Shauna Coxsey - #43

0:00Shauna Coxsey, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. For the people who may not know who you are, would you just be able to sum yourself up in a couple of words? Oh, I am a professional climber. I used to be a competition climber and now I get paid to climb on rocks, which is not something I ever thought I'd get to say out loud. That's pretty mad title, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit weird, isn't it? What would the professional title be? Oh, professional athlete, I guess, which still sounds crazy. but yeah i go with professional athletes it gives the intrigue of like people can look at they kind of look at you and go what do you do and then i just don't say anything until i ask that's class when you was a kid what's my title yeah um professional high rocks athlete i think i recently learned what high rocks means yeah i feel like we'd probably get like misconfused like every time when i talk about high rocks when to someone that doesn't know what high rocks is they go oh you're a professional climber i'm like because it's like high rocks i literally never thought about that but um have you always been into climbing like i just imagine like you as a child like just like being like a monkey climbing everything is that right i started climbing when i was four years old so i guess before that i was still learning to life you learned to climb the same time you did to walk basically yeah well just before i started school i started climbing so i saw it on the tv when i was three and became obsessed with it my dad used to love watching trans world sports you know like all of the motorbikes and extreme sports um and yeah one day i saw climbing and i was like that's what i want to do and he was like okay i have no idea what that is or how to start and yeah we found a climbing gym and i started at the kids groups oh so your parents didn't have like anything to do with no not at all um my dad dad did start a little bit after me um and he would take me scrambling and was interested in the outdoors but my mum and the rest of my family absolutely not when did it start to get like serious for you i did my first climbing competition at seven years old because it was at the climbing wall where i used to go to and kind of everyone was like oh you should do a climbing competition it'd be good you you're really good at this so I entered um and accidentally qualified for the national finals and I came third at this comp because there was only three kids in it so I got this medal and I came last but also third so I got the podium got a little picture and stuff and then qualified for the national finals which was in Merthyr Tidville in Wales and it rained the entire time we were there it was freezing cold and I really have such strong memories of this climbing competition because I saw the older girls having this finals like climb off and I just thought they're so badass and cool I want to do what they're doing yeah that's a that's a crazy start so seven years old the first competition did it just get like more serious from there um yeah I think I realized really quickly that I wanted to pursue comp climbing um and I wanted to be national champion like that was my goal and the categories were like seven to nine year olds and then 11 to 12 year olds and 13 to 15 year olds so I was like okay I would love to win one day and then kept working my way up through kind of the system the comp climbing structure that was in place at the time yeah won my first national final at nine and then kind of just kept getting more and more hungry for it and I remember when that's probably around 10 11 I said to my dad I was like i want to be a professional comp climber and at this time in the sport no one in the uk was doing that you could be a professional rock climber but not comp climbing it was almost laughable i made him promise not to tell anybody because i was like it's so embarrassing to say that out loud people are going to come for me if i say i want to be a pro comp climber why was that i think it was just that our sport comes from so much history um it kind of comes from the mountains comes from the rocks and almost comp climbing was seen as a bit of a laughable joke within the sport in the early years maybe um and it's obviously changed so much and so drastically and I've been climbing for nearly 30 years which makes me cringe when I say it out loud so I've seen so much change but you know when I was 10 11 the sport was in such a different place and it just seemed inconceivable that someone could make a living off being a pro competition climber it just seems so far-fetched um so yeah I think I was nervous to ever say it out loud and also I guess in a way being British you know we don't say like I want to go win and be number one and it's like not something that we feel very comfortable shouting about especially when we're when I was younger so yeah I was quite shy with my ambition back then.

5:08Was you into any other kind of sports at the time or like literally self-focused climbing? I did little bits and bobs mainly at school so I kind of got pulled into swimming galas and netball teams I was quite a sporty kid so from not a very big place so with teams i'd get pulled onto teams quite a bit and i realized really early on that climbing was the thing i wanted to focus on um so i'd always prioritize that and what is it like about climbing like i've i've like experimented just like literally basics in a boulder yeah yeah and like uh i i get why people get like addicted to it like because of the problem solving element um but what at that time like what made you obsessed i think for me with climbing there's always an element of unknown and that's physically and mentally there's always a problem to solve like you say but i was deeply curious in what i was capable of kind of instantly um whether that was an indoor climb or an outdoor climb and also the prospects in the sport you know there's so many different ways to explore climbing whether that is bouldering an indoor climbing wall like you've experienced or kind of going big walling in the mountains to everything in between um so I think that the diversity of the sport and the different avenues you can go down is one of the elements that kind of drew me into being so excited by it but I think what inspired me most was my curiosity of movement and what I was physically capable of and I think even still now you know after 30 years doing the exact same sport I'm still just as excited by it and I feel like I've not reached my potential I can still push further push harder do more which is crazy to say after that long doing the same thing yeah it is it is crazy um but like you say I've I get that like just by spending a little bit of time like it doesn't seem like it could ever get boring because there's always new challenges and there's always harder things there's always other things to kind of like conquer yeah so with bouldering especially especially indoor bouldering it's quite an accessible way to get fit whilst using your brain to because the problem solving element and then climbing walls change the climbs that are in there so there's always something new to try and even if the climbs did stay the same forever there's different ways to explore movement and to increase your strength and your capability on the wall so you kind of have this endless potential for growth which is really exciting but can also be really infuriating yeah how has the climbing scene changed over the last couple of years well last couple of years last 30 years like you mentioned yeah oh god no and you say it makes me feel even worse sorry i say last last uh 10 years no so climbing when i started climbing if i told people i went bouldering or even if i went climbing they'd look really confused at me and I used to start kind of every public speaking event or every kind of social engagement with an explanation of what bouldering was or I'd ask the entire crowd you know like anyone here know what bouldering is have you been and that question is now totally pointless because everybody knows what bouldering is in terms of they might have seen it at the Olympics or heard about it although everyone has a mate that goes bouldering even if they don't themselves um like every major city in the world has multiple climbing walls now it's become way more mainstream and what climbing kind of used to be it felt like was people found climbing because they didn't fit in to team sports or mainstream sports and I feel like I might get some stick for saying this but it felt like all of the weirdos that didn't fit into anything else ended up going climbing and it was just a bunch of misfits and renegades who didn't want to play a team sport or couldn't because they couldn't play in teams because it is a very individual sport as well as being quite social um but yeah it just felt like we were all of the misfits and that's very different now because people use climbing for so many different reasons and the definition of a climber is not that anymore it's really shifted and changed and i think that with the growth of the sport naturally we've welcomed and encouraged more people and that's been one of my goals in my career is to make climbing a more accessible place um and that just snowballed massively with the olympics and the announcement of climbing being in the games with it starting to just be seen by a much broader audience yeah and that was kind of like a that's when i first saw climbing at the olympics um obviously like you said you've seen kind of like documentaries and stuff like that as well um but like professional climbing in the olympics was like the first time and am i right have they kind of like changed the rules on it yeah yeah yeah so in tokyo 2020 which was in 21 um at the sport i competed and we had a three discipline sport with one set of medals at the end and then that changed to kind of two sets of medals so they split speed climbing to get its own set and lead climbing which is with a rope where you clip it in on the way up and bouldering without ropes just over mats not too high they were still combined and then in la we'll have all three separate and they'll be completely separate yeah so every individual will get its own medal and that's how it should be right it is but then what happens with the olympics is the number of athletes is usually getting more athletes in your sport like spots for athletes is really difficult so although we have an increase in the number of medals we have a decrease in the number of athletes per medal set so there's only going to be i believe it's 12 athletes per um sport discipline in la so we had 20 previously so not every country is allowed to compete no yeah the qualification process is really not fun it's really hard and really complicated yeah no i believe that i believe that across the board in numerous sports but um it's good that they're seeing that like you say you can have different skill sets within climbing as well yeah what's going to be really interesting in la is if we see athletes go for multiple disciplines because we've had to train to be multiple discipline athletes in tokyo we had to do all three in paris the athletes that were doing lead and bouldering obviously the combined event had to do both and then with la there's the choice to just do one but there's nothing stopping athletes going after two or even three disciplines um so yeah it's going to be really interesting to watch certain specific athletes whether they go for one or two disciplines in LA but that's kind of very niche and geeky no I love it and uh I want to I want to take it back to you though and how did you go from national level to the Olympics oh gosh that's a good question I don't have no idea no I do um it was quite a natural organic process I think for me when i started to do well at nationals as i kind of aged out of the younger categories naturally i made my way onto the gb team that sounds really arrogant naturally i made my way onto the gb team um but that's just what happens when you do well you know it sounds arrogant but was uh was there much competition sounds weird but was that i sound terrible i don't really remember because it was so long ago I was 11 when I got on the GB team um so I don't think so um apologies if anyone that I used to compete against is listening to this um but I always had my sights set on kind of an international stage and I knew that's where I wanted to go so to do that it was get on the GB team start competing at international comps in junior and when I was a junior athlete so kind of in the around 14 like that sort of age there weren't any bouldering competitions for youth athletes at that time um on an international stage so I couldn't compete in bouldering I had to compete in lead climbing which is roped and then as I got towards senior age which is 16 a coach of the GB team said no one can do lead and bouldering it's not possible to do both you have to choose now which is very interesting now that you have to do both at the Olympics um I would love to have a conversation with that coach about what he thinks of all the athletes who do do both and win medals in both um but unfortunately I had to choose um and I chose bouldering and that's when I kind of started on my senior development and going through the process of competing in world cups and building up from there um yeah it kind of felt very organic i think well where were kind of like the international competitions were they all over the world uh-huh yeah so when i got onto the the senior team um it was a case of trying to raise funds and figure out how i could afford so financially to get to the competitions that were all over the world so when you when you get onto these teams you're not just automatically like paid no to go maybe now these days it might have changed but no I work I don't come from a wealthy background um you know like my family weren't able to support me to travel all over the world competing and my dad gave up so much time and finance to help me on my journey for sure but yeah when it came to go into world cups you know of fly into China and America and Japan and every all over the world to compete um it was quite a while quite a number of years before I started to get any kind of sponsorship and prize money and actually pay for itself let alone start to make a living out of it and I grafted like I worked really hard to build my social media to be a professional athlete um I actually did an interview for one of my first sponsors when I was I must have been like 17 18 and I watched it back and I was like why would anyone pay that person to represent their brand and it was that moment I was like I'm going to be a professional athlete from now on and I educated myself I learned how to speak on camera I learned how to do social media how to advertise brands and I just took a whole different approach to it and ultimately ended up building my whole team that came with me to the olympics and helped me on the journey to actually make a living out of a sport that is quite hard to make a living out of oh yeah i was gonna ask for that so like uh what what was you doing like when you couldn't afford to to go to these competitions like how are you raising money yeah i worked at a climbing gym okay or a climbing wall um in liverpool and kind of yeah we just worked as much as i could to save the funds i lived at home and i had a super beat up car um and yeah just grafted as much as i can did coaching and route setting and yeah working behind the desk at a climbing wall doing everything that you could just to pay for a flight to fund that like going to china to compete and going to the states and also to kind of fund education as well so i tried to really treat my job as a professional athlete like a job on top of everything else I was doing um so I chose not to go to university I actually deferred my university for a year when I was 18 so I kind of got accepted into my places deferred it for a year and was like right I'm going to give it a year to give it a go um and that's where I started to really focus on like what are the pillars I need to build here in terms of being a better athlete so looking at everything from coaching nutrition like lifestyle choices like what am I doing to be a good athlete and then okay on the other side of that how do I become an athlete that brands want to work with and that will actually make me make this work because in climbing it feels like there's two ways to make money you can be marketable and you can work well with brands or you can win and do really well at world cups and comps and if you do both then maybe you can make a decent living and i think that has changed a little bit now um i think there's more money in competitions um than there was 15 20 years ago which there should be but not much there should be more climbers should get paid more um but yeah it wasn't like an easy ride oh i love it i love it But who was you looking up to for, like you said, you needed to make a change in terms of focusing on being marketable and, like you say, with actually being the best athlete that you could be as well.

18:56But who was you looking up to? Was you looking outside to other sports? Yeah, I had to look outside to other sports because there weren't athletes really doing it in my sport. um what happened when I deferred a year for my university applications I actually broke my leg two weeks later which was really bad timing on paper but actually really fortuitous in other ways because it was when the London Olympics was on and all my family had plans and were off doing stuff I think they were even like down in London watching the games and I was supposed to be away on this climbing trip and I actually broke my leg on the climbing trip but in Switzerland flew home I'm like, this is the end.

19:38Like, what am I going to do from here? And I was watching the Olympics, and I remember watching Jess absolutely smash it, and all of these incredible athletes. And I was like, hang on, I don't look like an athlete. Like, I don't act like an athlete. I act like a climber. And at that time, professional climbing, the image of it was kind of dirtbag lifestyle. And I was like, that is one avenue to take this down. but I want to win world cups and that's not going to help me so it was when I broke my leg that I found my first coach so I was all the way up until 18 didn't have a coach and decided it was then I was like right okay I need to start really figuring this out and I got a nutritionist and I figured out that I was massively under fueling and that my bone density was super low in climbing being too light is a very big issue that we have in our sport um like disordered eating is a huge problem that climbing has um and I very much fell victim to that at that time and it was fortunately like breaking my leg and sitting and watching these absolute badass like hench strong female athletes I was so inspired by it and also the way they were able to finish a race and then switch back into media mode and be authentic at the same time as being in kind of work mode I was like oh okay like if I want to be a professional athlete that's what this is it's not kind of sitting in a cave and sleeping in the ground which is fine and I have no issue with climbers that do that but I just saw a very different trajectory and now our sport is much more professional and people do work with coaches that's the norm but it wasn't then is the has the since the olympics i was speaking to kieran riley about this and he said it's similar in bmx um since being announcing like the olympics people like yourself probably took it more professional and treated yourself as a professional athlete and like got a nutritionist but was there kind of like a divide with people like the the dirtbag lifestyle like you said that um you know people going climbing uh enjoying it like living um just a climb and that's it compared to you who's like taking it serious as an athlete did it like did the olympics force that divide if that makes sense yeah it's a good question maybe but i think for me it was a bit different because i did all of that way before we the olympic announcement happened so i built my coaching team and so you just professional is physios professionalize yourself before yeah before the sport caught up with me yeah i'm headed the game did you have an inkling that it no i genuinely was so surprised and i also didn't want to do the olympics when it first was announced oh interesting um yeah that's a whole other story we can get into yeah um yeah it it for sure has had an impact on professionalizing the sport it's had a huge impact on the way the teams work so we compete for our countries so the countries who have more funding and more support you're seeing different approaches now um and I'm just I'm really glad I'm not a competitive climber anymore because I think I competed during the golden years of comp climbing where there was more eyes coming into the sport it was massively growing it was an exciting time for our sport but it wasn't super serious yet the stakes weren't as high there wasn't as much money being thrown into it which I think was a good thing because people weren't as anxious and there wasn't as much of a pressure pot as it seems to be now yeah no no that is uh that is interesting um so tell us about why you didn't want to go to the Olympics so when climbing was announced to get into the games um It was announced as a three-discipline combined sport, at which time I was world number one in bouldering.

23:50My goal was always to get to be world number one. I wanted to win a World Cup. That was like the dream. And then after that, it was to try and win the series title. And so I did that in 2016 and got a huge shoulder injury at the end of the year. So I was like, oh, I wonder if I can rehab this surgery and come back and win again. That feels like a good challenge. Because I was still quite young in my career at that time. And then I won again in 2017. And I was like, oh, I didn't really expect that to happen so quickly. And that was around the time where the Olympic announcement came. I always knew that I wanted to have a competition career in climbing.

24:32And then have a rock climbing career. And treat them as very separate. There's very few climbers who can balance climbing outdoors and climbing in competitions. because the demands for both are so high the training is slightly different and the competition season is just so arduous I'd spend most off seasons training I'd do the comp season usually get injured rehab train back into comp season and that was my life for years um so when the Olympic announcement came I was kind of ready to go rock climbing and be a pro rock climber um I also knew I wanted a baby and when the announcement came my husband was like you should do the Olympics my now husband then boyfriend and I was like this is weird like I'm kind of done with comps me going to comps was really strenuous on our relationship and it took like it's it's hard to be a professional athlete it takes a lot of support from everyone around you to win a world cup is really difficult to keep winning and to win series titles it's it's so demanding every single time it gets harder and I was really surprised when he was like what excited that I should do the Olympics I didn't know why and eventually was like why are you so psyched for me to do this he was like well it gives me like four more years no babies and I was like oh okay I was like cool if I do the Olympics can we have a baby after and he was like yeah right so I was like cool I'll do the Olympics and that's why I decided to do it pretty much um so that I had something to do while I waited for him to be ready to have a baby which I know sounds really silly but the Olympics kind of felt a little bit silly too because it was a three-discipline sport we had no idea how anyone would transfer into that style of competition because we'd never seen it before it was like you know asking a sprinter to do a marathon and an egg and spoon race as well you know like they're these three sports don't naturally go together um in terms of a combined event so yeah it was sort of let's just go and give it a go and see what happens and who knows um so yeah I genuinely didn't know if I'd qualify um but because I was world number one in one of the disciplines we were able to secure funding um my best friend was my coach at the time um I had a physio I still work with both of them like my physio was the best like I had my team in place and then when the funding came through I was kind of told I had to do things in a certain way but because i was doing it not i didn't want to do on their terms i wanted to do on my terms and i was able to build my own team and we had a great time in the lead up to kind of 2019 and then i guess the whole entire world shit hit the fan so yeah that was not ideal in terms of prep for the olympics for me covid comes along yeah and uh yeah you kind of get your uh olympic dream well like you say it wasn't really a dream but like your olympics dampened yeah yeah yeah it was yeah I mean it was great for some athletes you know they were able to like have like some of the younger athletes having an extra year of training and like growth and development under them I think it like yeah it was great for them but I'd literally just had surgery and it was really not ideal for me what was it like actually uh going to the Olympics during COVID because obviously it was like a different time yeah I guess I don't know what it's like not going during covid so yeah i mean going to the olympics in itself is the most crazy magical surreal experience but it's also really bizarre you know like the whole concept is why explain it but the the concept of the olympic village for one and then the amount of emotions just like in that one place and being part of a team and everyone's in uniform.

28:44I don't know, it felt like going into some weird episode of Black Mirror or something, you know, where I just didn't, especially because of COVID, everyone in masks and you're sat with these little plastic sheets in front of you and there was just so many elements of it that I didn't get. And it's so far removed from the world that I come from, especially because climbing has been on this rapid growth. I never expected to get to the Olympics, you know, like I'm not that story of a little kid watching the Olympics with the Olympic dream it just never felt possible for me so the whole time it just felt like the most bizarre surreal experience because we I never expected to be there and then we had COVID so there were so many hurdles to the event actually happening and at the qualification event for Tokyo I won the bronze medal and it was all there was such a buzz and a hype and i felt so ready for 2020 by the time 21 came around i needed double knee surgery and wrist surgery and probably shoulder surgery like i was pretty beat up and that's all just through climbing yeah yeah oh yeah so the knees for i had four knee surgeries two shoulder surgeries wrist surgery and i assume from falling no more from like wear and tear and maybe from falling repeatedly but no like crazy like it's not like mountain biking you know where they get hardcore wild injuries yeah yeah we just kind of get a bit sore after a while and hurt our fingers every now and then no i love that you mentioned there about um you made a lot of sacrifices and it was like stressful not just in like the olympic phase but like you know winning world cups being world champion what were them sacrifices like talk us through that as typical week training was it was it demanding in the build-up to the olympics um my sister rang me at one point actually and was like hey how you doing i was like yeah i'm good i'm just really busy she's like cool i haven't spoken to you in six months and i was like oops sorry like my bad um so yeah i have five older sisters though so keeping up with them all is kind of hard um five older sisters yeah i'm one brother um oh yeah so there's a lot of people to keep up with um but I would train nine days on and then have one rest day and I did that for like multiple years basically um and then I'd train twice two or three times a day and that could be anything from finger strength training so like just dangling off a piece of wood pretty much with weights attached to me to speed climbing training or lead climbing so on a rope bouldering training and then we'd have all my S &C work and then my endurance work that I'd need to do outside of that plus all the recovery stuff so it was a really it was a logistical nightmare to plan my training because you couldn't do this session before this session and you had to have a rest day after this one and then I'd have injuries to contend with within all of that so my coach Leah and my manager Matt at the time they were my coach and manager at the time and they'd basically sort all my schedule out between training plus media commitments as well because with the ramp up to the olympics that goes crazy um so they kind of act as a barrier and filter as much of the chaos as they could but yeah when i think back i i don't know how we did it it was wild yeah that's insane like when you obviously there you talked about your training you talked about you've got very like skill specific so like the the dangling the uh the actual speed climbing climb over rope bouldering etc you mentioned there that you you also did strength and conditioning in the gym yeah and then endurance what were what were them sessions i'm just intrigued like yeah so when i said endurance i was like on the wall all right okay yeah so i i really don't like running i don't do you don't need to it's not specific no No.

32:50Mainly because I've just had four knee surgeries, so I'm just scared to have more. But just kind of classic strength. Nothing too crazy. We do a lot of pull-ups. Is that a lot of upper body? A lot of upper body and lower body. Oh, lower body is that, yeah? Yeah, so when I was training for the Olympics, lower body was probably something we'd focus on as much, if not more, than upper body because of the explosivity needed for speed climbing in our legs. and climbing is there's a huge misconception that climbing is all about upper body it's our legs are so much stronger than our arms and if we're able to stand up and push with our legs then it's going to be a lot easier than pulling up with our arms um especially for people who are starting out you know if you can walk up the stairs you can get up a climbing wall it's so much about pushing with your legs but climbing is also so much about connection between your hands and your feet so it's all about the the chains and the links between your hands and your feet um so you do a lot of like sling work like uh yeah chain work within your training loads yeah and a lot of core and now i work with a coach who i started working with postpartum um who's called joy black and her focus is working with pregnant and postpartum climbers but i love her training so much that i I asked if she'd keep me on as a client even now.

34:10I don't really consider myself postpartum anymore. My daughter is four. She's really, her training is all about connecting your chains. And I feel like everything I do with her is so climb specific, which I've not had working with S &C coaches previously. And I never felt like I was lacking that until I started working with Joy. and that's been really transformed the way I train um in recent years which yeah I feel stronger than ever I think now so yeah she's obviously doing something right it's definitely improved um so moving on to after the Olympics what made you retire from comp and like uh like retire from doing competition uh climbing I always knew I'd stop competing like I said earlier and I was so ready to be done with the comp world I think there were so many elements that I found hard and it just kept being more and more challenging because of the kind of politics within the teams and the changes that were coming in and the way the path that climbing was going down didn't excite me in terms of competition wise so I actually decided to run for the vice presidency of our athlete commission so I could kind of give back and be involved in the positive development of the sport so I did that for two years and then did the presidency for four years so I sat on our executive board for six years because I really wanted to be part of that development but I was just so ready to not be in there as an athlete and I think one of my biggest regrets in my career is using the word retirement because everyone's like, oh, you're not a pro athlete anymore and I'm like, yeah, I am, just outdoors and then that's so hard to explain to people what being a pro athlete outdoors is but competition climbing people get immediately because it's numbers, right?

36:21You win or you get in the finals or you get on a podium people can understand that but rock climbing is very nuanced um would you be able to explain to to people like um do you know what what do people value within rock climbing in climbing or yeah yeah outside outside climbing like um like what what do people value as opposed to competition climbing you know climbing yeah yeah i guess it's like looking at any core sports you know like skateboarding or bmxing like so much of it about is about what you're doing within the community as well and pushing the limits so there's a climb i'm gonna go try next i leave on sunday actually um and that would be the hardest thing i've ever climbed outdoors so it's more like inspiring project focused more like um let's say doing specific um let's say every climb is different outdoors obviously it's indoors as well but yeah so we train indoors and then we climb outside and that's kind of where our like playground is I guess in a way um so it's very yeah it's very different to the the competition world which was really changing at a time when I stopped and I was by the time we'd gone through COVID and actually got to the Olympics I just felt so ready and I think part of me was already done when we got to the Olympics I think I could have pushed harder actually at the games um but I was just so tired by the time we got there with everything that had gone on and I was pretty close to making the finals I just didn't even think I had it in me at that point um I'd had multiple injuries leading up to it I tore my meniscus four days before the Olympics and my physio was like I don't know if you can compete and I was like if I can stand up I'm climbing like we're not getting this close because also you don't get to be an Olympian unless you actually compete at the Olympic Games.

38:18So imagine all that effort. They're not even able to get my tattoo. Have you got the tattoo? I did get the tattoo. Where have you got it? It's on my ankle. Yeah, incredible. And I've also realised, you know, for my team, it's had a massive impact on their careers as well, you know, to be a coach at the Olympics, to be a physio at the Olympics. That's significant. And I knew that. And I wanted to give back to them as much as I could as well because it was their journey as much as it was mine. Literally, they kind of almost literally dragged me over the finish line. That's incredible. So when you made the transition to, like you say, rock climbing and outdoor climbing, were you a lot happier?

39:03Well, I had a baby in the middle of that too. So I got pregnant literally just after returning home from the Olympics. It's very efficient. um we had a really busy month I did the Olympics we got pregnant my husband published a book we got married um I'm sure there's something else as well yeah it was like it's a busy month yeah and then I grew a baby I birthed the baby I recovered and my recovery was kind of my introduction into being a pro rock climber um and yeah that was a really different journey because I was just not only learning how to be a rock climber and all of that that entails and shifting into that mode, but I was doing it whilst recovering from the whole growing a human and pushing it out thing.

39:55Yeah, of course. Did you lose much strength? I climbed until the day before I gave birth. Oh, wow. And I felt really good throughout my pregnancy. I climbed a few times a week, which sounds like a lot, but when I went from training nine days in a row to climbing a couple of times a week was very much not right at all. Interestingly, I actually went from like 58 kilos up to 75. And the amount of times I googled like normal weight gain during pregnancy and it was like 10 to 12 kilos or whatever it says. And I was like, I'm like 20 kilos heavier. What's going on? So that was just crazy because I've never climbed with a huge belly and I lost my...

40:38some of my core is it tough it was just different but also it happens so gradually that I don't know it just felt really normal yeah and I I'm really fortunate that I had a smooth pregnancy and a pretty a very smooth birth as well um I mean it didn't feel smooth but I know it was compared to a lot of other possibilities um and then recovery I was so focused on coming back to prove myself not to anybody else but to to me like I wanted to get back to an elite level of rock climbing um and I was really excited by that and really fueled by it which was a lot to juggle I started back training well I started doing all of my recovery stuff literally as soon as I could and then back on the wall at five weeks postpartum the guidelines say to wait to six I almost made it so i would recommend listening to your health professionals whatever they say but i made it to five weeks and then was ready to train again but i was ready to train literally the day after i was like let's go i'm so excited for this that's good i'm just really tired it drives me that you're always kind of like positive and you're always looking forward to no i choose to be positive i'm not always positive it's like a very conscious choice yeah why is that um because it's a lot harder when you're not but i don't think it's possible to just be positive and feel good all the time and be motivated i'm really like fascinated by the idea of motivation and where that comes from and positivity as well and i think our mindset is what kind of creates all the opportunities we have in life and yeah i very much choose to be a positive person because the alternative isn't that fun yeah no i completely agree like um good vibes yeah come back around and also i feel like you can definitely trick yourself you know if you fake it till you make it exactly you know i just i feel like if we smile and we choose to look at a positive like have a positive outlook we're going to be in a much better place than if we're grumpy and looking at it negatively of course that's not possible all the time um but yeah i think that it's definitely something we can choose to do um but i don't think i'm naturally a very positive person i think i've made a choice to be no no it's like uh it's very hard to be in a bad mood after you've left for example yeah like when i was competing i would smile i'd like force myself to smile um and it would put me in such a better mood and then i climb better and then eventually that just kind of becomes part of like who you are and what you're doing um and i think yeah my like life philosophy is do something about it or get over it so when you've got those two choices you're like okay we're moving on it's always like moving yeah maybe one day i'll stop i'm quite a fast-paced person i think what's some of the craziest things you've done within climbing done oh uh i don't know i've not done them yet have you got any i'm terrible at looking back on what i have done which yeah people often ask like oh what's your proudest moment or like what are some of the cool things you've done i'm like oh I don't know.

43:57I can tell you what's coming up though. Yeah. I don't know. Why do you not look back? I think I'm just always so busy. I don't have time. Yeah. I'm not really into like celebrating and to, you know, like you come to my house, you won't see any trophies around. I don't have any like shit on my walls of like stuff I've won. I don't even know where all my medals are, you know. I'm just always excited about what's coming. Yeah. I don't think about it very much. Do you have the medals somewhere? Maybe. no i don't have them all so you just yeah my friend actually recently found one in her house so i know i don't have them my coach that came to the olympics she was like oh i just found one of your gold medals it's like cool you're not bothered you're not bothered about them at all maybe now my daughter is like asking about it a little bit and i did a competition a couple months back which my first since the olympics i thought i'd dip my toe back in there was a reason but it was like a historic event that was about to end and i thought oh do you know what i'm gonna join in for one last hurrah um and my daughter came and like watched a couple of bits of it and then she's been asking more questions about it since because we now watch the climbing world cups together and she's like oh you used to do this i'm like yeah so now she's kind of playing with some of the medals we've got and she's like where are your other ones and i'm like i don't know but in a way i kind of like that she doesn't see that attachment to inanimate objects Do you think more people should potentially take up that mindset of not always looking in the past and look forward?

45:31Because you've just completely put a different spin on it. I always say celebrate your wins. Yeah. Where you're always just looking forward to the next thing. So you don't have time to celebrate your wins because you're always looking forward. Yeah, I think it's just totally personal preference. I totally understand why people want to celebrate their wins. And I think that's great to do at some point for a moment maybe. be i don't think we should ignore them i think we can learn so much from our wins but it depends what your goal is right if your goal was to get to that place but it's gonna suck after it if you're like that's all you're going for i think celebrating a win is one of the hardest things to do if you don't have a what's next yeah so you've always got to like the dip post win is hard it was a big one but i don't know what'd you do to overcome that so i say i don't think i've ever had it very much really because i've always or maybe i did in the early days and that's where i've got this mindset of like okay what's next what are we doing um yeah especially now my parent there's not much time for anything you enjoy uh being a parent yeah i love it it's great it's the hardest thing i've ever done but the most rewarding all the cliches are true it goes so fast it's the hardest thing you'll ever do um yeah everything everyone says is exactly right um but yeah i love it she's so cool she's such a little badass what's she into she's into climbing yeah okay yeah for now we'll see if that sticks and we started a little kids climbing hold brand inspired by her because my husband started making her little climbing holds and people started asking to buy them so yeah she's a director of a company from the age of two like mini beasts she um so she has them all over the house and stuff and yeah she's psyched she did three pull-ups the other day in a row i was like that's pretty badass she just turned four um she's like wants to be able to do a one-arm pull-up one day i was like that's a pretty good goal for a four-year-old to have i was like let's go let's train um and she loves but she loves everything she loves dancing she loves singing she loves drawing she does swimming and what else is she into she does so much stuff gymnastics she's really good at gymnastics actually it's incredible how she's so confident i think that's what you probably want with a four-year-old right yeah I think I want I just want her to be authentic I want to create a space where she feels like she can be unfiltered for as long as she possibly can because the world starts to kind of squish that out of you at some point right so I love that she's confident but she's also so vulnerable and so real at the same time um so yeah we're trying to nurture her passion wherever that takes her we have no idea what it'll be but for now she's site to climb and that's normal for her you know like me my husband's a really good climber as well um like could be a professional if he wanted to but he doesn't want to um so we'll often train as a family together in the evenings we have a basement converted with climbing walls and training stuff and yeah she'll just come down and do pull-ups and stretch and do some core activities and stuff with us and that's normal right now so yeah I guess at some point she'll realizing that everyone's parents go train every night in the basement together but for now it's normal is that how you've kind of managed to keep up your training volume by like you say setting up a home gym so we've always had somewhere to train at home it's been really important for both me and my husband um but since becoming a parent it's been essential for us um for us both um one of the hardest things is actually I love training with Ned my partner and that's hard to fit in now to do it together um and I miss that a lot I know our time will come again where we can but that's a lot harder now um but yeah training at home I think for me is really important I'm working with a coach who understands the demands of parenting so you know she'll write a session it's like if you can only do half of this prioritize this isn't this or if you get interrupted mid-set this is the bit that's the most important um and if you don't do this today because you don't manage to make it happen choose this tomorrow instead of the thing i did set you um yeah having a coach that understands mum life has been game changing no that's uh that's good and like i say i feel like um i don't know some people probably take it for granted like um they when you don't have children how much time you have yeah yeah for sure when people are like i'm tired i'm so busy i'm like one day if you choose to have a family you will and you'll look back and think oh yeah wow that was really blissful but i don't resent people you know it's all relative it's like what's going on in your world and that yeah you do feel tired and you do feel busy when you don't have a kid and then suddenly you're just like, oh, those definitions shift a little bit.

50:26So you've been, like you say, world champion multiple times. What makes you different from anyone else? What do you think it is? If there was one thing, what is your secret? I think I'm just quite stubborn. I don't think I give up very easily. I remember having a conversation with a friend about the difference between motivation and commitment. So quite early on, I think I realized that early, like having commitment is essential to success. It's not about motivation. Whereas I think the world sells you this dream of it's all about getting motivated. That's how you start. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not how you keep going.

51:09You know, it's easy to be motivated compared to staying committed. So doing the sessions when no one's watching, like putting the time in when you don't want to. and I think I'm really lucky that I found my passion and I found something that I love and I fought really hard to stay in love with climbing you know I've fallen out of love with it multiple times and I think most professional athletes understand that I think most professional people do most successful people haven't always enjoyed their journey to get to where they are so yeah I'm really proud of that but I don't think I am different to anyone else I think maybe part of it is luck too you know like I'm really fortunate that my dad was able to give up so much time to drive me to so many comps when I was a kid and to instill the values in me that have shaped me into who I am into the way I am I think my dad is massively responsible for that and and my family too um i was grew up surrounded by people who were had like grit and went after their goals um so yeah i think i'm also lucky yeah no very lucky i feel like um for people who uh either like wanting to be the best climber that they can be or like just getting into climbing do you have any kind of like non-negotiables that like you'd you'd set in stone like oh i think it's a sport that is so personal to the individual's specific goals but i'm a firm believer that climbing is the best training for climbing you know it's specific yes no just getting on the wall i do think having like finger strength training um like having a routine getting strength and conditioning can help but I'm climbing is the best training um I don't know there's so many different avenues to explore within climbing if someone wants to go and do a 1000 meter cliff face it's going to be very different to someone wanting to do a bouldering competition but I think ultimately if you want to get better at climbing and you're already climbing you know the things that you're not good at but you also know the things that you don't like and i'd say go do the things you don't like before you start doing the things you're not good at because i do believe they hold you back more what the things that you just hate you know the stuff you don't like normally because you're bad at them right yeah and that's i think that's an ego thing though but i think people are quite quick to be like i'm bad at pull-ups i'm gonna go do pull-ups and i'm like but what don't you like doing and then that usually gives them more of an insight into where the areas that you actually need to improve are yeah no interesting yeah you pay much attention into your recovery sleep like you said you you focus on nutrition sleep i'm a parent i don't sleep but before before when you i did i used to pay a lot of attention to recovery um like the one percenters yeah for sure when i was doing the olympics or training for the olympics that was everything was thought about um and then yeah then I had a kid and now I eat her leftovers pretty much that's my diet um she eats pretty good so her leftovers is not bad but um yeah she just recently started sleeping in her own room so four years of co-sleeping that was a long time uh and I can probably count on like one hand how many full nights sleep I've had since I had a child not to put anyone off I don't think that that's a bad thing but yeah that would have terrified me if i'd heard that before having a baby because i loved sleep um but now i used to focus a lot on recovery and now a lot less yeah and do you think uh like you say because you you can't i just don't have capacity for it like but but um do you still value it for sure yeah massively and i'm still really particular about getting protein in straight after training about hydration like I'm not out boozing all the time um I if I have a climb or an event coming up or something specific like this trip that's coming up I'll really prioritize getting more sleep and my husband or like let me sleep in in the mornings and like take over certain parenting duties so that I'm able to prioritize that um and also you know I've been a professional athlete for a long time so in terms of diet and recovery it's ingrained in how I am and what I do and when I say I don't take it as seriously I still probably take it a lot more seriously than most because it's just part of how we are and what we do but yeah I don't work daily with a nutritionist I don't have external support so much now for anything except physio and like sports massage actually I have weekly sports massage which sounds lovely but as I'm sure you're aware it's quite not the most pleasant experience um so yeah i really try and look after my body um but i just don't sleep as much yeah i wish i did but it's okay yeah it is what it is i want another baby at some point so you know like just come out of the other side of finally sleeping again okay let's go again at some point four years you've kind of gone through all the hard stuff and you're just like let's let's bring round two you know that's yeah that's amazing that's amazing so looking forward you mentioned that you've got this big trip you leave on sunday is that correct um would you just be able to talk us through that yeah sure so i'm gonna go and try a climb called hazel grace sit um so it's a bit of a funny name for a climb because the original climb is a stand start and then whoever does the climb first gets to grade it and name it um so that's why it was called hazel grace it's a beautiful climb and then the guy who did the sit just called it hazel grace sit start so add some moves into an already existing climb um and it's graded v16 or v15 slash 16 um and it'll be the hardest thing i've ever climbed if i'm able to do it and it's probably the most daunting and the most vulnerable i've felt as a professional athlete in a long time because I'm kind of going after a goal that feels big and I haven't really done that since the Olympics um but it's also exciting so I'm pretty apprehensive um I'm a bit nervous I've trained I didn't have the dream run up into the trip you know I had a lot of illness over the winter and would have loved to have like a good year or two's training under my belt how long have you had your eyes set on this goal i did the stand start in 2024 um and i went back to try the sit start in 24 as well but we just had terrible conditions so it was too hot and that's the thing with rock climbing is you're not just up against it's not just you and the rock there's the elements at play um so it could rain for the entire month i could it could be too hot it could be too windy it could be all of these different things um so yeah there's so many unknowns with trying a climb outside um yeah and i'm really excited but really nervous where is it about it's in switzerland in gothard pass yeah so it's like right up on the top of the mountain and yeah it's a pretty crazy place actually um luckily it's not too far from the car because i'm not a big fan of walking i love that do you um do you ever get intimidated by any climbs do you ever get like actually like like nervous about sure i get well i get nervous on climbs a lot um because climbing bouldering is quite scary you know you're falling on these teeny tiny mats um but you mean by do i get scared of like falling and intimidated or by the enormity of a project both both but like um even just the fear of like uh the confidence of like going for a climb because it can be quite dangerous like you said like you are if you don't know how to fall properly then it's i mean if you do know how to fall you can still go wrong yeah um yes to both and i think i don't show it as much as maybe i wish i had the vulnerability to um but you know like even the other night in bed i was like why am i doing this why am i going to switzerland you know i my husband and daughter will come out for some of it but it feels like a really selfish thing to do to go after such a big goal and it feels really scary because if I don't do it then like we've wasted all this time and this effort and finance into me going and trying to do something but if I do it'll be good for my career and it'll be exciting and there's part of me that really wants to show my daughter that we can set ourselves goals and we can go after them and it's okay if we succeed or we fail um but at the same time I'm having to prioritize my training over certain parenting tasks and that takes its toll on my relationships and it's it's a lot to ask of people around me just as it was when I was competing but I think yeah I mean we're humans we all have wobbles right I'm like oh what are we doing why we shouldn't be going this is stupid i don't feel good and then i think i just need to be soft for a minute and then he's like no you've just done all your projects you're climbing better than ever like of course you can do it we just need the elements on our side and it's gonna be fine i'm like okay all right back in the ring i can do this oh that's great um how do you have little safety blankets yeah yeah and um is that your partner yeah for sure he's my safety blanket how do you manage that balance like between everything like you've got so much going on in your life like how do you manage balance i don't i think i constantly strive for it and that's why i'm able to do so much i don't think balance is possible for me and you just kind of like we have two startup companies we have mini beast which is a kids climbing holes and foxy which is like training edges we launched those recently and then kind of my commitments as a professional athlete I do kind of speaking and commentating and stuff as well which I love and yeah being the parent I want to be is my top priority and then being the athlete I want to be is what I feel like I try to balance um and I'm really passionate about giving back to the sport that's given me so much so being part of that positive development so over the years I've founded a women's climbing event that I run I ran for I think it was like 10-15 years and I was a trustee on a charity for 10 years and was on the executive board of our international federation for six years so there's a lot of voluntary work and a lot of time spent um building things and giving back um which I think are non-negotiables for me but every time I step back from something I fill it with something else I think I need and I thrive off being busy um there's no point at which I want to slow down or I want to kind of take a step back I think I'm quite good at protecting my calm as well and that's definitely thanks to my husband he's really good at creating spaces that feel really neutral you know we have specific rules in our house but we never have phones at the dinner table we never have phones in bed it's really important for us that we aren't on our phones around our daughter and stuff so we've started to kind of instill values within her about work ethic but also about kind of protecting your own mental well-being too um so yeah i think almost in some way being a parent makes it easier because you're kind of confronted with this reality of this little person is watching you everything they're learning is from what you do like what are your values what values do you want to instill in them um so you can't really run away from that you can hide from it but you can't run away from it yeah i didn't even think about it like that like like you say every single thing that you're doing is going to impact your child everything everything you say everything you do you are the ultimate role model yeah which is cool right yeah it is cool yeah but also really scary yeah you're like oh fuck yeah yeah yeah and they pick it up they remember it yeah you know like it's crazy but it's funny too looking forward to kind of like the the next five ten years maybe even longer like what are your aspirations well no one's asked me that in a while um i i'm really excited to see where my capacity is within the sport on rock um and that's something i want to try and figure out quite soon because i'd like to have another baby if it's possible my daughter is now asking for a brother or sister every single day I'm not sure how much I can take it but I've always known that that is something I wanted to do which is quite taboo as a female athlete I think to talk about because yeah it's a huge impact on your career you know the whole literally growing it and birthing and recovery and I think it would be very different for me postpartum this time and how I wanted to come back and I think that would look different but in terms of building my career and the brands that I work with I see a lot of potential and excitement there and I think our sport is in a really really good position right now you know it's growing and there's a lot of buzz around it there's a lot of opportunity within the sport for athletes um I really love working with athletes I do a bit of mentoring and and helping athletes set up their kind of way of working and um helping them out with like comp prep and stuff so yeah I'm excited to just explore what's possible and it feels like there's just so many different ways to do it right now I've just started doing you know more YouTube stuff and you're enjoying the youtube yeah i do enjoy it i enjoy it a lot i like talking as you can probably tell um so for me there's so much i've learned in my years climbing that i want to share so other people can benefit from it um you know all my medals and all my successes and wins are not very useful to anybody but what I've learned along the way could be so I want to figure out how to share that and how best to support athletes and climbers and anyone else who wants to listen along the way because it just seems a shame not to and I think I've been very fortunate to work with some incredible people who've shaped who I am and and how I've gone about my journey within the sport um so yeah it's just inspired me to want to share that more uh but yeah there's so many different facets and sides to it do you think you'd um you go more down like the the commentating side as well yeah i'd like to i'd like to i think like you say like uh it seems like you'd be amazing yeah i really enjoy it um and it was so fun to do the olympics in paris and to be involved with that i think you'll be at 28 well yeah i guess it depends what what my life looks like at that point as well um in terms of how it works out pregnancy wise and all that jazz i'd love to be involved in 28 again it's yeah it's like the dream gig right working on the olympics um but yeah who knows i recently commentated on an event called pro climbing league which was so fun to kind of see climbing going down a different path um but yeah I'm I think for me when I watch climbing I want anybody to turn it on and know what's going on so when I comment it I imagine like my grandma's listening and my climbing mates so you want it to be engaging for the core audience but also understandable for my aunt and uncle who've never seen it before you know um and I think that's really important for our sports growth you know when I was growing up climbing very few people watched it and we have to really graft to build a social media audience and all of that jazz and I think now that there's so many more eyes on the sport we have a service to do for the athletes to hype them up to know their stories to tell their stories to have a broadcast that really puts them on a pedestal and showcases how incredible they are because one of the most annoying things about climbing is when people do it well it never looks very hard so people can tune into climbing and be like that looks easy i could do that when you definitely couldn't they're just really really good no no it's uh it's incredible and it's incredible how uh how selfless you are and how much you want to give back to the sport like it just is amazing like I don't need anything else I always say to anyone I work with as well I don't need you to tell anyone you're working with me I don't need anything for your victories they're yours coaches who go after it because they want the glory are in it for the wrong reasons almost like living through their athletes yeah for sure I'm probably offending a lot of coaches right now but I disagree with it personally like I say I've never your outlooks on stuff are different but in such a refreshing way okay i'm not offending no not not me at all no no no no i genuinely love it i've learned so much thank you for this conversation oh no thanks for having me sorry i probably chewed your ear off no it's been it's been incredible it's been incredible but um yeah thank you we'll actually finish what's your death row meal oh i just had really good steak and chips i think i'd just go with that with tender sand broccoli actually and it had tapenade with it which was excellent like how detailed can i go here starter main dessert oh we got everything that's my main i don't know i should have prepped death row you're done after this ask i get to ask get to think about it for as long as you want we'll just the longer i think about it the long do i get to stay alive maybe maybe we'll play that uh yeah we'll play some standby music maybe like my my um i don't know if i'm gonna die then we might as well just get over and jump with so you're not gonna eat no i'll have my steak and chips steak and chips yeah yeah no starter no dessert i'm not really into like starters i'd go dessert though come ah see i'm literally one of my worst things is when people no offense ask me what my favorite is which is kind of like asking your favorite meal because i'm such a mood dependent person now i'm like right if i chose cheesecake and i wasn't in the mood for cheesecake i'd just be pissed off and then i'm dying pissed stuff so i don't really have a meal that i'm like i always want that specific thing so yeah i feel like i'd want what's it called when you get lots of little mini a petty four is it you get lots of little mini desserts okay so you just have like a table full of yeah little mini things and we're all sharing yeah yeah yeah and like all the people who are about to kill me can help them too oh that's nice they might not kill you then well i just want them to feel really bad about it because you're a nice person see i'm not a nice person i'm just twisted thank you shauna i appreciate that see you soon yeah see you soon thanks for having me