How to get back into climbing post-childbirth?

In today's episode, host and coach, Maddy Cope, is joined by  Dr. Sarah Duvall,  a women's health and fitness specialist, to explore the intersection of climbing, fitness, and motherhood. Maddy brings her experience from coaching elite climbers post-partum such as Emily Harrington, and her passion for climbing to the conversation as she delves into Sarah's expertise. With over 15 years in the climbing industry and a background in coaching and climbing performance, Maddy is excited to learn from Sarah's wealth of experience.

Together, they uncover practical strategies and exercises to enhance your climbing journey, whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out. From managing fear and anxiety to finding balance and prioritisation, this episode is packed with valuable insights:

Topics include:

Insights into Sarah's personal climbing journey postpartum and her impressive climbing achievements.
The importance of breathing techniques and core strength for climbers, particularly during pregnancy and postpartum.
Practical exercises and tips for improving breathing patterns and core engagement.
Strategies for managing fear and anxiety when returning to climbing postpartum.
Finding balance and prioritisation in different seasons of life.

Don't miss out on this empowering conversation with Dr. Sarah Duvall. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.

Some links from Sarah to help support the podcast:

Heel hooking hamstring strain strengthening prevention protocol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqvTjDcGZXQ&t=9s
Advanced hip rotational exercises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoC5YhmojGQ&t=37s
Drawing in vs abdominal brace: https://youtu.be/WA-mFvykZ9k?si=hQVcYeG1TDquRDpK
Rib cage mobility breathing exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1AkIPbnbfg
Pushing vs pulling and core pressure: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B4ezNr6HXGu/?igsh=dHB1dHllbTB6dDBm

The Lattice jingle is brought to you by Devin Dabney, music producer of the outdoor industry who also hosts the American Climbing Project.

Transcript

Maddy (00:00)
Okay, hello and welcome to the Lattice Training Podcast. Today I have with me Sarah Duval, who I'm really excited to have this conversation with. We actually put this in a diary a while ago and I can't wait to dive into this topic with you. Now, Sarah, you are a physio and women's health specialist and you take a lead in core exercise solutions and this is where I first came across you.

So this is a platform that has so much educational content for exercise around pregnancy and postpartum. And it covers a really wide range of topics, but we're gonna kind of zoom in on the exercise part here. And I actually didn't know that you were a climber until more recently. And we've just been talking about this. You do post a lot about sport on your Instagram, but it took me a while for you something to...

sarah (00:47)
Yeah.

Maddy (00:56)
crop up about climbing and I connected with you and so I really appreciate the time you're going to give me today.

sarah (01:02)
I am so excited to be here. This is climbing is my passion. And like you said, I never get to talk about it because my audience is so broad that climbing is a very, very small percentage. So I am so excited to focus on it today.

Maddy (01:17)
Awesome. Well...

I guess I might just let you start by introducing yourself a little bit and your journey. I know that you have a wealth of experience in this area and you know, obviously you share a lot of content about sport, but you also share a lot of content more around maybe breaking down barriers around kind of beauty standards. I saw a post that you did, I think it was, I don't remember asking your opinion on my body or something like that.

So, I don't know, maybe you can just introduce yourself in that kind of broad sense of how you got into this area and what it is about it that makes you so passionate.

sarah (02:01)
You know, I had my first child a little over a decade ago, and when I was in my postpartum period, I had been an orthopedic physical therapist, or you call them physio over there, and I had been a personal trainer for years, and like another decade. And when I got to that point, there was no help for anything. It was essentially postpartum, you just become a walker.

Like there was nobody saying lift as heavy as you can do. Get back into competitive level sports if you want to. Like there was nothing really out there for helping women be more aggressive. And I'm gonna use the word aggressive here because I feel like a lot of us have this athlete inside of us and not just at the professional level but at the just normal level of I wanna be an athlete my whole life and I didn't want children to change that because it's part of my identity

part of who I am. And so that is what took me from orthopedic physical therapy to women's health, was I was like, no, this is not OK. Things need to change. And so I've really been on the forefront for the last decade of pushing high level.

I guess getting back postpartum, like getting back to a place where maybe you are in better shape than you were prior to children. And I know as a climber, I have climbed more harder routes after having children than I ever did before having kids. So I just want to encourage anybody who's listening who's like, oh, you know, my good, my best days are behind me. Like that is not true. And I'm also in my 40s. So just putting that out there as well. I feel like the ceilings we place on ourselves.

ceilings where we maintain, I'm sure I'm going to get there and I'll feel it when I get there. But it's currently not there yet and I just want to continue to encourage women to keep pushing.

Maddy (03:54)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think this will resonate with a lot of the people who listen to this podcast, climbers. Trying hard really gives us something. So, you know, there's obviously there's getting back to maybe like you said, exercising, maybe just going climbing every so often, but it's another step to get back to a level where you're like, yeah, I'm really able to push myself. And I think for a lot of us in climbing,

sarah (04:05)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (04:21)
there's a lot of elements of that try hard, which is what really drew us to the sport. So it would be so sad to say goodbye to that. And honestly, this is part of learning about this topic for me was kind of scratching my own itch. I don't have children yet, but I'm a real lifer in climbing and I see them hopefully in my future. And also friends around me, you know, we're starting to have kids. So, so yeah, I think that will really resonate. And I mean, you said, you know,

and maybe it's like 10 years ago now that you had your first child. Do you wanna just speak a little bit to your experience of coming back to climbing and getting back to that level of tri-hard? I know there'll be like a physical element there, but there's also an element of managing climbing partnerships and kind of creating the space for your climbing as well.

sarah (05:13)
I feel like if you don't have one thing, you have the other. So I feel like every person going through having children, whether you're on the dad's side or the mom's side or whatever side that looks like for you.

we all have to overcome something. Well, you know, it's just hard. It's hard. Your life now involves other living human beings that you are responsible for. And then your body, if you're the one who had the baby, your body went through tremendous changes. And I know in our society, we do not want to call pregnancy an injury because it is a natural process. But from my perspective, I feel like if we had better care, better postpartum protocol,

better support, more education. I mean, do you know how many research studies are done on ACL repairs? And how fast we can get athletes back? Like if you tear your ACL, you're like, ah, well, that's protocol, it's fine, everything's good. But if something goes wrong during that postpartum period, maybe you're experiencing pelvic floor issues or dialysis recti, or just simply your body doesn't feel connected, there, the protocols are lacking and that was one reason why I...

really jumped into this is because there was no research for women and there was no research for getting back there. So we moved from my husband's work to the New England area, to Massachusetts when I was eight months pregnant. Well, then we moved to Virginia. But essentially before that I was in ocean sports, so I kite boarded a lot, surfed and wake boarded. And so I truly got back into climbing after climbing in college after having my first.

was the getting back into climbing. So it was all this fun, you know, that really fun progression of, okay, I did a 5.8, okay, I did a 5.9, oh, the next time I come, I did a 5.10. And then, so you get this lovely, and I think embracing that postpartum period for the lovely, like, oh, every week, you're going to probably feel a little bit stronger. And how many times do you get that gift?

you know, of being able to feel that. Because normally we're like inking out this tiny little bit of improvement that we see over a six week training program and it can be so frustrating. So I think just kind of sitting back and enjoying that coming back process and just know it's a process, know you're going to get back, I think can be really lovely. And then for my second, I climbed all the way through my pregnancy until I was 37 weeks pregnant.

And then I started getting a little bit too much pubic symphysis pain with big adductor moves. You know, you put your foot way out for a hold and then you pull yourself into it. I just had too much ligament laxity at that point to be able to safely climb well.

And so I stopped climbing around 37 weeks because of that ligament laxity, but then I had him at 39 weeks. So I really only took two weeks off of climbing. And then I went back to climbing around four weeks, climbing very gentle, very easy. So you don't have to take off that much time from climbing. And then I will say the second time coming back was definitely a lot different because my arms were strong and my legs were strong, but my core and pelvic floor needed time.

And so from that perspective, so the first time I didn't have all of that coming into it.

But the second time I needed to exercise a lot more self-control. And I think that is the part of the takeaway that you need to take a step back and ask yourself, okay, what is the lowest or weakest part of my body ready for? Not where is my finger strength or where is my arm strength? But where is my core strength? Where is my pelvic floor strength? What does that recovery look like? And you need to meet yourself where that last, I'm going to say last person, but last body part is.

sure you're keeping everything up and bringing it along. Because I think that's where we get into trouble. So we do a little too much too soon for that weakest link.

And so getting in for a good assessment. There's a lot of personal trainers now that are specializing in postpartum recovery. And I think they are well equipped to help with assessing these kind of weak links. And I think a physio or an occupational therapist or somebody who specializes in it, great. Get an appointment, go in to see somebody, talk to them about what you're feeling, let them do an assessment on you, let them give you some exercises because...

if you can get the right protocols in place for your body specifically, because everyone is very different, which is part of the hard part of this, and genetics plays a big role there too as well. But I think if you can get that right path, then you can come back a lot quicker than you think you can.

Maddy (09:50)
Yeah, there was lots of really interesting points in there. I think firstly reiterating that, I guess beginner's mindset really, that you had after your first pregnancy because you were actually sort of getting back into it, but maybe that is something we can nurture in ourselves, even if we are not a beginner. And that's probably a really nice takeaway for dealing with the kind of mindset part of it. But I guess the other tricky side

sarah (10:02)
Hehehe

Maddy (10:19)
to there.

is kind of having an awareness of what is okay and what's not. And actually, I thought it was interesting when you talked about stopping at 37 weeks, saying that you sort of had a bit too much pubic synthesis pain, which I don't know whether it's easy to describe this, but for someone listening, if they were climbing during pregnancy and they were starting to have some of that pain, is there a guide for how much is too much?

or at what point actually that is pulling back because just the way you phrased it as too much, I mean, I guess it said to me a bit like, oh, maybe a little bit is okay.

sarah (10:52)
Absolutely.

Ha ha

So yeah, so as a physical therapist, I think it's important for us to realize that pain is not always our enemy, but pain can give us a story. It can tell us what's going on. So I think pain is always something to pay attention to, but it's not always, pain doesn't always equate to, oh, I'm doing major damage. You could have a small amount of pain and be doing major damage, or you could have.

loads of pain and be doing no damage. So the body is really interesting when it comes to pain and trying to understand pain. So some people will have pubic symphysis pain because of, and that's pain like in the front of your pubic bone, so the front of your pelvis, kind of where your legs meet in the middle. So if like, if you take your, run your fingers down your lower belly, that when you hit that bone right there, that is a point that needs to spread to deliver the baby.

And so it is perfectly natural to have ligament laxity, especially late in pregnancy. And because of the nature of climbing, because we're pulling with one leg, to make moves, we end up stressing one side of the pelvis more than the other. So if you were doing a double leg squat, you would be putting significantly less stress on that pubic symphysis area than say a climbing move. So I keep working out all the way through delivery, I just stopped climbing. And so there's a difference.

Maddy (12:20)
more symmetrical way of working out.

sarah (12:22)
Yes, more symmetrical way because my body said you have too much ligament laxity right now. I have a family history of ligament laxity as well. And so my body said you have too much ligament laxity to safely do this and feel good after and not have it be something that progressively gets a little bit worse. And you only have a few more weeks. So I mean, you know, in your lifespan of climbing, like, come on, it's perfectly fine to do squats and breathing drills

So I think that there are, if you're having pubic symphysis and SI joint pain early on.

I would definitely say get somebody to look at you. You might have one hamstring that's stronger than the other. You might have one hip flexor that's stronger than the other. You may have one adductor that is full on checked out and one adductor that's strong and that's creating this opposite pulling at your pelvis and because of the introduction of new hormones causing ligament laxity that pulling is what's going to be causing pain and it's the uneven pulling that can cause the most pain. So if you can get somebody to get their hands on you to be like oh this left hamstring

week. We just need to strengthen the side and all of a sudden you start pulling more evenly and your pelvis will feel a lot better. So in a lot of ways in early pregnancy underlying issues start to show themselves.

And what I find when I talk to people is they're like, oh, I have some SI joint pain right around my period, or when I ovulate, or after a long car trip, but then it comes with a vengeance during pregnancy. So it was something that they occasionally had, maybe after a long hiking day, or something like that, but then it really flared its head up during pregnancy. So I would encourage people, if you're having some pelvis pain type things, to get in to see somebody

muscle imbalances so that you can kind of help suss that out before pregnancy can be really helpful.

Maddy (14:19)
Yeah, and actually that's really interesting. I sort of saved this for a bit of a closing note, but maybe we can tackle this question now and then get onto the breathing and sort of exercise and recovery postpartum. I guess the question I was gonna put to you is, if a climber was planning to be pregnant soon or to try, because this is often something that people know that they're going to want to do, then...

sarah (14:28)
Thanks for watching!

Maddy (14:46)
is there a set of exercises that you think could really benefit them going into it? And it sounds like potentially one thing could be doing, I guess, this more sort of unilateral work, things that kind of maybe are stressing the pelvis in an uneven way, but I'll let you sort of tackle that question, it just sounded like that could be something from what you just said.

sarah (15:12)
Well, I mean, honestly, I think that men should be doing this. I think people of any potential birthing situation, I think everybody should be working more planes of motion. I mean, I see so much pain just from people not moving their bodies in more ways. So thinking about...

fully moving your hip into all the way inside, all the way outside. I mean, it's so hard right now because I wanna use anatomy terms, but I know three fourths of the people listening will be like, what the heck does that mean? So I think that it can be challenging to describe these things.

so this is a very challenging question, but it's definitely one where I see everyone needs it, not just people who are looking at becoming pregnant.

And so for this, we're looking at how many different planes of motion can you move your body in? And luckily climbing is a very varied sport. It's one of the things I love about it. I mean, other planes, like running, oh my gosh, they are only moving in the sagittal plane. It's like the most repetitive activity. So I think being climbers, we already have that blessing of we are moving in lots of different planes of motion, but the more we can work hip rotation, okay. So thinking like single leg rotating all the way in, rotating all the way out,

and it's really hard to demonstrate exercises on a podcast, but you can get that idea of just the more we can move into rotation.

the more we can move into different planes of motion. So I do love single leg exercises, but single leg exercises where you're thinking about rotating around your hip, rotating around your shoulder, lots of movement-based core work. So the more we can think about the planes of motion that you climb in, and then the more you can move in other planes of motion, can be really helpful to provide that balance. And this is a tricky question for a podcast for not being able to do some exercises.

Maddy (17:08)
Yeah, for sure. Well, we can point to things like your Instagram that has a lot of these exercises on. And I guess one thing that sort of stands out to me is that these might require some learning. So I imagine they are good to start doing because say climbers, weightlifting and climbing is really prominent now. People do gym work, but they probably do deadlift squats. People often...

sarah (17:21)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (17:34)
lean towards stable and heavy, which I think is great. But I guess what you're describing is probably on the less stable side, maybe with the rotation. So yeah, is there anywhere that maybe people can head to just see some of these types of exercises you're talking about?

sarah (17:37)
Mm-hmm.

Well, so I do have lots of them on Instagram and I'm happy to link some more for you. But one of the things that you want to think about is stable and heavy is awesome. I want to be as strong as I possibly can. So I get that.

But if we think about doing like a basic deadlift, if you have one hamstring that is a little bit stronger than the other, what's always gonna take over when you do that deadlift? The strong side. So when we think about doing those bilateral heavy exercises, they are great for producing strength and power, but not so great for clearing up imbalances. And so that's where I want it to come from both sides for helping somebody's body.

Maddy (18:33)
Yeah, awesome. So that sounds like a good thing to get started on earlier. Okay, well, we're sort of like move now. Yeah.

sarah (18:38)
I also can we say one thing about deadlifting really quick? I also don't think that deadlifting, and this is gonna get me in trouble in the climbing community, but I also don't think that deadlifting is the best exercise for climbing specific hamstring strength.

I just, I don't think it is. I really think that single leg deficit hamstring work is much more sport specific for us and much more helpful for getting proximal hamstring without as much low back and loading in a way that helps to prevent hamstring strain. So I just am putting that out there, which I think I can link the video for you of deficit hamstrings, which I think are much more helpful than deadlifting.

Maddy (19:22)
Well, I think that sounds like a great idea and we'll link that in and I'm sure that everyone will be really excited to look at that. Okay, if we sort of like move a little bit now into I guess more of the pregnancy and postpartum exercise topic and how the body changes, one thing that I really want to pick your brains about is breathing.

And this might shock some people because they're like, oh, I want to know about the exercises I should be doing. But breathing is really the foundation and you talk a lot about it. So maybe I'll just hand over to you to explain why breathing effectively is so important to us full stop, but also especially with pregnancy and postpartum.

sarah (20:09)
Okay, so I'm gonna start this off with the statement of how much blood do you want to get to your fingers?

Okay, because that is what breathing controls. And not in the way of like, oh, I'm oxygenating through breath. Sure, that's true. But through the fact that when you have a very poor breathing pattern, you actually cut off the blood supply to your upper body because of the muscles in your upper chest. They're accessory breathing muscles. So if you're using your scalenes, if you're using your pec minor, if you're using your sternocleidomastoid, if you're using these upper chest muscles to breathe,

don't have good breathing in place, you're essentially creating a cinch point that is cutting off blood supply to your hands. So I think that breathing should be one of those really essential things that climbers work on because they want blood to their fingers. So hopefully that gave a really good opening of why breathing, why we should work on breathing.

Maddy (21:08)
Yeah, if you can tie anything to fingers, I think you will have like grabbed climbers attention.

sarah (21:12)
Exactly. But it's so true. And I think during pregnancy, people tend to experience more thoracic outlet syndrome because as that baby grows, it's pushing up into your diaphragm. And so your diet and your ribs are spreading. And so as that happens, as that rib cage spreads to make room for that growing baby, it flattens your diaphragm.

And as soon as your diaphragm flattens, it's not really as available for inhalation like it should be. So then we say, okay, what other muscles in the body can help us with inhalation? Oh, these great scalenes here. And then what happens? Your fingers go numb at night while you're sleeping. Your hands might go a little bit more numb while you're trying to climb. You might feel yourself getting more pumped than usual. And that is because that you are cinching on those, it's essentially thoracic outlet syndrome. So pregnancy increases thoracic outlet syndrome.

and we can help this by improving breathing.

Maddy (22:09)
Yeah, and I imagine a number of people will have heard of thoracic outlet syndrome, but you're essentially kind of like, I don't know, reducing the room for the blood vessels, for the blood flowing through to your arms, aren't you?

sarah (22:20)
You're reducing the space for your arteries, your veins, and your nerves going through to your fingers.

Maddy (22:27)
So when it comes to how we can work on this and I guess reduce the risk of this happening, I mean, it'd be great to hear your approach to that, but also whether it's different during pregnancy and then after you've had your baby.

sarah (22:44)
Absolutely, I think it's much worse after. This is one of those things postpartum that if you don't work on, I feel like it kind of sticks with you because you get that spreading of the rib cage, so unless you're actively trying to get the rib cage back.

into its smaller position, then you're not going to get the diaphragm back up in its dome-like shape. And one really good test that people can do for this is a little bit of cardio. So I know we're not normally big on cardio and I for one prefer to climb over cardio, but if you do go for a run or a fast hike or something like that where you start breathing hard, do you come back from that cardio

feel really good, you can move your head side to side, everything feels great, you don't feel like you need to open your chest and stretch it out because then that's telling you how much of an accessory breathing pattern you're going into. So as soon as you start getting a little bit out of breath and breathing with some force or some purpose, then that is telling us, okay, where is my go-to for breathing? And so that happens when we're climbing, right? We do purposeful hard breathing when we're climbing. So what is helping us do that purposeful hard breathing? Is it the muscles that are shutting off?

the blood supply to our fingers or is it that great breathing pattern which I'm happy to go into.

Maddy (24:04)
Yeah, and that's actually really interesting. I haven't heard it put like that before in terms of, yeah, when you're maybe really pushing your breathing, do you get a lot of tension around your upper chest and neck? And I mean, I know I get that, and I've heard from so many climbers, people who've had children or people who haven't, are like that.

sarah (24:23)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (24:24)
they really build a lot of tension around these areas. So, I mean, I imagine a lot of people listening to this podcast will be people interested in pregnancy and postpartum, but it just goes to show that actually this really crosses over for everyone and is really, really useful to think about. So yeah, maybe now if you could, yeah, I suppose explain how, yeah, maybe just explain how people might go about.

sarah (24:47)
We can give it a go.

Maddy (24:53)
reconnecting with that good breathing pattern, I suppose, after having a baby. And I don't know, if it's possible, can they work on that whilst they're pregnant as well?

sarah (25:03)
100% and I think that these patterns that I'm talking about, the patterns that end up happening in the pelvis, the ones that end up happening in the crud, they can happen to everybody. But pregnancy just magnifies it, speeds it up, throws it at you at a really fast pace. You don't have to sit at an office for 30 years to get it.

Does that make sense? So it's like the, I feel like this information is really good for everyone. It's just pregnancy and postpartum, really throw it in your face because it happens very rapidly. Yes, yeah, it happens very rapidly, but it definitely can happen to anyone. They don't have to be pregnant or postpartum. Okay, so back to breathing. So what we're thinking about, I want you to take your hands and I want you to place them around the bottom of your rib cage. Okay, like you're kind of squeezing yourself in. So thumbs around by your back, fingers around by the front of your ribs. And then what I want you to do,

Maddy (25:22)
Yeah.

really concentrates it. Yeah.

sarah (25:51)
is without trying to do anything, don't try to change it. I want you to give me a nice big breath like you would if you're on a climb and you're trying to relax yourself.

So what I want you to feel is what happened with that breath. Did your A rib cage slide up and then slide down? Did you feel your neck and shoulders rise? And you might want to do this in front of a mirror. Did you feel your belly come out, which is not going to happen when you're climbing in a really hard

place because your core is tight. So belly breathing while climbing is just not a thing because nobody's purposely relaxing their abs while trying to hang on and clip while breathing. It's just not happening. But we can also talk about belly breathing and the issues that I see with belly breathing as well as a way of practicing deep breathing. I don't like it because it's not going to carry over at all for us for climbing. We're just going to slip back into that shallow breathing pattern as soon as we tighten our abs. So we've got to learn to breathe well against the bracing of the abs. And I feel

is something that's very unique to athletics and not something you're going to cover in a yoga class per se, but something that we need at a high level of strain. So what you want to feel for is you want to feel for that rib cage as you take a nice big breath in. You want to feel for that rib cage to expand in your hands. So think about opening an umbrella. Does your rib cage open like an umbrella?

Does it expand into your thumbs? Does it expand into your side of the hands? And does it expand into your front? So you really want it to go a lot into the sides of your hands, and then into your thumbs and into your fingers. And so when we think about this opening or expanding in the bottom of the rib cage.

the stronger our intercostal muscles get. So our intercostals are those little muscles you see between the ribs. So I'm not gonna go into food analogies here, but you can picture these intercostal muscles. Okay, when we think about the core, we unfortunately only focus on abs, especially postpartum, because it's like, oh, gotta get your abs back. But the ribs spread during pregnancy. So we also change that link tension relationship on our intercostal muscles.

And so when I think about the core for somebody, I'm thinking about what's happening in the top of their thorax and in their abdomen.

because it's all part of the core. We connect our arms to our feet. And so we need really, really strong muscles between our rib cage. Because if you think about like going for a hold and you're trying to clip through or something, you think about how much your ribs move to do that. Think about how much one side of your rib cage scrunches down and one side of your rib cage opens up and how much muscular, maybe you've even gotten some cramping underneath your ribs at times.

and think about how much muscular stability and strength is needed to be able to make those movements because our core is more than just our abs. And so all this focus on ab work, I love it, but we also need to not forget about the top of our core and all the muscles in our thorax and those intercostal muscles that are between the ribs. So as we think about that expanding of that rib cage into our hands, those intercostal muscles are helping with that expansion.

a little bit tight for me. So kind of brace your abs a little bit like you're doing a plank, but just in your seated position. And then I want you to give me a big inhale again against those braced abs, seeing how much you can get your rib cage to expand. And then give me a really.

Maddy (29:20)
That's really difficult.

sarah (29:22)
Yeah, and so that's what's gonna, that's what should be happening climbing for you not to slip into a shallow breathing pattern. Because what happens is, is people lock their abs down, then they also lock their ribs down. And then the rib cage slides up and down to breathe, and then their scalenes get super tight, and they pinch off the blood supply to their fingers. So if we can get those intercostals a lot stronger, we can get the diaphragm a lot stronger, and we can get that really good inhale against the bracing abs, then that creates a very dynamic athlete.

And what you might want to do is you might want to take a moment and watch video of professional climbers and look at how they're breathing while they're climbing. So there was one time where I posted a video of Thor, you know, the actor Chris Hemsworth. So there was a screenshot and I recorded it of him being Thor in Rag to Rock and he was breathing hard. And then I got a clip of Michael Phelps right out of the pool, just finished an Olympic medal swim, breathing hard.

No air is going up into the top of Michael Phelps shoulders. His rib cage is expanding. His abs just look like he's standing there with his six pack. He is breathing very heavy, but his rib cage is moving out. He's a very dynamic rib cage. It is not sliding up and down. His neck and shoulders aren't breathing. Chris Hemsworth, his neck and shoulder is doing all the work. His rib cage is sliding up and down. The man's gonna need a massage.

Okay. He's not going to be a very good climber because his fingers are just going to go down and pump out. All right. So if we think about the dynamic level of an athlete that can actually perform, and I'm not making fun of Chris Hemsworth here, but you get the idea of what I'm trying to see you picture. But if we look at an athlete trying to perform and this can be a mom trying to come back on a five nine and just wanting abs and a, and a chest that actually works well and

breathes and doesn't cause neck tension when she's done climbing. I mean, so this can be from every level of climber. I just feel like it's something that we should focus a lot more on. Sorry. I just talked for a really long time. So I'm going to let you go. What questions do you have about that?

Maddy (31:30)
No, that was really interesting. And I have learned, I've spent a fair amount of time like interested in this, learning about the breath, but that was a really different way of putting it, which is so cool. And I was, when you were describing the exercise, I tried to do it and it's really difficult, which I guess makes the main question for me, how do we develop that? Is it through...

doing breathing like that whilst not doing anything else to begin with to form that kind of, to help us be familiar with it and then do we bring that quite, will we organically take that into our exercise or do we also need to practice it in an exercise scenario as well? I guess what I'm wondering is, yeah.

sarah (32:17)
Yeah, no, you nailed it. I gotcha. I gotcha. So some people will organically, after learning something, just put it in. You know those athletes. You teach them something and then they're using it and they're like, oh, it's like they never had to work on it. And then there will be those people that will have to work on it.

every single week, it will have to be their warmup exercise. They will have to beat it into their head every single time and it will still never feel like second nature until they've worked on it for six months. So, and then everybody's everywhere between. So what you have to do is you have to work on it, not under any load, just sitting in there, holding a light brace on your abs, inhaling, feeling those ribs move, getting a really big exhale can help, getting all the air out, trying to exhale for 20 full seconds and until your rib cage just really squishes down

breathing exercise that I can link for you if that's helpful. And then working on the inhale that way, watching yourself in the mirror, making sure your shoulders don't come up very much. And then take it into a plank. Start with a wall plank maybe.

start with maybe some serratus work with it, and then take it into a plank on the floor, and then buy a breathing trainer where you're getting resisted inhalation and resisted exhalation, because that is gonna be what you're faced with when you're having to breathe really hard. And it might be that you're breathing hard on the hike in while wearing the backpack, and that resisted inhalation and exhalation with a breathing trainer, or even just breathing into balloons, something to help you have that resistance will help you with your hike in

the crag without a tight neck and shoulders to start your climbing day.

Maddy (33:51)
Yeah, that's...

a really sort of interesting way of approaching it. And I have to say, I've not seen many climbers with a breathing trainer, but maybe especially to build on from like once you've built the awareness in the mirror, which I can imagine for me just sitting here and having how it feels, I can imagine that could take me a while. So is this something that people would start kind of during pregnancy as well to kind of connect that and then they can obviously, they'll be probably feel like they're slightly retraining it.

postpartum, especially initially? And is this something that people can do very early on postpartum as well?

sarah (34:31)
So the fun thing that I've learned with working with so many patients during pregnancy is it can help with prevention of diocese recti during pregnancy to work on this really good 360 breathing pattern and making sure the rib cage stays mobile. Because as you breathe into your sides, you help to eccentrically lengthen your abdominals. So it's like you stretch the side of your abs from the inside out. And if we think about diocese recti, we're getting too much stretching to the front.

And so if somebody has really tight sides, which can often be the case from somebody who's really strong, I've seen a lot of crossfit athletes with diastasis recti. And so sometimes strength is our friend, but our strength is only our friend if we can fully lengthen a muscle. And so when we think about that amount of give that's needed during pregnancy, we gotta have a lot of give. And so the women that I've worked with for subsequent pregnancies, we've been able to decrease their diastasis during pregnancy and then have them come out of the subsequent pregnancies

than previous pregnancies because of working with their breath and that good 360 breathing pattern.

Maddy (35:36)
Whoa, yeah, I didn't know that. That's really interesting. And also really motivating to get doing that. I think one thing when it comes to breathing, which I imagine people might often feel, is that we are climbers, we want to train, we want to feel like we are moving our bodies, and that maybe breathing exercises don't quite feel like training for us yet.

sarah (35:43)
Mm-hmm.

That's why you gotta get in a plank position with a breathing trainer or like hands and knees with knees lifted, shoulders relaxed, long turtle neck. So I really like to tell people when you're doing ab work, especially something where your hands are flat on the ground, pretend you're a turtle.

and you're popping your head out of your shell so that you're not all upper traps. Everybody's gonna go catch themselves now. So if you push backwards and your head disappears and your head goes in your shell, that's so much upper trap, so much tension going into that upper neck area. And so pretend you're a turtle and pop your head out of your shell, and then try your plank on the floor. Then add your breathing trainer, seeing if you can feel that expansion of your rib cage into your back while holding tension in your abs while keeping your head popped out like a turtle.

Maddy (36:46)
Nice. I am, I'm, I was going to say I'm also, I'm also imagining like if I was about to do that, I would feel really funny doing it as well. Like I really want to try, but I can imagine being in my front room, you know, trying to get to grips with breathing in these different positions. And I imagine breathing whilst in this way, whilst hanging is something that would be important for people who are interested in climbing and wanting to get back to hanging exercises, things like a pull-up.

sarah (36:47)
That's going to feel hard. It will feel like a challenge.

HNNN

Maddy (37:15)
would you introduce sort of hanging whilst doing this type of breathing as an important step before getting back to doing a pull-up postpartum?

sarah (37:23)
I do. I think that actually working on hanging and breathing and what's pelvic floor and core coordination on a hangboard can be incredibly important. And I think having protocols for we're going to do two minutes of hanging and here's how we're going to work through the holds and you're going to get some pump going. And here's how we're going to work like, you know, feet on the hangboard, but stimulating a climb, because when we put our feet on and we do long duration hangboard work with our feet on,

a climbing scenario but without all the moving parts. So it's really a good place to practice that core and pelvic floor breathing coordination and what we need to do in that scenario and kind of catch our go-to area. So if somebody's dealing with pelvic organ prolapse, maybe when it gets a little hard and they start getting pumped, they start bearing down.

because that can be the place where we feel the strongest. Or maybe if somebody's dealing with incontinence while they're climbing. So somebody leaks a little when they go to do a hard move. So we're gonna have to break that down, start at that base level, build the pattern, and then integrate it into climbing.

Maddy (38:31)
Yeah, and that forms a really nice pathway and hopefully people can see that too where you've got the foundation of the breathing. You've then got a more simple form of climbing, you know, arms are overhead, you know, maybe moving around on a fingerboard, building up some amount of fatigue and seeing where that takes you in terms of, I don't know, you know, you might lean into a certain way of breathing, you might find it harder to coordinate and then you can take that onto the wall

sarah (38:56)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (39:01)
This is what.

sarah (39:02)
You might find yourself over gripping as you're trying to, I mean, like there's so many moving parts with climbing that being able to focus on all of them at once is impossible.

Maddy (39:07)
And this, this.

Exactly, and this, I guess the work that you do is about trying to provide a little bit more of a protocol that gets you back there. And this sounds like a really good one.

sarah (39:23)
I really, I like it. And I think at least for me personally, I get to work with some climbers, but I get to work with a lot of other athletes as well. And I think for me and my personal journey, my husband is so much stronger than me, but yet I am often able to do the move better than him. And I...

I count that to core strength and thoracic strength and rib cage strength and good breathing and that ability to coordinate my core between my arms and legs. And so I think that it is huge because climbing is such a technique sport and if we can connect our hands to our feet better we do not have to be as strong and I think that is incredibly beneficial especially for women.

Maddy (40:08)
Yeah, it seems like a really big area to tap into, especially if you're gonna go through pregnancy and postpartum, but you know, full stop. So a couple of things that spring to mind, I feel like I can kind of visualize a nice flow between these exercises, you know, building upon these like foundations.

sarah (40:14)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (40:25)
Do you find there's any particular drill or a final step of doing this on the wall? Or would you, if you were working with a climber or a climber came to you to ask about this, would you say, oh no, that bit should just be more organic? And...

sarah (40:42)
No. Yes, I know.

At some point, yes, you want it to all be organic. And you know what? You want your brain to be able to check out and you want to just focus on on-siting or bread pointing or whatever your goal is for that climb. But until you get to that point, you have to think about it. So I would get it on the floor, not climbing. Then I would get it on a hangboard. Then I would get it on the V1s at the gym and the easiest rope climbs where you're focused on the technique thing that you need to focus on, whether that's your pelvic floor, your breathing response, whatever that is.

and then we put it into harder climbs on a top rope. And then once we get it on harder climbs on a top rope, we put it into easy leading. And then once we put it in easy leading, then we put it in a hard leading, and by that point, gosh, I really hope it's organic.

Maddy (41:28)
Yeah, so when you say put it into climbing, I guess you just getting people to practice the entire climb with this form of breathing. So like being able to, yeah, yeah.

sarah (41:37)
The mindfulness, yes. So let me give you an example of what I would give somebody if they're experiencing leaking or pelvic organ prolapse. I would tell them to place their foot on the hold and I would tell them to think, inhale down, good inhale down, out of their neck and shoulders, start their exhale, then pull with their foot, then follow with their hip, then reach with their arm.

So we're thinking in layers because so many people will pull with their foot or not even pull their foot, the pull with their, let's be realistic here. The pull with their arm, which will, which will instigate a lot of upper ab gripping, which will put, make them breath hold, which will then put pressure down on their pelvic floor, which will then cause leaking or worsening prolapse or pelvic floor tension and pain, which can cause obturator tightness and a lot of other things. Then they will pull with their foot. Then they might think about breathing, maybe.

So if we can think about those steps in a very safe, controlled environment, then when it matters for the hard parts, it will be more organic.

Maddy (42:43)
Okay, nice, yeah, that seems like a really nice process that people could go through when they first get back on the wall. And like you said, people are not going to want to, not that it's quite climbing by numbers, you know, but this stepwise approach of like, you know, they're not going to want to do that forever, but yeah, that seems like a nice way to just, yeah, get started. Maybe just for people listening, do you wanna just recap that one bit? Again, I liked those, that sort of step of the order of how to go about it.

sarah (42:50)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Maddy (43:13)
to help you not be all up here kind of in with more like the neck and the upper body.

sarah (43:20)
Well, and you don't have to do it forever, right? Because it's going to become organic. And then you want to think about it.

So it's one of those things where it's not forever, it's just until it becomes part of you, which is what all skill movement is with climbing. When you get to that point of like, I'm gonna throw a heel hook or I'm gonna backflag without having to think about it because it's where my body wants to go because I've trained that skill. And so this is just another skill for us to layer in. So what I like to have people do is think about the good inhale down, think about, so you're on, you got four points on the wall.

You're getting ready to make the move up to another hold. I want you to think about, inhale down. I want you to think about starting your exhale. So you're gonna initiate that exhale. Then we're gonna pull with the foot. Then we're gonna take the hips with it. And then we're gonna go with our arms. So, but all of that can happen in a split second.

So it can be just boom, boom. So it's more of like what you initiate with than like this really slow snail process. So it's just, I wanna know somebody is getting that good breath pattern before they're putting force on their body. And then that is gonna save their core and pelvic floor.

Maddy (44:32)
Nice, yeah, and I really like that. I often feel like I found it useful when there's maybe a sequence of things I'm doing. If I just initiate it correctly, then often everything flows. So maybe if you're initiating with that breath down, starting the exhale, and then thinking about that from the foot upwards, then actually it might flow for people, but you know, I've definitely spoke to a number of climbers who said,

sarah (44:43)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (44:59)
you know, you feel a bit disconnected, like when you first get back on the wall, a bit disconnected from your feet. So that, I think, provides a really nice intention that you can take with you to the wall when you first go, because when you first start, I've heard this from some people.

sarah (45:01)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (45:14)
Not that it feels aimless, but it's a little hard to judge, it's a little hard to know what you're doing. They're like, you should just go and start on some easy climbs. So I think it's hard maybe to bring intention to your session, yeah. So I think it brings a purpose to it. So that's actually really, really nice.

sarah (45:25)
You have purpose. Yes. You need purpose.

And then once we get that down and somebody's core and pelvic floor is progressing nicely in this postpartum period, then we can work on breath holding. Because let's be honest, if you're gonna do a really hard move.

you might need to hold your breath because that is when we are the strongest. I mean, we take that from the weightlifting world. If you need max effort, that's almost always breath holding. And so I am very pro valsalva. I'm very pro breath holding for movement if you need it, but only if you're doing it well. And the way you're gonna get a really good breath hold is if that rib cage moves out a lot for your inhale, because then you're not sending all your pressure down into your pelvic floor. So remember when we talked about that rib cage moving against those tight abs?

So what creates the pressure with the breath holding is our diaphragm when we inhale down. So go ahead and give me a big inhale down and then hold your breath. Do you feel how that creates pressure in your core? So your abs tightening in and your diaphragm inhaling down are what creates intradermal pressure and that is the purpose behind a Valsalva.

And so that is where we are really, really strong. And that's gonna be our natural go-to if we have to maximally exert ourselves. But if we have these other patterns in place, then we're gonna be more likely to move our rib cage with that valsalva and spread that pressure around, then sending it straight down our pelvic floor. Because if we've got a rib cage that doesn't move in and out well, then that pressure when we hold our breath is gonna go down, and then that is gonna hurt the pelvic floor.

Maddy (46:58)
Yeah, so I think this is something that we see quite a bit when it comes to pregnancy and postpartum exercise, return to sport, is that kind of bracing and pressure management, I suppose, and not wanting to send a lot of pressure kind of downwards, as it were, to the pelvic floor, which is kind of like the bottom of our core cylinder. So I imagine that a lot of climbers will just build back into climbing gradually, and they'll just start doing that sort of bracing,

sarah (47:09)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (47:29)
at a time that feels maybe that their body feels ready for but they could also maybe do it at a time when they're not ready yet and their breathing's not ready.

sarah (47:37)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (47:38)
I guess for you, I know it would be so hard to put like a timeframe on this, but are there any things that people might be able to recognise in themselves, or that you might recognise into someone that says, oh yeah, you're ready, you can handle that pressure of more of a bracing movement, therefore you can try those sort of hard climbing moves where you're going to use that.

sarah (48:03)
Yes, that is a great question. And a really individual question because a lot of it comes down to genetics. So if you have ligament laxity genetics, that is going to be a much...

further goalposts for you to get to than if somebody does not have ligament laxity genetics. Breastfeeding also plays a big role here because breastfeeding will promote ligament laxity. Breastfeeding is amazing and it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance. So I mean, you know, it's one of those give or take things on how important it is clearing up that last little bit of ligament laxity versus continuing to breastfeed. So many women notice a huge difference when they finish breastfeeding. A couple months later, they're like, oh, my body feels tighter. And

your body is.

legitimately tighter. You lost some of that ligament laxity. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. Genetics, breastfeeding, and kind of how you are building up your body. So I think that jumping can be really helpful because we are telling our ligament system like, oh you need to be handling some force. Like there's force coming and that is force from gravity, but it's the same force that we create when we create that inter-abdominal pressure. So if you

jog to grab your toddler and you feel like your organs are going to fall out, you are not ready for breath holding yet. Your body is saying, okay, you are just not ready for this. If you do that diaphragm where I told you to inhale down and kind of hold it, you feel like you had a big give in your pelvic floor, or you have a lot of doming out of your diastasis, you are not ready for breath holding. And so I think that's going to be a very individual thing, and I think some people are going to be ready for it quite quickly.

and be the envy of the other people around them. And I think that some people it's going to take a very long, for me it took.

took almost a year and a half probably, maybe even two years before I felt really good trying hard. But I have a history of ligament laxity in my family. Everybody in my family has a hernia. It's just, it is what it is. And I breastfed for 15 months. And so it just took a long time for me to get that back. But you know what? The whole time I was working on great finger strength. So just because you can make progress, you can become super strong.

during this time. I'm not saying don't get stronger. I'm just saying maybe don't project the hardest thing you've ever done in your entire life if you feel like you have a lot of ligament laxity.

Maddy (50:32)
Yeah, that makes total sense. I actually really liked what you said about jumping and maybe that kind of impact type exercise, mimicking that kind of, I don't know, bracing mechanism that you'd be doing with your breathing. Is that something you kind of would prescribe as an exercise or can that be, yeah, can that?

sarah (50:54)
Yes, 100%. I will actually prescribe. And so what I'll do is I'll start with just like heel drops. So somebody to kind of bounces. So just have somebody kind of bouncing a little bit. Like we're not jumping, we're not running, we're just bouncing. And then having kind of some stiff leg jumping where you're thinking, don't bend your knees, but I want you to kind of leave the ground. So you're like popping up on your toes a little bit and you can get a little bit of bounce there. And so start postpartum with that. When you feel comfortable, and this could be anywhere between four and 12 weeks.

Okay, so it's gonna wildly depend on the person for when they feel comfortable starting that. And so you can start doing a little bit of like, hey, hey ligaments that hold my uterus, I want you to wake up and support me a little bit more. There is strain coming, because the body responds to strain. If we wanna get something stronger, we gotta strain it. So if we keep things too safe and too protected, then we never get them stronger. And then we go and introduce something wildly straining, and then we're like, oh no,

had prolapse before this one move and now I feel like I have prolapse. What happened? It's like well you didn't progressively overload to get to that point. So I think that strain and stress is incredibly important. Just we've got to make sure the dosage is correct.

Maddy (52:10)
Yeah, and that actually leads me onto another question, which is harness wearing, and I guess with it being around kind of your middle and any potential for that to, I guess, play into the pressure equation in your abdomen. And I don't know whether there's anything you see where that...

sarah (52:21)
Mmm.

Maddy (52:34)
may be impactful for people's pelvic floor, for any symptoms they're having. Yeah, I don't know if you can speak to that.

sarah (52:41)
Absolutely, so generally you're gonna end up with.

of space in the front of your harness. It shouldn't be so tight that you feel it squeezing your waist. So I, when you when you're thinking about falling especially like you'll end up with space in the front which is good. So if you have a tendency, if we think about it like a waist belt for lifting, if you have a tendency to brace out against the harness like pushing out then that can be a problem because you could also be pushing down on your pelvic floor. And so I actually see tight

more of a problem than the harness because we wear such tight pants that have often waistbands that cut in and so your body is think about it as something poking you it's like hey pay attention to me and it's this constant feedback and your body is going to respond to that feedback in a different way one it's either going to push out against it or it's going to draw in away from it

And so either way, you're going to be constantly doing something with your core muscles that is not the climbing core specific contraction that you need. And so then that is going to affect your core pelvic floor and breathing. So I would be really mindful of how tight your pants are when you breathe, when you climb, just because that's going to affect your breathing.

Maddy (53:58)
Yeah, that's interesting. And I guess there's like quite a lot of like fashion and like high pants around there, but I know I've definitely felt it and I've seen some content around this, like, you know, I guess the sucking in, like, and depending on what you wear, I guess there may be like more or less of that. So that's actually an interesting point. Oh, sorry, did you want?

sarah (54:03)
Yeah.

And sometimes you do need a little bit of drawing in the beginning because our transverse abdominals, you can preferentially contract those deep internal abdominal stabilizers by drawing in. But the problem is, is you can't move any type of force, counting your body weight, by drawing in. Like you just can't. You can lie on the ground and draw in, you can stand and draw in, but as soon as you go to climb something and do a really hard move, like your body is going to want to brace.

it's because you're trying to transfer energy from your lower body to your upper body. And the way we transfer energy is through creating stiffness. And so just know that drawing in could be a part of the process for a few weeks as part of somebody's rehab protocol. But then I'm gonna be wanting to move it into more bracing exercises because then that's what's gonna, and breathing well under that brace because then that is what's gonna transfer over into their climbing more.

Maddy (55:15)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And this is more of, yeah.

sarah (55:17)
So I don't want to demonize anything, because sometimes everything has a purpose and a place. It just depends on when in the process we're introducing it.

Maddy (55:24)
Yeah, and it may not carry you through your whole journey of getting you back to where you want to get to.

sarah (55:29)
And you might need it in the beginning. So if somebody's like, oh, never draw in, I'm like, well, don't say never, because as soon as I say never, then I have to give it to somebody.

Maddy (55:38)
Just to, I guess I know that you've touched on the tight kind of upper chest muscles, neck muscles as kind of a consequence of not having this good breathing pattern, which is something we really wanna get back postpartum. Are there any other things that you see a lot, maybe people come to you and...

it kind of shows you or tells you that their breathing pattern is probably suboptimal. Anything else that people might notice, I suppose, kind of red flags alongside that kind of a lot of tension around the neck.

sarah (56:14)
Well, they have big upper traps usually.

They have very large upper traps, which I mean we use our upper traps for climbing. They're an important muscle group. But I want them to be able to turn off at the end of the day. So if you touch your upper traps and you don't have some squishiness to them, then that's saying okay, they might not be turning off. Like your bicep, you know, if you touch it, it's kind of got some squishiness to it, right? You can move it back and forth. Like it's not the hardest thing in the world. Like you're contracting it. So do your upper traps feel like they have some squishiness to them or do they feel like they're contracted really hard without you doing it?

So that's going to be a sign that somebody is in that shallow breeding pattern.

Maddy (56:52)
awesome and I think that's it's always a nice kind of reminder for people because when people listen to this they want to know if it's them and so I think that's a nice that's always like a nice thing to be really clear on. So I know we've talked a lot about the pelvic floor and something I think I've seen this from you which was you made a sort of a distinction between a drawing in

sarah (57:00)
Hahaha

Maddy (57:23)
And I wonder whether you could just talk through that because I don't think I had seen that before, before I saw it from you.

sarah (57:29)
Yeah, so there was a research study that came out that looked at maximally contracting abdominals. So what they had somebody do is they had somebody squeeze a ball between their inner thighs, so get adductor contraction, and exhale really hard for their max abdominal contraction. And then they had somebody draw in and they were measuring the, like draw in as hard as they could, and then they were measuring the amount of abdominal muscle that showed up for the exercise. And so obviously the drawing in was a lot weaker contraction than the maximal abdominal

which is telling us how much breathing plays a role with being able to contract our abs well.

Maddy (58:06)
So one thing I wonder like with the breathing and you know people are building back into their climbing, finding what they love in it. After people have that solid foundation of breathing, is there any go-to exercises that you think are particularly good for building back that core strength for climbing in particular?

sarah (58:31)
Well, so I am not a huge fan of hanging leg lifts.

I mean, I think they're okay, especially if you're doing a lot of roof climbing and you got to bring your legs down and back up. Yeah, I mean, there are times where you need to be able to do leg lifts. But I think for overall general climbing core strengthening, I love movement planks. So holding a plank, doing knee drops, side planks with a twist, or side planks where if you picture this holding a side plank, bring your hips all the way down to touch the ground and then bring your hips all the way up. So thinking about having to clip through or lean over and clip.

where you're having to control your body through that frontal plane, I think all movement in side planks and movement in front planks is the most beneficial ab exercises that we can do during, especially this building up process.

Maddy (59:23)
Yeah, I guess because you are getting to move.

sarah (59:23)
Because the hanging leg lifts are going to put a lot of strain primarily on the rectus and they're going to put more strain than a plank will, even though I think planks in the beginning can be kind of a hard strain exercise too, because then you need to look more at dead bugs and power presses and rotations with a band and things like that.

Maddy (59:40)
Yeah, but I guess it's interesting because one thing I've definitely experienced talking to people and starting to work with people who are coming back from having babies as well is that they have ideas about exercises they liked before and that might be things, often it's pull-ups, often it is things like hanging leg raises. Like I've had someone say to me, I want to get back to doing hanging leg raises. And again, it's not to say that is, yeah.

sarah (1:00:06)
Which is great. And your job as a coach, like yeah, I'll get you back there. You know? So I mean, I think it's great to have goals and, anyway, sorry. Get back to things.

Maddy (1:00:17)
Oh yeah, no, I was just gonna say, and so it's obviously good to know that those exercises are great, but there actually may be things that you have seen have a really great impact on people's climbing. There are a broader range of things that may be more accessible, especially earlier on in your recovery period.

sarah (1:00:36)
Well, and climbing is movement, right? So thinking about, okay, how am I moving through ab exercises, not holding still? So we need dynamic abs that can lengthen and shorten instead of just abs that hold us in one position. So I think that's really important to think about is how can I move through this exercise while loading, which is why I like planks, because you're loading your upper body, you're loading your feet, and you're connecting through the middle.

Maddy (1:01:02)
And so is like when that comes back to like these breathing exercises, is there sort of a cue there, I suppose I'm thinking, for people when they kind of form that slight brace?

sarah (1:01:18)
Yeah, so think about when you form your brace, you don't want your belly to move a lot. OK, so you're keeping the front of your abdominal wall.

Maddy (1:01:23)
Mm-hmm.

sarah (1:01:26)
fairly tight and the breath, the brace, is spread all the way around for when you breathe. So when you inhale down, you want all of it to move back sides belly. So when you're in your plank position, have somebody put a hand on your back and a hand on your belly, and then do a really deep inhale for me and see if your back can move just as much as your belly. Or if you have to let your abdominal contraction go a little bit to give the deep breath, and that's gonna be a big clue for you.

a little bit to give that deep breath and that's saying whoa you don't have an abdominal breathing system that is as strong and as efficient as it could be but if you could maximally contract those abs while giving a really deep breath then that is awesome because then you've got that kind of maxed out system that's working really effectively like the gold medal winner Michael Phelps was holding that nice brace with his ribs moving without his neck and shoulders moving.

Maddy (1:02:23)
So this is what we're all aiming for. That's nice. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, I think it'd be nice to move on from breathing, which is obviously really, really important. But I wanted to talk to you a little bit, I suppose more about like experience of training for people postpartum, especially fear and fear around training and...

sarah (1:02:25)
Exactly, Olympic level gold medalist rib cage movement. Exactly.

Maddy (1:02:50)
I guess around what is okay and what is not okay. And yeah, more just the actual, yeah, that people might feel not very confident when they're going back to it, more from like the soft side of things. And I guess what your experience maybe personally was with that, but also with supporting the people that you work with, threw back into exercise and training.

sarah (1:03:13)
Oh, it's fear is so hard because you go from, I was the bravest person in the world and I had kids. And then all of a sudden your body is like, you have a purpose here, you need to stay alive. And so you have this little voice, whether you recognize it or not, saying like, no, you need to stay alive. You can't take that risk. Or suddenly the risk feels so much more monumental.

the hormones that are produced when you have a baby and it gets better the further away you get from postpartum. So I'm just gonna throw that out there for people. So if you are feeling really panicky newly postpartum just sit with it and it will it will improve but I think fear training is incredibly important during this time period and just know you're not alone and pretty much every single postpartum person that I have talked to who is a climber has

of leading postpartum, absolutely terrified. I went from being the person who would, sure, I'll lead that or I'll finish the route if no one could get it up, like, yeah, I'll go try anything to.

I don't even want to tie in and leave. Like I'm terrified above a bolt. And so I had to work my way back to being less afraid. And it just is such a process. But I think that process is incredibly important. And so I wanted to share two things that really helped me. And it's my process of evaluating whether or not the fear is real. And so I will have a process for tying in. And I will check my knot myself. I will give it a tug. I will ask my partner to check it.

I will tell myself I am safe, I can climb, and I can fall, and

have to look at this rope again. And I think that's really important because how many times have you checked or not halfway up a climb?

And how much fear has that put in your head when you catch yourself checking you're not? So I think having that process of how you tie in, and for boulders, what is your landing like? Who is spotting you? How can you safely fall? Taking one minute to work through that process to make sure you have that process down is not something to be discounted. And you need to tell the person talking to you, like, hey, give me a second. Let me time a knot. Let me time a knot thoroughly, not in the middle of a conversation. And then I need you to check me

Here's what I need from you as a partner and a belayer. And then I will check every bolt and I will look at every fall. Is every fall safe? Might be a big fall, but is it safe? And then I will tell myself on the ground, I can fall anywhere on this route. Every fall is safe. And then I can climb. And usually I can climb pretty much without fear then because I've taken myself through this mental training exercise.

that then allows me to step into it. And then obviously fall practice, not pushing yourself so far outside your comfort zone that you're paralyzed with fear and then that hurts you in the long run. I think Hazel Finley talks about this so much and I love it. I love that concept of staying, of going into that orange zone or that yellow zone, not pushing yourself into the red zone. And then that way you can build up and not be...

terrified and frozen and having that process of getting better, but just you're not alone. I think most people are scared postpartum and you have to re-evaluate your processes.

Maddy (1:06:36)
Yeah, and it sounds like you really created a new pre-climbing routine, and that might not be something that people have had pre-pregnancy and having a family, but maybe that is something to consider. And actually, I know that I have discussed this and kind of created pre-climbing routines with mums that I work with, partly because as well, your mind is now so busy.

sarah (1:07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (1:07:05)
that actually that switch into climbing mode is really hard and it's maybe hard to really focus that attention and having that pre-climb routine is great for the safety checks and for knowing that you're comfortable with what you're about to do for your confidence, but maybe part of what it does as well is really focus your attention in little steps towards what you're about to do, which is your climbing. And once you've got more attention on your climbing,

as well.

sarah (1:07:36)
Exactly, exactly. And then also respecting allostatic load. Like having a baby is hard. And if you're working on top of it, like there were definitely time periods where the allostatic load, like the amount of just sheer stress in my life was so much that I was like, you know what, I show up and I'm like, I need a top rope today. Like I don't have it in me.

I need to tap rope. And just respecting that and being gentle with yourself and being okay with it and just being like, I need an easy mental day, but I wanna move my body and I wanna feel good and I love the sport of climbing.

Maddy (1:08:08)
Yeah, yeah, definitely leading into what feels right for you and maybe not feeling pressure from external sources, whether that's like, you know, people at the crag, or I guess there could definitely be a feeling of people knowing you as.

sarah (1:08:16)
Mm-hmm.

Maddy (1:08:25)
the climber you were before you had children and wanting to kind of meet those expectations and that could be with getting back to form physically or mentally and I guess people really always keeping a sharp focus on what they love about climbing and what really intrinsically drives them can help them lean more into it.

sarah (1:08:46)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And knowing who you are and just, people aren't paying attention to you as much as you think they are. I mean, you know, they really aren't. You do what makes you feel comfortable and just let it go. You know what, you're raising humans. Like, this job is hard.

Maddy (1:08:53)
Yeah, yeah, it's...

Yeah, yeah, alongside getting your breathing back to Michael Phelps level, that's hard.

sarah (1:09:05)
I know exactly. You're going to need to be focusing on breathing here, which is why we can't, you can't do it all at once, which is why it needs to be that process.

Maddy (1:09:12)
Yeah.

Nice. I've got a set of words written down here and it's starting to wrap up. I think there's been so much fascinating stuff in this conversation. A lot of quite tricky stuff around the breath, quite hard concepts and movements, but also some really nice sort of...

as some bits of your experience. And I think this is from an email that you sent out. So it's willpower, discipline, planning and habit forming. So I think I've kind of read.

something that you've written to share about this and especially this around parenthood and becoming a parent for the first time as well. So yeah, I don't know whether you just wanna talk about your take on kind of willpower, discipline and planning and how this fits into a life as a climber and a parent.

sarah (1:10:10)
Oh, that's a good one. And then how the allocytic load fits in as well. So willpower is something that we can grow. When we exercise willpower, we say no to something, we do something we don't want to do, we actually grow our willpower.

Maddy (1:10:15)
Yeah

sarah (1:10:28)
I can't remember the region of the brain, but it's something that we can grow. And then we look at routines. So if we are doing our rehab core public floor routine, and it's not the sexiest thing, nobody really wants to do it, you know? But if we say, and I feel like as a new mom, especially there's so much that needs to be done, the laundry, the dishes, and granted, you should have help with all of these things, but.

If we're home and our partner is not home during this postpartum time period, then we feel more of the weight of the stuff falls on us. At least we can. And so I think that one of the things to do is have your priorities.

and prioritize exercise. The laundry basket can sit there. The dishes can sit there. You can do them together at the end of the day. So I think that having those routines in place and prioritizing it, and I think it was, I'm going to say a little bit easier for me because I do exercise for a living, and I love it and it's my passion. So it was really easy for me to be like, I can use clean clothes out of the laundry basket, it's fine. But I think taking that step back and prioritizing it in the beginning will then help you get those routines

power and so you've got to have the it's on my calendar I'm doing it during nap time it's I'm not doing anything else I'm not getting distracted by anything else and then once that becomes your routine then you don't have to think about it anymore and your body will thank you because you're going to make such great progress.

Maddy (1:11:57)
and you'll get back to the thing that you love as well. And you will learn how it fits into your life and how that changes as your family gets older and stuff like that.

sarah (1:12:00)
Mm-hmm, exactly.

Oh, which is such a great thing. I just want to tell all the new moms out there, just, oh, we are, my kids are in climbing comps now and we're working on strategies and they, they love climbing and it's something we do as a family and it is the best. I mean, we are in the best phase right now and I am loving it so much. So for all of you who are in newborns, not sleeping and two year olds starting into tantrums, just hang in there. It gets so much easier.

climbing expands and grows because you will hopefully have these new little people that want to do it as a family activity and I just I think it's great it's so anyway just hang in there's all I'm saying it gets easier

Maddy (1:12:54)
So I was, when I think about kind of wrapping up this conversation, I guess I often wonder like

Is there something that you think really slips under the radar when it comes to pregnancy and postpartum? Something people really don't think about enough or a kind of mistake people make? And yeah, I'm interested to hear from you if you think there is something that we haven't covered like that. Or maybe just if you have covered those things.

What's a really great kind of tip you found really helped you keep getting outside and keep kind of developing your outdoor climbing? Sounds like you've really progressed this. It could even be a logistical thing. It sounds like you go out climbing outside a lot. So yeah, either both of those or one of the two, because I'm not sure whether we've covered everything in the first one.

sarah (1:13:50)
Well, so just know that I think the biggest takeaway is there's a season for everything. And no one is doing everything all at once. And when I had small kids, I was building a business.

And I was maybe getting to the gym once or twice a week. And I definitely wasn't climbing outside. It was like a couple trips a year. And it was hard. And you're just not doing everything at once. There's a season. Pick your season. And now is our season for outdoor climbing. And we're getting outside all the time. And my work stress is fairly low because I got it to that point where it can be fairly low. And so I think just knowing that if you see somebody who looks like they're doing everything, they're not doing everything. They are doing the thing

really well and they are not doing everything. And so I think taking that pressure off yourself and just asking yourself what season is this for me?

Is it my season to focus on outside climbing? Is it my secret season to focus on some gym stuff? Is it my season to do a workout at my house? Because I don't have time, and it's gonna add extra stress to my life. So I think just giving yourself permission to have seasons and know that seasons don't last forever, I think can be just a huge stress reliever during this time period.

Maddy (1:15:05)
Yeah, and that's something I've actually used a lot, and we use it in climbing training quite a bit. It's sort of knowing what is your intention right now, and I think people are often, they do know it when you say it, and I really like the sort of analogies of seasons, but it's also easy to forget it, I think as you start to see other people, and you know how the world is at the moment with Instagram and this, other people's lives, or snapshots of their life,

are so visible to you that maybe it's yes, knowing that there's seasons, but also having a gentle way of reminding yourself at intervals or if you start to feel that, I don't know, any amount of frustration or like, you know, not feeling as happy with the season that you're in.

sarah (1:15:46)
Hmm.

Yeah, no, and it can be hard, and you know what? It's okay to not be happy with the season you're in.

Like that's okay. They're hard seasons and it's, you're not always going to be happy, but you know what? It's going to pass. And then when you get to a good season, which you will get to, it's going to be even that more glorious. So I think that if we can just take a step back and we don't always get everything we want, you know, that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother set box. But, but I think that just knowing that everything changes, especially with children, the things you like and the things you don't like and the seasons that you like and don't like.

just knowing it will change and then that can give you something to hang on to.

Maddy (1:16:37)
Awesome. Well, this has kind of been a conversation that's gone through like a lot of technical aspects with kind of breathing and then transferring that back to climbing as well as some of your experiences. Do you think there's anything that you would like to round off with or something that you haven't shared that you think is, I don't know, really, I don't know, really resonates with you?

sarah (1:16:59)
I just, I love climbing. I love it so much. And I love identifying and meeting people, especially women, especially women who have had kids, just who are still in it and are fighting to be athletes and just love the sport so much as well. So I just wanna say, I see you and I wanna meet you. So I just, I think it's great. And I just, I love the things that they're overcoming and coming back from, from pregnancy and postpartum and busy lives and work schedules.

and everything to fight for that athleticism. And I just, I think it's something that should be really celebrated.

Maddy (1:17:36)
Yeah, yeah, me too, for sure. Like I have friends around me who are doing it and I'm just like, yeah, you are like, it's really, yeah, it's really motivating and inspirational to see. Well, it sounds like there's a few things that we'll try and link in with. I know that some of the stuff we talked about is a bit visual and it sounds like you have a few exercises and links that we can share with. So people might wanna listen to the podcast and then watch some of those things and also.

sarah (1:17:44)
Yeah.

Maddy (1:18:01)
practice it. I mean, it sounds like a lot of these things, it's about incorporating them into your routines and really building them in like with the breathing exercises. So I know that I'm really excited to actually get home and try this because when I gave it a go as you were talking, I was like, wow, yeah, this is really difficult and I get a lot of tension around my neck. So yeah, as always scratching my own itch with this conversation.

sarah (1:18:25)
Well it was wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for letting me talk about these things.

Maddy (1:18:30)
Yeah, and thank you for all the time that you've given. And I will direct people to your website and your Instagram account as well. Amazing.