Ep 32: Andy McVittie - Evolution of Climbing Injuries in Competition - That's Not Real Climbing

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So finger strength is just sort of maxed out and that's not how you're going to be able to

(00:04):
differentiate between athletes. I'm getting patients coming to me saying, oh well of course
you know I can't boulder how I used to because I'm in my 30s now and I'm like what? Why? You know
what happens in your 30s? Whereas you're still you know really young in your prime. So if you're

(00:25):
expecting your period and it's late that is something that you should give some consideration
to. Yeah there was a definite spike. Nothing interferes with improvement more than injury.
You need consistency. So it's fine to step away a little early and finish feeling fresh.
Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host Jinni and I'm

(00:49):
excited to introduce my guest Andy McVittie. Andy is a climbing PT from Process Physiotherapy. He's
been climbing for over 30 years, has coached in the past, and over time has noticed climbing injuries
change as the style of climbing has evolved in the competition scene. In this episode we'll debunk
some training and PT myths, talk about the differences between male and female climbers,

(01:13):
and the types of injuries they face, and we'll hear about why he thinks fingers are strong enough.
I hope you enjoy this episode with Andy.
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(01:35):
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for 10% off your entire Mad Rock order. Info will be in the description. Back to the show.

(02:17):
How are you doing today? Excited for the holidays?
Yeah, yeah. All set already. Got everybody's presents.
Nice.
One of those, I think I've had a good year this year for presents. We'll see.
Yeah, presents stress me out so.
Exactly. Yeah, it's just such a relief when you finally see that thing and you just like,
ah, that's the thing. That'll do it.

(02:40):
I can't do like a presents under pressure. If I see something in the moment, I want to get it for
someone, but then if there's that deadline, it just, it goes out the window. I like don't,
I can't do it.
Yeah, presents under pressure. I like that. You can feel the stress exuding from that.
Yeah.

(03:00):
And then just like nothing good pops out to you.
No, no, definitely not. And what about yourself? What do you do for the holidays?
Um, not much really. I mean, I don't really celebrate any holidays just because it's like
a lot of effort. And like, again, the whole presents under pressure thing, I just.
I'm loving so many people now. I think one of the nice things about the climbing community is

(03:25):
there's a lot of sort of intergenerational sort of mixing that goes on. So I spend a fair bit of
time with people that are younger than my children, whatever that kind of thing. And people are just
making such different choices nowadays. I mean, it may be a climbing thing as well. Climbing attracts
a certain kind of person, doesn't it? But it's just, yeah, people are just like, no, that doesn't

(03:48):
make me happy. So I'm not going to do that.
Yeah.
It's so refreshing.
Yeah. I've noticed a lot of climbers just end up going climbing on Christmas or like climbing
outside or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's even, yeah, career choices that kind of,
well, not even career. They just, I want a job that's not too harsh, that gives me the income

(04:08):
so I can go and climb or do the things that bring me pleasure. And I'm not lying awake in bed at
night worrying about work. It's like, wow.
I mean, as someone who's unemployed, yeah, that is what it's like.
Okay. Yeah.
Okay. So yeah, getting into the climbing stuff and I guess the culture and community,
how did you get into climbing and then coaching and then eventually becoming a PT?

(04:33):
Yeah. Yeah. It's been, yeah, I suppose when I look back a little bit of a journey, a bit longer than
I thought. Yeah. So it's like 31 years of climbing now, I think.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. I know. Yeah.
Congrats.
Yeah. But also makes me think, oh, wow, maybe I'm older than I think I am.
But yeah, I got into it. It was an activity at school that we did on a school trip where you

(05:04):
went away into the countryside and did various things. They have these, the residential,
they're called quite common in the UK. We'll go away for a week with the school and yeah,
you do lots of different adventurous kind of activities. Tried climbing and I can still
remember it now. I wouldn't be able to pick the climb or anything. I know which crag and

(05:26):
or not heavy it was, but I can still remember. Yeah, it's totally like, wow, this is the thing
for me. But I was quite young then, didn't know anybody else who climbed, didn't really,
wasn't able to get into it. And so really it was when I got to university and they had a
mountaineering club and it was like, oh right, there's my way in. It's all there for me.

(05:49):
Yeah, so climbed recreationally, but I was actually, when I left university, I joined the
police was my first career. Oh wow. Well, what was your degree, I guess? I guess I kind of assumed
that your degree was going to be in physiotherapy. Yeah, but the first one basically was sports
coaching, sports science. So I've always had that kind of within me. At that time, I was considering

(06:15):
joining the armed services, the REF, and so it didn't matter what degree I did. They just said,
pick a degree that you're interested in. So I thought, yeah, cool, sports science, coaching,
that sounds good. So I did that. Then decided not to join the armed forces, went into the police
and continued to climb through that time. And then had a career change, became an outdoor instructor.

(06:42):
And this is back really before coaching was a thing. It was instruction, safety instruction,
that kind of thing. Coaching wasn't really around. You mean in general or just for climbing?
For climbing, yeah, for climbing. All the other sports for climbing, they're still quite resistant
to it. It would be like, well, that's not how we do it in climbing. That's frowned upon,

(07:06):
but like training, people used to train in secret because you didn't know what they were doing.
You didn't want to admit that you were training to get better. It may just be a British thing.
You know, there's people at school who claim that they never do any revision or homework,
but they get poor marks in all the exams. Yeah, a bit like that, but nobody could admit that they

(07:28):
trained. I wanted to give a little bit extra and Neil Gresham was the first person to start up with
like an actual coaching qualification. So I went down to London where he was at the time and spent
the week there and got some basic coaching input from him. Then I moved to Spain and was working

(07:54):
on performance at climbing holidays where people would want to improve their grade. So they would
come on a one week, two week holiday and get coached basically to improve and sort of covered
everything. I came back from Spain then. I ended up working in climbing balls while I finally

(08:14):
retrained again as a physiotherapist. That's when I did get my physiotherapy degree and continued
there. That sort of grew, ended up starting a competition squad there and helping run that.
Then eventually going off self-employed, myself and my coaching partner at the time early,

(08:36):
formed a competition squad. Now, although physiotherapy is my main part of it,
I've been coaching for nearly 16 years. I still have a couple of people that I coach. That's more
just interesting, fun, psych rather than being on the ground of competition coaching.

(08:59):
So you no longer have a competition squad?
No, no, no, not anymore. Once the climbing physiotherapy grew, I've been in physio for
a while, but only full-time climbing physio for the last three years. That was never going to be

(09:20):
a thing a few years ago. You couldn't support yourself. There weren't enough climbers around.
There wasn't the attitude as well that you would go and see a physio for an injury. Again, I think
things potentially changed. That used to once be a badge of honor as to how many injuries you had,
but you were still climbing.
Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess that still is kind of a thing.

(09:44):
It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, the climbing physio has come about. The usual,
the usual, most physiotherapists who climb will treat friends and help friends, that kind of thing,
advise or what have you. And then that just grew.
When you started out with sports science back in the day, did you do other sports or what?

(10:09):
Yeah, so rugby to a reasonably okay level, played for the county. We did well at university as well
at rugby. We got through to high level national competitions and running actually. I don't do
that so much nowadays, but long distance running. I was a sprinter when I was young, but then get

(10:37):
ultra mountain marathon. Oh really?
Yes, I ended up with that. That takes quite a lot of time, quite a lot of energy.
And that's come to the conclusion that I couldn't keep us going.
Yeah, I only learned about ultra marathons like probably within the past few months. I couldn't

(10:57):
believe it at first. I didn't know it was a real thing that people could actually do.
Yeah, it's amazing. The human body is just fantastic. When I think actually having just
said all that of all the different things I've done with my body and that it's adapted to,
it wasn't like any of these I was like super gifted at. And now that have I done them to an

(11:17):
amazingly high level, but it's like if you give it the time and the space and the correct information
to work with, your body will do most things. Absolutely amazing. It's a fantastic, fantastic
bit of kit. Yeah, so yeah, you mentioned that you've
been climbing for a long time. You kind of touched on like the evolution you've seen over the years.

(11:38):
How does that kind of affect the injuries that you've seen people come in with?
Yeah, so originally treating friends, that type of thing, often like at the crag where
something would happen, somebody would come over holding their finger, compared by that,
this has just happened, but what do you think this is? And it was predominantly fingers.

(12:01):
People would worry, I think, about fingers. Fingers would cause them enormous pain.
Fingers would cause them enough anxiety that they wanted to reach out for some help.
Whereas if they fell off and badly sprained their ankle, they would just be like, well,
that just happens. It will get better. It will be okay. Or shoulders, similarly. Elbows,

(12:27):
that type of thing. People just certainly used to, still do to an extent, just not
seek treatment for it, just tough up and get on with it. But fingers was always the most commonly,
and that's backed up from research back then, not about people accessing help or treatment,

(12:50):
but which parts of you injured over that, whatever. Yeah, fingers, definitely the majority,
I would suggest, the things that you'd see. Now it's everything, which is really nice,
because if you just saw fingers all the time, as interesting and as great as it is working with
climbers, and every finger injury is a bit different, yeah, I think I'd be a little bit bored

(13:16):
if it was just fingers all the time. Okay, yeah. And so I guess, specifically in the competition
scene, they don't really set crimpy, fingery stuff too often. I mean, that's definitely part of it,
but I don't think the limiting factors, people's finger strength a lot of the times when it comes
to competition climbing. So yeah, do you feel like you see other stuff in the competition space?

(13:43):
Yeah, absolutely. And it has been an interesting and very rapid evolution within the competition
space, definitely. And yes, you're right, athletes this generation have just got to the point where
you can't really make a hole small enough for them not to be able to crimp it. They're using bolt holes,

(14:07):
aren't they? They're using screw holes. They're using the side of volumes to dig into it with the
fingernails and that type of thing. So finger strength is just sort of maxed out, and that's
not how you're going to be able to differentiate between athletes. That combined with what became
the fantastic sort of visual spectacle of the 2020, 2021 Olympics, the way to differentiate

(14:39):
athletes became about that uncertainty of movement, didn't it? The ability to read a problem,
get it right first time, have the movement literacy and the confidence in the competition
scenario to be able to go for these low percentage moves and pull them off, as opposed to how hard
can you hold? Then you have the big colorful holds, big dynamic moves, all this type of thing

(15:03):
that look spectacular and drew the crowd. And it worked, didn't it? Because climbing absolutely
exploded after that and obviously is now included, hopefully long-term in the Olympics.
But it's that type of movement, much greater peak loads. If you're jumping to something

(15:25):
and actually going for it, hitting it with one hand, whereas often in the past you would still
have the other hand on, so there's much more stability through the body. A lot more rotational
forces, both sort of intentional and unintentional. You've got the 360 moves now that everybody likes
to see, that kind of thing. But even just hitting something, when you look at what happens in

(15:53):
Yan Yur and whatever, and the Cobra kick that she really almost kicks us up in the back of her own
head, doesn't she, when she's doing that? The ranges that the body is tested through. A lot
more single arm work, which then upsets wrists as well, because you're having to control through

(16:15):
the wrist. Just a great difference in the movement patterns. There was a narrative review rather than
a true research project done in 2020, 2021. Looking at that, I'm predicting that was

(16:38):
Chris Lutter, who's a orthopedic surgeon who works with Volker Schoffel. I don't know if you've ever
heard of him. He's like the... has been for ages. Super keen climber, German orthopedic surgeon,
runs a surgery that specializes in outdoor related incidents, accidents and surgery.

(17:06):
They looked at the movement patterns, the changes, and they predicted actually what we're now seeing
three or four years later, because obviously what is in the Olympics then feeds through into local
competition and local setting in climbing walls, because everybody wants to have a go at that type

(17:26):
of thing. Much more shoulders is the biggest change, really. A lot more shoulders. The other
one, pushing as well. Never used to push. Now there's all of this going on in some real
positions that when you get your biomechanical head on and you look at what somebody's doing,

(17:52):
and I'm going like, oh man, how could you hit? Yeah, some of the push moves are definitely pretty
extreme. Yeah, yeah. I've chatted with people before about in competition, youth competition,
you get some feedback, often from slightly unhappy parents of the third child. But my child got

(18:23):
injured on that problem. It was dangerous. Why have you set it? They set it on the other. Often
there will be something underlying why they ended up getting injured on that. They might have had a
shoulder injury and that push move then injured them. But I really believe that setters set a

(18:44):
challenge. As long as it's not overtly dangerous, which I've never seen, it's up to the athlete
to decide whether they accept that challenge or not. That's part of being a competitive,
high-level athlete. You have to be aware of yourself. Is that for me? I have to have that

(19:06):
discipline, that talk within for youth, coach, climber, caregiver. How should I be doing this
competition? That type of thing and injuries that come out of competition are not the root setters
for. There's really no move that you've seen set in competition locally or in the IFSC where you're

(19:32):
like, oh, I really don't want to see that again or you think it's a little too far. I can't bring one
to mind. No. What I often say is I certainly see things that I think like, wow, how are they able
to do that? If I even attempted to do that, that would injure me. But so would playing a game of

(19:58):
professional soccer. That would injure me. I'm not trained in that way at all. What's the injury rate
in IFSC competition? I guess I don't know. Actually, in the competitions itself, yeah,

(20:20):
good point. Sorry if that's kind of why I'm here. It's not that high. There is always
likely to be a higher injury rate in competition than in practice. But yeah, but it's not off the
scale. I can't think of a problem or a route where it's been like, oh, athlete A has been injured.

(20:46):
Next one, oh, athlete B has been injured on that problem and can't continue or is noticeably now
limping after doing it or holding their feet and that being a common thing on a particular problem.
Interesting. Okay. Oh man, I wish I had thought of, tried to look through some old comps and see if

(21:07):
there was anything that was super dangerous. I guess the only thing that comes to mind most
recently is maybe the Salt Lake World Cup where there was a jump onto a dual-text slide onto a
little chip thing. I feel like I maybe remember an injury or two there. But also like Natalia was

(21:30):
already kind of injured. So yeah, my memory's a little foggy. Okay. Yeah. And that potentially
then is the, you know, route setters have got to set for what they, you know, for fully fit athletes.
They can't start accounting for, oh, somebody might have this or somebody might have that.
And then it's up to the athlete, whether they accept that challenge that their setters have

(21:55):
set. And sometimes that will feel unfair because sometimes you will have something that limits you
and you might not be able to do that. But that's, again, that's part of being an athleteism,
unfortunately, but you're not going to be a hundred percent all the time. Okay. Kind of a
surprising take to hear from a PT. That's interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I don't

(22:19):
think we're, as a whole, you know, particularly in sports, physio, I don't think we're very,
you know, we're trying to help people become robust and strong and to be able to do these
amazing things with their body. And if you're like, oh, oh, I don't think you should or, oh,
crap, no, we better be super, yeah, they're not going to get there, are they? Yeah, that's true.

(22:43):
Obviously not if they've just been injured, you know, if they've got an acute new injury,
you're not going to say, oh, we're going to ignore that and just put it on. But, you know, rehab is
finished when they're able to do those kind of things with no anxiety. That's a huge factor,
especially in competitive athletes. And, you know, there's, again, a fair bit of research showing

(23:06):
that a lot of people who, I'm going to rough figures here, but about 90% of people following
a moderate level injury, you know, something that's taking you out of the sport for a while,
about 90% of people will regain all their physical abilities that they had before that.
But only about 60, I think it's about 64, 65% of people actually make it back to the same level

(23:32):
that they were before. And that, they believe, is anxiety around that injury, recurrence, and
yeah, that type of thing. So it's amazing that the high level athletes do. Well, I guess they have to.
Which is interesting in itself, isn't it? Yeah, their drive and, yeah, is that a good thing?

(23:54):
That they have to, you know? Yeah, we know from lots of other sports, don't we, that people are,
okay, we're just going to give you an injection to get through this game. No, that type of thing.
That's the trade-off of pro athletes. I mean, yeah, I think that's a really good way to
look at it, that like anything can kind of be overcome. Is there any move that you see that

(24:18):
really just, it just like kind of scares you? I just want to know. It's just something I really
want to know. I don't think so, no, because they're all so amazingly prepared. Like for example,
when they get around these curve balls that happen every so often, like when suddenly like
cracks start appearing, you know? Oh gosh, when there was, I don't know if you saw this one, but

(24:43):
there was like a kind of jump into like a crack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that set in
local final balls, you know, that kind of thing. And you could look at that and think like,
wow, that's a bit, yeah. But again, it's there and it's for people to choose whether they
do it or not. And yeah, but they adapted within a handful of months. They'd become like masterful

(25:08):
crack climbers. You know, they're just so adaptive and so amazing at what they do. And now with all
the incredibly dynamic movements and the timing and the coordination and such that goes on,
I think they can just see. And they also know what their bodies can do. They're quite a lot more

(25:29):
aware, I feel, than say your standard climber of, you know, can I do that? No, I'm going to have to
adapt it and try and, which is why you see them trying to work around things sometimes, isn't it?
Because they almost don't want to do the version of it that they may be kind of getting funneled

(25:51):
or forced into doing for whatever reason it might be. And sometimes that's just, yeah, it might feel
like I've not got the ability to do that. Yeah, but no doubt, yeah, sorry, I haven't seen anything
that I can think of at the minute that makes me, I'm sure someone somewhere will be able to come up
with something or find something, send me a clip and I'll send you a video back of me going,
oh, but yeah, because I couldn't, my shoulder, for example, could probably not deal with a lot of the

(26:21):
moots and things, the giant leaps and stuff that they do. Yeah, but there's can. Yeah, I mean, I
guess speaking of shoulders, so this is kind of like a, this is a personal thing for me. My shoulders
have just been messed up for like years now. I can't even really like hang on one arm without

(26:41):
pain at this point right now. And I see so many comp climbers landing like one arm dinos where
they're just like flying back, hanging on one arm. And I desperately wish I could like rehab myself
to get to that point again. How, I mean, they make it look so easy too. It's not even the

(27:02):
like they're putting any strength into it. It just kind of looks like they're hanging off of it.
Yeah. And I just, how do I get to that point where my shoulder isn't messed up so I can do that?
So if we were both to break down what they're doing and also to look at what kind of a plan might look
like for somebody. Yeah. And that's quite common. And that's also an example of people give quite

(27:28):
often. They'll say, I can climb, but I can't hang one hand. And I really don't like the thought of
going for a dynamic move and having to hit it. So it's something that they come across quite often.
And really for me, why it looks effortless for them is because they're relaxed when they do it.
So they're not already full of tension and movement. This is what we've said before about

(27:53):
the difference with anxiety and why people don't get back to where they were going or where they
previously were. Their timing is impeccable. And by that, I mean, as they hit the hold,
it's at that dead point. This is where the term comes from, isn't it? Where they're not moving up,
they're not moving down. They have that time and space to hold it. So the peak loads

(28:16):
are shooting up there. Whereas perhaps when myself and yourself grab one of these holes,
yeah, we'd sort of snatching for it. We've not got it quite so well. And there's a great big
shock that comes through. We don't know how to control our body, like the scorpion kick,
cobra kick, whatever you might want to call it, whatever. That's all about absorbing that energy

(28:38):
and then bringing it back in, in a way that doesn't pull you off the wall. But I probably
wouldn't do that. I'd just try and grab on as I could. And my solution to coming off would be to
hold on harder rather than relaxing into it. So there's a look at the actual mechanics of what
goes on and that needs to be understood. But then it's finding what the issue is with the shoulder,

(28:59):
obviously, and there can be numerous things. It may be structural, there might be a joint issue
going on. I could take a stab and if this is something that's been going on for quite some
time, your words have messed up for years, which I would also address the use of the language there
and say, come on, it's made, yeah. It turns so negative on yourself. I'm sure they're not,

(29:22):
you know, that you're still able to do things with them. They're functional. And I find a lot
of this, you address that underlying issue. So we might have a rotator cuff injury from a long time
ago. And let's say for argument's sake, that was from trying to do a dyno and a Matt classic,

(29:43):
oh, I've wrenched my shoulder. It didn't really like that kind of thing. There's a lot of muscles
that insert into the shoulder and they all work in wonderful coordination to create movement and
also to hold the ball and the socket nice and stable in the joint. If through injury, some of

(30:06):
that is a bit totally non-technical turn out of whack. Yeah. That coordination has been affected.
Things are not working how they should. So climbing on it is actually causing irritation.
The body's great at protecting itself. Yeah. It will dial down the ability of a muscle to

(30:26):
output force in order to protect itself. What the body's not so great at doing is bringing that
muscle back into full use. The nervous system will kind of check in with the shoulder and go,
is it okay? Yeah. Okay is good enough. It doesn't know you would really like to do a one-armed dyno.

(30:48):
Yeah. It's like, are we under threat? No. Okay, then we're just going to leave the shoulder
how it is. And you can correct that through strengthening. You can get your external
rotation working, correct the shoulder. What's often missing at the end is that bringing it back
into coordination in sport specific movements and patterns essentially. And that does two things.

(31:15):
One is it tells the nervous system, we need this shoulder to work in this way, make that happen.
Yeah. Bring everything back. And it also builds your confidence at the same time. So your movement
patterns are natural and relaxed and how they should be, which gives you more head space with
programming and such that rather than worrying about your shoulder. So often what gets missed,

(31:38):
even if somebody's strengthened or healed, you're treated the underlying issue is that last part of
bringing it back into a sport specific kind of environment, if you like. And that's where this
further down the rehab you are, the more it should look like training, basically. Yeah.
There could be drills, technique drills, strength drills, warm up recruitment work to do.

(32:05):
I guess the hard part is kind of like when it comes to these more extreme moves where
you're landing on one arm or you're like landing this intense move where you just get a lot of
load, it's kind of hard to build up to it. It kind of seems like it's zero or a hundred in terms of
like if you're going to land it or if you're going to be able to hold it or something like that.

(32:27):
Yeah. And people don't, you might warm up, you might have climbed quite a bit in the session
already on climbs of a different character, a different nature to them. And then you suddenly,
you know, pew moves into this problem that maybe you've not looked at properly and you're like,
oh wow, okay, big day, no. Or you may have chosen it to go to. Do warm that up. Yeah. You can

(32:52):
go to find a bar, fingerboard with big jugs on it, that type of thing. Stand on a chair,
drop your feet off the chair in a really nice controlled way. There's a thing I had called
foot up catches, which if anybody's listening to this who's worked with me, we'll probably know.
And it's a way of gradually shot loading either fingers, wrists, shoulders. So you go under a bar

(33:17):
or a fingerboard, pull on it with feet on the floor. If you take roughly, because this is done
by feel, half of your body weight through your arms and then you're going to be able to do a
round and then pick your feet up off the floor quickly. You've just shot loaded in effect,

(33:39):
your system with 50% of your body weight. That's a nice starting point and you can progress in
there, depending on what your level is. I get people doing this, you know, single arm, sometimes
single arm on an edge, sometimes on the bar. There's work you can do on a TRX, you know,
rings where you're dynamically pulling yourself from catching yourself on the rings as you fall

(34:03):
backwards, that type of thing, but done with feet on the floor, leaning backwards, you pick the angle,
you pick how big the move is, all done by feel. There's jump and catching a bar that feels nice,
scared. Jump and catch a bar and swing. Jump and catch the bar, swing, then come into a pull-up.
Yeah, all this, it's just creating lots of, you know, you've got that, the move started to coordinate,

(34:28):
catch, then swing through, then bring it under control and turn into a pull because that's what
we do in climbing. So there's that, that's off the wall and then there's getting on the wall.
If you're getting things like, yeah, on spray walls, symmetrical boards, that kind of thing,
drills to be, it's a technique. You can't expect to just go, all right, I'm here, that hole's there,

(34:52):
I've not really done much of this. Yeah, suddenly I'm going to be able to do like Yanja does it.
You know, she does it how she does it because she's done it thousands of times.
Yeah, actually, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't think about warming up in that way, but yeah,
I should probably start doing that a little bit more.
Yeah, or even partway through a session. I often see people, so pockets are quite an injury seam

(35:18):
at the moment and an open-handed work and people will warm up. They might be pulling on edges,
you know, other, and that kind of thing, warming up going through, but they've not pulled on pockets
and they'll get halfway through a session and setters do have a bit of a habit of, it's like
they find a pocket in the holes they're working with and then they go and they'll create a line

(35:42):
of pockets. I don't know if it's just a UK thing. Yeah, they do. There's just like a theme, isn't
there suddenly? And it's like, oh yeah. It's never just one.
No, no, it's a bit of them. And so you'll go from, yeah, okay, you're quite warmed up,
but not for pockets, which is a totally different mode coming through the fingers.
And then suddenly you're expecting to be pulling quite hard on pockets. Yeah, go find the

(36:06):
fingerboard, go do some hanging, you know, three finger, two finger, that kind of thing,
warm it up, then go back and crush. Don't just jump on it.
Yeah. And I guess I kind of wanted to touch on something that you had mentioned
before we were doing this interview where you said that you think fingers are strong enough.
Yeah. Yeah. There is now the ability to measure how hard somebody is pulling on a hold while

(36:36):
they're doing the problem. We've got the gadgets now, technology, things that used to cost
thousands now cost hundreds or less. It turned out, yeah, I was doing a
workshop with some coaches a while ago and quite a while ago, he'd made something himself,

(36:57):
like a good few years ago to see, he was actually using it for feats to see the
weighting that was going on within his feet and it would get a live readback on a little screen.
Oh, interesting. This is like, you know, he's made it himself from some computer bits and all this kind of
whereas now, yeah, you can get, you know, the force gauges that you can attach into a hold
and look at and read. And what we see is that what people are able to, you know,

(37:24):
these kind of feats of strength where somebody might be taking the middle bottom rung on the
Beastmaker 2000, body weight, lock off, holding other, you know, weights in the hand and that
kind of thing. So able to, you know, 70, 80, 90 kilos through one arm and not hitting anywhere
near that when we're actually climbing. And so you definitely need to train

(37:51):
beyond what you're going to experience in performance. Yeah, because if you've only
trained to this level and performances at this level, your tissues are going to struggle with
that and you will get injured. But yeah, so we definitely need to be a little stronger than we
need to be. But as these are still just about the most commonly injured part of our body, then maybe

(38:20):
we could afford them a little more space and not hammer them quite so hard and look at other
aspects. It's also quite easy for everybody to think, I fell off. What feedback have I got? Well,
my hands came off. If my hands were stronger, I would be able to stay on. And so we go down a

(38:40):
line of only strum the fingers as opposed to thinking maybe it was my hip position. Maybe,
yeah, I was hanging out at the hips and that pulled me off the wall. Did my foot slip, you know,
whatever it might be, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we just go towards
the fingers. I mean, I think people are going to want to know like a number of like,

(39:03):
once I hit this, I can stop training my fingers. Oh my gosh. Right. No, that's a terrible question.
No, no, I don't have a number in mind. So this is like, you know, deadlifting.
We know this is beneficial for climbing, great overall body strength, exercise, we'll get triple

(39:27):
extension, all of this kind of stuff that feeds into your, have to help your climbing. But where
do you stop? Is a body weight deadlift okay? Do you need one and a half times? Do you need two times?
Do you need two times? It's all quite individual and relative. And so, yeah, I'm not going to be

(39:49):
able to say. But I would suggest for most people, you know, if you can hang body weight off a 20
mil edge on one arm, yeah, you know, you're probably good. And the interesting thing then from that,
and I say that a 20 mil edge, that won't necessarily relate to you being able to hold a 6 mil edge.

(40:14):
That's different. That's recruitment. That's contact strength. That's coordination of the
strength to be able to get in on a little edge. So you then train on a bigger edge, but then
climb and use small edges to gain the ability to use small edges. There's a lot more timing

(40:36):
and coordination involved on small edges as opposed to just the strength. So yeah, even within that,
it's always good. Yeah. Lots of gray areas, no straight answers. Sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of
nuance. I just know, yeah, I feel like people would want me to ask. So yeah, for sure. I've got to
cover that. So back to the World Cup circuit real quick. I was thinking about some of the,

(41:04):
I guess, like PT things we see on World Cup climbers. I know in like commentary, people
have mentioned seeing like KT tape or those like metal stickers that some athletes wear. I still
don't really know what those are for. Or just like wearing ice packs all over their body or cupping

(41:24):
or stuff like that. Any of those, like, do you have thoughts on any of those things? If they're
helpful or not? Many thoughts. So please excuse this brief intermission, but if you're interested
in deleted scenes from this episode where he debunks another PT myth concerning push-pull

(41:44):
muscle imbalance and what training should look like for comp climbers, do consider helping support
this podcast on Patreon. Some other perks include a membership pin shipped to you after two months,
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(42:07):
the guests. If you'd like to help out non-monetarily, liking, commenting, and sharing
helps a great deal as well. Back to the show. We have to differentiate in some ways. It's a bit
like that when people try and follow the training plan of a World Cup climate. Yeah, it's not going
to be suitable for them. And because they're, as well as pushing themselves super hard, probably

(42:33):
to a level beyond what most of us can, they're also after marginal gains. These marginal gains
are super important. So they will do things in their training. They will use things to give them
an extra 1% because they're already doing all the basics really well. They're getting enough sleep.

(42:58):
They're eating a good diet. They are not drinking too much alcohol. They've got that discipline. All
those foundational building blocks are there. And so if they've got an injury, they're already doing
all the things that I normally try and encourage most people to do actually. The biggest impact

(43:20):
you could have on your injury is not to be using KT tape or an ice pack. It's to make sure you get
enough calories and protein so your body can rebuild itself. It's to make sure you sleep so
your body can rebuild itself. It's to make sure you stay off things that will affect your body's
ability to rebuild itself. So KT tape is an interesting one. It provides no support whatsoever

(43:48):
to a joint. You can stretch it. We're talking about how much force, how much pressure that
all these athletes are dealing with and these huge peak loads and that kind of thing. A bit
of stretchy bandage is not going to hold that shoulder together if their shoulders and liniments
and such aren't able to. But also interestingly, neither really does rigid tape. A PC might run

(44:18):
on a sports field and quickly tape somebody's ankle up and put that free rolls and tape around
it and build this almost like cast around the ankle. That provides support for about 20 minutes
and then it also then starts to slacken off because the forces are so huge that are going
through the body. What it does, they believe, is it draws the nervous system's attention to that area.

(44:46):
The nervous system is aware something funky is going on there. Let's give it a little
bit more attention. That's at the subconscious level. So essentially more brain computing power
is going towards looking after that ankle or shoulder now than it otherwise would have been.

(45:06):
That they believe has a positive effect. It doesn't matter what colour it is. It would appear,
it doesn't matter what pattern it's put on and that type of thing. Is it going to
physically protect that joint? No. Can it have a positive effect that means a re-injury or a

(45:28):
worsening of the injury that may otherwise have happened won't? Probably, yeah. There's no very
rare side effects to it. Sometimes some people are allergic to the glue in it, but that's easily
tested out. As long as they don't believe, oh, I can just carry on using my shoulder however I want

(45:51):
now, then yeah, no side effects. All good. Ice, yeah, as an acute treatment is good.
Professional athletes would likely use that slightly differently than we would. They're
potentially using that as a way of numbing the signals that their body is trying to give their

(46:16):
brain to say, hey, maybe you shouldn't be running around on this ankle. But they've got a game to
get through or they've got a competition to get through and that kind of thing and they'll deal
with it later. That's their decision-making process, not necessarily for us when we actually need to be
able to show up for work on Monday, that kind of thing. Yeah, different decisions for different

(46:41):
people really and all these, except for cupping, which I believe from having looked at literature,
et cetera, et cetera, can't find anything that says it actually does anything whatsoever. It's
just bruising yourself and I'm not sure why people would do that. I think it's a good thing

(47:02):
why people would do that. Okay. Okay. But there we go. Does it have a placebo effect? Yeah,
yeah, maybe. Is that correct to be having that placebo effect? As in, is it giving somebody some
false confidence that they otherwise shouldn't have? That would be bad. Is it making somebody

(47:23):
feel able to do something that they otherwise would have felt, oh no, I don't think I can do this?
And if that's appropriate, then that's okay. Sports teams and pro athletes will use massage
a lot. It doesn't do physiologically as much as most people think. Yes, it can move fluid and

(47:47):
blood around a bit and that type of thing, but not hugely, but does it make you feel an awful lot
better? Yeah. Does it feel nice? Yeah, yeah. Is that priceless sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
I'm an advocate for it. One of the places where I work, they have a sports massage there and I will

(48:08):
say, yeah, okay, yeah, go get that. Go make that feel nice. Yeah, that can be priceless because
then somebody feels like, oh, I can use this. I want to use it. This is okay. I was shying away
from it before. And so for pro athletes, yeah, in sports teams and things, they will have
full-time employed masseurs, won't they? Yeah. Yeah, because it can make the difference between

(48:32):
them feeling like they don't want to play that day to be in like the camp. And what about the
medal stickers? I never got a clear answer listening to the commentary on what it is
or what it's supposed to do. Yeah, I don't know is the only answer. I have heard and seen and thought,

(48:55):
hmm, right. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Maybe I got to ask a Japan... Yeah, yeah. I have seen from
a patient in a previous role I had, it was a neurological physiotherapist for quite some time,
and she used to buy these little metal stickers that she would have one on the nape of her neck

(49:25):
at the back there. And I forget where she had the other one. And they would last sort of like two
or three months. And it was some traditional medicine thing from, yeah, Asian country.
This is all swirling around in the back of my head now. I can't quite exactly remember where.
They were quite expensive, but she swore by them and they didn't appear to be having any side effects.

(49:49):
Yeah. No, in terms of, right, I'm going to make a note,
metal stickers. I'm going to find out. So yeah, I guess the moral of the story is kind of like
for the average person, just the basics are very important. But then when we're watching
what people are doing on the big screen or in competitions and we're kind of seeing them do

(50:14):
it's not necessarily something that you should be doing. They're just doing it because they really
need to at that moment. Yeah, yeah. And if you've got a sore shoulder as well, don't think, oh,
they've got a sore shoulder and they're doing that. That's likely the thing that will help me.
Yeah. Because yeah, as I say, they will have all the basics done. They will have been doing all the

(50:36):
basics for years. Yeah. And you're likely still going to climb after work, finishing late,
rushing down a hurried meal on your way home. Yeah. Getting back home, getting self-sorted
the next day, not getting enough sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that.
Okay. That's a good thing to keep in mind. So that kind of leads me into, I guess, like other

(50:59):
PT myths that you have. Right. Do you want to go into some of those? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I love
talking about that. I don't mind talking, but education, I think is really powerful and really
important. And my big one at the moment is about aging. And I'm getting patients coming to me saying,

(51:24):
oh, well, of course, I can't boulder how I used to because I'm in my thirties now. And I'm like,
what? Why? What happens in your thirties? You're still really young in your prime.
Yeah. And now I'm aware, yes, aging happens and it affects everybody differently. So these are

(51:47):
generalized statements, but there's quite some information that gets rehashed quite often is this
that you start losing muscle mass from when you're in your thirties. And so you're in a decline,
you've peaked. That's it. You're done for. It's all downhill from here. And those are in themselves.

(52:11):
There are studies done on the general population, the vast majority of whom don't meet the health
recommendations for that, the cardio, strength, this and the other. So already by being active
people, we're way ahead of the game. Yeah. And yes, that does start to happen, but it's not a genetic

(52:35):
thing or a physiological thing. It's thought now to be a lifestyle thing. So what happens in your
twenties, people tend to have more spare time in order to do things that they wish to do. And they
often happen to be physical as you get into your thirties. And again, this is generalized to the

(52:57):
general population. There are many people who won't do these things, but this is, say, for the
general population. They tend to find a partner, have a family of some sort, get a proper job,
a career that comes with stress and that type of thing. A commute probably rather than just working

(53:18):
in the bar that was just down the street because that's all you needed to do at that time. And all
that eats into your time and your energy reserves. And so it's small behavior changes where instead
of being active three times a week, you're now only active twice a week. That's the difference

(53:38):
that starts to happen. And then you get into your forties and your fifties and maybe responsibility
at work is getting on. Maybe now your children are teenagers and they're taking up quite a
lot of your time, shall we say. Then you can get into your fifties. I nearly am now. And I'm spending
quite a bit of time looking after my parents now, which I don't begrudge. But life gets more

(54:06):
complicated. Often the older you get as well. But it's been shown many times as well that you can
keep what you've got really quite easily. That it isn't an inevitable decline.
And it's not so much about aging, I suppose, but the story that you said,

(54:27):
these have been, our shoulders have been annoying me for ages. People will be like, I've got sore
knees. When I go walking in the mountains, my knees are really sore. So I should not go walking
in the mountains anymore rather than let's get those legs strong enough and robust enough.
And certainly in the UK, that is often, not always, but often a story that people will go and see their

(54:53):
doctor and say, it hurts when I do this. And it's almost kind of a joke response is that, well,
stop doing that then and then it won't hurt. And that's the solution. So people's activities
and such that get taken away from them and their opportunities to be active. And it's not both

(55:18):
from the aging point of view and the rehab point of view is just, yeah, there's pretty much always
solution that we shouldn't stop fence. Do you feel like that's even the case in the comp scene?
Because I mean, we definitely see these are really high level athletes. They're definitely
very active and probably, well, I guess you can't say that they all have access to like a

(55:42):
good like doctor or PT or something like that. But a lot of them definitely do have access,
but they still, I don't know, once they hit around the 30 mark or even like late 20s,
they're kind of starting to think about like, oh, I probably can't do this for much longer.
Yeah. And so why do those people, sometimes it's mental burnout, competition is stressful,

(56:07):
the travel, the time it takes you away from your family and maybe in your late 20s, 30s or whatever,
again, looking at this general population thing, maybe you've got a family now and you're not
enjoying being away from them. Whereas when you were young and single, it was super exciting to
go travel in the world and that kind of thing. But now you're fed up of the 10th year of just being

(56:28):
in a hotel for 48 hours, doing the competition and going back home and lots of, yeah, that type of
thing. Or yeah, the physical side of things, but what they put themselves through is greatly
different to what we put ourselves through. The amount of training, the amount of volume,
they truly are pushing their body to the end of its limits. And so yeah, that can take its toll,

(56:55):
both physically and mentally. Then there are the sort of the outliers, aren't they? The people that
are competing for years and years. I know one of the guys who's set in the UK, Dave Barons, I think
he was on the World Cup circuit for something silly, like 18 years or something like that.

(57:17):
Yeah, anyway, yeah, there are people that can keep doing it. They absolutely love it and the body
holds up. Every sport has these people that just seem to be good. But then if you look at who's
performing really well outdoors, then there's still lots of people in their 30s and their 40s.
But you know, Sean is not doing too badly at the moment, is he? To me, just observationally,

(57:42):
it seems like outdoors, you can kind of keep doing that forever, pretty much. Yeah, you hear some
incredible feats outdoors from people who are much older, and it seems to work fine. And the
competition scene, it just doesn't seem as easy to still be competitive once you're past a certain

(58:05):
age, and more so in bouldering compared to lead as well. Yeah, and there can be numerous reasons.
Yes, I don't feel actually it's going to be the genetic sort of like, oh, you are now 30.

(58:25):
I feel it's more the cumulation of what you've potentially been doing for the last 20 years
and the effect that has on the body and the mind and your psyche, your determination.
Lots of people, when you hear sports, people talk about retiring and they say,
I just knew it was the right time for me to go. I was still performing okay and that kind of thing,

(58:47):
but I'm just like, I've not got the psyche to do this anymore. And it is really tough. It must be
really, really hard competing the stress. And I'm sure they love it in equal measure, but everything
that goes on and everything I have to do. So yeah, who's probably the oldest? Jakob Schubert?

(59:11):
Apologies in advance to him if he's not the oldest, and I just called him out for being old,
because he's not old, but he's maybe old compared to his contemporaries.
Definitely up there. I mean like, Jai and Cam obviously.
Yeah, yeah. Still absolutely, but yeah, I was absolutely smashing it. Yeah, and just seems to

(59:32):
have been around forever. I can remember watching them when things sort of found their way onto the
internet and you could be watching some grainy footage of a competition from somewhere. Yeah,
yeah, amazing. But I think maybe we're not, it's only been structured and seen as a career

(59:59):
in some ways. We're a relatively short time, hasn't it? I think there's still really very few
professional climbers who earn their money. I mean, do any of them earn their money just from
the competition scene? Likely. No, no, yeah. Not a chance, I would have thought. Yeah, the competition,

(01:00:22):
the money's not that unprimely and such, is it? It's all about influence and such. But yeah,
but it's just not being there as a long-term career that people might do. So it would be
interesting to see, I think we're going to really have to say, well, maybe let's wait another five,

(01:00:42):
10 years before we can start seeing what happens to people, what are the patterns that are forming,
go for competitions, what is the average age for leaving and the reasons why. Yeah, true.
And then the true reasons why, because many people in their retire will announce they're retiring for
this reason, that reason, or actually there might be a reason behind it seems.

(01:01:05):
Is there, because I feel like I've heard of it before, but like any research about like
power or like speed in particular in aging, because I feel like you can keep the strength,
but maybe like the recruitment is not so fast. Certainly there's a link to that and aging.

(01:01:26):
There's a fair body of evidence that says that's kind of the first thing to start going. But we
also know, and this is how competitors keep going in different sports. And what I expect to start
seeing in climbing is your tactics get better, your mindset gets better, you're able to, if it's a

(01:01:54):
team sport or what have you, or even in individual, but you're able to read the game better and be
where you need to be before the other players have figured out what's going on. So although you might
not be as fast, you're still in the right places at the right times. Now for something like climbing,
yeah, and as you say, particularly bouldering. I think that's a really interesting question.

(01:02:18):
I know we hold on to what we have a lot better than people think. Again, going back to what I
was saying about aging, it's not just this that will happen at this age. Yeah, I don't know of any
actual studies relating that to, because most of the power type sports and that type of thing that

(01:02:40):
we think of and the research within that will also be lower limb based. Which can be quite
different. That's another one I'm going to make a note of. Come back with any information and I'll
put it in the description and people can follow up on that. Do you want to go into, I know you had
mentioned a couple of other myths. I also know that I just want to keep an eye on the time.

(01:03:03):
Yeah, I guess if we're going to look at one other myth, it would be that that injury that happened
to you that night was caused that night. There's been some recent research now coming into climates,
good quality. There's a lot that's not great quality, but some really good stuff. It's a bit

(01:03:25):
of a shame because we've got as a relatively new sport that's getting new research into it. We've
got the opportunity to learn from all of the mistakes that other sports have made. And not
necessarily mistakes, but just almost like admin errors where they don't define a variable
accurately. Anybody else who's doing some research in that area, you can compare the results.

(01:03:50):
It'd be nice to think we'd do that, but we're not doing. We're getting lots of research that might
all be in the same area, but when you try and compare them, you can't. It's apples and pears,
basically. You can't do these comparisons. But where we do have some really good results,
some really good research is into the fact that, and this staggered me, is that up to 94%

(01:04:14):
of injuries in climbing are chronic injuries, not acute. So that overuse, overload, under recovery,
whatever else you might want to think of it as. So pulley injuries being the most common,
that people think, I was trying that problem, I didn't warm up properly, I tried it too many

(01:04:35):
times that night. It was that move. Actually, unless there was a whole break, a foot pop,
and an opening of the hand under unexpected shot load, the pulleys should be able to deal with
us pulling on them as hard as we can. If the pulley's in good order, it should be able to

(01:04:56):
deal with pretty much whatever we throw at it. There is often, when you look back and talk to
somebody about the six to eight weeks previously, they'll be like, oh yeah, I have been pushing it
hard. I've been training, got Tripp coming up, got this project, whatever. Yeah, they'll have
stepped something up or vice versa. Yeah, I've kept my training and everything the same, but life's

(01:05:19):
got really busy at work, big project on at work, or got some family stress going on at the moment,
and that kind of thing. Yeah, 94% of injuries in climbing are overuse based, including a lot of
the ones that we think aren't. It really is about just keeping an eye. I encourage people I work

(01:05:42):
with to have a weekly check-in with themselves. I don't mean like have a word with yourself,
so it's off out, but just a quick top to toe. Maybe that too. Yeah, if I have you a good idea.
A quick top to toe is like, how am I feeling? It's like, all right, yeah, yeah, you're a bit
of a niggle in my life. You'll pop out in your training diary, make a note on your phone or

(01:06:04):
something. Next week when you have your check-in, that's still there. Third week, ah, it's still
there. I need to give this some attention, because what often happens with injuries is
with the benefit of hindsight, people will go, oh, that's what it was. Yeah, I saw that.

(01:06:29):
I did have a little bit of, I remember last week, it was just a bit sore after I was climbing.
A lot of the time, injuries don't shout that they're coming. They don't send you a
letter. They don't say, I will be arriving. They don't shout at you to say, this is going to happen.
It's a whisper. It's a very small whisper. Yeah, and we miss the signs because of that. It's really

(01:06:52):
easy too. So just this little check-in every week is five minutes of just what bits are a bit sore.
Yeah, and bits do get sore, but if it's only sore for a week and then it goes,
that happens, doesn't it? We get niggles. But if it's hanging around for a while, then it's
like it's being an injury and it needs cooking up. Well, thank you for sharing those myths.

(01:07:16):
Hopefully we can spread the word. But yeah, you mentioned that you want to go into some of
the current research out there between male and female climbers. Yeah, I'm definitely really
interested in that as well. So yeah, what are some of the issues that they did research on?
Yeah, and this is one of the areas where, although I said before that in some ways climbing isn't

(01:07:39):
doing itself any favours in the research world because everybody's researching it, but we're all
doing it separately and it's not comparable. But there are some people, one unfortunate enough to
know and call a friend, Gudmund Grunhaug, who's from Norway. He's a full-time researcher in climbers

(01:08:03):
and absolutely fantastic that we've got people like that looking into it. He does a lot of
qualitative research or a lot of kind of like questionnaires to people, that type of thing,
asking about injury and this or that. And then within that, he's able to differentiate, he's able
to get the message out there and to get comparisons between male and female or just do female specific

(01:08:27):
research. And I'm aware that the terms are a little interchangeable, men, women, female, male,
that type of thing, which can be quite rightly a sensitive issue. Now, my sort of rule for this is
I use the language that's been decided on within the research paper. They have decided how they're

(01:08:49):
going to categorise people within that and within research. Again, I stick with that.
So, yeah, two really, really good papers that he's done. One in particular was,
it was called, the main title is called Painfully Ignorant. And it was a female only. And looking at

(01:09:14):
elite IFSC competitors, asking them about their injury history, how often they get injured.
And then there was almost an incidental question within it around eating. And I've made a couple
of notes to make sure I'll get the numbers right. 32% of those questions, I think there was a couple

(01:09:38):
of hundred who answered the questionnaire, felt that they had disordered eating of some sort.
It's a lot.
Yeah. And that's people who are prepared to admit it, although it was an anonymous questionnaire.
True.
And people who are aware enough themselves that they have that, that aren't in denial,

(01:09:59):
that aren't even aware that what they're doing is it might be some form of disordered eating.
And that doubled the people within disordered eating. It doubled your
chance of injury. Yeah. If that makes sense. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you,

(01:10:24):
it's one of those statistical things within research. It's not actually that hugely
significant. It's like saying something is doubled, but it's gone from one to two.
Sure.
Yeah. It's not huge numbers wise and that kind of thing. So it's not necessarily,
yeah, a huge correlation there. But I thought, yeah, really, really interesting. So that one,

(01:10:46):
I was just talking about, about the IFSC climbers was called top of the podium at what cost.
And the second one is painfully ignorant. And that was looking at the impact of gender
and training on injury in climbing. Looking at the fact that we all climb at the same time,
looking at the fact that we all climb the same routes. Yeah. And are there any significant

(01:11:13):
differences between injury rates, injury types between the genders? And again, that showed
shoulders a different population. So this wasn't IFSC climbers again. Yeah. This was like general
climbers. But again, yeah, shoulders came out top for women, whereas for men, it was still

(01:11:34):
significantly fingers. And then-
Do you mean like just in terms of injury rates or-
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. So for women, shoulders, 35% of them reported a shoulder injury
and for men, it was 21%. So a big difference there. Whereas for men, fingers is 43%. And

(01:11:58):
for women, it's 33%. So the shoulders and fingers, that's 35% for shoulders and 33% for fingers,
very close. But it's the first time we've seen this, all previous research has just been fingers,
fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers. And then just suddenly, since this is 2024, this peak,

(01:12:20):
since this change in setting that we were talking about earlier, we're now getting shoulders. And
an increase in knees, their ankles, that type of thing that's well from falling more. Yeah,
it comes back to what we were saying before really about movement, different movement patterns,
rotational forces, higher peak loads, bigger moves, jumps, more one-armed stuff, that kind of

(01:12:46):
thing. And although there are female problems and routes, male problems and routes, in general
training, everybody climbs the same stuff. So these IFSC climbers, when they go to Innsbruck

(01:13:07):
to train, it's not, these are the women's routes, these are the men's routes. And then that feeds
in, not only has there been this change, and as we know, generally speaking, men have more muscle
mass, yeah, more of that up top. Whereas it's the other way around, generally speaking, for females.

(01:13:29):
So potentially their shoulders could be a little bit more susceptible anyway, just genetically.
But when you're training, you're training on generic routes that everybody, and the vast majority
of setters are men. And so there will be likely a slight reach, you are more likely to be shorter

(01:13:50):
as a female, you're more likely to be taller as a mate, than not. Nobody's doing it on purpose,
but maybe more thought might need to be given. Have you ever, have you ever been to a climber
that followed or seen Kimbrough climbs? I have. Yeah. Not too familiar though.

(01:14:12):
Right. He's the philosophy professor who's also like super keen climber,
guidebook writer, that kind of thing, real climbing activist. But I think he's also quite tall.
But his whole thing is about personal grades, is that you cannot for a minute say that like,
you know, some boulder problem that's famous for having a great big span on it is going to be the

(01:14:38):
same grade for somebody who's five foot tall than it is for somebody who's six foot tall.
And so why are we, yeah, a slight digression for what we're talking about here in comp climbing,
but it's, yeah, it's really interesting, yeah. Really interesting way of looking at things.
Interestingly though, in both of those studies, females were not getting injured more than

(01:15:01):
men. Just differently. Yeah, just differently. And it didn't appear to be of a greater severity either.
Based on those results, like what do you take away from that? Like, what do you think is the
learning there? Well, as I sort of suggested, and it is only a suggestion, perhaps the, you know,

(01:15:25):
you know, the generalized genetic makeup, female versus male, might make females more susceptible
to this type of thing with the modern style of setting. Is the modern style of setting going to
change? There's no sign of that happening. So people are going to have to adapt and so
strength, more strength and conditioning work for the shoulders. But we also doubt,

(01:15:48):
well, I was going to say probably not at the elite level, but maybe the facilities are often not there
for female athletes. The spaces where you go to strengthen and condition, you know, train and that
kind of thing, are not very welcome often for female athletes and that type of thing. So there's

(01:16:09):
historical barriers there and that might be what we're seeing now. So in football, for example,
they feel that in soccer, a lot of the knee injuries that are happening to the professional
women's soccer players, like loans of them, you know, there's absolutely loads of them. And

(01:16:30):
there's various things they're looking at, one of which is as they were growing, they didn't have
access to strength and conditioning. So whereas the boys at the end of a training session might be
encouraged or would go off to the gym and do some strength work and that kind of thing, it wasn't
when these girls, these now women were girls like 15 years ago, society just wasn't thinking, oh,

(01:16:57):
we need to get them in the gym. So as the boys grew into men and went through puberty whilst doing
weights, they grew that kind of a body, their body responded to that and they missed out on that.
And one level below the women's soccer elite, they've got the nutrition advice, they've got

(01:17:19):
the weight training, they've got the strength and conditioning experts, they've got all that.
You go a level below that because the money's not really in the game, it's there in the top level,
not below. They don't have the strength and conditioning. So when these players come up
through the ranics, they don't get that kind of input until the very top. And it'd be interesting,

(01:17:40):
I think that there's facilities now, but there are societal norms, expectations, just, yeah,
behaviours that decide about encouraging women to get into strength and conditioning.
Good to keep in mind. I also definitely wanted to touch on this. This was like one of the

(01:18:05):
discord questions that had come in as well. Have you seen any research out there about
how a female athlete's menstrual cycle affects their strength and injury rate?
It's going to be another grey area, it depends, answer from me. What we do have now, I'll probably
provide a few links to what I feel are good quality resources on this that are also easy

(01:18:31):
to follow. So people are out there doing the research, some super professional, amazing
researchers who are also putting it into practice, but then putting it out on insta. So it's nice,
easy, yeah, it's not going to be sending people dense research papers and that type of thing.
And the answer does seem to be, it depends. You can't foresee that your cycle will definitely

(01:18:59):
do this. It may change from month to month in how it affects you. The length of cycle, etc.,
may change from month to month, so you may not be able to plan. It's all so irregular
that it's incredibly hard to figure out. But you certainly can't say as a population,

(01:19:20):
this is what will happen to you through your cycle. It's incredibly individual, same as when
it comes to menopause and post-menopause, very menopause, hugely individual experience.
And so it's about tracking for you. So yeah, track your cycle. There are
there's apps out there and Sequence is a climbing training app that I like. I have no

(01:19:45):
affiliation with them at the moment. But within that, they're the first one I've seen. It's
actually built in a menstrual cycle tracker into a climbing training app. Yeah, I think it's great,
especially as it's run by two guys, I hope they don't mind me saying, yeah, the computer nerd
guys. So brilliant that this message is getting out there enough that people are thinking this is

(01:20:08):
needed. And so to see if there is a general pattern that follows for you. And yes, then
there is some basis of thinking that you may feel less confident at certain points. You may be
better off doing some strength training at a certain point. And so you may be able to

(01:20:29):
do some strength training at a certain point or some physical and some aerobic fitness training
at some point, or you might need more carbs at a certain point, this type of thing. But it's not
written in stone. And I say to people, imagine if you know that every Friday is a really busy

(01:20:49):
day at work. Yeah. And you could never be able to go and climb it after all you finish too late to
go climbing, for example. But if you don't have your stuff in your car for after work, yeah,
who knows? Like every so often a Friday might not be busy. And then you just miss out, don't you,
if you've not prepared for the fact that it might not be. And so it's more about checking in with

(01:21:15):
how you are at that time on that day and responding to that and not feeling bad about doing that,
if that makes sense. If you've got to change your plans around something or whatever, that's fine.
That's what your body's telling you. If that's what your body needs to do that day, then
that's what needs to happen. Yeah. I mean, I guess in terms of like the injury risk,

(01:21:39):
was there like a certain, I don't know, time? So yeah, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's still muddy,
partly because a lot of the research hasn't been of great quality and the reason to great deal of
it, it's coming through now. One of the best ones I've seen was done by the women's at the

(01:22:02):
soccer, the football association in the UK, where they looked at from youth football all the way
through to the women's premier league. And there's like many, many hundreds of female footballers
and tracked blah, blah, blah, that they sat and looked at the injury rates. There wasn't really a

(01:22:24):
hugely clear pattern apart from when they were late for their period. So if you're expecting your
period and it's late, that is definitely, but that's a big word to use in research. That is
something that you should give some consideration to. Yeah. There was a definite spike. Yeah. At

(01:22:45):
that point, more than anything else. Yeah. That was the one thing that really came out of that.
But this idea, I know people like Lattice, they're sort of like messaging when this first started
becoming like, oh gosh, we need to look at this. This is a thing. How can we have overlooked this?

(01:23:09):
51% of the population is female. A lot of women climb. What are we doing? And so the big messages
that were coming out was almost like, you will feel this in week one. You will feel this in week
two. You will feel this in week three. And as we've learned more and they've learned,

(01:23:30):
they're messaging now, Liz, and they've got some good output and it's on their websites and their
social media. You can go and have a look and it will be like, this may be what's going to happen
or this might be how you feel or it's likely that you may feel like this at this time. Yeah. And

(01:23:51):
that kind of thing. But yeah, again, their advice is track. Find out what happens with you because
not everybody's different. And then don't plan for, but don't expect that to happen every month.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty pivotal part of it. But with those watches that track your vitals and

(01:24:14):
stuff like that, or if it tracks your sleep, I think sometimes it will tell you that you slept
poorly. And so then you go about your day acting like you. Yeah. Yeah. And so then I just had to
stop doing that because I was like, okay, maybe I did sleep poorly, but then it telling me that I

(01:24:37):
slept poorly just makes me feel even worse. So it's not really helping. And there's been,
yes, yeah, absolutely. And that's definitely seems to be a thing, doesn't it? We get told
this objective information and we're like, oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So therefore this is how I'm
going to be today. But yeah, the information side of things can be fantastic. There's also some

(01:24:59):
research I found as an aside once looking at, so athletes who were really well-educated and knew
that they needed a certain duvet or a certain room temperature and a certain mattress type in order
to get their best night's sleep in order to perform up. And these are those marginal gains that these

(01:25:21):
teams and athletes and stuff go for. What happens if they don't get that because they're in a
competition in some country they've never been to and they've not been able to arrange that.
And the teams that don't either know that or don't have the ability to have that. So they just get in
on doing it. They don't mind, but these other teams can fall to pieces because they've not got

(01:25:44):
all of these things that they feel they need or that should happen. And without that, then I'm
not going to be able to do this. Yeah. There's an awful lot of auto-regulation of checking in with
yourself. And it's hard, but you've got to learn to do it. Yeah. I was just thinking, because also
part of the question they mentioned when Yanya said that she had won most of her medals while

(01:26:08):
on her period. So it's kind of like, I guess sometimes you just need to ignore it and
maybe it'll be fine. Well, what choice did she have? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, if that's when it's
scheduled. But going back to what we were saying before, sometimes, yes, the setting is going to
be unfair for somebody at some point because they've got an injury or something happening.

(01:26:34):
Yeah, they can't schedule competitions around all the individual athletes, period, can they?
And so it's, yeah, somebody, yeah, I suppose when you look at it,
within all those competitors that come out at an IFSC, yeah, many, well, maybe not many of them,
but yeah, a few of them have got to be on a period at that point. Yeah. And yeah, I once gave a talk

(01:26:59):
basically on the menstrual cycle and the menopause, which was obviously attended by women
and no other men. And yeah, I started by saying, the irony is not lost on me. I'm a middle-aged,
middle-class white man who's going to stand here in front of a room of women and tell them what
their experience should be. I am purely talking from the research and the papers and that kind of

(01:27:24):
put, it's kind of nice that the overwhelming, what seems to be coming from that now is, yes,
we have this information, but that's not your destiny. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Okay. Well, I guess we can just go into the discord questions then. I think that was a good place to
end things off there. There were still so many other things I wanted to ask, but

(01:27:48):
you know, maybe another time in the future. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, going into a couple of
discord questions, the first one, most people seem to talk about PIP injuries. Do you have any
advice for dealing with a dip issues, I guess, DIP issues in particular, synovitis or capsulitis?
Right. Okay. Yeah. The first, I suppose, whether it be dip, PIP, but if we talk synovitis,

(01:28:15):
capsulitis, it's a little bit semantics as to, you know, which is it, that kind of thing.
It's an overuse of that joint in a certain way. You are not going to win unless you give it some
space. And it is a process that is going on. It's like a negative cycle, I suppose, really of

(01:28:43):
irritation, sensitivity. The body's response to that actually sets it up for being more reasonable
and more easily set off the next time with this inflammatory process that's going on within the
finger. And so, yeah, obviously usually crimping and such like is the thing that does it. This is

(01:29:03):
one that it's all the interventions in the world of penguin fingers or, you know, this and the other,
which has its place, it's a good thing, isn't going to do it. It is the basics. It is, you know,
listening, finding what it's able to do because I'm a big believer in, you know, let's kind of keep

(01:29:24):
climbing. I sometimes, how some people are aware of themselves enough to monitor their own crimping,
you know, and reduce that and start climbing open-handed. I find if somebody's quite new to
climbing and we go to crimp for a reason is it is stable. It's not necessarily the strongest hold,

(01:29:46):
but it's stable. You can move around a crimp, yeah, and we're on it and we feel like we're
not going to slip off it, whereas like open-hand stuff and slopers. So asking somebody to go
open-handed if they've not got a great deal of movement experience in climbing can feel
just like starting all over again and it can be really hard for them to manage.

(01:30:06):
So sometimes I actually just, I call it anti-crimp taping. I had to say, get some cheek tape,
wind it down the finger, wind it back up the finger again, or most likely the middle finger
will be, yeah, literally to stop you from being able to bend the finger because of the bulk of
the tape. It doesn't provide any support. It doesn't do anything magic. It just stops you.

(01:30:31):
In an open position, the forces on the finger are distracted. It's when we come up into 90 degrees,
90 degrees most often for this type of issue. Yeah. And the bones then are pushing against
each other. It becomes compressive and it's those compressive forces normally from crimping that

(01:30:51):
sets it off. So you can continue to climb, but you just got to really back off.
That's hard to hear.
It is. It is. But there's loads that you can do. Look at all the open-handed climbing that
there is now. This is what we're talking about, the change in style. It's not all about crimping.
And it's a bit like the picture I use of people. It's that oil tanker that you put the brakes on

(01:31:14):
and it takes a long time to stop. Then you've got to put it in reverse and it takes a while
to get going for reverse. And then it comes out. Yeah, it's quite a slow process. But with
the right approach to it, you are able to keep people climbing, keep people in climbing,

(01:31:36):
which I think is super important because for most of us climbing becomes,
we'll quite say everything, but it becomes super important in our lives. It's your social
interaction. It's your escape maybe from family stress, work stress, where you can just,
you could either go and be sociable and chat to everyone, or you can put your headphones on and

(01:31:57):
just have some lovely time to yourself, that kind of thing. It's engaging. It's physical challenge.
It's a mental challenge. It's people's mental health space. So the last thing I say to people
is stop climbing. Yeah, personally, I had it really bad a year or two ago because I was climbing at
a gym that just crimps all the time and everything was always crimpy. Sounds great. I want to go.

(01:32:22):
Yeah, it wasn't super interesting, but I'm doing a little bit less crimping now, more just open
headed stuff. It's not always crimps and it's improved a lot. There's active things that we
can do. It isn't just about taking away. There's strength in the rest of the chain, shoulder, elbow,
wrist, that kind of thing, working on the muscles within the hand that formed the control and

(01:32:46):
foundation for the fingers, that type of thing. So yeah, it's not just a passive treatment.
Well, I also have these things. It's kind of like penguin fingers, but you can also put it in the
microwave. I love heat on my fingers. If my fingers are cold, it hurts so bad.

(01:33:07):
Right. Interestingly, there's as many research papers saying that heat is better than ice as
there is the other way around. When you look at that, they've both been heavily researched.
There's just as many London on one side, they're the other. Neither with big margins. It's like,
we think heat is a bit better than coal. Kind of draws you to the conclusion that they're both

(01:33:31):
as good as each other. They both end up in the same place just through different mechanisms.
They provide pain relief through the novel stimulus that they give to the nervous system,
similar to when you rub something that's sore. Yeah. And it can kind of stop it hurting a little
bit. It's that kind of effect. They both do that. And they both encourage fluid exchange,

(01:33:57):
which is good for healing, but through different methods. So it's very much kind of personality
led. Some people really want to stick an ice pack on it and feel like they're hammering it down and
they're beating it into submission. And they're like, yeah, that can be, I'm with you. I'd like
a nice hot water bottle. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, it feels nice. Okay. Yeah. Let's

(01:34:18):
just do one last discord question. This one is from Erica. She asks, how should an experienced
climber start integrating more training into their routine? For me, it can feel overwhelming
and directionless because there's so many options and I don't know what's best or most needed to
improve my climbing. And so I guess doing it in a safe way and yeah, preventing injury. Right. Okay.

(01:34:42):
Yeah. Because that costs you, yeah, whatever your goals, wherever you're trying to improve,
what are your weaknesses, that type of thing. But yeah, you are at your starting point,
if that makes sense. If you are at a load that you are happy with and your body is dealing with,
then you can start increasing that load and you're much better off doing that in a way that is going

(01:35:06):
to be consistent for you. As we're recording this, obviously it's coming towards the end of 2024,
New Year's resolutions. Everybody goes, wow, I'm going to train eight times a day. I'm going to
do this and that. I'll do that. Yeah. And two weeks later, the wheels have come off and we're
not managing it. And we get peaks and troughs and peaks and troughs are not good. Yeah. Not doing

(01:35:28):
very much. And then you've got trip coming up and going mad at it for two weeks. Not good.
What we need is slow, gradual improvement, small, small steps that over the course of a year,
add up to quite a big change. It's something like, I think with compound interest, if you improved

(01:35:48):
something by 1% a week, which is not a lot, by the end of the year, it adds up to something like 60
or 70%. And if you could improve, and it doesn't work in this linear fashion, but if you could
improve your climbing by 70% in a year, that's amazing, isn't it? And you've only got to improve
things by 1% a week in order to do that. So gains do not come quickly. They are hard won,

(01:36:14):
but that's fine. If we take this small step approach and track what you do, it doesn't
have to be a hugely detailed training diary. One that I quite like for people that are just starting
is to write how long the session was, say two hours at the climbing jib and how hard they

(01:36:36):
tried, say eight out of 10. It also starts getting you thinking about how hard you're trying.
If every session you go to says eight out of 10, eight out of 10, eight out of 10, eight out of 10,
there's something going wrong with your training. You need some variety. So you times two hours
by the eight out of 10, you've got 16 punts. This is not my system that I came up with,

(01:37:01):
it's been around for a while. It's arbitrary units. They don't mean anything. It's just 16 load
points if you want to look at it like that. And then add that up over the week. So if you do three
of those sessions, you've got 48 load points in a week. So what you don't want to do next week
is increase that to 70 load points. You want to make that up to maybe 53, 55 load points,

(01:37:28):
just a small little increase. These rules are often around 10% a week, that kind of thing.
Not too bad. But if you went 10% a week every week for the next year, that would end up being,
when you start, you can maybe take some bigger steps, but you're always better
under training by 10% than over training by 1%. So it's small steps. Trap what you're doing in

(01:37:55):
some way that works for you. Some people love a spreadsheet and love numbers and that kind of
thing. That totally does my head in. I can't do that. I'm much more of the, yeah, write down in
a notebook. Yeah, that's it. Don't overthink it too much. Don't be like, well, it was a two-hour
session, but actually I was only climbing for half of that because I was resting for the other half

(01:38:19):
of that. Don't overcomplicate it. It matters too much. If you have had a big long route session
and actually you did spend, you met some friends, had a coffee halfway through, met some other
friends, went for some cake, you know, all that, I don't like that. Then maybe change it. But if
it's just a normal session, then just keep it as it is. Don't overthink it, but trap what you're

(01:38:41):
doing and increase things by less than you probably think. Great advice. So any New Year's
resolutions for you? Ed, but you know what, I'd actually said this to someone earlier today.
I'd step in away from the whole New Year's resolutions. The time to start making changes
is now, not some arbitrary date in the future and that kind of thing. You don't get any extra

(01:39:05):
motivation because it's January the 1st, but it's actually to make sure I under train this year
rather than over train. Physios and coaches need physios and coaches because we are human
and we do the things that we tell everybody else not to do. This year I went hard at it trying to

(01:39:29):
perform three times a week, despite talking with my partner at the start and saying,
we've got the chance to go climbing outdoors three times a week. We mustn't try and red point three
times a week. That would be a really silly thing to do. Within two months, we were red pointing
three times a week. Absolutely loving it. Having some successes, ticking lots of things. It's all

(01:39:50):
going well and then it all didn't go well. Injury or? And the camp burn out basically. Yeah,
yeah. Just like I am absolutely knackered. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
So thankfully no, not injury. And so this year I am going to, yeah, and I'm going to under train
by 10%, not over train by 1%. Take your own advice. Okay. That'd be good, wouldn't it? Yeah.

(01:40:15):
Okay. Well, I think that's all the questions I had. Thank you so much for joining me.
No problem. Any last words that you want to get out there?
I don't know. It is just, yeah, if you want to improve at climbing, then injury is the one thing
that is guaranteed to stop that improvement. Yeah. Nothing interferes with improvement more
than injury. You need consistency. So it's fine to step away a little early and finish feeling fresh.

(01:40:42):
Perfect. Want to let people know where they can find you?
Yeah. Yeah. It's process physiotherapy or one word.co.uk is my website and I'm on Instagram
at process.physio are the two main places that you'll find me. Perfect. Yeah. I'll leave those
links below. Lovely. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was amazing to talk to you.

(01:41:07):
Yeah, no problem. No problem. So thanks. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast.
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed. Otherwise you are a super fake climber. If you're
listening on a podcasting platform, I'd appreciate if you rate it five stars and you can continue the
discussion on the free competition climbing discord linked in the description. Thanks again for listening.

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Ep 32: Andy McVittie - Evolution of Climbing Injuries in Competition

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 32: Andy McVittie - Evolution of Climbing Injuries in Competition