Welcome back,

Earlier this year, Kris told me to check out a series of podcast episodes on logical fallacies. The first episode talks a little bit about how communication has changed for humans recently, and it’s something I still think about months later.

As recently as thirty years ago, an adult might only write a handful of things to someone else in their life. Our main form of communication was face-to-face or over the phone. In an incredibly short period of time, we’ve now started communicating and even arguing with complete strangers in writing via forums, comment sections, and social media. One of the biggest problems has come from us not having the tools to communicate well in this medium. Few of us were taught how to have serious discussions in writing, and the power of the internet means we all get an equal say in what’s going on.

This episode mentions an article by Paul Graham written in 2008 on How to Disagree, and what this new form of communication and using it poorly could lead to. Hint: it contributed to getting us to where we are now.

In the rest of this newsletter I talk all about climbing, training, coaching, and other things that you’re probably here for. If you only take away one thing though, check out the first half of that podcast and take 4-5 minutes to read that article. Regardless of your political leaning or apathy, it’s more important now than ever to learn how to have hard conversations with each other.

Walking The Walk

This month’s WTW goes to Drew Ruana. Drew has been making impressive ascents of hard sport routes and boulders for several years now, but 2020 specifically has been an incredible year for him. Matt Fultz recently said that Drew might currently be America’s best boulderer.

In a recent podcast with The Nugget, Drew talked about his approach, and I really appreciated how thoughtful he was about his whole process. Drew is someone who brings an admirable level of professionalism to his approach.

A few years ago, Kris and I were talking about climbers whose style we like in Boardmeeting episode #104, and Drew Ruana was the person I brought up. Drew has a mix of technical prowess, earned from cutting his teeth at Smith, and the power of a youth competitive climber. That mixed with being coached by the legend Tyson Shoene has allowed Drew to bring a unique style to this sport.

Here are a few of my favorite videos featuring Drew.

• Him FAing the Assassin (14d) in Smith Rock

• Drew doing 18 double digit boulders on a 3 day trip to Joe’s Valley

Lastly,This video of Drew working on Grand Illusion (v16). Though Drew didn’t end up being the hero of this story, it’s a great watch and shows his work ethic.

Around The Internet

I really enjoyed this article from the NYT on elite athletes improving during quarantine. The biggest takeaways that I got from this were:

1. Sleep is important for everyone, especially athletes

2. Even elite athletes struggle with the schedule of trying to compete for many months at a time. Extended breaks from performing can be huge.

3. High level athletes still struggled with motivation when taken away from their normal routines.

4. It’s easy to think of athletes at the top of the game as mutants who can handle unreal training volume, and also that that’s what it takes to be at that level. That’s probably more of an over-glorification of hard work than it is an honest assessment of what’s really going on.

“Many athletes across sports, from track and field to swimming to baseball, have performed as well or better than ever despite the hardships imposed by the global pandemic. They say they have channeled the frustration of forced shutdowns into opportunity, and that they feel refreshed by increased rest, less exhaustive travel, enhanced focus on training, healed injuries, creative improvisation and a less stressful perspective about sport.

Some athletes and coaches said they had begun to reconsider their training habits, especially the value of sleep.”

Our next article piggybacks on the last one, but rather than talking about the most elite athletes in the world they are talking about child athletes and how treating them like pro’s is failing to prepare them for sport.

“From the first Little League Baseball World Series in 1947, tens of thousands of children have competed to win the national tournament. Many of those children and their parents came to the stadium with dreams that success on the little league diamond would be a sure step to playing in the big leagues. But in the entire history of the Little League World Series, only 56 kids ever made it to a major league baseball team. And that ratio makes sense because early sports acumen doesn’t translate into mature skills. If anything, the Little League World Series should prove to parents that early sports success should be enjoyed”

I had always heard that LLWS kids rarely made it to the big leagues, but I was still a little floored by there only being 56 kids in the last 70+ years. 

The more we look into it, the more evidence there is against early sport specialization in youth athletes. Yes, there are outlier sports like women’s gymnastics where the peak competition age is so young and so short that the only option is to specialize early. Even then, the injury and burnout rates are staggering.

I think it’s awesome when children are introduced to climbing at a young age. I wish I had been! They shouldn’t be competing year around or exclusively be climbing though. If the world’s most elite and well trained athletes struggle with this kind of scheduling why would we put kids through this?

I’ve enjoyed a lot of the videos that Albert Ok has been putting out on his youtube channel, and I thought he did a wonderful job with this video on “Why Japanese climbers are so Incredible”.

This videos dives into a lot different factors that seem to contribute the Japanese climbers’s success. Personally, I found the part about Japanese climbers using more bunched positions than American climbers to be an eye opening observation. I’m around 5’9’’, and a lot of my early climbing was done with guys over 6’ tall. Because of this, I developed a very extended tension style. Watching this video and then paying closer attention to Japanese climbers on Instagram and Youtube, I’ve come to realize that these small-box positions have been a complete blindspot for me.

Since seeing the video around a month ago I’ve been spending time during my warm ups to do more hip mobility work between problems and then climb each problem with these types of bunched positions that I’m not used to. I love how bad I am at it. I’ve spent so much of my climbing trying to expand the range that I can reach, but this is the most dedicated I’ve been to being stronger and more competent with holds bunched near my center of gravity. And that’s the great thing about climbing. There are always new avenues for growth. It’s truly endless.

It’s been three years since I was in Ceuse, and this beautiful video of Seb Bouin climbing Biographie and other classics is the first time I feel like that wall has been done justice. Even if you’re not huge on the storyline, it’s worth skimming through for the shots.

Final Thoughts

If your climbing sessions regularly go longer than two hours, consider eating a snack half way through. I prefer eating a banana while I’m hangboarding which is just before projecting on boulders. I regularly see people climb for 3+ hours without ever drinking water or eating food. If that’s you, give this a try and see if it helps you have more energy for the last leg of your session.

Bonus points if you snap the banana in half before eating it.

Until next time,

Nate Drolet and Team Power Company