Kelly Birch on Training, Nutrition, and Mindset to Climb V14
Kelly Birch is a 29-year-old climber living in Boulder, Colorado who sent her first V14 last fall. She has many, many double digit boulders under her belt. She is an incredible climber and has been really vocal on her Instagram about using weight training in her climbing training. She actually competed in power lifting for a while when she took a 5-year break from climbing after getting burnt out on competition climbing as a youth.
We talk in depth about the following:
- her training program
- how and why she incorporates heavy weight lifting into her program
- what she thinks are the most important things to focus on when training for bouldering.
- how she manages her schedule with a full-time job
- how she fuels nutritionally for climbing and training
- some of the difficulties with nutrition and body image that exist in the climbing world
- how she approaches climbing with a mastery mindset
There’s some bonus content at the end of this episode about core training, hip mobility, how she deals with failure in climbing, and how to train efficient movement that you can find on my Patreon page.
Get More Training Advice on Our Patreon
You can find bonus content from this episode and other climbing training advice, as well as nutrition and mindset education on our Patreon.
Show Links
- Kelly Birch Instagram: @kellyabirch
- Listen or Watch the the uncut video with no intro or outro on Patreon
- Get nutrition and mindset education and tools on Patreon
- Start a training program built by TrainingBeta
Work with Me on Your Climbing Mindset
I’ve been talking to a lot of climbers lately who have lost their passion and joy in climbing because they’re comparing themselves to others, feeling disappointed with their performance, and putting a lot of pressure on themselves to be doing better, faster.
I have been there myself, and I’ve worked on all of it intensively over the last few years. Through all of this work with coaches and self-reflection, I’ve come out on the other side having WAY more fun in my climbing and feeling mostly positive emotions in all of my climbing sessions. I went to school to become a coach to help people on exactly this thing (among other things, but this is my favorite).
Let’s work together by having skillful conversations over zoom to uncover what’s going on underneath all those negative thoughts and feelings and make a tangible plan for you to start enjoying the process of climbing more and caring less about what others think of you. Let’s get your joy back in climbing.
Photo Credit
Photo of Kelly Birch by Matt Burbach @mattburbach
