Pro Analyses Intermediate vs Elite Bouldering Technique ft. Canadian Champion

Arguably one of the best things about climbing is the many different and often wildly varied methods people find to solve boulder problems. Madison Richardson is Canada's number one ranked boulderer and in the top 25 worldwide, whereas my partner Nathan is an advanced amateur. They've both climbed for over 10 years but that's where the similarities end. At nearly six foot five, Nathan is over a foot taller than Maddy. In today's episode Maddy's husband Zach Richardson, Canadian National Bouldering Champion, will be analysing Maddy and Nathan on three routes at Parthian in London to find out where and why Nathan is struggling. We're psyched to have Vivo Barefoot supporting this video. You can use code HANNA20 for 20% off barefoot shoes and courses. I'll also be sharing an update later on in the video as to why you've not seen me climbing much on the channel recently but first let's meet Zach, Maddy and Nathan. Well I'll be really interested to hear what you think, Zach, looking through a few of these boulders that Maddy and I tried. Obviously we've got a really big difference in size, also in strength and skill, but we were both able to try some of the same problems. I know we want to start off with this green slab, right? Because I want to see you two on this green one, the slab. Oh god. You know the groan that Nathan made means it's the perfect boulder for this exercise. Here goes nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh god, that's absolutely shocking. That was a good first attempt. Yeah, I felt so stuck there though. Yeah. But I'm happy to get up there. Yeah, I think that just comes down to beta. Like you've got the skills for this one, I think we just need to find a better foot sequence for you. You seem pretty confident on your feet. Well, I had to impress you guys. He is quite a bit taller than me. I don't, like Zach's a little taller than me and even with Zach there's a lot of beta I can't do that he can't. Wow. I'm not even a short girl, like I'm pretty tall as girls come. If you did wingspan like from there. Okay. Got a bit extra reach. Okay. Try and use that to my advantage. Slab though I think is the equalizer among everyone. Oh, nice. How did that foot just go up there? Did you really use that green one up there? Your hand was on it but I don't know if you were, did you, can you really get anything on that? Honestly, it's based on where it is, it's the same as kind of grabbing the volume. If you're just standing up, you're just using it to stand up in the end. Are you going to try Maddie's beta for the front that you've got? Yeah. I'm going to try, yeah, just, it's just really hard to weight this foot and take, come off the bottom volume. So I think another element for you to focus on is, is thinking, this is the common theme with slab is always trying to think more about the lower body than actually the holds you're grabbing because for sure if you're trying to grab this crimp and this volume really hard, you're going to really struggle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Yes, look at that. So good. Amazing. Oh, come on. Is it good? It's perfect. Yeah. Let's go. Cheers for the tips. I tried, I just tried to not think about holding myself on with the handholds. Like you said, just using them to reposition where my like center of gravity was over the feet. This one was definitely really interesting to have a look at. Let's pay attention to, it really looks like you're trying to power your way through the sequence, right? Yeah. Honestly, it's always hard when slabs are set with lots of handholds because it sets this trap of thinking that you really have to pull your way through a sequence when in reality, in reality, it's like sort of what we were talking about when we were climbing this boulder. It's, these are actually sort of just guiding points to put your lower body and your hips into the balanced position. And they just kind of help set your way through the climb rather than actually the holds that you grab and you pull on, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. And I think I don't like this type of climb at all. One of the reasons I don't like this type of climb is because generally as the terrain gets more slabby, the handholds get smaller. And I feel finger strength is not a strong point of mine. I don't like pulling hard on small holds. The holds are bad because they're not actually meant to be grabbed on and pulled on very much. Let's have a look now at Maddy and the way she gets through the sequence. Maddy's instincts, because she's just so good at slab climbing, her body will just naturally say, okay, my foot, I have sort of a foot that's elevated, like her right foot is in that situation. I have these two hands. My mission right now is to have my hands guide myself over the foot and balance, not to pull. And it's just about experience and about reps. The more you practice this, the more slab you climb on, your body will naturally develop this intuition to set your balance points better. Even when we just sort of verbalized it and gave you some cues, like we can watch your next attempt is so good. You really, like you can even notice the point when we, like we noticed the point when your kind of elbow shifts out of the way and your hips are right above the foothold. It's so good. It's really noticeable here. I just want to have a quick mention of the top move as well. And when I watched Maddy do it, I noticed she kind of took one extra step with her feet to get her right foot up in a foothold. Whereas I felt like I just went with maybe more momentum and just, I needed to latch the top hold. Otherwise I was coming off. Well, I guess I would ask you, how comfortable were you on that left foot, little left foothold? A little bit shaky. A little bit shaky. So Maddy was probably feeling really comfortable in that position because she's quite nice at trusting these bad footholds. So she had just that little bit more comfort, could take a second to look around, find another foothold to set up for the finish. Whereas you were maybe just really not loving life standing on that foothold. I just saw that. I need to go. I just wanted to grab something I felt secure on. And honestly, since you're taller, I'm sure you will run into this situation more where you're just, you kind of are almost conditioned to think, I can reach the next hold. Like, let me just see it. Let me just grab it. Whereas Maddy being the shorter climber needs to set her position better so she can actually do the next move. Because maybe she'll need a high foot to actually reach the next hold. As a tall climber, you generally kind of, you just, you spot the positions where the holds are really comfortable and you just kind of try and throw yourself in between them. Yep. And as a shorter climber and especially as a comp climber as well, I'm sure Maddy is much more used to having to be comfortable in those like in between sections of climbs. That's a great way of putting it. Absolutely. I haven't really been on the channel that much recently in a climbing capacity. It's not really something that I've talked about. So I wanted to kind of put a little update ahead of this video to, I guess, explain why you've not seen me that much. So I've been dealing with a series of recurrent injuries. I'm always wary of applying a kind of degree of toxic positivity to things like injury, because at the end of the day, there's no real skirting around the fact that they just are rubbish and they keep us from doing what we want to do. But I do also believe that if you don't learn anything from your injury or take your injury as an opportunity to try and learn something about your climbing or like your health in general, then that's like the biggest waste. I've been on a little bit of a, I guess you could say journey, trying to address some of or understand some of the kind of underlying and aggravating factors that might be contributing towards my injuries. And I think that the thread that runs throughout that is basically just not being super in tune with my own body and not being the best at listening to my body when it tells me that I kind of need to take a step back. Having had a bit of time off climbing, I've had a little bit more time on my hands to, I guess, reconsider my relationship to my physical health, but also my overall wellness. And off the back of that, I have a recommendation and then also a question. So you might not know, but aside from footwear, the partner that we work with, Vivo Barefoot have a whole education component and they've kindly enrolled me on a couple of courses that they offer. So at the moment, I'm taking a course that covers reconnection with human movement. And it's not just courses about natural health. There's a whole host of like functional movement courses on there. There's a Barefoot trial running course. There's like an introduction to Barefoot fundamentals course. But I'll leave the whole library of courses below. So if there's something there that like sparks your interest, you can go and check it out. My question, I am interested to know if you'd be interested in like a more in-depth video about injury and like reconnection to climbing off the back of injury or, and, and, or, and, and, if you are interested in checking out Vivo Barefoot, Barefoot footwear, we have a new code. It is HANNA20 and you can use it to get 20% off the Vivo Barefoot website or courses. So we're now on the, this is the Titan, right? So this is the Olympic replica wall and they've currently got competition finals folders up on this wall. So a perfect chance to see a bit of comparison between World Cup Pro and an amateur on a very competition style problem. This pink boulder, I think it's one of the women's finals blocks from a competition that they had here at the weekend, just gone. I know Maddie, you've tried it already. So we're gonna, we're gonna let me have the first go and see how it goes. Oh my gosh. You can reach it. Just go. I'm just feeling out the distances. Yeah. This is a women's boulder. So I don't think it was built for you. Not much in this world was built for me. Perfect start. Five stars. Oh. Can he do it? Oh my God. Here we go. Oh, that was really nice. Still a bit of comp style in there. Come on. All right. Now we're getting into the super cross. Come on. Try hard. That was a good attempt. That was pretty good. I think I might actually try and swing the start next time. I static'd it just to see what was possible. Okay. Let's see it. Yeah. I gotta see that top, that top section. Nice Maddie, come on. Oh, nice. Got a lot of height on that jump. Yeah. Maddie's been working on that move a lot. That's like, it was her weakness for a while, but she's been practicing. Okay. This looks chill so far. Nice. How? Come on. No way. And again, pausing on it. You know, I did not flash this move the first time, so I'm actually very happy to have done that. Nice. That was really cool. Yeah. It's almost like better to like put the foot away, like a flag to match. I thought you, like my instinct is to put it on the chip. Yeah. But it almost like pushes you too far into the hold. Yeah. Like I feel like I'm fighting for my life on the undercut hold. You look so chill and I don't know if that's purely, I don't feel like it's purely down to your body positioning. I feel like there's got to be a strength element there as well. Maddie is pretty darn good. I think I was also maybe meat hooking it a little bit. Now that I, now that I think of it, Maddie has probably like three defining strengths. She's really good, good at the shoulder buster moves. She's really good at slab and actually really good at undercling. So this, this move is in a real house and Nathan has his work cut out for him. I'm going to try and unleash, unleash competition style. Save my shoulder. Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, okay. It's more fun that way. Yeah. I can, I think I can learn that. So what do you think you should do as the next step? I don't know. See, this is where it helps to like film yourself and then go immediately watch the video. And you can see that like, cause I saw you, I saw that your feet like landed like kind of in the middle and then you just let yourself kind of barn door off. So I think your, your feet either need to land a little bit further away. So you do less kind of tilting or you need to like switch your feet or get both feet on there or something like that. But yeah, the way your foot landed, like there's no way to fix it unless you switch feet or, you know, keep your hand on the star holder or something like that. Sure. Oh, that was exactly trying to get some, like the slowest fast feet in competition, climbing there. Do you want a little quick, quick tip? I would recommend you run from the ground into that position and feel what it feels like. So now try to recreate that feeling from the start holds. Come on. Oh, that was so much better. You were, you were going for the correct end position. Absolutely. Yeah. It's frustrating, but it's close. I think these hips are going to be like, yeah, I felt better. We all want you to do it so badly. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. It's all in the swing. Oh, that was better though. Better. Holding that undercut. I feel like I need a straight arm, but then that feels like it swings me around. But I don't know why it feels really hard to pull in on it. Let's set off on this pink then. We're just going to watch through my first attempt on the pink where I really, I kind of play into my, uh, size strengths. Um, and so I went for the way that felt most secure for me with, with no shame attached, uh, realizing there was probably a jump involved that I was just going to bypass. You are tall. That is the way it is. And so I think there is always, always going to be value for you in trying a boulder like this. Yeah. Um, as a comp climber, as a recreational climber, it doesn't matter. Um, because that's just how your body works and to try anything else would be contrived and kind of defeating the purpose of climbing, which is to just naturally get your way through a sequence. I found a way through that first move, uh, using my height. I then I could reach up to the next holds and get out to this position where, um, your right hand grabs onto quite a, like a thick kind of slopey pinch to me. I sometimes find myself swinging out from the wall in these positions a lot. You know, if you can imagine that kind of triangle where I've got hands here, feet here, because of the length of my entire body, my hips are really far out and then back in. And I find that position just the amount of times I find myself there and I just find myself peeling out from the wall because I can't keep my hips in. Like, let's say you're a smaller climber and you, you can't really, you know, like try and visualize this feeling because you're not used to it. You know, try to imagine yourself grabbing an undercling at your knee height and your foot is like super high. And obviously your hips are like higher than your hand and you're like further back from the wall than you want to be. It would be really difficult to hold that position. Um, and so obviously you're not experiencing, uh, undercling that high, but that's like the exaggerated example of this nuance that you're facing versus Maddy. Yeah. It's like, it's, you have more lever involved in this move and it's making it harder. If you were to open your left hip and like really sort of contort your hips inwards, you're making that triangle smaller. Sure. By having this leg bent and pressing, but you need to be able to open the hips in the first place. So there are ways to counteract this, but it involves training for sure. Sure. Yeah. And let's have a look at Maddy on this pink line. Cause this looked like it was right up her street. Of course she has to do this swing method. Uh, good for Maddy for conquering what has been a weakness of her. And yeah, she just fits a bit better in this position. And she's also just, she's got a really strong lower back too. Cause uh, that's, that's definitely quite a core muscle in these undercling moves. Yeah. Okay. So on one of my later goes on the pink where I got up there again, I then went for this different method. I copied what Maddy had done. So I have my left foot on the big hold and instead of having my right foot on a foot chip, I flag it out. So now we're both in the exact same or trying to both be in the exact same position. Do you think there's still a difference in the way that I'm positioned on those holds and Maddy though? Yeah. So it's in your right arm. Um, you're, you're, you're really trying to lay back this hold, which is, it's always hard to tell sometimes it's good in theory, but in this situation, actually you don't want it because you kind of come out a little bit too far from the wall. And what it does is it really, you really have to grip this pinch, which is miserable, right? It's not good, but Maddy's kind of really engaging her bicep. And when you see your arm is bent and like kind of hold your arm here and you it feels bad in your hand, right? But now we bend our arm. We can feel like we can, we can, it almost becomes a bit juggier in our hand. Yeah. Yeah. So she's using her lever to her advantage here and she's bending her arm to get, to turn this, um, undercling into a little bit more of a jug feeling. Whereas your arm is straighter, you're a bit extended and now it's way more in your grip. You actually have to pinch because like to make this a juggy undercling, you'd have to press your arm up like this, which is kind of doesn't work mechanically, but Maddy's using her short lever to get this, uh, undercling effect. If I was to draw like the forces on here, it kind of looks like where my left foot is, which is the best place that you kind of want to take weight off. Cause that's a big foothold for your left foot. Almost looks like I'm pressing away from that hold, putting more weight into my arm. I think Maddy by comparison, her hips are so much more up and over that left foot. And like you say, that's cause she's brought her upper body in as well with that, those bent arms. And this bouldering is tricky, man. There's never a one rule fits all. And it's hard to notice because this looked like you'd think, Oh man, this looks like a layback you want. Usually this is what you, you want to lean with a straight arm and lay back. But because this wall is steep, but the foot is a little bit too much underneath the hands here where it's, it's more about the bicep and the lever actually. And, uh, and I think we were talking about this while you were climbing too, uh, as just as a taller climber, oftentimes you can just sort of climb with your arms straight and extended and you don't have to work on these like little bunched sequences. One of the other things we then played around with on this pink was I tried to learn the jumpy method of doing the first move. And I wonder if we watched through and play through a few of those attempts now, maybe you could talk through why you think I was getting closer. Yeah, we can notice. I remember even too, like on your first try, you're, you're landing like past the hand, like, and then, and then you remember when you ran into it from the start, your body was sort of more in line with where the blue angle of the wall is. And you were like really leaning back. There's just like, kind of like a two or three step process. That's really basic and fundamental for these sort of swing moves. Just any sort of jumping move where there's a start position in the end position is step one. You definitely got to go feel what that end position feels like. Step two is actually run from the ground and jump into the end position, because now you're feeling first, you felt the end position. Now the second step is you feel what it's like to load the end position. But since you're running from the ground, it's obviously easier than doing it from the swing. Cause now what you have to do is you just have to connect, like, how do I throw myself into that position? Right. Whereas when you first tried this boulder, you kind of had no idea what to do. I'm like, you just have to swing. And then hopefully my hand catches and the foot lands or something. Let's watch Maddie here. Yeah. Here's Maddie. Here's Maddie showing us how to do the swing move. I mean, her swing is very slow and she just is so precise in that landing. She knows it's like she knows exactly where she wants to land. Watch this key moment here. So as she's swinging, so she brings her hand in and now she's, what she's going to do is redirect herself a bit. So she's here. She's going to pull herself in a bit. So that way she's pulling herself more towards this blue panel of the wall. So she lands in that nice end position. Whereas I think you just sort of kept swinging in the same direction, but watch your arms engage. There's almost a three-dimensional part of her swing there where I can see her left leg almost comes out and away from the wall to then whip her back into the wall. Whereas I felt very along one plane of motion, just going in a straight line. You can really see she gets a real twist in her lower body. Again, Maddie does look a lot more comfortable in that end position with the, the hand is kind of low and it's kind of close to the feet. Maddie is a lot more stood up in that position. I feel like I'm a lot more compressed. Yeah. Yeah. I like bringing out all the excuses for the two climbers. No, man, it's, but see, yeah, it's fun to joke about, but also it is just reality. It's, it's, there are, there are reasons for things like the reason that you struggle more in this position is because you are bunched. And the reason that it's more comfortable for her is because it's, she just fits better. So I like these kinds of moves and I was really curious to see how you would get on with them Maddie. I think I might ask you to go first because I don't want to give anything away here. Of course it's tactics. Yeah. Come on Maddie, you got this. Oh, strong. Okay. Oh, there's the compression. This is satisfying. Come on. Oh, smooth to that. Nice. Come on. Yeah. Nice. Nice work. Yeah. I did not see the arete until I got on the wall. Yeah. And that arete is really positive. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, uh, that's why I just kind of like rock into it, but I was like, this does not feel good enough. Yeah. I can't, I don't know how you pulled on without the heel. I know I should have, I messed up, but I was able to recover. I think the biggest difference immediately isn't going to be anything visual. It's going to be the sound. I think the compression style of boulder is going to be a great one to analyze the differences between the taller and the shorter climber in particular. Like I'm sure. Oh, dab. I'm sure the hips and, uh, oh, come on, come on. Yeah. Yeah. Learn from my beta. Yes. There you go. All right. The purple climb that, uh, that I picked for us was something that I normally really enjoy. It was compression. Um, so I was really interested just to see the comparison between, um, myself and that boulder and Maddie. For me, it was a boulder that felt pretty physical. It felt pretty burly. Um, some of the moves felt quite snatchy. Um, and I think you can see about halfway up the boulder. There was a move where I felt really close to falling off. Um, I put my left foot up high and you do this kind of move from the left to right into a crimp and I just caught the crimp and I felt like I was just about to fall off, but I just managed to latch onto it. I think you can see in the video how my head kind of kicks back. Um, and I was just lucky enough to grab it in the, maybe half a second that I had. And I was really surprised. Um, I wasn't surprised by how smoothly Maddie climbed, of course, but I guess I was, um, I guess I was like taken back by how smooth Maddie made a climb look that for me felt really burly. It's always good to have an idea that power and burly moves are also inherently very technical and we can often get caught up in thinking that it's just about trying hard and gripping really hard and snatching really hard on a move like this. Yeah. Whereas the technical aspect, um, that Maddie, I think did really well on this move is just knowing exactly how much momentum to apply to the move, like kind of distribute her weight evenly throughout every little, um, point of contact on the wall, like the right foot smear that you have here, which creates a much less violent load of this handhold. Whereas maybe you're focused too much on thinking about it as a powerful move or early move and you're just focused on the snatch. Yeah. Violent is a good way to describe my climbing style. As we get onto the next couple of moves up the climb, I also noticed myself doing a lot of readjusting on the positions, both in terms of just shuffling my hands about and kind of, um, shuffling my body about trying to get more comfortable. Whereas Maddie seems to grab the hold and move on the first move off of the crimps onto the nicer hold. My sequence is to jump my right foot, take kind of cut my feet, jump my right foot from a wide right hold into a hold that's higher and closer into my body. Maddie though was able to just step her left foot in and high to make sure she never cut on that. And then she did a foot swap with my legs being so much longer. I would have thought if anything, for me, it would have been easier to move that foot up high. But when I looked at where that foot was, I kind of thought I need to cut and jump the foot. Whereas Maddie was able to just keep both feet on at all times and then do a foot swap. Yeah. Cause the foot was probably just a little bit uncomfortably high for you. And that's just naturally going to push your, your butt out a little more and make you really have to grip on the holds. So you kind of latched your left foot on the side of the wall, which was actually good. It looked like it took a bit of weight off and then you were able to bring your right foot in. All right. Thanks so much for talking us through the clams. I really appreciate it. It's so good to have that such high level attention to detail breaking down exactly what it is that making moves feel hard for me and making moves look so easy for someone like Maddie. So I really appreciate that, man. I, this is, this is why I just love to talk about climbing. I'm an, I'm a nerd when it comes to this. It's so much fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we know on your channel, there's a whole back catalog of, uh, of high attention to detail, uh, analysis of, um, your training and climbing movement as well, right at the, at the World Cup level.