World Cup PRO Coaches Amateur on HARD Moves ​⁠

If you recall, a few videos ago, Nathan and Swedish World Cup climber Emil shared a session at the climbing hangar in Reading. They focused on pushing Nathan's grade beyond what he thought he was capable of, and new folks seemed to really enjoy joining along. But what we didn't share was the even more incredible progression Nathan experienced across a single project, at the upper end of his grade limit. This yellow boulder, Nathan would be the first to admit, he would have tried once and then moved on. But with guidance from Emil and a little perseverance, it became clear that Nathan is likely more capable of higher grades than he always believes. And you might be too. This session was sponsored by Squarespace. So I don't often get the chance to climb with pro climbers. And I don't also often get the chance to climb with people who are also quite tall. And I'd say, you're probably a more powerful climber, would you say? I'm definitely a powerful climber. It's like my entire foundation as a climber. Not the best climber technically, but I do have some power and I can do some one arm pull ups. That's kind of what I do. And I would say that kind of lines up with, obviously, we're working at very different levels. But like if I was to pick my strength set, I'd probably think of like powerful big move type stuff. So it'd be really interesting to see if with you climbing at your level and me at mine, how the differences apply across the level and also what kind of tactics and subtle positions and tricks you might be able to help me out with. I think one big thing is like, I mean, when we're standing next to each other, I guess I kind of look like a shorter person, right? That's a first for me in climbing. And this is a 2B small. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because I'm like six foot one or something, which is relatively tall, but you're a little giant. So it's going to be quite fun to just actually probably help coach you a little bit with your height. Should we try it? Yeah, let's go. Let's go. It's a funny one where I've got no reading of whether this would be like a hard one or moves would be okay. It has an upwards arrow. That's my reading of it. This means it's harder. I mean, I've just got no idea whether it's a hard one or not. No, it looks pretty dynamic and tricky. But for us taller folks, I don't think it's going to be too much of an issue because it just looks like it's a bit of coordination, but good holds. Playing to our strengths. That's what we're playing to our strengths. Yeah, that's the game for this episode. Oh, I must start as well. Yeah. Oh, this is interesting. Nice move. Come on, come on. Oh, solid. Yeah, really. This is one of my favorite techniques. Heel hooking chips. A lot of people would go like this, but it's so much better to heel hook as a tall guy. Sit on it. Yeah, it was actually quite demanding. Like this move, it was hard to understand how any changes in my body position would affect how I hold the holds. At first, I wanted to go quite dynamically to it, but instead I started off by just locking to it and then pressing out. In retrospect, I think it's better to go dynamically high into it right away because it's quite good when you're in it. Yeah, I thought you might kind of hop up into it and take a bit of a bring it back in. Yeah, but you managed to, both your feet were still on, so that's part of your full extension. Exactly. And so I had to hold it quite extended and bad and then explode after. But it's easier to explode from this compression because you just have more control in these holds. So from that compression, I think you'll benefit from maybe even swinging with your leg. OK. Oh, this was tricky. I started double gaston. Left foot on and then, yeah, push it up. Yeah, come on. You need to go deeper, but I think it's worth trying to understand how to use your hips in this starting position. Yeah, really sink down low. Left foot, you can even heel hook if you want, but otherwise left foot there. Toss it on. Nice. And then just like roll over. So I'm just coming down here. Open up your hips more, go lower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toss it up. You can go further again. OK. You're on the right track, but you really have to toss it in and start. Otherwise, it's just not giving you anything. Just get a bit. Yeah, just toss it in there. Yeah, it's going to stick. Glorious, right? Crush it. Hello everyone, welcome to our warehouse slash kitchen. This part of the video is sponsored by Squarespace and we wanted to share a couple of updates relating to our Squarespace online shop and our merch drop, which should have dropped by now if all went well this week. So I wanted to give you a little bit of a like behind the scenes of, uh, I guess what our like warehouse looks like and also chat to you about two of the features that I think are going to come most in handy for Nathan and I over the next few weeks. Today is fold and list day. So today we're listing them on the website. So I'm going to take you through what that looks like on Squarespace. As you can see here, Squarespace lays everything out really simply for you and organizes all of the information that you need to input. I think my favorite feature is the ability to edit product images in the backend. So if you'd like to check out Squarespace for yourself, perhaps you're launching your own physical or digital products, or you want to start on a blog or something, you can head to squarespace.com forward slash Hannah Morris. And then when you're ready to launch, use the unit code Hannah Morris for 10% off your first purchase of the website or domain. Now back to Emil and Nathan climbing. I almost love how unnatural it feels and that it feels like I'm really working my brain to do that movement. Yeah. It's good to force these things. Oftentimes as a taller climber, you'll just opt for something that actually works, which is this kind of doesn't for you. Yeah. Until it does, obviously. Until it does. Come on, get it. Trust it. Yeah. Come on. Roll over, roll over. Come on. Further, further. I really go far in. Yeah. Come on. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Yes. Oh, okay. I got to stick with that now. You were quite tall in the move. You were like shaking around. So you do need to be a little bit more dynamic if you're going to do the dynamic approach, but you look good. Also this heel hook is so much better deeper in. He always gets it up here every single time. So get it like all the way in there and it's going to, you're going to cruise. Something clicked that go where I was kind of thinking, ah, I just, I just want to try it my normal way. Yeah. But suddenly then that goes, something felt right. Like the hip position was right. And I suddenly was like, hang on. I can, I might get, I might get round. You were just about to like, if you had been a little bit more coordinated, you would have done it easily. Far in with the right foot. Come on. Roll over, roll over, roll over. Yes. Come on. Nice one. Come on. Get to the next. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Work your feet up. Come on. Yes. Come on. No. Good go though. Really good go. Oh yeah. That felt great. You were close. Like that's kind of the last move. If you stick that and work your feet up, you're a hundred percent done. Awesome. Yeah. It felt so good that time that I, this arm went round and was like, I love how you were like, yeah, you were falling for like five seconds. And then I was like, I'll take this whole, that's fine. That was good. Full body. Come on. Yes. Come on. Good. You can, you can get a lot more from the right hand. This, you have to push with your fingers. So you were trying to flip it like this. Yeah. You have to like, keep on engaging on it and pushing upwards. Like you're mantling with just, with just your tips. Keep that hand straight. Yeah. So keep it straight on and drop and then mantle with your fingers. So you can like actively pull a little bit with it inwards when you're above it. Yeah. I always try and look at holds and consider like, what are the downsides of this? So for instance, the X-Cult marking here is slippery. So here you don't have any tension. Screws can be good quite sometimes. This section needs to be brushed if you want to use it. Here's, there's something slippery. Also, last thing is when you actually hit the hold, where do you get the most tension, right side or left side? Probably, that's harder to say. I would guess around here. Okay. So this is what we'll brush. Also, sink down with your heels slightly more when you land on it. On this hold? Yeah. Just when you're extending it like this, you're just increasing the risk of slipping and with your height, you're more at an advantage leading your heel downwards. I feel like that's a quite a common thing that happens when you're doing a big move like that. Yeah. When you come up on your tiptoes on the hold, suddenly you're like almost exerting force backwards rather than being able to push down. Exactly. Yeah. Oftentimes boxes, as a lot of people might be aware of, it's like you want to angle it basically 90 degrees from the box. I know you had it in a recent video, talked about that with Jenja, but the same of course goes for this hold. It's just a slightly more complex. You should consider the same thing of like how you angle your toes and then you lose a little bit of that tension, but try and lose as little as possible. Yeah. Come on. Buzzing in. I almost feel like, I don't know if I've quite got the tension that you had when you kept that foot on. Yeah. It was really hard and it feels like it's a stronger position, right? To catch it. With a more bent arm. You mean? Yeah. So, you know, when you did it static, that feels very hard to catch the hold as you're coming around with your arm quite straight. It's true. Yeah. We can try one more fun thing. Left foot on this hold. Left foot on? On the foot hold. Oh, this one? Yeah. It leaps for a slightly worse position to move from, but when you land, it's going to be easier to hold. Okay. I can give it a go. It takes a bit of the like pendulum out. Yeah, exactly. It takes it out completely basically, but it requires you to tense your right arm more and pull more than actually dynamically launching for it. Might be, might be like the best beta ever. You never know. It's harder for sure. Because you're, yeah, it's definitely possible, but you're exploding so much more into it because you can't control the motion in the same sense. So I think, uh, we have our work cut out for it. We just got to execute on it. We've got a few guys and then got to link it. Something clicked with the start though, where I feel like that's kind of in the bag now, it might take one or two goes to get it again, but if this clicks in the same way, then it does feel like it would just be a matter of goes from the start until first half. Ah, clicks. Second half clicks. The last moves? Emil said they're fine. Never trust me. One thing I'm going to question real quick is whether or not we can use this one instead. Ooh, that's controversial. It's controversial, but it's a like more comfortable position. The hold is better. So I'll give it that a quick go. Compare. No, because you're too low. It's better to push with the upper one. I always think it's good to experiment with different alternative solutions. Ah, that method, like you say, that left leg just brings me off. Yeah, but, but something happened here that we can take a look at real quick. When you're taking the hold, you're trying to keep your right foot fronted. And if you let, let the foot rotate with the motion, like from this to this, it'll give you a slightly more advantageous position to grab this one from, like compared to the right foot, which will give you slightly more tension on the right foot. Okay. Yeah. So this goes from being like that to, it will actually rotate a little bit. Well, yeah, like from this to this. Yeah. Okay. So you're spinning with the motion, like so. So almost tweaking it a little bit. Move through it. Yeah, yeah. Ooh, better. Better. That held on for longer. Yeah, way longer. I also think you can, you can improve it even slightly more, but you just have to try it a few more times, I think. Focus on it even slightly more. Yeah. And yeah, you're going to stick it. It looks good. That held for longer. Yeah. Maybe rest. A bit of rest. And too psyched. Too psyched. Yeah. Come on, come on, come on. Oh, that was good though. You slipped out of the left hand. That was just the hand to not being enough to bring me back. Yeah. That was really good. The footwork was excellent there, which is actually the most important part. Thanks. Yeah. The foot. No, but everything you did with your core and your, your leg, this was all well connected. It was only the left hand that slipped off. The hold isn't great, so it's understandable, but like, well done. Well done. I'm proud. I think give it a go starting from there and then get to the top. Just to try the top. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're ready. Young paddler. Get ready for it. Get psyched for it. Right foot on and just feel that position out. Yeah. Come on. Work your feet up. Sure. Good. Good one. Yeah. You can work your feet up and get the heel up. Excellent. Nice one. Okay. That's almost all of it. Yeah. I think you could coordinate the move if you wanted to. So you do the swing and then when, where you fell off, you would flip to the way you had it, had it when you moved up. Because once you've taken the swing, you just got to progress anyway. Like there's no comfortable weight, there's no elegant way to move up. You just basically push your weight up to the next foot hold. There's no like trick really to, to get the right foot up. So I think if you want to, when you've taken the swing, like flip to something comfortable and just get higher up because you're in a new motion, you're in a new move basically. So yeah. Next go. I think, should I try it from the start? I think you could rest up and try it from the start. Yeah. Because I think that move in the middle is one that it might just go one time. I think you can do it consistently soon, but I don't think it's worth just giving it a go from the bottom because you're, you're, you're there. If you're psyched, you're there. I'm psyched on it. Neil told me I'm psyched on it, so I'm psyched on it. It's not, it's, it's, it's tricky that hold. If it was a bit better, you could get away with so much more on the swing. Like you could get away with your position being off. But like we were saying earlier from the first climb, this is now at a level for me where the hold is like only holdable if I am not swinging too much and if my foot stays on and all those things have to fall in line. Yeah. You're not really allowed to make any proper mistakes here. You can't compensate by just, you know, hanging a little bit harder or anything like that. You have to climb really well, which is important to challenge yourself with. Technical climbing is the hardest to improve on. Enjoy it. Enjoy what this nice block has to teach you. But instead of a set for you specifically to help you improve on your capabilities as a climber, I think that's a nice way to think about boulders. Somebody put this up for you to improve. It's a teacher, an indirect teacher. Feels like a big taught lesson. Deep in. Nice. Super good start. Come on. Breathe. Take a second. Consider the right hand. So good. You know this move. Right hand, right foot up. Tension, tension, tension, tension. Yeah, flip it. Come on. Oh, that was good though. Okay. That was really good. I mean, that was like 98% there. Yeah. Literally just that last, you were kind of flipping before you'd taken the swing. I am coming to you from an air in the North of France. We have just begun our road trip in our newly converted van. We couldn't be more excited. Um, I wanted to just end the video because I felt like it kind of ended a little abruptly. Although Nathan didn't manage to send the boulder during his session with Emil, I thought that the video itself was really good testament to the power of perseverance. And that mindset shift towards finding the value, seeing the value in individual moves and small amounts of progression, uh, rather than seeing the session or the boulder as a failure because he didn't top it to take away all of the mini wins from a session. So hope you enjoyed the video. It was really warm. I'm just cooking some food in the back of our van and we are headed to Innsbruck to watch the world cup. Anyway, more of that soon. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did give it a like, follow the channel, give Emil a follow and we'll see you on the next one. Bye.