there on YouTube or Instagram. So if I...

was to summarize where the whole energy systems thing got us in climbing and saw those changes in the training culture globally, all the climbers that we kind of have conversations that crags and meet at walls and things like that. What do you think are the things that changed as a result of energy system education? Yeah. Because I do know, I'm really certain that things have changed on that front. Yeah.

Well, actually, maybe I'll start with sort of where we are now. So we kind of did a lot of education around classifying energy systems that we've talked about. Sort of within this, we did develop some assessments to try and just get kind of before and after snapshots of things like forearm physiology. But I think where we are now is we're at a place where,

Energy system training is accessible for all types of climber, no matter their discipline, because there is a thorough understanding of these component parts and how they play out in climbing performance beyond just endurance climbing. So beyond, I suppose, disciplines, performances, where people would really...

or classically think that endurance was key. I think now we can see the value of it beyond that. I think we are past the point where when someone says endurance, you just think about some like 50 meter stamina route. People think about their whole climbing performance and longevity within climbing with endurance as a piece of that puzzle, maybe even if they're a boulder. And I think that comes from those clear component parts. And so I think we're getting that better training structure.

for boulders and sport climbers, every climber alike from that education. I think that's one of the big things along with the good understanding of load management, which I think is better for kind of staying clear of over -training, understanding how to progress that. And I think understanding, so I think the assessments are really useful, something that has been part of our kind of, you know,

part of how we've developed like as a company and you know, something that we do use and see value in with climbers. But I also think the greater understanding has led to climbers having an idea of their own metrics in their climbing that are linked to improvements in endurance. So you know, I think like strength and power, that raising of that was always, I think, really clear to people.

the change in endurance performance a bit harder beyond getting the top of your sport route or not getting quite as insanely pumped. I don't think people went that far outside of that. They didn't think outside of the box much more, you know, whereas now we have kind of durability, your ability to do repeat performances. How long can you sustain your, a really high level for you within a session? You know, I think it's, we've got a more thorough, well -rounded gauge. And as obviously as climbers who are interested in,

all sorts of different things. That's great. Yeah. I think it's, it's a much deeper knowledge on all those different parts within the energy systems. And like I've anecdotally, I found it so cool to see a big change within the climbing community that I've got to know. Like I've been climbing for 25 years or so, and seen that there is so much more of a culture nowadays of boulders, for example, knowing that for a hundred percent sure they can become a really good.

route climber within a couple of years of really focusing on that discipline. There used to be such a write -off of these things of, I'm just a boulderer. I can't go and do route climbing. It's, I'm sort of like stuck in my box as such. And the same for a reversal of someone from a route climbing going into bouldering, because people understand how these energy systems break down. They know the intention that has to go into it. And they know that it's something that just has to be taken in these building blocks and put together. And I think that has, yeah, definitely changed over time.

I think as well from a nationalistic point of view, I've have also been quite proud to see us Brits who are stuck with our 10 meter high roots finally perform abroad. I mean, do you remember 10, 15 years ago, the, if you said, there might be a hundred plus Brits who would go abroad to Spain or France and do pretty well in terms of sport climbing, you go nah.

that's never gonna happen. Maybe a few of the trad climbers, but no, it just, it really didn't happen. So I think that's changed quite a lot as well. Yeah, definitely. And a lot of that comes from the fact that education around an area can help make it less overwhelming. I think it's always really easy to look at people who are really good, I don't know, really good strength and power athletes or really good endurance athletes and actually somewhat underestimate what they might have done to get there as well, but also...

be able to kind of distill down what they might have done, understand it and be able to apply it to yourself. I suppose that's sort of how I usually think of understanding. Can you take knowledge that you've built in a different context and then apply it to yourself? Yeah. So the second topic we had to talk about was the female athlete. And I think this is one that for me as one of the founders at Lattice and watching the work that...

yourself, Ella, Mina, et cetera, do in those years when I think it might have started maybe five years ago that we really started to go after this. I feel really proud of what we achieved now because I think a lot has changed on that front. And it's really, I think that's almost one of the defining changes for me that has definitely occurred as a result of work that you've done on that education in that front. So.

Yeah, I guess what are the things that you feel like you really needed to change the climbing communities, yeah, education or knowledge on that front? Yeah, I mean, I think it actually really came at a time where a lot of sports were pushing education on this or wanting to become more informed. There was like a lot of research coming out there. So actually, I think this is probably one area where the shifting climbing.

is somewhat in line with the shift in other sports. Yeah, which is cool. I mean, we're not at the place where we're putting the money into the research that like, know, women's football and rugby are doing, but yeah, as a team, I think the actual initial recognition was from the perspective of health and sustainable training. So from the side of Red S, which is relative energy deficit in sport, that was actually the initial.

angle we came at it from, I suppose. And when you look into, when you look into Red S, when it comes to female athletes, anyone with female sex hormones, female physiology, the, I guess, the understanding of those hormones, therefore the menstrual cycle, all of this kind of comes a bit part and parcel. I suppose it sort of slightly opens up this whole world beyond health, which is the optimization of performance.

And I think really where we were at is that there was just not much understanding about this at all, either by individuals, especially by coaches. And, you know, also I think we were interestingly at a place in climbing, culture -wise, where a lot more women were starting to climb. A lot more female climbers who had started climbing were climbing older. You know, I remember like speaking to a female climber who was like, you just had kids and then you stopped climbing.

You know, I just think the whole culture there has changed as well, which I think or hope this can play into in a positive way. I think we saw a lot of female climbers shy away from weight training. Yeah. And, you know, I think I think that's across the board, actually, like all climbers. I think there's been a shift there as there's been better understanding of power to rate ratio, longevity and just actually the benefits of strength training rather than.

putting weight, I suppose, I think that, you know, a kind of shift to have a more healthy culture there. And so I think that will also put a lot of female clients in a really good position, performance -wise, longevity -wise. And I guess the other kind of arm of this learning about the menstrual cycle and just that simply is just there for us to be able to work with individuals. I don't actually think any of the actual...

the way we support female climbers, the way we really schedule managed training, none of the actual approaches or strategies we use there are groundbreaking. And I'm very happy to admit that they're not at all. It was just a new context to apply it in that came with people understanding that kind of foundational knowledge. And I think that's actually a really nice way to look at it because I think...

you know, when you continue to learn about stuff in climbing it can start to feel a bit overwhelming, right? my gosh, all these things to learn about. But actually, I think there's like some core strategies and things that we all, well, as coaches know, and that people can learn and then they can apply it to different areas. And I think the menstrual cycle is definitely just one of those where when it comes to optimizing training, if that is something that people are interested in or feel that will be beneficial to them, it's not for everyone.

You know, I think it's it's nice to know that it's just that element of working with your own physiology in the same way as people might do around stress at work or being a new parent, you know, just all these. I think that's what we really love here at Lattice is to be able to work with all individuals who are super passionate about climbing. Yeah, I really can't agree with you more on that front. And it's been really nice from.

seeing that change now with the female athlete over the last five years especially because I think I can be pretty confident saying that if you looked back over the years the shift from in terms of the genders across coaches, professional coaches working in climbing has really changed quite a bit. It's not as far as the gender balance between climbing, the climbing population as a whole which is really male dominated.

when you went back 20 years and now we're getting closer to our 50 -50 split in climbing coaching. I think it's still a long way off that, but there are now a lot more female climbing coaches as well. So that's one impact within it. And I'm as guilty as the rest of the climbing or the coaching population that I was under -educated and having you do those coach education sessions and Mina do write articles and...

and do the research internally for what we were doing as a company. I learned so much from that because I just didn't have the know -how. So then I started to apply that with the clients that I was working with. But also I saw just from the social media that we're doing in terms of either podcasts or YouTube, then spread out to just down the wall and hearing more people talk about it. All my female climbing friends would come up to me and say, you know what, I actually, I know what to do now.

I had no idea on this front before and I had more guy friends who would say their partners now more interested in training because they feel like it applies to them as well. And there was that real change in that climbing culture, I think, and the practice that we see. So I suppose, where do you see what the key takeaways in terms of how people are or how women are dealing with the hormone cycles and then also S and C.

within climbing training, what are the sort of the key things that you think have changed compared to say five years ago on that? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you kind of just touched on one of them there is that I think we've seen a shift and you know, this has come from all different places. Obviously, I really am passionate about this side of things, but obviously lots of external influences outside of that as well. I think we've seen a lot more openness with female athletes, like sharing stuff on Instagram and.

I think there's generally been a step to more openness. I think people share openly about their cycle, their pregnancy, return to climbing postpartum, training as maybe an older female climber going through the menopause, things like that. I think we're just getting more visibility on that. And that's always really nice because I think it has created a greater sense of belonging within the climbing community, within the training space. You know, I think that even...

when there was the step that we had a lot more female climbers, it was another step for them to feel really at home in the training world. And I think that, you know, internally here at Lattice, we like went through a cycle of like looking at the research, educating between us, experimenting, right? Because even if there's research within any sport or within climbing, it doesn't exactly apply. We then like were very active in...

experimenting with kind of ourselves anecdotally, you know, like we have a really great resource here in that, you know, we had like a Facebook community group. We've got, you know, quite a bit of access to be able to talk to a lot of different climbers and see the variation there, which I think has been really great. And now we're actually sort of coming back around full circle because there is more research coming out as well. So.

I think whilst we're doing that internally, we're like seeing the effects of it outside and that will continue to go. But yeah, so alongside, I think seeing a lot more kind of visibility on this and general openness and that might be communications with partners like you said as well. I think that's really cool. I think we're just, it's had maybe a little bit of trickle down effect to some of the more kind of core training principles and structures as in maybe females climbers have seen that the menstrual cycle is a consideration in training.

and therefore actually just taking their training and structure more seriously and learning about that more seriously as a whole. I know I've had female climbers say to me, how do I train around my cycle? And my first thing would be, well, how do you structure your training right now, even as a whole? And, you know, not that this is a bad thing, but sometimes they're like, right, I don't know, I don't do that. And I'm like, well, you know, here how we do things at Lattice, and people might have different opinions on the menstrual cycle, but.

Training comes first and core training principles. Thinking about the menstrual cycle is then another kind of just an individual layer on top of that. So I think it's, but I think it's given a different route for female climbers to actually just feel empowered in their training full stop. Yeah. You know what the thing is? Is it's maybe around the fact that by specifically addressing hormone cycles and the difference between the two genders.

in terms of how their bodies are functioning is it's created a relatability so that then your female athlete has come back and gone, now I get how training is related to me. You've given me something specific here, which is dealing with my body and how it functions. So now I'm going to look at my structuring of my training and I'm going to look at that S and C element in particular. And it's just required that kind of ignition, that open gateway of relatability to go, this totally applies to me. Cause I remember being...

These conversations that we used to have in the office years ago going, this is madness that we haven't got more women who aren't using training as a way of improving their climbing because we know it works, but no one's doing it. It felt weird. But fast forward a few years and now we're going, yeah, we're in there. People get this now. And of course there's really good results off it. And the gap, the gender gap as well, is massively decreased. Go back 20 years ago and the...

difference in performance between men and women was huge in climbing. It's really flipping close now. And it's interesting, I think the menstrual cycle, along with other topics and areas, I think part of the education and the conversations that people are having out there, the root of it is you need to kind of break down some barriers and perceptions. And I think that can really make people feel like they belong. Because when it comes to the menstrual cycle, not that we're going to dive into all the details, but there may be people's...

beliefs informed by their culture and kind of perceptions around what impact their cycle might have and actually the reality might be different to that and so challenging that and exploring it and kind of learning from that I think is just quite an, well it's quite an empowering thing but I think it really opens you up to other new ideas as well because when we have a perception or a belief slightly challenged and we're sort of...

that it might be a different way. So like, for example, one thing is like when people are menstruating, that's often got a, well, a culture in some places associated with that of like, you sit on the sofa, you can't do anything or that kind of narrative around it. And I think actually the research and the information out there around sport and the menstrual cycle is really challenging and changing that. And I think that when anything is challenged like that, it generally opens up people to other ideas as well. Yeah.

I mean, talking of opening people up to other ideas and there being a lot of change and really big benefits that come from it. I think that third topic that we talked about right at the start around strength and conditioning in climbing, because I feel like in terms of landmarks and the timeline of changes in it, I had to put my finger on it. I would say that the attitudes around strength and conditioning really started to turn a corner in terms of what we did and...

the climbing community industry was around the whole COVID era when suddenly millions of people were forced to be at home and couldn't go climbing. And kind of one of the principal options was strength and conditioning on all sorts of different things like, you know, lifting devices, pull -up bars, stair bands, weights, whatever it might be. And we, yeah, we had this big crossing of a threshold where people realized...

how that could be incorporated in their training and how that would actually then affect performance. Because before that, I always felt like there was this real, I suppose, I don't know if maxim's the right term, but a thing where people just go, if you lift or if you do weights, you just get big and heavy and that's rubbish for training. And I don't hear that very much. And that's only four years later.

Yeah, yeah, I, as you were speaking, I was like, I think one of the biggest things is that people had the kind of misconception that if they lifted a lot of weights, they would just put on, they would just pile on muscle. And I think the other thing that I thought changed it a little bit as well was maybe, I don't know if it's necessarily climbing being in the Olympics, but I think seeing...

how some of those top -end competitive elite athletes were training. And I don't know, I definitely started to see them sharing weightlifting training, you know, proper just, you know, in the gym, your gym sessions, like how loads of other athletes will do it, competitive athletes. If you're a, I don't know, swimmer or, you know, all these athletes, they'll have their practice and they'll have their gym sessions. And I think people started sharing that a bit as well. Yeah, I mean, I thought Shawna was amazing for that.

I think she was definitely a part of that equation. I remember also I used to get messages from people saying, Will Bozey does Olympic lifting. What? It was the same thing. And yeah, there was a shift into we're climbers and we're athletes. Why don't we start training like athletes? But again, going back to that original premise of when we talked about the energy systems is think of the intention. So we're not just...

going into the gym and just lifting random weights for no reason. It's taking specific parts of the body that we know are under high loads and limit climbing performance and saying, let's work them at an intensity, duration, plane of movement, which is appropriate to climbing. Like you take the shoulder girdle, for example, we're not pushing or training in every single different plane of motion. We're doing it in ways that relate back to climbing. And I think,

That for me was one of the cool things that happened within strength and conditioning for climbing is that we took an intelligent approach with it and shared that with climbers globally to go be pinpointed, be intentional, and guess what? You'll see really big improvements with it on the other end. Yeah, I think one of the kind of things that changed in terms of like how climbers are informed is their understanding.

of specificity and how to make training specific more generally. And this is across the board and I know loads of coaches talk about this, put educational stuff out about this is that the adaptation is specific, not the exercise. I think we've made a shift from climbers looking to train only in ways that mimic climbing to them and actually to think.

in a different way about what makes a specific climbing exercise. And I think that has definitely reduced the barrier or changed people's beliefs around S &C training to target certain muscles in certain movements with certain loads. And I think another thing that sort of goes a bit in line with that specificity is that now people understand progressive overload better. They can see how...

easier is to get progressive overload with weight training in a way that is not the same always in climbing that has a lot of technical failure and all of that sort of thing. So I think again, there's an improved understanding of some of these core principles that have meant climbers don't, they've broken down climbers fixed mindset or kind of certain ways of thinking about training and like allowed.

room to introduce things that we used to think were, I don't know, nonsensical or only for like Jim Bro's, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely agree on that. And I suppose if I was to say two bits of strength and conditioning where I felt like there was a big change and then we've seen really big benefits for this and climbing out the other end is I feel like we really changed the...

the culture or the industry's approach with core training. For example, if I look back 10, 15 years ago, it was just way too simplistic. It was down that whole route of just do some crunchies, maybe some front levers or something, and that was it. But we went down that whole route of explaining that the core is a really complex set of muscles, and we have both a sort of anterior and posterior chain, and it's...

needs to be dealt with in different ways and it also relates to different climbing movements. So you have to think about what you're trying to achieve in terms of climbing movement and then how that relates back into training. So I think that was one big thing and I've really look at climbers nowadays and see them doing all sorts of variety of core exercise and go, yes, it's finally it's changed. We're not just doing sit -ups because yeah, it has some benefit, but it's not enough. Yeah. I love how you call them crunchies though. what are they called? They're crunches. yeah.

I do like a crunchy bar though. For all the Americans listening, I don't think crunchies exist in America. This is, I don't know what crunchy is. Yeah, it's like a chocolate bar. But anyway, just had to pull you up on that. We're gonna start talking about Kit Kats. Yeah, yeah. And again, in the climbers guide, the flagship course, and you know, and we tackle this on free forms of our media as well. You just have to go and search for them. Is there's this process of going from kind of...

movement, muscle, training exercise. And like with any good education, it's like, yes, of course you want like the foundational knowledge, but you want practical steps to take to apply it. And I think people understanding those steps, us using them as coaches, talking about them, I think has, yeah, has really kind of meant that.

it opens up people's repertoire of exercises that they're choosing from, because they're not just choosing things like a hanging lever and crunches, things that were just, you know, I guess endless like YouTube videos on those sorts of core exercises. Yeah, yeah. And I think what's gone hand in hand with that as well is a really good understanding around the upper body and the shoulders, upper back, arms, and how to do strength and conditioning, which relates back into climbing for that as well. Like I look at people,

at the climbing wall nowadays and I look at high level athletes and I think their back and shoulders look quite different from climbers. They've not only been therabanding basically. Yes, yeah. Which is an understanding of load and how to progress and like I think that's where moving into weight training really is a difference from when I remember being at the climbing wall and if I looked at people training it was usually either body weight or resistance bands and the fact is if you want to push the force past any of those.

you know, the resistance that you're applying, then using weights is gonna be the thing. What do you think some of the key kind of positive outcomes you've seen there are for this kind of shift in S&C? So I think that in a very introspective way in terms of the climbers that we worked with over the years, I think we've had a really good track record at producing very, very good competition athletes.

If you look at some of the juniors that we've trained at Lattice over the years, we've produced a lot of podiums in terms of international competitions on both a route climbing and bouldering front. And I feel really proud that we have shown that if you get the S &C right, you don't produce just a route climber or a boulderer. You can produce people that do great on both of those fronts. And even from the perspective of Will as well, being able to do the speed

alongside the bouldering and the sport climbing or the lead climbing and doing S&C for all three of those and making those appropriate. So I think that's one really big benefit is we produce really good competition athletes and that's been related to the S&C. I think we've seen a big improvement in terms of the injury incidents and the fact that when you have climbers who have the right muscle structure, the right durability within...

part of the body, which is a limiting factor within climbing. And you train that appropriately, then you'll see a lower injury incident rate. I think that's been another really big factor. And then I've also felt like we have seen a climbing population, which is better at adapting across disciplines and styles, more multidisciplinary climbers nowadays. And you see them moving around all the different disciplines at a really high level as well. And I don't think you used to see that 10, 20 years ago. People used to stay in the lane.

and they couldn't transfer across, because I think they were so specific and the S and C hadn't been done that well. Sort of maximized, yeah. One thing I think, one change I've seen is that I think when people do get injured, if they get injured, a finger, things like that, I think people can return to a high level much quicker, because there is just this other option there that allows you to keep working muscle groups, things like that, which will play into climbing performance.

even when you actually can't go climbing at your limit. That's probably a little bit like the, you know, obviously with COVID and people had this option to kind of do S&C at home, but I think that is an area where it applies really well. And I think, I mean, I've seen this with people from within this, you know, clients that we work with, but also outside when you see, I don't know, pro athletes and all these people sharing what they're doing when they do have an injury. And, you know, I mean, you can just see how...

quickly they get back to the level. Yeah, that's a really good point actually. I kind of like glossed over that in my head when I've been thinking about this S and C element is yeah, the rehab and just the mental sort of mindset approach that you can have around being really seriously injured. And if you realise that you have to have three months out, six months out, if you've got a mindset that S and C can be done outside of that finger injury and you can do some really marked improvements to your potential as an athlete.

you're totally bought in and motivated and then the injury doesn't feel as bad actually. And I've been through the same thing. I've had so many injuries over my years as a professional athlete. And yeah, what do I go back to? S &C, every time. Yeah, definitely. And then I guess the final area that I've seen is the return of women to climbing after having a baby. And S &C always plays like a role in there. It has, from the people I've learned from and then what I see.

others doing and then what I have done and has found worked well. It's not the only thing, but I think without it and without the understanding of the role that it plays, that process could be slower, longer, less satisfying. I think S&C sometimes creates a safe environment or a environment where a climber can push themselves potentially before they can push themselves on the wall. So.

kind of comes back to the mindset thing, you're providing someone with that kind of, I don't know, that try hard, that thing that they love that feels like training, even if potentially they can't quite get that same level of feeling on the wall just yet. Same goes for injury. So we're gonna talk next about flexibility training, flexibility education, because as we...

mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, we have a new course, which is just launched. And you have been very much at the forefront of the development of that, rolling it out, creating all of the content and being involved with something which is so important to us, which is the education and informing people of best practices. So I think my question to start with is, can you tell me a little bit about for everyone listening, what does.

this education course for flexibility training include and what's the kind of the headlines in terms of the experience that you're going to get? What are they going to take from it?

Tom (46:36)
Yeah, so what does the course include? Well, I guess I'll just give a run through of the content as it's laid out. So the course is a four week course where people get the opportunity to submit questions on the content that's assigned for each week. But we obviously know that life does not always work as easily as being able to dedicate, you know, an hour a week of learning for four weeks. So people will always have lifetime access.

And that's something we value for all of our courses because the information we're giving, the processes we're laying out, people can come back to time and time again, even as, for example, with their flexibility, even as it develops, they'll be able to return to the same process and actually probably kind of get to explore the exercise library that comes with the course more and more over time. And with the kind of flow throughout the course, it's laid out in an order. So you meant to kind of start at the...

and like move through to beginning rather than kind of come in and kind of pick out bits that you want. I really encourage people to move through it in order to get the most out of it. So it's got a load of modules in it that you follow through module one, module two, module three, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's module one through to six. It's also got some bonus content and then, you know, an area where the Q and A's can be uploaded. So we're going to start, well, essentially module one introduces you to the course. But the main thing to take away from this is that we're...

trying to get across how you can get the most out of the course, because that's obviously something that's really important to us, and there's a number of ways in that we want to do that. Module two, we're going to look at assessing flexibility. So really this goes for any training intervention that you might do, but flexibility is no different in that if you don't understand your starting point, it can be hard in the future when you look back to gauge how effective the training.

you have tried has been. So we're going to start with a kind of a module on assessment. We'll guide you through an assessment and we actually give a kind of assessment toolkit that's downloadable. And again, something you can come back to if you want to reassess. And we'll guide you through it in a sort of more practical way, but also providing the knowledge of like, you know, why, why do we do an assessment? When should we do it? And how are we going to do it for climbing? And.

along with the practical steps. Then the third module is a bit more kind of anatomy and physiology. So forming a kind of knowledge foundation that can inform our practice. And this also includes kind of understanding, we'd often call it like the anatomy of climbing. So this really plays into exercise selection further down the line as well. Now, for some people, this will be a knowledge base that informs their practice. For others, I think it can really help with

buy into your training. That's something we've found with wanting to educate climbers we work with is that when people understand what they're doing, why they're doing it, and some of the theory behind it, not crazy in depth, you know, just some, it can really help act as a kind of like, yeah, a buy in and excitement for the training, kind of quite empowering just to know a bit about what you're doing. It gives you assurance, doesn't it, that you know what you're doing and why you're going for this. Exactly.

And then module four, we're kind of going to move on to the different methods. And so we'll get onto this. I think a lot of people know about static stretching. Maybe a lot of people see climbers doing yoga, but they don't want to do yoga. So we're going to really kind of dive into all the different methods that we have found to be really effective with the climbers that we've worked with, which is a lot of climbers now. And that also spans, I suppose, accessibility for different levels.

for the way people like to approach their training. Because of course there's like the physical stimulus you're giving your body, how do you respond to that? But ultimately we know we have to do our training and that is kind of the starting point. And you know, in the same way that in other forms of training, say finger strength, some people might really like pickups, you know, doing edge pickups. Some people might really like actually hanging off a fingerboard. I think there's an element of that with flexibility as well. So we're gonna cover the breadth and...

go into detail of how to do them, to get the most out of them, to make them effective. Module five is then an exercise library plus some key flexibility skills, we call them, and kind of movement skills. So if you are training an element of flexibility like the side split, something we really want people to understand is pelvic position, understanding what an anterior pelvic tilt is and how that plays into...

your side split training and getting the most out of it. So exercise library to be explored. And, you know, I'd really, we really kind of encourage people to try the exercises out along with us. We're going to see some different climbers here on our team doing exercises so people can see how it looks a bit different to everyone as well. And then in module six, we're going to kind of bring that all together and look at programming flexibility training for yourself. So people can.

see how we approach it. We'll guide you through those steps. So you know that we'll kind of give the information on the steps that we take. Then we'll do give some examples and we'll do a guided practice. So you'll see one of us do it and then you'll also be able to do it yourself with the resources that we give you. There's some bonus content there just to kind of touch on a few little extra things like a follow along and then each week.

you'll also get your opportunity to answer the questions. So I guess the experience when you move through this, what we're trying to provide to people is the knowledge, but also really the processes that we use to apply it in a way that people can come back to time and time again. Yeah, in essence, it's like the flagship climbers guide to training is a very

practical course in the sense that you have got all this theory base and it kind of represents how we work at Lattice, but then there's a go away and do this stuff and this is how you do it. So you will walk away from your flexibility course going, I know how to now go and program this in to my training and I know the exercises to do and how to select them and why I'd select them. Yeah. So is Josh out of a job? I'm just thinking here suddenly. What's going on?

I'm sure he'll be fine. Does Josh know about this course? Yeah, Josh has been very, very much involved. I mean, the course has kind of, you know, been an evolution from Josh and the flexibility team building out here, a lot of education within the team, running workshops with people and yeah, and then coming through to the course. And, you know, I think it's something that, you know, it is different to working with a coach, make that really clear, doing the course.

doesn't make you more flexible. Doing the course and applying your knowledge and following the steps we lay out will make you more flexible. So, you know, I think it's definitely still a process, like any training process to engage in, but it's a different thing to engage in than doing a plan with a coach. Yeah, yeah. So with the context of when we were talking earlier in this podcast around the things that we've tried to kind of...

change and impact within the climbing industry, the climbing community, the way that we train in our best practices is what do you see as being the main things that we're trying to change when it comes to flexibility training at Lattice at the moment? Like what are the, I suppose the milestones that we're going for? We go, yes, we really want to get people to do this differently or we want people to change their attitudes or their approaches on these key things.

Yeah, and I think there's three that really stand out. I'm sure there's more, but the first one, and this links back to one of the modules in the course, is that there is so much more to training flexibility than just passive static stretching, these sort of routines that you might see people doing where they're holding stretches for really long durations. And I'd sort of put yoga in there as well, just because a lot of climbers talk about using yoga for flexibility, which is absolutely fine if they want to do that.

It's just that what we also see is a lot of climbers reaching, seeing it as a barrier, because they're like, I don't like yoga and I don't want to sit in a stretch for kind of 30 minutes, sit doing stretches for 30 minutes. If they don't like that, they won't do it. So I think seeing the breadth of approaches that are available is a big one. And also what plays into that is just people's level of response as well, you know, using different approaches really helps.

us work with a number of individuals to get results. And so, yeah, the fact that there's different methods when they're appropriate, how to how to do them, that's going to be number one. And then the second one is trying to get climbers to look at flexibility in the same way that they would look at other forms of training now. I think there's a lot of knowledge out there about how to approach finger strength training, how to approach endurance training. And I

What we want to change, I don't think we're maybe quite there yet, is to have people think about their flexibility training in that way. So that's like programming, structuring, looking at things like intensity, frequency of training, maybe even tapering into a performance phase, like all of that sort of thing. And then the final one is having people understand how to select exercises that are appropriate for them. And there's a couple of different branches to this. The first one,

And the most important one really is selecting exercises that are appropriate for your current level of flexibility. So meeting yourself where you are and enabling yourself to get a good, the desired sensation of stretch to the area that you want it in the positions that you're using. So the sort of form that you're using in your different stretching exercises.

So understanding that is, we've found to make a really big difference to people's progress. And when we have, you know, coach people on this, people we work with, they then see much kind of faster progress. So I think it can also really play into people not seeing gains when they do flexibility training. And the sort of second branch of this is having climbers understand if they are like a little bit more specific, you know, if they've got.

preferred style, maybe even a specific project, certain movements that they feel are really holding them back flexibility wise. How do you go from that climbing movement through to a specific flexibility training exercise that, like with a lot of other training, won't necessarily look exactly like the climbing move. You're not just mimicking off the wall. You are doing a flexibility training exercise that directs the stretch and, you know, or potentially the strengthening.

you know, lengthening and strengthening both really important for flexibility. You're wanting to direct that to the specific muscles that are then going to play out on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. It's three big, big areas, but I am hoping. Yeah, they're not small points. No, no, they're not. and I suppose that's what for me always gets me really psyched about what we do with education and what we've done over the years is that they're really important things. And ultimately.

they're all about impacting the performance and the longevity of the athlete at the end. And that's really important to all of us as climbers, but also the people that we work with. And hopefully we will look back at this in five years time. We'll be recording another podcast going, right, what's the next topic? Yeah, yeah. Look how different the whole stretching flexibility industry is now around climbing. And people just don't think of that as being a little bit different or...

niche or too high level anymore. It's just standard practice. Yeah. Hope here is to change that across the whole industry. Yeah, yeah, definitely. With a sustainable approach. I think that's often the thing and it's sort of I suppose it goes back to climbers having a good knowledge of all the different strategies they could use in their flexibility training is that, you know, I think you can look at an approach, use it and have it work for a bit and get some, you know,

positive impact it for your climbing, which is great. But I think then often people feel like they reach a bit of a stopping point or, you know, they don't know how to then kind of make that a whole kind of a continued development through their climbing. And I think because climbing is such a life, a sport, you know, people are really in it for the long haul, forms a lot of like lifestyle around it. I think it's really nice to approach training and learning about training in a way.

that you're like, yeah, this will be sustainable. So I think that's where the processes of, you know, in the flexibility course, probably some of the standout processes that we give, you know, and kind of guide on, or the assessment, selecting exercises, programming, and progressive overload, like how are you actually progressively overloading your flexibility training? I imagine most people would be able to list the ways to progressively overload finger strength training to you, and probably a few less would be able to do with flexibility.

Yeah, quite a few less. Yeah. And also always bringing it back to what is the impact in your climbing? So one of the things that we found with some of the approaches to flexibility training that we use, some of the more strengthening ones, so I'm not talking about just sitting in a stretch for like a really long time, a lot of what we do and what we look at in the course, we're really strengthening our body just with the emphasis on a large range of movement, is that we also find...

that can transfer well to the wall, even if people haven't seen a huge change in classic flexibility. So how far they're getting into the sides. But some of the basic measures that we use when we are assessing people's flexibility, they obviously they have their place, but what's really cool that I've definitely seen is that when people do some of the flexibility training that's a little bit more focused on like strengthening positions, they feel it on the wall in a meaningful way to their climbing.

even if they haven't seen some huge change in like their flexibility capability in some of the basic testing. And I think that just kind of helps people break down some of those barriers that they're like, you know, there's really flexible people over there. It's just easy for them. They've just like can get really deep into the sides. But I think you can see a bit of another way that it applies to your climbing. Yeah. So.

I'm sure people listening are thinking, well, this sounds flipping interesting. I bet there's loads that I don't know about flexibility and I'd like to learn more. But what I wanted to maybe do was look at a couple of topics and give people just a bit of an insight into how we're actually looking at those things. And one of the first ones that you brought up was around static stretching. So what is it that you...

specifically are trying to educate people on around static stretching and how this fits into the flexibility training spectrum. Yeah, so kind of zooming in on just this one method. And I think it is a great one to talk about because it is one people are really familiar with and it is useful even though we use it alongside other ones, it is really useful. So I guess some of the, Fusco's going to do some like highlights on static stretching.

things that I think people could take away and think about. And say the first is intention and intensity. So there's a couple of different ways that you can approach static stretching. You can do constant angle static stretching, or you can do constant tension stretching. So if you get into a static stretch, a passive static stretch, so I don't know, Taylor's pose or anything, you could just.

remain in that position for your whole duration. So obviously you'll want to be feeling a stretch in the muscles. That's how you're getting that intensity. But then you can just hold it for the whole duration. And what you should feel is that that stretch sensation will dissipate throughout the time. And that is due to the adaptations that are occurring, a lot of which is kind of a neurological dampening relaxation. And when you say those sensations dissipate over time, we're talking about in session.

mid exercise, not over a period of those sessions. So discomfort lowers during the stretch. So it would be both, I suppose, but actually if you get into a stretch position where you feel, you know, that kind of sensation in the muscle, if you then hold that for 60 seconds, maybe even longer, whatever duration, you should feel that kind of start to reduce. And if you just hold that position, you're sort of in statically, then...

that will occur throughout the duration and nothing else will change. Or what you could do is as that sensation dissipates, you could actually move a little deeper into the position. So obviously, I guess some people are like, but it's static stretching. I guess it sort of is passive static stretching, but with a gradual deepening into the position throughout the duration to maintain the same.

stretch sensation. So I guess in one, you're setting the intensity at the start when you get into the position and then you're not changing it. And with the second, you're setting the intensity at the start, but then you're looking to keep that the same. And both of these can be useful, but I think if people aren't seeing much progress from using static stretching, they may be doing sort of too much, if you like. They may be leaning a bit more on constant angle.

and not actually doing the constant tension where they're bringing a bit more of that intention and intensity to the session. And it is a bit uncomfortable. You are trying hard in the same way as you might be in training. So I think that is probably one of the really important bits with static stretching. And I think another is frequency and playing with frequency. So even if you're doing the...

their constant tension, especially if you are doing the constant angle. You can do more of this. The load that it's adding to your training is not the same as some of the more active forms of flexibility training, which are more like strength training. So use this. I think what some people do is they might do static stretching once a week and feel like they are not seeing much progress. And I think what we'll explore...

in the course alongside other things is how do you program this to make it the most effective it can be? And I think through frequency can be a really good way to do that. Couple of recommendations or ways that we have found work are doing your kind of passive stretching on any day that you are not doing an active form of flexibility training, or you could do it every day.

or you could do it like, you know, say at least like three times a week. So we're just leaning more to that kind of frequency, higher frequency side of things. And what we've found is that on top of the more active methods can bring about really good results. Where people might not see as good results, they might do is if they only use the passive forms and especially if they only use the constant angle forms. Yeah, it's really interesting that you say about that frequency element of stretching, because I think,

Most climbers are quite aware they have different options of sort of modalities, types of stretching, train, stretch training, flexibility training they can do, but they're really unsure about how frequent to make it. And I get asked this all the time. Is it better to go once or twice a week and go really deep and hard, or is it better to go seven days a week and go light? And it, to me, it always feels like there's quite a lot of confusion and unknown around this topic.

Yeah, and especially because you could try either. So with the more intense forms, we're probably usually talking two to three times a week, depending a little bit on body area as well, because, you know, if you were kind of doing some training for the lower body and upper body, then, you know, the fatigue will be a bit more isolated. Though we definitely start to run into like, how much time do you actually have to give to this? But yeah, on the sort of more intense side of things, you've kind of got two to three times a week.

And then if you're using the passive static stretching, you can do it seven days a week. We call that sort of greasing the groove. You'd probably keep it a bit lighter, you know, not pushing it so hard. Or you might do it like fewer times a week and push it a little bit harder with that constant tension. So you are really trying to kind of get deeper. And, you know, I do think it's quite easy for climbers to like put another weight plate on the bar or like, you know, on their kind of pickup edge.

it really takes some drive from you to push deeper into a stretch. So one of the approaches that we'll talk about in the course as well is tasking and tracking. And that's something that we have found really useful to help draw people's attention away from that kind of internal, that sort of sensation, some of that discomfort and having to push into that and having more of an external cue. So yeah, that sort of can play into...

getting the most out of your training as well. And another topic or sort of specific element of flexibility training that you touched on a little bit earlier, which I think also be interesting to talk about now is around this appropriateness or selection of exercise, you know, according to the demands of the climber, their specialisation, the project they're doing or how their body makeup is at the moment. Can you tell us a little bit about that and...

what this actually means and where are the areas that we're looking at to sort of see gain knowledge? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'll start with appropriateness because I think that's a really important one for seeing progress in an area. Say you choose an exercise and it's appropriate and it's not quite the best one for your project. There's often crossover between them. So I'll start with appropriateness. So I think the...

main thing here is to remember that in any given stretch, what we want to do is to be able to increase our range of motion. And there's a few different ways we can do that. But often with a lot of the exercises we've found to be really effective, you can use gravity to kind of help pull you deeper into a stretch. But the thing with gravity is it's obviously a force acting downwards. So the positioning of your body, the orientation of your body in the stretch,

needs to be such that you're really maximizing that. This is probably a little bit hard over a podcast, but if the pancake is a really good example or a forward bend, let's say a forward bend, because that's kind of gonna be really easy, because these are folding exercises, and when you fold forward, gravity will help draw your torso down to the floor. It'll be assisting you in getting deeper into your stretch, which is what we want. We want to be able to fold forward enough.

that gravity can help kind of pull us down into that stretch. It can help assist us in the same ways you can sort of add a little bit of weight to pull you deeper into stretches. Now, if when you bend over, if you, when you fold your torso forward, you barely get anywhere because of the orientation the rest of your body is in.

and the limitations of your flexibility. Not unless you have a head that weighs 50 kilos. Well, yeah. Basically. Yeah. Then you are just not getting the most out of gravity. So, and you just, because of that, you won't get as much stretch. And what we tend to find is that then people just don't see the progress that they want. And it kind of one of the problems here is copying people who are more flexible than you. So looking at the training exercise, the exact training exercise they're doing and trying to do it. And, and,

It doesn't mean you won't be able to do some form of what they're doing. You just probably need to change the orientation of your body so that when you do fold or move into your stretch, whatever that is, whatever that exercise is, gravity is pulling you and you are making the most out of that. And one of the kind of concepts we have is chasing the horizontal. So in a pancake or a folding exercise, you want to position yourself so that what you're working to is to be horizontal to the floor.

when you reach that, you know you can progress. So that's kind of the one side of it. Yeah, I think it's such a good example because I've been through this exact same experience with the whole straddle pancake thing is that when I was first working it and I was really inflexible on that forward bend, I just would get nothing over bending forward. And I watched my sister who's a gymnast and she's like, this is brilliant. I'm really getting deep in my stretch. I'm like, I'm getting nothing at this. So I had to go in a stood up position and...

forward bend because gravity was working my favor. And then once I could get beyond 45 to 60 degrees within that stretch, then I could go back down to seated. And then I did get something from it. And it was so interesting to go through that experience myself of realizing this stretch is appropriate when I'm quite unflexible, inflexible rather. And then when I've got deeper into it, I've become more advanced than the other one is totally appropriate for it. And it was cool experience that for my first time in my life. Yeah. And I guess.

The key thing to point out that you said there is that there is a form that is appropriate for all levels. I think that's a nice thing about flexibility. It's actually a really inclusive form of training because there's a lot of great adaptations you can make to exercises to make them right for people with different flexibility. So what you're doing here often when you're like changing the orientation of your body is whatever starting position you're in for your stretch, they'll often be a certain angle already set.

maybe at your hips, if we're talking about the pancake fold. So then when you fold, you're further increasing that angle. So you can think about making that starting angle as open as possible. So you're not in a very stretched position to begin with, allowing you to bring a stretch onto the muscles when you actually do the movement or the folding. And so, and as you said, that the way we do that is often through manipulating like the height of the hips and things like that. Yeah. So then I guess the other side is selecting exercises that.

are appropriate for your goals, your goals or your movement identifying weaknesses. Reflecting on like the actual climbing side of things is something that we do in the assessment module. It's not just about like flexibility tests. Of course, that's like one side of the coin and the other side is your climbing, your experience. And there's a few different ways we approach this. You can look at really common techniques and kind of movement patterns that we see in climbing.

And then we can identify the sort of different movements that are involved, the different muscles that are involved in that and how they might be limiting it. Then we'll choose exercises that target those. And we sort of call that the movement muscle system or yeah, process, because you follow these steps where you can really break down the movement, see the demands of the different muscles, what's lengthening, what's shortening. And then we know we want to...

increase the flexibility of the things that are lengthening, because they could be limiting us flexibility wise. And then we might want to strengthen the muscles that are shortening to help like pull us deeper. And so I'd say moving through that system and then being people being able to take that away and apply it to any movement for them is is key and just remembering that whatever exercise we end up with, it doesn't have to exactly look like what you're trying to do on the wall. In some cases, it might, but there's actually a lot of.

really effective flexibility exercises that look nothing like what you would do on the wall. Like the seated good morning is one that like comes to mind, but it's so, so valuable. And so I think remembering that along the way as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really, you know, really hoping and looking forward to people learning more about this, whether they're doing the flexibility deep dive course, or they're just looking at the content that we put out via things like the podcast here on Instagram, YouTube, et cetera.

and getting people to understand that it is like other forms of training, really quite a broad church as such. And there's lots of different approaches to achieve a similar outcome, but it's about thinking about it intelligently with the right approach, understanding what the demands of your goal are and what your project is, and then going into it in a thoughtful way and being consistent with that, with that training. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of the thoughtfulness comes around being...

realistic from the outset with your training time, where you are at, so that you can be consistent, you understand how to progressively overload it. And, you know, I think these are all skills people could take away. They could apply to other areas of training, but we're also going to look at it specifically thinking about flexibility training. And yeah, I think that hopefully because it's something you can come back to that classic thing people get where they hit a bit of a plateau or they've...

had to run out of ideas. They've used up the ideas or their current knowledge base. Hopefully this is a course where the idea is it could sustain your flexibility for your climbing career. And yeah, I mean, it's definitely something that I am really passionate about. I think I've always, coming from dancing, always used flexibility in my climbing. But for me, it's so linked to movement and that's something I hear from other climbers and that's often something that climbers really value.

is like that movement exploration, like being able to work out beta or getting your body into all these funky positions. And I think flexibility plays into that really nicely. massively. There is such a flipping huge correlation between good movers and flexible climbers. Yeah. And then you look at bad movers and then poor flexibility climbers. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously it's not a sort of like totally black and white, is it? But I think when you look at people who are really efficient,

can be really creative, B2Ys, often they do have a high amount of flexibility. Yeah, yeah. To finish off, I guess if anyone who's listening is interested in actually going and signing up to the course and getting involved with it, is it a case of going to the website and looking into our education section, sorry, in our education section and signing up? Are there any kind of...

money back, try it and see how you like it guarantees. How are we dealing with that? Yeah, so you can head to the website. You can check out a bit more of the information on there. If you still have any questions about whether it's right or not for you, you can also just contact us through the website. There's a form on there and that'll come through to the team here who can help explore your particular situation if you're still unsure.

Also, we do have a returns policy. So if you buy it and you look at some of it, you realize it's not quite right for you, whether it's just not quite right now, or it wasn't what you're expecting, then you can email that back to us and you can get your money back within the time period and stuff that's all on the website. One thing that I would say if you're gonna do that is I just really appreciate, we do have a feedback form if you could fill it in because,

then that can just help us improve it or kind of see where we can best be like clear on what we're offering. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks very much, Maddie, for joining me again for it's been a while since we sat down and as ever, it's good fun. And it's just nice to have me and you chatting about stuff that we absolutely love, which is training and climbing. Yeah, yeah, it's been good. It's been good to do. It's nice to like look back and see how things are evolving and changing as well. I think that's really cool. Yeah, awesome. Well.

Thanks very much for everyone listening and we will see you again very soon. Yeah.