Speaker 1:

Well, John I’m here, John Kett. John, can you introduce yourself to to people that who may not know?

Yeah, sure. Thanks jar. I’m John kettle. I’m a a full-time rock climbing coach. I guess I’m also known as, as the author of a, a book on climbing technique as well. I’ve been climbing, I think, 27 years now and coaching for about 20.

Speaker 1:

Nice. And yeah, I love your book. It’s I mean, it’s just, I use it all the time, not just for myself, but a lot of the drills from it, and even the creative names for drills that you know, straight arm, bendy body platform builders, you know, a lot of like just, you know, good ways to just imprint into climber’s minds, you know, different ways to coach movement. But let’s start out. I mean, you’ve been climbing for a while, as you’ve mentioned. What injuries have you had as a climber? Like, has there been any specific injuries, maybe if you look back, is there one that sticks with you? That’s like, oh, this was a rough one.

Oh yeah. There’s one that physically sticks with me, but still a rough one, actually. So I was psyched at my mind for climbing when I started it. And I started as a teenager at about 15 and and what I didn’t know at the time I found out near the end of my teams was I had a delay of two years. So I, I was starting when I thought I was physically mature, but actually my growth plates were still developing.

Speaker 1:

Oh, interesting. So almost is delayed closure of, of the growth plates themselves

Also had a lot growing. Yeah, that’s it. And the result was that you know, at the time in the mid indoor roots were kind of made harder by making them more fingery. And I remember doing a competition route that was when I was 17, it was entirely on screw ons, you know, the tiny holds. And basically I had a favored crimping and I came into the sport physically very strong from a range of other sports, except for my fingers. So I had no sport specific strength for climbing, but

Speaker 1:

I like overall like four.

Yeah. You know, I could do like a push up on one thumb and stuff. I was super strong, but, but, but so I would force drag myself up these roots by force of will. And I absolutely hammered my fingers. I ended up with basically growth plate damage to the D joints, the end joints of every, every finger.

Speaker 1:

Oh wow. Of every finger. Oh

My God. Yeah. About two years in that happened. And it was, it was acutely painful to to climb at all, even on jugs. So I, I stopped for about a year and a half and I, and in my mind, I’ve given up, I couldn’t climb anymore. And that was that climbing.

Speaker 1:

Wait, how, how long into climbing was this? Like how long were you

Two years in?

Speaker 1:

Wow. So this was like early on. And it sounds like you just got after it, like you were like full,

I was mad keen. Yeah. Yeah. I started at like 15 and then at 16, 17, I got a summer job doing the artwork for a climbing wall that was being built in my local town. And that got me in with all the climbing guys and got me hooked on it. And and then at the end of the job, they offered me like wall membership instead of payment. They offered me the choice and I took the membership, you know, and that was the rest is history basically. So that hooked me. But yeah, I fingers pretty badly, you know, and they they’ve been those D I P joints have been swollen ever since. And I eased back into, into climbing at about nine yeah, about 18, 19 after about 18 months off, very cautiously and, and got back into it and was fine.

And then at the end of my thirties those joints started to become a and I suspect, I mean, there’s, you know, there’s, there’s a whole load of elements to osteoarthritis and so on, and there’s a genetic element too, but it’s, it’s the end joints which are kicking off and they’re all kicking off at different stages. So now I’ve got like arthritic fingers for, you know, for the future, which I’m learning to major as a climb. So I think that’s, that’s the, like, that’s the big cautionary tale I tell young keen people who look a bit like I did at the time. I’m like, you know, this growth made thing serious and you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life if you overstep it. So that, that’s probably the, the worst one. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And how, and that’s, it’s a tricky one because those end joint of your fingers, like if you’re climbing horror are in harder and you’re closed crimping, they’re going to hyperextend. Right. And you, you’re going to have some pressure on them. Yeah. So, so what do you do? Is there anything you do now to manage it? Do you just manage your climbing load? Are there any specific exercises you do kind of what’s the strategy now?

There’s, there’s kind of several strands. Really. The first one is that I’ve worked, looked out. I had a strong preference for crimping and changed that at the end of my twenties. And at that point, I guess at the end of my twenties, after about 10 or 11 years of kind of climbing for work climbing for fun, having married a climber, you know, every day off climb, you know, every holiday was a climb trip. So I was all in still, still super psych. The end of that, you know, I was basically having a pulley injury of some kind once or twice a year, every year.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

It was consistent. Oh yeah. Really the always tweaky fingers. And I think that related to my obsess with CRI pin as well. So I addressed it at the end of my twenties. And just by changing, like by strengthening my half CRI and strengthening my drag, I massively reduced the amount of dependence on crimping. And I think that that increased the mileage. I can get outta my fingers. And then when the arthritis came in, it was like a massive incentive not to crimp because I’m still strong on a crimp, you know, I, it’s still strong as grip.

Yeah. But it, but, and I can do it a few times, but I can’t like repeat crimp the same tiny hole with the same hand. So now influences what I choose to project on boulders that makes sense. And relative, you know, roots, it doesn’t affect me on because no crimp on a route is really small enough for me relative to the boulders I pull on to actually inflam it. So for me, like if I’m operating on route, I’m operating like V nine and under and V nine crimps are no problem for my fingers. But if I push up to like into the double digits on boulders, then I’m starting to get onto little gnarly death prints. And I can, I can, I can do them. And I’ve done some of that sort of gray on crimps in the last year, but I would session them like once every three weeks.

Yeah. So if I was to get on them, like more than once a week, I would just end up with some chronic inflammation issues. So I manage it that way. And, and as I say, the arthritis has been a massive incentive to work on my open grip. So I’ve got tons stronger on various open grip positions now. And the result is that I almost never crimp anymore, like full crimp with a thumb over. So that like the last really crimpy thing I did was yeah, it was about, was about April of last year. And that was like a, the crux of a, of the 11 was a crimping bit. And I just half crimped it all,

Speaker 1:

So, oh,

Wow. Yeah. So I’ve got way stronger on half print and I just hardly ever have to crimp anymore cuz I’ve sorted out the other grips.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It’s interesting that you’ve done that kind of, if I could say like later in life or later, later in climbing career yeah, I I’ve talked to some climbers, for example, like Sean Nicole, like early on, he trained, this was when he was a youth, he just trained the half crimp right off the bat. So then as a youth that became his, you know, kind of stronger grip and it’s kind of cool for you that like, you know, made some mistakes as a youth, but now as an adult right now, you’ve been able to switch a pattern and climb hard routes. But you know, utilizing like the three finger drag or, you know, a half crimp and only using the full crimp when you have to throw down and sometimes

That’s it. I, I still say that I keep like I keep some emergency crimps in my back pocket particularly for tra when I’m terrified and I need not to die, but yeah, you know, all it really affects now is my choice of problems. It doesn’t actually affect my top performance.

Speaker 1:

That’s awesome. And then are there any other injuries you’ve had maybe like one other one that that’s affected you, you know, that’s affected your climbing that you’ve been able to either manage or have had even trouble with?

I think like I’ve had, I’ve had some common ones. I’ve had loads of like pulling injuries. I’ve had like easily into the twenties or thirties with pulling Dr. Including like audible pinging ones. And I’ve had,

Speaker 1:

That would make sense with it one, one to two per year, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and then elbows I’ve had golfers and tennis elbow on and off since I was 18 and still managed them now. So that’s like 20 plus years. And then my shoulders are probably the worst injuries I’ve had to deal with in terms of stopping me climbing. So I tore my lab room on both shoulders actually to well, a year apart. And, and it took kind of four years of unsuccessful conservative rehab to work out that they needed surgery and then had surgery to both. And both were like pinned down with a one bolt and one and two in the other. And that went, that was kinda happened at the, in my early thirties. Yeah. So that was a bit of an injury epic.

Speaker 1:

Was that, was it a singular, I know there were kind a little separated apart, but was either one of ’em like a singular instance or was it a wear and tear that just happened or developed it

Was wear and tear? Really? Yeah, I had I was, I was kind of very strong and good at applying force. I had poor posture. And I was, when I wasn’t climbing, I was white with kayaking and downhill mountain biking and, you know, living that life and had been for 15 years at that point. So my body was just taking it hammering really? Yeah. Yeah. And my shoulders are much stronger and healthy now than they ever were in my teens or twenties.

Speaker 1:

Really. What’s, what’s your secret? What’s your shoulder, your shoulder health now, what do you, what do you do?

Well, it would be, my secret is 10 years of trying to get them better, basically. Yeah. All this, all this stuff. Yeah. improving my range of emotional really helped improving, improving my overhead range helped cuz I was a bit of a classic color hunch climber in my late twenties. So like improving my thoracic extension getting my LA a bit more flexible, allowed my, kind of my me to bend more at spine. And then that put less stress on my shoulders. And then increasing that the kind of motion in this direction here has really

Speaker 1:

Helped us external the external rotation.

Yeah. rings a lot of overhead rings stuff helped in initially I did like three years of pretty flat out high intensity rings work. That that was the first thing that really dramatically improved them.

Speaker 1:

It sounds sounds like for the overhead rings, you also needed to get that mobility to be able to, you know, do those well.

Yeah. And it was working out what made me more flexible, like traditional stretching didn’t really work for me. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask. So for your flexibility, like how maybe let’s break that down maybe to overhead flexibility. What did you do? Cause I, I bet you’ve tried everything. Like it’s you, if you had 10 years of shoulder pain and have your personality, which sounds like you’re just go 100%. Yeah. Your sight you’re doing it. You’ve probably tried everything. So what,

Yeah. I’ve, I’ve tried everything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So what have you tried? Like what’s the shoulder stuff that worked and didn’t work as far as, maybe let’s say first overhead mobility.

Okay. Well like the light Theban type exercises that I’ve been prescribed by physios at far times have never worked. They’ve never made any difference. The, any kind of static stretching of the pectorals. Do I open up the shoulders? That’s never worked my,

Speaker 1:

A door frame, like going in

The door. Yeah. Like the doorway sort of stretch or, or the LA stretch in the doorway too. Yeah. And I guess what I, I guess what I’ve worked out is that the load wasn’t high enough basically. I, your classic, my kind of build is like stiff and muscular and I can produce lots of explosive power. And I think part of the reason I’ve had a lot of injuries is cause my tendons are very stiff and I, most of my training now is around decreasing tendon stiffness because if I don’t I’ve always got great explosive power off the go, but that’s also a capacity for injuring myself. So for me, for the load to be high enough for me to get more flexible, I had to really load it up. So, so for example, prone eyes and Wises and Ts on the rings where I’m dropping downwards. As I open up my shoulders

Speaker 1:

And

Hip,

Speaker 1:

Are you doing those from your are standing?

No, I’m doing them standing and that’s when the rings may be like a foot off the floor. So they’re pretty full on

Speaker 1:

That’s. That is, that is full. Yeah. But you’re essentially, so you’re basically standing rings are full off floor and you’re dropping into a T. Yeah. So dropping into a double arm. Y or a double.

Yeah. No double arm Ys and double arm eyes. Yeah. so it’s heavy. I mean, you, you are looking at someone, I guess when I started climbing 15, I’ve been strength training since the age of like seven or eight. So that’s kind of what you’re up against

Speaker 1:

Seven or eight. Yeah. Your parents were psyched on it or you were

Psyched. No, I was psyched on it. No, my, my granddad made me an app wheel. You know, really? Yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

Let’s rewind for a second because you said that you got into climbing. I I’m gonna rewind. You said you got into climbing from a, you had a physical fitness background. I didn’t imagine that from seven or eight, you were strength training, but was it just, was it all Olympic list, strength training, like all that stuff before climbing or what was your

It was totally disorganized. It was what you’d expect from an eight year old making up their own strength it’s training. So yeah. Yeah, no one was guiding me. I just wanted to be strong. So I was doing hundreds of pushups. Then as I say, my granddad made me this a wheel out of her, like a PRM wheel and a piece of fire with bike grips on it. So I was doing like full a rollouts by the age of about 11 or 12 in my bedroom.

Speaker 1:

And were you just like a walking muscle with like 0% body fat?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Lots and lots of pull ups. Yeah. And then I got some of these things called chest expanders, which are like the three Springs between two handles that you, you could put different weights of Springs in. So someone, someone gave me a second handset then from a charity shop. So I then like had this whole routine with these things that I would do before bed. So it was totally disorganized. And like at the time actually you know, I remember wanting to join the gym when I got to secondary school. And at the time strength training was kind of taboo until you finished puberty. It was like, don’t my, until you’ve got, cuz it’ll do something disastrous. Yeah. Yeah. So like anyone psyched who you tell not to do something, you just go and do it your own way behind their back. Yeah. And, and I’m very wary of this. What I’ve giving advice to people these days. I think if that was me in that situation, you said, don’t do this. I’d be like, oh right. I’ll do it without you support them. You know, if I motivated enough. So that’s what I did. You know, I remember them, they wouldn’t let me join the gym until I had hair under my armpits, which was very upsetting. So I just went home and lifted weights and ran disorganized weight, which was probably much riskier.

Speaker 1:

All right. But I mean like gave you a foundation for strength.

It gave me a high strength foundation. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

All right. So we’ll fast forward back now. So you had all this free experience strong and so yeah. So you’re going, so you found that for overhead flexibility, doing those, you know, those tees wise and then eyes with the rings, which is full on, I mean you could modify that always, I guess, on the knees or bring the rings up. Yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. I worked my way down with the rings in height slowly and I had a piece of tape on the floor and I just moved the tape back slowly, further from the rings as I got stronger. Oh wow. So there was a, there was a progression there and I did, ’em like twice a week at like three sets of six for about four years. So I kind of progressed that way. Wow. Yeah. And I think essentially what I was doing was, was loading the pecs as I loaded them, eccentrically really heavy. And that had a dramatic, that was the first thing that had an effect on my pec tool flexibility. And I think my pecs were tight from having done a million pushups from the age of seven, you know? So that,

Speaker 1:

That it literally probably a million of them. Yeah,

Well, yeah. And you know, people commented on how, how my postures suddenly changed in that year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, so that was one component, you know? Yeah. Really utilizing pec and I’m assuming lats as well because you’re getting that eye. And I know that feeling that stretch like right at the end and if you’re doing six reps, I mean it’s challenging, you’re, you’re doing something at a level where you’re, you’re failing or fatiguing. Was there anything else for the shoulder that you did that you found was effective?

Tho those, I, I basically stuck with those cuz they were working for a few years and then I kind of plateau decided it was time for a change. And then I I’ve experimented with a lot of stuff since, but essentially what I’ve always returned to is doing something, doing some heavy, slow loading, a Strat protocol. So three to five sets of three to five, you know, six rep really of something that challenges my shoulders. Overhead pressing. I did quite a lot of that for a while. So I did dumbbell overhead press like a military press and then switched to handstands cuz they were, they were less, you know, I didn’t need, I ran out of weights basically. So I thought I’ll do handstands instead. And then I went to, you know, one handed one. So this was feet against the wall for balance.

Speaker 1:

One hand in handstands.

Yeah. So I would, I would get into a handstand and then, and then take one hand off and do like an isometric hole for 30 seconds and then go back and do it with the other hand,

Speaker 1:

With the legs straight up or would you spread them to, to like visualize more?

I was doing them in the hallway because I was trying to learn to handstand, I couldn balance upside down, so I’d have my legs like tip tacking back and forth across the hallway.

Speaker 1:

Nice,

Nice. You know, it was like in my backup, so I didn’t catastrophically fall to the front or back. Yeah. So those opened up, those helped really helped strengthen an end range I think, and open up my shoulders more. And then from there I kind of did some more isometrics, so heavy isometrics work quite well for me. The other ones were like the what’s it called the bridge, like a back bend pose and I do them with elevated feet and my feet will be on the sofa or a few, a few steps up the stairs and my hands on, on the ground. And

Speaker 1:

I’ll were your elbows elbows back, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that would basically that would by raising my feet, I’d load my shoulders and arms more.

Speaker 1:

Are you talking about where your hands are behind you?

Like your

Speaker 1:

Like doing a reverse wheel?

That’s it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and if I just do them on the floor, it really pitches my lower back. I’m not, I’m not flexible enough of the hips really, but if I raise my feet, I can get them dead high and I can put a ton more weight on my shoulders, which works for me in terms of loading. And I can push with my legs into full it full like end range of the shoulders. So I would do holes there. And now the main thing I do now S so those, these ones here, we pull up into that position.

Speaker 1:

What do you, what do you use for that?

I started with bands and then I ran out of bands heavy enough. Like I was dragging my feet across the floor rather than moving the bands. So I do them. Yeah. So I do them on the rings now. Okay. So I kind of have tape on the floor and I lean back and I pull myself upright with those and I can just progress the tape and lower the Riggs as I, as I strengthen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And those, I mean, those work on that external rotation almost, it sounds like you had done some band work with some light external rotation, like this isn’t working. Yeah. And a combination of loading yourself, you know, with end range positions, with slow heavy loads, and then kind of going back to finding ways to just maximize how much you’re challenging the muscle. Cause it sounds like maybe you just didn’t have enough challenge to

Yeah, totally IPO, you know, psychologically and physically, I respond really well to strength training, but it has to be, it has to be really high load. It has to be intense and then I love it and it’s really time and efficient and it works.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I mean, if you’re doing six repetitions of something that’s done rather quickly.

Oh yeah, it’s brilliant. Yeah. It’s like half an hour, twice a week. That is the most I do in terms of any call work or anything other than climbing or finger specific stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then for climbing itself, you know, have you, have you had any injuries on climbing movement almost? Let’s say you’re, you’re doing something you’re on the wall. You move a certain way and you feel something, or has it been more just like kind of accumulation of things a over time

The vast majority have been wear and tear just cause I’ve climb so much. So they’ve been like, they’ve been the elbow classic elbow things or finger tweaks. Yeah, I did one of my pulley ruptures. The audible one was, was basically a classic light, not warmed up and kinda rotated round of two finger pocket, like 15 minutes into a session. And that made a horrible noise. But yeah, the only ones I’ve done on climbs have been specific to injuries on climbs have been like hamstrings on heel hooks. Yeah. and knees on heel hooks like NCL and LCL I’ve, I’ve damaged both of those on heel hooks

Speaker 1:

And just kinda like a high awkward heel hook

Or, yeah, just applying massive floors through my knee, really in a weird angle, which it doesn’t like. So I’m, I’m, I’m definitely quite aware of heel hooks now if they go, if I go really deep on them. Yeah. And likewise, with, with the, a hamstrings, I’ve got like a high hamstring tendinopathy, you know, which is very persistent. So

Speaker 1:

Kinda in the, into the gluteal.

Yeah. Right at the, yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s been a really hard one to to manage and settle. So that’s kind of frustrating and makes me pretty wary certain movements on that here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. Have you tried your heavy loading at components for your hamstring?

I have. I think the problem with that is it’s extremely sensitive. You know, if I sit wrong, then it gets angry. Yeah. It’s extremely sensitives. I’m glad to do some high loading, but It won’t tolerated.

Speaker 1:

There’s a static nerve that’s right. In that area as well. So that, that complicates it. Right. Because then you have some nervous tissue that’s that’s right underneath that hamstring.

Yeah. The only I found one way of loading it heavy, which doesn’t irritate it. So I do do that, which is I do like side split, good mornings. So standing in like a side split and you know, a good morning, like a kind of hinge. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You’re hinging at your hips.

Yeah. And I do that with with a 20 kilo weight plate head over, held over the back of my head like that. Yeah. So it was, I hinge forward. I get a ton of load and it like, again, it’s L the hamstrings on the load.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And you do

It absolutely nails my hamstrings.

Speaker 1:

And you do it side splits and said together, cuz together aggravates

Together, aggravates and side splits. There’s an element of like I’m half can just squeeze the ground as well. Not to slide down.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Use like adductors you.

Yeah. There’s a whole lot of clamping. And that to me feels a bit more climbing specific. And it hits my house. It was really hard. Like I was absolutely crippled by dogs. The first time I did like a set of five of those or 20 kilos on I found a way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It interesting too, that actually that position is like called abduction, but it puts the sciatic nerve on slack. And so it’s interesting that position also probably if there’s, you know, nerve that’s little irritated there too, it it’s much more comfortable for it. So you get that climbing specific almost your feet pressing inwards, your nerve is put on slack and then you get to do the heavy, heavy loading. Yeah.

Yeah. It takes my boxes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk a little about climbing movement. Cause I, I love your book and I flipped through it all the time. Like it’s like right. I mean it’s and part of it too, I like the creative names for the exercises. Like I didn’t know that slots only have three fingers. Like there’s a lot of oh yeah,

Yeah. There’s a lot, lot of things to learn through it. But but when you’re coaching climbers or even yourself with movement, I’m fascinated by climbing movement. And for me, especially how it relates to injuries not as much performance, but how it relates to loading tissues, but are there any on the topic of movement, are there any kind of like key things that you notice from climbers maybe that could potentially predispose them to either an injury or maybe make it so they aren’t performing wall while climbing efficiently? You know, let’s say maybe either one of those. So it’s who knows it is something that someone’s doing on the wall can lead to an injury or not, but is there any like kind of key movement patterns that you notice that you like to correct maybe is a better way to, to

Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s, there’s probably two there’s, there’s a strong preference for one kind of grip. Like I only really use one kind of grip and I most commonly see people doing that with crimping and, and there’s there’s I have a good go at crimpers in the book as you’ll be aware. Yeah. I’m like stock it, stock it that’s the slot group exercise really is for them. So so yeah, that’s the most common single grip preference I, I find and I think there’s a bit of home from person experience with me that definitely correlated with, with injury. And, and I think it’s an, there’s an increased chance of it as it becomes less, a bit injuring you as it become, as you become less adaptable and you try and make things fit the crim more and more. But the, I see the same with other grip dependence as well. So people that always three finger never use their thumb or they’re pinky. Quite often they basically end up being pushed into a position where they have to crimp and they, and they’re not really prepared for it. So they’re much more vulnerable there cuz they’re not really conditioned. So yeah, I think, I think having a strong preference for one particular finger grip orientation is a, is a risk factor just from my kind of observed experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Regardless of what it is, right. It could be you favor clothes crimping or you favor open hand or, or drags like it’s whatever you do, you don’t have an arsenal when you get into different positions.

Yeah. You kind of wanna be prepared for everything, you know, adaptability is the greatest ability and all that. So so yeah, I think that, and then the, the only other one that kind of seems to correlate to me in experience with, with injury is is people who move very slowly and statically. So typically they’re, they’re expressing a psychological issue, which is that they’re very cautious and indecisive. And so they to do very deep lock offs a lot in order to reach a long way without half moving dynamically or exclusively, or to search at a great distance from their, their other hand. And you know, if you are locking off deeply, you almost always have to CRI once you go below the shoulder to pull inward on the hold instead of down and it looks bit, you know, it’s like peak, there’s a lot of stress on the elbow at that extreme bend there.

And if you’re cautious, you are doing this for long durations who are like creeping up very strenuous things. So I think there’s like a, a collection of things there, which are pushing you towards basically stressing your body more than it really needs to in order to feel safer and more in control and move more cautiously. Yeah, I think that that end of the spectrum, compared to the people who move more bounce, the more bouncy explosive end of the spectrum seems to point more to, towards kind of long term overuse injuries, really like by elbow issues, shoulder issues in, in female climbers, wrist issues as well, sometimes kind of seem to surface there a bit.

Speaker 1:

And you think part of it is like the psychological component of just not being comfortable with body movement or, you know what, typical we hold a climber back cuz we see it all the time. Like you look at a climbing wall and you, oh, static climber. We, we know we, you can check them. You can say that that’s their like style is, is the main thing, psychological or fear.

Well, it’s, it’s, it’s different with every climber, you know? It depends on their chosen if they’re like a, you know, a, a climb who, who thrives in like high risk climbing scenario. So they’re climbing a lot of like trad and loo maybe loose rock. They’ll typically climb very statically cuz that’s the safest way to move that’s

Speaker 1:

Their style because

Yeah. And it’s a, that’s a survival requirement of that, that style. So it might be a product of that. It might be that they’re excessively cautious, that they’re anxious about falling off or they’re anxious about failing or some other kind of anxiety and con concern and actually the styles, just a product of that. And it’s not appropriate to their actual goals as a older or sport climb someone in a pretty safe kind of environment, I guess. As a coach, you know, I’m, I’m all was curious about why people do things. So it, it’s not so much that it matter. It doesn’t really, you know, if you’re moving slowly, I statically like question it, try and find out the reason don’t assume it’s because you feel cautious or that you grew up on a, like a, you know, a thin all your local CRAs were like thin ver climbs. And now you’re trying to do something like continuously over a powerful and you’re still trying to like puppet slowly. So yeah, definitely ask yourself why, whether it’s a product habits or, or mental stuff. I can’t, I can’t say why it’s very individual, but I’m always asking that question. Like as soon as I see a particular behavior, doesn’t, someone’s trending towards a particular behavior, like static climbing. I’ll be thinking, why are they doing that? Like what’s going on there and asking them lots of questions.

Speaker 1:

So what’s the prescription, let’s say you see someone statically climbing. You’re like, all right, we’ve identified this. And whether it’s psychological, whether they just love doing Chasity, run out tra routes, like whatever it is, let’s just say that that’s the movement you observe. Is there a drill or anything that you give to kind of counteract that to allow them to cut loose?

Yeah, I think I’d, I’d the first thing I’d probably do is give them an exercise where they didn’t have an option to lose statically, to see how they cope. So for example, I’d get them to climb, but give them the, the rule that they can only move both hands at the same time and give ’em some easy climbing to do and see what happens. And you, you know, you’ve not had to tell them overtly don’t move statically. You’ve just presented them with a problem where the only solution is to move dynamic and it’s gonna show you their ability to organize their body and express power and timing and accuracy and all those things. And actually by moving both hands together, they have to rely on appropriate receptive awareness rather than site to guide their hand to each individual thing. Cuz they’re happy to move both together. So a task like that would be the kind of start point typically. And then I guess modifications from that return into more normal climbing would be to give them exercises where they had to start every move with their hips before their arms and hands moved. So they

Speaker 1:

Initiating right?

Yeah. Initiating from the hips. And you can do initiating from various different areas depending on, on the climate, but just getting them to start things in different places in their body. Getting them to keep their hips continuously moving while they climb. That’s that’s a pretty tricky drill and fries, people’s heads.

Speaker 1:

It’s tough to sense, right? You’re like, wait a second. I have to move and like, Like stutter right when you try it.

Exactly. Yeah. And you have to circle basically you have to circle your hips. You know, all our joints, moving circles, none are moving straight lines, so you have to circle them and a them and figure AATE them. And then you end up doing this like weird dance on the wall. And then trying to figure out when is appropriate to move a limb, according to what your hips are doing. Cause there’ll be a, a sweet spot in each circle or figure of eight that your hips trace where it’s really easy to move a limb because you’ve unloaded it and, and lament will weight it and Rewa it at the right time. And that will come intuitively to a really skillful dynamic climber. But that’s a really a, a really good way of kind of like a, an exploration for people to do all the whole try and work that out for themselves. As long as they don’t mind leaving their dignity to one side.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Maybe you could play like some beats in their ear, like some secure or something and they’ll

Be like, that’s it? Yeah. Yeah. The hips never lie.

Speaker 1:

It’s never lie. Awesome. Yeah. And then I, I know that like, you know, pulling with two arms, I guess you can make that harder by like them clap or double clap or something like that in between hold and just all those seem like you can just ramp them up even more

You can. Yeah. So you can, you can increase the time. Yeah. Without the hands on the wall, by adding claps and so on. You can get them to, particularly, if you look at it single moves, you can get ’em to doing one handed. Mm. Which means they need to kind of be able to organize their balance and tension well, at the end of the move, so they don’t swing it out or bond or off. So yeah. There’s lots of options.

Speaker 1:

So what about the reverse let’s say, and this, you haven’t found it as, as common, but let’s say that someone, especially like youth, client climbers, you’ll see this right. They’ve grown up and they’re like monkeys in the gym. Right. They’re just dynamically throwing for everything, you know, kind of almost disengaged. How do you take a drill and take that type of climber and bring them just a little bit more back to center with the repertoire because obviously you need to be static at times, right? They’re, there’s no question about that. Is there any way that you can take the overly dynamic climber and then give some drills or tools for more stuff? Yeah,

Definitely. You, you, you, you can generally work on it with tension so you can get them to fix some of their limbs with tension, for the duration of each hand move and that stops them in their tracks. So for example the the, but squeeze drill for my book, you know, is one where you say like for the duration of every hand move, you have to clench your bum. And that means you’re gonna lock your whole coin place and you’re gonna go motionless from the hips downwards while you move a hand. So that’s like a that’s kind showing you can set stability through your, with your call via your feet. And yeah, variations on that. Really. You can do that and focus on clawing with both feet, Chlor, your hips to the wall which kind of sets up a similar result.

There’s a, there’s a range really. I’m trying to think of some others off the top of my head, but yeah, essentially you are trying to fix a part of them while another part moves yeah. Gluing the gluing, the belly button, or, you know, the loop on their harness on the front there, the absel loop pin that to the wall for every hand move that will have a similar effect and what it, what it allow, what it gets in skillful at is the kind of very thin face climbing where you can’t afford to throw holds because you need, you need lots of accuracy cuz the holds are so small and need to be held. So precisely. So those kind of situations which is why like technical war climb are often quite static climbs because it serves that. So someone going to Smith rock needs to be like really on point with with pulling very hard with their, with yeah. With getting the hips pined to the wall while they fi while they, you know, go to very small handholds rather than like Chuck it about between big ones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. I like that. You’re using like use a lot of the external cues. Like it really, the climber could em like really think about, you know, their, their belly, you know, kind of belly button and position or something external outside of their body, you know, like on, if they’re doing a route, you know, they’re you know, their belay loop being pined somewhere,

Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Waistband is another one I use, like that will work for boulders. If you have a Boulder then yeah. Think about the waistband or your pockets and all the button on the front of your, you know, your pants or whatever and pin that to the wall. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Alright. I’m gonna throw out a couple random ones, so this will be on the spot and just we’ll we’ll, we’ll see where we go with, so, okay. Right. So, so I’m just throwing stuff out there. This is just things that I see. So there may not be an official drill for any of this. Okay.

Speaker 1:

All right. So climbers coming in, they have finger pain. Let’s say they have middle finger pain and watch them on the hang. I watch them on the hang board. And when they grip, they kind like spread their fingers out. Yeah. In this like middle finger gets this kind of like to load. Yeah. So I test them. What I do is I do is call like a valgus vari stress test and I notice their joints a little bit loose. But but anyway, the visual observation they’re crimping, but they get this like spread in their fingers.

Really. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

All right. What’s what’s the drill? Any thoughts? Any I on the spot?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s not something I’ve addressed, but if I was to address it, the obvious, the obvious drill in my mind immediately would be like glue those joints together.

Speaker 1:

Nice.

Yeah. Pinning together, get an elastic band round them. Or just visually think about that. Like you’ve, you’ve gone from having a hand to having a, and you’re gonna climb with a pool and show me, you can do that. Yeah. That’ll be where I’d start.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I think the, the words that you use, I mean, glue ’em together and you have a paw, right. Those are the simple things. Cause what I would say, I’d say you should a deduct your middle failings into the right. So what is he talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So climb, climb with a paw glue, your fingers together.

Yeah. My language is important in getting ideas across. Definitely.

Speaker 1:

All right. I’m gonna throw out maybe a couple more random.

Oh, go for it. I like that one. I’m gonna use it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. Next edition. Right. Of the book. All right. So we’ve got, now I’m just thinking of things. I all right. So climber is climbing and you notice they’re, crusing out a lot and their wrist is extending back and they’re going into kind of like a chicken winged position. But that only happens when they’re, crusing like when they’re really on some challenging moves and we can let it go. They can keep doing that. That’s fine. But my tests, I take ’em into the clinic. I test them, I do a thing called a Hawkins candy test and this causes their shoulder pain. So, ah, I would say that, Ooh, this is maybe something that we want to minimize when they climb. So what would be the drill to then you’d say to, to not allow that, that chicken wing position because it’s, it’s influencing their shoulder.

I think I’d focus on like, you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but it sounds like there might be a scapular retraction issue sitting behind this potentially. But yeah, I’d focus on, I’d focus on what happens in their back and in their thoracic spine. Like what they’re probably trying to do. If they’re chicken winging, like this is, they’ve got a ton of tension in this kind of circle here, the kind of the ring of steel as they call it. Bmxs they’ve got loads of tension here and then they’ve got a slack spine and core and then maybe some tension of their toes. So basically their core’s not really dishing out the tension, which is what should be, provide tension. Shoulders are doing it instead and they’re getting totally gas doing it. So I would focus for, for that person. I’d focus on thoracic extension. So I’m talking about lifting the stern up and, you know essentially yeah, lengthening the whole upper back. So their chest is raised and in terms of cues I use for that, obviously those are all internal things. I’ve mentioned if they’ve got like if they’ve got a, a neck neck pendant or anything on, like you’ve got there what’s on the end of that one.

Speaker 1:

It’s a nut.

Okay. There we go. So I would say take that nut, Jared, and point it up, hold it up to the light with your chest as you do the crux. Yeah. And that should cue some thoracic extension. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure.

Keep the nut up. If the nut drops into shadow, you’re in trouble. It, am we gonna chicken? W

Speaker 1:

So I, I love, I love those cues though. Cause right. Cuz it just like puts you into, if your movement coaching, it puts you into the moment and like now I’m climbing and I’m not thinking about my chest or my core. I’m thinking about, oh, this nut that I’ve been wearing for the past 15 years, it’s so important. Probably needs to not fall to the ground. I need to keep it love. And that’s like, yeah, yeah. The cue in my mind.

Yeah. And in terms of alternatives, for those of you out there, not wearing a nuts like me stretching the front of your top, that would do the same thing or creasing the back of it. If you think about between your shoulder blades there, if you could wrinkle that, that will have the same effect. So going through the crux with that means you’re gonna really engage your upper back give you rotate the cuffs, a break and you’re chicken winging arms and everything, a break as well. Yeah. So it’s applying more force there that you can direct to the core. So you don’t have to create as much force at the extremities.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And you can almost think like you’re down in this position, if you lift, well guess what that chicken wing, you know, now, now went away. Right. So You didn’t have to address the elbow as much as maybe the whole body.

Yeah. Yeah. So it should, you know, it, it, it will give you more reach. If you think about moving off a gas storm, people off of gas on, in here, and they’ve got a real short reach. And if they were to do that, they would be able to reach a lot further. So it, it has all kinds of benefits and climbers often have pretty stiff. The Rasic spines. Aren’t great at using it in full extension. And like extension is fundamental to reach. You need extension as a climber.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That totally makes sense. Right. One more, one more random

Movement. We we’ll move down to the lower body. So newer climber, they, you know, they, they just got into it maybe two, three years. Their upper body bothers them. They’re like kind of over pulling, but the main thing is you watch them climb and you look at their shoes and they’re like blown through are their shoes, like at the, at the toe tip you know, kind of like the front inside of the toe on their shoes and you watch them climb and they’re like scuffing their feet. Right? Yeah. So this is like your classic kind of newer climber. You know what, what’s the, what’s the drill, what’s the advice for them? And I actually find their injuries. Let’s just say they have vice steps, tendonitis. Like they actually have, you know, pain in their upper body, but the hypothesis it’s driven from maybe their footwork.

Yeah. Yeah. There, there’s a kind of element there of like top heavy tension I think is the kind of general issue that’s going on. And yeah. And as you can imagine, I have, I have a ton of footwork related drills. I, because it’s like the most common problem across all climbers. And everyone will basically benefit from working on their feet, whoever they are like, go and work more on your feet in some way, like, you know, no matter how experienced you are, there’ll be some changes you can make at your feet or have benefit, you know, further up the chain up your body. So for inexperienced climbers there there’s an accuracy issue going on, which is wearing out the shoes rapidly. So there’s lots of like very, very, you know, much loved and abused exercises, like silent feet. Yeah. For that, I think the first thing really is to make them really aware of what their feet are doing.

Like until you know that they’re doing something unhelpful, then there’s no real buy. There’s no motivation cuz you think they’re fine. You know, you’re worried about your bicep, but you, you, you think your feet are fine and that needs to change if you are gonna sort it out. So the first thing I would tend to do with, with someone whose feet are a bit bangy like that is I would ask them to do an easy route. I’d, I’d get ’em to do an easy route. And I would ask ’em to tell me when they came down, how many times a foot either double tack a hole or hit the wall and slid down to it. And I would show them that movement by like two millimeters, you know, like a very small amount just to make it clear that I was looking for the tiniest movement area. I would tell ’em to do that. They would obviously think in their head, oh my goodness, I’m doing it too much. I better not do it. I’m being watched by a coach. There’s all this mental pressure they’ve applied to themselves. Yeah. They’d go up the wall on the easy route and they would still do it because it’s a habit, you know? Yeah. And they would, they would show me the best footwork they’ve ever done that day. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

They’re like just like typically

Yeah, they would be really precise, but it would be extremely, mentally hard for them. And they’d find they still did it maybe two or three times as opposed to like 90% of the foothold like they did before and come down and be acutely aware of what their feet were doing because of this social dynamic I’d created. And that for me is the start point. It’s like right now you’ve been like almost shamed into knowing that your feet aren’t up to scratch. You’re gonna know about it. You know?

Speaker 1:

Oh, like a B

Yeah, yeah. Your sensitivity is, you know, we’ve turned up the radar on sensitivity to footwork and now you will know when they’re not being accurate. You’ll be really conscious of it. And that’s, that’s the start point. It’s like once, you know, they’re not accurate, then the solution’s really obvious. Like anyone can, anyone can figure that out and they can practice it. You just have to know when they’re not being accurate. So there’s like, then, then there’s these two kind of separate tasks they have, which is one is to deliver really practice more precise and accurate feet. And the second one is to maintain awareness when they’re not practicing. So whatever climb you do you want to know if your feet double tap, tap, and slide or do something that wasn’t go to the hold and fully wait it first time. And if you know, in a red flag pops up in your head, each time it happens, then you’re still to learn and progress, but you have to know like awareness sits, believe it all. So that’s the, that’s the start one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It sounds like, I mean, there’s probably 50 drills that you could give oh yeah. For like silent feet or, you know, blinking like whatever it is for accuracy and precision. But the knowing when, and having like someone internalize, that sounds like it’s like the key to implementing drills. It’d be pretty amazing. If someone came up though, with something, you can slide into your climbing shoe with just an accelerometer. So you’re not even thinking. Right. And then you, oh yeah. Like after you get down, you’re like, oh, check your phone. Oh yeah. I double tap 340 times in this, you know, in this session, you

Know? Yeah. It’s I put it on like a big screen in the wall that would be really

Speaker 1:

Effective and then have it like red, like go red and then have, have your face like come out and have it like red. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. But the social shaming is an incredibly powerful lever, but yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it’s awareness is really, really important. And what it means is that they’re not just monitoring it. They’re not, you know, if you are reliant on some external feedback to tell you how your footwork is, then, then you are only gonna know about it when someone helpful is watching you who’s attentive. Whereas if you, if you are sensitive to it internally, you’ve got this amazing source of feedback every time you place a foot, which is, which is what you want.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. And then I guess on the, on the topic of movie, then, you know, we talked about just in general, what you notice, like climbing movement, that predisposes injuries, you kind of talked about the dynamic climbing and the over crimping. We threw out a couple different drills, just some random drills, like things that I, that I, that I see in the clinic. And is there any other like, kind of on the topic of movement, any other, I wouldn’t say closing thoughts, but any other, you know, before we kind of move on to more injuries, any other things that you kind of recommend? Like if a climber is listening, watching as it relates to, I don’t know if perfecting movement or just always improving movement as a climber that you could, that you can maybe mention.

I think in general themes, I would say that are worth EV everyone’s worth exploring are are tension, like look at how much tension you’re carrying and look at where it is in your body. And those are quite hard things to work out. You probably have to go and do some contrast, drill, like deliberate, excessively different areas of your body. And even that is a skill in itself. Some people, if you tell ’em to tense their whole body tenses, even if you say tense, your legs, you know, so being able, like a skillful climb, what they’re very good at is being able to manage tension effectively and just tension the limbs that need to be tense and only tense just enough. And the rest of their body is relaxing in a kind of incredible manner. And when you see a elite performers perform, you know, climb really well on, on easy ground, they’re ridiculously relaxed.

Like I, I remember having a, sharing a session with Steve McClure and watching him climb a horizontal roof. He was trying to teach her a, a technique in a horizontal roof, indoor in his trainers. And he just like walked along this roof upside down, like, like totally relaxed demonstrated this complicated hand sequence. And then someone else was like a solid V seven Boulder got on. And like, couldn’t even get the two or three meters to the point where he shown. Yeah, that was so hard. They were just pulling so much harder than he was. And they were in climbing shoes. He was in trainers, you know what was really striking about what he was doing was, was the economy of movement, really? In terms of how low the tension was. He only used just enough tension. And if you’ve ever seen a novice climbing or someone like a, a weight lift to come into the, into the climbing wall, who’s, you know, bulging with muscles, you’ll see them just apply an insane amount of tension and it doesn’t help them at all.

And the brilliant climbers, the ones who have the tension’s hard to see where it is, and it’s very subtle and it’s the minimum amount of tension. So yeah, I think tension is worth exploring for everyone and coming in and out of tension, you know, you have most power when you go from totally relaxed to full tension. So maintaining high tension in between powerful moves, isn’t helpful. Being really adept at moving around the like relaxed to tent scale, like all the time, that’s the skill, really not staying at this end or staying at this end and you’ll get like the slot type sport climate at this end, all the time kind of draped under the holes and you’ll get the boulders who like power up everything front on at this end. And they’re really good at one end of the spectrum and really they need to master the other end as well. And then they’d kind of, they get their full potential.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And that kind of goes back to that static versus dynamic style. Yeah. But I like how you mentioned, and I haven’t really thought of this, but to, you can do it in climbing movement, but also just sitting there, like, you know, tense, one buttock cheek on your right. Relax it, do it on your left, like work all the way up and down the chain. And that makes sense that some climbers just can’t turn it on, turn it off. Even just standing there. How do you expect to do that when you’re on the wall?

Yeah. That’s it. And if you can’t moderate it around your body, how are you gonna breathe whilst applying tension? You know, because your whole body’s gonna lock up and you won’t be able to breathe. So you won’t able to be tense very long at all. So yeah, you really be able to moderate it all over all over the body rate. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I, I guess in closing, like, you know, on everything on every aspect, whether it’s strength, training, climbing, preventing injuries, improving movement performance, if there was kinda like a final take home message, like something you’d say, all right, let me distill this all down, you know, into of one thing. Or, you know, a couple things, but what you know, what’s kind of like a kind of closing message, your, your, your kind of thoughts on if someone’s listening and they’re like, I just want John’s number one tip

On,

Speaker 1:

You know, on getting more efficient with climbing and staying injury free. So what would you,

I would say, I would say to stay curious, I think curiosity is the thing that sits behind it. And if you keep asking questions and you keep you keep curious, then you’ll keep improving. And I guess for me, you can kind of hear from my injury kind of tales of wo that it’s curiosity that see recover from those injuries. It’s not following the advice of the original physios and taking what they said at face value. It was changing physios three or four times, and then it was making up my own stuff. And, you know, that’s, that’s driven by curiosity. And it’s the same with climbing technique. I took a look at my technique at the end of my twenties when I was at like peak injury rates and, and yeah, and it was a curiousness which opened my eyes.

The fact it was really, really bad and it was a large tu to my, all my injuries and and yeah, and it’s that, which has driven me forward from there and just seeing really good progress going against the odds really. So yeah, I think take a curious approach to everything you try the moment you think, you know, think know it, like that’s a red flag. You don’t know it. You definitely dunno it. I don’t know it. No one knows it. So yeah. Watch out for that. That’s a trap. Stay curious. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Well, John, where can people find you? And are there any resources you can kind of recommend? I know we talked about your book, but

Yeah, they can, you can find me in, you can find me, I’ve got a website, John kettle.com and Instagram that’s my, that’s my kind of social media presence. And in terms of resources on my website, you can find my book and you can get that on Amazon and so on as well. Which is called rock climbing technique on the website. There’s also, you can download last year’s, I’ve been putting my presentations coaching presentations on there. So if you’re a coaching nerd or you just wanna learn loads, that’s much more information dense than the book. So be prepared to be batted with a bit of science and theory, but if you’re up for that, then I, I I encourage you to go and look at what’s on there. There’ll be another one of those presentations coming out in, I think may or June from this most recent one there.

So there’s some resources there, there’s a bunch of other links to interviews and articles I’ve written that are around the, the place on podcasts and and websites. Yeah, and I guess on the Instagram side, I try and mainly share educational stuff on Instagram. So you know, I don’t post a lot, but what I do post is like ideas. If you like and concepts, like some of these drills we’ve discussed. So go and have a go and have a browse through those and yeah. Get in touch if you’ve got any questions.