9min chapter

The Careless Talk Climbing Podcast cover image

E132: Toby Roberts - Winning the Olympic gold, heavy training schedules and board climbing feats of strength

The Careless Talk Climbing Podcast

CHAPTER

Climbing Styles: Learning and Evolving

This chapter delves into the nuances of learning from the climbing community and balancing personal style with technique. The speakers discuss the differences between competition and traditional climbing, emphasizing the evolving skill sets required in each arena. They reflect on the dynamics of board versus rock climbing, assessing how strengths from one may influence success in the other.

00:00
Speaker 1
I've
Speaker 3
been telling everyone that you are, so... That's not me. That's where it came from. That's great. The funny thing is, it always looks like you could be brothers as well. It's like believable. Or, you know, make sense.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Maybe we just, yeah, I don't know. Feed the conspiracy. We're not brothers.
Speaker 3
All right, I've got a bunch of unrelated questions. I thought this one was quite interesting from one of our patroons who were all very excited that you were coming on. So we got loads of questions and we're not going to get to all of them. But someone was asking that when they watch you climb, they can see that you're like quite a generalist in that you've got your strengths. Obviously, your power endurance is incredible. But you also, you seem to be equally good on like all hold types uh and like you're pretty good on most angles obviously now you're like your previous slight weakness with slabs seems to be mostly addressed at this point to get to this point being so good at so many things did you ever try and mimic other climbers to climb like them or have you always just been adapting your own style uh
Speaker 1
I've always been natural like strength has always been my natural style I've loved like campusing and stuff but I definitely look at like videos of other people Serato is like a prime example like the way he climbs is just so it just looks so good and sometimes I'm like man I just want to climb like that sometimes it just looks nice um but i think looking at other people climb boulders which i haven't done it's actually quite important part a bit or a big part of like my training like looking at what other people like climbing with other people who are good at stuff but you're not looking at how they do it it's really important i think so yeah i think looking at other people is i've i've done that quite a lot obviously you don't want to do it too much you don't want to constantly compare because people will like be slightly different in different things but uh i guess i do that quite a lot yeah
Speaker 3
and the question that was vaguely linked after that was uh something that was I think, school should be quite cool is that actually your strengths and things you're good at, actually quite old school, but you're kind of more of an old school climber that's in, I think you would have done even, well, can't we have done better, but just as well in previous eras of competition when it was like, when you didn't have to do the laches and the like, trim bladders
Speaker 1
yeah
Speaker 3
but like now you're also going outside and climbing on on rocks do any of these like new comp style moves do they feel like they're helping you or are you just kind of going back to what you were previously good at yeah
Speaker 1
absolutely not the new bouldering stuff is I think it's probably the furthest away from like outdoor sort of pulling as possible sometimes. Like it feels like a totally different sport when I do it. So I don't think it's translatable, but something which I'm still, I still like another part of climbing for me. So I'm incredibly motivated to get better at that um just like with the other other things but yeah i don't think they they benefit each other really maybe like slap obviously i'm talking about the really crazy stuff like i don't know sliding down volumes and stuff like that sort of thing but i guess with like laches and stuff it does give you like an awareness of your body and how it moves like in space so it could it it maybe has some benefits would
Speaker 3
you on a previous one of our previous guests uh yannick flo uh famously said one of my favorite comments which was that for him bouldering uh world cup bouldering isn't a physical sport uh because he feels that like he's so powerful and he feels that he can't really use it um in world cup bouldering is that something that you find as well or are you finding a way yeah
Speaker 1
i think that's true uh not fully like it helps to be strong it definitely helps to be strong, but like the strongest comp boulder is definitely, no, the best comp boulders aren't always the strongest. So I think you can get, you can win a Boulder World Cup without being able to do one and pull up. Obviously, I guess it's, it depends slightly on the set every now and then they do just throw in just an incredibly burly boulder but a lot of it is just being a really good climber and knowing how your body moves which is also kind of nice that you don't have to spend hours just getting stronger and stronger and stronger and you can just go climbing and become better yeah
Speaker 2
yeah it's funny um i remember uh i remember like uh a conversation we had with sean when sean bailey came on and he was like he feels like the thing that's changed is like uh at one point in the competition bouldering there was like a point where like the fundamental skill sets were the same and there were a few additional skills of like kind of like doing a one-two hand flip or like kind of uh but he now felt like there was this like transition where actually the fundamental skill sets to climb well in competitions and outdoors were like changing moving apart a little bit um which is quite interesting to hear that maybe even like the just like the emphasis on physicalities is part of that as well obviously the same applies outdoors it's not just like the strongest person but like yeah there's like a real like barrier to entry of physicalities that's necess like totally necessary outdoors i guess yeah
Speaker 1
like a v17 border you're gonna have to have some level of strength yeah yeah which i wonder if that's i wonder
Speaker 2
if it i mean i don't know maybe it's the same with like competitions but i wonder if that's changing a little bit as well and like yeah um yeah it does seem just quite interesting how that's like transitioning and seems to change year on year as well like a couple of seasons ago it was like it seemed to be like a really powerful um like you you seemed to have to like be really strong in the bold world cups and there was a bit of coordination but it was like doing really really well in that season yeah yeah yeah yeah i think it was like two not yeah maybe it was like two seasons ago or something. It'd
Speaker 1
be funny if they put all these crazy moves, everyone gets really weak, and then they just suddenly flip it. Yeah, back to basic. Back to basic, and everyone sucks.
Speaker 2
I'm back in comps. Sam's going there actually
Speaker 3
that was a question someone was asking if if there was a board style competition so just board climbing competition someone wanted to know do you reckon a comp climber would win it or a rock climber would win it oh
Speaker 1
it's got to be a rock climber yeah sure that's
Speaker 3
the answer we wanted what
Speaker 1
sort of board do we do like a like a wooden board yeah yeah like a woody i'm trying to think of i mean there are some strong board climbers oh
Speaker 2
yeah yeah yeah some people are good yeah
Speaker 1
they're
Speaker 2
yeah yeah it is generally wrong i kind of feel like to get as good at board climbing as some board climbers are like a comp climb would just be playing the hand pretty badly yeah like it's just unnecessary right like but then like well board is like a very like general term i have the same thing with like kilter boarding like i'm not that good at kilter boarding like the big smashes between more yeah it's totally different isn't it i think at times i've been like ah i should be better at kilter boarding and then i'm like actually no
Speaker 3
it's fine yeah yeah that's a fleeting thought and then actually no i don't get really
Speaker 1
bad on your skin like it bruises it in weird places it sucks yeah yeah
Speaker 2
yeah yeah you kind of like put loads of force through specific points yeah but i think it is good to be strong on a wooden board climbing like just
Speaker 1
having that base level of strength is just helpful, I think, sometimes. Even if for the mind you're like, OK, like if there's any
Speaker 2
move where it just requires like pulling on a hold, like I'm sorted. I can one armor off this at any moment. Like it feels nice to know you can do it.

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