Date: April 14th, 2016
AboutĀ Sean McColl
This is an interview with 28 year-old Sean McColl, a well-known Canadian climber who’s accomplished amazing things both outdoors and in competitions.
I can’t describe his amazing accomplishments betterĀ than he does on his website, so here’s an excerpt…
“Sean was the Canadian Youth Champion in his age group ever year from 1999-2005 having won every National Championships he attended. During his youth career, Sean claimed 5 world titles; since no other youth competitor has won more titles; this achievement is unsurpassed in youth climbing history to this day.”
“Since Sean started competing on the World Cup circuit, he has won 4 events (2 in bouldering, 2 in lead) and been on the podium another 23 times. Sean has won the Overall CombinedĀ Rankings and has been 2rd and 3rd in the Lead and Boulder Overall rankings respectively.”
“As an outdoor climber, Sean has onsighted 5.14a (8b+) and climbed multiple 5.14dās (9a). On the bouldering side, Sean is one of a dozen climbers in the world to flash the grade of V13 (8B) and redpoint V15 (8C).”
He seems to only be getting stronger as he gets older. In March of this year (2016), he won the Rab CWIF, a big competition in Sheffield, England, where he beat out Ty Landman, Jimmy Webb, and Jorg Verhoeven (video).
He spends most of his year training for competitions, and only sometimes makes it outside to climb on real rock.
Whew! Sean is a badass. We’ve all seen videos of his crazy training (here he is on the campus board), butĀ I wanted to find out more details about how he trains.
What We Talked About
- How he trained as a kid
- What his training cycles look like
- Training for bouldering vs route climbing
- Campus board, fingerboard, climbing drills
- Weight training?
- His schedule
- His diet
Sean McColl Links
- Sean’sĀ website: www.seanmccoll.com
- Sean on Facebook
- Sean’sĀ Instagram: @mccollsean
- Sean on Dreamcatcher (14d in Squamish)Ā (Video)
Training Programs for You
- Check out ourĀ Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities.
- Our other training programs: Training Programs Page.
FrictionLabs Discount
FrictionLabs (my favorite chalk company by far) is offering you a discount on their awesome chalk – woot!
Please Review The PodcastĀ on iTunes!
- Link to the TrainingBeta Podcast on iTunes isĀ HERE.
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Transcript
Neely Quinn: Welcome to the Training Beta podcast, where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. Iām your host, Neely Quinn, and today weāre on episode number 51, where I talked with Sean McColl. Heās a well-known Canadian climber who has climbed V15, I think heās the only Canadian to have done that, and .14d. He also competes a whole lot.
Heās 28 but, as a kid, he started climbing on the Canadian Youth National Climbing Team and he won the gold medal in lead climbing in his age group at the 2002, 2003, and 2004 Youth World Championships. In 2006 he won in both the bouldering and lead climbing categories and he started to do adult competitions after that. Heās been super successful at that. Heās done a lot of podium finishes and heās won some national competitions and he continues to do many, many of these things every year.
I wanted to talk to Sean because a lot of us know Sean McColl as this crazy training guy, like Patxi or Adam Ondra or something, and there are videos all over of him on the campus board doing crazy stuff. I got the opportunity to sit down with him – not with him, but over Skype – and talk about how he trains. Hopefully you guys will get something out of this. No, heās not like the average climber and so you may not be doing exactly what heās doing but I think, actually, his approach is really interesting and I learned something from it.
Before we get into the interview I want to let you know that Friction Labs, my favorite chalk company, is giving you guys some awesome discounts on their stuff/on their chalk. You can go on over and check that out at www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta .
Alright, without further adieu, here is Sean McColl. I hope you enjoy it!
Neely Quinn: Welcome to the show, Sean. Thanks so much for being with me.
Sean McColl: Thanks for inviting me.
Neely Quinn: For anybody who doesnāt know who you are, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Sean McColl: Alright, letās see – my name is Sean McColl, Iām 28 years old and I started climbing when I was 10. I started climbing with my whole family; we wanted to do a sport altogether. I guess a lot of people know how I started. I was competing really quickly, I started to train really quickly, and two really big key inspirations, my coaches, were Andrew Wilson and Mike Doyle. Now Iāve been climbing for 18 years. I do World Cups, I travel the world, honestly, I get to do what I love. Thatās kind of me in a nutshell. Weāll get really specific. Iām sure weāll have more specific questions but if you have a question that we donāt get answered, feel free, obviously, to contact me after.
Neely Quinn: Okay. So, youāve been climbing for awhile and like you said, you started competing at a young age. Do you feel like you just were naturally gifted at this? Or what do you think set you apart? Were you just able to become pretty good, pretty quickly?
Sean McColl: I think itās a combination of things like every athlete. One is the drive. The second is that Iām very competitive, and the third is that climbing was not my whole life as I was growing and learning as an athlete. I think a whole bunch of things combine to make really good athletes and I think the fact that I didnāt only have climbing in my life made me just love climbing even more. I always had other things. I was in school, I played soccer, and I played piano and I also rock climbed. I loved doing the whole mix of things and it wasnāt until I was maybe 22 or 23 when I did climbing 100 percent of the time, all of the time.
Neely Quinn: Thatās interesting. It kind of reminds me of Eric Hƶrstās kids who do football and soccer, so climbing for them is sort of a seasonal thing. Is that what it was for you?
Sean McColl: It wasnāt so much seasonal, because I was always kind of climbing, but if you only rock climb youāll be missing a lot of muscle groups. Where, to be a good boulderer and lead climber and speed climber, or just to be a good lead climber or just to be a really good boulderer, you really need to me more of an athlete nowadays. The problem, I guess, 10, 20 years ago, there werenāt as many climbers so you had people – I guess youāll always have climbers who will not have your typical athletic build, but now thereās more and more people into the sport. I think weāre going to see more climbers who have an athletic build who are just really versatile in other sports, so that you grow up and do baseball and basketball and soccer and rugby and climbing. If youāre a really good athlete and you excel in climbing, I think it will be those people who will be the new standard of climbers in the world.
Neely Quinn: So do you take that into your training now? Do you do other sports or cross-train a lot?
Sean McColl: I think I was actually really lucky in that I did cross-train and do other sports as I was growing and now itās less important. I can kind of see the end of my competition career, even if itās in five or six years, but itās more important when a climber is 15, 16, or 10, when theyāre growing. Thatās when itās really important for them to be doing other sports, to be getting muscles in their legs, learning really good hand/eye coordination – itās really everything. Whereas once youāve built those blocks and you can start climbing a whole bunch, it kind of just – Iām really trying to say itās a lot more important to do all of those things as youāre growing as an athlete. Once you get to a certain age, if youāve never done any other sport and youāre 30, and you try to play soccer, itās super hard. You just donāt have the coordination to kick a ball if youāve never done it before whereas if youāre 10 and you start doing it, or even earlier, if youāre five or six, and you learn to do every sport in the world then you can pick them and pick specific ones to excel at.
Neely Quinn: Yeah, it seems that the younger you are the better. Tell me a little bit about the evolution of your training. When you started, when you were 10, did you start training right away or were you just climbing a lot?
Sean McColl: No, when I started at 10 and even now – I donāt know at what age people start climbing. Iāve heard some people say they started climbing when they were 12 and others say that theyāve been climbing since they were four or five. Whatās too early, really? In my opinion, itās never too early to start climbing as long as youāre not doing only climbing. If youāre just really into sports and you happen to be a good climber, thatās really cool. Like I said, I played soccer.
When I started climbing at 10 it was just for fun. I just loved the feeling of climbing, seeing what I could do, trying to get to the top of each wall, and then I got, obviously, introduced to the grading system. They were like, āMaybe you can go do that red one over there. Or go do that line in the gym.ā The world just kept getting bigger and bigger but I didnāt really do strict training until I was maybe 12. Iād already been climbing for a couple of years but even at 11 or 12 it wasnāt that strict. I would just come in three days a week and climb with my friends. And yeah, itās called ātrainingā but at the end of the day, I think back on it and I just loved it. It was like going to soccer practice. Was it training? Yeah, itās considered training, but I loved it. I was getting active, I was getting cardio, I guess I was even working out my upper body, but for me it was like being at a playground. I happened to be good at it, I guess, right from the get go so I always had motivation.
Neely Quinn: I just did an interview with the coach of Team Texas, a kidsā climbing team who crushes, and we were talking about whether or not kids should be fingerboarding or campusing. Is that something you were doing and what are your thoughts on that?
Sean McColl: I never touched a fingerboard or a campus board until I was at least, I think, 16, or 17, or 18? Somewhere in there. Iāve heard a lot about it in the last couple of years and I do strongly discourage it if the athlete is under 16 and I donāt even have any medical background – itās just the stuff that Iāve read. Iāve read stuff about growth plates and I honestly, itās not a domain I have a lot of knowledge in, but I know that as the kids are growing, if you mess up the fingers when they are that young, the damage is irreversible for the rest of their lives. The fact is, they donāt need it.
What Iām saying, dead hanging and campusing on pretty small, maybe like one-inch grips or one-centimeter, whereas if theyāre doing pull-ups, itās considered a sort of hang but youāre on a jug. I would consider that okay. Itās more conditioning in my mind. Itās not/itās only when youāre getting really small and youāre putting a lot of stress on the tendons, especially when theyāre growing, thatās what I tell people to avoid, at least until theyāre 16.
Neely Quinn: Okay. So what were you doing between the ages of 12 and 16 that you call ātraining?ā
Sean McColl:
I think that also adds to the athlete that I am today because I kind of tried it all. You really do have to try it all. You have to try coaching and route setting and training and different types of training, like train five hours a day and see if you can handle it or train two hours and take an eight-hour rest and train another two hours. The more stuff you try, you can figure out more and more what works for you and then keep doing that. Keep moving along.
Neely Quinn: What did you find works for you and has that changed up until now? Like, how much you can train and what kinds of training you can do.
Sean McColl: I mean, a big misconception is that I train every day for three or four hours. When I tell people, when theyāre like, āHey Sean, how much do you train?ā and Iām like, āTen to 15 hours a week,ā theyāre like, āWoah, what? Donāt you do this professionally?ā Yeah.
I know Adam Ondra. Heās at the upper echelons and I think he trains 20 to 25, and thatās conservative, I think. He is built that way. He loves training that much and he admits that heās constantly tired. Before competition season he has to have a really big tapering session but Iāve found that – Iāve tried to train 16 hours a week <unclear> and Iām just too tired and my training sessions are just less efficient. Everyone has to learn it but Iām really comfortable doing 10 to 15, and of the 15 hours a week itās not all climbing. There will be some dead hanging and some fingerboarding and some – off the top of my head itās hard to come up with the percentages and everything but I try to do cardio. I do floor-based exercises with bands, which is actually kind of new for this year and last year. I obviously do bouldering and lead climbing, circuits, I donāt really do any speed training although I should, since I do World Cups in them and everything. Then I do a bit of cross-training like, abs, and I like playing soccer with my friends or playing basketball. I guess itās not considered training but itās more for fun.
Neely Quinn: So 10 to 15 hours a week, and is that what youāve been doing for the past, how long, 10 years or so?
Sean McColl: I mean it goes/it definitely varies. I never say, āI have to train 10 hours a week.ā I play it extremely by ear so when Iām competing a lot in a season, Iāve done nine competitions in a row on back-to-back weekends on nine weekends in a row. If you account for those competitions and you donāt consider them training, I was only training five hours a week, because I would train on Tuesday and Wednesday, maybe for two hours each but mostly just to recover, then Iād rest two days and be back in a competition. Itās really an average of when Iām actually training and then you take into account that, generally in December, I take three weeks when I donāt do any rock climbing so then itās zero. Thatās my off-season. I play everything by ear, I listen to my body, and if Iām feeling really tired one day Iāll leave training and Iāll go home.
Neely Quinn: Do you work with a coach or trainer?
Sean McColl: I do not. My last coaches were Mike Doyle and Andrew. They were the only coaches Iāve ever had and I donāt think I could work with another coach.
Neely Quinn: Whyās that?
Sean McColl: Number one is trust. I just donāt trust anyone better than myself to teach me or to tell me how to rock climb. Itās probably – well, I know it has to do with my personality. Itās because I donāt like people to tell me what to do and stuff. Itās hard for someone to say, āSean, you climbed that wrong,ā and Iām like, āOkay, can you explain it to me?ā āWell, you did this move wrong.ā āWell, thatās debatable,ā and then we have a conversation about it. For me to just blindly trust someone, which is kind of what you do with your coach, even though you have a discussion, itās only those two people that have coached me that I know it would work. So if Mike came back and wanted to be my coach, I would say yes but heās probably the only person in the world.
Neely Quinn: Okay. Mike, you heard that. Do you take inspiration for your training, your routine, your structure, from anybody? Do you read up on training?
Sean McColl: I [laughs] do not read up on any training. That might be weird, actually, but no, I donāt do any reading on training but I do a lot of listening and then I do a lot of testing. Someone will say, āWhat do you do in training?ā and theyāll say, āI do this, this, and this. I do three-hour circuits once a week, because I find it really helps.ā Iāll be like, āThatās interesting. I havenāt done that,ā and Iāll kind of get more of a definite plan of how to do it, like how many rests they took, and Iāll try it. I try it at least once because if I donāt try it once I canāt say if itās good or not.
I try almost every training that I hear, as long as I donāt think itās dangerous, and if I find it works or if I liked it or if it just suited me then Iāll do it more and then sometimes Iāll incorporate that into my training. Sometimes I donāt, and sometimes I try it once and think it didnāt work for me or itās too hard, but I really think that itās that adaptability – because I donāt have a coach, I kind of need it. I also know that if I do the same training for too many years in a row it will start to stagnate a bit and I probably will hit a plateau.
Neely Quinn: When you say you do a lot of listening, who are you talking to? Or are you listening to podcasts or what do you mean by that?
Sean McColl: I would listen to podcasts if I found the right podcast to listen to [laughs] but a lot of itās through just my friends in the World Cup circuit. Obviously my girlfriend, Iāve learned a lot from her. Sheās actually the one who introduced me to circuit climbing, like, five or six years ago. Before that, we didnāt, or I didnāt, really do any circuits, we just did lead climbing and that was maybe two in a row or three in a row, or maybe up-down-up but the concept of circuit climbing was really cool and now thatās a full incorporation into my training.
A lot of people in the World Cup circuit, like I said, will just say, āWhat do you do for training? What do you do for lead training? What do you do for bouldering training? Does it work?ā Mostly just talking to my friends.
Neely Quinn: Do you mind me asking whoās your girlfriend?
Sean McColl: Oh yeah. Sheās Mathilde Becerra and sheās from France.
Neely Quinn: Is she a World Cup climber, too?
Sean McColl: She is.
Neely Quinn: Okay, that must be convenient. Soā¦
Sean McColl: Yeah andā¦
Neely Quinn: Oh, you go.
Sean McColl: I was just going to say sheās predominantly a lead climber but over the past couple of years sheās actually excelled quite a lot at bouldering and then this year for speed. Sheāll try to go to Paris for the overall World Championships and I think she can do really well.
Neely Quinn: Speaking of which, do you consider yourself a boulderer or a route climber mostly?
Sean McColl: So that question doesnāt have an answer for me and I choose also not to answer it because I donāt want to be labeled as one or the other. I want to be a climber and I want to be good at everything to do with climbing. That might sound poor – thereās a better word for that but <unclear> I want to be good at everything. I wish I was better at trad climbing so I could say Iām a good trad climber, because I know Iām not good. Itās an area of climbing that I know that later in my life will probably be very appealing to me, but I just donāt have enough time to do it right now.
I take the disciplines that I can do right now, so bouldering, lead climbing, speed climbing indoors. I love doing those. I also love doing overall. Then you take the even more bit of Psicobloc climbing for the first time in my life, which was a lot of fun, then you go to straight outdoor climbing so outdoor bouldering, outdoor lead climbing and you could also throw in free soloing but I choose not to do it. Itās not something that excites me. It doesnāt/I have no will to do it. I know that the people that do it, not that they think differently, but theyāre in it for different reasons and for me. I do/I predominantly do competitions but I love climbing outside, bouldering and lead. I just want to be the the best climber that I can be.
Neely Quinn: I think thatās a sufficient answer. Itās an ambitious answer. Do you have a season where you only climb outside or are you always doing both?
Sean McColl: Unfortunately, I donāt have enough time to climb outside as Iād like. Itās just the truth so I usually do, starting in January, I start training, knowing that the World Cup season usually starts in April so I have a good four months to go from my off season to World Cups. Usually I train really, really hard for about two months where Iām just constantly tired and I hope to do a few competitions end of February and March, basically to gauge where I am. This year I did have a string of three or four competitions in a row which included the Canadian Nationals and I actually competed in the French Bouldering Nationals as well and they really help me gauge, āAm I weak? Am I strong? Am I reading boulders correctly? What do I need to work on? Am I/do I have my warm-ups still down? Do I feel shaky?ā Just everything to do with competing, I can gauge. Then at the end of those three or four weeks I still have about a month and a half before the World Cups start, which is when I really need to be ready.
Every year I kind of get a little better at gauging or tapering for the World Cups but, actually, in the past couple of years Iāve always really struggled for the very first World Cup I go in the year. Itās probably because Iāve overtrained before and I donāt taper enough before it but every year I try to figure out, maybe I taper for two weeks, or 15 days, or 16. Iām still figuring it out and itās also because I have so many competitions in a year that Iām not worried about one World Cup. I know a lot of people only do four or five in a year but I do, like, 20 to – I think I did 26 competitions last year and 28 the year before. Iām competing the whole year so Iām not worried about not being strong at the first one.
Neely Quinn: When does World Cup season end for you then?
Sean McColl: [laughs] I guess that goes hand-in-hand. The bouldering season usually ends just before June, with the exception of one thatās in August. The lead climbing season starts, generally, in the first week in July so thereās no buffer in between the two seasons. Which means that, unfortunately, Iāll probably be pretty weak in the first couple of lead comps because Iāll still be in boulder mode or the last couple of boulder <unclear> sort of lead training, which will mean that I would have a little bit less strength but Iām aware of it. I just start lead training, if I can, sometime in June and generally the first couple in July I donāt have as much endurance but I know that Iām really strong from bouldering season. The lead season goes through most of the fall and ends, generally, in Slovenia in the middle of November.
Neely Quinn: And then youā¦
Sean McColl: And right after that [laughs] – I didnāt mean to cut you off – I have a break and generally I use that time and I go climbing outside for a three or four week trip. Last year I went to Bishop, which was amazing, and as soon as I got home from Bishop I go back to Vancouver for the winter and I just stop climbing. I didnāt touch a single hold, indoor or outdoor, for almost a month.
Neely Quinn: Okay. Man, I have so many questions. I talked to Adam Ondra about this, about how/about training for World Cup bouldering as opposed to route climbing. Basically, he said that it doesnāt matter because if youāre strong enough, the routes are going to feel doable. You just said thereās this transition period for you but, in general, youāre kind of banking on your strength and power to get you through routes?
Sean McColl: Not really. I mean yes, in a nutshell, Iām more powerful than most lead climbers but if I canāt physically climb 60 moves in a row on either hard moves or easy moves then Iām not making it through the routes. Itās that part that I need to get my body up to.
I think that when you were talking to Adam, heās always more fit to climb routes than me because he doesnāt only do bouldering for four or five months of the season. Does that make sense? Because I know for a couple of years he did do every bouldering World Cup and every lead World Cup and I imagine that sometime in the bouldering he either a) never stopped lead training in the bouldering season or b) had to retrain lead just to remember how to climb 60 moves. Because heās a stronger climber than me he might get it back quicker. It used to take me two months then it went down to six weeks, five weeks, four weeks, and now I can actually get back my endurance in two or three weeks. He might just get it back faster because he had less time off or he might just train lead through the whole bouldering season, just to make sure that he doesn’t lose it.
Neely Quinn: When you/so, for those three, four, or five weeks, whatever that you need to get your endurance back, what are you doing to train for that?
Sean McColl: Now I do mostly circuits. Soā¦
Neely Quinn: Can you tell me what you mean by that, ācircuit climbing?ā
Sean McColl: Circuits/circuit climbing, I train usually in a bouldering gym, so I donāt have access to lead. If I do have access to lead then I just go and do routes. Iāll do, I donāt know, nine routes in a day or six and with adequate rest. Circuit training – how am I going to explain this? Youāre aiming for circuits of either 25 to 60 moves and Iām trying to them āxā amount of times in a training session. The longer the circuit is, the less times that I do it just because my skin usually hurts. Letās say we have a 30-move circuit. Iāll try to do it four times then rest for 20 minutes then do it another four times then go home, eat, rest for four hours, and then do exactly what I did in the morning that night. In total, I did 16 times on a 30-move circuit.
Neely Quinn: So youāre doing 4X4ās on routes.
Sean McColl: Yes, but in between every 4×4 I restā¦
Neely Quinn: For 20 minutes or four hoursā¦
Sean McColl: No, like six minutes.
Neely Quinn: Oh. I see. So youāre doing the 25 to 60 moves, resting six minutes, doing it again four timesā¦
Sean McColl: So I do that four times then thereās a 20-minute rest, I do it again, but if itās a 60-move circuit Iāll only do it two or three times then rest 20 minutes then do it again. Usually I play it by ear, because sometimes Iāll do it four times or five or six and Iām just completely destroyed and Iām done. Then sometimes it depends on how new the holds are or what kind of moves there are, how powerful they are, but when you go up to 60 moves the moves are not very hard, but itās hard just because there are 60 of them.
Neely Quinn: Are you generally doing this on boulders?
Sean McColl: Yes, but I usually fill the wall with <unclear> holds so I can set my own routes.
Neely Quinn: So realistically, – actually, I was going to ask: where are you? Like, where do you live and where do you train now?
Sean McColl: Iām currently in/I live in ChambĆ©ry, France and so here we have, actually, a really good club, ChambĆ©ry Escalade, and so we have a really nice bouldering gym. Here there actually is a lead gym but generally I can do most of the routes pretty quickly so I fall back to circuits because itās more accessible.
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Alright! Back to the interview.
Neely Quinn: If you had your own wall at your house or something it would be one thing, but if youāre trying to do 60 moves on a bouldering wall at, like, a time when there are even a few people in the bouldering area, do you feel like youāre kind of monopolizing the area? Or how do you navigate that?
Sean McColl: Iām fortunate enough that I donāt have to generally deal with that. Not because Iām an asshole and just say, āHey everybody, get out of my way,ā but because I pick times to train when a) thereās not going to be anybody in the gym or because our gym actually is not a public gym. Itās not privately owned, itās run by the city, so there will be a two-hour session where only the 250 of our club can go and train, and then it gets even more distinguished where it will be only the ācompetition oneā and ācompetition twoā kids can train for these two hours. Weāve put in extra sessions explicitly for the World Cup climbers where I can train, or where we can train actually, from 10-12 in the morning and weāre the only people supposed to be training there. I know I can go from 10-12 and there will be, at maximum, six other people there to train.
Neely Quinn: All of whom understand what youāre doing or are doing the same thing.
Sean McColl: Yeah. Because in a public gym, doing what Iām doing is impossible. I know itās impossible. I know even when I was training as a junior, the junior team trained from 4-7 and people hated it because they knew there was going to be 16 kids monopolizing every wall and we were probably loud and obnoxious [laughs].
Neely Quinn: So then, how would you suggest, if somebody wanted to do circuits and they were a 9-5er, how would you suggest they do that?
Sean McColl: [laughs] Uhhhh…
Neely Quinn: Letās stretch the imagination.
Sean McColl: I donāt know, I mean, a home wall is not a bad idea but generally itās a lot of work. If youāre a 9-5er and you need to do circuits, I think your best bet is to do it on the weekends. If youāre going to the gym and you get there at 6:00 or 7:00 and youāre there for a couple of hours, I know thatās like peak times for gyms. Generally youāre not going to be able to do circuits. I donāt have a solution for that because Iāve trained at night and Iāve trained in a lot of gyms and Iāve seen what itās like. Most of the time when I go to gyms like that itās like, Iām either going to do boulder problems or Iām going to go into the corner of the gym and do conditioning because I can condition all by myself without disturbing other people. I can time my rests a lot better and everything that goes with that.
Neely Quinn: What would be the second-best thing to do? What about doing doubles or triples and only taking a certain amount of rest?
Sean McColl: If you can, get a group of people, like four or five, that want to do the same thing as you. Then, if you go to a certain wall, generally you canāt have more than four or five people bouldering on the same wall and if youāre really efficient with your timing, thereāll always be one person starting their circuit as one person is finishing. Then youāll be resting for, I guess that is about four or five times your climbing time. Ideally that would work for four people on a climbing wall but if you have four or five, Iām sure you can just make it work. I guess that would be your next best solution, is to monopolize the wall, but at least youāre doing it in a group of four or five, which is basically what you see at the gym anyways.
Neely Quinn: Yeah, and what about routes? What if they wanted to train on routes?
Sean McColl: Routes…um…do people climb routes in gyms anymore? [laughs] No, they do. I donāt know. I actually havenāt been to a public route climbing gym in a longer time so I donāt know what, really, itās like. Do people line up for routes or is it kinda just you ask? I imagine you could always just do a route and look for the next route you want to do, which would be in a 5 to 10-minute rest and make sure that you got on in your 5 to 10-minute rest because the hardest thing, usually, is if you do your route and then youāre like, āOkay, Iād like to climb in 5 to 10-minutes,ā and then you wait for 30 for some route because there was a two-person line and a person worked it for 12 minutes. I guess the biggest thing is just efficiency. Make sure you can climb a route, and itās always better to climb an easier route, maybe youāll just make it to the top more easily, than to have a rest thatās too long.
Neely Quinn: Okay, so I will go into the gym and do threeās. Iāll do three routes in a row but Iāll lower down and then walk to the next one, so I do have a rest but itās very short. What do you think about that? Because I think thatās common, to do twoās or threeās like that.
Sean McColl: I guess it all depends on the height of the gym, but I know that one thing you can do if youāre/instead of doing threeās is to go up a route but just go to two-thirds and then downclimb it back to the bottom and then go to the top. Even in gyms that are 45-feet tall that actually works pretty well. You go up two-thirds, you go to the bottom, then you go to the top.
Neely Quinn: Because then you never have to come down and get off of the wall.
Sean McColl: And youāre never resting, which is really key.
Neely Quinn: Okay. I know we have sort of a limited amount of time so I wanted to get into more details about your training schedule. Would you mind going into a week of your training?
Sean McColl: Yeah, yeah. No problem. Should we say, like, this week of training or more like during my lead season?
Neely Quinn: Um…okay, so are you tapering right now or are you in full training mode?
Sean McColl: Umā¦[laughs], I donāt even know what Iām doing right now. My next World Cup is a couple of weeks. No, I havenāt started to actually taper yet but Iām mostly trying to do just new boulder problems. Iām physically very strong. I feel strong. I did a couple competitions and I felt like I was route-reading well and I was solving the boulders and I was climbing the boulders. I was understanding them. What Iām trying to do now is just do as many new boulder problems, new angles, new route setting, just to prepare for the World Cups because everyone knows that in World Cups you donāt have to do five V12 boulders, you just have to do all of the boulders. Or you have to – itās better to do five boulders – Iām not making much sense [laughs]. In World Cups itās really key to not miss a V6 or V7 boulder because the grades are so irrelevant in a bouldering competition. You just have to do all of the boulders and if you do all the boulders then it comes to tries, obviously, and thatās when tries become important.
Neely Quinn: Okay. So, yeah, I guess this week, whatās your schedule like?
Sean McColl: Generally in bouldering season, I guess weāre still in the 10 to 15, and in bouldering I think I do less training than when Iām doing it for lead. I donāt even know how to do it day-to-day. I basically wake up in the morning or the day before and Iāll say āOh, Iāll train tomorrow at this time and Iāll do this.ā I do have a few things that I do during the week. I try to do cardio, letās say twice a week, so that would be riding my bike to the gym and back. Itās about 16 kilometers and takes me about 40 minutes there and back, so I try to do that twice a week, weāll say, but I really just like the whole cycling part. Then I have a/I guess you would call them cross-training workouts, that I actually just picked up last year. I do them with bands, like Therabands, so a lot of stuff on my lower body, through my legs and quads and my glutes, just to make sure that I have power through my legs. Often, climbers are always working their upper bodies so they donāt have a strong core or lower body, and more and more the climbing competition style is pushing more towards athleticism and people that are just better athletes are excelling a lot better at competitions, so I think itās really important.
I have six different workouts that I basically do one a day and then one day a week I get to have a rest day for that. The workouts take between 20 minutes and an hour and thatās on top of my training. So we have the cardio, we have that, and then we have actual climbing, which is four or five days a week, for in between an hour and a half and two and a half hours of climbing. I used to do campusing and dead hangs but now thatās fully phased-out because I feel that Iām at my strength that I need to be for the World Cups. Now itās a lot of doing new boulder problems that get set in the gym at any level. If I can’t onsight V3, V4, V5, and V6 then there will be one in a World Cup that I donāt onsight and that one will cost me. I always do every new boulder problem that goes up in the gym and I try to repeat boulder problems that were a little bit strange for me, or hard, or on a weakness. Then I try to make boulders that are at my maximum.
What I really struggle with in competitions is trying 100 percent. I have a hard time, if a move feels really hard, I have a hard time trying really hard, especially in training. In competitions I guess Iām a little bit better at it but sometimes Iāll fall off a boulder and Iāll just have to try harder. Sometimes people will say, āWell, why didnāt you try harder the first try?ā Itās kind of an ongoing battle.
Lastly, Iāll do, which Iāve almost kind of phased out now, conditioning. I was doing a lot of conditioning before, mostly like abs, I guess a bit more campusing, pushups and pull-ups, and – but a lot of abs.
Neely Quinn: How many times a week do you do that?
Sean McColl: This is the hard part. I donāt set a number. Itās different from week to week and itās crazy. I do log all my training so I could go look at it and tell you how many days a week I trained in every week of the year but generally it will go, like, I train five or six days a week if you count just doing something. A rest day would be where I basically sit at home and do nothing. If I go out and I do cardio, then I trained that day, even though I didnāt do any rock climbing. If I go and I do a 20-minute workout, I warm-up and I do my 20-minute Theraband workout, I consider it a training day. No, I didnāt climb, but I consider it a training day. There will be days that I go and I climb twice in a day so itās really hard to say what I do but I train probably six days a week and Iām climbing for probably four or five of those days a week.
Neely Quinn: Can you give me some sort of idea what the conditioning is? Is it one time a week? Five times a week?
Sean McColl: Um…itās probably, well, the bands I do everyday because I have six workouts that take 20 minutes to an hour. For the conditioning I usually do it two or three times a week but a lot more at the beginning of the season when I can really abuse my body, where I can be really dead-tired because I donāt have any competitions. Now, Iām not going to do any crazy, crazy ab workouts because Iām going to be tapering pretty quickly for the World Cup season.
Neely Quinn: With your ab workouts, can you give me an example of one of them?
Sean McColl: Um…thereās front levers. You do a normal front lever for as long as you can hold it, so I generally can hold it for 15-20 seconds. Then I come down for a five-second rest but itās always hanging, then I do another front lever with one leg bent for as long as I can hold it, go back down, five-second rest, then I switch legs, which leg is out. Thatās usually 10-15 seconds each leg then I go down. Then I do L-sits, where my toes touch the roof of the wall thatās in front of me. I do that 10 times without using momentum and then, to finish it, I do knee lifts with no momentum, and I do 20 of them. So thatās all one set and I do that three times.
Neely Quinn: Wow.
Sean McColl: That takes probably 30 minutes. No, it doesnāt take that long. Maybe 20 minutes, and then I do banana boats on the ground where youāre on your stomach. Iām trying to do the thing where youāre kind of in a handstand – a planch. Iāve been trying to learn how to do a planch because the muscles are so new to me, it hurts after five or 10 minutes of trying to do it.
Neely Quinn: Okay.
Sean McColl: Sorry – I lost my train of thought. Basically, I just try to do that to exhaust my abs to where I canāt even do a sit-up without it hurting.
Neely Quinn: Okay. Thatās pretty intense. And then youāll also do campusing, push-ups, pull-ups, and are you doing weighted anything? Pull-ups?
Sean McColl: No, I never/I donāt do any weighted stuff just because I donāt need it. I used to do it a little bit when I was growing as an athlete but I havenāt actually used weights in a while.
Neely Quinn: Did you use to use weights in other ways besides weighted pull-ups?
Sean McColl: I donāt think so, no. We had a weight vest hanging around when I was training. We just kind of tried them a few times. We thought it was cool so we would sometimes use it but it wasnāt a thing where it was like, āOh, letās always use the weight vest so that weāll always be better at competition.ā We never did that.
Neely Quinn: So youāve never been into doing any sort of weight routine, like, even shoulder presses or anything like that?
Sean McColl: No…no. Iām not that person, no.
Neely Quinn: I mean, is that something youāre against?
Sean McColl: No, Iām not against it, I just find that my training is hard enough with my own weight. I donāt know why I would need to add any.
Neely Quinn: Okay. So, we got a question that asked about your finger training program specifically. I know that youāre not doing that right now, but when you were, and Iām assuming that was a couple months ago, what kind of board do you like to use?
Sean McColl: So, Iāll use any board, actually. [laughs] I donāt have a favorite board, and I actually like using different boards because as soon as you get used to one board, itās easy. Youāll be really good at fingerboarding on one board and youāll go to a comp and youāll be like, āOh, Iām really good at finger hanging or Iām really good at hanging,ā and then youāll get a hold that’s different and itās like, āWhy canāt I hang on that one? Well, itās different than my hangboard.ā
I donāt know. Iāve never been attached to one hangboard but I guess it would all depend on just the depth of whatever Iām hanging on. My routines for hangboarding would usually go: I hang every minute, for as long as I can, alternating arms. Iām resting for about 1:45 for the same arm and Iām hanging for 5-15 seconds.
Neely Quinn: Do you ever add weight to yourself?
Sean McColl: I’ve tried it, like I did add weight three weeks ago after a pretty long rest. I was like, āOh, I should just try this with weight and see if I can do it,ā and I <unclear>. I did it about the same time as when I was training for it normally but I figure if I can add weight, why donāt I just do more sets using my own weight?
So I do alternating hands on the minute, every minute, then after about 20 minutes I do both hands hanging, so two-handed hangs. I also do two-handed hangs on the minute, every minute, so Iām only resting about 45-50 seconds, and I do that for another 20 minutes. If I was adding weight maybe I would only be able to do it 15 times whereas I just do it until, basically, pure exhaustion, and then I canāt really hang on anything. I lean towards that kind of method over adding weight.
Neely Quinn: Thatās really interesting. Iāve never heard of anybody doing that. Where did you/did you just come up with that on your own?
Sean McColl: I think I did but I might have seen it or heard it from somewhere else. Iāve kind of adapted it into that and thatās what I came up with. Itās easy and I donāt have to think at training. I donāt have to think for 40 minutes. Iām just hanging and itās easy to go on the minute.
Neely Quinn: Then how often do you do that every week?
Sean McColl: I do dead hanging longer into my training season than I do campusing but I kind of just do campusing or dead hanging when I want to, not feel strong but, remember what it is to do those movements. Sorry, I forgot what you asked.
Neely Quinn: I asked how often you do it every week.
Sean McColl: [laughs] I usually do it no more than three because, usually, once I do that type of workout Iāll usually climb after it for an hour or an hour and a half, but Iāll actually be really tired. My fingers will be opening up on pretty good holds and usually I try to rest the day after. If I donāt rest the day after doing a dead hang workout, Iām really tired that day of training. If I take that day into account, I canāt do it more than three days in a row – Iām sorry, three days in a week.
Neely Quinn: Okay. Letās see. I have a few minutes left and I wanted to ask you about injuries. Do you ever deal with injuries?
Sean McColl: Thatās a really good question. As a competitor, I think to be injured is probably the worst thing you can do for your career. A lot of people are like, āI didnāt mean to get injured.ā I also think that injury comes from/if you donāt – everyone can feel when theyāre going to get injured, generally, a lot when it comes to fingers. Theyāre like, āOh, my fingers were a bit sore and I thought I might injure one and then I did that last boulder at the end of the day when I should have gone home and I hurt my finger,ā or something.
The injuries you canāt see are like when you jump off a boulder problem and you hit the corner of a mat or in between two mats and you sprain an ankle. Iām not talking about those kind of injuries. Iām talking more about the things in your body where you can feel it. I think that diet is really important to avoiding injury. Everything you eat, everything you shouldnāt eat, and hydrating. Thatās actually something that Iāve improved, I donāt know, like 500 percent in the last couple of years because of my girlfriend. Now I feel like I eat really well, Iām always hydrated, and I can almost train as many hours in a week as I want. I feel less tired and itās a whole combination of things but I think staying injury-free for a competitor is the number one thing they should focus on.
Neely Quinn: Can you just give me a really quick breakdown of the kinds of foods you eat and donāt eat?
Sean McColl: I eat healthy. I eat all foods. Iām not vegetarian. Iām not vegan. I try to eat all my food groups. I try to eat a couple of each food groups every day. I try to eat protein, I try to get enough iron, and so all of these things are things that everyone knows they should do so I just make sure that I do do it. I just actually added it on my āfrequently askedā questions on my website because so many people were actually asking it now.
I eat four or five times a day. In the morning, I eat bread with peanut butter or butter on it. I also have a bowl of cereal with, usually, Iāll have a whole grapefruit and I have a lot of coffee with sugar and milk. Actually, almond milk, now. For lunch, if itās a training day, Iāll eat something that will give me energy so pasta, rice, the carbohydrates. Also, bread and, generally water, actually. At training Iām generally hydrating. After training Iāll usually have a snack, which is sometimes a bowl of cereal but generally itās fruit, so I eat an apple or sometimes I eat two apples. Then I eat dinner, generally pretty late, 8/8:30, and for dinner thereās always protein, probably a bit of carbohydrates, but a lot of vegetables. I forgot to say that during lunch, also, itās key to have protein. Then, for dessert, at the very end of the day at, I donāt know, 9:30, itās a yogurt with a bit of muesli and sometimes something sugary as well, like a bit of chocolate.
Neely Quinn: Cool. Well thanks for divulging all of that. Iām sure everybody will appreciate that. Itās like, prettyā¦
Sean McColl: Another thing with diet that I, not that I realized but, kind of just learned is that yeah, you should have pretty low sugar. In general, everyone eats just too much sugary food. Salt, yeah, I guess that should be also low but thatās something I just donāt eat too low of and then fat. A lot of people eat high fat. High fat and high sugar are the two most common, and if youāre eating a lot of sugar and your body doesnāt process it right away, your body produces insulin, which just converts the sugar back into fat. I watched a documentary, I learned more about it, I was more conscious of what I eat, and I feel like Iām a lot more healthier at eating because of it.
Neely Quinn: Do you feel like your energy levels are pretty stable?
Sean McColl: Yeah, they are pretty good. Another fact is I donāt drink pop. When Iām training I donāt drink alcohol. I donāt/thereās lots of other things that deteriorate peopleās diets and then they wonder why they get injured or why they donāt have enough energy or why they canāt train.
Neely Quinn: One last question, I promise. How much sleep do you get?
Sean McColl: I try to get nine hours a day. Generally I go to bed at 11:30 and then I try to not wake up before 8:30 or 9:00. About nine hours a day.
Neely Quinn: Do you want to give a shout out to any of your sponsors?
Sean McColl: I mean, everyone knows who my sponsors are but one thing to say is I wouldnāt be where I am in my life without my sponsors. I know that itās a relationship and everything, but they saw potential in me whatever years ago and so Iām really happy to have all of my sponsors. I donāt need to list them but thanks to them, and if you support them, thanks to you as well.
Neely Quinn: Awesome. Thank you very much for your time and good luck this season.
Sean McColl: Thank you.
Neely Quinn: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Sean McColl. If you want to follow him you can go to www.seanmccoll.com or heās on Instagram @mccollsean and on Facebook at Sean McColl.
Coming up on the podcast I have Kyle Clinkscales, who is the head coach for Team Texas, which is a team of kids that crush. Alex Puccio actually came from that team and Delaney Miller and a bunch of other, just, crushers. I wanted to talk to him about how to train kids and what he did that was so spectacular with Alex Puccio and all of that, so thatās coming up.
Other than that, on Training Beta I hope that you guys have noticed the new podcast episodes, the āAsk Krisā episodes, those mini-podcasts, basically. Theyāre about 15 minutes long and itās just a conversation between Kris Peters and me about certain, really specific topics of training. Iāve gotten really good feedback about them and I hope that youāre liking them. If you hate them and you really donāt want me to continue them just email me at neely@trainingbeta.com or if you love them, let me know. Itās kind of a new thing and I like it. Itās a short burst of information thatās really digestible. I have another one this week that will actually come out before this episode airs on route training versus bouldering training, so thatās interesting. If you guys ever have any suggestions for topics, just email me at neely@trainingbeta.com .
A little update on me. I am still training with Kris. I was sick last week and so I kind of took the week off because I really didnāt want to get any sicker or make the sickness go on and on and on. I think thatās terrible. I gave myself the week off. I was kind of due for a week off anyway, and now Iām pretty much back to training. Iām still seeing gains, which Iām psyched about.
Other than that, if you ever want any help with your training we have so many resources for you and they really work. I was looking through a bunch of testimonials the other day and Iām just blown away by how much success people have had. On all of the pages for each of the training programs I just recently put up a bunch of testmonials from people so if you want to check out what people have said, you can go to www.trainingbeta.com and then go to the ātraining programsā tab at the top and youāll find all of our programs there.
I hope that you guys are finding something useful out of these podcasts or our site or our programs to help you get stronger. I also love success stories and I want to interview more of you guys, more of my listeners who are climbing, you know, like what a normal, mortal human can climb. I want to have more of you guys on the show so if you think that youāre a good story, just email me and let me know.
Thanks for listening. Have a great week! Iāll talk to you soon.
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No, I have no idea who your sponsors are…missed opportunity right there. Also, Neely, I was very surprised about his training (or lack of a structured training). Obviously it works for him, he’s a champion (genetics may help? maybe his circuits indeed are the way to go), but it’s the extreme opposite from the guidelines of the majority of experienced trainers, especially Steve Bechtel.
I like how Sean talk about how important diet is, then goes on to list an incredibly unhealthy diet. Neely, call people out when they’re dead wrong!
Owen – Thanks for the feedback. I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not really my job to tell people they’re “wrong” when they haven’t hired me to be their nutritionist or explicitly asked for my opinion. As tempted as I am sometimes, I’d honestly be annoyingly preaching to people all day long if I did that. My job on the podcast is just to be a vehicle for these athletes and trainers to impart their knowledge and experience to you guys.