#8 Dr Tyler Nelson - Strength Training for Older Athletes, Contrarian Advice on Managing Injuries , What is 'Good Pain, and Poor Habits Outdoor Athletes Should Discard - Ageless Athlete - Stories and Secrets of Adventure Sports Icons

Episode Transcript
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Kush (00:04):
Hi, dear listeners.
This is Kush Khandelwal.
From the ageless athletepodcast.
Where we tap into stories andsecrets of elite performance.
Hope you have enjoyed theconversation so far with
athletes across genres.
This is an experiment to see ifa podcast.
Across the sports holds appeal.

(00:27):
Love to know what you thinkright.
To me on my social mediahandles.
Or email me atkush@agelessathlete.co.
Today we have a different kindof episode.
VSP king with one of ourforemost experts on injury
prevention.

(00:47):
Rehab and cleaning for climbing.
Many of us would have heard.
And even benefited from Dr.
Tara Nelson's compelling advicevia social media, or even in
person.
Tyler is the founder of GAM forhuman performance.
Where he treats clients fromacross the world.
Why telehealth.
And in his office in Utah.

(01:09):
Dalla holds degrees inchiropractice and exercise where
he specialized in 10 unloading.
Very applicable to our spokes.
He is also a certified strengthand conditioning specialist and
teaches conferences worldwide.
On host of topics.
In a sport with freewheelingroots.

(01:30):
Tyler brings rigor andscientific curiosity and
dispenses well research advice.
Often by serving as his ownGuinea pig for testing new
training and rehabmethodologies.
With a background in big wallsand hard bouldering.
For Tyler is a talented andexperienced.
Clambered himself.

(01:51):
I am excited to hear histhoughts and advancements in
training and science and currenttools and tricks available for
us to continue excelling in thesports that we love.
We talk about how we learn tolisten to our own body.
How calisthenics and yoga is notso useful to climbers.
What separates the elites fromus?

(02:12):
Only Jos.
And what does AI have to offerthe training progression?
Without further ado.
Hi, Tyler.
Good to see you.

Tyler Nelson (02:27):
What's up?
Thanks.
Good to see you as well.

Kush (02:29):
Great to, have you on the show.
to kick off, would love to heara bit about, who you what do you
do where you're from, and then,what did you have for, breakfast
today?

Oh dang.
It's nice to not be on just aclimbing podcast'cause I talk
about finger stuff so much thatit's gonna be quite relaxing in
some ways to not talk aboutfinger strength training and
injury.
So thanks for the invite.
so a little bit about me, like Iwent to, undergrad, the
University of Utah ended upgoing to chiropractic school I

(03:03):
did master's degree in exercisescience and was just like for
some reason super interested intendon loading and and because
there's not that much researchon it in science.
And so I just got interested inthat kind of avenue and then did
my.
masters, finish at, universityof Missouri, where with the
football team Mizzou helpedthem, and so I got a lot of

(03:24):
exposure to the sports scienceside of, exercise science from
there as well.
And then since then, I've justbeen clinically in Utah and just
like working with rock climbers,like it wasn't always working
with only rock climbers, but thelast four years has been almost
exclusively working with rockclimbers.

Kush (03:39):
And, what did you have for breakfast?

I wish that I had a donut.
I'm way into donuts and theclimbing world.
People that had, some toast withthe way that I like to make it,
which I think is really good, islike toast with honey butter.
And then I use, like from TraderJoe's like an everything bagel
seasoning.
It's pretty

Kush (03:57):
Got it.

What about

Kush (03:59):
sounds like a strong yeah.
You have strong breakfast,strong sandwich game.
To be precise, I had a bowl of,this multi seed thing that I
make with the steel cut oats andhemp seeds and chia.
And then I just, cook them with,any kinda nut milk I have.
And then I top it out withavocado and something to sweeten
up like bananas, works well.

(04:20):
And I find that I'm full forlike many hours.
Tyler, you have, certainly,moved on from your, I guess
your, Your master's work inworking with, footballers and,
you know me like many othersare, avid consumers off the,
excellent content you put outon, on the web through your
Insta and others.
And there's so much science andthought and planning that you

(04:41):
put into your, into your, intoyour studies that you share with
us.
How did you move from workingwith, with footballers into
working with rock climbers orlet's say broadly, outdoor
athletes and, and how has that,transition bin and what's the
feedback that you've gotten?

Yeah, I think, the transition was mostly just I was
interested in climbing, wouldconsider myself more of an as an
educator, And that's essentiallywhat physios and chiros and
doctors do.
They educate people on lifestylechoices and maybe try this
instead of this and navigatethis.
And in the realm of like sportsinjuries, that's pretty much

(05:18):
what people do.
All of the other.
Physical, passive things thatcan be applied to a person are
sensory changes, they're notreally fixes, So I had that kind
of in the background as like aphilosophical difference maybe
with what I was gonna do for myjob.
So I actually didn't like havinga in-person clinic because, and
not that I don't like tocommunicate with people'cause I

(05:40):
do, but when people come into anoffice, they expect to get some
service and they don't want tosit and talk with you and learn
about how they can helpthemselves.
I always found that kind of achallenge to connect with people
and have them, take it uponthemselves to help them, to fix
their problem or helpthemselves.
And so then I went to mostly avirtual kind of business, which

(06:02):
now I actually get a lot moreenjoyment out of.
And I don't know if thatanswered your question
originally, but.

Kush (06:09):
It, it does.
And, it leaves me with a coupleof, breadcrumbs to, to come back
to later.
but one question Yes.
I should ask you is, can youdescribe, what is it that you do
today and, and how do you help,athletes?
You talked about a virtualpractice.
What is that all about and anyother things that you do?

I have a pretty broad scope of practice.
So like in terms of, achiropractor, physician,
chiropractor, physician in Utah,compared to a medical doctor, I
have mostly a, I have the samediagnostic ability, the same
ability to order images, canorder blood work, et cetera.
I cannot prescribe medicationand I cannot do injections of

(06:48):
things that are not.
Like autologous to the person.
So I could do PRP injections,which I don't do'cause they
don't, they're not effective.
But I can't do injections orprescribed medication.
But aside from that, the scopeof practice is very similar.
Granted, like the differencebetween healthcare providers is,
medical doctors go and they do aspecialty and they expert,
they're expert in one particularthing, right?

(07:09):
And like for me, like I had apretty like solid anatomy
background and really good likeconnective tissue tendon
adaptation rehab background.
And so finger injuries arereally common in climbers.
And so the majority of the, whatI do now when people come into
my office is I do diagnosticultrasounds on fingers.
And so it requires a reallysmall diagnostic probe.

(07:31):
It's a really small, called ahockey stick probe.
And I will do.
Diagnostic ultrasound imagingand do rehab program design
pretty much.
So that's like the in-personbusiness.
And then the remote business isthat same thing, but we just
talk virtually and sometimesI'll have them get imaging done
elsewhere.

Kush (07:48):
Awesome.
thanks for sharing that.
And I think a lot of people dobenefit from a lot of the free
programming that you share aswell from your, from your social
feeds.
getting back to, working withdifferent kinds of athletes.
a lot of the focus of the showis, is teasing out, some of the,
the improvements, the wisdomand, guidelines that have
evolved on how to help, olderathletes, keep performing as

(08:11):
they, as they get older inyears, but not so much in
desired performance andlongevity of, their, athletic
career.
What are some of the most commonquestions and say.
Performance complaints you getfrom older athletes.

So I would say older athletes.
the good thing about having apretty deep understanding of
what the science suggests is thecause of repetitive injuries,
which are like golfer's, elbow,tennis, elbow patello, femoral
knee pain, Achilles tendonitis,shoulder tendinopathies, like

(08:50):
all of, I have a pretty goodunderstanding of those things.
I've spent a lot of time likeresearching those and like
staying up to date is, it's notas complicated as most people
think that it is based on thepain that they have, and as we
like age and we continue to beathletic, those.
Small like tissue tears and thearthritic changes and the bone

(09:12):
spurs and the cartilagedegeneration and the disc
thinning, like all those thingsare now considered pretty normal
for a human.
if you're not, if you're walkingupright for, 50 years, 45 years,
like you're gonna have some wearand tear on your body, that's
like pretty par for the course.
And so I would say we can use alot of the, of the understanding

(09:32):
of what we do know about thescience to apply it to a whole
bunch of different things.
It's not always a direct,one-to-one comparison
relationship, but it's like wecan extrapolate quite a bit and
successfully.
So I think the number onequestion that I probably get is,
can I still perform my sport?
And the number one like limiterthat I will see is people will
notice, they will still be ableto participate, but they will

(09:55):
lose power output.
So the connective tissueinjuries, like the tendon based
injuries or what appear to betendon.
Based injuries, limitperformance, not participation.
So people don't have thathigh-end power output.
They're not performing it ashard as they can or think they
should, but they're still doingtheir thing.

(10:16):
I.

Kush (10:16):
I wanted to double click on that for a second about,
about, being able to perform,but, maybe not at the same, same
standard that person might beaccustomed to.
It's interesting that some ofthe people I've been speaking
to, some athletes who are intheir, fifties, sixties, and
even seventies, some of themhave actually seen performance
gains in those later years.

(10:38):
And actually this, I'm talkingboth surfers and climbers and
one thing that I'm understandingis some of these athletes have
approached, let's say.
Non-conventional advice fortraining at older, ages, such
as, getting on system boards andtraining for power and, doing
things that, you don't normallysee, older, climbers do.

(11:00):
So, Wanted to hear your opinionon how some of these people are
able to actually utilize,modern, demanding training
apparatus and keep improving inthose, later years.
And some of these are, I wouldsay, more elite athletes.
what are some of the lessonsthat we could glean for?
the more average person outthere who is also getting older

(11:20):
might also have some injuries,but wants to, wants to not, back
down and try to get whateverimprovement they can.

So I think with maybe what I said previously is.
in the context of people that Italk to that have pain
complaints, so typically, thatwill have pain complaints, will
have a performance loss withtheir sport for a period of time
until it's managed.
But I absolutely agree with you.
That doesn't mean that athletescan't continue to progress in

(11:49):
their sport.
And that's been my experience aswell.
And I think the easiest way tothink about how that's possible
is most people that are older inyears and they're participating
in their sport, they have othershit going on in their life.
They like have a job and theyhave a family and they like, are
not obsessed with just likedoing obnoxious training
volumes.

(12:09):
Like they literally can have abetter training program and they
just recover better.
They have better quality food,they have better quality sleep
habits.
Like all of those things allowathletes to recover better from
their workouts and the additionof new things like a, a moon
board or something or, thetension board.
To increase your power output.

(12:30):
that's not risky at all forsomeone that has a climbing
background and it's really justgiving them that little extra
effort during their session.
And as long as they don't havetwo frequent sessions and
they're pretty low volume,they'll only just get better
because they've already put in alot of the physical loading
requirements over the years toallow their connective tissues

(12:52):
to adapt and tolerate that highstress stuff.
They've already put in all thegroundwork and the framework for
increasing their performance,but now they're recovering more
from it and they see thoseperformance improvements, which
is very cool.

Kush (13:06):
Absolutely no, I love that.
And you're right.
one should, separate out, thesetwo tracks, which is the, the
injury prevention and the injuryrehab track.
And then second being the, thetraining and the, the
performance improvement track.
And I think you provide servicesin both arenas.
I personally benefited from the,training, end of your, your
services because I, I workedwith you a little bit last year

(13:28):
to get on a training planmyself.
Unfortunately, my training endedprematurely because I got
injured.
And then I've been working moreon rehabbing from injuries and
at some point I hope to get backon, more structured, training
regimen.
Getting back, actually.
let's talk a little bit aboutinjuries first on the injury
spectrum.
can you help, us understand,what is, let's say good pain.

(13:52):
Versus what is bad pain?
Because I think a lot of us,because we love our sport so
much, we keep doing thetraining, keep doing the sport
despite feeling pain, despitefeeling soreness and, where you
know, where somebody else mighthave stopped.
So I think there are maybe somekinds of, some kinds of fatigue
slash pain slash soreness whereone should maybe try to push

(14:14):
through and perhaps there's someother kinds of pain where if you
push your body to do certainthings, you might actually,
exacerbate the condition and,cause let's say harm that's,
harder to recover from.

Yeah.
I think maybe one other thing toadd, bef from the, a couple of
things you said before is likethe strength training and the
rehab, I think it's importantfor people to know that they're
like the same thing pretty much.
Like I usually tell people thata deload or a program like time
off or weeks to months off is areally good time to do strength

(14:50):
training.
And so the reason that like I mybusiness is more catered to, I.
Athletes that have paincomplaints, maybe they have
acute injuries, but mostly it'spain complaints.
They need to restructure theirwhole training program.
I don't just need to give them abunch of random things to do.
And so the biggest, let's saylike waste of people's time, in

(15:11):
my opinion, is to be able to gointo a clinic like people did to
mine when I first had an officeand get some physical service to
their body.
And then the majority of thetime spent is doing that thing,
but then they leave.
I didn't really help that personall that much.
I told them as much as I could,but they weren't really focused
on that.
And so it's really about likeactually being more

(15:34):
comprehensive with the person infront of you and understanding
what their life is like and whatthey do.
And then all we need to do is wehave to adjust all the things
though.
Like we can't just give themstuff to do, which is confusing
'cause a lot of people when theyhave an injury, they think I
need to do rehab.
But then rehab to them in theirmind kinda looks like.
Low intensity range of motion,lots of passive stretching, like

(15:56):
all the things that, there's notscience to support that.
Those things are helpful in thecontext of getting or necessary
to getting an athlete back towhat they're doing.
They can be used as steppingstones for people with a lot of
sensitivity.
But that's not my clientele.
Most of my clientele are peoplethat are doing too much and if I
give someone that's doing toomuch more stuff to do without

(16:18):
taking away a bunch of stuffthat's not really helping'em,
that's a waste of their time.
So I wanna make sure we add thatin.
'cause I think that's reallyconfusing for people in general.
They think rehab is like lowintensity, easy range of motion,
et cetera.
But it can be strength trainingand there's plenty of evidence
to support that.
Strength training is the closestthing to a miracle cure as we

(16:40):
have for.
The aging athlete or paincomplaints.
It's not a miracle cure by anymeans, and every person is
different, but it's pretty muchthe closest thing that we have
as far as we know with just likegeneral wellbeing and health,
And then, oh, go ahead.

Kush (16:53):
no, absolutely, and I think this is one of those
things I try to even tell myparents and people of their
generation that, as olderathletes, or just older humans,
one thing that does, go outtacontrol is muscle loss.
As one gets older, exponentiallylose more muscle, and one of the
more, sure shot.

(17:13):
methods to combat is strengthtraining with, not with sissy
weights, but, with heavyweights.
one other question.
So going back to understandingpain, let's say I went out for
run.
I come back, I have knee pain,right?
And then that, that pain causesme to stop and now I have to
limp back home.

(17:34):
I wake up the next day.
I may still have pain, I may nothave pain.
So what are maybe some things wecan listen to inform us whether
the pain we had requires us toeither go see a doctor or the
pain is, let's say more just thebody reacting to, to stress to,

(17:56):
to a long run.
And we should do somethingdifferent to, To get back to, to
form, and it's not really aninjury.

I think, and that was great that you interject
again because I forgot thequestion'cause I went off on a
tangent, so sorry.
But I think the.
I think I, I like to teachpeople that there's not really
such a thing as good pain.
Like we made that term upbecause we wanna be stubborn
doing the stuff that we don'twanna stop doing because of a
pain complaint.
Assuming that you have to feelpain to know that you're doing

(18:27):
the right thing, that's not trueeither.
There's good reason to maybepush into a little bit of pain
to know that it's okay, but thatdoesn't mean that you have to do
that every time to make pain goaway either.
So another thing when youmention, you know when something
pops up, so let's say you're outrunning and your knee gets sore,
right?
It's not likely that it's thatrun that actually made your knee

(18:49):
sore.
Maybe you landed weird, youtwisted it, whatever.
But when I talk to my athleteson a call, I say, tell me what
you've been doing the lastcouple months.
And every single time there hasbeen a sharp increase in some
load, either a new load or theoriginal load.
Beyond the athlete's currentcapacity to adapt to that load.

(19:09):
And so that injury did nothappen that day, even though
they felt it.
So your knee injury didn'thappen that day, even though you
it that day.
It had been coming on for monthsof time usually.
And it always is attributed tosomething in their life, right?
Maybe it's physical load, maybeit's work stress, maybe it's
moving, maybe it's not sleeping.
Like it's not a simple thing toreally pinpoint or nail down to

(19:34):
one thing, but the physicalloading is the easiest thing to
manage.
And so if athlete goes on a runand they're sore, like the next
day they're sore again.
You have to find a dosage ofload that they can do where they
break that behavior or thatoutcome, where the next day they
have pain.
Because that becomes anexpectation for the athlete.

(19:56):
And if that becomes theexpectation, then that becomes
the problem in itself in somecases.
And so I would say for runners,like the kind of the like knee
jerk reaction for runners isokay, cool, you, you love doing
long distance, low intensity,moderate paced exercise, right?
And that's all they do all thedamn time, right?
That's only one kind of load toyour tendons.

(20:19):
It's a very like low force,moderate velocity strain
inducing kind of load to theconnective tissues.
That's very different thanstrength training, which is very
high intensity, very low volume,very stress inducing to the MA
actual material properties ofthe connective tissue.
So those athletes need to dump abunch of the volume they need to

(20:40):
build up some tolerance in theirtissue, and then they need to
work back into running again.

Kush (20:46):
makes so much sense.
I think the two things I, hearare one is, people try to, ramp
up their training, running,climbing, what have you too
quickly, and then the body,complaints.
And then the second thing mightbe that, sometimes often we have
injuries that might stayasymptomatic for a while until

(21:07):
you push them beyond anenvelope, and then the body just
throws its hands up.
And I think that's maybe whathappened with my shoulder, for
many years.
I kept pushing it, with justsome niggles, just some loss in
range of motion.
And then one fine day, Icouldn't raise my, arm above my
ear.
And I think that was my bodysaying, okay, enough is enough.
you have pushed through these,other, signals I gave you, and

(21:27):
now I don't want you to go and,do this particular thing
anymore.
I want you to go and treatyourself.
one thing, also, adding on is,often, Tyler, if you're told,
Hey, listen to your body, if, ifdoing something, hurts, stop
doing it.
I know you often advocate forcontinuing to practice the sport
in certain cases.
So let's say somebody, like yousaid, somebody has like a finger

(21:50):
injury or finger pain, somebodyhas knee pain, maybe elbow pain.
And again, when I startedclimbing, I was told, Hey, you
ha, you're having like elbowpain, rest that elbow, do the
other modalities, with.
Compression and ice.
And then don't stress that, thatelbow for some time give it
complete rest.

(22:11):
But I think sometimes youadvocate for, continuing that
activity.
So I think you touched on thisearlier, but would love for you
to expound upon how you, advicein certain cases to continue the
sport.

Yeah, I think in rare circumstances, is it con
what I would is considered riskyto load like a sports injury.
Obviously, like the exceptionswould be like shoulder
dislocations, ACL tears, fullAchilles ruptures.
there's the obvious, fractures,there's the obvious exceptions
to the rule, but most peoplethat are getting a pops up one

(22:44):
day and it sticks around a longtime.
Those are not injuries thatshould be considered red or even
yellow flags for mechanicalloading and physical stress.
The type of physical stress Ithink, is important to
differentiate for the person.
it needs to change a little bitin some way and the dosage needs
to change, but very rarely is itlike a hard, you shouldn't put

(23:04):
load on that thing.
At the beginning, if someone haslike an acute flare up, let's
say your shoulder, like it'sokay to take a week off and not
do anything.
Like it is okay to like, if theindividual feels like it's makes
sense to not load, to let itchill out.
I think that's pretty intuitive,and you kinda limp around for a
little bit.

(23:24):
But if I do that for too long,like the actual quantity or the
amount of tissue that's injuredin that context is probably not
a huge amount.
If I continue down the rabbithole of not loading it, I will
lose capacity in all of theother healthy tissues.
And so there's an Australianphysio, Craig Purdum, who is

(23:46):
well known for using the donuthole analogy.
I think maybe in the ninetiessaying focus on the donut and
not the hole, And so it's likethere's more healthy stuff than
injured stuff.
And so you're probably okay toload.
We need to maybe change the loadto make sure you're loading a
lot of healthy stuff.
But in that context, it makespeople's pain go away quicker

(24:08):
than anything because the painis not a reflection of the
actual extent of the injury.
The pain is a mix of all thethings in someone's life.
Maybe there's some physicalpain, but there's like a bunch
of psychological stress, there'sa bunch of fear, there's a bunch
of sleep loss, like everythinggets thrown upside down.
And so someone's pain is,because it's not reflective of

(24:31):
the injury, it's almost alwaysokay to keep loading'em.
Even in the context of likerotator cuff tears, when people,
I've had multiple clients with50% rotator cuff tears and they
will go, I'll send them to get asurgical opinion.
And they always get sent backand they're like, keep doing
rehab.
And every single one of thoseathletes that I can think of off
my head are back to loading fullstrength, doing their sports

(24:53):
again.
So it's like our body has thismassive built-in buffer for.
Being able to get theseinjuries, but still adapt to
them and still get back to oursport.
Obviously there's limits tothat, but that's the exception,
not the rule for most athletes.

Kush (25:09):
Tyler, I love that you brought the conversation right
back to donuts.

Oh, I always, for sure.
that's my vibe for sure.
Yes.
if people have taken likecourses, for me, I do a lot of
teaching, and if there isn'tlike at least five pictures of D
with donuts in them, they'll beupset.

Kush (25:25):
I love it.
when you visit San Francisco,we'll have to go visit the, some
of the best, donut shops.
You have some, some donutaficionados, in the area

Oh yes, we might be coming to San Francisco.
I think we have a course, ayouth course there that Collin's
teaching.
So if I.

Kush (25:39):
Okay.
Yeah, we'd love to get somedonuts and coffee.
moving on a little bit, again,on the, subject of a specific,
let's say trauma, that causesthe injury.
So you mentioned the rotatorcuff stuff, and then it could be
maybe somebody, tore the ACL,pretty specific trauma that
might have happened.

(26:00):
So wanted to juxtapose thatagainst things such as
arthritis, osteoarthritis, that,some of us start suffering from
as we get older, just wear intoet cetera.
And I'm wondering, I.
If your rehab protocol changeswhen it is something like

(26:21):
arthritis that, is diagnosedfor, one of your athletes.

I think it, it depends on the person of course.
'cause some people are gonnahave more of a predisposition
for that and making sure theydon't have like more of the
natural kind of inflammatoryfactor, which would be like the
rheumatoid I.
Versions of that, which can be,managed with medications in
other ways.
But from like a mechanicalstandpoint, there's not a lot of

(26:45):
red flags per se for loading anarthritic joint.
And in most cases, the sciencewould say that strength training
and loading at a high vol at ahigh intensity, low volume over
long periods of time with slowincreases should help like the
cartilage as much as anything.
So again, it's another one ofthose exercises.

(27:07):
The best thing we have to amiracle cure.
It's not a miracle cure, butit's like probably not risky
necessarily.
and this is really common inlike climbers, fingers, like
climbers have ugly hands becauseall their are all janky looking
because they load.
Now the amount of, I alwaysthink about I, every time I talk
to someone that's been climbinga long time and they have a

(27:28):
finger injury, I'm like, andthey're like stressed out about,
I'm like, I.
Think about how much stressyou've put on your fingers over
20 years and you've had onefinger injury.
I was like, that's bananas thatthey can much because they're
small joints, But all matter haslimitations.
At some point they get some sortof repetitive positional thing
that creates a irritation to thejoint and the joint gets swollen

(27:52):
and the bones get hypertrophied.
The ligaments get hypertrophied,the knuckle actually gets
arthritis and other joints getarthritis as a response to make
them more stable.
So like in the spine, if youtook, a thousand people through
an MRI scanner, most of that arelike above 60 mo, almost all of
them would have arthriticchanges to their facet joints in

(28:13):
their back.
And that really is just likeyour body responding to
mechanical stress to make itmore protective.
So I think on the whole like.
Managing the pain.
I think managing the pain isdifferent than managing the
pathology.
The pain is people withpathology or findings on an MRI
with no pain.
They're not patients, Peoplethat have pain complaints, even

(28:36):
without MRI findings or with MRIfindings, they are maybe
patients, but they need not likea bunch of like passive soft
tissue things.
They just need like a morewell-rounded per structured
program for their life, morethan like a single thing.

Kush (28:51):
Tell it was.
Honestly, mind blowing for me aswell because I am one of those,
specimens with, very misshapenfingers.
A lot of, synovitis on myfingers and the hang board,
protocol, which is, hanging onyour fingers, for certain
length, for certain, whichcertain, repetitions over time
that really helped me, get overmy, finger pain.

(29:13):
So I think for that particular,situation with finger range,
absolutely.
And I've given that, I've giventhe advice to, to many people,
sometimes even unsolicited,because I would see somebody at
the crack or at the gym, withlike funky looking fingers.
I'm like, Hey man, if you'refeeling pain, you need to, get
on that hang board of yours, afew times a week and, and, teach
your fingers how to graduallyaccept stress.

(29:35):
Is that also true?
for other joints, again, theknees, ankles, shoulders,
elbows, et cetera, where perhapsthe arthritis is, let's say end
stage.
let's say there isn't cartilageleft and, it's bone and bone.
And in those cases, have youseen people, do well with the,
the, the weight training, typeof, rehab protocol?

it depends.
There.
I definitely don't see as manyof those, but I would predict
that they definitely are notgonna respond to the same volume
of like strength training andstuff.
Like I don't, I would still likepromote slow controlled strength
training with modified ranges ofmotion for per the individual,
right?
Based on what they actually careabout doing, which is another,

(30:22):
which is why for rock climbersI'm always like, alright, cool,
let's find a way to keep youloading your fingers to make
you.
Feel and know that you're stilla rock climber because loading
is okay.
'cause if I give a bunch ofexercises to someone that does
not care about the exercises,the research shows, they don't
really help people.
generally, that's the problemwith the rehab world, is people

(30:43):
selling the idea that this thingis good for this pathology, but
if the person doesn't give adamn about that, it's not a very
good choice for that person.
So I think those people need tobe like, managed more tightly
than most of my clients who arelike pretty well equipped to
navigate on their own.
'cause they're not gonna havethe same capacity.
but the most of the orthopedicsurgeons that I know, or people

(31:04):
that work in like theprosthetics like, like
replacement space would say youdo not want to get those kinds
of things unless you absolutelyhave to.
So at some point, if you reallyare bone on bone in the knee,
like getting a knee replacementisn't like an okay decision and
a personal decision for peoplebecause.
but some people will toughthrough it for a really long
time.
Like hips are the same way.

(31:25):
Hips, most doctors will say,don't get a hip replacement
until you can't hardly walk andthe quality of your life is
really suffering.

Kush (31:33):
Mm-Hmm.

I think a lot of people get scared of pain and
fearful of pain and that kind ofdrives not doing things because
of the fear of pain.
But like it's not until thoseend stages where it's really
self-limiting that you need tobe overly concerned about it.
But most of the time that'sagain the exception, not the
rule.
But again, I don't work withpeople over 60 that much.

(31:56):
Certainly that's the populationthat are getting end stage
arthritic changes.

Kush (32:00):
Got it.
Tyler, one thing I think myselfand a lot of your other,
followers or patients or whathave you love about, about you
is, you dog food, your owntraining.
And by that what I mean is youare, you are talented and, and
dedicated rock climber yourself,and you're always out there,
experimenting on different typesof, injury, injury prevention,

(32:22):
injury, cures, and other kindsof, training methods.
one thing I believe, you wentthrough in your own life is, is
I think you had somedebilitating, injuries yourself
and you managed to, rehab and,and get back to form.
so maybe just, if you wanna justquickly share, what happened
with you and, how did you provethe, the diagnosis, or rather

(32:45):
the prognosis wrong and get

Yeah.

Kush (32:48):
what you love.

Yeah.
My case is super interestingbecause like it's the equivalent
of dogs that get hip dysplasia.
Like humans can get dysplasia.
And so most youth athletes willexperience a risk in
experiencing symptoms or makingtheir symptoms worse or actually
getting or injured when they gothrough their growth spurt.

(33:11):
And so I played baseball mywhole life.
I wrestled my whole life and Iplayed football.
And like when I was a little kidin elementary school, I was
super fast, like always thefastest.
I could beat people in races,but then when I went into junior
high school, I just couldn't runfast.
It was weird.
I remember just being like, whythe, why can't I run fast

(33:31):
anymore?
But I didn't really have hippain that I remember.
I.
But it was definitely like achange that happened to my hip
that was being expressed in thatmaturity phase when my bones
were starting to grow and fusetogether.
So essentially the hip, the lefthip is like a, the hip is a ball
and a socket joint, and peoplecan visualize, like the ball is

(33:51):
spherical and con cave and thenthe, or the, socket, I'm sorry.
And then the ball is just likeconvex and round.
And so they fit good togetherand there's ligaments around
them and there's muscles andthere's this range of motion,
right?
It has a pretty good range ofmotion.
Mine is not built like that.
Like my hip socket is bigger andflat my, my, my ball or my

(34:14):
femoral head is square.
So like my range of motion on myhip has never been good.
Like I've known that since I wasa little kid.
Like I tell my wife, I couldnever sit cross-legged as a kid
on the ground comfortably evermy whole life.
And so like.
When I was in, so that was kindalike the story that maybe didn't
get seen when I was a kid, Andso then when I went to college

(34:36):
after my bones were donematuring, like my hip and my
back started to hurt all thetime and it didn't really
present like hip pain to presentat like back pain.
And so with that limited rangeof motion, like I just, there's
nothing I can do about it.
But I got some advice frompeople and I would go complain
about it and I would get advice.
And the advice was always thecliche, oh your back is tight

(34:59):
because your hamstrings aretight or your back is tight
because your core is weak andyou need to strengthen stuff.
And so it was the kind of runyou down the typical, like
essentially bullshit,biomechanical explanation for
low back pain when no one reallydid a thorough sit me down and
talk to me about what's goingon.
I.
Because I was super active, likeI was climbing and out, back

(35:22):
country skiing and going toconcerts with my friends and
painting as my job going tocollege.
So my life through college wasjust like, I'm a good example
of, I was just really tired allthe time.
And when you get really tired,like your body is like an
ecosystem.
And so when I get really tired,my hip is always the thing that
hurts always.
Still to this day.
it presents like hip and backpain, right?

(35:44):
But I can do a lot of stuff.
I can climb, I can go backcountry skiing.
I can lift weights withmodifications, but there's other
things that I can't do.
I can't stand on flat ground fora long time.
That always makes my hips sore.
I don't like walking for longdistances that'll make my hip
sore.
I can't do like really deepsquatting or dead lifting that

(36:06):
will predictably make my hipsore.
So it's like there's thesethings that I think are
important for.
People to understand thatyou're, you do have some
limitations to your mechanicsand there's not a whole lot I
can do about that, but theinformation that I got or the
advice that I got was notpersonalized to me because it
was just like, Hey, ha, theyhave this pain complaint.

(36:27):
Here's what you do.
And that's such a cliche,outplayed like waste of people's
money.
And it super pisses me off nowwhen I hear people getting that
from healthcare providersbecause all someone had to do is
take an MRI right?
And take more of a picture, takemore of a look into it.
And so I had an M MRI recently.
Hip is jacked but it's not thathurt, right?

(36:48):
Which is like the, I think I'm areally good example of if you
looked at my pictures on an MRI,you'd be like, that person must
be miserable.
They must have a lot of pain.
But my hip hardly hurts at allbecause I know how much I can
tolerate and I can still enjoythe stuff that I love and not be
miserable.

Kush (37:05):
Yeah, no, I think you've, really learned slash taught
yourself, to listen to your bodyand be very specific with, what
you subject your, your hips to.
And, I think over time you havekinda fine tuned those
activities that your hip can,can thrive in and reduce or,
sometimes maybe eliminate otherswhich clearly bother your hip.

(37:27):
And I think there's a lesson.
I think some of it, I think allof us as we get older, learn on
our own.
some of us are more self-aware.
They do it faster.
Some of us it takes more time.
But it's, yeah, I think that'sthe key thing, which is one can
still continue to do a lot ofthings.
1, 1, 1, 1 flourishes in andminimize, minimize others.

(37:48):
One thing that I always, findfascinating is, Some of the
elite athletes in our sport, theones who are out there, breaking
records, doing first ascent,whatnot.
What are some of those thingsthat, again, these elite
athletes are doing the bestrock, climbers, surfers,
runners, et cetera, that therest of us are not doing for

(38:12):
both?
injury, observation, diagnosis,rehab.
any comments there?

So yeah, this one's like really tricky and I
have your viewers won't see it,but I have this like paper
sitting in front of me.
Essentially it's like a, thisone's a 2016 like International
Olympic Committee consensusstatement on load in sports and
injury And so goes through andit talks about things that are
considered internal loads andthings that are considered

(38:39):
external loads.
So the internal loads are socialstress, sleeping habits, diet.
Other healthcare factors, otherrisk factors, family history, et
cetera.
And the external loading is likeall the physical stress with our
sport, the dosage, theintensity, the volume, the
recovery, et cetera.
And like it all matters for theathlete and their ability to

(39:00):
adapt.
To adapt.
when we come down to theabsolute significant difference
between why professionalathletes can tolerate more, it
is genetic.
that's not discrediting theirwork ethic or discrediting their
skillset or discrediting whatthey do.
But from my experience, most ofthe time in our space, the
professional athletes, they givethe worst advice.

(39:22):
Because they don't understandreally why it works for them or
how they're good at what theydo.
They just do it.
And the difference that thesepapers would validate is that
those athletes literally cantolerate more physical stress
than other people can.
And that's a connective tissuething.
Maybe that got built a littlebit more for that person, but
what really differentiates theplaying field with the most

(39:42):
elite and the average athlete isfor sure something that is, was
out, outside of the control ofthe individual, which I think
that's like very maybeun-American.
And people are like, oh, that'snot true.
Like whatever you want.
And I think that's cute andwhatever, but I think that's
naive as hell too.
because ex examples like MichaelJordan and LeBron James and Kobe

(40:03):
Bryant, those athletes have beenkilling it since they were kids.
They didn't do shit differentthan someone else.
They just were better, just likephysically better.
Same thing for the client space.
Like the athletes that aretraining the hardest can do more
they can't.
And so I think it's really maybeimportant for everyone else to
appreciate that because if youtry and train like them, you're
gonna get hurt.

(40:23):
And that's the downside of thatis I talk to all the people that
work with pro athletes thatdon't give good suggestions, and
they get hurt because thatathlete doesn't really know, in
their defense, they don't reallyknow how much a normal person
can tolerate, but theirprescriptions tend to be over
the top.
a lot of times, and that's notto say all of them, but that's
pretty common in all sports.

Kush (40:44):
No, I think that is, I think that is a hard truth that
some of us are just born with,gifts that, the rest of us don't
have.
I remember many years agohearing some comment by Dave
Graham and Dave Graham was beingasked about how he managed to,
keep pushing the, the hardbouldering envelope for so long.
And I think one of the things hesaid, which I thought was

(41:05):
really, interesting, he saidhe's taught himself to, to stay
on the verge of injury but notget injured.
So I think it's probably acombination of just.

Yeah.
Most would not.

Kush (41:16):
in having the body capacity, the connective tissue,
and maybe just some ESP wherehe's able to really understand
what his body's going throughand push until he cannot push
anymore and then stop there and,

I think maybe a really important thing too is
everyone wants to like, andprofessional athletes work their
ass off, right?
But so does the weekend warrior,like I know so many athletes
that care so much aboutclimbing, they work their ass
off too.
and so what the pro athlete,just because they have more
time, they're doing more, theireffort matters more.
That's not the case.
There's a lot of people that putin a lot of good effort and try

(41:51):
really hard and do all the rightthings, and they just don't,
will not get the same responseas the elite athlete.

Kush (41:56):
true.

And that's just like a hard reality of our
world, And so like I, I havemaybe,'cause I'm 42 years old
and I'm not a professionalathlete and have a job like that
doesn't hurt my feelings really.
But for young kids, maybe I thatwould be like a kind of a stamp
down on your thunder, right?
And that doesn't mean that youdon't want to keep pursuing your
dreams and your goals, whatever.
It's but being realistic aboutit, I think is also, a very,

(42:19):
helpful thing for just theaverage person.

Kush (42:22):
Tyler, what are some of those most common things you see
that concern you?
where you feel, these are thingsthat athletes should not be
doing.
You just keep seeing the samethings over and over again and,
maybe some things that you feelthey should actually start
doing.
And they seem resistance to, tochange.

Ooh, the climbing world's super resistant to
change.
I don't know if there's likethings that I would say are for
sure hard they should stopdoing.
'cause we don't have that muchevidence to support anything in
rock climbing really.
there's very low, low qualityresearch and quantity of
research and that will changeover time.
Of course.
I would say maybe the most riskybehaviors are really just

(43:07):
climbing volume, just like doingtoo much too often.
That will certainly staleprogress.
That will certainly increaseinjury risk.
But that's not a single thing,but that's a mix of all the
things.
I would say probably the mostuseless thing that climbers do
is a lot of calisthenic types ofexercise stuff like body weight,

(43:27):
stuff like just naturallyclimbers are strong, like their
upper bodies are They do a lotof stuff.
They're naturally good at otherthings.
And so the one of the rabbitholes that we get ourselves into
that other sports did too.
But now they have the researchto say, don't do that.
But climbers don't have that isthey try and replicate movements

(43:47):
or positions or things that looklike rock climbing things and
they do them off the wall likethe ability to adapt and get
something from that.
We can say that's pretty much awaste of your time.
that's not strength training,that's not your sport.
That's not end range stretching.
That's just a skills acquisitionfor something that you hope

(44:08):
transfers to your sport.
But there's very littleguarantee that the coordination
of something that's not yoursport will actually transfer to
your sport.
Right?
And so when it comes to strengthtraining, the recruitment, the
tendon stiffness changes, thoseare the things that we can say
pretty confidently.
Those should transfer to oursport, but we still have to
practice our sport.

(44:29):
But there's a lot of the.
Crossover between gymnastics isbeautiful and strong, and rock
climbing is beautiful and strongand we love each other, so we
like, but climbers do all thegymnastics shit, but the
gymnastics athletes are not rockclimbing for their training.
So we're we're obsessed withtrying to be like this other
sport that is maybe strongerthan us.

(44:49):
I don't know.
it's a very weird space, butclimbers like that kind of
stuff.

Kush (44:53):
As, as climbing enters the mainstream Olympics now, and,
and you find even, even, federalgovernments are starting to
actually recognize theimportance of climbing to maybe,
as a, as something that, a lotof people engage in and starting
to put money into it.
you of course, are, leading alot of the, research in
training, and I think there areothers as well.
What are some of the things outthere that are going on with,

(45:16):
with, training and again, injurydetection, rehab, et cetera,
that are being done with eliteathletes that, the ordinary
person out there can at least,Get insights on or learn from or
take advantage of.

I don't know that I don't know, with the exception
of like maybe the German team,I'm sure Alex Mes and Adam
Andra, I'm sure they have a teamof I.
Specialists, like watching themclosely?
I'm not sure that someone doesthat regularly in the states
that I'm aware of.
Like I'm maybe some, I knowthere's one doc that's a medical
doctor that's doing like somecardiovascular stuff.

(45:51):
And in terms of the research,like I don't work at a
university anymore, so I don'tdo much peer reviewed research.
Like for my job now it's mostlyjust like applying sports
science ideas to climbing andbetter understanding it.
And so hopefully and like when Iwas in graduate school, like
doing research is interesting,but it's boring.
That's not really what turns mygears.

(46:12):
Like I, I love research andappreciate researchers, but my
brain is too, not scattered, butit likes to move on and do new
things other than this is theone thing we're gonna do for the
next three years.
So I want like hopefully youngerkids coming up and getting like
their.
Master's degree in exercisescience, they care about
climbing.
They're the ones that are gonnakeep pushing like the good

(46:32):
research moving forward.
But I don't know that there'sfrom my perspective, I would say
being able to measure force, andthis is something that I'm known
for, is like measuring force andmeasuring velocity are methods
to detect fatigue.
using a fingerboard is like alittle bit harder to detect
fatigue.
And that's kinda like the recenttwo and a half hour podcast I

(46:54):
did with Steve.
But those kinds of things seemlike groundbreaking, like life
shattering kinds of things forclimbers.
But that's not that complicated.
Nor is it that likesophisticated by any means, like
other sports have been doingthat for decades.
And so being able to understandthe amount of fatigue you carry

(47:14):
from session to session isprobably the most helpful thing
that the average athlete can dofor themselves.
And so essentially what thatmeans, and it doesn't need to be
sophisticated, like the straingauges, like the Eck Progressor
that I use and promote isinexpensive.
It's$150.
The vi true encoder, the LPT,which it measures velocity.
That's a little more expensive.

(47:35):
Those are like$400, But usingtools like that allows the
athlete to make sure thatthey're prepared or rested for
their training session.
And the training session isgoing to be useful and, I guess
useful in the context is they'regonna recover from it.
And so they're gonna get anadaptive benefit from it if they
do it when they're not tired.

(47:56):
Like most people are just likedoing too much stuff and their
sessions are just sub subparquality.
The quality's just not that highbecause we try and apply the
same frequency of loading toclimbing as we would other

Kush (48:09):
Yeah.

if you think about the size of the fingers and the
size of the knee, you can'tclimb as much as you can play
soccer.
You just can't, the fingers willlimit how actual volume you can
do.
And so one of the things that Ido quite a bit of is teach, like
at the CWA or teach, like I wasat the Canadian Climbing
Symposium this fall, talkingabout like finger training

(48:30):
things and how we can maybethink about them differently to
make us less injured from them,but gain an adaptation.
But then also youth climbinginjury risk is something I do a
good amount of teaching with.
And I'm not sure if I'm fullyanswered your question, but I,
there's not really that muchsophisticated stuff going on in
the climbing world that I'maware of.

Kush (48:50):
You, you.
you did.
And, in fact, you, partiallyhelped point us towards my next
question, which is, related to,quantified health for, for
climbers and yeah, for, ourkinds of, outdoor athletes.
we have seen improvements inQuantified Health used by the
everyday, athlete out there.

(49:11):
people are using differentdevices.
People are, studying data,people are monitoring, energy
output sleep.
People are recording thosethings in, in Strava and what
have you.
What is the state of, quantifiedhealth for climbers?
Because, for example, and I seepeople logging in their,

(49:31):
climbing activity in Strava, butto me it doesn't really, I.
Mean that much because they'remanually entering that data
instead of having, Strava oranother device, record
important, data points abouttheir, climbing session and
their climbing performance overtime.
yeah, I would, would be curiousin what your, what you take is
on, advancements in quantifiedhealth, that are taking

(49:52):
advantage of already or shouldbe taking advantage of.

I don't know that there's much that people are
taking advantage of that'sreally precise and that accurate
in terms of, or that as ameasure for what they're getting
outta their training sessions.
with the exception of athletesthat are like using, let's say
for finger training, they'reusing some sort of measurement
device to calculate their loadsall the time.
And so one thing that I'll usefor my training is I'll use the

(50:18):
power meter to measure my.
And quantify my strengthtraining stuff, my non climbing
strength training stuff.
And that gives me a pretty goodrange of adaptation over time.
But I would say there's nothingreally that's that powerful and
or like useful maybe thesleeping habits stuff, but
those, like wearing an Applewatch is not that precise of

(50:39):
your sleep habits.
something like the whoops,Strapp would be better, But like
it's really hard to predicthuman performance, just period.
there's fancy tools and a lot oftimes the fancy tool becomes the
focus of the thing.
I usually tell'em.
We did a podcast, maybe a couplemonths ago with my coaches and
one of the questions that wasasked was like, how do I know my
training program was effective?

(51:01):
And the next time I do atraining program, how do I know
what to change?
And that's like a multifactorialthing.
But my response was like, didyou get hurt?
Like how, what was theconsequence of your training
program?
did you have a season that wa,that LA that lasted the amount
of time you expected it to andwas your average performance

(51:22):
high quality?
did you try hard, did you gethurt?
How was your sleep habits?
what was your overall wellbeingduring that period of time?
And most people that, like I gothurt at the end of my training
program, it's like you probablypushed too far.
Doesn't mean your trainingprogram was bad.
You maybe pushed it too long.
People that got hurt in themiddle of their training
program, your training programwas too much volume.

(51:44):
Like you can't do that the next,So I think we can also use,
humans are not dumb.
Like athletes are notintentionally doing shit to hurt
themselves, but they know whenthey're overdoing it.
But if we don't educate peoplethat it's okay to not do the
plan as it's prescribed or gooff the plan.
that's a mistake on the coach'spart because I don't know how my

(52:07):
athletes are gonna adapt toevery training session.
Why the hell would I, thatdoesn't make any sense.
They don't know either.
So they have to know that yoursessions are not the same
quality.
Your sessions are not the samevolume.
You have to teach the athleteand the athlete's gotta learn to
get a better sense of what theycan adapt to.
And that changes over time too.

Kush (52:29):
Got it.
The athlete listening tothemselves and then their, their
coach also providing, yeah, thatprompt feedback on adaptations
that they need to be making.
many years ago, I remember, awell known climbing trainer,
Justin Shank.
He would be out at the crackwearing a hot rate monitor.

(52:51):
the way he would instruct peopleto use that thing was that they
should listen to the HRM to tellthem, Hey, if you are rest on a
long, long climb, it'll tell youwhen you should begin climbing
again because your heart hasnow, slowed down to a certain
level.
Do you see people benefitingfrom HRMS in their training or,

(53:13):
actually while they'reperforming as well?

I've like at the, I don't know that many people do
that, like I think maybe themost rare cases that happens,
like I have certainly.
Heart rate monitors and likewhat are called SO two monitors,
so I can put heart rate monitoron someone's chest and then also
a, oxygen utilization monitor ontheir forearms.
And you can, but the problemwith that is and it's really

(53:37):
interesting because when itcomes to like finger boarding,
you'll see like a drop in oxygenuse when they are doing work,
and then you'll see it come backwhen they're recovering.
And they'll do that throughoutthe repetitions, even when their
muscles are not recovering.
They can still do repetitionsbecause the types of muscle
contractions used with afingerboard.

(53:58):
So it's pretty, pretty damninsightful.
But those things are$2,000, likeclimbers are not investing that
much money in that kind ofequipment.
and it's even like hard to sellto the larger Community because
like I've tried to do thismultiple times with our team and

(54:19):
say, Hey, I'll do this for free.
I live here, send my way.
I'll do it for free.
And there was interest, butthere was like little follow
through.
So it's like the team's not bigenough almost to be able to have
enough eyes exploring all theavenues that we could that would
really help our athletes.
there is that we could use inthat context, which for sure,
but they're not being used,which is a bummer.

Kush (54:41):
Great.
we are moving, to the end of oursession, but, before we do that,
just one last thing on thistopic, which is, when you look
at the, the future of screening,the future of rehab, what is it
that you find most exciting?
do you see, AI coming in and,giving us some valuable, tools,
something else that, you really,keen to, see, develop?

I think the like AI example would be an AI could
give you like a generalized,crappy training program that's
very generic, but the AI can'treally understand and care for
the person enough to educatethem on an emotional level
that's gonna be meaningful.
sure, make me a finger trainingprogram, whatever.

(55:24):
It might work great.
Might be too much volume, buteasy to adjust.
But they can't really sit andunderstand the person's
emotional response and howstressed they're about a pain
complaint and how that stress isinfluencing their training and
how they need to adjust that.
So I think in terms of beingreally precise, I think I've
always been a fan of letting theprinciples of sports science

(55:45):
guide.
The kind of direction that wetake.
But the art of coaching is likenot that simple.
The art of coaching is reallywhat makes coaches and
healthcare providers exceptionalbecause they have to connect
with people and they have tothink on their feet, and they
have to not freak out when theclient is freaked out.
And there's all these otherfactors that I think AI is not
gonna be able to do very well,at least anytime soon.

(56:06):
But I don't know that much aboutthat world.
Maybe they do.

Kush (56:08):
Sure.
yeah, I'm curious.
one thing that you know, again,climber is being a little bit
more hippie than other sportsmaybe we are not so good at,
which is keeping, detailedrecords data about training and
performance, which maybe todaydoes not provide sufficient.
reserves for l lns, largelanguage models to drop on, but

(56:30):
I'm curious if that changes.
we are able to, I'm, I'mpositive this is already
happening in other sports andI'm, I am positive that maybe
give it five years, 10 yearsmore money comes into the sport.
People will start recordingtheir data and, in that spectrum
between coaching and training,being an art and the science,
we'll probably see some shiftshappening towards the science

(56:50):
spectrum and maybe even people,experts such as yourself,
starting to maybe leverage a bitmore, AI in, helping maybe fine
tune or inform training.

Yeah.
Yeah, that'd be interesting forsure.
I'm assuming that will happen,

Kush (57:04):
great.
one thing I just, yeah.
One or two last questions beforewe, before we wrap up.
Any, any favorite, climbingtraining book that you, you
love?
or maybe another kind of,training research?
I know that when I startedclimbing, we had, just a few
books out there, performanceRock climbing, and then I think
Eric Horse and a couple ofbooks.
But now there's so many other,books people are putting out.

(57:26):
wondering, which is one, whichis your favorite climbing
training book?
And then I also like to read,and then secondly, just for fun,
what's maybe, a great climbingmovie that you watched, you
would recommend?

So I can probably say the only, probably I don't
read books very often.
like the downside of books isthey're outdated too fast.
like things change.
And I think a lot of the, withthe exception probably of Eric
Horse book or Steve Bechtel'sbook, like those have some
quantified, oh, I guess the oldrock.
Climbing trainers manual hassome science stuff too.

(58:00):
it's but those things are like,they're, things change so fast,
And so I think, I've probablynever completed a full rock
climbing book, looked at pieces.
I think probably Steve Bechtel'sbook is probably one I've read
the most.
and I forget which one.
I have a couple of his that Ithink are good.
metal I think is a good one, butthat's not as much like a
training book as it is, like akind of informative, skills

(58:22):
discussion kind of thing.
so I read research papers morethan anything else.
And if I am not like readingresearch papers, like I'm not
reading climbing shit.
Like I don't, I actually don'twatch like climbing competitions
with few exceptions orprofessional athletes climbing
or YouTube videos of athletes.
Like it's, I think like it'sbeen good in some sense to like,

(58:45):
make.
My ex exploration of the scienceand modifications seem organic
for me based on what I like,read and learn and explore, so I
don't do a ton of that.
additionally, for climbingmovies, geez.
I, I do the just the, real rockmovies, just like the people
pushing it.
I like that kind of stuff.
That's awesome.
I love the, I love big wallclimbing.

(59:06):
to me the purest, mostinteresting, exciting thing
about climbing is big wallclimbing, or, all style
climbing.
I don't like sport climbing thatmuch.
For some reason.
I like bouldering because it'spretty hard and it's sort
natural and you can do it right.
I don't love sport climbing forwhatever reason, but I love the,
big wall adventure kinds offilms for sure.

(59:26):
I love that movie, the Alpinist.
That's probably the one thatI've seen the most recent,
that's the most badass andawesome.

Kush (59:32):
I hope you got to see it on the big screen.
I know I did.
And, even with some idea of whatI was going to expect, those
opening scenes with Mark, uh,cleric, yeah.
Just free solo, onsite iceclimbing.

what an amazing aspect like that.
that's so incredible.
I really is like a feed ofathleticism that like, is far
beyond anything I will ever do.
It's amazing, right?
'cause I've done some

Kush (59:58):
even, maybe, even, beyond athleticism of a feat of, human
endeavor.
it's just, I think it's beyondathletics.
It's like a human being capableof, that kind of performance.
It's, it's unreal.

Tyler Nelson (01:00:11):
Yeah.
It's as close as you're gonnaget to a superhero status,
right?
As a human.
I think people don't do thatshit.
You don't just like.
Walk up to a ice cliff and climbit with no rope.
that's just not something thathumans do.
Like honnold, solos areincredible.
and those are amazing to watch,but he's very rehearsed and like
does it more strategic and plan,right?
that thing was like not, he, Ithink he did it solo, right?

(01:00:33):
And then he went back to filmit.
But like the ice too, it's notas consistent the conditions,
right?
So the kind of takes the scarefactor and cranks it up a little
bit too, So

Kush (01:00:44):
absolutely.
And you, not taking nothing awayfrom Harold, but Yosemite
granite is maybe a little bit,less brutal than, than, British
Columbia Ice.

yeah.
And those routes are like sowell rehearsed and he knows'em
so good.
Like he's an the other level ofamazing athlete for sure, no
doubt.
Like unmatched, but it's So alittle bit, just a little bit
more edgy, a little bit moremetal.
The Alpine Ascent, that was,that movie was got me gripped
for sure.

Kush (01:01:12):
Yeah.
Next level, inspiration where Ihave no guilt on sitting on my
couch and eating popcorn while Iwatch that.
climbing action.
Tyler, I think most of us,you're pretty well known on the
interwebs, but those of us whodon't know, where to find you,
could you point us to how peoplecan find more info on, what
services you provide toathletes?

(01:01:32):
And then also one, one thing Ithink you do is also quite
valuable if you still do it,which is, I think you were
hosting in-person trainingworkshops or, measurement
workshops at some point.
If you have any of those comingup that people can find out and
sign up early, because I thinkthose sell out pretty quickly.

Yeah.
Those things are fun.
I haven't done as many of those.
I did a lot last year, like Idid every month.
I traveled to teach.
it was like a lot of load.
I have four kids, so it's I liketo be home from my family.
So I did a lot of that lastyear.
I probably am not gonna do muchof that this year.
certainly do lots of onlineteaching and I have online
courses too that people wouldjust buy on the website.
we do have a youth likecertification course, so maybe

(01:02:14):
people that own gyms and want totrain their youth climbing
coaches about strengthconditioning principles.
We have a course that we teachtwo days there that we're, that
we are promoting and gettingtraction for and accepting,
interest in.
And I think we have fourscheduled this year, but, we'll,
we can fill that up where Imaybe will teach some of those.
Colin usually teaches those.

(01:02:35):
and then people can find me onInstagram as like something I'm,
I use enough, but I'm startingto get away from, I've used it
for a long time and I'm overthat platform in some ways, but
I will still be there and Ianswer messages, whatever, but
there's all my information forYouTube and.
Patreon account and website onInstagram as well.
So I don't use Facebook orTwitter or other, platforms.

(01:02:58):
Mostly just Instagram andYouTube and Patreon.

Kush (01:03:01):
Got it.
Instagram and, and YouTube.
And then I think if people wantto book private, on your
website, right?
Yeah.
we'll make sure to, post thoselinks.
on topic of, of camps.
Actually, I found this always alittle bit, annoying that when
you are a, you go to theclimbing gym, right?
you're a youth athlete, you're akid, and there are these, daily
regular, like whatever trainingprogram set up.

(01:03:23):
On the other end, if you're anelite athlete, again, you have
the ability to ha go intoimmersive coaching programs.
But let's say you're just a,middle of the road, but, but
obsessive, average athlete, youoften have to be self coached.
So I'm always interested inhearing about, training
workshops, immersion ones thatpeople are doing where they can,
people such as myself, can justgo, go to some place in Salt

(01:03:46):
Lake for a month and just betrained with, with good coaches
and also have the, camaraderiethat's another topic to look
into.
and I hope somebody out thereis, thinking of doing those
kinds of camps for, for the

sure, I'm pretty sure people do that stuff for
sure.
Like I know it happens at likethe USA like coaches training
camp and the, at the settinglevel they do.
But something that's crazyinteresting is like in the
climbing world that we're tryingto maybe nudge a little bit more
is to be a youth climbing coach,you don't need any sort of
credentials other than a littlebit of.

(01:04:17):
Street cred from the gym andpeople like you, and you had a
good, you're a good climber.
Like those are the requisitethings that you need.
But in other sports, that's notenough.
Like you can't do that if you'rea high school soccer coach or
high school football coach, likethere's no way in hell you're
getting that job unless you havesomething to support that you

(01:04:38):
know what you're doing.
And not to say that they don'tknow what they're doing from a
climbing standpoint, butprescribing things and making
good decisions, and helping theindividual on a physical level
as best they can, requires morenuance.
It requires more education.
So that's the impetus for thatcourse is to try and help equip
youth coaches have a bit moreunderstanding of sports science

(01:05:00):
as it applies to training a rockclimber, a youth climber.

Kush (01:05:03):
That is absolutely the way forward though, I would say as,
as an old school climber, Isometimes have mixed feelings
about a sport getting a littlebit, formal and commercial.
But no, I think that is, theright, that is the right place
for climbing to be, evolvinginto,

the problem is like most of those kids aren't
gonna grow up.
Like my kids grow up and they goout with me to the desert and we
go like scramble and climb anddo stuff.
a lot of those kids don't dothat.
They grew up in a gym climbing,and they just see what the big
kids are doing.
They do what the big kids aredoing, whether that's a good
idea or not, most times probablynot, but they can still do
things.
So it's it's a hard like spaceto navigate.
But, so that's that's somethingthat I think needs to happen for

(01:05:40):
the sport to evolve and forathletes to, be able to progress
in a healthy way That's gonnabe.
Long term sustainable for themand it's kinda like a necessary
thing that's gonna be slow toadapt and equip ourselves with,
we like approach the USAclimbing too about that and say,
Hey, you guys weren't interestedin this.

(01:06:00):
We'd like your sport, whatever.
And it's again kinda like afalls on deaf ears kind of
things.
yeah, sure, send us your stuff.
We'll see.
It's no, we're not gonna dothat.
We're gonna go in the other waywhere we're just gonna go
because I like teaching and sodoes Colin.
We're just gonna go educate allthe coaches around the country
and then be like, oh wait, weshould probably support this
thing then because it like iswhat the coaches really want

(01:06:20):
kind of thing.
So it's but another topic.
But yeah, I think that needs tohappen.

Kush (01:06:24):
Tara, I, you have so much, you're such a fountain of
knowledge.
I could talk to you allafternoon, but I know that you
have things to do.
So I will, let you go.
I think you should still bedaylight in, in Utah.
Hope you get to enjoy someoutdoor time with your family.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.

Yeah, you're welcome.
Thanks for having me.

Kush (01:06:41):
Thank you.
Take care.

Yeti Stereo Microphone (01:06:46):
Amazing.
Dollar really knows this stuff.
Great.
Advice on learning to listen toone's body.
And cool story on how Tyler wasable to treat his own career
ending hip dysplasia.
And returned to form.
Contrarian advice as well, whereone can and should listen.

(01:07:09):
And practice our own sports evenwhile injured.
But in a careful way.
And also funny how calisthenicsand I would add even a much
loved yoga.
Is not really.
The best training for climbing.
It has helped me just becomemore able and confident, but the

(01:07:33):
skills acquisition and timespent.
Would be better applied toclimbing if that was my only
goal, but I do like do yoga.
So.
It's been fun.
As we get older.
We lose muscle at an acceleratedrate.
So hence it's important to notgive in and continue training

(01:07:55):
with heavyweights.
This advice, which has now wellcemented.
And has been embraced by thebroader medical community.
Is applicable to rock climbers,runners.
Surfers cyclists also.
We can say Because if we do theright thing and keep pushing
ourselves, I also recommendpicking up Peter at Tia's

(01:08:18):
outlive.
In fact, he would make anothergreat podcast guest someday.
So if you know, Him personally,please ask him to come on the
show.
Until next time, stay healthy.
Stay.
Ageless.

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