Ep 43: Carl McNeice - Erin McNeice's BRUTAL HONESTY Approach to Training

We were like, what do you mean she can't go to the World Cup? She's good enough. When she got appealed out in Prague in 24, we were bracing ourselves for full -on depression. It's just quite surreal to see your daughter with strangers wanting an autograph and stuff. I remember running over to the athlete area where you could talk to them and the big security guards would step in front of her and say, is it okay if this person

approaches you? I was like, it's me, Aaron. She hardly ever drinks, but she was definitely semi under the influence when she had to do that interview. Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host, Jenny, and I'm excited to introduce my guest for today, Carl McNeese. If it's not obvious, Carl is Aaron McNeese's dad, and I'm so thrilled to get a parent

perspective on the podcast. In this episode, we'll learn about the family's dedication and honest approach to building Aaron's climbing career, how much it costs to support the training and travel of an athlete, why he's no longer allowed to watch her comps in person, and we'll get adorable dad anecdotes from the Olympics. I hope you enjoy this episode with Carl. Real

quick, I'm excited to announce my new sponsor helping make this podcast episode possible, Mad Rock Climbing. I got fitted with their brand new line of high -performance shoes, the D2 .1s. They just came out December 6th, but you might notice a few of your favorite gomp climbers are already wearing them, like Oscar Boudran from Team Canada, and also me. This is the first time I've gotten to wear their shoes for an extended period of time, and I'm actually super impressed

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quite late for you, isn't it? It's nine o 'clock, yeah. And my first day back at work after two weeks off. Oh, wow. A lovely day at work. Yeah, just getting back from Innsbruck still? Yeah, we had about seven, eight days in Innsbruck and then the rest of them building a carriage. Oh, okay. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Yeah. Is it done? Yeah, it's done. It's standing. It hasn't fallen over yet. Impressive. Do you have any other travel plans coming up soon? No, I

did have. But some of the feedback from Innsbruck means that I won't have. Oh, wait, what does that mean? It's just some of the observations from Erin in terms of having the pressure of people, not pressure, that's the wrong word. I think the expectation and the fact that you're there and therefore she feels the need to spend

time with you. So which sort of breaks the rhythm of her being involved 100 % with the coaches, getting herself into the right zone, having her sort of alone time, recovery time, all that sort of stuff. It just distracts from it. And it is incredibly stressful, which I'm sure we'll get onto later. So I don't think it's a particularly bad outcome. Yeah, I mean, I was definitely going to ask about that later. I guess, how are you feeling about that? I feel like that could be

a little bit sad to work through. Yeah, I guess everybody's different and we get to watch you at a lot of, or have got to watch you at a lot of competitions. I just think you, at the end of the day, I think the thought of going to watch them at the competitions is nice and it is nice. But yeah, but it is, you know, they're World Cups, they're the top level of competition climbing

and the little things matter. So at the end of the day, if the athlete is performing less well or could perform less well because you're there, then yeah, that's 100 % the right thing to do. Plus physically being there for some reason,

it is a lot worse. for me anyway than than watching it on television yeah so does that mean you don't like you haven't seen the other world cups uh like in the start of the season you didn't make it out to those either no the uh the asia ones uh no and and again i think that that was very much because you start the season you have no idea really where you are compared to everybody else and i think at that point you can't really add very much uh you She doesn't need emotional

support. If she does need it, she can call. Really, she just needs the interaction with the coaches. She'll respond better to the coaches. And fundamentally, they know more than I know about the competition, the performance, why the performance was good or bad, what can be tweaked realistically within

the period of time, all that sort of stuff. And they have a way of working, which... yeah which you can disrupt quite easily so yeah that that and cost well oh yeah cost for sure I get that okay well we'll definitely get into all those topics um later but first just so we get to learn a little bit more about who you are um I mean in the intro I will have told everyone you are

Aaron's dad um but I think a big question a lot of people want to know like immediately as soon as possible do you climb much yeah so I uh I got into climbing about doing the maths when I was about 18, when I went to university. And I'm 55 now, so a long time ago. And all the time I was at university for six years. Not because I failed. I did a PhD as well. It was the easy option. Get a job or do a PhD. I think I'll do

a PhD and stay in education a bit longer. So I got to climb for sort of six years and I did it in North Wales. So I had access to all the mountains there. So I sort of got into climbing there. I was not very good at it. Because, you know, they did have climbing walls, but the climbing walls were pretty rubbish. And the people I climbed with were proper mountaineers. They only went out on rock and they only did lead routes. Okay.

Dirt bags now? Yeah. And, you know, apart from the slate quarries, it was pretty much all natural gear. And I just crapped myself basically whenever I had to lead, unless it was really, really simple. So I overgripped everything, pumped out on most stuff. But it was still good fun. And then you had people like Johnny Dawes sort of at that stage doing amazing stuff. So my few claims to fame were going to a few parties and Johnny Dawes was there talking to the elite. And I was like,

wow, we went to a party. Yeah, so I got into it that way, then left university, got a job, stopped, largely stopped climbing. And then when we had kids and they were, I don't know, old enough, four, five, six, we introduced them to various things and climbing was one of them. So I then got back into climbing. I probably climb maybe twice a week now, sometimes more. Yeah, that's pretty often. Yeah, yeah, not, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess I'm comparing

myself to the other people I know. Yeah, I mean, I climb like three to four times a week. So, yeah, I think that's often. I honestly don't want to climb more than like three days a week. But yeah, twice a week is quite pleasant. And obviously it's not, it's just climbing. I rarely do any strength and conditioning or fingerboarding. And I don't even like the boards themselves. Erin makes me do the board and it's just, I'm pathetic at that. Well, it's a separate skill

almost. It seems to be to me anyway. But during my interview with Erin, I'll link that in the description for those who haven't heard it yet also. But she mentioned that you used to do gymnastics. When was that? So when I went to university, so I'd lived in Australia. I was born in England. I was living in Australia from 79 to 83 or something. So I competed in Australia. where at that point in time, the standard was lower. So I was at

national level. Then I came back to England and I was really right on the periphery of national level. But yeah, so I did it at a relatively high standard. And then I went to university with a thought to sort of continue my training, but soon got distracted by other things. But I did the university championships in the UK

and I think I came third. in my final undergraduate year and then i did it again in my last year of phd i don't want to say i came third again but i might have come fourth or fifth but yeah but i sort of did did relatively okay um and then post -university i i stopped that as well it's quite hard to find places to do uh the gym especially the six six different sort of disciplines so yeah yeah that was i guess everyone will say it's useful because i've got some element of

body awareness and stuff but uh Yeah, and just the understanding of what it's like being an athlete. She mentioned that she believes you could still do some of the tricks from gymnastics. What tricks do you think you could still pull off right now? I mean, I won't make you do anything, but if you want to show off anything, now's your chance. Weirdly, the easy handstands and things like that are easy. Once you know the tricks, you can hold a handstand for a long, long time.

Flick flacks, backflips, and back somersaults. I could probably do a front somersault, but they're harder to land. Cool. Wish we could see it. I'll go and spend an hour warming up and then send you a video. Oh, that would be great, actually. I'd really love to see that. Okay, and so now

getting back into the climbing portion of your life, how did you end up getting involved in the climbing competition scene with Aaron? Most of the walls in the UK run fun competitions each year. At least one, but sometimes many. And they run the sort of boulder leagues as well. So they put the problems up and you've got so much time to log how many you do or how many attempts and stuff. So we got into it through the fun competitions first. And often they have a junior category

or youth category. So that's how we first got into it. And then you've got various competitions which run locally in the UK. So we got into some

of those. and then they have what's called a youth climbing series which um which as the name suggests is sort of it's done regionally and then the i think it's the top three from each region go to a grand final uh in in well usually in scotland at the national climbing center there and then you get crowned the youth climbing series champion which then qualifies you for the gb team weirdly if you're on the gb team you're not allowed to enter it um okay so it's sort

of like a a sort of backdoor route in but it opens it up to a much wider environment and then you unbeknown to us at that time you'd have national competitions like the UK UK Nationals Welsh Nationals Scottish Nationals all of which if you win or podium get you the right to go to the GB selection whether it's for junior grades or senior grades so Yeah, we had no idea really how the GB team thing worked. But through doing some of those competitions and the YCS Youth Climbing Series,

we became aware of the GB climbing team. And they were like, I don't know. It's like when you see these elite group of people who are warming up and doing their thing and then they absolutely destroy you on the wall. That was what it was like the first time we saw them. And they were all wearing their kit and stuff. And I think that's when Aaron sort of clocked them and thought, oh, they're on a different level. I can go win a local comp, but these guys are on a completely

different level. And I think that sort of inspired her to see if she could get up to that level and see if she could get onto the team. So how young do you think she was when she kind of first had that thought of wanting to make the national team? I guess it happened quite quickly, so I'm guessing it was like 14, maybe something like 12 or 14. Yeah, I really should know. Okay. Yeah, because when she went for it, we just moved her from one climbing wall to another climbing wall

against her will. Why against her will? I guess

we are one of the challenging things. is to work out what's best for them to achieve their goals without trying to be pushy about it and so we we had two children both climbing uh her brother who's about a year and a half two years older um and they were they were climbing at a wall called the reach in southeast London for their squad um but there was another wall called the castle in London itself which had a much stronger squad and a much more focused squad and a lot

of those squad had moved into the GB team. And our son wanted to go to that squad, wanted to go and try out for that squad. Aaron didn't. We persuaded them both to go to the tryouts and they both got offered a space and Aaron did not want to go at all. But yeah, we sort of said, well, if Callum's going. There's no way we're going to go to two different walls. So you're going to have to go there. And eventually she

decided it was really good and much better. But we sort of thought they would put them both in the same squad. But for reasons only known to them, they decided to put them in two different squads. I think because they felt everyone was too young to be in the same squad as Callum. But that meant that they had to go two times a week. One squad was on two days and the other

squad was on the other two days. So there was a period of about two and a half years where every single day we were having to drive from where we live into the center of London where we, my wife, was having to do that drive. So she basically picked the kids up from school, got them in the car, gave them food, drove into the center of London, which was a two hour drive.

That is so inefficient. yeah yeah and then drive all the way back yeah geez yeah thinking back to the youth scene or yeah just when she was

growing up um do you remember any times where you need you needed to like push her more or um i guess like how do you find the balance between when to push versus when to back off and suggest more rest my experience when they were when she was young girl was that she didn't The schedule wasn't intense. It was more intense than a normal person, but she probably wasn't doing more than three or four days a week. And she probably wasn't climbing for more than four hours in any of those

sessions. And a four -hour session would just be like playing around on boulders. They were structured to some extent, but not massively structured. And the competition sort of lent themselves. There were obvious ones that she had to do, which were the nationals. So she would go to all of those if she could do. And then you had some higher profile sort of fun competitions, which aspirationally I think she wanted to do.

But yeah, we didn't really have to. Sometimes we had to suggest to her ones to do just because we thought it would be a good idea. But generally at that age, she was quite happy to compete in most scenarios. I would say that that was all fine. And then she went to some EYCs. I think she did a year. So she had four EYCs, which she did okay. And I think she came 25th just in about every single one of them. So she didn't make semis or anything. But first year on the team.

She seemed quite happy with that. And we were quite happy with that. And then COVID came. So the next year was completely wiped out. I think she did one national competition, which was, she did the Welsh, Welsh boulder and came third. And then in her age group, and then she did the UK lead or something and won it. And then COVID hit and everything was shut down. And then I, I think we went like a whole, you know, all the

way through that season. And then they opened up world championships, youth world championships. And she got to go to that. And I think she'd been allowed to go to two training days as a, you know, we were allowed to travel as an elite athlete. So she went to the youth world championship and came fifth. Oh, okay. Not bad. Which was, you know, good or unexpectedly good. Fifth in

bold, I think. 10th or 11th in lead um and then obviously things started to loosen up and she could actually get to competitions the following year but then she started to break into the senior squad um so she had less interest in going to the youth ones and was more focused on the seniors um and i think i don't know i we had a lot of discussions because you're around which competitions to go to and all that sort of thing. So when you're in the senior squad, you can either go

to the regionals. So ours would be the European, I guess in your case, it would be North, South, Asia. It wouldn't be Asia Pacific. It would be North, South America. I don't know what they're called. So you have a choice between going to the European Cups or if you qualify, you can go to the World Cups. The European Cups being

slightly easier. So I think she had a year when she first broke into the team, she had a year doing the European Cups because they actually said, you know, she's transitioning into the senior team and we don't think she should go to World Cups. At that stage, she was probably second, I think, in Boulder in the UK and second, third in lead. So we were like, what do you mean she can't go to World Cups? She's good enough. And actually Tom, who you had on the program

as well. So Tom sort of said, you know, I think it's right. And with hindsight, he was 100 % correct. So it's a really good example of why you should listen to coaches. It was right as in she should have started the World Cups earlier? No, no, no. She should have eased herself. She should and did ease herself into the European Cups. Because I think, you know. You always want to jump in. Well, yeah, I think as a parent, you sort of like, well, yeah, if she's good enough,

she's good enough. And then there's merit to that to some point. But the gap is so big. You're going from the European Cup into the World Cups. The gap is huge. If you look at some of the results, you'll see people winning a European Cup and then not making semifinals at a World Cup. Yeah, not always. You get some like Orianne Pertone

smashed it all the way through. Um, so you do get some, some exceptions, but, um, yeah, it's just such a big jump up and it's a jump up from nationals to Europeans or, you know, the, the regional side, you know, it was with hindsight, it was 100 % the correct thing to do because it allowed her to see where the level was, get herself up to a reasonable level within the European cups and, uh, and then sort of re reset for the

world cups. And, and weirdly because of. various cancellations because covid was still kicking around uh some of the european cups were cancelled they said oh in that case because you couldn't go to those we'll send you to a couple of world cups which so it worked out really really well in the end she got to see european cups she made one final um and then uh and didn't trouble the podium actually she made one final and it was a lead and she was completely misread uh a section

of the uh leader and decided to everybody else went like it was like it was a sort of uh pockets traverse everybody else did it pocket traverse with feet and everyone decides you try to campus the whole thing and she campus most of it but then just ran out of energy on the final move um but uh yeah so she did that and then she could yeah so she's like oh yeah i made a semi a final um and then she went to the world cups and uh i think she was 40 something so yeah she was

like oh my god that you know that's a whole another level what do i need to do and in terms of the whole process like memberships teams coaching um all of that must kind of add up and be quite

expensive if you're comfortable with it could you like do you want to give an estimate of how much all of it like cost every year yeah i mean the the membership is not i honestly don't know how much it is British Mountaineering Council membership. It's not, I mean, it's not debilitating. The, yeah, I mean, you have to go to certain competitions and they generally cost 60, 70 quid to enter. Well, the only ones that we tend to go to are the selection ones now, which are two

of them. So, yeah, again, that's not, yeah, it's cost, but it's not a particularly high cost. The biggest one I would say is, again, you know, different for different athletes, but I would say, When your child suddenly decides that actually this is something I want to take seriously, then you've got to take it seriously as well. And generally that means that you can't just go to

the same wall every day. So if you happen to live close enough to a wall, and we chose a place to live in Kent, which at that point in time had no walls anywhere near it. I think the closest

one was about 50 minute drive. They've subsequently built about... three quite close when we moved away um nice but of course but yeah so so when yeah when she made that decision we were like okay so yeah we need to get you to various locations so you can experience different route setting uh you know different problems yeah because they they do reset quite frequently but not massively frequently and if it's the same setters it tends to be similar styles um yeah so so basically

we were writing off weekends um so you make a sacrifice in time sacrificing cost because you know so we had to you know we'd go up to sheffield a lot um that was a four -hour drive staying overnight um yeah so yeah i think that's that's probably where the the cost element comes in and then yeah because they're unknowns a lot of the walls would say oh yeah we'll let the gb senior squad come and climb for free but uh you know the junior squad we won't you've got

to pay um then you're paying as a parent as well often you know if you if you happen to want to have a little play as well which is all fine but yeah that's another 10 to 15 pounds per day uh and then food that you're spending whilst you're there and stuff even if you try to you do as much of that as you can um and then if they get the internationals you obviously got to pay for them to go out there, pay for them

to stay somewhere. Often when they're young, I think a lot of parents do accompany them out. So then you're paying for yourselves to go out as well. Yeah, so I think that's where the cost comes in. I'd say it's probably 10 ,000 to 20

,000. Yeah, I mean, that might be... 10 10 would be the minimum 20 would be the absolute maximum i'd say um yeah whilst whilst they're spinning i've been right at the beginning of it wasn't that much towards the end towards the end of of us paying for everything it was probably closer to that because we were obviously paying for everything for her she was living in a lot of different hotels to train um and then we were ferrying around everywhere And all that sort

of stuff. Yeah. So I think, you know, it's slightly different now because she has got other funding options. But yeah, I think at its worst, it was probably pushing towards 15 ,000, 20 ,000. Yeah, geez. And I suspect, you know, you could probably do it cheaper. But that was, you know, we used to send her off to competitions with a sort of suitcase in which there was a hot pot, you know, which you can plug in and make your own pasta

and stuff. Oh, that's nice. So, yeah. Which, weirdly, she still does that, even though she doesn't have to now. She still does that because she actually likes that process, weirdly. Yeah, I mean, like the ritual consistency. Yeah, I think, yeah. And it's easy, isn't it? It's not particularly exciting. She just makes pasta, pesto, and tuna. So she can take all of that with her, so she also then doesn't have to sort of go out and find it. Oh, yeah, that totally

makes sense. Okay, geez, yeah. I mean, a lot of sacrifice, and it's not cheap to... cheap to get into no i do i do remember one of the fathers turning around to me i think at the beginning of the second year and saying you're going to destroy destroy cars and he was right we did we did put a lot of miles onto cars yeah i mean that's yeah really far drives i didn't know that it would i didn't know that the uk was that big um yeah if we drive up to uh from from where

we lived in which is just outside london or commuter town of London we used to if we had to go to Ratho we'd either fly up there or it would be a 7 -8 hour drive which in itself then you start to get into the whole debate of you've got to factor in the fact that sitting down for 7 -8 hours is not the best uh you know sort of um preparation to then go and climb as hard as you can because you're going all the way to a really really good wall so then you start to get into

the well actually it would be better to fly even though it might be more expensive because then i'm gonna have to hire a car when i get at the other end and uh drive so yeah so you start to get into a lot of those sort of considerations good thing you went through the sacrifice it paid off thankfully But I mean, it looks like when you look through her results, I felt like

before maybe like 2023 -ish, she was still pretty unknown, sort of like even like a little bit quiet in the youth scene. What happened between like 2023 and 2024 that made it such an incredible season after? Yeah, so 2023 was the year when she did World Cups. I think it was exclusive. She won the European Cup at the beginning of the season, then she just did World Cups. And that was the year when you had to get the OQS points, basically the top 40, I think, ranked,

went to OQS. And then, yeah, so she was basically looking at that year and saying, okay, so this is the year I need to try to get myself into

the top 40. not really trained changed her training plan massively um and yeah it was all it was all relatively new as well we'd we'd moved to a company called lattice who create training plans um and we just moved from working with um jen wood who's who's a really great gb athlete and a coach with lattice and we'd moved to ollie tor who who sort of owns and runs lattice who was providing even more bespoke because I think Jen was in a bit of a weird position because

she was still on the team at that point in time so she was coaching Erin so that was sort of new she was working really closely with or starting to work more closely with Rachel Carr who was one of the GB coaches yeah so we sort of went through that year and then she did yeah I think she said yeah she squeaked in literally squeaked in and then we sat down with Tom Greenall who was the GB head coach at the time with Rachel, with Ollie and me. And they sort of said to her,

so Erin's very good at talking to us. She's not very good at talking to other people openly. She's much, much better at it now. But then she was quite quiet. They were like, oh, yeah, what do you want? And she was like, well, you know, I'm going to do my best, blah, blah, blah. I think Tom was saying, but what do you want? Do you want to go and do your best and enjoy it? Do you want to go and qualify for the Olympics? Do you want to go and put down a statement sort

of thing? And she went, yeah. I think she actually said, yeah. And Tom was like, say it, say what you want. And they did actually make her say,

I want to go to OQS and I want to qualify. um ideally i'd like to qualify comfortably um so they sort of said that and then um and then they they basically sort of said okay so there's a lot to workshop it wasn't they didn't sort of pull any punches in terms of you know what that was going to look like in terms of the training plan and yeah they've sort of said you're going to go go deep into a hole you're going to feel like absolute crap um yeah we're going to have

to push it really hard i think that's the famous yeah famous top line of you know well they keep pushing if she doesn't break keep pushing yeah but yeah she was she was massively behind where she needs to be uh yeah and she'll say that as well yeah she was nowhere nowhere near um the level one to to qualify for the olympics at that point in time but actually to be any sort of a contender at a world cup she was a non -entity um and i don't mean that in a nasty way i mean

you know there was there was no there was no um event which could have happened where she would have um you know made a final let alone podium um just like honesty of yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely brutal honesty, I think, which I think really works well with Erin. And it may not work well with other athletes, but it certainly worked well with Erin. And she had seen, I think she'd been observing some other athletes that she'd seen who were dead on their feet at the

end of a session. And she was like, well, I don't

actually feel like that a lot of the time. And I think the other key thing we said to Ollie was, if you look at her 24 season, sort of it started off okay um i can't remember where she came i think she did one boulder world cup which came 39th or something and then she made a semi -final in in south korea came 17th or something and then she just tailed off it got worse and worse um in the 23 season or 23 yeah let's say 24 i'm pretty sure she made a final yeah yeah

yeah so uh so we sort of said well how do we We need to change the training plan so that it's, you know, that we are continuing to work and keep up the standards so we can maintain and actually ideally improve. So if you look at, you know, I think Toby's performances, Toby Roberts, they tend to sort of get better. And obviously he's had a massive turnaround this year at Innsbruck. That's pretty cool. So, yes, all these things came into play. She went into a... you know,

a brutal, brutal training plan. And our job in that was quite simple. I guess quickly we realised that often she'll have, you know, Rachel will sort of work with her, but Rachel can't go there. And there were eight, nine hour days. So, you know, Rachel can't be there for all that time because she's obviously servicing a lot of other athletes. You know, Ollie would sort of pop in, pop out, have a look at stuff. We brought in an S &C person, so they were sort of involved.

But in reality, I think she just needed company. So that tended to be me, sometimes my son and Lindsay and me probably more on the, naturally, I think I was happy to do the actual physical activities. But emotionally, I'm probably a little

less. uh turned on whereas lindsey my wife she's she's much more attuned to that side of it so i think she was much better picking her up and sort of saying um you need to step away from it but not not step away from the training yeah so there were a number of occasions i think where she was like you you're getting upset you're getting frustrated stop And then we'd be like,

well, I've still got two or three hours. She goes, yeah, well, you can still do two or three hours, but stop, grab a coffee or grab something to eat. Just have a 10, 15 minute break and then go back to it. Yeah, so it wasn't sort of making an excuse to say, oh, no, you know, you're upset. Let's go home. It was sort of saying, take a step away and then go back to it. So, yeah, you're not here the nicest possible way. You're not here to feel good. Yeah, but you knew this is

what you signed up to. You knew you would feel. crappy and tired and all this sort of stuff. So it's just part of the process. But obviously the first time you do that, it's quite horrible. And probably, actually, to be fair, the second time you do it, it's not that nice either. But the results are nice. So if it all works. So yeah, so that was the slightly different aspect that we got to experience there because suddenly it was like, well, yeah, we need to split our

time up. So yeah, most of my holiday that year was spent in a cold gym somewhere. Just being there for Erin Lindsay basically sort of wound up her work that she was doing so she could spend more time at gyms and ferrying Erin around to the various locations, which was absolutely fine because it meant that we were still sort of involved. I got to find weird and wonderful things to do to sort of make some of those exercises more fun. Yeah, what were some of those exercises?

There's so much stuff now on YouTube. on the internet. So you can look at the sort of exercises that athletes do in other sports and then sort of either adapt them or say actually that one's relevant to climbing. Plyometrics is one we really got into but only where they sort of had some element of you could use this for quick footwork.

on a coordination boulder or you could use this for explosive movement off of a boulder you know then you adapt that to say okay so let's get ourselves into a really uncomfortable position and then try to explode out of it or you know let's let's you know balance on on one foot on this block and that you know if you sort of move a weight around and then you can actually start to understand which muscles to move in your body Um, and a lot of stuff with resistance bands

where you, you know, you're resisting the movement, but still keeping the balance. Um, so you, you know, personally, I think it starts to teach you how to stop swings and how to counteract, uh, barn door, dooring off of stuff. Um, so we deal with a lot of that, a lot of balance stuff. Um, and we still muck around with a lot of that.

Uh, yeah. Chucking balls. you know multiple balls and sort of throwing them back um i think also like med i love doing stuff with medicine balls where you catch it at weird angles okay yeah and then so you again you sort of utilize your muscles which you would normally use and you can make that very aerobic if you're throwing it all over the place um so that's fun um And I think, you know, therefore the warmup can actually end up being sort of, you know, an hour plus

long, but actually you've done a whole load of, you've got your body warm, but you've actually done a whole load of other stuff, but it's sort of badged up as a bit more fun. If that works

for the person. How are you involved in her training nowadays? Or like, how has that evolved? You mentioned, yeah, you were like pretty involved before and now maybe it's kind of waned a bit. Yeah. So I would say we were not that involved. Early, early on, because we just relied on the coaches. Then when she became more serious, yeah, through COVID, we became more involved just because we sort of had to because it was all at home.

And then as she came out of COVID and became more serious, we became more involved just because we were pulling together a team. So one of the challenges we've got is you've got Rachel, Car, Olly, Tor. Tom Parkinson, who's the S &C coach. Yeah, those three are working together. And they do, they work together really well, but obviously that's a risk to have that many people involved in a training plan. And I remember a number of people actually sort of said to me, I don't think

it will work. But it works for Aaron and it works. But one of the things I try to do is make sure that we have regular meetings as a threesome.

to discuss all that sort of stuff and you know look at when the next training block is yeah and that's where it's really it's quite interesting to see them all work together um yeah because rachel's at the competition so she's got direct feedback ollie's got all this sort of science and knowledge and but but obviously you can only put so much of it into play at a certain point in time and from an snc perspective there's only so much you can do so there's a bit of maintenance

but actually you know if you suddenly sort of say to tom we're not going to do this comp So that gives us a four week block. You can be like, okay, in four weeks, we might be able to achieve something. So let's do this, this and this. And then your Ollie's feeding into that. Rachel's saying, yeah, I think that's a good idea. Or actually, no, I don't think it's compression. I think we need to work on contact strength or

whatever. So it works. Yeah, for this dynamic, it works really well, but you do have to work at it a bit. So I would say our, as she went into the Olympic qualifying bit. We were more in support role and making it fun and adding in exercises which we thought might add value. After the Olympic year, we had another discussion around what we want to achieve. We wanted to achieve 25 and she wanted to be more consistently challenging for a medal. So obviously that required

more training. We had more specific areas of weakness to identify there. So winter wasn't massively different, to be fair. It was back in a hole. But I would say during this year, we've probably taken more of a backwards step because Erin's getting older, so she knows what she has to do. She's got access to more people who she can train with. But yeah, we still, I probably, when she's in the country and when she's in a training mode, I'm probably still

see her at least once a week. I think her brother's a lot more heavily involved in training with her now. And to be fair, he's far, far better at setting problems than I am and things like that. He doesn't set, he doesn't root set, but

he's actually. doesn't root set yet but yeah he will he'll be able to go to a woody board and sort of say yeah i'll make up this route for you um or he'll be at a point on a on a splat wall you know and sort of do a 70 move route um to to sort of simulate a lead route and he'll be able to eliminate stuff and sort of say okay you know either climb that but eliminate that and that or actually climb up to the top using these three routes but only that hold that hold

he just sees stuff like that a lot better than than i can so yeah that's been really useful and i think yeah some of the some of the more recent videos certainly on the boards most of those problems have been set by callum and they're all they're really horrible well it's nice to have a lot of family support so yeah earlier you mentioned that being you as a parent physically

being there could be a distraction um which competitions did you choose to go to and then i guess i wonder like if you only go to a few select competitions doesn't she like maybe feel even more pressure because that's like the one that you see please excuse this brief intermission but if you're interested in deleted scenes from this episode where he talks about the pivotal moments in her training growing up and his perspective on the weird parent dynamics in the youth climbing scene

do consider helping support this podcast on patreon some other perks include a membership pin shipped to you after two months prioritize guest questions or the ability to submit video questions and more to come the proceeds go back into the podcast help me break even and they help improve the experience of the guests if you'd like to help out non -monetarily liking commenting and sharing helps a great deal as well back to the show yeah and i suspect that's some of the some of the

issue so we're not a constant feature at the competition so we're not part of her her setup for the comps whereas and you know some of the other parents are are a constant feature which is you know which which works well i think or can work well um yeah so we went to prague which to be fair park worked you know quite well um she did she did well qualified for finals in fourth and then finals were cooled off so there was no finals Which was upsetting. Well, upsetting

was a shame. But yeah, I still think Oriana had done a really good job there. So that is what it is. And then we went to Innsbruck. Mainly because we'd never, we go to Innsbruck a lot to train, but we'd never been, she'd never actually done the World Cup there. And it was obviously quite a well -informed audience and stuff like

that. one we wanted to go to anyway just to experience um yeah and and that i think us being there was me lindsey and callum uh and and her partner so uh yeah i think it just threw her off yeah not not in a big way uh you know and it might have happened anyway but but why have that risk there i mean at the end of the day like i say yeah we were we were sort of stood in the crowd um and i tend to do little hand movements so i'm stood in the crowd going oh god i look like

an idiot um and and you're you're yeah you're basically climbing every move with them you don't you know we don't always get a fantastic view i and i just found it really you know really stressful lindsey's finds it really stressful as well um and and yeah so when we when we had the discussion it was quite an easy discussion And I think you're backed up by the coaches as

well. You almost get to the point of saying, well, yeah, if this is the equivalent of a Masters or a Grand Slam, you're there in your unit of professionalism with your coaches, with your separate hotels, you're removed from all those influences. And yes, you might see them in the audience, but it's, you know. but they'd be doing

it probably for a number of years. So, yeah, for me and Lindsay and actually all of us, it was a very simple, you know, we're saying if we present any issue to you at all, we're very happy not to come. Yeah, we can watch it on, in Europe, you have to watch it on Discovery+. But, yeah, we can watch it on Discovery+. Yeah. She always calls us up after each of the rounds. So we get to talk to her anyway. And then when she does get back, we can celebrate or commiserate.

So yeah, it doesn't massively change anything because as you go through the rounds, you can't really celebrate because you're straight back into recovery and all that sort of stuff. And generally when it finishes, if you do well. So

I think Innsbruck, she got third. By the time she'd gone through anti -doping and stuff, it was... gone 11 o 'clock at night oh yeah so you can't really get anything done in in the um yeah you can't celebrate too much because you know she's not she's not wanting to go to a nightclub or anything like that um uh yeah so literally it was like oh okay um i think uh we we had the leftover food that was in the in the cafe at the wall in innsbruck and then uh and then went

home So, yeah, you know, in some ways it's always nicer and easier to celebrate when she gets back to the UK and, you know, all of that bit's done and she could be 100 % with us. You know, it wasn't a hard decision at all. And, you know, it was the right decision for her. You know, it might not be as we move into 26, 27, 28, however long, then I'm sure that we can try to introduce it back in, in some way or shape, but I'd much

rather. her be able to perform at her best than you know physically be there and her maybe not

perform at the best yeah that makes sense yeah you also said that the experience of actually watching a competition is kind of terrible um have you like found any strategies that helps you calm down from that or no the uh i i think one of the first things that we went to is as when she got onto the youth team was was some sort of psychology thing for parents you're sort of saying oh yeah yeah this is obviously stressful for your kid and stuff but actually you've got

to try to find a way to enjoy it but obviously no way i've had to do that um i i've never i said yeah i've never found a way of of taking away the stress um i i am less stressed about it now than than previously um but i think that's I think when she first started competing, we really didn't have any clues. So we're like, oh, maybe, maybe, maybe. And then with knowledge, we were like, no. They don't televise the qualification and she's not going to get out of qualification.

So this is what it is. So you were basically watching it on the app. And then when she had the 24 season, it was like, geez. So that was all like a massive shock. So that was relatively low stress because we're like, Jesus, this can't be happening. But then by the time of the Olympics, you then had that glimmer of hope that could she make the final? And then she made the final. Like, my God, could she get on the podium? So you had that glimmer of hope, which added a bit

of stress. uh into it but i guess that's good stress so you know and even now i'm still i i think i'm still coming to terms with the fact that she's performing at a really high standard so you know you would on the performance she's done so far you sort of expect her to make finals it would be a bit of a shock if she didn't but but in my head i'm still like oh you know oh she might not make semis um so it did that that aspect is weird but but yeah but less stressful

now i think because she does generally she delivers and you know certainly getting into semis that seems to be quite yeah you can see quite quickly whether it's a boulder or lead that she is where she needs to be um we used to joke because you're on the lead because you've got those two qualification routes often you can qualify on the first one if you do a really high or top it and you can actually look at the results say you you don't actually have to bother to climb the second one

you'll be in um And that's happened a few times. So that was, you know, it was almost like a wow. I never thought that would happen. Is that the strategy? Like just don't really do the second one? No, I think, I don't think, well, you know, certainly, I mean, some of the athletes have talked in the past around, you know, I don't want to come out last. So I'll deliberately muck up a bit. But I just, the margins are so close now. Yeah. Especially with the boulder scoring

system and stuff. I think you can't. You can't have that attitude. So yeah, certainly for Erin, I don't think she ever gives anything less than 100%, although she will sometimes tape her fingers for the lead routes. Oh, that makes sense. On the qualification. So she'll sort of bank a bit of skin and maybe compromise the climb slightly. Okay, smart. Yeah, I'm surprised you would say that it's a lot less stressful now because now there's more expectations involved too with making

finals. And then if you don't make finals, then it's a lot more painful maybe. Yeah, but it was depressing. I can't think of the right word. I sort of think it's quite hard to maintain that level all the time. So you, I think, I think she's been on a final streak since the beginning of 2023. I mean, she was, she made the finals in Prague in 23, but then was appealed out, which is fine. And then every finals through to Innsbruck Boulder, where she didn't make the final. Well,

and that was purely down to performance. Yeah, like was that a stressful moment or like disappointment? Yeah, it was more disappointment for her because she was so close to Boulder 3 and Boulder 4 on another day. I'm sure she would have sent one or both of them and that would have got her in quite comfortably. Yeah, I think you've got to be pragmatic. I remember she called us up after when she got appealed out in Prague in 24. we were bracing ourselves for, you know, full -on

depression. And she was just like, we're like, oh, yeah, you sound okay. And she's like, yeah, I just wasn't good enough. We're like, yeah, but you weren't good enough. Yeah, you got in. She goes, no, no, I wasn't good enough. If I'd been good enough, it wouldn't have mattered if they'd appealed me out of one. I would have had enough points to get through anyway. So, you know, I wasn't good enough. I just need to get better. So she was really massively pragmatic

about that. And, you know, I'd sort of say after

Innsbruck. boulder that was when we had the discussion so yeah again pragmatic about it and sort of saying well what yeah what's different why you know why didn't i perform as i would have expected to perform why did i throw myself so much at boulder three and not save something for boulder four which was the power boulder you so yeah i think as long as she's taking something from each of them you know it's disappointing but um as long as she's taking something from it

and moving forward in her mind and and you know from what we can see i think it's sort of oh yeah okay and i guess that's the journey towards uh getting to that point where you're like okay i'm i now feel i am good enough and i've got the mindset and i've got the the structure and the team that actually i should be making finals and i should be challenging for the medals every single time getting into the yanya like category yeah Well, that's a good mindset to have. I'm

glad to hear that. None of these were like super depressing moments for her. I think they were. I think she was upset. But I think you could be upset, can't you? But then you just need to process it and think, OK, well, what do I change?

What do I do differently? Yeah. Can you think of like the most stressful competition that you've had to watch? Yeah. Budapest OQS. It was the second qualifier. And she, yeah, she'd got third in the first one in Shanghai. So it was, you're sort of thinking, oh, yes, this is nailed on. She's going to get the Olympic ticket. And she had a disaster, well not disaster, she had a

really bad for her boulder round. And we were suddenly like, oh God, she's got to come out and do, she had to, she had to get to the headwall. Actually, I think a hold or two onto the headwall in order to get into semifinals. And we're like, God, if she doesn't make semifinals, then this is going to be the most stressful watch because people could actually overtake her. So that was hugely stressful. I think there's a video that is on one of her YouTubes, which is Callum, my

son, videoing her. And he's super, it's literally like this. He was like, and then I think there's

a bit where he goes, that's it, she's in. in semis yes that was probably the the most stressful it was about 34 degrees it was really baking hot so you're sort of like you've got heat stress as i say this is a non -athlete so you as a as a as a spectator you got heat stress and stress it was it was uh yeah that was quite an unpleasant environment um obviously the athletes had it easy because they just had to climb up this wall in 34 degrees oh yeah that's pretty simple yeah

that was probably the most stressful because he's thinking my god this is a a huge dream and a huge moment which might be about to disappear. So you were there in person for that? We were. We went to the Budapest ones, which was really great because, again, we were bystanders in that. Probably the first time I'd seen her when she actually got your approach by fans. I'd never seen that before, so that was quite nice. So when she came out of the Atelier area, we'd sort

of migrated around there. But we didn't get to talk to her for quite a long time because she was just working her way through a crowd, which is quite surreal to see a daughter with strangers wanting an autograph and stuff. Yeah, no, she had suddenly blew up. I think it was, I don't want to say like surprising, but yeah, I think still like around that time, it was still pretty early. Not a lot of people knew who she was.

And so it was kind of like... I'd say even in the UK, even in the UK, she was still relatively unknown. I think Rachel used to say, Coach used to sort of say, you're the best boulder in the UK and nobody knows it. Yeah, it was a silent rise, wasn't it? And I think, yeah, and even at the Olympics, because I think she must have been one of the lowest, because it was on, I think it was on World Cup ranking or World ranking. So she was. Always either the last out or the

first out, depending on which round it was. It was a long way back. And Okuress as well. So she was like, yeah, you're still thinking, oh, yeah, these are the positions. And then Erin came out almost like last and was able, well, unfortunately for somebody, knocked them out. Yeah, I mean, it was so interesting. Like I remember when I first interviewed her, she was just saying that she was still like waiting hours in ISO for like quality. It came a really long way.

It's very interesting to see. Yeah, yeah. That's also presented a challenge because I think qualifying, she struggled a bit with the qualifying high up in semis. It means you come out earlier for semis and that didn't give her enough time to warm up. Oh, yeah. So she had to adapt her warm up. Yeah. So, yeah, it's quite weird how you have to continue to adapt. to uh to your sort

of yeah what your performance is giving you yeah it's ever -changing and of course how was your experience at the olympics did you get to enjoy the venue much or was it mostly just stressful uh stressful to watch that was um yeah it was it was okay actually it yeah it was there was a little bit of stress actually there's probably quite a lot of stress around the Because at that point, she really wanted to make finals. And there was a possibility. It wasn't beyond the

realms of possibility. So that was a bit stressful. But I'd say the atmosphere was fantastic. The venue was fantastic. It was bloody hot again. But it was an amazing venue, packed, literally at capacity as well, which was fantastic to see.

They did a really... really good job um yeah and so that that sort of i guess being in that environment and that um setting sort of took away some of the stress yeah but it was it was a bit stress i i the things i can remember is for whatever reason when she qualified it was like the the lead part was was what determined whether she was going to get into the final or not but somehow we were sat with a whole load of other parents So I'm guessing it must have

been the friends and family tickets. Yeah. So we were, we were sat with all, you know, a number of the other parents. So you had to be quite careful around, you know, what you, what you were like, you know, you know, cause obviously you want them to get in, but in order for her to get in, other people had to fall earlier. So, yeah. So it was, it was quite weird, you know, weird, weird vibe. But I mean, you know,

you know, generally all the parents are so. at that level they're so supportive and stuff um yeah so i think we were sat next to um uh what's the name casper cova oh yeah jenya jenya yeah her her parents or her mother in particular um yeah she was lovely giving us sort of hugs and stuff um yeah so it was really really quite cool i do i do uh although the other bit i remember is she yeah she qualified we knew she'd qualified so i was super happy um and then i saw her that

you had barriers at the front where the where the athletes could mill around and then there was a sort of area off to the far right which is all behind barriers but you could actually go and talk to the athletes and get the design stuff but it was sort of security patrolled but she was at the front and i thought oh yeah i'm literally two things away and somebody had gone out of the seat So I thought I could jump that

and get to go and talk to her. So I did jump it, really athletically jumped it and went to talk to her. I was like, wow, yeah, this is amazing. It's happening. And she was like, yeah, I'll leave it. And then I could see people minister. I'll go back to my seat. And I tried to jump back into my seat, completely messed it up. And then he smacked my head. So I looked very uncool getting back into it. Yeah. So that was, yeah, I mean, that was, I guess, stressful, but happy.

And then the... The final was less stressful until there was a brief moment where you're thinking, oh, could she scrape into third? I don't think she was ever going to get first or second because I think Brooke and Yanya had sort of wrapped them up. But depending on her lead, I or Jessie may not have overtaken her. But I mean, by her own admission, she made that lead route really hard. I mean, she fought really hard as well,

but yeah, she didn't read it. maybe in the most efficient manner but yeah in reality i think by that stage we were just massively happy she was she'd made it to the final and got to climb again yeah and then suddenly she had all the power i remember running over to the the athlete area where you could talk to them and and the big security guards would step in front of her and say she almost stopped you and say is it is it okay if this person approaches you yeah

i was like it's me So yeah, that was quite exciting watching her. Yeah, he can come over. Okay, that's nice to hear. I'm glad you had a not too stressful time. I was going to say the other interesting, we went to the, I'm assuming everybody does this, but they have like houses, like the GB house. So all the athletes and all the friends and family, because you can't go to the village, obviously,

where they're staying. So generally after the event, they can invite you to this GB house, which is like, I didn't know this was a thing, so that's interesting. Yeah, so we went there, which is really nice. It's a really nice location. They have a bar, and they have a bar which I think lots of people can go to. Then by special invitation, you can go into the special athlete area where, again, they have another bar and food and nibbles and stuff. It's a really beautiful

setting. So she invited us there. Toby had just won his gold, I think, the night before. So he

was there. discovering alcohol i think oh yeah uh um but uh yeah i had my dad out there uh erin had one of her sort of best friends from school where lindsey was there kind of was there uh so he went into this um yeah this this area and uh yeah and all proceeded to get really really quite merry and about halfway through getting merry um the uh she was offered this interview with eurosport or somebody but it was at the eiffel tower or looking out over the eiffel tower

she was like oh i can't get there i can't get there they'll send you a limo so they'll put you in a limo drive you out there you'll get interviewed by shauna coxie and and other olympians and then they'll drive you back um and toby had done it it's like yeah it's really good go for it go for it So she was, I think, she hardly ever drinks, but she was definitely semi under the influence when she had to do that interview.

And then they put it on the big screen where in GB House, they put it on the big screen so we could watch it. And they'd obviously, she never wears makeup, but they'd obviously put makeup on there for this television appearance. And she just looked bemused for the whole thing. Like she went up in a lift and she walked through this crowd of people who were all clapping her.

She's walking through going. what what's happening but that was quite cool then she yeah then she arrived back we uh we had some more food and drink and then that was really really really good and yeah really nicely i'd obviously never experienced anything like that before but that was quite nice quite a nice way i think for the athletes to then celebrate with the the families because you know you really don't get to see them personally because they're always on another

side of a fence yeah Well, now that I know that backstory, I think I would need to go back and try to watch that again and see if I can see that she's under the influence. Same with Toby, I guess? Yeah, well, I'm not sure when he went large on the alcohol fund. You were about to say Shauna? I think Shauna did a lot of the talking for Aaron. Which is lovely. I mean, Sean has been absolutely fantastic to Aaron through the whole sort of experience. Yeah, I hope I can

find that video again. I feel like I must have watched it at some point, but now I really got to find it. Yeah, I think it was Eurosport. If I can remember it, I'll ping you. Yeah, I'll try to find the link too. But if you find it,

let me know. So, yeah, I mean, you've watched the sport evolve over time. Lots of variations in setting. What do you think about the evolution of setting? Like, does it ever scare you to watch Erin throw herself around on dynamic boulders? Or where do you draw the line in terms of danger? Yeah, I don't really. I think injury is part of most sports, isn't it? We went to a youth

European cup in Graz. And, you know, one of the German guys who is now climbing on the World Cup circuit broke his leg, like audibly broke his leg. And I remember grabbing Erin and sort of moving her away from it. But, you know, obviously you get bad things like that happening if Natalia

sort of doing a ACL. um but i sort of think you know that that that is the case with any elite sport because you're right at the the cutting edge of it um i so so in terms of the evolution i guess it sort of had to evolve because i think the you know the the athletes doing it just became more and more focused on competition climbing yes i think it sort of evolved from a people who climb then doing competition climbing but I think you've now got people who just really

focus on competition climbing and the rock climbing is a side hustle if it's a hustle at all and so the things which challenged at the early stages of the sport just were not challenging I even look at some of the lead routes where you sort of see you look at it and you think my god look there's a horrible crimp section in there and they're resting on the crimps because their finger strength is so strong they're sort of like oh good this is a rest I could just lock in so yeah

I guess it had to evolve and it had to evolve in ways with different sort of holds and macros and volumes to force movement and to change movement and body shape so yeah I think I sort of think it had to evolve and actually i like the um you know i think leads probably evolved or changed less but even now yeah when you look at a lead route now it's it's comprised of multiple sort of sections um and you often snakes up rather than go straight up um and it's you know you

still get the sort of power endurance routes but they i'd argue they're generally the ones which are topped a lot um whereas the ones with sort of you know interest here more interesting moves which either cause um you know concern amongst the athletes or also attest them yeah they're the ones where you get separation yeah and so you know they're generally like you know dinos in in lead routes i sort of think yeah they set them relatively easily but it just adds

another element of stress to to the athletes and so they might get it but they might have expended a whole load of energy in getting it or concern in getting it so yeah i sort of see that and on the bolder side Yeah, you've always had slabs and you've always had sort of an element of power. Yeah, I think the two new ones are coordinations and dynos. And I guess they were sort of in there before. They've just become a lot more intricate and you're no longer dynoing

to a jug. You're now dynoing to something which is not ideal or you're having to grab a tow hook in there whilst doing that. And again, I sort of just see that as the evolution of the sport. Look at the sort of diners they were doing two, three years ago compared to what they're doing now. They're a lot harder. Coordination moves are a lot more intricate. It's just natural evolution, isn't it? I think the no -text holds don't look very pretty, but they can force a movement. I

like the dual -text. I think the dual -texts are really clever and I think they look pretty, but the clear holds, I don't think they look

pretty. but you know they add another element but again most people have got to grips with them now so they're not yeah they're sort of nothing new so I suspect it has to continue to evolve and I suspect it will continue to get you know more intricate and harder for the athletes but I actually like the fact that yeah you for boulder in particular you'll test across a wide range of skills so yeah just being good at power or just being good at slab is highly unlikely

to get you into a you know into a semi -final um because you have to be good at all sorts you know the crimps the slopers the movements which which you know i think is much better as a um much better demonstration of being um you an athlete in an elite sport an olympic sport and something which is hopefully becoming more and more um watchable um to the public so i like that i also personally i like the combined format i think that was really exciting i know it's

not there for the olympics but i uh for the next olympics but i i actually thought that that the the combined format made for a very exciting competition and obviously you know favors people who are good at both but uh it sort of added some interesting elements of this person's really good at lead and has had an okay boulder round so they could actually jump up. Yeah, that's actually quite a hot take among the community, even among the athletes. So it's interesting

to hear that you like the combined. I mean, I feel like part of it is maybe that Erin's pretty good at both. I suspect that helps. Yeah. If she was like a boulder lead specialist, I don't know if you'd be saying the same thing. I probably

would not know. Actually, I don't mind the fact that it's... two separate disciplines would have been fantastic if they'd kept it as we've got effectively a combined format but we will whoever wins the boulder round will get a gold medal for the boulder and whoever wins the lead will get a lead gold medal and then we'll put the two scores together and whoever wins both of them will also get medals that would have been fantastic but I think, yeah, the fact that we've

still got it at the Olympics and the fact that we are getting more medals is great. It'd be really interesting to see, well, to see what the selection criteria are for the Olympics because it's not very many athletes. And if you give whatever 16 or to actually make up a proper speed competition, I think it comes down to 11 or 10 for lead and 10 for boulder. So that's not a

very exciting competition. So you've sort of got to try to find a way to say, well, We'd ideally like people to do both because then we can at least have 20 odd people and have a proper semi -final format leading into a final. But I'm sure they're thinking about that. Yeah, I think that's info we're all waiting on. I mean, I would love to see individual boulder and lead medals and then also a combined medal. I think that would be really cool to see. They do it in gymnastics,

don't they? Yeah, exactly. But also, going back to safety in the sport, I'm just thinking about the mat situation in Burn. Do you have any thoughts on that one? Not massively. I mean, I thought Bern was an amazing, yeah, I didn't go, but from what I could see in the feedback I've had at the venue, it sounded amazing. It was obviously temperature controlled, really hot outside, but okay inside. It takes away all the concern on wind, rain, all that sort of stuff. And they

had, what, 4 ,000 odd people there. So that must be one of the biggest audiences, if not the biggest

audience of any World Cup this year. yeah so the venue itself I thought was fantastic setting I'm bound to say this the setting was fantastic it was the best Boulder World Cup ever and everyone yeah okay yeah yeah in terms of the hardness of the mats there was that one move of yes I think Yuffie Pan hurt himself didn't he falling and there was that one specific move and there were some some hard falls it was a crazy move I really liked it, but yeah. Yeah. It's really

hard, isn't it? I think the mats were hard, I guess, because they were brand new. Yeah. It's just really hard, isn't it? You sort of think, what can you do? Do you mandate a softer mat? And then you exclude a whole load of more venues from being able to put on World Cups because they've got to shell out. X amount of money for these specific mats, which are going to be, you know, probably not last for very long, um, because they're softer, um, you know, more, more open

to damage or whatever. I, yeah, I don't know the ins and outs of it. I, I, I do know the, uh, some of the coaches who were appealing that particular boulder. Um, yeah. And, and I do, yeah, I sort of respect their, their, their views, but yeah, I sort of. I almost sort of also go down the line of, well, yeah, this is the sport. Maybe it's more direct interaction with the route setters to sort of say, is there any way we can put that move lower or have it as a lower down

move? But I also think having them high up adds another element of, I don't know, excitement

or commitment to the climbers. So you would not have put in an appeal to... make it safer yeah i personally wouldn't have but i i'm not you know i'm not as uh i'm not as attuned maybe to the risks that they may well have been seeing sure yeah because some of the women took some big hits as well i always think you know i i love um watching zelia ramazu because i think if there's a way for her to try to hit the wall or fall off in a dangerous looking manner she'll

take it yeah she's she's amazingly committed Okay, good to know. And yeah, congrats on her performance in Burn. It was a good comp. I really liked the Burn comp. Yeah, that was a good, well, it seemed to be a good one. Okay, so let's get into some of the audience questions. Had a good

few come in. People were really excited to hear from you. So first one, how does having a comp kit influence the family dynamic? Is it tricky to balance, especially with more than one child? So I thought it would be a lot trickier than it actually is. So my son climbed pretty much all the way up to university and then discovered other things at university and then sort of got back into climbing at the end of university. And now he's probably training harder than he's

ever trained in his sort of life. I think he's got a side hustle or side bet on with Aaron. around going to the Nationals and seeing where he could place. He's not going to win it. Sure. The brutal honesty again. But yeah, I think he's sort of thinking, well, I wonder if I could make semis or that sort of level. Is that going to be this year? I think it's in January. That's when they tend to hold them. Can't wait to see what happens. So that might be quite interesting

if he did. somehow make finals and get on the team that would be an interesting dynamic but yeah so so they've they've always gone really well which which uh which i put down to great parenting but i think in reality but i think in reality it's because um we moved around a lot as you know when they were young so obviously lived in lots of different countries well quite a few different countries and then in different locations around the uk so they they sort of

had to rely on each other that you to get on whilst they created new networks then as soon as they created a network we ripped them out of that and put them into something yeah made them strong um but uh yeah for that reason they seem to get on really well they both um they both share a house in sheffield which i didn't you know i thought that might not work that well but that works really well awesome um you know kind of whenever we can we'll run her around

to the various walls that she wants to go to pick her up uh and then yeah we'll often train with her whenever we can as well so weirdly yeah there's absolutely no resentment he's he's probably more invested in some ways than we are as parents in what she's doing he does all of her sort of you know social media and youtube content so he's he sort of enjoy doing that with her um yeah it's yeah i mean i did expect that there might be a bit of um yeah resentment on what

she's achieved in climbing yeah and all that sort of stuff but but they touch wood yeah nothing yet and uh so yeah that's been really really good and actually sort of helped out a lot in terms of sharing some of the support burden burden that's the wrong word support opportunities yeah i mean it takes a village so that's really nice to hear So this is a question from another parent.

How do you balance celebrating podiums so that it doesn't place too much emphasis on good results equals good vibes? Because maybe that results in pressure to perform. And then balance it with also seeing bad results as being valuable. Yeah, so that's a really hard one, isn't it? No matter what level they're... performing at because you

sort of want them to do well for them. So, yeah, I think with Erin, she went through a phase where she was moving from sort of doing the fun competitions to moving into the sort of more focused on nationals and internationals and all that sort of stuff. And obviously she had to place highly in order to qualify for the teams and then highly in order to get selection for the World Cups and European Cups. So, yeah, I guess we focused on what she needed to do in order to place in those positions.

But also, if she didn't, it wasn't the end of the world. Yeah, we can go away. We can work

on the areas of development. um and uh yeah let's see what happens the the following year um i yeah so i think that the key bit i would say is that you are constantly looking at if you win that's great but but almost in the nicest possible way you sort of got to forget that and say okay so so you won but what could you do better or what didn't you do as well as you could have done So there's a great moment where you're celebrating and then there's a moment where you're

actually looking at how you did that and what you could have done better. I also think there's a challenge, and this might actually come down to one of your earlier questions around not so much the parent culture, probably more the athlete culture. So when you start to flip into a World Cup, so one, you've got a selection event in January. But if you've pre -qualified, so I think most of the governing bodies have pre -qualification criteria. So, you know, by winning a World Cup,

you pre -qualify. So Erin's pre -qualified. She has to go to the selection event, but she's already selected. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I'm assuming like Brooke Rapparty was probably pre -qualified by placing where she did in the Olympics. So she probably still had to go to selection, but she was already selected. So certainly that's how it works in the UK. So if you... I think here, if you pre -qualify, then you don't compete.

Oh, right, okay. So we still, well, yeah, they still want you to go, I think because it shows everybody where the potential level is. But you don't have to perform. So she's not peaking for those competitions at all. And then, you know, as you, in the UK, you tend to have a few competitions. I call them fun competitions, but they're like the Climbing Works International Festival. I think it's called QUIF and Plywood Masters. So they're good pre -season comps, which are really

hard comps. And they operate on a qualification, semifinals, final basis. But a lot of people use those as a benchmark to see where they are. But obviously, if you're focused, because you know you've got the World Cup, if you're actually focusing on peaking in April, you're not really going to peak for them either. So she sort of struggled a bit with, I'm going to go to this competition and I might not win it, even though

theoretically I should. And then I think you do start to get a bit of expectation because you've got somebody saying, oh, yeah, they're not going to say this to your face, but I beat

Erin. And then, yeah, she's like, oh. i don't want to do these competitions anymore yeah it's no fun but actually they still have value because it's it's sort of showing you where you are even though you might still be in the middle of a horrible training block and absolutely knackered um so yeah so i think that was the other one in terms of yeah podium is podiuming isn't everything and and we certainly don't still say to you go and win another gold medal or you make sure you

get to the finals we're like you know if you climb well there's no reason why you shouldn't get there but the margins are so fine um you know a simple mistake somewhere doesn't make you a bad climber but does mean that we should be analyzing results and stuff whether you win or not um and then the other one i think is that that flip to you know winning you're winning everything locally to actually i may not be winning this because and you These people might be peaking

for their GB selection. Some of those athletes are absolutely peaking for that because it's the competition they have to perform at to get on the team. Whereas at that time, you're probably at your weakest. You've had two months of intense training. You've probably not really had much of a break before going into the competition. So you're absolutely not peaking for it. You're just going to it and sort of accepting that that

may well mean you don't win it. Yeah. So I guess just being realistic and as honest with yourself as you can. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hopefully

that advice helps out. um this one is a bit more of a fun one do you get final approval of the shots of yourself on youtube no i get i get no i don't even know that i don't even know they're filming half the time i'm gonna need some context for this but this person said i'm specifically thinking of you pretending to ride a horse and getting caught by some random passerby i don't i don't know this one yeah you have to Have you ever seen Monty Python and the Quest for the

Holy Grail? No, I actually haven't. So they, obviously they're Arthurian knights, but they don't have horses. They just literally pretend that they're riding a horse. And generally they have somebody with coconut shells following them to make the clippy cloppy noises. But I think it was in Innsbruck and we were walking down to get coffee. And yeah, I sort of thought there was this lovely bridge which looked a bit medieval. So I thought, oh, let's ride our horses across

the bridge. And they were obviously there. Then as I rode off, they put their phones on. Then when they caught up to me on the other side, I had to suddenly pretend to dismount my horse because there was a random stranger walking the other way looking quite concerned. I'll have to find this clip. It was an Innsbruck. Yeah, I think it's the Quest for the 8C. Ah, perfect. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. But I'm on, yeah. And they'll film when I'm not

even aware. It's very, yeah. And so there's one, yeah. Lots of times when I'm not even aware they're filming and then I'll watch it later and I'll be like, oh, thanks. Thanks for putting that

in. You watch all the videos? Well, yeah. I don't get to see any of the... yeah the prep or what's going in and what's coming out but i yeah they that they they generally tell me when they're out and then yeah me and lindsey will sit down with a cup of tea and watch oh that's cute we won't understand half of the humor and the brain and all that sort of stuff that's fine but apparently

it's funny yeah yeah yeah no that's cute um okay and let's do one last one um This is all in good fun, but how does it feel to be a worse climber than your child? Or if you had any other competitive goals of your own? I don't know when it happened, when they overtook me. They both overtook me. I guess I was probably quite happy. I certainly wasn't disappointed. And it probably happened

slowly. they would overtake me on slabs and then you know and then gradually on the more powerful boulders and and that sort of stuff they've always been much better than me on lead just because of my i have to grip everything as hard as i can right before i'm super pumped about halfway up um so yeah so that that that wasn't so bad the one which was a bit galling was um When my son stopped climbing, I got better than him again.

And I was doing quite a lot of, I was probably climbing maybe four times a week at that point because I was working a lot with Aaron or going to a lot of stuff with Aaron. And then I broke my thumb really badly in Innsbruck. How? Oh, yeah, you shouldn't ask that question. I just leave it. I broke my thumb in Innsbruck and it sounds cool. I actually did it running to catch the bus. I fell over, wanted to catch the bus.

Yeah, really upsetting. Yeah. And then they set it and then they called me up the next day and said, no, this is much worse than we thought. We're going to have to come in and reset it. And that's horrible. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody, but they took me in and they sort of said, oh, you know, we're going to break it again. You're not under, your arms sort of, you can't feel anything in your arm, but you can look. So I was looking at them thinking, oh,

why would you look at that? And they got a hammer and like a chisel thing out. And I looked away then. I don't want to watch that. But that was all like pinned up for a while. And at that point, I was really, I was climbing quite hard for me. Yeah, probably on the second hardest grade in most of the climbing walls. Wow, really? And then whilst I took ages to recover. And whilst I was recovering, my son started climbing again. And by the time I got back to it, it was better

than me. So that was the only galling one because I thought I could have probably had a few more bragging rights for a bit longer if I'd actually been fit. Yeah, that's it. No other goals. I'm just happy nowadays to sort of keep the aches

and sprains. manageable so yeah wow it sounds like you climb pretty hard whole family climbs pretty hard um what grade would you say you climb now uh i didn't know the v grades sure so i'd say v6 sometimes v7 very occasionally but v5 that's nice and easy not nice and easy but i

can happily happily do most of those All right. Good to know. Yeah, I think that wraps it up then. That's all the questions I had. Thanks for joining me. And any like last minute thoughts you want to get out there? No, I think the only thing I'd say as a parent is I think, yeah, well, one, keep it fun as long as you possibly can.

And then if they really are. serious about making it or taking it to the next level uh yeah sort of try to find a way to support them in that but but i mean i still think the brutal honesty bit is is absolutely required because i think they've got to agree to that commitment as much as you've got to then sort of say well how how can i support you to get where you need to get but i'm only going to do that if you're 100 committed to it as well um yeah so if you've not got any

interest in committing to this training plan and committing to this time and not having the sort of social life which you might want at that age, then there's no point in me committing my time either. So I do think there's a bit of sort of brutal honesty or at least feedback at some point if one party isn't fully committing to

it. Amazing advice. Thank you so much. um anything else you want to shout out or i don't know if you're very active on social media if there's like i'm i'm not at all that's it all right well then just thank you so much for joining me um it was really good to get that insight um yeah very unique perspective so it was great thank you so much no problem cheers 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 big 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.