Robynne Murray is a climber who graciously offered to do a mindset coaching session with me on the podcast about her negative body image. Robynne feels like her body doesn’t fit in with the “typical” climber body type, so she often feels self conscious and ashamed. It affects her mood, her confidence, and her sense of belonging.

In this session, her goal was to have some tools to use to start talking to herself differently about her body so she can stop feeling so ashamed and anxious about it. I coached her about her thoughts and emotions about the situation, and we did a lot of reframing, validating, and reassuring that she is indeed good enough just the way she is.

We talked about why she feels this way (what happened as a child that triggered such intense feelings of shame), how she can speak to herself differently going forward, and ways she can communicate with her close community more productively about it so she’s not constantly seeking external validation. We also talked about society’s role in her feeling this way, and the choice she has in caring about what people may or may not think of her.

This was one of my most favorite coaching sessions to date, honestly. If you struggle with low body image (I think I know one person who doesn’t), please listen to this. I’m confident you’ll hear something in this conversation that applies to you and you’ll be able to use some of the same insights and tools for yourself.

If you want to work on this with me one-on-one, I’m accepting new mindset clients right now and I would be honored to help you feel more empowered and positive about your body. Or at the very least, must more neutral about your body.

Jesse Grupper is a 27-yr-old climber who frequents podiums at international competitions, has climbed up to 5.15a and has flashed up to 5.14c. He is an amazing climber. AND I LOVE watching Jesse Grupper in climbing comps. His infectious smile, his tenacious try-hard, and his incredible climbing strength and skills are exactly why I watch climbing comps in the first place. I was so thrilled that he agreed to an interview, and I asked him a lot of questions about his approach to climbing, his detailed training program, how he maintains a positive mindset while climbing and competing, and how he’s coping with a current finger injury. Support the show and get tons of bonus content over at Patreon at www.patreon.com/trainingbeta.

This is an actual coaching session done by Coach Matt Pincus with a climber named Kyle Smith, who has a full-time job and wants to send his first 5.13a (7c+). Matt asks him a bunch of questions about his schedule, goals, weaknesses, injuries, and helps Kyle make a plan to get him to his goal.

Regardless of where you’re at in your own climbing, listening to this coaching session will give you insights into the questions you need to be asking yourself about your own life, goals, and climbing in order to make a plan for yourself. If you want help with all of that and you’d like Matt to coach you through it, he’s taking new clients right now and you can find more info about his services below.

Bronwyn Hodgins is a 31-year-old Squamish-based professional climber and climbing guide whose main focus until recently was big wall and crack climbing. In 2022 she sent Necronomicon (5.13d/14a), which is one of the hardest roof cracks in the world. Before that send, she had climbed up to 5.13d sport and 5.13c trad.

In the summer of 2022, Hodgins and a team (including her husband, Jacob Cook) made a film about an expedition where they spent 65 days putting up many first ascents in Greenland, traveling between climbs via sea kayak. In fact, she’s made a lot of films and you can find them all here.

Needless to say, she is an accomplished, well-rounded climber and adventurer and I have a lot of respect for that. When I read about her recent ascent of La Rubia (5.14c / 8c+) in Villanueva del Rosario, Spain, I was intrigued. How did a big waller who’d climbed just one 5.14a sport route sent a long, burly 14c in Spain? So I asked her to be on the show to talk about her training and preparation for the route.

Turns out it’s a great story and she has a lot of wisdom to offer us.

• Her climbing story – how she became a pro climber
• Big wall experience
• Crack climbing training
• How she got shut down hard on La Rubia and then trained for a year to send it
• Visualization on projects
• Managing fear of falling
• The festival for women and gender expansive people she’s putting on in July
• How running mid distance for so long prepared her for route climbing

• redpointing tactics on outdoor routes
• her diet
• what her lifestyle and finances are like as a pro climber
• sexism in climbing and guiding

Support the show and get all of the bonus episodes plus nutrition and mindset training at www.patreon.com/trainingbeta

This is a replay of an episode that originally aired in January, 2023. I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about the most common mistakes amde by climbers who are trying to break into 5.12 climbing. Sending 5.12 is the most common goal among her clients, so she has quite a bit of experience with the minutiae of what it takes to do that.

She will share her personal experience of her first 5.12’s and what she learned from her trials and tribulations. She’ll then go into the mindset shifts that are required to jump into the coveted 5.12 territory, and how she helps people do that.

While you might predict that strength training is one of the main tools Alex uses with her clients in this situation, it is not, as she says it is very rare to find a person who is climbing 5.11 who can not climb 5.12 with the strength they already have.

So while we spend a few minutes talking about strength training, you’ll find compelling evidence in this episode that that may not be your issue. Here are some of the other topics we discuss:

• Why technique and staying calm are so important
• Honing the skill of resting
• How to decrease intimidation of the grade
• How to learn from your falling experiences
• How to have more of a competition mindset
• What to climb on in the gym if you’re trying to send 5.12
• A better alternative to having a perfect pyramid before entering into 5.12 territory
• Why repeating climbs that are sort of hard for you is an important strategy

We talk about a lot in this episode, and I highly recommend it if you’re at the 5.10 or 5.11 level, or if you’re just not consistently climbing 5.12’s and you’d like to. Even if you are climbing 5.12’s consistently, I think a lot of her tactics will help you!

• Get the 5.12 Breakthrough Series AND the Steep Climbing Workshop for 30% Off
• Work with Alex as your coach
• Have questions? Email alex@trainingbeta.com or neely@trainingbeta.com

Ben Hanna is a 25-year-old professional climber originally from New Mexico. He climbs hard sport routes outside and he’s active in competition climbing. He started climbing at the age of 10 and quickly gained notoriety as a youth competitor. He’s gone on to podium at 2 national championships and climb 5.15a. I wanted to talk to Ben about how he trains, what his competition mindset strategies are, and what it’s like to be a professional, full-time climber.

He goes into detail about his “early life crisis” when he decided to put his faith in a coach to help him really level up his climbing abilities. It worked, and we go into exactly what he did during that long training phase and how it changed his body.

We also talk about the mindset tools he uses, the books he reads on the subject, and how he implements having a growth mindset and having a different definition of success than just winning and sending.

• redpointing tactics on outdoor routes
• his diet
• honest conversation about his weight management tactics and my thoughts on that

You can find all of that bonus content and the uncut, ad-free video episode without intro or outro on my Patreon page.

In this episode, I talk about how I've worked through my negative feelings about being a short climber. I used to care a lot about not being acknowledged for things I thought were harder for me as a short climber, and I used to feel envious of taller climbers' long reach.

But having done the kind of work I will guide you through in this episode, most of the time I honestly don't care anymore what other climbers are doing or how hard something feels for me as a short climber.

This episode will give you a roadmap to look at your own feelings, values, and thoughts about the situation so that you can enjoy climbing for what it is to YOU - not how it compares with someone else's experience.

Get more mindset and nutrition coaching advice like this on my patreon: www.patreon.com/trainingbeta

Author, psychologist, researcher, and clinician Aric Prather, PhD talks about the practical advice he wrote about in his book The Sleep Prescription: 7 Days to Your Best Rest and the work he does in his sleep clinic. In this interview he offers clear steps to help you sleep better so you can feel more recovered, energetic, and calm in life and in climbing.

• Things people do to help them sleep that actually undermine sleep
• How to use cognitive behavioral therapy to sleep
• How to properly wind down before sleep
• Thoughts on drugs and supplements for sleep
• Using sleep diary
• Importance of standardized wake-up time
• Using sleep deprivation to increase “sleep drive” to eventually improve sleep
• How to deal with rumination that keeps you awake
• Bonus Content on Patreon

There’s some bonus content from this episode on Patreon.

• what he thinks of the drug I was on (mirtazapine) for sleep and histamine use for sleep
• why my alphabet game puts me to sleep most of the time
• some thoughts on biomarker testing to figure out why you’re not sleeping
• why nightly wake-ups might not be so abnormal.

You can find that bonus content and the uncut, ad-free episode without intro or outro on my Patreon page.

Help support the show and get nutrition and mindset coaching on Patreon.