Ep 14: Cody Grodzki - Reading Routesetter Hate Comments

Okay, Hachioji was hard, but the season was awesome. It had a story. And Ai just doesn't have leg power. And she'd be the first to tell you. We might finish setting and taping qualities, let's just say, at Thursday night at midnight or 1 a.m., 2 a.m., get to the wall at 7, we're there from 7 until all the way, maybe until again, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m. Am I good enough? Is this imposter syndrome situation happening? Am I supposed to be here?

Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Coming podcast. I'm your host Jinni and I'm excited to introduce my guest for today, Cody Grodzki. Cody is the USA national chief fraudsetter and in the 2023 IFSC season, he had the opportunity to set boulders in Hachioji, Prague, Innsbruck, and the burn world champs.

In this episode, we'll watch him read YouTube hate comments and we'll learn about the differences between IFSC versus USA versus commercial route setting, as well as hear about his awesome new gym that's opening up soon. I am so excited to visit it someday. This is a super long episode, but there was so much to get into and he has some serious passion for setting, which is just inspiring to listen to.

So please enjoy this episode with Cody and send him lots of thanks for the time he spent with me on this. Hope you enjoy. Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, awesome. Well, let's just get right into it then. Yeah, how are things going? Are you preparing for your upcoming trip to Europe for this selection come? I am. Yeah, yeah, just slowly starting to pack my things and get everything organized. And you know, I travel quite a lot, so it's kind of the same strategy each time.

Yeah, you've got the routine down. Yeah, exactly. So I guess getting right into it a bit, when did you start climbing and route setting?

Let's see. So funnily enough, I started climbing and route setting and working at a climbing gym all like almost in the same day. Not exactly, but for sure, yeah, within maybe a few days or something like that. It was all pretty much all at the same time. I started climbing about 16 years ago, so I've been setting for about that long. And then just due to the nature of when I started at this climbing gym in town, they happen to be having a USA climbing regionals.

And so I got to like for run, for run, like I had any concept of what that meant, right? I was just like, they're like, oh, there's people here setting competition routes. They invited us if we want to help them test. And I was like, okay, I'll help. And so kind of right out of the gate, got involved in just pure luck, just completely pure luck that it happened that way. Like right when you started climbing? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I was fooling around.

I mean, I went, I guess when did any of us start climbing? When I was two years or four years old, probably I went to a carnival and did one of those rock walls, right? But I don't consider that the start of climbing anymore than I had a birthday party at a climbing gym when I was a kid. Had someone bully me and my friends for a couple hours. Maybe that's the start of the climbing. I don't know.

But when I started to actually get into it and I want to go to the gym and I want to participate in this community, that was all kind of at the same time. Yeah. Well, it's just kind of strange that they would ask someone who's still fairly new to climbing that they would ask them to start to for run or route set at all in any capacity. Unless you were just really good when you started. No, no, no. Pretty much on the contrary, terrible, terrible.

I think though it's just like probably pretty indicative of the community up here in southern New England. And it's, you're also talking almost two decades ago, right? Like the climbing landscape has changed so incredibly much. It was very, very tight knit for every, you know, new climber in a facility. There was 15 mentors, you know, now you have every 15 new climbers. You might not even have a mentor.

So I think I just got really lucky in that way where the community was like very excited and very open and they're like, oh, here's someone new that seems like they're wanting to share this passion with us, you know, and I did. I didn't realize how much so, but they helped foster that. And I think they're like, oh, if we just show them this and show them that, then maybe they're more likely to stick around and be involved. And they're right. Yeah, definitely.

And so back then, was there a formal process at all to get into route setting or were there these, I guess, clinics and courses that you can take? Because I know right now in the US, there's like five levels of route setting. What's the word? Like certification? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So is that like a new thing? It's not a new thing. I think I should know this, I'm one of the national chief instructors for US at climbing. I should know all the history except to go over it all the time.

But I want to say it was like the route setting program and its founding was somewhere around like maybe 2007 or 2008. And that was kind of just like the first iteration of it, right? Of like, hey, we're formalizing this process in some way, shape or form. I don't even know if there was five levels at that point. I don't remember what the levels were. I do know though that for this, like they did at least have like local events and then like regional events.

Maybe they had divisionals and then nationals. So to be the chief of any one of these events, you did have to have some sort of formalized education through USA climbing. And exactly what that looked like, I don't quite know. I think the first level two clinic might have been in 2009 or 2010. So it was all starting to be developed around this time. And I think that's where there was just so many loose ends all over. People could just be involved and as it's forming kind of as you go.

So it's almost like you can't be too picky if you want the events to occur at various places around the country. And I'm just guessing here. I don't know. I've actually never talked to anyone about it, like really what it was like back then in terms of specifics for the certification process. But it'd be interesting to talk to someone, maybe like Chris Danielson. He'd be like just he started the whole program. So he would be a wealth of knowledge for that. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, maybe I'll have to look into that. Yeah, he's a smart guy. He's a really good. And so I guess out of this, you've kind of managed to make a career out of climbing, which I think is something a lot of people wish they could do. It's yeah, I mean, it's a lot of people's passions. So was that like a very intentional step for you or did it just sort of happen like how you just sort of happened to start for running and route setting? Yeah, I think I'm trying to think back here.

It was it was fairly intentional from I won't say from the get go. I won't say from day one or even maybe year one, but pretty, pretty early on, I realized that I was very invested in this whole idea. But I just didn't know what that looked like because there weren't really any careers. Like there was certainly no like careers in route setting as I knew it, at least in my little bubble of where I was here in like southern Massachusetts.

And then it wasn't until I went away to school, I went to University of New Hampshire, that I was kind of like, oh, man, I need to make a decision here. Like, do I keep kind of pursuing this thing that I'm really excited about route setting? Like, I know I'll have climbing, like I know I'll keep climbing. I knew that much. But do I keep pursuing route setting? And what does that look like? So I just started Googling like climbing gyms in New Hampshire, climbing gyms in Boston.

And long story short, eventually found Metro Rock, which maybe folks know or maybe not is the home of the Dark Horse bouldering series. And in my mind, and maybe this is just me being like, I don't know, I have like a deep, deep connection to it because I kind of was there and the foundings of it, I think maybe from season two until season six, so really the early days. And it just like ignited this huge passion for competition route setting, competition climbing.

They had more of a professional environment for commercialized route setting. It was far from perfect. And if you compared it to today's day and age, you'd be like, what is going on? But for that time, it was very much like top end in a lot of, lot of metrics. And it got me super motivated. So much so that I went to school at the University of New Hampshire and then at various points in time either lived close by to the school, like around the Patuckaway State Park area.

There's a lot of good climbing up there. And then would commute to work in Boston. It was like 80 miles each way. And then, or switch, or I was living in Boston and commuting to school and same number of miles each way. Gosh. Got kind of tricky at times and definitely, yeah, like asked myself like, what? What am I doing? Like, there's no money in this.

Like I'm not getting, you know, I'm having to like pick up coaching shifts and coach teams as well as work full time, as well as, you know, travel all this way to school. And yeah, it wasn't without questions. That's for sure. But just kind of was like, you know what? I love this. So I'm just going to keep going for it until the road runs out. And so far the road hasn't run out. So yeah, that's awesome. And a lot of dedication. I mean, for like non-Americans, that's probably what?

Like an hour and a half, at least of driving every day to and from. Yeah. Yeah, at least. I mean, depending on Boston traffic, too. I mean, when you're in New Hampshire, it's, you know, whatever. It's like all pretty open and pretty chill. But you get closer to the city and for sure tons of traffic. And then the weather in New England is pretty wild. Like you can get crazy bands of intense snow and rain or frost or whatever in one area and then be completely clear or vice versa.

So you'd like I'd be traveling sometimes and they'd be like, oh, we're not canceling school. And then I'm in Boston and it's like two and a half feet of snow. And I'm like, damn it. This sucks. But you just manage and yeah, it's quite a drive though, for sure. Yeah. So for those who aren't aware of the Dark Horse competition, I guess people like me. Sure. What's the history? What's the history? I'm definitely not the best person to talk about it, but I was involved for a while.

So it was kind of this brainchild of Josh Larson, who's now the US team coach, Olympic coach, national coach, and Dave Wetmore, who's another level five national chief root setter. He's been involved with the U.S.A. climbing for very long. He's been the chief of Open Boulders. He's been on like every career imaginable and just like integral to the sport. So they kind of came up with this concept along with the owners of Metro Rock.

And it was kind of one of the more like one of the first big scale private competitions with a large cash purse and a dedicated finals round in like a more grand setting. And so for me, it kind of kicked off that, you know, kind of competition climbing as we know it, as we see it in today's day and age a little bit more.

So like I remember for the first time, like it was at one of those competitions where I saw like a true paddle move be set and climbed, you know, and I was like just completely floored. Like I didn't know that, you know, something like this could even exist. And the energy and the people, it was it was like a really special time, at least for me in competition climbing and route setting. Yeah, sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I can't.

I think probably the first time I saw a paddle move, I was also just like mind blown. I was like, okay, and then outside of your climbing career, we were talking a little

bit about it earlier. You're also a firefighter. And also, I don't actually know. I've like never met a firefighter, I think outside of maybe when you're like in elementary school and you are taken on a field trip to like something like that, you like see a fire truck or something. What's that like? And how do you manage that along with climbing? It's very different in most ways. What's that like? Yeah, I don't know. It's just a completely different world.

I kind of love it because it's just such an opposite of what I do with climbing. All the guys at the fire station, they're just their career firefighters or in construction or they're in fishing or any number of trades. And then we do this and to kind of just like help out the town or in the surrounding communities and stuff like that.

And it's cool because I just kind of can like shut off the climbing brain and I can focus on this other set of skills that are vital to success and different type of career path. I had no intention. Like I never grew up and was like, I want to be a firefighter. My wife and I moved up to back up to Massachusetts in 2020. We were living in Chattanooga for a long while. We moved up here and then yeah, kind of long story short, they do like fire inspections, I guess, when you purchase a house.

And the person who's doing the fire inspection was also the captain of the department. And my brother, I guess, had been trying to get on the fire department and he was like, oh, are you the captain that was doing hiring? And he's like, oh yeah, like because of COVID, things got crazy, but you should come back to the station and we'll do your interview like this weekend if that works for you. And my brother was like, oh, that's awesome.

And then he looked at me and he's like, so what's your story? What are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know, I just like moved across the country and like trying to start this like new business concept and I don't know, like just getting married. Like he's like, you should consider being a firefighter. And I was like, no disrespect, like I have no fucking clue about anything to do with the fire service. Like I'm probably not your guy.

And anyways, yeah, he explained the whole process and the support that the town gives and kind of like tangibles of an expectations on kind of either side of things and just kind of tip my toe in. And as I kept going, you know, coming around and moving forward, I was like, oh, this is really cool. Like this is really special and it's a really good group of people and everyone's like genuinely there to help.

Like everyone who when you're responding to something, it's usually someone's like bad day. I don't know, people don't want to call 911, right? It's like a bad thing. And you're like something is occurring that you're like, damn it, this isn't good. So it's nice to be involved in a group of people who are like, yep, like we're here to help and we want to make a difference and try to make your day, you know, at least a little bit better or not suck as much as it is.

So yeah, it's pretty wild for sure. But I really enjoy it. I don't know if you're recording recording on the beginning, but I don't know when when you started recording.

But like yesterday, like I was saying, like, I like woke up at, you know, to my pager, I have this like little pager here and it like goes off if there's like a serious thing that they need us for and they alert us as to like where you're going and what you're doing and what the situation is basically and like hurry the hell up and get to the station basically. And that was for a commercial Scalper that caught fire in the town over.

And so first thing in the morning, go to the town over and you see a pretty big plume of spoke from like, you know, eight miles away and you're like, oh, this is going to be a it's going to be a morning for sure. And it's definitely a juxtaposition from climbing where climbing can be a lot more peaceful if you'd like it to be. It can be intense if you'd like it to be, can be kind of whatever you'd like it to be because it's your own personal experience. Like climbing is for everyone.

All types of climbing are valid indoor, outdoor, trad, crazy cordadina, you know, like you get to pick your experience every single time that you like step on the wall. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, both very physically demanding jobs, though. Yeah, I'm noticing a theme in my life. I could probably pick easier careers in terms of demand on my own body and mind. But I guess there's something to it for me that I like.

Yeah, has it ever, I guess, like interrupted around setting that you're doing? Or do you kind of separate those? I try to separate them as much as possible. So I do a ton of kind of my my full time gig now is I run a consulting firm for climbing and route setting and athlete workshops and wall design, kind of the whole gamut, anything under the umbrella of artificial climbing, wall management and whatever scope me and my team kind of work on.

So I try to be selective as to when I can schedule certain things, whether that be for the fire department or for for myself for this business. But generally speaking, like they're super flexible and allows me to be allows me to do kind of both things. I mean, I have minimum requirements I have to meet at the station to do this type of training this much and I have to meet this many meetings or this many response, this much response volume each year.

You know, there's like things I have to do, maintain certification, education, things like that. But as long as I'm hitting those or exceeding those, then all is well. Awesome. So we've discussed a bit of your route setting career, your firefighting career. But this is like a climbing podcast, I guess. So we'll get back into the route setting. So you've discussed a bit about your setting journey in the US.

How did you become an IFC route setter? Great question. And minor clarification or maybe major clarification. So I'm technically not like I would try to make sure that like this is like a people know this like so there's like a very, very rigorous and very specific and then arguably, depending on you're talking about political process as to like what who gets their IFC license. So it's a very specific thing. So I never want to take credit for that because I do not have that.

We do have a couple of folks in the US who do have that, which is awesome and aspiring one day to hopefully get that opportunity. But I've managed to work on a number of international events because there's like certain requirements that say, okay, you need to have like this many route setters that are hired and hired by the IFC. And then there's like a number of other slots that basically get filled by the host federation of the event organizer, the head route setter kind of conglomerate.

So depending on what their needs are and what they what the expectations are of the event or the event sponsors or the venue itself. I mean, there could be any number of things that might make the event a little bit easier, a little bit more logistically complex, typically if it's a little bit more logistically complex. And I'm just like painting broad strokes here.

Like what I've found is they'll add an extra spot or an extra two spots in the setting team because they're like, oh, things could get crazy. There's more likelihood that like a mistake could be made or that the schedule could get shifted or the timelines could bounce around or you know what I mean? So they try to like in those situations, like add a couple extra folks. And then who they add is it's kind of like a three step process.

The chief chief has to be involved, the event organizer and host federation has to be involved and the IFC has to kind of sign off on this. So it's a little can be good can be quite complicated to be completely frank. And I don't quite know my way around at all. But I just put my my hat my name in the hat, I guess. And especially last year, it was able to work out quite nicely. But I had experience prior to that. So my family is all from Poland.

I'm a Polish citizen, Polish citizen and American citizen. And a few years ago, 2016, I went to visit my family in Poland and then also go on vacation and. Super long story short, ended up setting the European Youth Cup in Warsaw for its inaugural event, which was kind of just shit luck, to be completely frank. Another just lucky situation, maybe right place, right time. I contacted Chris Danielson, who I referenced earlier, and I was, hey, you know, I'm going to Poland and visiting my family.

I noticed that there's a competition series going on over there. And like if you know, I don't know if you know anyone on that circuit or whatever, but like I'd be more than happy to just like wash holds or tape or brush or I don't know, whatever, just so I can like see what it's like to be involved in that type of circuit. Because at this point, I'd already set for numerous regionals, divisionals, dark horse, private comps had done a number of nationals.

So I like, you know, I kind of I had some familiarity with the U.S. circuit and I knew that, OK, there's this other step and I just want to get involved and learn. So I was like, well, you know, go hang out for a little bit, learn from these guys. And Chris, you know, he was a busy guy, like he didn't really get back to me for a little while. And I'm like, that probably means that it's going to happen. And I was a little bit like, oh, well, I'll still go and watch the comp, you know, no worries.

And then the day we were leaving, I got a phone call from Chris and he's like, hey, did you leave yet? And I was like, no, I'm like literally about to leave to like hop in the car and go to the airport in Atlanta. And he's like, if do you want to root set for this comp? Because something happened and two of the root setters got injured and they can't find any replacements, like any qualified people. And I was like, yes, yes, I do want to root set for this event.

So that's kind of what kicked it off. And then I maintained these contacts and worked with these folks and other and other instances over the years. And yeah, here we are. Okay. Yeah. So not an IFSC route setter, but I guess you kind of just got picked to route set for a few of the competitions. Yeah, I think it's kind of like, kind of like what I was referencing earlier, like they already had their like official crew of people.

But there's like for for like each event, you know, like let's say the IFSC picks three people like one chief and two official route setters. Every comp that I was a part of this year had a minimum of eight, eight route setters. So that's five other slots that are getting filled by the host federation. You know, like so for us, that's USA climbing, right? Or if it's, you know, Japan, it's the JMSCA.

So the chief might say, hey, you know, you got good recommendations from so and so, like if you're around and we can get approval and IFSC checks off on this and the event organizers cool like maybe you want to come join. Yeah. So it does require a lot of I guess like self-starting, you know. So you know, like let's say for Hachioji, Remy, you know, message me and ask me, hey, love to have you on the crew would be super nice. I've enjoyed working with you.

In the past, we worked a couple of events together and he's like, but it's not, it's not just like this like homeboy hookup situation. You can't just like be on the crew because I say that you can be on the crew, which at first I kind of honestly, I thought that's what it was. Like to be completely frank, I was kind of like, that's just what it is, right? Like that's just how this happens. And it's not, it's like it, it helps to have contacts just like any industry, maybe on planet earth, right?

It helps to know people who have involvement in the thing that maybe you want to be involved in, but it is far from the buck stopping here, so to speak. So after that, I had to contact like on my own, I had to contact the event organizer and the director of sport for Japan. And I was like pretty petrified because I had no clue what this meant. And then they had a bunch of internal conversations. I wrote a bunch of emails in Japanese. Apparently, I didn't offend anyone too, too much.

The translator was my friend. And just to like do the respectful thing, you know, try to do my best there. And then once those two things got approved, I guess, the IFSC said, okay, cool. Like this is Remy, this is your team. Okay, have all these like check marks been made? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. All right. Now you're green light. So that's a little bit of the behind the scenes, but it's not always that way. So this is just my experience.

It's not like everyone's experience, always some other folks, if you interview them, they might say like, oh, for me, it was different. But that was more or less my experience over the past couple years. Well, it's a very kind of long and windy experience, I guess. I think, yeah, like the first guest I had talked to, Nicholas, Nikki, if you're familiar, he was saying that there was maybe like a like a Google Sheet kind of deal. And then you like sign up and then they choose people from that.

Or like signing up on a Google form or something like that. Something just also very informal and like not a very strict process. So now it's become even more confusing for me as to how they choose people. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I'd love to talk to him. I think I'll see him in a couple of weeks. But that's all I'll ask him about this. Maybe that has to do with their own internal Federation selection. So from like a formal Federation selection process, they might say, OK, here's our list.

Like we at U.S. Air climbing, we do a version of this, right? Hey, based on certification level and experience, this group of folks is qualified to represent the U.S. So what we're going to do is we're going to have this application window. Are you, you know, and then on that window, maybe they maybe they just have a Google form, you know, to represent that application. And then from there, maybe like for us, our route setting committee reviews it and then

our VP of sport reviews it and our CEO of U.S. Air climbing reviews it. And then collaboratively selection is made based on the best representatives for our country. So maybe I would assume that the German Federation does something similarly. Maybe that's what he's referencing. But I don't know. Yeah, it's a lot. Maybe one day there'll be like a more formal. I don't even know some kind of process. Yeah, they're working on it. They're working on it. It's slow going, but yeah, one day.

So yeah, you sat in a lot of World Cups in the twenty twenty three season. I think it was Hachioji, Prague, Innsbruck and then also the World Champs in Bern. Of those, did you have like a favorite wall that you sat on?

Oh, that's a good question. Favorite wall. I'm trying to think back. I don't know. They're all like. They're all so cool and so special for like totally different reasons. You know, the the wall in Hachioji, I mean, like it's it's Hachioji Japan. It's like the World Cup in Japan. For me, that's always been on this massive pedestal. I don't know why.

Just like maybe looking back historically, like watching those comps, I was always just very engaged and always in my mind, I was like, man, be so cool one day to like just have a chance to be a part of something like that. So then with that being to like kick off the twenty twenty three season and until like I had never been to Asia before, you know, for me, just like that whole it was the whole combo, you know, and the wall itself, like from like a physical standpoint was like massive.

We had amazing resources. GMSEA sent us like awesome, awesome, awesome holds all the hold manufacturers. You know, they were like just cranking out awesome new shapes. We got we got a lot of cool new holds to play with and create some cool, cool situations. So that's special. Right. But then you could look at all the other ones like Prague and Innsbruck. And I mean, Burn, like they're all just so special for their own ways. Burn was cool. It was in this huge venue.

One of my personal dreams, like I even had on a notepad somewhere like a journal that I was like from years ago, I was like, I just want to set an event in like a huge arena. And I didn't really care really what the arena was or what the event was. But I would look at like Adidas Rockstars or like the World Cup in or sorry, the European Championships in Munich in twenty nineteen. Maybe it was. And just seeing like, oh, they're at the Mercedes Arena or something like that.

And just being like, that's the pinnacle. Right. And then the arena for the sport that you're so passionate about. And then to be involved in that. Yeah, just like sometimes a little overwhelming almost just like stepping back and being like, holy shit, like this is so cool. And you got to reel it back in. But, you know, it ends up like it hit me a lot, hit me a lot a lot of times. So no, it's really cool. You kind of like manifested it. So that's always that's always good to hear.

But speaking of Hachioji and how much you enjoyed that process, that kind of sounds like it was kind of your favorite based on how you're describing it. It kind of reminded me of one of the comments that I saw in YouTube for that competition

about their outstanding. So I guess we'll sort of segue into this segment where you're going to read all the hate comments that I picked out. Perfect. This is bringing me back to like my commercial root setting days where we get like the little oh, like comments box. It's like one out of 15 is like, hey, nice job, guys. Keep it up. And the rest is like, this sucks. Perfect. So yeah, we'll get to see in real time what it's like when Routesitters read that.

Yeah, I think it reminded me of this one where I don't remember if I picked it or not. You sounded really excited about Hachioji. And I think one of the comments was like, oh, I think the Routesitters had like too much time on this one. They like had too much fun with it and ended up being way overcooked. But let me share the Google Drive with you and then we can open them. Yeah, you can go for it.

Okay. The root setting was one, too hard, especially since the semis already take a toll on basically everyone. Very fair point. Two, not especially effective in terms of separation. Arguable but fair. Three, not fun to look at. Depending on your perspective, again, arguable, but I see where they're coming from. And then let's see, every year we seem to get more and more new school setting. Now it's running dinos at about three meter height. It's about like nine feet accurate.

So we watched six people attempt the same move for about 30 minutes. Great. Why not involve more actual climbing moves? You can still make it look appealing to a casual audience. Make the moves 3D, involve knee bars, hooks, campus moves, et cetera. There's so much bouldering that will look cool without resorting to parkour so often. Cool. I mean, the first thing is that it's nice that they kind of have like a, it's not quite like if then statements, but it's constructive.

Maybe it's a little bit negative, but it's not like hate for hate's sake. They're not like, this sucks. I run a lot of clinics and I probably run 12 to 15 clinics a year and it's one of the things we talk about with giving feedback is kind of like make it actionable or at least express yourself why more than just like this is too reachy or this is bad. That doesn't help too much. So this person, Cedric, had some nice points. Too hard. So that's the first point. Yes, absolutely.

I mean, no doubt at all, numerically or otherwise, that it was too hard, especially since the semis already took a toll on basically everyone. And yeah, they're not wrong. First comp of the season, we haven't seen a World Cup. We haven't seen really any high level route setting or competition climbing since, I mean, Munich. Yeah, Munich was 2022 European Championships. So like myself and a few of the other route setters who were in Hachioji were on that.

We hadn't really seen anything or anyone since then. You watch their, maybe their videos online like, oh wow, Yoshioki is looking real strong or Miho looks amazing or, you know, Yanya is in peak form or whatever, right? There's all these like things.

And then you get to the comp week and you're like, okay, we actually now have to make like pretty real decisions on what we want these moves to look like and feel like and kick it off with a bang and meet the obligations of the event while meeting the obligations of the audience. And so semis, semis are always hard. Like that's just the way that it is. You kind of have to have it that way to separate, to get as much separation as you possibly can going into finals.

And then typically what that does is it allows us to have a better show for finals and we can, we can play a little bit more with movements and things like that if we have like a harder semis. But it can bite you in the ass, which it did for us. And that was because we set a really hard semis for both men's and women's. And it, yeah, it was just like too much of a toll with not enough rest, I think, for the athletes in between. Let's see, next point.

It's kind of what we talked about, not especially effective in terms of separation. It's like we got the separation, right? So separation is, depending on how you want to look at it, maybe they're talking more like relatively speaking, but like objectively separation is like, do we have a ranking? One through whatever, 50. And we did, we had a ranking, but it just wasn't like the ideal ranking probably because of the way that optically the boulders performed, right?

Which kind of then bleeds into like 0.3, which is not fun to look at. And yeah, straight up, it is like not that much fun to watch climbers try and fail, basically pulling off the mats, right? For minutes at a time. And then you're like hoping, ah, maybe this next athlete will figure it out and they don't figure it out. And you're like, damn it. It's not fun for anybody. The roots setters very, very, very, very much included.

I think that the latter points in this comment are a little bit, how do I say this? Like how do I say this without even, it's not so simple. It's not so simple to just say, like, why not just involve actual more climbing moves to appeal to a casual audience and like add a knee bar or a heel or whatever.

Every single one of these athletes, like if you look at any World Cup, semifinals and above for every event, and I don't even care, pick from 2020 onwards, nearly every single one of these athletes minimum climbs 8B boulders. Minimum. They're like maddeningly strong. They're so good. This is their full time job. This is their life. This is everything that they work for, train for, breathe for. They have six opportunities per year to give their absolute all.

There's just like really not an effective, feasible way to put very straightforward, traditionally set rock climbing moves on the wall and achieve that ranking and visual appeal. It gets to the point where it's quite ineffective, I think, actually. You still need to represent physical style. You still need to represent climbing style. Don't get me twisted. That's not what I'm saying that like, oh, all these moves needs to be parkour or all these moves need to be like crazy, crazy things.

But we have to introduce the concepts of risk, intensity and complexity in a very particular and exciting way for both the athletes and the audience to make sure that we get that separation in that amount of time. Because if we don't play with those other levels of risk and complexity and we just lean on intensity, you kind of end up with a situation of a yes or no or a black or a white or a zero or a one.

Either do the move or don't do the move and there's no chance of creating any sort of crescendo effect. You kind of saw this maybe at the World Cup in Prague. There was a couple boulders that we set that were like the intensity during boulders and literally nobody but like Janya could touch them because nobody was straight up strong enough to pull on those holds. So it was like kind of cool in a way because you're like, oh wow, look how much stronger Janya is in the rest of the field. Great.

But then you're still having the same situation occur where you're having five other people prior or 19 other people prior depending on the round. Kind of like try fail, try fail, try fail because it's just a yes or no question. There's no way for them to get better and learn the movements in any amount of time. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, that makes sense.

And I guess in the Janya situation or I guess on the men's side, I don't think there's like one guy that stands out as being so much stronger than anyone else. I would agree with that. For most things. I mean, there definitely are stylistic climbers more so on the men's side. Whereas the women's side, you kind of have Janya traditionally on all styles, maybe not so much slab, but even then she's really good.

And then there's a hyper competitive field with the women below that two through 15 or something like that. So yeah, it's great. Great feedback though, for sure. And it's not something that we didn't think about. Basically the summary of this is that we pushed too many new concepts too frequently or out of the gate. That was it.

This like crazy parkour thing that they're referencing, I think it was men's three, but it was teal volumes and yellow holds and it was like a pretty difficult and tricky move around the left side of the arete. And then you ran it like, yeah, probably two and a half meters. Did this like crazy parkour. I mean, it wasn't parkour as much as it was like a paddle dyno, but it was like multiple hand move paddle while also timing the feet quite high.

And I think it was just too late in the boulder to push that much. Because if you get it wrong and you go too easy, then everyone just like stops and skips, stops and skips. And you saw this a couple of times in Meringen and I think in 2021 or 2022, where there was a couple of instances of that where they aired on the side of a little bit of caution to see more tops or more zones.

But then there were a notable number of instances where the climbers were like stronger than the boulder and they kind of, it didn't look as exciting for the audience especially too. And then they got even less separation because they just kind of all ran it. I see. I think, yeah, another big one was probably the last boulder which was M4 with the jump into the press. But yeah, now people are used to that. So I think it's...

Oh man, it's like, that's a boulder now where I just like, I would love, and there's no way to do it, but I would love to like get all those athletes back on the wall, four on four off, put that same boulder on the wall and then see what the results would be because of the familiarity. And we got a chance to do that in burn and we saw, it wasn't identical by any stretch, but it was a very, very similar style of move. And we saw, I think three of six got zoned and two top.

And one person was actually getting, there was a fourth person, I believe it was Nikolai, got really close to getting zoned. So you almost had a four of six, whereas you saw zeros across the board for Hachi-Achi. Yeah, it was very confusing to see, but I guess pretty much a brand new move. I don't think we had seen it before. Yeah, brand new move, I think, especially at that level.

I mean, maybe, I would imagine just like the probability is that someone has fooled around with that move somewhere in the world and maybe set a version of it, but not on that type of scale and that type of purity. I mean, that was also maybe the problem is that there was no way around it. It was, you had to do this and it was like just so complex because, and the complexity was high because you'd never seen it. So how do you know what you don't know?

When we were testing it, it felt like bananas for so long. And then all of a sudden we just like took a break, got a coffee, put on some music and then Serhiu did the move, Remy did the move, I did the move, literally. I have like a video, it was like a running video of just like bang, bang, bang. And we were like, what? We've been working on this for two hours, tinkering, whatever. And then it's been right here like the whole time.

And I think we undersold that aspect of it to be completely honest. We were like, oh, well, who the hell are we? Like they'll definitely figure that it's Mejdi Shalke. He's, we didn't know at the time, but he's like an Olympian now, right? You have the best athletes in the world. They're way better, but we didn't effectively turn the dial appropriately for the four-minute window that they had for on-site and the fact that it was so, so, so new. Yeah. So that was the first comment for Hachioji.

And then I'll put images up of the comments as well as the boulders for people who are watching on video. So you can see that. Let's actually move on to the Hachioji Men's 3.

So this was the one I was talking about. This one says, I just wish the setters would tone down the insanity next World Cup. They might've had too much free time. They convinced themselves their boulder problems are possible in four minutes. Yeah. I mean, I think I kind of hit on that at the end there a little bit. Like definitely I'll say this. It was 100% not too much free time. That was one of the more time restricted events due to the location of where we were hosting it.

We were forced to, we couldn't enter the facility before a certain time and we had to leave the facility by, I think it was 10 PM every single day, which typically we have until there's no limit. I mean, we'll be at the wall until 1 AM, 2 AM, 4 AM. Like it's yeah, like, and it's not like because, oh, we're like just sitting there tinkering. It's like the work has to get done and to dial this right. That's just what it takes a lot of the time.

So we didn't have, we did not have too much free time. If anything, maybe if we had more free time or more time in general, we would have been able to calibrate a little bit better. I would say that that could be a thing, but we did definitely convince ourselves that the boulder problems were possible in four minutes because we wouldn't have left them on the wall. Otherwise we don't want to like see a bloodbath of athletes.

Like we want to create an environment where all the athletes have the best opportunity to showcase their skills and succeed. And it's up to them to make that happen. That's what we want to see. In the ideal world, you have this perfect crescendo and everyone's like getting closer and higher and there's this battle and there's this back and forth and who's going to win it. You know, like that's super cool. Like everyone loves that. Yeah, we missed the mark on that one.

But how do you know until you try? And sometimes you just don't. And I think sometimes you need to have these events that pushes things because we pushed things. And I think it allowed for like a pretty cool season, like on the whole, like, okay, Hachioji was hard, but the season was awesome. It had a story. Like if you look at the season, like I'm sure Matt Groom could do, he's like awesome at this shit.

He could probably put together a really cool 2023 story, you know, about all the feelings and the emotion and the timeline. And you don't get that from having identical, perfect events because I honestly, I think the sport becomes kind of boring. You know, like if it's always if you always know what's going to happen, then why the hell are you watching?

Yeah, good point. Hachioji man comment for that I took just a couple, I guess, like the first sentences I wanted to go over. I feel like at least two setters should have to be able to top any set. Also, it would be nice to see a top from the centers during the boulder preview. Oh, I don't know what they mean exactly by the top any set. I guess, like any of the boulders. Yeah, like all these like all the moves went somebody did. Somebody did the moves. Maybe that was me. Maybe that was for me.

Maybe that was Olga. Somebody did something at some point in time. And most of the time, I'll say it is one to three people. Any more than that. It's unreasonable. You're wasting skin. You're wasting energy. We should be good enough at our jobs to like evaluate a setter's performance and how they're moving on the wall and be able to provide and use feedback from our standpoint as well as what the setter is feeling while they're testing on the wall.

There are unique situations where we'll lean on one person because it might be an extremely hyper specialized skill set. Right. Or it could also be like we're super running low on time or we're super running low on energy or skin. And like, hey, Ginny, you have this move dialed.

Can you just like keep running this and we can keep tinkering and then, okay, Cody, you can try the different ways to cheat it because you're finding this strange way that only you or someone who's climbs like you can cheat it. So like we'll play off of one another. You know what I mean? So, but that's not to say that that's that's the exception. That's not the rule. So a lot of times we do actually we do mean we do these moves. We're not we're not ever setting a boulder, though.

We don't ever there's unless we're like chilling and like things are great and we have like free time. No one's ever like said, he always says it's like, okay, one more time for the culture, for the culture, you know, and he's like, it's like a funny thing. Like he just because he wants to be a better climber and he wants to be, you know, to learn these things. But like that happens this much. Like we just don't have the time or the energy to to invest into like full sense.

So we have to calibrate our experiences based on the sections and all the sections go and all the boulders they go for sure they go. But we could be asking too much at certain times or not enough or not enough. How do you do is too much. It would be cool to see like top from the setters during boulder preview. But to be frank, that's a lot to ask. I mean, any of these weeks, if they're talking about it live, there's just no fucking way.

There's just no way to like go out during whatever finals or and like at that point, you've already.

I mean, some of those days, let's say for qualities, we might finish setting and taping qualities, let's just say at Thursday night at midnight or one a.m., two a.m. get to the wall at seven where they're from seven until all the way maybe until again, one a.m., two a.m., three a.m. between stripping the wall after watch everyone climb and strip the wall and put up semis and make adjusting for semis and take tape, tighten those right.

Then you're back on the wall three hours later to watch or four hours to watch semis. Then you what you know what I mean? Like it just ends up and that's not including the entire week prior. You're just like. That's not our job is to like the it's the job of the athletes to perform. It's not the job of the setters to like show the athletes how to do it. Because if I could just if I have to a 70 hour work like that, I could just fire boulders on command.

I promise you I wouldn't be resetting and I would be climbing in a World Cup. I'd be I'd try to be an athlete. And I guess like it wouldn't really I mean, usually the athletes top it. So don't really need to see a route setter top it. I guess it was just in this one instance where nobody had talked and people really wanted to see what was going on. Yeah. I think I don't know when that comment was like posted or whatever, but I did post like I'd never posted reels before on Instagram.

I didn't really know how that works, but I made a reel and it like showed the moves. It was like it's I've been doing it for each World Cup now. It's like testing versus setting or sorry, testing versus athletes or something like that. I forget what I titled it. So it just takes an event, takes just random highlight moves, basically more or less if I had my camera running or not, which sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

And so, hey, here's somebody on the team doing a move or not doing a move, depending. And then like here's the athlete doing the move or attempting to move in a different way or the same way and like seeing like a before and after. And it people seem to like it. Like it's kind of cool. It's kind of I think it's like I think it's fun, you know, and it shows that like, hey, we actually do this and we try our best. And it's definitely we're not trying to like screw people.

We're trying to create great fields and great moments. Like it's we're definitely not root setting in any way, shape or form for like the money or the fame, because that just doesn't exist. We just love it. We're passionate about it. And so just like to share that with people, I think is the number one thing. Yeah, I'll link that first video in the show notes for people to see.

But OK, moving on to Prague, I think also men's. So Prague men's two. This one says maybe the center saw M4 and misread it as before. Oh, I remember this one. Yeah, I had a lot of involvement in this one. That was tough. The summary is that conditions matter. We were for running this boulder. We had to have a screen cover up. That was part of it. So it was like an open air venue.

We had to keep a screen cover up, otherwise everyone would see us testing and forning, including athletes and coaches and people could video like people walking by the street. So there was that. And then it was also probably like 85 degrees with no wind. So you add that to it. And it was like a literal oven in this venue. And even at sometimes we tried to move the screen around or whatever. It just didn't matter so much.

It was so absurdly hot during the days that there were some very, very strong roots setters on this team. And they were having trouble dead hanging certain holds, just holding them, much less moving to and from them. And we were actually quite worried for that entire round that we were way overcooked the round, especially M4. I was like, we sometimes will place estimations or predictions on how we think the round will go. And I think every roots setter had like men's four.

I was like, I don't know if it goes, but I don't know if they'll do it. You know what I mean? We're going to create a moment where someone's going to do this move and that's going to be the reason that they get gold. And boy, oh boy, was that not the case. The temperatures dropped. They had to have gone down till we should look and see. It felt freezing. People were in sweatshirts, puffy's, gloves, hats, like people in the crowd. You know what I mean?

It was frigid and it made the entire world of a difference. That fiberglass just like, I mean, if anyone's ever climbed on sandstone, whether that's at font or at horsepans or in Chattanooga or anything like, you know, we have like slopey sandstone, the fiberglass can feel sometimes similarly to that, or at least how your skin and your hands and your body reacts to that. If it's really hot and greasy and sweaty, you know about it.

If it's cold and sticky and almost feels velcro-y, again, you know about it. So that's a tough one to deal with, but you know, sometimes that's just the game we play. And I don't know if there's a great solution on how to fix that, but we could probably try to be more, if nothing else, a little bit more aware. I won't say shy away from certain moves, but just be more aware that like these situations could occur if, you know, the weather is this or the conditions are that.

So do you look at the weather of the day of the comp when you're setting? Yeah. Yeah. So part of the thing that we didn't pay attention to is the wind, the wind picked up quite a bit too. So it was like whatever, however many degrees, which was like much colder, but not that much colder, but then you added no wind to a ton of wind. I mean, we were like, everyone there was in tank tops or in shorts with maybe no shirt on or something like that and pouring sweat.

Couldn't even keep chalk on the hands. And then, like I said, you know, you fast forward 12 hours or whatever it is. And before you know it, you're like completely bundled up like a, you know, like you're going out to brave the North and yeah. So yeah, a little bit of a miss there, but I think we still got the separation for the run. Yeah. Good to know what you were hoping to see because that makes a lot more sense for like the last boulder that you would want it to be hard and show separation.

So that that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Let's do prognosis for that photo.

Are they bad at calibrating the difficulty of static climbing to the climbers when they don't have a million dinos? It's nice to see some more strong and static climbing again, at least hope that keeps up and they figure out the difficulty. Also really felt like there should have been one or two more moves on M4. I think this one they're talking about M3. Yeah. If they're talking about M3, I'd say, I think we kind of nailed that one. If I remember that was the slab.

Yeah, I think they liked that one. But then it says they're bad at calibrating the static. I'm not really sure what this this comment. Yeah. Because I think maybe it was a different moment. Maybe it was, but it's kind of like a reference. I mean, we're trying to create a really diverse field of play.

You know, like if Cody and Ginny are our field and Ginny is really, really good at cordo dinos and Cody's really, really good at slab and the route setters put even accidentally, they put like two of the four boulders are more slow and static and slabby and maybe only start to zone is a cordo move, then the likelihood is that if all other things are remaining equal, Cody has a massive advantage at this competition and Ginny has a hard time.

So we try to create a fair field of play throughout start to zone, zone to top, you know, at different points throughout the wall. I would like to think we're not bad at calibrating difficulty, but maybe some folks think that in certain instances. And we can always be better if nothing else. That's for sure. We can always get better. And for the record, that's not the reason why I would do worse on the comp folder in

case anyone was wondering. And then for Prague women's, there wasn't much in the comments except for congrats for Oriane, who I think won that one instead of Yanya. And I think you wanted to talk about this a bit, which was why you think she managed to win that comp over Yanya. Oh, yeah. So I think that this is kind of like a testament to I think we had a quite nice round actually in terms of diversity of style. And it allowed Orion to shine through. I mean, it wasn't a perfect round.

There were again, there were some things that I think if we looked back, we would have liked to see maybe a little bit differently. But the way that the round played out, again, all the athletes are climbing on the same boulders and the best climber won that day. And the best climber was Orion. And Orion topped the slab in the most graceful, beautiful style. But I've seen someone climb a slab in a really long time. It was really, really impressive. She smashed it.

And it was kind of a moment I was like, I think she came out, don't quote me on this, I think she came out last. I think she came out, like she was in sixth place. So I mean, she came out first, actually, is what I'm trying to say. And I watched it and I was like, shit, this boulder is way too easy. We're going to have like people just go through this thing. And it was not the case, Orion. It just like really showcased how exceptional she is at the style of climbing. And then you get to Yanya.

And if I remember correctly, Yanya did not do the boulder. There was conversation during the comp that might have had to do with her foot injury. Yanya dealt with a foot injury, which is also why she wasn't in Hachioji or in Salt Lake. She had like, I think she broke her toe or something like that. And you could see it. I think even though I was watching the shoes that she was putting on and she had like hyper stiff shoes for the slab. And I think it was to protect her foot, protect her toe.

But that combined with maybe sensitivity or maybe even hesitancy on if she was ready for that. I don't know. She just didn't do the boulder. She always wears like the 5'10 high angles though, right? And that is a stitch shoe. Maybe that actually has nothing to do with it then. But watching her on it, it seemed like she had like an ice skate on comparatively to Orion. So that was really cool to see. And then they both did boulder four, which is like that like Kordo campus thing.

The top was maybe a little bit too easy. I think, or wait, that was maybe that was boulder two. Either way, there was a black and yellow Kordo boulder. That was, I think, the other determining factor that they both topped. And I think had that boulder been a little bit harder, you would have seen Yanya maybe win because then Yanya topped the most physically demanding boulder. And she did that in like just incredible style. She like really set herself apart in terms of the raw power.

But I think that was kind of cool because like the determining factor for me in that round was like, it's showing that climbing is not unilateral, right? It's multifaceted. And Orion won this comp, in my opinion. She showcased a lot of her skills really, really, really well. But then she really stood out with her like technical expertise. And yeah, we represented that in a way and she had her win. So that was cool. Yeah, really cool to see. Okay, so now on to Innsbruck. Women's won.

This was a really long comment, so I'm just going to read through certain parts of it.

Feel free to read through it on your own if you want later. And then I'll also put the whole photo in the video. But yeah, let me just go through some of the points that they made. So the route centers created the worst routes I've ever seen to ruin what could have been so thrilling. Jump on W1 literally being a height contest. W2, which was the only technical slab being the most straightforward flashable slab that created absolutely no separation in skill.

W3 has a jump that's literally impossible for Innsbruck, regardless of if they skipped leg day or not. Also has a slab on there, which probably belongs in a modern art museum because it's served no purpose. W4, again, being impossible for Innsbruck because of their height. And asking them to be fully stretched, holding on with their fingertips and swaying 90 degrees into a fully stretched toe hook while still holding onto your fingertips, et cetera, et cetera.

So yeah, a lot of height dependent comments in this one. Yeah. So much more. I'm like still reading. Yeah, go for it. No, it's like so, I mean, I think I'll say this much. If someone has, this person has a lot of very strong feelings on the competition in general. So I don't think that even if I could sit down with them and have a conversation, they may or may not change their views.

But I will say that there are a few things on here that objectively, not objectively, that I just kind of from a, I just disagree with. Number one, jump on number one being a height contest. That situation, if you like look back at the video, like the replay, you have to jump. Yes. You have to leave the ground to achieve the hold. And okay, if you're a little taller, yes, it is a little easier. That jump, it couldn't have been a more straightforward, simplistic demand of leg power.

Like out of all the things that we ask of the athletes and coordination and jumping and springiness and hot feet and toe catches and all, like it is purely, like can you, can you just, and I just doesn't have leg power and she'd be the first to tell you. She'll be the first to tell you like Brooke did it. No problem. Brooke is yes, a little bit taller than I, maybe by what an inch or something. Brooke's five two. I don't know what I is. Maybe I's five one.

We could probably look and see, but like you watch Brooke and she like does it and she does it and she does it. To me, I actually use that as an example sometimes for folks as like, yeah, we do the best that we can do, but optics go way farther than what our interpretation of the round might be. Like, we could have a conversation about this round. The roots that are going to have a conversation.

Hell, anyone can have a conversation, the coaches and they could all say, everyone could say the same thing that yeah, that was like a leg power issue there, which I would to my dying day say that's a leg power issue. But optically there's millions of other people who are watching this competition and interpreting their own feelings based on what they're seeing. And optically it looked fucking terrible. It looked real bad.

We have the smallest athlete unable to do this jump move over and over and over and over and eventually though she did it. And why did she do it? She jumped a little bit more and climbing is not perfect. It's far from fair. Vertical jumps without any shadow of a doubt are the least fair move I would say for a shorter climber. Basically the taller you are, the easier those moves will be. That being said though, there are quantifiably more difficult moves for folks who are taller.

For example, bicycles in increasingly horizontal roof that are tight. So like, I mean, I can't really show it here, but like I can only get my foot so close to my face and the closer I pull my foot to my face, the more I have to engage in more like my back sags and the more my core has to compensate for that as well as my lower back. Whereas I don't know how tall you are, but if you're under six feet, then you're going to be in increasingly a little bit more comfortable position, right?

And that box gets more comfortable as you get smaller, which means that you're actually going to have a greater likelihood of success. Again, all things remaining equal. So it's our job to sometimes play off of this. Whereas like you can't just say, okay, well, I was in the comp, so no jumps just as much as you can't say, Kai Lightner is in the comp, so no jumps, right? Because he's just on the opposite end of the spectrum. We just have to find ways to do our best. Again, we're humans.

We're definitely, there is no science in terms of like, we don't have a rubric or something that we can follow to tell us how to do our job. So we have to do our best to gauge this level and dictate what's appropriate. For what it's worth, and maybe it's not much, but we had a couple of folks on the team who actually work and have worked with I quite a lot who are on the root setting team. And they made the final calls on whether this height was appropriate.

And they were like, we had that thing up probably another eight inches. And maybe 20 minutes before the comp, we were like, is this too high? Like me and the chief actually were like, is this too high? Is this too high? And then we called over some of these Japanese guys and we're like, hey, is it too high? And they're like, no, no, no, it's fine. But like, if you're really worried about it, bring it down. And we're like, I think we should bring it down.

And they're like, I mean, she's going to do it. She's so good. Imagine if we left it up like eight inches, like the world would have burned. So we use the information to the best of our ability. They weren't trying to hose us. They were trying to give us valid information. They're like, oh yeah, based on our experiences when we've trained or workshopped with I in the past, she is capable of doing X, Y, or Z. And we have like reference points to kind of like go along with that.

And this kind of like meets or exceeds our expectations of her on this style of move. So what do we do? We say, all right, well, let's lower it to be safe and move on. Other things, women's too, which is only the quote technical slab. I mean, it's kind of like I said earlier, you really, we have four boulders. So we need to represent different styles in different ways. Having 25% of the competition made technical slab to me is good. Like that's if we have more than that, it's a problem.

If we have less than that, it's a problem. So I don't know. Maybe their comment there is about the separation and that too many of the women did it. Maybe we could have made that technical slab a little bit more complex or technically demanding. I wouldn't disagree with that. I think that's a fair thing. But yeah, let's see what else. When four being impossible, most of this was about, yeah, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to at least like address each point.

I don't know if these folks like follow you or, or listen in because it'd be cool to like at least try to address some of the, I guess I won't touch any more of the height thing. I mean, they talked about women's four being impossible fire, Brooke. I don't think that's the case. Maybe it's a bit harder, but then I also find strange ways of getting through things. Like we saw that in the semi finals round as well on that yellow and orange folder.

But I will, I will kind of clap back here and say when they said it's, it's pretty clear that the roots that is completely tunnel visioned on Yanya and created big leaps, leaps and dynamic power moves that would really thought we'd slow her down a little bit. And I'm glad that Yanya flashed every boulder embarrassed the roots setters really consider an ignorant root design to not consider the whole field. We that couldn't be like that could not be farther from the truth. I'll just say that.

Like I usually like to be like pretty, I don't know, open. That's not the case. Like we do not focus on one single climber. We do not favor climbers. We do not like it's our job to create the best field of play that we possibly can. And it's not our fault that Yanya is fucking incredible. She is really, really, really, really, really good.

And if we were actually trying to do that, like make this, this game only for Yanya, then literally, I don't know if anyone else would do any zones, much less top boulders. She is that far above and beyond, at least when I saw her last and burn, she is exceptional. So that's just not the case. That's never, I don't ever want anyone to even read a comment on YouTube and think that there's any sort of bias towards any individual athlete or nation or team. Like it's just not the thing.

That's why the teams are also diverse. They come from, there's men and women from all different nations. That's why the chiefs switch. It's not just a chief from this country, right? It's constantly and typically maybe there's some continuity between comps and maybe a team will have a couple of members that were on, let's say Innsbruck this year and maybe next year.

So again, it's in favor of creating opportunity and new styles and new representation to make it as open and have no favoritism, have the least amount of favoritism as possible. So maybe there was some misses. Again, it's not an easy job.

And I wish it sometimes when I see someone say things like that, I'm like, man, I just wish you could come climb in our shoes for a day and just to really understand some of the decisions that were made because we're truly, from the bottom of my heart, speaking for the other setters who are on these careers, truly trying to do our best to create the best field of play and an exciting round and separation and represent diversity of body styles and represent the sponsors. And you know what I mean?

There's a lot of things that we're trying to do. And yes, at this level, it's our job to meet or exceed all of those things. But we're not perfect and we do miss things. So it's a bummer that person feels this way. But I love you.

It'd be interesting if the IFSC could put out some extra, maybe just short video that shows a little bit of the behind the scenes during the setting process that they could put out with the comp and just get some thoughts on what the setters think they were hoping to accomplish there, any reservations that they may have had during the setting process. I think maybe that could help clear up a lot of things. I think you're right. They were doing a little bit of that last year through Matt.

There's a couple of moments. A lot of times too, Matt would do it through other channels as well. It wasn't necessarily an IFSC thing. So depending on where you got your information from, you may or may not have seen some of that information.

But yeah, it'd be cool almost if it was during the feed, during the comp, if there were moments almost like commercial breaks that were like, hey, and then here's Ginny with 30 seconds behind the scene of what her experience was like setting this World Cup or whatever. Yeah, I think you're right.

I think if nothing else, both competitively and commercially, the thing that I always find or I have historically found is a huge factor in people's, I won't just say happiness, but just the overall caliber of their experience wherever that lands is personifying the experience. There aren't little leprechauns and fairies who wave wands and make these things happen. They're people. It's me. It's you. It's it's my lease. It's Remy. It's Pierre.

It's people who have come together to create this thing. And I think that, again, that could be the 5'10 in your home gym. That could be the V4 at your home gym.

And if you kind of put some eyes to that person and those people, what they're trying to do and understand a little bit about where they're coming from and their intentionality behind it, I think that usually goes quite a long way in understanding and having a little bit more empathy towards the situation and if nothing else, athletic empathy towards the event or the climate itself. So yeah, that's precisely why I wanted to do that. Ten points to you. Okay. Burn men's won that photo.

This was one of the positive comments that I took. Best comp of the season on both sides in terms of setting in competition.

Thanks. Well, thank you. And then burn women's, again, just like the first photo I'd taken, the only one I had taken. This one I just wanted to talk a bit about since people are always asking for this. I would love to see Yanya take on the men's course, realizing that not every woman would be able to or want to take on a men's course. I think she would love to test herself. She has the drive to push the women's competition further and show just how strong women are. She's in a class by herself.

Go Yanya. So I think with this one, I just kind of wanted to ask how you think she would fare on a men's route because as a viewer, I can't quite pinpoint why, but the boulders do look very different and so yeah, I wonder how you think she would perform on them. I think she would do well, to be completely honest. I think she would do really well. Exactly what really well looks like, I don't know. I think if she had a good day, there's no reason.

I'm trying to think back critically here before I go put my foot in my mouth on a podcast. And in terms of reach and stuff as well. Well, she's not shorter than Serato, you know what I mean? So that would be a non-issue there. There are shorter like Nimrod, Marcus is not the tallest climber either, and Mechi is the tallest. Yeah, she would fall within the range of average athlete size. I think she would do well.

I'm not going to put predictions on what she would do when and where, but I think she definitely I feel like stands a chance, maybe more than stands a chance. I think she could do well. But yeah, I don't know what that would look like. I don't know how that could work. I don't know if that's ever her desire. I was hanging out with one of her teammates and countryman, Gregor Vizonic, a couple of months ago. And he was kind of saying, I was like, oh yeah, how's she doing?

Because like, I won't say Yanya and I are like friends, but like we chat every now and again, see how you're doing, check in, if we're at a comp, hang out, whatever, go get a drink, catch up. But I was asking, I was asking, how's she doing? How you doing? How's the team doing? You know, whatever, like guys getting ready for the upcoming season, you know, whatever, just standard. And he's like, dude, Yanya is in like unreal form.

Like normally she apparently they have like this spray wall that they'll like do like trainer boulders on and stuff like that. And normally she's like, kind of right there, one and one, two with men, the men's field, like she'll do the boulder, they'll do the boulder, they'll do the boulder, she'll do the boulder in no particular order. It's there. And he said this year she's just like, like they won't touch the boulders and she does the boulders.

And this isn't like random civilians, like this is their team. You know what I mean? So I think that she, yeah, she would smash. So I'll see her in two weeks or three weeks. So we'll see. But yeah, she'd smash. Really cool here. Yeah, awesome.

Okay. And then one thing, one last thing about Innsbruck, I think you had mentioned that you guys had reset a whole boulder after it was signed off. What happened there? Great question. So basically the way that the competition work week typically flows is that the beginning of the week is like finals boulders go up and then like midweek is semis and then end of the week is qualies.

And the reason for that is like, qualies are then left up on the wall and roll right into the first day of qualifying for the competition. And then also like finals happen first because you have the most amount of resources to pull from and just kind of all the things. So the way that we broke it down is the Innsbruck wall is pretty big and it had enough space to put up all the finals boulders at once.

And so what we did was we kind of went like, all right, men's bay, women's bay, men's bay, women's bay, men's bay, women's bay, all the way down. So we didn't pick like this is men's one or this is women's three. We just kind of said like, okay, this is the women's team. This is the men's team. Here's your bays. We'll talk about style. We'll talk about hold selection, the hold selection and style or the hold selections in general. That was a whole other conversation.

We had to be like very particular about which holds went on the wall during certain rounds per the event organizer sponsorship agreements. So that was a limiting factor on a number of occasions. So it got to the point where we set this boulder and it was actually a boulder that I kind of was pioneering. And the concept for me was that like, if you were facing the Innsbruck wall, whatever, you saw the Innsbruck wall, you're climbing, you're a rock climber.

But if you turned around, the audience and the wall and the mountains were just like bananas. It was so beautiful. And like, I was like, I think we need to set some sort of like face out experience here, both for the athletes and for the spectators. Like the athletes get to look at the spectators and the wall and the, you know, like take this in and then the spectators get to see the emotion of the climber as they're trying really hard in a World Cup final. So that was the concept.

Long story short, the concept got on the wall and I won't say it failed, but it definitely did not meet my personal standard of what I would have liked to have seen be on the wall for any round really. It just, there were too many question marks remaining. There were a number of like possibilities for cheating. This was for a men's boulder, which ended up being men's one.

So if anyone remembers that boulder and I'll talk more about that, but it just like the Bay, the zone was wrong and the holds that kind of were like picked out. I just, I just didn't do a great job to be completely frank. And we worked on it. We spent a lot of time as a team. The team invested a lot into this boulder and it just like didn't do it, you know? So we ticked it, we picked it, the online observation came and the whole time I'm like, damn it, like not your best Cody, you know?

And it kind of sat with me for a little bit and was, it wasn't like weighing on my week. Like I was like, okay, it's done. Now it's, now it's semi's day or now it's whatever day. But after a little while I looked at the team and we had a really, really good team. We always have a good team, but this, this team was like really jelling and like getting stuff done. We weren't limited by time. We had no time constraints or anything like that.

So I went up to the chief, you know, at dinner one night or maybe it was at launch, something like that. I was like, Hey, what do you think about like, if we reset this? And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, just think about it. Like, you know, we have opportunity here. We have an opportunity here to like make something really special. And I don't know if we did it. Like remember we have this potential beta break. We have this potential beta break. Like it's too easy here.

It's too hard here. Like, okay, right. Like, let's think about it. And I was like, look, just think about it and I'll take it on if need be, if we have time or whatever, like, and he's like, yeah, but then you have to deal with online observation. I was like, look, if we have the time and space, just like, just tell me Cody, you have two hours or you have three hours and like, whatever it is and I'll make it, I'll make it happen.

And if it doesn't happen, then we already know we have a boulder that's like in our pocket. You know what I mean? Like this boulder, the show will still go on. So I ended up getting the opportunity, reset this boulder, then brought the team over. I was at that point able to move the boulder over a bay, over a lane. So it was a much more compelling lane for the movement that we were chasing, which was that pressing and all that. And it like, it was like butter.

It just went, it just flowed because it was like the right area with the right tools for the job. And it was kind of a testament to like sometimes, you know, trying to put a square peg in a round hole, just like, ain't it, you know, you just like, you can, you can have all the time in the world and the best, the best workers working on the thing, but if it's just not fitting, maybe it's just not fitting. So we got lucky and maybe we set up ourselves with luck by being able to work.

We worked pretty hard prior. The team came together. We had a really nice session on this, on this climb, got it to where it wanted to be. And honestly, I was like super, super happy with it by the end of like when the competition was going on, it met exactly our quota for what we wanted to see in terms of performance on the athletes. And it was like a super exciting start to the show. And that's what we wanted. We wanted to like get the show off with a bang.

It's the last World Cup men's finals of the season, get the crowd in it, get the athletes in it, be like a fun, uh, pressy, funky thing, huge jump, lots of tops. Um, and yeah, so it was cool. It was really, really cool. I was like very, very happy to have that experience. And did you still manage to have that face out moment? Yeah, actually it was like way more pure in this way because the panel that was initially allocated was maybe it was only like 20 degrees or 25 degrees overhanging.

And so we were having to like build out with a lot of volumes and larger holds. But the problem is, is that the wall was completely flat. And so we had to use vol- like these volumes, but kind of like I was mentioning earlier, we were fixed as to which brands we were allowed to use in certain rounds based on like sponsorship agreements.

And so due to the selection of other boulders that happened prior to this boulder, I was left kind of with a certain pool of holds and certain brands to pick from. And it just didn't quite fit the needs of that profile. But then when we switched profiles, it turned into this more much steeper cave with like a kind of dihedral-ish situation. Then those holds actually worked perfectly for what we were trying to create because they were lower profile.

They did have a lot of surface area, but it wasn't the right tool for the job in the previous version. It was exactly the right tool for the job when we move things around. So yeah. Wow. Yeah. I feel like it's really cool hearing the concept behind the boulders. It makes me feel like I should go back and rewatch them now knowing this and then seeing how it, I guess, translates over the video screen and like seeing how the climbers climb so.

Yeah. It's really interesting to hear behind the scenes. Please excuse this brief intermission, but I would just like to remind you that if you are enjoying this podcast, please follow and rate it on your preferred listening platform. If you're watching on YouTube, I would love to hear your discussion and thoughts in the comments below. Anything helps to push this podcast out to more people and get even more amazing guests on. Back to the show.

One last question about IFSC related setting. I think this was also one of the discord questions that someone had asked. Where do you see IFSC setting top level comp setting evolving to? I think what will happen. I think the most likely course of action, again, broad strokes on the whole, is that the setting will be more dictated by the parameters of the given event.

For example, when we have Olympic qualifying events this year or we have, let's say, the Olympics themselves, there's multi-zone scoring. We saw this at a few different comps so far, like if it was continental events. We've seen this. You're going to have a low zone effectively, a zone, and a top. I don't remember exactly, but you get a minimum amount of points for the first zone. I think it was like 5, 10, 25, maybe, if that's what it is. I'd be lying to you.

I don't remember off the top of my head. What you end up seeing is you need moments in between the zones. At least a lot of times that's what it's interpreted as. Why do you get a zone? Why? Because you've done something to demarcate success. Someone is thinking that that is successful. I think, at least for this season, you might notice maybe a little more choppiness, especially when we're trying to represent all the styles still.

You might be able to represent a few more styles or at least a little bit of extra in-between because now we kind of have this extra zone to play with. Numerically, it does create some problems where the difference between start and low zone is 5 points. Okay, so it's 5 points. The next is, again, 5 more points. It's 5 to 10. But then that zone to top is a 15-point differential.

Now you're at 25, so you have to showcase some sort of exceptional moment, I would say, to demarcate the difference in athlete performance from zone to top. So I think you might end up seeing maybe more similar styles to what we saw in burn, both in the world championship and the combined. Just more action up high and more success down low, which I think does actually answer some of the folks' questions or feedback from what we read on the YouTube videos.

It's not that fun to watch people just try and fail off the ground. And that's true. So you're going to see more of building moments, I think, as people learn moves. But I think you'll also see more learned moves. So I don't think we're going to get away from more coordination style. I think we might see more lower body coordination, more things having to do with hips and core and legs and feet, because they require just a different ask of the athlete.

A lot of times if we have coordination up high, hand cordo, it's limited or determined, success or failure is a lot of times, it's determined by a lot of things. But if I can pull more or hold longer, I'm more likely to succeed. A lot of times, again, I'm like broad strokes, but if it's more lower body and core and feet and stuff, then there's more learning involved and maybe more leg power involved and more. You know what I mean? So you might see more of that.

But I would say you might see more of the stuff like we saw in that high flying fun boulder in Hachioji. If it's a coordination boulder, you're going to need to showcase coordination in some numerical differential from zone to top. So what's that going to look like? I can guess as well as you, but that'd be my guess.

It'd suck if that like, to use our example earlier, where if Ginny's like the cordo master and I'm just a power climber, I'm just going to pull on holds, that the thing that's going to, like the boulder that's for your comp for cordo and you're like, you turn around like, yes, it's cordobolder. You only get to do that from zero to five or from five to 10, right? But it's an easy enough version that I'm also able to play and fight on it.

So then I also can get those points and showcase my skills, even though my skills are much less than you in this represented style. But then the top of the cordobolder is just like grabbing on a four mil edge and just yarding to another four mil edge, right? But that's the cordobolder. Do you know what I mean? Like then it's like, well, we don't, we didn't represent the coordination style climber. We represented the power climber, really, at the end of it.

So I guess in summary, there will probably be lots of changes and it will be dictated by the field, the rules, the field of play will be dictated, I think a lot by the rules and the scoring. And we're, if nothing else, I know no matter who's on the teams, they're going to be, you know, firing on all cylinders to create the best comp. So if nothing else, know that. And what does like lower body coordination look like to you?

Do you have like an example of that? So it's not, this isn't the most pure version, but if we looked back on women's one Prague finals, it was a green and black boulder. It was like green rock city fiberglass with black volumes. And it was this Lachey or Lombada or swing set or whatever you want to call it. You like jump to these two holds and you like did this swing, then you time it right. And then as you're swinging, you match this hold and generate off this, you hate him or you love him.

Oh, I love them. Oh, you love them. Okay. And then, but like, so you need upper body, like, okay. So someone who's listening is like, well, Cody, that's all upper body, there's no upper body left or no lower body. That just like to get the generation started. That's like, that's integral to the move. Yes. But it's not like there's so much more to come. So then you like do this thing and then you have to time your hips with the trajectory of your body into the wall. Right.

And where do you release that point? Right. So that's on how you're releasing this hold, how you timed this. Right. And then where do you land on this volume? Do you, do you cheat inside? Do you cheat outside? Do you cheat forward or back? Where's your ankle landing? How flat's your foot? And then we're not even there yet. Right. That's just like the interaction point. That's like, then you still have the whole reception of what happens after. What are you doing with your hand? Right.

What are you doing with your, with your foot? Are you stutter stepping? Are you toe catching? Right. So you're putting in these levels of complexity that are asking questions in time and space to the climber that they have to, they can only get the opportunity to learn or answer as it's occurring. You can't like just be like, I'll pull harder and I'll do the move. You have to be like, I need to be better to do the move. And so what is being better?

Okay. Let me critically evaluate what I just did here and I failed because, and then work backwards, right. And then maybe to move forwards, then I must fill in the blank. So maybe it may be full body rather than just lower body, but those two things I think we'll see, you'll probably see some more of. Yeah. I mean, we've definitely already started seeing a ton of those and I love like the shame moves as well. I'm still personally trying to figure them out. I just can't get it working.

I don't know why, but there's a lot of steps to it. So maybe that's why. It's a lot of learning, but then I'll say that like, once you figure out functionally why it works for you, even like if you just figure out the 101 or 102 version or wherever you're at in your experience, it doesn't matter which you figure out kind of the meat and potatoes and what makes that work. And you then have the building blocks for all the moves afterwards.

And that's why they're, I think a lot, they're really popular right now is that like, you can just like get better at them. You can learn how to get better at them. You don't have to go to the hangboard or like the tension board or the moon board and like, that's still valued. Like you still should do that. Like to become a well-rounded climber, you need to have that like grit, right?

But then there's also this fun aspect of like, oh, I'm learning something new about my body and myself and my, how I'm interacting on the wall. That's like very, very appealing to, I think an increasingly large percentage of the population. And it just so happens to also be awesome for competition separation on really low intensity level moves, which is also quite nice.

Yeah. There's something very satisfying about that point where you're working on it and then you kind of unlock it for yourself or you finally understand how your body moves in that way. And then it gets like, all of those get a bit easier. And then you just add on the other layers of like little tweaks that make it a bit more, a bit more weird. Yeah. Climbers like checking boxes, right?

And like, if you can figure out, okay, I know how to start this style of move now and then, okay, now I know how to add in a different style of this other move. And then you can start almost like Lego blocking them together to create these chains of things. You know, you can start checking these boxes and okay, I've unlocked that skill now and now I can approach another skill that I can add into this, right? Now I can check another box of my skills and just keep developing all at the same time.

You're still becoming a better, stronger climber. You know, your fingers are getting stronger, your biceps are getting stronger, your back is getting stronger, legs. They can be excited to unlock that one. Heck yeah. Well, you can come visit or open it up a climbing gym up here just south of Boston. So we're going to have all kinds of styles of climbing. Don't get me wrong. We'll have a lot of resources available to us to create those special style moves as well. Oh yeah. I'll visit for sure.

I'll let you know. And yeah, we'll talk about that as well. But yeah, let's get back into like the general route setting kind of stuff. So how hard do you climb versus the climbers that you're setting for? And do you ever kind of feel intimidated setting for these like elite worldwide level climbers?

Those are two really, really good questions. And maybe I'll flip them in answering them. Sure. I'll say that like, I think now that I've had a number of opportunities to work alongside these athletes, both in competition setting or workshop setting or whatever it is, you realize, I know it's like the funny thing. It's like they're just people too. And it's like they are. You know what I mean? They just like happen to, for whatever reason, to fall into this life.

And they're really, really good climbers and they're exceptional people and their methodologies and their trainings and all that stuff. And I remember the first, like I remember when I went to Poland that first time to set for this international event, I was like worried, you know, I was like, am I good enough? Is this imposter syndrome situation happening? Am I supposed to be here? Is like, and this is for a kids comp, you know what I mean?

These are just like, I mean, granted it was 26 nations, you know, 26 countries are all coming to Poland to climb on shit that I'm being a part of help create. So you feel the pressure, the coaches, the parents, the athletes. But then you check that box and you're like, okay, like I did it. Like, okay, like maybe I am supposed to be here. Things could have been better.

I can, I can self analyze and self assess and be like, I could have done this better and I should have done that better, but also give yourself some grace. Like you did this. Okay. You did this.

Okay. And then I think that just like develops, you know, so then, you know, I, um, for ran for my first world cup and there was a lot of nervousness in a way because a root setter has had this conversation a lot and I don't care if you've, this is your first QE that you're ever setting or literally world championships. You're you were always worried year over year of year. Like is this it? Is this my last chance?

Like I have to show my best because if I don't, what happens if I just don't get selected again? Is it, is it because of something that I could do right now or, or don't do right now? So I'm feeling quite a bit of pressure for that, but I tried to just like, okay, no, I'm good. I've been training. I feel in good shape. I, I'm going to do my best to, I'm going to try my best to be the best person of what they want to see, right? What are they, what do they need from me?

I'm going to offer that to them. I'm not going to do more, um, unless they would like to see it because I don't want to be overbearing or anything like that. Um, and just be the best asset to the team and to create the best competition that I can. That's what I always, I always go back to. So it's about the competition. Um, so I want to be a part of it. And that's the part that could feel intimidating sometimes, but less so the athletes.

Like it's almost, it's like the environment beforehand and it's like the athletes, they're, they're coming whether we like it or not. You know what I mean? Like Saturday morning comes or Friday morning comes, whatever the comp is, like those athletes are coming. Like, you know, you can sometimes like, you know, you'd be like, oh shit, like that's Adam Andra. Like he is, he's climbed some stuff, you know, or like, oh, there's a, you know, Brooke Rabbit too.

And I've been, I've been setting for her for a very, very long time, all the way like through her youth circuit. But then you see her now and you're like, you know, wow, or Natalia, that's, that's our Olympian, you know? So sometimes, you know, you kind of step back and you're like, oh wow, that can be a little bit, uh, you know, if nothing else, you're like, this is important. I need to take my job seriously here. Like, I think that's, that's that.

But as far as climbing level, uh, Ginny, that's like a trillion, trillion dollar question. And like, like outdoor grades and indoor grades and whether you climb in the South versus the North versus West Coast versus Columbia versus, you know, Iran, like sure there's like relative levels. Um, there's stylistic preferences based on area development for sure. Like if there's any truism in climbing, I would say that's one of them.

Um, but as far as competition, route setting and climbing, the one thing that I'll, I won't, I can't really answer your question so, so well, because we don't even use V grades in comp setting at all. We don't, we talk about levels. We talk about athlete success or failure given, uh, certain, uh, parameters. But one thing I'll never forget. So I was working with Josh a lot, uh, Josh Larson.

He's like, like I was mentioning, like our national team coach, Olympic team coach, and he's been a friend of mine for like years just due to the nature that we like kind of lived close and we ended up sitting at the same gym and he was the head setter and like whatever. Um, and I remember like years and years and years and years ago, he was, he's such a good climber. He's an outdoor climber, indoor climber, just like he's fucking amazing. There's no other, no other way to go around.

He's only gotten better over the years. I don't understand it. Uh, it's just, it's impressive. And I remember we went, we went up to Montreal for a comp one time, me, him, his brother and this woman, Isabel Faus, who's like the most low key crusher in American rock climbing. If you don't know who she is, look her up. She's like bananas. Like she's climbed more V 14, V 15. I think she's gone V 15. I was like, she's so good.

We went up and like, I wanted to make finals and I didn't make finals and I was bummed out and Josh made finals and I was like, dude, how do you do it? Like how do you balance, you know, like commercial route setting, competition route setting and outdoor climbing? Cause he also climbed outdoors way stronger than me. And I was like, I want to reach whatever this level or this level. And I was like struggling and he's like, dude, like at some point you got to pick one, you know?

And no matter what you're going to get better. And if you get better at one, the other one will trail and you will also, it will elevate, but like you got to pick one. And I was like, I don't want to pick one. And he's like, he's like the best athletes do, you know what I mean? Like a lot of times like you look at traditional sports, the best pitchers aren't batting cleanup and hitting grand slams, right? You look at, you know, hockey, the best scorers aren't always the best defenseman.

You know, there's like, maybe these aren't the best examples of comparison, but like sometimes you have to like pick a lane and try to focus on it and get really, really more experience or experience as you can.

And so for me, I, for what this is worth, this is a super fucking long winded way to say that like I've noticed personally that as I reduced my amount of day to day commercial route setting and involvement in traditional climbing gyms and upped my competition environment, I won't even just say like comps, but like if I, if I teach 12 to 15 clinics a year about competition route setting, I'm in a competition environment.

If I'm going on phone calls with people about like, how do we up our youth team engagement? I'm in a competition environment. If I go to a world cup, okay, I'm in a competition environment. All of a sudden now my brain is like almost rewiring to only think about like comp style and so my competition style due to all these reasons is just like elevating. So in some, in some instances I can perform quite well on competition style boulders regardless of the level.

And in other instances, like it's not even, it's not even funny. Like I'll just get like, I can't touch them, you know? And I think it's just a matter of like knowing where you best fit as a member of a team.

And sometimes, I mean, I think if nothing else, you just like keep pushing and keep trying to get better, but it's really hard for me to tell you like where do I stand to like a whatever, like a Zach Galla or I don't know, like Zach Galla is a way, way, way, way, way, way infinitely better climber than I am. You know what I mean? Like there's no competition there, but that's not his job and that's not my job. My job is not a professional athlete. His job is not a professional route setter.

The demand of each is different and rigorous and trying and in its own ways. And neither of them are right or wrong. They're just different, you know? And like if he wanted, I will say this, if he wanted to be a professional route setter, you know, granted he gained, I don't, I don't know him. Like I know him well enough. I don't know all of his ins and outs, but like granted he achieves the soft skills necessary.

He has the hard skills and the technical ability and the climbing ability to achieve whatever he would want in the competition route setting world. I would not have the same opportunity. Like I, there's no way I could, you could give me all the days and the weeks in the world and he is just a much more gifted athlete than I am, than I'll ever be. So you don't think you could like make a US national team? No, I don't think so.

I, those athletes, I know maybe like, I mean, there's certain, there's certain styles maybe that I would, that I have a preference or an affinity towards that I have found that over the years that I'm more predisposed to. And like, maybe I can do quicker than someone else or have like, I might be like, oh, that didn't, you know, in my brain, I might think like, oh, that didn't feel so bad for me.

And then I watch other athletes perform or the route setters perform and they might be struggling a little bit more. And I'll be like, huh, interesting. So yeah, there's situations like that. But if it came like down to brass tacks, like no, like I don't think so at all. I have competed though. I mean, I've competed, I competed at Vail a couple of years ago. Didn't do so great. You know, like I just, I did it more for like learning, you know, like what is it like to

be on the other side of the curtain? Because I think that helps, helped me be a little bit more well-rounded. Yeah, a bit of a detour, but you're setting for Vail this year, right? I am. Yeah. Yeah, I am super excited. I'll be in June. Probably try to get there a little bit early. The altitude is wild or the altitude elevation is wild. Oh crap. Okay. It can make performance difficult at that, at that level. Oh no, that's not good. But that's good to know. Why is that?

Are you going to go compete? I was convinced to sign up to compete by a previous podcast guest, Albert Oak. And it's coming up and I'm not ready. So just going to hope to, I don't think trying to not get last is a good goal because then I'm like, my goal is dependent on how other people are doing. So maybe I'll just like try to get a zone or something. Yeah, that's an awesome way to look at it. I think that's very astute, like don't compare your performance on others. But like that's what I did.

I was like, I just want to get like a zone. That was my goal. And I got a couple zones, got a few zones. I dropped a couple tops and I was like, damn, hell yeah, this is great. And I had a fun time and just I went into it with like more fun, like let's just enjoy. And if I think if I could unsolicitedly offer anything would just be like, if you go into it like a fun aspect, don't be like, oh my God, it's coming. I have to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like nobody cares.

There was like this article years ago that was like, nobody cares that you rock climb. You only care that you rock climb, but you think the other people care that you rock climb. You know what I mean? And it was meant to be like a conversation to yourself of like, it's only about you. Like really your performance is about you and you should be like, be kind to yourself, be kind to others kind of thing. But like just worry about yourself.

And like if you're having fun, then that's all that matters. But I will give you this bit of advice. Get there early because that elevation is fucking bananas. Like you will be sucking wind more than you care to know, literally. So yeah, a couple days, flying a couple days early, go on a couple hikes, go up to even higher, do that once or twice a day, eat a bunch of extra food, bunch of extra water, drink too much alcohol. That will help you a lot. Oh gosh.

Okay. I don't know why Vale was suggested. I should have chosen a different one. I like... There's only, only Salt Lake is the other one. Yeah. I should have done this. Vale's cool though. Vale's like, you're going to get there. Have you been there? No. You're going to get there and you're going to be like, okay, this is why I chose this one. Because the vent, like the environment, the venue, the spectacle, the like feel of it is just like, it's very, it's pretty powerful.

Like this is, this is climbing to me when you just like see all these people come together, there's mountains behind you. There's people who don't know really about climbing at all, who are there like supporting climbers. The amount of spectators is for sure bigger than any other event that we have. Like it, I don't mean that to scare you, but it's like, there's a lot of people there who are like fucking psyched that there's climbing going on. And to me that gets me psyched.

Well, that'll be cool to see. I mean, yeah. I'm mostly just signing up to get the experience, see what it's about. I, yeah, I don't even know how it goes. Like I don't think, I don't, do people watch qualifiers? Yeah. Oh yeah. It's like a fair venue. So like anyone who's in like that Vale village, they'll just like walk up, you know, and hang out. And it's also like a whole weekend. So it, it's like the GoPro games. So they have like a youth component and they have a citizens component.

It's like, there are a lot of people who just come to experience climbing in the mountains, you know, and come hang out in Vale even. Cause it's just like a cool place. I mean, yeah, there'll be people there watching qualifiers and if nothing else too, there's like depending on number of participants will have like multiple waves. So like, let's say you're in wave two, like all the wave one folks are going to watch wave two and see how they perform. And you know what I mean?

No matter what that's going to happen though. That's going to happen in Salt Lake. That's going to happen in, you know, in Vale. So that just happens. I'm starting to regret this decision a bit. You're going to do just fine. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll, I'll message you. You can let me know what the boulders are. I can prepare.

Yeah. Uh, you know, this has been awesome, but I definitely respectfully won't do that, but I'll tell you how much fun that you're going to have and that you should definitely come. Yeah. Okay. Maybe see you there. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, to distract myself from thinking about that anymore, let's get back into the route setting. How long are your days for route setting comparatively between sitting for IFSC versus maybe like

a national comp versus a local competition? I'd say that like if it's a upper level, like national comp, you know, like let's say an NACS or, um, I mean, honestly, any, honestly, any of the national comps, they're all, they all have a different amount of, there's different things about them that make them have more effort here versus more effort there.

And the example might be like, look at youth boulders, like the level of boulder problem on any individual youth climb is like vastly lower than let's say your elite level nationals, like your open nationals. And then even more so comparatively to like, you know, a world cup, right? But you have like a trillion boulders to set, you know? So it's like this, there's just so many rounds of climbing.

So you know, but then you look at, you know, a world cup bouldering, you might say, okay, I have very few boulders to set relatively speaking, but the level and attention to detail and the viewership, right? The optics that we talked about earlier, there's just so much going on that you have to see to spend this time to make sure that it is as right or as close to right as you think as possible.

So nationals and like a world cup, you know, they're pretty similar in terms of time investment, I'd say. The days look differently, what you're doing with your body and your time on those days might be a little bit different. Definitely you have to have, and depending on the level of competition, like let's say I said, okay, we'll have Vail Citizens, right?

Which is like a red point round in Vail versus an NACS versus a Youth Boulders Nationals versus an Adult Boulders Nationals and a World Cup. You have this kind of like gradient almost of maybe they all roughly have a similar time or something like that, like of investment that you have to set.

But what is asked of you as a rootsetter in terms of creativity and then as well as like physical demand in terms of performance on boulder problems to be like the most valuable member possible on the team increases. You know what I mean? So you just have to have the experience to back that a lot of times. It doesn't mean that you have to, oh, everyone on the team has to climb AB if you're putting a World Cup. That's not the case.

But you have to, if you're not that person, you have to have then other skill sets to help offset maybe that differential in some way, or at least add to it, maybe not offset, but like add to it. That's definitely not to say that the strongest rootsetters in terms of physical capability are the best rootsetters. There's many, many instances where that's actually not the case and that sometimes that can be a hindrance.

So a lot of them people think like, oh, it's just these boulder bros who just like grunt and take their shirts off and bro down. Like no, maybe in the past, I don't know, maybe in the past that was a thing. I personally do not enjoy that on my teams, whether I'm the chief or I'm an assistant or whatever. Definitely something that is more like low key and communal and like together goes quite a long way for me.

But we do have a job to do and you do have to be able to, sometimes, sometimes you just someone has to do the move. Sometimes someone has to do the sequence and, you know, support that person in that moment or support that team in that moment. That's what's critical. And it's nice. It feels really, really, really, really nice if you can be that person sometimes, you know, if you're like, oh, the team needs me right now.

Like, all right, like I can do this, you know, and that's those are my favorite, like personally my favorite, favorite moments. Like if there's, you know, it's 3 a.m. This thing isn't going, you feel like you're spinning wheels and you're like, okay, the team needs something right now. We're gonna put on some good music, you know, like drink a coffee and we're gonna like start firing things here. And that's I love that. That's great.

And that balance is key. What makes a route setting team work for you? So we talk about this a lot in different like workshop and clinics that I do. It's like what makes a great route setter or better even to go further, like what makes a great route setter that you know, like someone that you know, what makes them, what sets them apart. So maybe this is a similar question.

So from like an individual level, someone who's a good communicator, someone who's able to like both give and receive feedback well and in different ways at different times, someone who's able to manage stress well, someone who's able to manage themselves and their own personal life well.

I know that sounds silly, but like, are you someone that like needs to like have their handheld to like go get food, go get coffee, go get water, go like whatever, or are you someone who's like a self-starter and can like knows when they need to turn it on and turn it back and like manage their own performance throughout the week? Do you have a good attitude? Are you fun to be around? Do I want to spend the next nine days with you? You know, because I make this joke sometimes.

It's like a lot of times, you know, we'll be in hotel rooms together or like, you know, rooms that have bunk beds or something like that. And it's like, if you and I are on a team, do I want to be with dealing with Ginny every day? And I mean that in every sense of the word, like respectfully, like I wake up and I open my eyes and there she is across the room staring at me.

And then I go downstairs and she's brushing her teeth and then like she's making coffee and then we go to the wall and then we're conversing during the day and then we eat lunch and it just goes and then you and then you go to bed. Good night. And you close your eyes. Right. And then I see last thing I see, like you want this person to be somebody that you like care to be around, you know, and if things get tough, what is their response to things that are tough? How do they deal with that?

And that can be a quite an important thing as a team member as well. Like what's your penchant for dealing with adversity in difficult times? So those are just, I mean, then there's all the hard skills, you know, climbing ability level, mastery of movement, you know, are they able to use their resources creatively? Do they know the field? Do they know how to calibrate if this, then this, right? What do those skill sets look like on the fly or do they need to be told? You know what I mean?

Like there's quite a lot of things, but those are some of them. Oh yeah. It's like a whole relationship. Yeah, no, literally. Yeah. It's like such a relationship with eight other people, you know, or seven other people, you know? Yeah. And I think a diverse team too. Like I definitely do not love when it doesn't happen so often anymore, but like when all the climbers look the same, feel the same, climb the same. That's not great.

Jack of all trades, master a none is I think increasingly a thing of the past for a high performance route setting. I think naturally you have to have an exceptional level of all these things that I mentioned, including climbing styles and whatever. But if you have a few things that you're like exceptional at that really set you apart, that are like the ace up your sleeve, that's fucking awesome.

Because like if I'm like, oh yeah, Ginny, like I really need this like men's quarter boulder to be like really hard, like really only want like to see three zones and like one to two tops. And you're like, got it. I know exactly what you're looking for. I've done this a million times. And that's not to say that you're like the end all be all, but like your knowledge of what that level looks like and how that's going to present itself on the wall.

And ultimately, yeah, okay, there's different ways we can do it, but you have a good feeling and then you can get that feeling really close so that with the team or the small group can come together and the team can come together and make adjustments or adaptions as needed and have the conversation.

And ultimately, you know, we make the calls as the team, but you can get us there a lot closer as opposed to like if you were or I was like, I don't know, I'm not really good at Cordo or I'm not really great at that style or I'm not, you know, like I don't really know what that looks like. Then your first draft or second draft might actually be quite far off, right? And then there's more effort that needs to be put in. So you just multiply that out over the work week.

And before you know it, you're like, ah, it's pretty sweet to have different people who are good at different things and different sizes and different, you know, knowledge bases all coming together. What's your expertise? My expertise? I don't know. I like to be fun to be around. I like to like make people be happy and have a good comp week and motivate people. And those things are quite important to me. I'd say if it was like a climbing style, I try really hard to work on my weaknesses.

My weaknesses are like I'm really not great at like small holds overhanging. For example, I'm a bigger guy, probably the heaviest international like person who sets internationally for competitions by quite a bit, like 200 pounds if I'm feeling fit as a fiddle. Usually sit around like 215, 220, 225, sometimes more. But then with that, right, that's not just all negative. You know, I typically retain muscle a little bit differently than your average climber.

So things that are more pushing oriented, those like jump press moves, you know, even on more difficult versions. I actually for me personally, they feel like once they're finalized, I'm like, oh, okay, that doesn't feel so bad. Like you're talking like upper body triceps and biceps. And I'm like, oh, I have that. Like that's cool, you know, maybe. But if I'm grabbing small edges in a roof and doing all kinds of crazy moves, like that's much harder for me.

Lower body cordial, upper body, lower body and like, you know, I was kind of discussing earlier like those I found higher success with and then even like certain types of slab as well, maybe not the most technical and precise on like very small edges. Again, I have like a bigger chest. So a lot of times it like pushes me back a little bit and the center of gravity isn't as ideal for my pinnacle of performance as I would love it.

But if it's like I have really weirdly like flexible ankles, probably from like playing hockey and that lower body lower leg power is pretty good. So I think like in those types of situations where I can accentuate that and then maybe like strong lower back and stuff again, like for pushing and pressing and compressing too. I mean, that's fine. But if I were to pick a few things that maybe those would be more standouty. So that's kind of what you bring to your setting as well. It depends.

Like if it's like a local comp or a regional or divisional, something like that, like then relatively speaking, everything for me, I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable at providing any, any whatever the team needs. I'm comfortable providing that in any situation. I feel like I have the experience now and the knowledge to like draw from actual moments in time and be like, and apply them to the setting.

So for, yeah, especially for the lower level, lower level events, like, yeah, okay, whatever, whatever you need. But then if it's like, if someone's like, all right, Cody, we need you to set like the hardest thing and we really need it to be like unique and special and funky or whatever, what do you got for me that you only, and you only got an hour, you know, like you, there's like some time constraint or something like that.

I'm going to, anybody I think would naturally default to the thing that you feel the most comfortable with because you're like, okay, there's constraints here. There's eyes on me. I have to achieve this goal. I'm probably going to default to one of those things that I previously mentioned unless explicitly as otherwise, in which case, hey, all right, like I'm up for a challenge. Let's go. And then one last question about routes setting in general. I think I feel this way.

I think a few other people have felt this as well. I feel like when I watch USA, like national comps, the setting feels and looks pretty different from what I see on like an international circuit. And I just, I don't really know why.

Is this something that you feel like is the case or are we just like, are we just seeing things? I don't think that you're just seeing things. Cause if you're feel like your feelings are valid, right? You're picking up on something. What that is to you, I don't, I don't know, but I would, I mean, maybe I'd ask some questions as to like, do you think that it's, it's probably pattern driven, but what type of pattern? I don't know. Are there movement patterns that maybe you feel that are different?

Is it like hold shapes as patterns? Is it like the placement of holds or volumes? It could be stylistically. Are we representing different things? And I'd say any number of these could be the case.

If nothing else, I would say that if you've, depending on how long anyone has been following competition climbing for, this will help inform this like next part, but like, let's say you've only been really following competition climbing since like 2019 or 2020 in the U S then unfortunately you've only got to really see our high level events in climbing gyms. Prior to that, you were seeing our events being held at very large scale convention centers. So like for both youth and adult nationals.

So that alone with like having like this big wall that is shipped in with holds that are shipped in with like even the camera angle, like you're not like when you see a camera angle, it's like the wall and then the backlighting and the judges and the audience, right?

Like if you look back at, I don't know, Madison, Wisconsin, 2016 adult bouldering nationals, you know, okay, you'll see like dated holds maybe, and maybe the movement styles are a little bit more like OG, but the feel you'll be like, oh, this is like a presentation. Like they're, they've created an environment here. Whereas for like a trillion reasons that take a whole other three hour conversation to get through, you said climbing has shifted things quite a bit.

And now you see our nationals, like I think last, you know, the last couple of years, they're being held at, at a commercial climbing gyms. And so I think that does, if, if all other things are held equal, that feel is a little bit lost, you know, that like presentation is a little bit lost because, you know, you're seeing like these like super high end climbs being put on commercial climbing walls.

And I don't know what it is, but like maybe, maybe if you look back or like anyone who's listening like looks back, you might be able to identify what that looks like for yourself. Because I know, I know I see it and I feel it, but maybe that's just like me as like a roots header who's been kind of on both sides of the coin there.

And I, with the IFSC, you see like a very, like if it's a world cup, you see a very, very pointed and concerted effort by the event organizers and the IFSC to create this like exceptionally high quality competition environment. So if nothing else, I think you notice that, that'd be my guess, but you're probably noticing other things as well. Hold sponsors are different, right? Volume sponsors are sitting in different flavor of climbing is maybe, maybe favored here or there a little bit more.

So, so you don't like explicitly go into a comp thinking that you'll set maybe like something more powerful for a national competition versus like something more flashy for a world cup. No, but I think, I think that's a good point. I think it that happens naturally, because like there's certain styles of moves and certain certain aspects of climbing that like, whether we like it or not, they're just gonna it's, it's gonna be really hard to represent at a lower level. I'll give you an example.

I've referenced this comp earlier, like Marengin, I think it was 2021 or 2022. There was, it was like one of the first years where they released these, like the cheetah ball volumes. They're like these orange slices, basically. And they're like, as you build them out, or as you like stack them, they build out the wall.

Anyways, they, they kind of unveiled them there, if my memory serves, and they set this like, I don't know, penta paddle across the wall with like black volumes and blue holds and all these athletes are maybe it was even like six paddles. I don't know. I just remember seeing just like flying with these athletes.

It just, it just looked like, like a, like a gif that was just like perfectly edited, you know, or they just like constantly hand moves like going like this and seemingly like never stopped. Like, I don't, I just don't know if there's a world where you can represent that really well in a youth nationals or an ACS and still meet the needs of the event. You know, maybe there's an athlete who could do that. Cool. But that athlete's going to perform on every other style as well.

If they're that far above and beyond, they're going to perform well at other things as well. So maybe then as Root Setters, we could do a better job at like allowing the rest of the field to perform, to compete, to show their skills and not just smash them and then make this the, you know, little Timmy show or whatever it is, you know, like, so I think at the highest level, you can really, really push those things because those athletes are the highest level athlete. Okay. That makes sense.

Good explanation. Okay. Let's move on to your personal gym pursuit that's coming up. You are starting up your own gym.

Where are you in the process of that? And also how long has it been? Because I, you made it sound earlier, like it's, it's been a really long time. In my mind, it's been a really long time. Basically when I, when I'm up here, like where we're at, it's a, it's like, I don't know, it's like an hour south of Boston and an hour east of Providence. That's kind of how I'm describing it to folks who aren't from around here.

It's like southeastern Massachusetts, not quite Cape Cod, but it's like a climbing dead zone. There's just like not climbing around here, both outdoor. There's some outdoor if you, if you drive a bit indoor, it's, there's nothing, there's nothing down the Cape.

As you approach Boston, there's increasingly some climbing and as you approach Providence, there's increasingly some, but you know, if I'm being as objective as I can, not as a gym owner or soon to be gym owner, the quality of the gym experience is lacking tremendously, even at the gyms that exist that are up to, you know, an hour plus away. So I would, you know, drive to these places and I'm like, God damn it.

I'm like spending all day getting stuck in traffic, fighting, spending, you know, $30 on a day pass and like climbing on these, these environments. And I'm just like not inspired by at all. And but why is it that I go to, I go to Southern California, I go to Miami, I go to, I go to Houston, you know, wherever I go to anywhere. And like they, they're pushing and there's a lot of reasons for that, I think.

But I was like, all right, I'm tired of, I'm tired of coming home and not climbing, you know, because I just, I got to a point where I just refused. I was just like, you know, I'm done. I'm not driving an hour, an hour and a half each way to, to do this. So yeah, we opened, we, I created this like concept and then I, you know, was talking to my wife about it and I was talking to my partners, now partners about it.

And so, you know, we've, we were kind of flirting with the idea for a while, like, ah, this could be cool. Maybe we'll do a co-op, maybe we'll do even just like something small. And then, you know, all things kind of came together and we were like, okay, let's like make an actual bouldering gym. And so, and depending on what your timeline you're actually looking at, I mean, we didn't sign the lease on our space until November of last year.

So it's only been a couple months and we've been building out since. We finalized the design process. So all the angles are fixed and the walls are looking sharp and even the interior, like just moving right along, painting and repairs and all that kind of stuff because it's in an old bank. It's in a bank from the 1800s. Whoa. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, pretty wild. It's a really unique looking space. Like if you look at it from the outside, you're like, there's no way it's climbing.

It's like a huge cut quarried granite that was shipped in. And like the interior is all like this yellow cream marble that was shipped in from Italy in the 1800s. It's like brass fixtures and like mahogany. Yeah, in the climbing gym. There's like fireplaces in every room. Super cool. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's wild. So we're cruising. We're chugging right along. We're hoping to be open by May, June. Maybe that's a bit...

Yeah, maybe it's a bit ambitious, but it really just depends on the city signing off on our plans basically. And the city in particular, this one is a little, can be difficult sometimes for weird reasons. And then engineering, because it is such an old space, just making sure that the floors are going to support the uplift loads for the angles and stuff. But we have strategies if certain things don't go the way we want, it just, they could take longer is all.

So if nothing else, I mean, yeah, summertime, be open. Be like a little over 3,000 square feet of space, 3,200.

I designed the walls and picked out the holds myself and kind of have a combo basically of kind of like your old school New England climbing, because there's a huge amount of people who are very attached to that, but also provide opportunities for this newer age of climbing and route setting experience for folks and offering that in our commercial day-to-day setting, but also bringing in athletes and teams from around.

So like I was talking with Natalia the other day, and we're going to be working together for a couple of things and kind of in her preparation to Paris. And depending on timeline and a trillion other things, who knows, like I'll try to get her in and run like right when we open, run like her and maybe Jesse through a workshop or a simulation or something like that.

So providing the resources to kind of do all the things because I want people to be able to like a lot of times, especially around here, you know, if they have a cool set of holds, cool set of fiberglass or volumes, they get like earmarks for like V8 and up or something. But the general climbing community might be climbing V4 or V5.

And so my concept was like, I want people who climb V2 to have like the coolest holds and volumes to like play on and explore and learn and like because look at the repeatability for that. Like no matter what you climb, you always need to warm up or you should be warming up. So you're going to climb that V2 again. But then the people who are projecting that can climb it. People who climb V3 are going to climb. You know what I mean?

Like so investing really in like all levels of the community and not just like cutting corners because like traditionally that's what we've done. I don't know. Trying to like push it, push it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's always good to keep like beginners in mind and setting attractive boulders for beginners as well. What are your favorite parts of the gym that kind of set it apart for you?

Or like sometimes when I walk into like a friend's new house or something, I just want to know like what quirks of their house or apartment they really like. So what is that for you in this gym? I think it's all the strangeness of the old build. So it was an old Federal Reserve Bank. Like I was saying, I think it was built in like 1896. You know, like huge granite blocks, wrought iron, steel, there's stained glass windows inside. I was mentioning the marble.

Like all the fixtures are like kind of grand. It was like a lot of it was renovated in the 20s. So it was art deco feel, 39 foot clear height ceilings. There's mosaic work on the floor. There's like white marble tile on the floor. Like, you know what I mean? It's just like crazy. It almost feels like a museum, you know? But like we're going to put new age climbing in there.

And so I don't know, I just want, I want it to be a place and I think it'll be a place where people like generally can just like go and like hang out, you know, and like, yeah, you want to climb a little bit cool, but you can just like hang out with your buddies, get a coffee and like see what's up and kind of be that like communal watering hole. But then also have all the amenities of people who want to like train and get stronger too.

Like we're going to have a board room, which funny enough is in like a previous conference board room that has like these, you know, chandeliers and you know, like I said, like multiple stained glass windows and huge fireplaces and stuff and like put, you know, a kilter board in there. Like we're building our kilter board, like I was just building it two days ago.

And then, you know, put all of your like training tools, like there will never be a lack of training tools, you know, like whatever hang boards that we want or certain types of edges or like tension blocks or weight vests, you know, provide all the things for whatever type of climber that you want to be or that you are here, but create an environment that you like genuinely want to be around. It's not like, well, I got to go to the gym to get strong to go send the project outside.

It's like, no, actually, like, I kind of like hanging out here. Like that's what I want. I want people to like have that authentic climbing community and experience. So that part's cool. And the location is like pretty special too. So like in this historic district of this city that, so the city is New Bedford, Massachusetts. And at one time was the wealthiest city in the world. It was the Golden City. They called it, it was the whaling capital, whaling capital of the world.

So back in the whaling days, it's got all this like super cool history from like whaling and like those kind of old times, all still accentuated throughout the downtown area with cobblestone streets and like huge old lamp posts and stuff like that.

So even if you like had a morning session or something like that or an afternoon session, you could like go down, go down the street and like walk down to the wharf and like catch a ferry to Martha's Vineyard or something like that, or like go get some like food from these like really cool, unique restaurants that are nearby and like all these like old bars and I don't know, it just like has like a cool vibe that you could like go explore and learn a lot too also.

So those are the quirks, I guess. Sounds like a super cool space. I'll have to check it out. Do you like care about cafes in the gym or like yoga or I don't know what else do people look for? Yeah, I love all that stuff. I'm super into like cafes and bars and stuff in gyms like the more Euro style. For better or for worse, I think for better, we do not have that in our gym because literally across the street, like right across the street, we have this like long standing cafe that's very popular.

So like, yeah, you like walk across two lanes and you're at the cafe. And then for bars and drinks and stuff, like doesn't matter which direction you go in. There's like restaurants, foods, bars, depending if you want like a low key kind of divey experience or you want to like get bougie and like, you know, whatever, like dress up afterwards, like any in the whole range, like truly.

You want live music, you want DJ, you want quiet, you want like outdoor patio, you want upstairs, downstairs, you know what I mean? Like there's just so many places you could go. So we didn't feel like a need to really force that in our own space and we'd rather use that space for more climbing and all that. And then as far as like yoga and stuff, same thing. There's yoga and bar studio one block away. That's like pretty prominent in the area.

So again, like we don't need to rather like bolster the community and not feel like we need to like try to pull and take from those folks. Like they've been here for a long time. They're doing a good thing. I'm not going to step on your toes, you know, like just do your thing. And hopefully we could have some like cross pollination, you know, maybe some yogis want to start climbing, maybe some climbers want to start some yoga. It's all good for me. That makes sense.

I think a lot of times climbing gyms are in locations where it's like an old business park or like warehouses. So it's nice to have those built in. But it sounds like you're in a really prime location. Yeah, it's kind of bananas. There's for the past like 45 years, the city has been trying to get this train station. It's like it would be like the termination for this north to south Boston regional transit. So in the Boston area, it's called the T, the MBTA.

And that does like, you know, if you're in Boston proper or just outside, it'll do all the normal train things. But there's a regional train that will run like to a point. It'll run just so far north and just so far south. But then there's like these communities that are just outside of that, that are like for years have been like, guys, give us the train because we have the people we have. All these people are commuting every day to work anyways to Boston.

So finally, I don't know what gave but they're expanding, I think the north and the south terminus points. And so New Bedford, about one mile or maybe not even a mile, quarter of a mile from where we're at, will have this stop.

So now I'm feel very certain that like the whole economic growth for the area is going to increase because people will be like, oh, I can live here now and just like hop in the train and go work in Boston, or people in Boston and be like, oh, cool, I'm going to go hang out down in New Bedford for the weekend and go climbing, you know, like it just opens up the possibilities for everybody. And just kind of allow folks to more easily access, you know, different parts of the state. Sounds cool.

I can't wait for it to open. I'll let people know. I don't know anyone who lives in Massachusetts, I think, but if I do, I'll let them know. Thanks. Yeah, we'll be doing lots of projects and stuff too, like workshops, training camps, all that kind of thing. So it might even be an opportunity for folks who don't live like super close by to like maybe make an investment to come visit for whatever project that we're working on.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Okay. Well, we can start moving into Discord questions from the community. I had one that was about the gym, so we'll just get into that one right now. What's the difference between setting for World Cups compared to setting comp style boulders in a gym? Definitely the... I mean, other than difficulty, obviously. Yeah. The field, like the field of play, or not the field of play, but the field, like who are we setting for? So like it's a broad field versus a narrow field.

So broad field is like your commercial, even if it's for like a World Cup style climb, it needs to be accessible for a greater range of people, for a greater range of body sizes, greater range of experience. Whereas a World Cup, I'm like, cool, who's in finals? All right. That's our minimum in terms of height. That's our maximum in terms of height and reach. Here's where they're like, here's where they excel. Here's where they have difficulty. Here's previous rounds of performance.

Oh, they're tired. Oh, they're feeling great. It's like hyper-calibrated typically at higher levels of climbing, just because we have more information. There's more quantitative information that we can pull from. And it's for this moment in time, right now. This is occurring at this moment. Whereas you set a World Cup style climb at the gym, you have more things you need to just caretake for and typically provide more opportunities for play and experience and success within those things.

So that'd probably be the biggest differential. But it's cool because you can still play with those things and represent climbing movements and styles that you've seen at high level events as well. Do you have to think about safety a bit more, maybe? I would say. I'd say that's a fair point. I mean, I never personally, this is just small potatoes, but I never say safety. I always say risk management, just to be like...

Because no matter what, even if you have a really experienced climber, shit happens. But yeah, I think people's own ability to self-manage their risk, I feel like there's probably a phrase for it. And I think there is, and I just can't think of it. But if you're a high-performing athlete, we can ask a lot of you and you can self-assess your risk. And then if something goes wrong, you're likely to know how to deal with it in time and space. So it's actually less risky, quote, quote.

You know what I mean? But if you put a similar version of a thing on the wall for a less experienced climber, they're almost like, depending on where they're at and who they are, they might self-assess themselves to be greater at the thing than they actually are, but not have the requisite skills to get themselves out of jail, so to speak, if they fuck up. And so they're actually way more prone to risk because they're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Hold my beer, watch this.

And then they're going way over their head, unknowingly so, and then are more likely to get injured and have the severity be higher. That's just my feeling on it. So yeah, you have to calibrate that quite a bit to make sure that you're doing your best to not, I don't know, you don't want to see people get hurt no matter the instance, but you have to be more careful in the commercial environment. For nothing else, there's more people. There's more people climbing on it.

True. Yeah. Yeah, that makes it hard as well. But yeah, I guess that's more of a body awareness kind of thing, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Next one. What's your favorite round, I guess probably in World Cups, gender and qualities versus semis versus finals? What's your favorite round of those to set for and why? I think, I mean, maybe this is expected, but I think finals for any gender though. I don't have a preference on setting for male or female. They're both super fun. I don't know.

Each group can do an incredible amount of fantastic moves and crazy things. Some of the boulders this year that I had a highest affinity for might have been for women's semis, but then others might be men's finals. But I think on the whole, I really like finals because it's this moment. Everyone's together and everyone's watching and the drinks are flowing, the music's going. It's this crazy feeling and the atmosphere.

It's like, all right, it all comes down to this, to these four boulders and the announcer and the DJ. I don't know. It just feels very exciting. When you're setting, you're kind of like, it's always hard. You forget during the setting week, you're like, oh wait, this is going to happen in this way. You go through it and you're like, holy shit. Yeah, that's right. That's what this was for. I think maybe something like that. That's not too obvious of an answer.

Obviously while you're setting, not all of that is going on. I don't know if you feel that energy while you're setting finals boulders versus if it

all feels the same to you. I think that's totally fine. What are the top mistakes setters make in commercial setting and how do you avoid these? Probably a lot of them are soft skill driven. Communication or lack thereof, feedback or lack thereof, understanding how to work with your team or lack thereof. I think those are some of the biggest because I don't know, regardless of your setting ability, I don't know if you've ever set before. No, that's not for me.

Conceptually, I could fly to Southern California or wherever you're at and be like, all right, Jenny, here's what we're going to do. Here's some bolts, here's how they attach and here's just some pointers so that way you can just move forward and you could set a climb. Anyone can do it. In that regard, it's zero barrier to entry. You just have to want to do it, whether or not it's going to be good or bad or whatever.

If I said, Jenny, set me a ladder to get from bottom to top, at the very least, you could pick out the biggest jugs, put them in a horizontal line and those hands would then become feet and then you'd get to the top of the wall. When it comes to that, there's no mistakes. It's just your choices of how to attach things to the wall.

inevitably there's such a diverse group of people who are climbing on your climbs that inevitably there's going to be some people who like or dislike or love or hate or whatever about your climbs. What really matters is how are you working with your team? How are you working with your company? Are you showing up on time? You know what I mean? Are you being lazy or are you always the person who's rushing around to help others? Those are massive wins or losses depending on what you're doing.

If you're always that person who's willing to lend a hand and provide good feedback, even when the feedback isn't good and it's constructive, are you able to provide that feedback constructively in a way that the other person receives it well? Because different people receive feedback differently. That's a fact of life. Can you calibrate for that? That's massive. Then having the longevity.

Knowing when to turn it on, when to turn it off, knowing your own body, knowing your own mind, being able to do it day in and day out. It's not just setting for a day. If it's commercially, it's setting for a life. It's setting for a salary. It's setting for your family because you're providing and you're getting compensated in some way.

You need to make sure that you have this ability to continue if that is your goal. I think managing that is quite important. Yeah. I did a setting clinic once, just like an intro, just to try it out. Yeah. Definitely it was not for me. I put something up, hated it. I think Flannery was leading that clinic. Oh, nice. I love Flann. Flann and I get to talk quite a lot, we're both on the root setting committee.

We chat quite a bit on different projects and trying to get them to come up with me to Montreal in the next couple of months and do a big clinic up there. Flann's awesome, 10 out of 10. Really good clinic, but yeah, I just couldn't do it. I was talking to them about the climb and I was about to cry. I was so bad. I was so upset. Then at the end, they were asking, does everyone want to try setting again or have interest in it and everyone raised their hand except for me.

I was like, I can't, it's too much. It's a lot. It's a lot. You're always putting your heart on your sleeve, but you're putting your heart on a sleeve in a way that's kinesthetic that everyone is grabbing, whether or not you want them to. You have to show it and everyone gets to touch it and beat on it and love it and hate it. If nothing else, it can be an emotionally demanding profession for sure. Yeah, emotionally, physically, it was everything.

It was also just like, I'm still trying to get stronger and it was so physically exhausting that it just wouldn't let me climb after. Yeah, that's a super fair point. A lot of people forget that aspect of it. It's like, oh, why didn't this setter just do that? That setter probably made that tweak at the seventh hour of the day out of eight and it's a Thursday and they've been here since Monday. Maybe they were just exhausted and they just didn't see it because they're so tired.

It's like that personification of the products that were... It's a balance because on one hand, if you're a member of a climbing gym, you're like, I don't care your excuse, give me the product that I pay for because that's fair because you're paying a premium, especially where you're at. If you're in California, there's a lot of gyms that you can vote for with your money.

You want the highest caliber of the thing, but then the other side of it is, well, it's people creating this thing for you to experience. Just having a little bit of a understanding of that can go quite a long way too.

It's just constant back and forth. Yeah, there's a lot to it. But yeah, back to the questions. This was from a previous guest, a Paraclimber. Will there be any facilities in your gym for the Paraclimbing community? That's a great question and I'll be honest. This is the minimum, of course. It's going to be ADA compliant because it has to be. So I'm not going to be like, oh yeah, look at us. But I don't know really much about Paraclimbing. I'll be the first to say that.

But thankfully, some of my closest friends either have been, are, or will be chiefs for Paranationals and also run a lot of Para events. So that's a great, really great question that frankly I haven't thought about throughout this process. Right now I've kind of been thinking about a lot of the wall design and stuff like that. I haven't thought about the other stuff.

But that's a really, really good question that now I'm going to probably make some phone calls after this or some text messages and be like, hey, what can we do to make this more accessible? Some cool things, we have elevators throughout all of the facility. So that's cool. No matter if you want to go train upstairs, you want to train downstairs. But as far as specific setting for Para athletes, I honestly just frankly hadn't considered that.

Especially up here, I haven't noticed any advocacy for it. But now that's actually probably a, I mean it's got to be a massive community up here that's underserved. That would just extend to reason. So whoever that climber is, thank you for that. Now you got my wheels turning. So I don't know what we don't know yet, but I do know that we will absolutely, like I tell you we're going to put our best foot forward with that.

So it's like Aaron Davis and Noel Heckel and Miles West, Kenny Benson, like all these folks are and woman Mia DePolis, like they're all nationals, para nationals setters and stuff like that. And then also have some typically some personal connection to the para world, whether that's family members or friends or something like that. So I'm going to get some advice on that. Yeah, that was Anita Agarwal. But yeah, maybe you'll see if there's a community up there or maybe you'll start the community

up there. That's an awesome idea. Awesome. Okay. Two more. So which athlete is the hardest to set for or type of climbers hardest to set for? They said I'm assuming Yanya is somewhere at the top of that list. I feel like Yanya is easy to set for because she's just going to do it. You know what I mean?

Like I'm not like easy to set for that's maybe like a misnomer, but like you never like you never really like worried if whether or not like if we're like ever worried, like I don't know if someone's going to do that boulder and if Yanya is competing, we're like, well, yeah, and it's just going to do it. I don't know hardest athlete to set for.

I think it's just probably mostly when you get some of the extremes in terms of body size in like finals because there is and I mean, we talked about Innsbruck a little bit. There isn't there wasn't any like super I don't think Stasha made finals like Stasha is the tallest girl I think or Oceana.

So if you have like one of them and let's say I in finals, you're like, fuck, that's hard because you just like you know, you want to represent all the styles and all the things we talked about today and also like what is the experience differential for them on this move versus this move versus this zone versus this top and then you again balance in the optics of it. You balance in their own personal performance. It's quite difficult. Same thing on the men's side.

If you have this one's a little bit maybe easier sometimes like if you have Seratu versus like Mechi, I always say their names. I don't pronounce their names right. So I'm sorry, but I need to get better. I know there's like some accent there, but the nice thing is, is that like Seratu is so fucking strong that like just given any inkling of opportunity, he's going to like find a way through it.

So it almost is like a little bit of a setter get out of jail free to some degree as long as it's not like a completely statically static tension demanding position where you like the only way to do this move is if you keep all these three points of contact on as long as you avoid that then like or you avoid the situation where something like someone's super tall like Adam or Mechi can just reach and get his own.

As long as you avoid those two things, like otherwise you kind of can play a little bit more just because like I was saying like Seratu is good at every style. He's good at the jumps. He's good at the slab. He's good at tech. He's good at the swings. He's like, he's just good. Whereas like, you know, Ai is amazing athlete, but she definitely has more of a gradient of like style preference.

Yeah, like her strengths are incredibly strong and her weaknesses are quite weak, but they also fall in line a lot of times, I feel like with her size. And so it can feel even more challenging at times. So yeah, I'd say it has nothing to do with the tallest or the strongest or the weakest. It's like when you get them in some sort of order for a finals, that can be where it's tricky when there's a massive discrepancy in those things as when it gets, you just have to have a much finer tooth comb.

And even with the finer tooth comb, you're more likely to make a mistake. So sounds like someone who's overall good at everything is just the easiest person. Don't even have to. It's great. Yeah, if you're there, the chances are high that the boulders all get done. Even if you get if you're like, oh, this boulder felt really hard. Like she's just really good, you know, so chances are she's going to do it.

I guess maybe the asker was wondering if it's hard to set for her because a lot of times after when she gets interviewed, she's always like, oh, like, wasn't that interesting or it wasn't. Yeah, I think she has she handles herself really well in those situations because you can see it that she wants to push more and try more. You saw her after Burn. She flashed every boulder in the World Championship finals. Just did so well. And everyone else struggled. Everyone else was a performance.

Everyone else it was like a battle. And she just all the way. And in some ways, you're like, yeah, yeah, you're right. I don't know what to do about you. You're winning in casual style, time in and time out. But it's like not just respectfully, it's not just about you. There's five other women in your field just for finals or there's 19 other women in semis who also would like a chance to perform and a chance to succeed and showcase their skills.

And then sometimes, sometimes as we know, there is still a chance for Rania to make a mistake and that athlete to perform through. So just as much as we're not always setting, you know, for any one specific style, we're never setting for one specific climber. We just have to like open the doors of possibility for everyone and allow them themselves to

shine through. OK, making it to the last question. You kind of touched on this a little, but how much do you think setters are able to sway rounds for particular athletes? And are there any current safeguards or are the current safeguards enough or is bias setting going to be a problem in the next few years? I'd say the safeguards are like every setter, like if you're talking about like IFC stuff, every setter is coming from a different country or just about. Like there's no way.

Like it's everything is so communal, like, OK, Janice, that's a boulder. Great. And if let's say Ginny was a terrible human being and just said, I really want so and so to win, if she really knew so and so. Yeah, like you knew their style and there was some way like I mean, I guess that you could try to do that. But then but then the small group would come over, because usually come over with like another group of like two or three or four people. And then we would make give you feedback.

And you can't just say no, it doesn't work that way. You know, you can't just be like, no, fuck you. We're not doing that. It's so much more collaborative. And then the chief has to check mark the boulder. And then like it just be so excruciatingly obvious to anyone on the setting team that that was the case that like we'd be like, no, like this isn't happening. Like it's not I don't know. Like to me, it's just like so far away from a possibility.

But the funny thing is, is that that person who's asking this question is right. Like in in theory, there's like really no other world where like people can create this field of play that performance is then kind of judged on. I mean, maybe you have like skiing like or snowboarding in some instances. I mean, if like golf might be the closest thing if golf courses changed. But golf courses don't change. You know what I mean? But like in theory, like someone's creating them, right?

Like you have a golf course, I don't know what they call them, like a designer, creator. And like they're the ones determining how long is the drive going to be? How many? What's the par supposed to be? What is our tree situation looking like in terms of obstacles? What about bunkers? What about water features? What about slope? What's the grass depth and thickness? You know what I mean? Like all these things, like they have this play in a very similar way to that we have play.

But like Pebble Beach is Pebble Beach every year. Augusta is Augusta every year. So in any case, I guess my point being is the safeguards are like built in due to the diversity of the team. I think you could run into the risk of like, let's say you had an entirely fill in the blank country team, maybe. But even then, I don't think anyone, like no one athlete is going to be worth someone's entire career.

You know, like I'm never, I would never do that because I've spent nearly 20 years of my life trying to create a career for myself. Like I don't like, I want to see everyone succeed. I want people to win and fight, but I'm not going to like, I don't know. It just to me seems crazy. So the first part of the question though was... How much do you think setters are able to sway around particular athletes?

I mean, I think if, if I think anything's possible to the same points that I was just kind of making is that like you could, it would have to really be a situation where climber a climber was a hyper specific stylistic climber. You know what I mean, like their strengths were so far and outside of other people's strengths. You know what I mean? And they're like to where you could even create this possibility. I'm just talking about theory here.

Like if someone was just so far above and above and beyond at jumps compared to the rest of their field, and then you made it so that everything was just the same style of jump, then maybe. But again, like, but then honestly at this level, the jury president would come over and be like, no, no, we're not doing this. Like you're not having three, five arm paddle dinos back to back to back to back. You know what I mean? Like they just be like, no, like you have two hours reset it and get it.

Like that happened in Salt Lake. Not this version, but they like canceled the boulder in Salt Lake this year. Just three coaches, I think it was like three federations were like, no, we don't like that. And then the jury president was like, no, that's unsafe. So then they had to reset the boulder. So you know what I mean? So like, they'll do it. So I just, I don't know, like it's, it's the probably closest of possibility and the least likely to happen. If that makes sense.

I think like the main one that people think of is like, like French climbers are supremely good at slabs. I think that's like the main one that comes from people's mind. I think that's a, yeah. I mean, then a lot of times people say like, oh, American climbers are just really good at like fuggie pinches and steep stuff. And it's like maybe historically that was the case. And I think there probably are some, still some feelings on that.

A lot of that, I think a lot of that is driven by commercial climbing. Actually, if you look around in gyms around the U S how many slabs do you really see? How many like 12 foot, 14 foot long slabs that are four or five, six degree angled slabs? Do you see where you are like truly, truly slab climbing? Probably not many. So it's kind of like, yeah, maybe the French climbers, they train that because they realize, yep, we're really good at that. They're really bad at that.

So when a slab comes up, if it's going to come up 25% of the time and around the chances are high that I'm going to smash and I need that advantage. So naturally the other athletes should be saying the same thing. And actually Yoshiyuki this season, I talked with him a couple of times, so I was hanging out with him in Tokyo a bit. And then we did like a training camp in Nuremberg and you know, just like kind of saw him, we were just kind of hanging out a little bit.

And he was telling me like other athletes in between, in between comps were like going to train like whatever you think of, whenever you think of like climbing training, whether it's like finger boarding and pull ups and sit ups or whatever, I don't know, whatever you think of training. He would go to the gym like three to four days a week and just climb slabs for three hours a day. Because he was like, I'm just not good on slabs. I just need to go climb slabs.

And I'm just like, fuck yeah, dude, that is awesome. Like that is exactly what you should be doing, you know, because he and then guess what? Some slabs came around and he did a great job. He did a really, really, really good job. So it's kind of hard in those level of environments where you can really favor athletes too much because the field is just so competitive nowadays that yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I don't know how it'd be done. Sounds good. I think that's quite comprehensive.

And that's all the questions I had. Yeah, thank you so much for all the time. It was super interesting to get to know all this. I know a lot of people were also really excited to hear about it and they had a lot of questions.

So hopefully this this answer is a lot. Anything else you want to shout out or let people know where they can find you? Yeah, sure. I mean, if anyone ever has any questions and anything about like route setting or climbing or consultation stuff, like I said, it's kind of how I make my bread and butter. But even if it's just, you know, friendly personal stuff, Instagram, I try to communicate people as much as I can through there. It's just at see gradsky.

It's just my first and first initial last name. And then my business account is syndicate route setting. So I try to be up on both of those as much as possible. So you kind of hit one or the other is fine. And then the climbing gym that we're opening is called Boulder Union. So of course, would love to invite everyone to come visit at some point in time. And yeah, if you have any feedback for me or questions or anything, comments, concerns, ideas, thoughts, feelings, just give me a shout.

Open book. Awesome. I'll leave all those links in the description so people can take a look. And yeah, thank you again. It was an amazing talk. Awesome. Thank you so much, Annie. 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.