Ep 18: Chloé Caulier - Belgian Bouldering and being a Muscular Climber!

My family is not a climbing family and I'm in Belgium so it's not a climbing country. I arrived to a point I had to stop physical preparation because it was not good for my climbing because I take a lot of muscle and quite fast. If you have more muscle it won't be so feminine so maybe calm down. I already heard that. Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host Jinni and I'm excited to introduce my guest Chloé Caulier.

Chloé is a boulder and lead climber competing in the World Cup circuit for the Belgian team. This is my first time talking to a Belgian climber so in this episode we'll learn a lot about their fairly newly established national team and how funding works and we also talk about body image with being a more muscular climber as well as the difficulties that come with being a female climber. Hope you enjoy this episode with Chloé. Okay great. Well yeah how are you doing today? Are

you preparing to travel to China for the first World Cups of the season? Yeah today I'm resting and I will train Wednesday still in Europe and then I will travel on Friday so yeah I leave soon and I feel ready for China. Yeah have you been there before? Yeah I've been in China several times because there was a lot of bouldering World Cups before in China several times in

Chongqing. I've already been in in Shanghai, Wuzhong, a lot of places. Okay exciting. I'm also going to be in China soon just for like unrelated family travel but it actually really stresses me out going there just because it's so locked down with like apps and everything that you're allowed to use so yeah I hope it turns out okay for you. It's really stressful for me. It's quite different you cannot use all the internet stuff like in Europe or in the US but because I'm used to go

I think I have my habits and I know how to deal with it so it's okay. Yeah I guess you probably know better than me. I haven't been in 10-15 years so you have to find a good VPN. If you have the good VPN it's good. See what I'm worried about is the map apps don't work and then I can't read Chinese very well. Yeah you really have to use a map in advance. For example for me I use it in the hotel before I go out so I'm sure that I'm not lost during the way. Yeah

it's stressful but how do you feel in general for the upcoming season? Are you excited nervous for it to start? Yeah I'm quite excited and I feel also in shape so I really want to climb at my level and just enjoy competing. Yeah I did some simulation with other teams lately and it went well so if I can climb like this training camps it will be good. Yeah who are you training with?

We had two or three training camps with other teams so it was the Belgian team with for example the Slovenia, the Austrian and the German teams so we did both bouldering and combined simulations so it was a lot of OQS athletes who were there and some of the boulders a specialist so it was very interesting because yeah it's good teams so it's also good to see where you are before the season starts and it can give you confidence if you are in good shape so it's good before the

World Cup that you know where you are and what to expect. Have you ever gone into these training camps and then realized that you're feeling much worse than you thought you were? Yeah I already had this experience last year to be honest the last year wasn't so good already during the simulation but I was still believing in myself that I could change things during the next sessions and to improve but yeah then finally it was not I was not improving and the the competition season didn't

go so well but yeah since then I made a lot of changes so it's different. Okay yeah that must be really stressful yeah like I can't imagine going into it seeing all how strong everyone else

is and then realizing that you're not where you should be. I feel like I kind of experienced that recently climbing in a competition where I was like just warming up and everyone else was way stronger than me and already going into the competition I was in a bad like mental state because I was like even during my warm-up I can tell that everyone is way better and that's really

stressful. But it's also a part of competition and there is I would say that there is no rule because sometimes you are pretty bad at the warming up and then you do the best comp of your life so it's also important to not to to stress too much about the warming up or how you feel in the beginning of the session because sometimes with the I think with the adrenaline of the comp or the mental game you can really change your climbing when you are on the first border and then it goes

well. Sometimes it's also the opposite you feel so strong in the warm-up zone and then you do your your worst comp so it's not always a link between the the last sessions and the warm-up and the conditions. Yeah you also need to believe in you until the last last minute. Huh okay yeah I'll keep that in mind but yeah I'm glad you're feeling strong after the simulation and hopefully things will go well. Thanks. Yeah how did you for those who don't know how did you get started climbing

and when did you start competing? Yeah for me it was I started randomly I would say because my parents are not climbers my family is not a climbing family and I'm in Belgium so it's not a climbing country we don't have mountains we don't have a lot of cliffs so it was basically an opening day at the gym so it was for free you could climb for free and it was close to my house so my parents saw the advertising that we can climb for free that day so they were like okay

we can try with the kids it's a good activity for the weekend so I went there with my parents and my brother and it was my brother and I who climbed and I really liked it like from the first route I wanted to go to the top and then I wanted to try every route of the gym and I didn't want to stop my parents had to to pull me out of the gym so yeah I just asked them to to to be registered to a club and to start it every week so that's what they did and since then I never stopped.

How old were you? I am 27. Or when you started? When I started I'm 27 and I started around eight years old I think. Okay and when did you start competing was it as soon as you signed up for the club you started competing? No I think it was like two or three years after so around 11 years old 11 or 12. And was that like local competitions or did you I guess already

start doing international competitions? I think my two first comps were kids competition like local local local comp and then I firstly went to national competition but also because in Belgium we didn't have a lot of regional or intermediate level so it was or really easy comp or national. Yeah that makes sense and I guess did your brother also end up climbing or did he not like it as much?

From the first time he didn't continue but then he climbed later like when I when I was already in the team so I think it was yeah maybe five or seven years later just like this but not competing or not expecting any results it was just for fun. He's better at tennis. Oh okay. It's a good tennis player. Does he like compete in tennis?

Is like competition running in your family? Yeah he competed in tennis and he was apparently he was very talented in a lot of sports like football and tennis so with balls he's very good but he's not a competitor like me. He's not really interested by competitions. I think he's even more talented than me in sports in general but it's just that he don't want to compete and I am a a real competitor so from from being a kid I remember also at school I wanted to be the

best in the sports class and always so yeah I can relate with that. So your experience doing

youth competitions how do you feel like that compares to doing elite competitions and how is that transition? For me the transitions was quite good because I remember I did the World Cup finals just after I was in the first year of in the senior categories. Oh wow. So the transition was good but the difference was I would say mainly the style. It's way more powerful in the senior for sure and also like the the fields because there is more people so you cannot do

mistakes. I mean less mistakes than in the youth because in the youth we are less climbers and also the level was I think a lot of difference between the athletes. So for example you had the finalist and then there was a big gap between the others but in World Cups it's like everyone is very close to each other in terms of level. At least in the top 30 we can do I think everyone can do finals in terms of level but it's more about the strategy the mental game. So then do a lot of

youth competitors end up dropping out before they reach the senior circuit? Yeah there's a lot of factors that we should take in consideration because your body can change and your maybe your goals in life can change as well because I know a lot of climbers who stop for the study for university things like that. And then I was looking through your competition history

you've done boulder, lead and speed competitions. Yeah. It's I mean it seems like bouldering is your favorite but yeah is bouldering your favorite? Yeah I would say yes. Yeah the story is that I started with lead climbing because in Belgium there was no bouldering teams or groups it was mainly lead clubs. So I was very good in lead also in the European Youth Cups. I did finals, I made podiums and then I discovered bouldering because the first European Cups, bouldering European Cups started

and I tried and it felt that I was even more good. I think because my body is better for the strength, sport, effort, shorter effort and yeah I'm more strong than endurance. So yeah bouldering came like naturally for me because I never trained it before before my first European Cups, Youth Cups. So yeah one moment I just chose because with school and everything it was better to to be specialized in one discipline and it paid off so it was a good

choice in my opinion. Then climbing became an Olympian sport so and it was a combine with the three disciplines so it was a new challenge for me because I never speed climbed before and we didn't have the speed wall in Belgium so it was a big challenge to train it and to start from nowhere. So yeah that's why I started to do lead again and to start speed climbing. Then as soon as the first Olympics finished I stopped speed climbing because I don't like it so much. Oh really okay.

It was mainly for the Olympics and now the next Olympics it's about lead and bouldering so I'm still doing both. I like lead a lot. I still prefer bouldering but both are very good. I really liked these disciplines. I guess I thought if you were like a more powerful climber you might like

doing speed as well. But yeah I don't know one guy one specialist told me I am good for my experience for the experience I had at that time and I have a good body type for it but yeah just always the same repeating the same movements and what I like about climbing is the the variety that every session you can try different moves you can learn something every day so yeah speed is not my my thing but I liked it like it was good to learn a new sport and to to improve because you see your

your times getting better and better so it's quite satisfying but I think at one point when you are fighting just for small details and always doing the same yeah I don't like it so much. Yeah you kind of hit like a plateau and then you're just shaving off the top of your head. Yeah but it's also fun to watch so yeah. So you said that there was no speed wall in Belgium. Is there still no speed wall there or like where did you go to train? So now we have.

It's also a matter of time because the as the government supported olympic sports they wanted to provide the speed wars but it just took time and it was a lot of work. So yeah I think it's just took times and it's I think always the same with administration and everything like this that

it takes more time than the time we had at that time. So I think we had this first speed war very close to the qualifying event so before that I was going to to the Netherlands or the or Germany to train it so it was a lot of travel because for me Germany it's two hours by car and so to go and then two hours to go back and Netherlands it's one hour and a half. If I wanted to do double session a day for example ordering and speed I had to move a lot.

It was very tiring. Yeah I guess I can see why that would make you not want to to speed more than you have to. Yeah okay yeah that makes sense and yeah I guess we can get into the Belgian team because you're the first person from Belgium that I've talked to on this podcast.

So you mentioned that initially there was no Belgian team so what was training like without having a national team? Yeah it changed a lot. So yeah the first years there was a team but it was only in eight camps. There was no team for the bouldering camps because as I told you earlier there was no bouldering. The bouldering discipline didn't really exist in Belgium.

Like it was not considered like a real discipline. It was more like you train a bit on a bouldering world for lead but you don't train for bouldering call. So yeah when I was doing lead camps we had a team but it was really not organized as it is now.

It was one coach for all the group and the coach was not I mean he was doing his best but he was not very experienced and didn't know a lot about the high level the sport elite habits that we had to do, how to warm up, how to read the roots, everything so it was a bit like a parent. And for bouldering camps I went with my dad and my dad is not a climber but he's someone very organized and structured so it helped me to have this structure and for climbing I was quite alone

just learning by myself. I also had my personal coach in Belgium so we tried to to improve after every camp. Like I filmed everything so he could watch it and we could learn some things and between camps we really work on what we saw on videos

and I could really see the progress over the years. I think it was just slower than if I had a real team or a real structure but at that time I think there was a lot of countries in that in the similar situation and yeah with the years we built a team and yeah because for example the first World Cup I did I was alone in bouldering so it was one coach and me and now we have a real team

we have three men, two or three women sometimes. It depends if it's in China I'm still the only woman to go now for example next week but when it will be in Europe we can have three women and we have also the physio, we have training camps in Belgium, we have national wars, training, national center so it's a lot of changes from the past and from what I knew at that time. Yeah you said that your dad was your coach for a while. Did he have any like sports background or

like strength training background or anything? I don't know the name in English I will check. What is it called in French? BF. I can show you a picture. Sure. Do you see something? Oh okay yeah yeah um yeah I guess like pool or billiards. Yeah so he was the he was European champion in pool. So he was competitive but it was not physical sport so it's quite different but um but at least he had the the competitive way and the the structure so it helped me.

On some points it helped me a lot and at some points it was also hard to to be with your dad it's sometimes it's it's not the same yeah you get annoyed by him or bored and you're like oh shut up don't tell me that at that moment I'm already stressed or something because he wants to he wants to do your best so he's pushing a lot and sometimes it's it's too much. And I mean I guess pool is quite different from climbing so did you ever feel like he wasn't

qualified to be giving you advice? Yeah that's it. Yeah I didn't know that there were like competitions for pool either that's interesting. Do you ever miss like training before there was a

whole team or is it always just much better training with a with a team in place? Sometimes it was also hard to be with a team I think especially in the transition period because I was the more experienced for a while so I was the one who pulled everyone you know so I couldn't really take the advantage to learn from the others at least in the first years

and then it changed a bit like now we have very good men's athletes and so when I train with them they're really pulling me and it's good but also it's men's so it's not the same that if we train with if I train with women's of my level it's way better because it's I mean sometimes when a man does a movement and you are not sure you can do it you will say yeah but it's a guy so it's okay if I don't do the moves and then you see another woman who do it

and you are like okay I have to do it now no excuses yeah I get that yeah it's it can be good and it's also bad sometimes but especially because we don't have other very strong women at the moment for the bordering team I am really the strongest so and from far so I don't learn from other women's I'm always pulling the others it's good for the country but for me personally it's sometimes hard not to learn so much during the training camps but yeah with the years we we also

improve the quality of the training camps for example this year we went to Slovenia so with in Slovenia and Germany and they have a lot of strong women so it was good for me it was one of the the best preparation I could have because I could train with uh top three world cups at Leeds and it was good do you still find yourself when you're training with men you kind of feel like you don't have to be able to do the move because like they're men and then you're like

a woman so it's like different or do you try to be able to compete with them as well um I would say in my personality I'm the woman who wants to beat the guys as well I mean for me the sex doesn't make any differences the way I complain more it's about the hate because sometimes the distance for example if you work on the big coordination or big jumps with men's it's quite it's quite hard to compare if they are taller than you for me it's hard to say if it's because

they are taller or it's because I don't do it well or I don't push enough and for example last year I could train a little bit with uh Brooke Raboutou in Paris at the beginning of the year she's very small and smaller than me so sometimes I tried to jump and I was like wow it's far I don't I'm not sure I can do it and then she did it so I was like okay I can do it and then I I tried again but I think if it was a man maybe I should have stopped before trying more so it was good to

to see someone else from my size or smaller doing it yeah so it's more about the distances than the the sex I would say yeah that makes sense I think I've also experienced something similar where um I see someone do a move and lots of times I can just be like oh well they could do it because they're like stronger than me and I'm like kind of weak but if I see someone who I know is less strong than me do a move then it kind of like lights a fire under my ass and I'm like I know

I should be able to do this move like I am stronger than this person so you're so uh you're so competitor uh not at a serious level trying to be but I'm really weak yeah the mindset is there but the body is weak so I know that some countries don't get to train as a team because the country is too big like for example in the US a lot of people are kind of spread out and we try to have like a training center in salt lake now that brings a lot of people together

but I don't think everyone gets to train together all the time I guess I mean Belgium is a bit smaller so do you guys train together on a regular basis um we don't have like a day a week something like this it's more that we receive the calendar of the next month and so for example we have a simulation on the beginning of the month and then a training camp after work in the end of the month something like this but it's not always the same days or the same dates it changes

every month and we receive the the email from the national coach the month before so we can organize the we can organize it but it's new from last year before it we had less training camps and before we didn't have training camps because we didn't have the training center so sometimes it's also a small country so we know we know everyone like the the national teams it's mainly friends from from long time it's always the same people like we don't have a lot of new people it's not coming

like 10 new people per year it's maybe one new people every two or three years so as we are friends and we we are all from the same city or around we also meet each other at the gyms at the commercial gyms i mean for like when you personally train you you meet the others and we can climb together so it's a mix of personal personal training together and training camps like officially organized by the federation

yeah especially from two years ago now we have a very good one in in in brussels so the cap in the capital city it's uh it's called le camp de base so it ends the base camp in english uh there is a master of fire competition over there i don't know if you watched it tomoa was competing there last year i don't think i saw it but yeah if you didn't if you didn't watch you can watch on youtube it's a very good competition okay yeah i'll put the link in

the description it's like the studio block masters or something like this it's like a not an official world cup but it was with a lot of world cup climbers but it was with a lot of world cup climbers and so we train in this gym which is very good for hard wooders there they have a lot of hard wooders and good route setters so it's very good yeah that's good i think it's surprising to hear that there's a commercial gym that sets boulders that

are hard enough for world cup climbers i feel like i've always heard that they like world cup climbers can't climb in commercial gyms just because they don't set anything that's hard enough so yeah it's surprising to hear that i think it's true in a lot of countries but uh it's not the case in france or in belgium i mean in belgium it's from two years ago because before uh this gym didn't exist but i i train a lot in france because it's it's close to belgium i only drive

two or three hours so i can go for the weekend or folk and in every every commercial gyms you can find hard boulders in paris maybe not far from paris but in the capital city you have a lot so it's good paris i think it's one of the best city to train for world cups and in terms of funding and support that you get as an athlete um i know some countries they get like support from the

government for like uh being in you're like technically part of the army or something like that is it similar in belgium or no yeah and it also evolved with years but now i have a salary from the government to be not a military uh it's not a military salary it's a very sport elite from for the the olympic project so until i am the only in the olympic project i have a salary to to do my sport so it's very comfortable for me yeah that's good it's good yeah so you don't

have to do any like you don't have to i guess divert your focus doing other like commercial setting or anything like that yeah the question if i didn't have that salary the the question would be what do i do next to training i can give course or i can do it set but it's also tiring and it takes time it's complicated to combine but i know a lot of world cup climbers have to do it but you said it only started two years ago where they started doing the government salary

uh this salary was from the first olympic uh year but it was also for the preparation of the olympic so it was before 2020 i think it was 2018 when it started but at that time it was a half-time salary that i had better results so i could have the full time but it can change every year it's considering your results they evaluate you every year and you can also lose it in one year so it's not very sure for your long-term future but but for the moment for the olympic project

it's very good to have that salary and the support from the government yeah that's that's good to hear there's a lot of people out there who are struggling with that so yeah it's good to know that you're you have some security yeah but okay yeah um switching gears a bit into i guess like body image related things um you have one of the more muscular builds of the

female world cup competitors and you mentioned that you're very proud of it which is good do you feel like being more muscular just came naturally to you or did you work specifically to get bigger 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 no it was quite natural uh i know that because i when i i saw the the pictures of me when i was a kid i was already muscular without climbing because i was not climbing before eight or nine years old and before that i was already with quite big shoulders and then i mean muscular arms so i think it's in my genetics um and i also i mean a lot of climbers i guess i trained the

physical parts uh the fitness gyms and for the first years first years of international competitions but then i i also noticed that if i do too much i take weight and it's not so good for climbing and i also climb uh with too much strength and sometimes it's it doesn't impure at world cups because you have to to find the easiest way to climb a wall or to find better with techniques and using your for example your inner hooks or two hooks and then you have to

pull your inner hooks or two hooks and not doing everything in your arms so my coaches also didn't want that i do fitness anymore i arrived to a point i had to stop i mean it's not stop but i did less uh physical preparation because it was not good for my climbing really also because i take a lot of muscle and quite fast i still train the physical part but more uh i think in a smarter way i do more specific exercises and i also work with uh with bands more than weights

elastic bands uh things like that interesting so you had to stop because even like well i didn't think that your arms could ever be like too strong for climbing you know yeah but it's not really that i was too strong but because i think climbers can have a lot of strength but also can climb uh without using it or you know it's it's more about switching like sometimes it's good to to go strong for a move but then you have to to use your hips or your

technique something like this and for me i mean it's specific to me so i don't want to to generalize this topic but for me it happened that at world cups i was missing boulders because i was not putting a heel because i was doing everything in the compression way or in the arms and yeah for me it felt impossible to do the move and then when i went out of the isolation the coaches showed me videos of other women which are also very strong but they could

switch from a compression move to the hips move and to climb more smoothly more technically the this part of the boulder and so they could do the boulder and me i was climbing with too much strength in every move and i think climbing is always changing your rhythm your intensity so it was more about that it's it's more about me that i cannot use my strength in the proper way we just did less strength so i could i could use more my technical abilities and i think that's the

thing i don't know if it's if it's clear it's quite specific to me but yeah that makes sense i mean yeah i guess i was always the under the impression that you always could get stronger and that you could always you should always try to get stronger but it's interesting to hear that maybe maybe not i think it's true that if you just want to measure your strength the finger strength the arm strength you can always improve but depends of what you need especially for competitions i

think outdoor i could take more strength and it will help me i can work the boulder so i have time but at workup you have five minutes for boulder and if you do wrong beta because you have too much strength or you don't feel the good movement because of your strength it's bad but i think it's not the case of every climber i think some climbers have a lot of strength and can climb with it properly so you think maybe your weakness is like reading beta i think it's not reading but

it's more feeling when i am climbing at competition because my reading is is often not so good is often very good from the ground but when i am in the boulder my ability to feel and to adapt on the moment can be bad depends also of the stress and how i train but uh yeah interesting to know

um yeah going back to body image um did you always feel confident about the way that you looked and like your build yeah i think for me it never been a big problem to be muscular even when i was a kid or a teenager i saw a lot of other girls struggling with that because they saw that their shoulders became more muscular or something and it was hard for them to assume it as a woman and for me it was not a problem because i knew it was my strength i knew it was a tool for me

climb good so i was quite proud of it and yeah at least in the climbing gym it's really okay for me sometimes it's harder when i am in a i don't know in a metro and i see people looking at me because i have big arms oh does that happen to you yeah yeah and so in restaurants or something if i have a a top or something where you see my arms sometimes i see people looking at me yeah it's not poor but i think for everyone you don't like to be looked at long

uh yeah for me it's not polite it's weird to do that yeah i think i have a well not as similar of an experience but since i when i grew up i never did any exercise so i'm used to looking like a certain way um and i didn't start climbing until i was uh like 20 years old so since i never grew up doing any exercise i'm like not used to seeing my arms or my back being big and i'm like not used to the way i look wearing like a strappy top so it does kind of make me a little bit

uncomfortable even though i'm like not that like bulky yet um but yeah it makes sense like i accept it because it allows me to do the moves that i want to do but yeah it definitely i think sometimes it like looks out of place yeah i think i was also lucky i was thinking about it when you were talking and i just remember that my my parents were also proud of that like i mean they were i mean they were really helping me to be proud of that like my father was always saying yeah chloe

she has uh strong muscles and it's good i mean i think i already met climbers uh which have non-climbers parents and they were like yeah but only if you have more muscle it won't be so feminine so maybe calm down i already heard that and my parents were not like this at all they were really proud of me and uh supporting me for my choices so if it was good for for my climbing goals they were supporting me so i think it's also helped me to to be confident about that

wow yeah i it would be really hard if i think like my parents said that it looked bad i think that would be pretty painful to hear was it like other world cup climbers or just like people that were in the gym at that time it was more uh when i was doing youth comps so it was international competitors it was belgian competitors in the national team but it was in the youth youth comps yeah so they didn't count they didn't continue at world cup level but yes they were

still the best in our country at that time for for their age it's quite sad yeah that's a shame to hear geez yeah but it's good that your parents were supportive of it and i'm sure that helped with your confidence as well but okay um yeah moving on to you being i guess one of the only

women on the belgian team so i think earlier you mentioned that there are a couple of other women on the belgian team now who will be participating in the european for a long time i was the only woman in the bouldering team in lead we always had good climbers because we had muriel sarkany we had uh anakva boven matthew pivovain so several climbers who made podium and also won world cups in lead but in bouldering we didn't have so much we had another chloe it was

chloe grafstow she also won the world cup bouldering world cups i think it was in 2009 something like this but i was not in the team that i was too young so when i started world cups i was the only woman in bouldering and now we have two other women but for example for this year they are not selected for the world cups because they are not strong enough they are only selected for the european cups but they could go at world cups only if they get good results at european cups

so you can be selected in the in the season during the season yeah for the moment i am the only woman in the bouldering team i think also one of the discord questions was about this um would you prefer to have more female high level belgian competitors or do you like being like the dominant female competitor in the country um yeah i have a an ego of a competitor so it's good to be the best of course it's like for the ego it's nice but considering uh the problem to train as

i told you before that i train only with men for years uh i think it would be better to have other strong women it would push everyone better and higher i think i think i could improve faster with other women as well so yeah i think in conclusion it would be better to have other strong women but yeah for sure it's like it's about 10 years i am the best in belgium and it's also good but it didn't it doesn't help me to to improve faster so it kind of it kind of allows

you to win money in competitions when you're in belgium but then at the world cups it it gets a little bit difficult for you yes there are positive aspects and negative ones and yeah when i am in my country i can win the competition i can win money i can win the the salary because of that but when i am at world cups and i see other teams with a lot of strong women i see that the results are can be better because of that yeah do you ever feel i guess because of that do you ever feel

intimidated when you're competing at world cups with other really strong women um i started world cup when i was very young i was 15 years old uh so at the beginning i was climbing against my idols so i was impressed so that time i was climbing against anashtar akio nobuchi julian wool and and there were the women i was watching at tv so yeah at that time i was really impressed but then when i i get good results and then the women of my age came i think i was on the same

statues from my view but it also depends of the time of my life i think some some period i was less confident and i could be impressed by the others sometimes i felt very confident and i felt the best and i was not afraid of anyone so yeah it also depends of my mood but in general no i know we know a lot of climbers at world cups like i compete at world cups for more than 10 years i think so i know everyone almost everyone so it's more like friends or

people i'm used to see every year so i think i'm not afraid anymore it's it's really like an it's an environment that you know it's less uh terrifying that's a new new environment or something you don't know and you also mentioned that um you got to train with stasha recently and um you really enjoyed that experience um what do you feel like i mean she's also like a really

like muscular strong female competitor so what was your experience training with her yeah it was really good uh it's funny because we know each other for a long time we have uh um just one or two years difference so we competed at youth youth competitions against each other so we know we know each other for a very long time and uh i think we are we always uh appreciated each other but we never spent time together really it was just competing

and um yeah it's it's funny because we are quite similar um in term of situation like she's the only woman she's uh with her parents i was with my my dad before the team started and still now i am the only woman in the belgian team so sometimes i can feel a bit alone uh yeah i think she feels the same and she's also training with a german team i train a lot with french french team because it's close to to my country so we have a lot of common points also because we are muscular and we are

uh yeah we are quite uh in the same style of climbing so i don't know we had this idea at the end of last year because we we were invited in a duo con and we were in the same team in paris and it worked very well like the the personality matched the the climbing abilities also were complementary even if we are in the same style but for some details we were complementary and we really had fun at this camp so we said to each other okay we should train together sometimes

so it could be nice so we discussed it after the season and stasha came to paris uh two times one week because i was training in paris at that moment and uh it was very good because for me i'm not used to climbing with other women uh at training sessions so it was very good to see that i can do things she can do or uh that she can push me i can push her it was really give and give and take give give and give um uh yeah and also the personality matched so it's very good

like we became more friends than before yeah hoping to train more with her in the future yeah i think we can we will do it because uh so we organized this weeks in paris but we also met at the simulations in germany in slovenia so actually we train more than two weeks together we train more like three or four weeks uh this season this pre-season so yeah uh and we are we we said to each other that we are motivated to to keep going we will do other sessions together for sure

and i think it's also good to have a friend with me at the oqs or at the one cups it's always good i think also for her because she's also always traveling with her parents and i think it's good to to have a friend next to it it's a shame that it took so long for that to finally happen but it's good that you you guys are are finally training together um what was you mentioned like the team boulder competition that you did um i forget what it was called but

i forget what it was called but what was your strategy for that competition because it's not often that you do like a team competition so the qualification it was uh about 15 boulders uh in a row like it was in a rounding gym so it started from the easier one to the hardest one and we had i think five minutes per boulder with no rest so it was really in a row but as we are two you can do for example i can do the first boulders you can do the second one i can do the third etc so we just

observed in advance okay which boulders are our style um it's so we could decide which climber will climb this boulder uh so we decided uh according to the style and also to the height because stasha it's a bit taller than me so if it was a big jump or which she move she would go and if it was a small box i would go because she hates that and i'm very good at small boxes so we mainly choose with the height and the distances but also we we were open to adapt for example

at one moment stasha was in a slab she was supposed to climb a slab but she couldn't start finally so i just made one try and i could start and so i i keep continue to to climb and it works so yeah we had the initial plan and we also modify uh yeah depends of what happened at that moment and in finals it was quite the same it was also uh five minutes per boulder and yeah we couldn't read it in advance so we had to decide in the five minutes but as we

already did this in the qualification we just followed the same logic with the height the distance and if we couldn't for example do the first move we just tried both we see which climbers is going the the highest yeah did you like that format would you want to do it again yeah it was very fun it was very good i think so i liked it because i was with stasha because i told you the uh we really matched and we didn't have a i don't know disagreement or something like something

negative it was only fun and the strategy worked so we won the comp yeah we entered it congrats yeah i'll um link that competition as well for people to watch if they haven't seen it so they can keep up i think it can be frustrating to be in a duo i place for me as i i'm used to climb alone and it's a individual sport sometimes if the other is struggling it's super hard for me to watch or uh to stay calm but stasha is very good so it wasn't she was not struggling so much

and i i was not near her so it was really comfortable it could be different if the other one is struggling and you have to do everything or you have to push push her but yeah it didn't go like this so yeah that's good i yeah i was thinking about like team sports because the thought of doing team sports like volleyball or soccer football or anything like that would really stress me out because i don't want to be like a burden to my team so i don't know how i would feel about doing

like a team or partner competition i think that would be too stressful yeah it's really like this you don't want to disappoint the others and you don't want that the other is it's a weight yeah it's in both ways but it's uh i think you have to find a good person to be with and then it works but we couldn't know in advance it was quite a bet but uh yeah we were lucky it worked so yeah that's good to know um and then last question about um i guess being a female climber

um i think you mentioned that at the climbing gym um even at like the commercial climbing gym i guess you said that you experience a lot of uh i think you said like machismo with the climbing gym

yeah is that i'm surprised that that's still something you experience as like a professional climber yeah it's true um it's a shame but it still happens i think it happens to every world cup climbers for sure because also because the climbing is increasing a lot so you also find people who were beginners and from other community in the gym i think usually there i would call the real climbers who follow competitions they know you so they know that

you are strong and they won't they won't underestimate you but sometimes i i meet people at the gym who are not following competition so they don't know me and they just see a woman which is climbing in a black boulder or red boulder and if they don't know the the level or the difficulty they just think okay it's a woman so if she can do it i will try and then they cannot start it's quite funny to watch but sometimes it's less funny when the people uh are coming to

to talk to you and to i don't know they give your they give their opinions or their advice but you you didn't ask for anything so just let me alone like yeah it's not cool uh but for the rest when i see a guy which is trying the same boulder as me just because i am a woman i find it very funny because it's directly punished you know it just cannot start the boulder so it's funny but yeah it still happens um yeah i think because a lot of people

don't know don't know climbing and start climbing uh but yeah it's also happened with with real climbers but i think it happens less yeah i guess i'm kind of surprised that you have that experience because i don't think i see that too often but i guess maybe maybe i just don't try stuff that's hard enough so i don't see maybe it's question of culture i don't know how it is in the us but i think in europe the men's are still uh considered like uh better than women's

it shouldn't be like this but i think it's still in the culture for for uh it's changing it's evolving a lot but it's also still in the culture also in the the the work uh work world uh men's are better paid than women i think on a lot of examples it's still uh it's still uh still like this i don't know in the us maybe it's about the culture but it happens uh here no i mean i think in general it would still be like that i just i don't see it as

much in a climbing gym because i think in climbing gyms people are usually a little bit more um i guess like accepting there's not as much like toxic masculinity i guess but it depends on the gym as well i think yeah it depends of everything about the city where you are and yeah for the for me it happens because also i climb in very hard waters but i also see for uh weaker women that it happens but in a different way for example like the man will feel obliged to give a

uh an advice you know or but he will give advices to women but not to men and it can be really kind like it looks kind and sometimes it's nice but if it's only for women it's it's kind of much yeah yeah i i mean i guess yeah people always talk about beta spraying and it's really annoying but um i think for me i will always take beta because i just want to know how to do it but imagine in the opposite way if you want to climb outside on sides and you don't want to have

information and you are climbing you are on the wall and then one guy is he's screaming yeah put the right hand like this and then this and you're like come on i just want to climb by myself and and don't don't tell anything yeah i didn't ask anything yeah that makes sense well hopefully people will hear this and they'll know yeah i hope so okay um i know you have a cut off soon so we'll

just move on for now um future goals for the upcoming season do you have any like concrete goals that you want to hit yeah to go to the olympics for sure yeah you're participating in oqs so good luck to you on that um thank you yeah i hope it goes well and yeah any other goals or just just the olympics for this year i mainly focus on this because it's a already very big project so i cannot think about something else for the moment but yeah for sure after i have other

projects but for this year it's it's mainly olympics okay i mean i guess you have to like train in order to peak for a certain competition so is like this first world cup kind of just like practice for you or are you also trying to like peak here as well yeah the the goal for the first china world cups is um is to practice before the oqs but i'm i'm still a competitor so for sure i want to be on the podium i want to win so i will give my best but yeah for example if i do

if i don't complete these goals it's okay i just have to learn uh what happened and yeah to to take the advantage of these comps before the oqs definitely okay well good luck there um real

quick let's move into a few discord questions from the community um first one are there any struggles on the national team with different languages being spoken no it's okay we speak in english oh really yeah okay i mean it's funny because we we mix a bit of everything yeah so we mainly speak english then i would say french and then just a bit of flamish but yeah everyone is speaking french quite good even the flamish climbers for example

hannes van der isen is from the north part and it's speaking flamish but he learned french uh being in the team actually so yeah now we speak french with him and if he cannot speak he cannot speak or he cannot find his words or he doesn't understand us we speak in english and all the briefing from the coach are are in english oh okay yeah i guess i'm surprised i thought more people spoke french in belgium than english so that's interesting to know

we have three languages so it's french uh dutch and german dutch is uh flamish uh it's the same language but yeah because if we would speak in the three languages the coach would would do the briefing in three languages it would take too much time or so we just do it in english and and so everyone can understand makes sense um next question what do you do in isolation to kill

the time usually i'm i climb i i mean i climb quite early because it's the order of climbing is the ranking so if i'm i am well ranked i will enter the iso and i will warm up directly so it's my warm up routine uh just i think last year i was waiting more because my previous year was bad in terms of results so yeah it depends i like to talk to the to other climbers the coaches i like listening to music um maybe this year i will read because i started to read the more

than the previous year again because when i was younger i really liked reading but then i i said but then i i stopped a bit so now maybe i can take a book in the iso but yeah in general i just warm up directly so i don't have a lot of things to do except to focus on my warm up and i guess

speaking of music um people are also curious about what kind of music or bands you listen to um i have a mix of everything i would say because um i'm really sensitive to music uh according to my mood or the mood i want to have so it can be really hard to know if i want to to be nervously ready in the hardboiler for example but sometimes if if i know that it's a slab and i need to be really relaxed or calm i will listen to calmer musics i also like some raps

raps sometimes because it can be aggressive in the in the lyrics and sometimes i need to to be in this mood for competing so yeah it's a mix of everything and i use it like a tool to have the mood that i really need for the next boulder if i know which side is it any specific songs that come to mind right now that you want to share i really like listening to techno when i am competing so for example charlotte the wheat uh it's a belgian dj okay i'll try to mix in

uh dance with me you have to tap to tap it okay mandragora from codeine okay these will be hard for me to look up but i'll try to find them it's nice techno to climb uh and yeah for the rap uh it's a mix of american rap or french rap because the french are also very good in rap yeah but yeah aiming them it's a good a good classic all right sounds good well yeah i think we we gotta end soon so i'll end it there that's all the questions i had and thank you for joining me today is there

anything you want to shout out or let people know where they can find you no you you can find me on instagram and on the world cup streaming but uh yeah thank you for inviting me it was a fun time yeah discussing about all of this yeah i'll link your info in the description and then yeah it was great to talk to you thank you 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