I would believe that's a perfect run.
The 495 I ran in April before the Seoul World Cup.
Was there any moment in the middle of that
where you kind of thought like,
oh, maybe I've just lost it?
Every single day.
Every single time.
Training like every single day,
I was having like my lifestyle
on just absolutely being disciplined
about everything in my life.
Welcome to the season one finale
of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast.
I'm your host Jinni and I'm excited
to introduce my guest for today, Sam Watson.
Sam is only 17 years old,
yet he has already won gold at a World Cup,
holds the speed climbing record in the US
and recently secured his Paris 2024 Olympic ticket
at the Pan Am Games.
In this episode, we'll get more into speed climbing
at the highest level, his experience at the Pan Am Games,
how he juggles personal life, school and climbing,
and we need your help in figuring out
how he can up his social media game.
Hope you enjoy this episode with Sam.
Okay, awesome.
Well, thanks for joining me and how are you doing?
Doing quite well, how are you?
I'm all right.
Are you feeling relaxed after that huge weight
of trying to get an Olympic ticket is off your shoulders?
Yeah, I think it really does fundamentally change
the dynamic of how you view and approach the training cycle.
Whether or not I had gotten it,
it would be either I'm training for OQS
or I'm training for the Olympics itself.
And it's both pretty heavyweight of an event,
but it's definitely watching the different qualifiers.
It's definitely a way different perspective
already being qualified.
Did you take a break or are you still taking a break?
So I took six days off.
I took from the 25th to November 1st,
and it was so wonderful.
I enjoyed every single second of it.
Just because I think lifestyle-wise,
I'm very committed to being the best I can be off the wall.
So whether that's sleeping and eating
and managing my own time day to day,
that's very stressful for me to do while in training
to maximize my productivity in my sessions.
So whenever I was in a break,
I'm just like, I can climb whenever I want.
I can hang out with my friends.
I can do all of this.
I can just completely not worry about anything
and not have a care in the world,
which is good in moderation, I think,
for just about those times.
No, I mean, six days isn't even that long.
So I'm glad you got a little bit of a break.
Yeah, just basically the travel back
and then a couple of days was all I needed
to be more reinvigorated.
Yeah, like no climbing at all, not even any,
not even a little bit of climbing.
So I went bouldering a couple of times, really fun,
hung out with some friends,
and then I did a blindfold speed day,
which was just really fun,
but no pressure, no training plan.
I could have gone to the gym.
I could have not gone to the gym,
and that was kind of the mentality towards it.
So I think it worked really well.
Blindfolded speed sounds interesting.
Is that something you do on a regular basis ever?
No, it is so difficult.
It's absurdly hard to do because it seems like,
oh, it's just muscle memory.
It's really not.
You use your eyes when you speak.
Okay, that's good to know.
Yeah, I kind of thought,
I think I saw it posted in a story,
and it was like, oh, that kind of makes sense.
Maybe that's a good training, good way to train,
but I guess not.
Yeah, it was fun to try.
It was a fun day,
but I would not seriously implement it into a training plan.
Okay, makes sense.
All right, so let's get into, I guess, the meat of it.
For those who don't know you as well,
when did you start climbing,
and why did you end up choosing speed?
So I started climbing when I was five years old,
actually on my fifth birthday,
because that was the requirement.
You had to be at least five years old to climb
in the local gym that I was going to.
So I was just really into climbing when I was a kid,
and climbing is not very big.
I'm from Dallas, Texas, so not a lot of mountains here.
Like, it's very indoor kind of based culture.
So I started climbing at five years old.
I eventually joined another team based out of Colleyville,
which is sort of in the Fort Worth area.
And it was kind of a more serious thing
where we would compete.
And then when I was 10 years old, I joined Team Texas,
which is a DFW kind of Metroplex based whole organization
that competes in USA climbing and youth.
And I ended up really enjoying it
in the entire process of having
that kind of community around me.
I think I was very passionate about climbing
from kind of day one.
Like, I just really enjoyed it
more than anything else, really.
So I loved Team Texas.
So I just invested a lot towards that when I was a kid.
And then speed climbing was kind of the natural,
it was very sort of embraced, I think,
through that competitive climbing culture.
So it was just one of the other disciplines.
It wasn't obviously as popular as bouldering and lead,
but there was other athletes who I could join
and do speed on a regular basis.
And I was quite good at it.
But I think I was
13 years old when I started speed climbing more,
almost the only one I was really
competitively pursuing at a high level,
because I think I had, I realized I had more potential
in that one than the other disciplines.
Okay, wow, so five years old,
it was like you had already known about climbing
at five years old and you decided you wanted to do it?
I think I was definitely just,
like my parents would say,
I'm a vertically inclined child is the term they use,
where I'd be climbing the walls and I'd be like,
climbing the different things around
and just in the most dangerous way possible.
So they were very excited to take me to somewhere
where I could kind of express that through a good outlet.
Yeah, I feel like I have fairly any memories
before five years old.
So I can't imagine I would have like,
decided that climbing is something
I wanted to do at that age.
I think I was three years old.
I have a specific memory of,
I think one of the first like hard lessons I learned
in my life was to tell whether or not something was stable.
Like I remember climbing up on this like plastic shed
and it just completely caving in on me.
And I was like, okay, well, that's not like,
you gotta like at least knock on it
to make sure it's not gonna fall over on you.
So that was one of my earliest memories
of like learning something as a kid.
Wow, what a memory.
Yeah, I don't think I have any memories that early.
I think my earliest memory is my parent,
my like mom was holding me
and then she was ripping me away from an ice cream machine.
That's my earliest memory.
So the earliest memory of a non-athlete.
But yeah, back to speed climbing.
You started speed climbing at 13.
Do you feel like,
this is just something that I just thought of.
Do you feel like it would even make sense
to start speed climbing earlier?
Cause like your body goes through so many changes
in that time and speed climbing is so same every time.
Like, do you feel like that makes a difference as you grow?
I do think it would have made a difference
if I started speed climbing earlier.
But so when I say I started speed climbing at 13,
I mean on the official route,
I think I competed in C and D,
which is the U I think 12 or maybe U11,
U13 categories in USA climbing.
I'm not sure if that's exactly correct.
But it was a non-standard speed route.
So it'd be set new every time.
And I wasn't really that good at that one,
but I would sort of, I enjoy training it.
And I think it's good to sort of teach a child
that's under the age of, I would say 13 or 14,
the fundamentals of moving your body faster in climbing,
like in moving all four limbs at once,
specifically for speed.
But I would not necessarily say it's essential
rather than just like,
I think there's a lot of athletes who could start
at a later age and be still top of the world.
But I think we'll also figure out in like 10 years,
if there's some like kid that's been training
since he was five years old and just speed climbing
and how better that's gonna make
than someone who started at a later age.
Yeah, that'll be interesting to see.
Do you feel like speed climbing came naturally to you?
Yes, I don't think I was ever really
the strongest athlete.
I am not very athletically inclined.
As I would say, no Olympian would say like,
I'm not an athlete,
but like I was never good at sports as a kid.
I was pretty good at competitive climbing
and bouldering and lead, but not like exceptional.
But I think I just really, really enjoyed the process
of training speed climbing.
And that's what kind of elevated me to a higher level
where I could sort of embrace the natural talents I had.
But I think I really only discovered
that I was very talented at speed climbing
when I was like 15 years old.
Like when I was like sort of, I think running,
like I think I had a big, I had a stretch of time
where I dropped from like 7.4 seconds to like 5.8 seconds
in the span of six months,
just because that was like my primary goal to speed climb.
And at the time that was kind of like unprecedented
like territory for someone to do.
So that was kind of the moment where I realized
I was really natural at it.
But before that, I was really just enjoying the process
of getting better at something.
And when you first started speed climbing,
was there anything about it that surprised you?
I think when I first started competitive speed climbing,
I think in 2021, just the sort of load,
like of how much of an endurance sport
competing in speed climbing is,
where you're sitting for,
or you're running around for 40 minutes in line
and doing your runs and waiting,
and your heart rate is constantly like elevated.
So it really does become an endurance effort to a level.
And like, I remember my first proper competition in speed,
I was exhausted at the end.
I was like, wow, that was not anything
I've ever experienced in practice.
So that was my first big surprise
for speed climbing, I would say.
You mean running around because of like,
you wanna keep warm or like the venue?
So that competition specifically was Youth Nationals
in Reno at Mesa Rim.
And I do remember the warmup area
was not by the speed wall at all.
So sort of pacing like between there in the bouldering area
and trying to keep my fingers warm and sort of like,
and it was just like volunteers are calling you
to line up and stage and things like that
are constantly happening.
So it's just a very sort of a little bit overwhelming event
for a first time thing.
And I didn't expect, I expected it to just be,
I would race, do my thing, race,
just stay warm like I would in practice.
Cause I had done a lot of preparation for that.
But the real deal was definitely a big shock.
Yeah, I'm sure you've gotten more used to taking on surprises
going to different World Cups.
So we'll get back into like specifics
of speed climbing a little bit later on.
But right now I wanna go into your experience
at the Pan American Games.
Cause that just happened recently.
And of course that is where you took your Olympic ticket.
So congrats on that.
But yeah, just walk me through your experience
at the Pan Am Games and how you were feeling.
So the Pan American Games,
I had sort of planned out the entire year
of wanting to like, of deciding 2023 was the year
that I wanted to get Olympic qualified.
I either wanted to get a spot at the World Championship
or at my continental.
So I think it was announced by the IFSC
that it would be, they wouldn't host
a separate Pan American qualifier.
It would be at the Pan American Games.
And I think earlier this year to my knowledge.
So I really wanted,
so I put all my effort towards the World Championship
and had the worst event I have ever had.
Wasn't necessarily like something I would say
was because of nerves or because of anything really.
Like I wouldn't blame the conditions.
I just happened to have two bad runs back to back.
How often does that happen to you?
I mean, I like to think of speed climbing as your,
the concept of consistency is you want
to raise the rate of mistakes not being made on each move.
So ideally if you're a great competitor,
you can get to like an 83%.
It's sort of what it takes to win a four race competition
in order for it to sort of be in control of what you're doing.
And I felt really, really good
with my completion rates before burn.
I was not slipping really at all.
Like I was dropping like three runs out of 20
or something like that before that.
And so I felt great, but that actual day, I think,
I was a little thrown off
because there wasn't any practice runs.
The practice runs were the day before.
And it was sort of just like,
I was trying to just do my runs,
but it ended up just being,
I didn't change my mentality at all.
So I was just like, I feel confident for my next one
after I slipped on my first run.
And then it just didn't work out.
That kind of 17% of not having a good run is not,
it just wasn't, just happened to roll twice really.
So I was just like, anyway, so after that event,
I was like, I have about 70 days to train
for the Pan American Championships.
So I was like, I will partition 45 of them
to the Wujing World Cup as well,
where I want to just get way stronger
and consistently be sub five.
And I did that and it was just,
I ended up doing an insanely like brutal training cycle
where I was training like every single day,
I was having like my lifestyle
on just absolutely being disciplined
about everything in my life.
I was not only tracking my calories,
but I was tracking the individual amino acids
of every single thing I ate to that,
make sure I could have my leucine,
isoleucine and valine levels,
which are the muscle building compounds
at constantly a high level
so I could be completely optimal.
So that was about 25 days.
And I was kind of miserable doing that
because it's just so much constant work,
but it really did pay off
because I was the week before trying to doing great.
The comp itself wasn't amazing,
but I acknowledged,
I think I was pushing for a world record run
and it just didn't happen in the last couple of moves.
So I was at the end of the day content with that.
And then after that competition leading up,
I said I wanted to do just performance.
How do I win at the time three races?
Was it what I thought because there were 16 athletes.
So I was like, okay,
so they won't take all 16 athletes to,
it'll be a round of eight
because it said that in the info sheet.
And they ended up actually changing the rule last minute.
So I had learned from the Salt Lake World Cup,
that was men and women on separate days
that doing the men only format is kind of brutal
because the five minute breasts really gets depleted
because you're staging and you're warming up
and you really don't have that much time.
And you're kind of like,
you're out of breath a lot of times.
So I was planning to do that with three races
and just saying I wanna have three clean laps
and I'll be able to win the comp.
And so that was just my entire training
of just I wanna have perfect days.
And I was doing, I think six out of seven,
six out of seven, seven out of eight, seven out of eight,
like 10 out of 11 days all the time.
And then the only perfect session
where I didn't mess up a single run
was actually the day or the last session in Santiago
on the wall.
And then of course the comp itself.
So yeah, that was kind of the entire preparation.
As far as like the micro level of being at the competition
and being immersed in that experience of the village,
it was a bit more than I would expect
in terms of like kind of a shock of just,
wow, it's so much stuff going on.
But I really did enjoy it.
I did feel kind of at home with,
I just had the mentality of I'm here,
I wanna compete in speed climbing
and I wanna win races.
And that kind of brought me pretty far.
Yeah, was there anything that happened at the games
that you weren't expecting or kind of threw you off?
So if you watch the stream actually,
you could probably see this.
It was very cold.
It was not very great conditions.
So it was like probably 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
I don't speak Celsius unfortunately.
But it was pretty cold and they actually brought us out.
I was racing Isaac Estevez from Ecuador
and they said, we were like,
I was about to go, right?
They're about to climb up the mark, right?
I'm sitting here in a Jersey in shorts
and it's freezing, right?
And the wind is like blowing too.
So like the auto blade is flapping in the wind
and I'm like super cold and they're like one minute delay.
I just stand here like stone faced for a minute.
And I'm just like, I got this.
I didn't expect this to happen
but I'm not gonna let it throw me off.
And I'm really proud of myself
because I had the fastest run I had with a comp
after that happened.
And I think so did he,
one of the faster comp times of the comp as well.
So it was really just, the conditions weren't amazing.
I think I had a foot pop on one of my races as well
but just doing what I trained for,
you still have that little bit of margin of error
when you're trying to get a little bit more consistent
but just recovering your runs and doing your best
to just win every race was the goal.
Yeah, I sort of remember seeing that there was a delay
and it just felt like ages,
just watching you guys stand up there.
It was a tense moment.
It was like so palpable of like everyone in this crowd
was like, oh my God, how are these athletes
doing this right now?
Like it was an immense amount of pressure for sure.
Yeah, well, Glad you pulled through.
And I think another thing people talk about at the games
is like the village experience.
Was that anything interesting for you?
I really think that the Santiago 2023 people
did really, really well,
especially because some games are kind of like,
like nightmare experiences
with like the village is not working.
I think we had some issues like the first couple of days
with like our water.
But besides that, our village was a great experience.
You have to like sit around or go around the village
and see all the other athletes and all the other sports.
So it was a cool experience.
I didn't, before the games or before I competed,
I didn't try to explore a ton,
but I ended up a couple of days after like
exploring the whole village and it was a really cool
experience.
They put in a lot of work and a lot of effort.
So it was just a really good time
for all the athletes, I think.
Yeah, I figured like, I feel like in that situation,
I wouldn't really want to explore before time to compete.
So you had like some time after to just relax
and hang out there.
Yeah, because I think they flew out the entire
USA climbing team.
So it was women's speed, men's speed,
men's boulder lead, women's boulder lead.
And that was like the entire competition.
So we had three more days.
Oh, okay, awesome.
And I don't want to like get too much into it
because she's not on the podcast to talk about it.
But if you had some info on it being on the same team,
I think a lot of people are just wondering
why did Emma Hunt end up competing despite already having
an Olympic ticket?
Like, wouldn't it be better to focus on training
or something like that?
Yeah, so that one was kind of an issue that sort of
arise, I think, from the fact that it was
the Pan American Games and not an individual qualifier event.
Like I think they did for Asia.
Like Asia had their full like Hong-Jau Asian Games.
But Pan America didn't have that same situation.
So it's a pretty big deal to compete at the Pan American
Games as far as like all the athletes that want to go there.
And even if you're Olympic medalist,
it's still common for you to want to go to that event.
So I think that became a sort of conflict of you want to
compete as an athlete because it's not just an Olympic
qualifier, it's just a competition you want to do good at.
And I think also it's good practice to be in that village
environment and to be immersed in that experience
before the Olympic Games.
So it's not as much of a shock.
I do think there's obviously an argument either way of
it's really the elephant in the room because the Olympics
are so big compared to anything else climbing
has really seen.
So it's like you sort of want to preserve the purity
of the sport through not competing in a bracket
or messing it up potentially.
But I think it worked out well.
I think Piper is completely deserving of the spot
that she ended up getting.
So I don't really have too much quarrel with it.
Yeah.
And so thinking ahead to the Olympics,
do you sort of have a training plan in mind?
And are you going to be doing like any of the
World Cup season?
Yeah. So I think I would like to try to win a World Cup
series at some point.
That's still a major goal of mine.
I think I will do Wujiang, Salt Lake City,
Chamonix, Skip, Branchon right before the Olympics
and go home and train.
And do Seoul after the Olympics if I'm inspired to do so.
So I think the World Cup circuit is still a big part
of climbing and competing.
And I still want to go to events and learn from my mistakes
if I do make any, which I will,
about how to compete and how do I be the best athlete
in Paris.
So that's like a pretty big deal to me to go to those events
and figure out what to do.
But I do have sort of a plan of month by month
of doing different training cycles and trying to get
stronger and more powerful and a better performer
as a sort of an alternating cycle.
How much faster do you think you can go by the Olympics?
Is that something that people think about?
Personally, I think I have some, definitely some doors
to open as far as I'm pretty young.
I'm not that strong.
Like I am, I definitely could,
I have only really been training as far as I'm consistently
doing a good like weight regimen for a few months now.
And it's been like very, very helpful.
Like it's helped a lot on the wall to do that.
So I think the sky's limit sort of as far as pushing times
down via just raw power output.
And just far from being perfect,
I think the sport is still really young.
So I think I'm not saying anything is impossible
at this point because I think it's not a good mentality
to be putting yourself in a box of,
I think the limit is four or five or whatever.
I don't, I think it's,
I'm gonna continue to work my hardest to push my times down
and I have no clue what the limit will be.
Okay, yeah, I think that'll answer one of the later
questions that came from Discord as well.
So yeah, a few questions just about like speed climbing
logistics in general.
This one may be kind of like a silly question,
but I was listening to a previous podcast you did
and you mentioned that you had like a finger injury
at one point and it just kind of made me wonder like,
do speed climbers get injuries?
Like, did you get it from speed climbing or like,
of course with like bouldering or lead,
people get like finger injuries or sprains were falling,
but there's no like surprises on the wall with speed.
So just kind of wondering if that happens.
Yeah, so for speed, I think since you're pulling on jugs,
but pulling on jugs fast,
you can be prone to a sort of a different set of injuries.
So I think that specific injury I got when I was pretty young,
I think I was like 15, of just pulling on,
of too much volume on a certain finger.
I think it was like my left index finger and it just ended up,
I think getting tendonitis or something like that.
And I just rehabbed it like normal, took some time off,
did some loading on it and it was no huge deal.
But I think as far as a broader question of injuries
and speed climbing, it's definitely something
that does happen.
It's just a different nature because bouldering,
I think is a bit more brutal on the body because you're
falling and you're hitting the ground at that kind of rate.
So it's a little bit more aspect of randomness of you can fall
weird or you can, it's just not good for wear and tear
to be hitting the ground that many times.
Or just speed, you're on an auto-boule consistently.
You're hitting the ground at a normal rate
and you're not like falling like large distances.
But sometimes like different training regiments
can be bad for you if you're lifting a ton of weight
when you shouldn't be or you're using bad form or you're,
I think a lot of times people will overload their fingers.
Like they'll try to do hangboard stuff.
Like if you try to do hangboard stuff on really small ledges,
really fast, that's really not good for your fingers
unless you're training to be that level of ability.
So I think that's a bit of an issue.
But besides that, it's, I would say generally a bit more healthy
than boulder or lead for injuries.
Yeah, I guess like why are people training a lot of weight
on small edges for speed climbing?
I think just as a like hangboarding thing,
they want to pull on tiny edges when they don't have to.
Sometimes it's just because they're not doing it
sometimes it's just because it's like cross training with bouldering
they want to get strong with their fingers.
Sometimes like a workout I'll do a lot is pulling on the campus rungs.
So like you pull on the campus rungs like at a higher level of width.
So they're larger, right? They're like jugs.
And you try to do them fast.
And it's really good to train for contact strength
if you're trying to do it like on those jugs.
But if you do it on the smaller ones,
you're just shock loading your fingers over and over and over again.
And that could potentially not be good.
I'm not a doctor, but I could potentially see some issues
with you doing that.
As you know, I think some people have.
So yeah, another speed question I had.
This is also this is always something I've wondered about.
But I thought so it also stems from like this discord discussion.
You have this like rhythmic beef that counts you in.
And then someone said that you still have to react to it less than 0.1 seconds to start.
Is that the case?
So yeah, that's a pretty controversial point in speed climbing
is the technical false start rule.
So the idea behind it is that a human cannot react to a cue
within only 0.1 seconds, right?
They have to be longer than that.
They have to be if they were there,
or if they were to get under 0.1, they would be anticipating it.
And there'll be a false start.
So what ends up happening is it doesn't really do its job
because you're anticipating it anyway.
If you're running a one to your anticipating the beep,
like I can tell you right now, I do not react to the third beep
because if I did, the reaction time would be like 0.3, 0.4.
Because if in a controlled scientific setting, you're given a beep
and you're saying, okay, press this button when you hear the beep.
In theory, the max would be about 0.1.
If you're like a highest percentage of a very good reaction time.
But the thing about speed climbing is you're not doing you're not just pressing a button.
You're fully moving your entire body off the ground to get off the pad,
which requires a ton of energy and takes longer.
So you're anticipating it anyway.
So I personally have a cueing system where I'll do a certain swing based on the beeps.
So that the motion allows me to move before the beeps go off.
I'm generating momentum when the timer isn't going.
So that's why I'm a big fan of swinging at the start because it's basically cheating.
I mean, with no rule against it, it's like it's beta.
It's part of the route is to get off the ground faster than the clock can start you, essentially.
Because you want to get that ideal reaction time because it is a lot like shaving off.
If the difference is 0.1 versus 0.2, that's a tenth of a second.
And that's a lot of like 0.1 seconds on reaction time versus 0.1 seconds of strength.
Like just getting stronger is a big deal.
That's like several months of training at least at a high level.
So I would say it's definitely, I would personally make some changes to the rule itself.
But that's generally the rundown of what the best athletes will do to try and circumvent it, essentially.
Yeah. So is it like the last beep is not always a consistent amount of time after the first two?
No, it is.
And so do you know why they don't just like do like one starting sound like say like track races or something like that?
I think it did for a while.
And the IFSC, if you watch like 2014 comps, I think the year they did away with it.
But what ended up happening is I was talking earlier about the margin of error of sort of like getting off the ground in 0.3 versus 0.2 or even like 0.6 if you're really slow, like actually reacting to it.
That's a very like that's a very large amount of skill in climbing to make up that amount of time.
So it sort of is a little bit better to have the standardized beeps because you're maybe at a different you're not in the same position.
Your body maybe isn't cued because you can't just stay there cued for a while.
You have to be like, you know, in a routine.
I mean, there's obviously a benefit to that.
So it wouldn't necessarily be fair to be constantly giving everyone, say, in a qualifier round a random beep at a different time because potentially it could help other athletes do better than others.
And it also just lowers times to have a standardized beep to have faster reaction times.
If you're getting off the ground in 0.1, it just lowers times.
That's all it does.
I mean, it's just really I have a see obviously does benefit from having lower world records because it's interesting to the viewer. So they don't want to needlessly push that those up.
Yeah, I guess they do always kind of advertise it as like this is the fastest race in the Olympics.
So, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Does that mean like you need to train reaction time at all?
Or do you just kind of have that beep going in your head?
I think it's a matter of a set of cues.
So you're like super react like you're very used to using the beeps as a cueing mechanism to get off the ground in a certain amount of time.
So like personally, I put some effort into it.
You still far start occasionally because you still have variance because it's not humanly controllable to the thousandth of a second.
Unfortunately, so you still have some errors, either being too slow or way too fast.
So it's an issue sometimes.
But I guess it's a necessary part of having a racing sport.
Yeah, thanks.
So back to your personal speed climbing specifically, I'm excited to ask about speed again because like before when I did my speed interviews, I had like never touched a speed wall.
And then I finally got a chance to like try it in Salt Lake, educated myself, tried it.
And now I just have like more questions related to it.
I did it the first time and I got like 41 seconds, which is slow, but honestly, like less time than I thought I would take because it felt like an eternity on the wall.
When it comes to making improvements in speed climbing, do you remember like where you like what time you started out at and how quickly you improved?
So we actually didn't have a 15 meter wall in Dallas until 2019, which is when I started.
I was born 2006. I was 13 at the time.
So I actually had trained at another wall like because that was both in the fall and I started training in the spring. That was a 10 meter wall. So there was no timer on that one.
So I think the first time I ever like did a day on a timer was I went down to Houston and I had run 11.63 on the 15 meter wall.
And I was like really, really. That was pretty good for the time, to be honest.
And then I kind of shaved it down. I like had like a joke of like we didn't have PR. We didn't have a timer system.
So my PR like was like 9.7 seconds on a mobile timer and then like 11 seconds on an actual timer.
And then I really just wanted to lower it down via the actual like system once we got it at the new gym in Plano installed in 2019 in the fall.
So I do just remember really enjoying the process of wanting to lower that time in practice because I wasn't competing at the time.
So just wanted to lower that time was really what I wanted.
Was it I'm assuming it's a lot easier to improve when you're first starting out and then you kind of just get like really tiny gains after that.
In terms of actual time, yes. So I think it took me from that to like in the first year I was able to shave like four seconds.
And then in the next year, like one and a half. Then in the next year, like another second.
And then this year, like a half a second. And then from the beginning of 2023 to the end of or to now in November when recording this, like 0.2.
So it does get like logarithmically hard. But I would say you're definitely improving at climbing itself.
Like at a pretty good rate as you're training harder and more advanced like training mechanisms.
Just the time is lower. Like the gains just show up as less because it's just you can't be improving by that much every single every single day.
And I guess you also consider like accuracy and consistency as like gains and training as well.
Yeah, of course. Like being able to run your fastest run last year on an average Tuesday is a good thing to do for sure.
Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. And then after I had tried it out, I kind of just wanted to have like a good clean run.
Like it's still not going to be fast or good, but just like it felt like a clean run.
And I was talking to like Albert and Grace and they said that that's impossible and you'll never feel like you have a clean run.
But like you finally did sub five and like April and I feel like at sub five, it's hard for me to imagine that you didn't feel like you had a clean run.
Do you ever feel like you have that or in your mind, you still know like exactly what you should have done to like do better?
Sometimes I'll have runs where I'm like, oh, if I just improve that a little bit, it would have been a little bit faster.
And the sub five barrier was brutal, especially because I had run so many runs that if I had just gotten off the ground a little bit faster than I would have.
I would have gotten the official sub five time like I'm not not in competition, but it was just I've done that so many times.
Like I think I've run maybe 14 maybe like 14, 15 ish sub five is like on an actual timer now.
And I've run maybe 40 or 50, five O's that if I had gotten off the ground in a perfect reaction time, I would have gotten a sub five.
So that was for a while. The like the joke is that it's just so hard to like it's just such a tough barrier to push past.
But as far as your question about the perfect run goes, I definitely do have it sometimes like when I'll head a major PR and it's like a big gap.
It's just all that comes together. It just all clicks, I think, a lot of times.
And that's really just like a one and like, I would say for me to run that sub five that I did in April, I was trying like for that to be my primary goal in life.
I probably put in a legitimate 250 attempts of this. I'm trying 100 percent to get this run and to get off the ground fast and to do this.
And I got it once. So it's really like that's that I would believe that's a perfect run. The four, five, the four, nine, five I ran in April before the World Cup.
Well, glad that you can feel like you have a perfect run. Maybe I'll feel like that one day.
I believe.
And in terms of coaching in climbing, what kind of coaches have you had? Like, when did you start coaching with Albert?
So I worked with the coach Merit Ernsberger since from when I was 13 to about the time I was like 16 or 17.
I started managing my own stuff more myself.
And he was on Team Texas as an official speed coach still is. And I would go to the practices and do those lessons plans.
I think when I started doing the more like the senior World Cup tours, I more enjoyed just climbing on my own and I was more productive to be at the gym, like the daytime hours and doing my own lesson plan.
And I definitely learned sort of I had more of a self-coached phase through the World Cup season last year, where I was still getting a lot of support from other people, but I wasn't necessarily taking any one input.
I think I started working with Albert in the latter half of like, I would say around the Jakarta World Cup last year in 2022.
So that was September, where I would like analyze stuff with him and go over stuff.
And then I think he started writing my plans like the stuff I would do like early this year and like March or so, where I would like have a lesson plans is what I'm doing today.
And then USA climbing hired a trainer, Matthew Madison, the current speed team manager and strength conditioning coach. And then he made he started making my workout plans.
Just about two months ago. So that's been my coaching support status. There's a lot of other names that are in there that I haven't mentioned that have been incredibly supportive.
And as far as my coaching goes, that process, please excuse this brief intermission, but I would just like to take some time and remind you that if you are enjoying this podcast, please follow and rate it on your preferred listening platform.
If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to subscribe and hit the like button. Anything helps to push this podcast out to more people and get even more amazing guests on back to the show.
Yeah, he had mentioned that you were in strength cycle jail.
What happened there? How did you come out of it? So I was explaining this earlier. After burn, I just did a brutal, brutal strength cycle. And it was the first time in my life that I had done that much training that consistently.
I was very, very bad at skipping the gym in order to climb a lot of times because I just enjoyed climbing so much more than I enjoy lifting.
I did that and I was just so sore. I was lifting a lot. I was doing a lot of weight and I was doing a lot of climbing and I was still doing a full voluminous three day on one day off schedule in climbing.
I was doing the same schedule I would for climbing if I wasn't doing any lifts with a full pretty hard lifting schedule. I was thrown in the deep end for sure, which is what I wanted because it works.
But I was just so like, it really takes a toll on everything in your life because you're putting in absolutely everything to keep your lifestyle afloat.
Because really what would happen if I hadn't, like if I was not focusing on sleeping enough every night, I would probably just get injured.
That's probably the outcome that would most likely happen or I would just not have this production I would have. It gets really demoralizing to be running really fast times.
In March of this year and February this year, I was running five O's with relative ease without all this training. And now I'm training and I'm running five three every session because my body is so tired.
So it is a necessary part to sort of get slower to get faster, especially when that involves hypertrophy and gaining weight.
It's a necessary part of every athlete really if you're trying to train optimally. You don't have to show up every session with sort of the ego of I want to do the best today.
I want to PR every session. It's not a realistic goal. And that especially sort of took a mental toll on me because I said like I love the process of getting faster in practice. Like I love just like that's how I get motivation to climb at a high level.
So that was especially real for me. But I'm doing it again now and I've made some adjustments and it's definitely working way better.
So you did manage to like get out of it.
Yeah, and that was the that was the plan. So it's three weeks of training and then one week of D load and then competing at the end of that for a month. So as soon as I started downloading every session got faster than the last basically.
And it was a great feeling like everything. I was living in Utah at the time and I went back home to Texas and like all in life was just so well.
And I was just really enjoying it. And like it, it really does like if you want to go through a process for I mean any sport really.
And you really want to show like you really want to work hard and then get results. That's how you do it. And it's like almost like I mean even outside of competition just going to the gym and being able to run some five multiple times in a day and being like wow this is this really did work.
It's a great feeling for sure.
Yeah. Was there any moment in the middle of that where you kind of thought like oh maybe I've just lost it.
Every single day.
Oh wow.
Every single time.
It'll definitely get easier and easier as I do it more as an athlete, but it because it's becoming so new.
Robert's a great coach, but he's he's never had an experience of coaching a high level athlete like this much of having that high of an intensity. And sometimes just like, am I doing the wrong thing.
To train, and which I made some adjustments and I did lower the volume eventually.
I just changed the so instead of doing three days on one day off, I would do two days on one day off.
Because it's just sort of a math equation. If you think about it, where you have three days, and one day off that 75% of the time you're climbing, 25% you're resting right.
If you do two days and one day off it's 66% of the time, and one day is 33% right. So, all you have to do to make the easier sort of less volume work is be 9% more productive.
And I was like, I looked at that, and I was like, I can definitely do that if I am, because the third day on would just be pulling on the wall and screaming at my skin hurts.
So, I eventually realized this isn't working really that well. And it was, but I mean even just figuring that out and sort of letting go of the ego of knowing, I am not an athlete who can train that much, like, you want to work hard and you want to put in the volume.
And it really does take a toll on your ego. As someone who's done that, like I did that the entire time of the past two years of I would do three days on one day off.
So, it really does take a toll and to say, it's more optimal to not do, to do less right. You're over training, essentially.
So, it didn't work out, it does take some time, and I think I'll hopefully if someone if someone reaches out to me and is like, how do I do this at the highest level, I would be like, don't make the mistakes I made.
So, it's a full it's a full learning experience for sure. Well, glad you're out of it.
And thank you for the insight on speed climbing. I think that was everything I had about speed climbing so far. We might get back into it a little bit in the Discord questions later.
But for now, I just want to go into climbing, but like non speed climbing for a bit.
People are always kind of curious what speed climbers do outside of speed. So, do you ever do like competitions for bouldering or lead?
I love rock climbing. It's I will always be a lifetime climber.
Even I don't I'm not going to competitively speed climb for the rest of my life, but I think I will always be a climber for sure.
So, I never really enjoyed the process of getting better and training lead climbing. I just didn't like it.
Like I didn't like going to the gym and doing doubles on like plastic roots.
So, I was never the most invested in competitively climbing. I did enjoy the process of competitive bouldering.
I like doing hard moves on indoor routes and I like doing like big dynamic stuff. I love the style of competition route setting and how it pushes athletes.
So, I do it occasionally. I haven't I've strayed away from doing bouldering comps just because it's kind of dangerous as far as getting injured goes to the point which is not worth it for me personally.
Like I do genuinely love doing it, but I remember I had a session where I was like on a spray wall and I was just trying really hard and I was really enjoying myself.
And one of my coaches kind of pulled me aside like the one of the team pecs is like lead boulder coaches and was like you can't be doing this like I was just like I will I mean not in that way really but it was just like you can't be going on these routes and trying your absolute hardest and campers sing it and then dry firing off and then hitting the mat at like high speeds right you just need to be more careful.
And for me, I'm a type of person who wants to invest fully in something if I'm going to invest in it. So, I was like okay, I still do it occasionally in a more chill sense.
I love bringing my non-commer friends to the gym and bouldering with them. And it's always kind of a shock to them.
Because it's like wow you're the difference between like me and a new climber as even just as a boulder who someone who doesn't do it that much is just astonishing. But it's always fun to get people into climbing.
I want to be the best ambassador I can so yeah that's mostly answers that question for me.
Yeah.
So you don't even in the future you don't think you'll do like any bouldering competition starting day like that.
Um, I don't want to close the door forever but I don't have any immediate plans to pursue all three disciplines at any point really in the near future.
Maybe as a collegiate athlete or a master's athlete or at a more recreational level but I don't ever plan on entering the bouldering World Cup or anything like that.
Sure. Yeah.
When was the last time you did another kind of competition because like you, I guess in Team Texas you still did like some bouldering elite stuff.
I think last year I actually won a qualifying event that we did. And it was actually kind of an upset because everyone was like, I am not a better boulderer than at least like 10 people at that event.
So, um, I guess the setting just kind of fit around my style of just big jumping moves, and I think that like a lot of the stuff I could do and I was just like being really scrappy and fighting for the zones and stuff so it worked out really well.
And that's like still a, like, sort of like a joke or my friend group that I want to work up before I want to qualify event.
So, I do really enjoy it but it's just kind of, there's, there's many reasons that I kind of have to take a cautious approach to doing things like that. Yeah, understandable.
Yeah, we just, we don't really see much in terms of your social media in terms of like you bouldering so I think it's just something people are curious about. Maybe I should just upload more boulders onto Instagram.
I always felt a little weird doing that of like saying like, unless it's just like a massive fan or something like, if you want to watch someone who's really good at bouldering don't watch me.
But, I mean, maybe it would be entertaining. But, like, there's, there's a lot of other boulders in this world that you would rather watch do a boulder, but yeah, maybe.
I mean, yeah, to me it's not like I'm watching bouldering videos to see like the best person do it, like, I mean, especially because that's like not even relatable to me.
I just have like that curiosity to see like, I guess like the cross discipline kind of thing.
Because it's interesting to see like, it was really interesting to see like boulder lead climbers do speed and like the 2021 Olympics and it's also really interesting to see speed climbers, not speed climbing, so it kind of helps put into perspective the difficulty of one discipline and like the mastery of another.
Yeah, I think it's, I think you should do it.
All right, well, that's some social media advice. I'm still trying to work on that. I'm figuring out what to post and things like that because I, I do want to put in more work into my social medias and stuff.
But I just can't bring myself to post like the same route every time first becoming. I do it every day right. Or I do it, you know, a lot of like five days of the week.
But it's like, do you really want to watch me run like five? Oh, like you watch me run for nine. Like, do you want to, would you rather watch me like have an average run in training?
It's kind of the question, but I don't know. I've definitely explored it.
Yeah, that's kind of the difficulty with like being a speed climbing athlete because it's the same thing and people don't really want to watch.
I did try on social media. I tried to make like a voiceover like video of I got some footage from my friend Dylan Countryman.
He gave me some footage. I made like a sort of information video on contact strength. And I was like, okay, I'm going to make this series. I'll call it Snip Snippets.
And I'll make one like every week. And I did it. I was like, okay, I'll take me five minutes. I'll take me 20 minutes. It'll take me an hour. It'll take me two hours.
And I spent like so long trying to perfect this video. And it's gotten like a hundredth of the views that a video of me just like speed climbing would get.
I'm just like, is this is this really worth it? Because like, or do I just want to funnel more effort into being the best athlete I can?
Because I remember I put in so much work into that video. Like I spent I spent probably like a whole day like writing a script, compiling the videos, figuring out what I'm going to say.
I like texted a coach and was like, am I what is what I'm saying about this contact strength thing like valid? Am I going to am I giving out good information right to people about this?
And so it was a lot of effort into contact creation. And then I ran the first Survive next week, and it got like so many more views.
And it was just like a huge thing. I'm like, well, should I just try to be a better athlete and more things like that will happen? Or should I focus on content creation? So I'll figure that out one figure that one out eventually.
Yeah, I mean, if anyone's listening and wants to see certain things, maybe suggest it. That's always helpful.
But yeah, maybe don't put like, you don't have to put like too much effort into it. Yeah, because that's like that becomes kind of a time sink. And then people just like watching like good old classic boulder.
I'll get some ideas gone.
Yeah, exactly. And people will let you know if they have any.
So yeah, and then also in terms of, I guess, just like your personal life, I think you mentioned earlier that you might want to do like collegiate competitions, or that's like something that's a possibility for you.
I guess, first of all, like you are quite young, you are still in school, I think. So how was it doing like school in addition to competition?
So, um, I think so during COVID, I was in online school through the my freshman year of high school, which was 2020 to 2021.
And I did I did enjoy it. It was a bit boring.
And then I was an in person school the next year, my sophomore year, and I really did enjoy it. I'm still very close with a lot of the friends I made that year.
But I was just like, I can't be doing this because it goes back to the thing of I want to be putting 100% of my effort into my lifestyle, and I can't be getting up at eight in the morning and going to school and not being able to have access to like
meal timing and doing sessions when I want. And it's just like another level of percentages of like, is it going to be 10% worse for me to be in actual school, right.
So, um, it's kind of a sacrifice I had to make was like, okay, I'll just do online schooling. Um, so I'll probably graduate around March or April, ideally before the World Cup season starts my senior year of high school.
And I am applying to colleges.
I probably will go to the University of Utah, and if I get accepted in Slick City and live there, because it's climbing is great there. And there's a lot of, there's a very good Olympic culture around there.
I think they have like 54 Olympians that have gone there in the history of the school.
So, I would feel kind of at home there.
So, um, I think if I can develop a kind of a community of friends who want to do like bouldering and things like that, with them and competing at a collegiate level, I can definitely see myself being in that path.
But it's definitely sort of an open door and my number one focus is obviously the Paris games and being the best become I can be as of now. Yeah, definitely.
What are you interested in studying?
If you have no coin.
Um, so I want to study business. I love the idea of like logistics and just sort of to know how the world works. So, specifically that school I would study operations, the project management, which is sort of two degrees into one, and sort of the shipping
routes of getting things places is a really unique interest I have sort of uncommon, but I get to work sort of in the global field.
And I always love the idea of doing international business.
So if I wanted to have a career outside of climbing that would probably be my choice as of now.
Okay, yeah that's interesting I feel like I don't hear that many climbers going into business school, so pretty cool.
And then outside of climbing and school, all things that are a lot of like hard work.
I guess like what are you do you have time for other interests or hobbies. I think I seem like chess stuff, but I love chess, it's awesome.
I love it. I like it in the same way I like speed climbing. I am not nearly as good.
But I play as a hobby, play my friends.
Play it online.
It's really fun I like studying lines.
It's just a whole process I like doing.
Then, I like learning languages.
I think I have a like very good memory. So I can learn words really fast.
So, I think it's something that's been really useful, traveling on the World Cup circuit is just to be able to have an extra level of communication with other people.
So, that's been sort of an advent.
But my social life is very important to me. My friends, like relationships in my life are very important.
Like keeping everything there. I definitely draw a lot of happiness and a lot of balance from trying to climb at a high level from having healthy social relationships.
And yeah, that's a very scientific way to describe I'm mostly a normal person outside of climbing. But, yeah, that's what I would say.
You're giving all these reasons for how normal you are outside of climbing.
Is there anything that you wish you had time for that you don't because of climbing?
I would love to have like a business. Like I would like to like pursue like an entrepreneurial endeavor.
I like that. Like the whole deal of doing that and having something like trying to fill a hole and figuring out the logistics around that.
But I wouldn't want to do that unless I could commit myself to that. And I definitely couldn't as of now.
But maybe later in my life, I would want to like sort of either have a product or a service that would be something that I could personally want to financially gain from or sort of a stakeholder.
Like I want to help the world in a way.
So things like that I would definitely want to do or be a part of an organization or service.
It's just things I kind of like can't do at a really meaningful level because I am so busy.
Absolutely. I mean, being an entrepreneur is like 24-7. Or at least all the entrepreneur online people make it seem like that.
Yeah. That was like a thing. Like it's a major thing. And if you're a person like that and you're trying to pursue something, it really like the more effort you put in, the better you do.
And it becomes a sacrifice of everyone wants to be financially well off. If you're the 10% of people who actually succeed, probably higher than that.
But then you also you're giving up eight hour weeks. Right. And I don't want to do that.
And I don't want to put myself through something that I'm not going to fully put myself something.
And it would take away from climbing. And if I had a whole nother life where I could sort of pursue a different path, that might be it.
I mean, it's good you're at least thinking of it ahead of time. You have some time to go.
But yeah, I think like a lot of people climbers especially struggle with like getting financial things in order just because it's pretty expensive.
Traveling around is really expensive and there's just not as much money coming into climbing yet, but hopefully one day.
Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have wonderful parents as my sort of angel sponsor and a wonderful federation and a wonderful Olympic committee that gives me a lot of support that I wouldn't be able to really do it without of, obviously.
So my parents not only like financially are contributing to I'm a dependent on 17.
Like of the housing and you know normal normal child things which are obviously great to have. Like I don't have to work a job or, you know, support people around me.
But also coming to my events and taking time off their works and their lives to be supportive of me and all these different places like it's definitely a major thing and my dad is also
a really good friend of mine and he's been a really good friend of mine for the international business world for 20, 25 years.
And that's been a tremendous help being a more accustomed traveler and really know what knowing what I'm doing and not making a lot of the rookie mistakes.
A lot of athletes do when they enter the World Cup circuit. Yeah, definitely. And behind every athlete. There's a whole lot of support.
But yeah, I think those are all the questions I had so we can also just move really quickly into some of the discord questions.
So first one does speed relay have a future.
Absolutely.
I hopefully, I don't know how the qualification process will work but I think the
World Games 2025 will be in either Chengdu or Chongqing in China and speed really will be a part of that. And I, I love that idea of expanding on the form of speed climbing.
It has a couple flaws that need to be sort of addressed is that one of them being, it's a little bit dangerous because you can only have two auto belays and one top rope and that is not safe.
So maybe expanding the type of six lane wall and figuring out the mixed format of you want three men or two men and women, or woman, and then two or two women and a man.
So figuring out that, or figuring out do you want to do country like nationally based or do you want to do teams you have two Indonesian teams, or you have a mixed like I can compete with a great British athlete or Spanish athlete right.
So there's a lot of open potential as far as the speed really goes and I'm excited to be a part of that, potentially if it would get a bid for its own Olympic medal, if that wanted to expand.
Because I think things like that can make more decorated Olympians, because it's part of Asian Games as well like it's good to sort of like, I personally will never be able to reach the level of another athlete like Michael Phelps because there's so many disciplines
that one person can compete in. And for climbing, it'll maybe be, I mean in theory you could be competing in boulder lead and speed, we probably won't see any athletes that actually will qualify doing that.
Maybe like an Oceania or African doing that with a continental quota, but no one's for sure going to win a medal in both boulder lead and speed.
So maybe boulder lead will be split and then you have speed relay that you might have athletes, probably not even in my generation but years down the line will be able to accumulate medals and be decorated Olympians which will help the sport as well.
Yeah, that would be really cool. Have you tried speed relay yourself? No, there's unfortunately probably not a setup in the entire United States that could support it.
We do have technically a four-wheel-in-a-wall in Texas, but we don't have enough holds and we don't have the timing system. So it is, if you want to choose an insanely expensive sport to do something with, you have a speed relay.
Well I hope you get to try it one day, maybe if you get a chance to go to China.
Next question, who are your heroes and inspirations? I think I actually saw on the IFSC page for you, you have some things listed. I guess actually this is kind of a tangent, but like where did you submit this information that shows up on IFSC?
Because like some people have hobbies and stuff listed and some people don't.
It's actually very, it's very obscure and very hard to get to. So what you have to do is you have to go to the, if you're an athlete, you hold an athlete registration card.
Go to the IFSC results info, then click on the top little profile, and you can make a login.
And then from there it shows you, there's a little profile, it's like another hidden little profile section where you can enter like your hobbies, your, I think sporting hero, I said Mono Genoble.
Like your hobby, yeah your hobbies and then like also there's another box that you can tell the commentators that they'll see, like what to say on the broadcast.
So, like I think Grace they're talking about like, I can put my pronouns here and say, so they say they them on the broadcast, which is a good thing.
I think that's an option. Then just other things about yourself like your height and your weight.
One thing is, I'm not sure if I could actually enter my height and my weight. I don't, some stuff is restricted like to your Federation, like I have a horrible picture in there.
Like my arm is bleeding in my IFSC profile. So I couldn't change that, or I couldn't add a banner.
Oh you're right, I see it. That's funny.
Yeah, it's very hidden. Hopefully, that's a pretty easy fix for them to roll out like a better website and a better way for athletes to give it because it does add a level to commentary to know that about them.
So, yeah, if you're an IFSC athlete, that's what you do.
Okay, yeah I'll let them know. But yeah, so your hero, I guess, what, why did you choose Manu? I don't really know this person, so I need some context.
So he is a Argentinian basketball player. I am a big basketball fan. I love the San Antonio Spurs.
Parents are from San Antonio, and like it's a major part of like my entire life growing up is this team like we're like super fans.
So, Manu was a very like foreign, like at the time, I think he was drafted in the early 2000s. Foreign players didn't really play in the NBA.
So, he was drafted with like the 50th draft pick. And he was playing in Italy at the time and he played in Italy, and then for like two years and then he finally joined the NBA.
And then he had a very unique case of, he was an incredible player, but he came off the bench in the system, and that helped the Spurs win four championships I think with him.
As like the sixth man of the year, like the unit. So, that was a very unique thing. He's also just a great person, very like philanthropic, outside of basketball.
And I think also his coolest feat was in 2004, the Argentine team completely upset the US team and won the Olympics in Athens.
So, that was like a major moment that kind of etched his name and like the kind of the first bout Hall of Fame kind of thing so I thought that was really cool.
When I was first getting into basketball.
The Spurs were playing the Rockets which is kind of the rival team in Houston, to Antonio versus Houston. And he like at like 38 years old got a crazy like game winning block on another one of the Houston Rockets star players.
And I remember that's like one of my fondest sports memories. So, that's why I put that there's definitely a lot of other people I could have put as that but yeah.
Any like climbing heroes, climbing heroes for sure.
Both Miroslav and Yanya, just very good competitive climbers at like a very consistent, like high level is really inspiring and something that I want to do and look after.
And even just my peers like even looking at I mean they're the same age as me but like Serato and Toby.
I've gotten to know both of them kind of a little bit through a language barrier for Serato but it's been it's been a fun time like being inspired by the people that have like going to the Youth Worlds events with them, and you know meeting them for the first time and sort of
experiencing the whole circuit with people your age is a very nice feeling, especially this year because I wasn't really on the circuit with them last year, kind of both of their first years.
So, that matters a lot to me to have friends and peers that you know can kind of uplift you. Yeah, great options.
Next question, if you could do anything to a speed route or format do you have any weird ideas you would like to try out?
So, I think, um, if you really want to try and potentially expand the discipline, I would maybe like either do, wanting to compete in like the Rockmaster event, they did do an ARCO where it's a speed lead climbing route, or like the Seeker Block event, Tuckfest event where you have a Deepwater solo event.
I actually did get invited to Tuckfest but I don't think I can go because it's during a World Cup, but potentially pursuing that because I think it's a little bit more palatable and understandable to the average climber because it's just, there's more crossover, like a really good boulder or really good
speed climber could succeed in that event. And so, that's a cool concept to me, that's a cool bridging concept to watch athletes not on just a standardized route where they're practicing every time but watching them adapt and watching them choose to do a different thing every time.
So, it is definitely cool to watch. Or just speed, like a classic event that's not on a standard wall, just a new route wall every time, and you have a quality semis and finals round, where it's like, you watch everyone get faster and invent new beta as the comp goes on.
That's potentially a new idea.
So, I think there's a good amount of expansion of speed climbing because it's still so young.
And that could happen, maybe not in my career, but down the line.
For training.
Do you do anything unique or unusual.
No, just at a very high intensity. Um, like what I said earlier about tracking not just my calories but my amino acid intakes, like, if you told me that I was gonna be doing that a couple years ago, I would be like, that's crazy, like, the, like the amount of things and you have to slowly
do it if you like, if you're a young athlete, and you want to say I want to be an Olympian one day, you can't jump into the deep end like that because you will burn out so fast but if you slowly like sort of stick your toes in and be able to be into to enjoy the process of every
single time, like, harder and harder.
It's definitely just yeah, just like volume, like I just train a lot.
And, like, really hard and pretty intense every like on a day to day basis like I think is something I get a lot where it's just like, feel or just like oh another day of the office, I'm going to try and run, whatever like I'm like push myself every time.
And when that's sustainable that's amazing, but obviously you got to manage it and balance it with other things in your life.
And last little question, how do you handle shoe selection, is there an optimal point of being broken in, but not too much that you like for competitions.
Um, so it seems like actually there's sort of a little tiny bit of a little bit of a space race going on between some of the climbing shoe companies for designing a suit you.
I don't want to go that in depth because I don't know how much of a like trade secret it is, but there as far as just a regular shoe goes as far as breaking it in.
I think it's virtually negligible unless there's a massive hole in it and it's hurting, because you're using mostly the bottom of the rubber.
But I think as the technology advances, you'll get some thinner margins of error as far as when you want to use the shoe and optimizing the durability for speed specifically will be a future task for companies.
What makes like a good speed shoe.
And then some sort of ideas being floated around that's very, very young things. I personally, this is kind of public information I do not like the sportive of 499 I think it isn't far from optimal.
The stickiness of the rubber at the bottom to be able to smear because you do smell a lot. And the durability of the bottom of the shoe is also an issue because if you wear that rubber out too much and you like start slipping because of that because the rubber is worn down, that becomes an issue.
But as far as just fundamental things, you don't want a super aggressive shoe that's because bouldering shoes a lot of times will be designed to concentrate all the force onto one tiny little point to step on tiny little holes, and you're not doing that to be coming.
So like, um, some of the shoes will be pushing down onto, like,
like that point and you don't want that you don't want the little tiny little toe. And also the little bit of, I forget this doesn't actual shoe term but the one in the shoe bends back to like
be able to do heel hooks.
That I'm this on the tip of my tongue, but, um, that is not the best for speed you typically want a flatter shoe is what I'm saying really. And then you don't need to rubber on the heel.
Because you're not. Yeah. And also like saw.
Um, sometimes you want a softer shoe at the top. It's more like a sock kind of design. I've heard varying opinions about you want a harder design that presses your toe into it more so it doesn't move around, which I find are an issue with some of the
most huge designs, but it's it's still so new that I want to try different things before I definitively say something is better than something else. So, I'm not going to give a solid opinion on that debate, but I'm very excited for the technology to kind of scale up with
the event as well.
So anyone wear socks with their shoes.
Yeah, a lot of the Indonesian athletes do. I think it's weird. But, um, like, I think I was actually asked that question and it was cut out I did an interview with Matt groom privacy.
I said a lot of controversial answers. I'm surprised they actually did the interview. But, um, that was one of those like, they're like socks or no socks and I'm like, absolutely not.
That is weird. Um, I have tried it like I was like okay maybe they're on something. And it's just weird feeling like it's like cushiony on your foot.
Um, I could maybe see the idea like grip socks like at the bottom of your shoe that's like sticking to the toe. But at that point just like I, I am I am I am against socks like I it's such a gross feeling for me, and I'm just like, no, no socks for me.
What's this I have seen review I'd love to see the controversial opinions. Um, it was just so okay, I was, it wasn't controversial necessarily but I just said something that was like kind of, um, I was really out of breath, because they got me right after
the wall. So, they asked me.
Like, so they asked me that they've done it was the ones to watch interviews on YouTube and the I 50 channel, you could see my actual answers. Um, but they ended up trying to get like 15 minutes content and they got like five because they asked me like name as many time, any many types of
climbing holds as possible. I was like the speed handhold and the speed foot.
And I was like, I cannot name climbing holds right now I'm so exhausted.
And, um, and he was like, Do you prefer indoor climbing or after climbing and I pointed at the wall like this is kind of the climbing. And I was just like, you know, I would definitely not want to like, announce this to a public audience on the IFC because I don't think it makes
them look the best like I'm just saying that kind of as a joke, but it doesn't make them look the best. And then I think also, uh, they like talked about who they asked me who is my best friend on the IFC circuit.
And I was like blanked on that one. I was like, Oh, I don't want to want to say an answer to that because there's a lot of people that I would consider that. And there's a lot of people that I wouldn't want to say someone else for.
So, um, but the interview they did great. They did great at taking what they could from that. So good job. Um, the crew over there.
Yeah, I'll try to find it and link it below for anyone who wants to watch. Cool. Well, that's all the questions I had. Thank you so much for joining me.
Anything you want to shout out or let people know where they can find you? Um, from my Instagram, send me a Watson underscore underscore. I'm going to be working in my content now apparently.
I'm going to be, you know, try to list out some ideas and figure out some different things to post focusing on that more.
And just if you can, if you got this far, just check out some speed comps. They're cool.
If you enjoy it.
Follow some of the other athletes got some interesting stories to tell for sure.
Definitely. Awesome. Exciting. And thank you again. It was amazing to talk to you. Thank you.
Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, I would love to hear your discussion and thoughts in the comments below.
And don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed. If you're listening through a podcasting platform, I'd appreciate if you rate it five stars and you can continue the discussion through my competition climbing discord.
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