Highlight: Climbing In Your 50s with Steve McClure

In today’s Lattice Podcast Highlight, host Tom Randall sits down with the legendary Steve McClure to discuss the secrets behind maintaining and performing into your 50s. Steve's storied career includes ground-breaking ascents and impressive repeats across all climbing disciplines, making him a unique authority on the subject.

Highlights from this discussion include:

• Emphasising the importance of aligning training with specific climbing goals for optimal results.
• Understanding and addressing weaknesses
• Importance of top-quality trainers
• The significance of dedicating undistracted time to climbing and how full-time commitment can lead to substantial improvements.

This 13min episode is just a highlight from a more in-depth conversation that delves into the evolution of climbing grades, training methods, and Steve’s unique approach to staying at the top of his game.

For the full discussion, tune in to the complete episode available on all major podcast platforms.

As a thank you to our listeners, get 15% off our Lattice Training Plans with the code PODCAST15.

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

Transcript

Tom (00:00)
What do you think of the training approaches or tools that have?

changed the climbing grade the most that you've seen over the years or witnessed? The actual tools themselves? Yeah, either the physical tools like, for example, a campus board or just an approach. And I think I'm coming to this with the reference of you know very well the professional climbing community and you've witnessed what those people have done over the last 10, 20 years plus.

what your perspective is on. So that's interesting because it varies depending on what you want to do with your climbing. And so I would say, I might get in trouble for saying this, but I would say what the climbers were doing 30 years ago was pretty good for sport climbing on the whole. But it maybe wasn't very good, it was rubbish for...

modern indoor climbing and it might not have been so good for like brute bouldering but it was pretty good for sport climbing and if you look at what people like Ben and Jerry were doing they were doing well with sport climbing so that was just like climbing a lot, fingery stuff and endurance based stuff but it there was very little of the real power the real compression that's sort of more modern style so we've got a lot more of that now which is really helping

So things have come a long way and things have moved forward considerably. But what we were doing, what they were doing, I won't say we, it doesn't include me, what they were doing back then I think was fairly forward thinking. You know, there's like crimpy cellars in the Sheffield and all that sort of stuff. That was appropriate. Yeah, I very much agree. I think they'd looked at what they wanted to do. They want to climb whatever at Ravenstor or whatever at Malham and it's got some...

Rubbishly small handle. It's got some bad footholds. It's gonna take a minute and a half to climb it I should be in that zone. So that's what they did and those routes are still the same. They still require the same Training to get up them. But now obviously we've got like tons of bouldering which is wide compression style climbing and people weren't doing so much of that then Yeah, yes, it's definitely changed quite a bit. I suppose the key to training and it being successful is

is to just look at what you're trying to do and try and at least replicate to some extent what you're trying to do. Because if you're trying to do something and your training is completely different, it won't help that much. It's not rocket science really, is it? No, I mean, I think you've just basically encapsulated the entire approach of what we do at Lattice, which is to go, what is it that you're trying to do? And then make sure there's a really good match up with the training and preparation to the thing.

that you're trying to do at the end. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell. That's it, folks. That's what you need to do. We should just snip that for 30 seconds and just repeatedly put it on Instagram and YouTube for the next 10 years. It's not easy to do that, though. It's quite hard to understand to some extent what you really want to do. That can be quite hard in the first place. And then if you finally do manage to understand it, you've got to have a way of...

Replicating that to some extent, you know, you don't live near an indoor facility. That's tricky. We don't live near any outdoor climbing That's tricky as well, you know, if you've you very time starved, it's not easy to make you know the junction between What you need to do? And what you're actually doing it's not as easy as what it might first appear to be no I feel for people that have have got like a long -term project say in the peak, but they live in London

and their local wall is all massive volumes and jumps between volumes. You know, that's going to be hard for them to replicate what they need. Yeah. I mean, it's exactly why I train specifically 90 % of my time at one wall in Sheffield, because it represents what I want to do when I go climbing outside. And I very much choose that. I love the other walls. And I think they're really cool. And I've kind of, it sucks sometimes because my friends go there more, but I know what replicates, or, you know, transfers across into my climbing. So I just have to.

stick with it. Yeah and the other problem of course is that as climbers we like to do loads of different things. Yeah. There might not be, it's like right after I finish this project here which is like a five moon bullet problem I want to try that project over there which is like a 50 meter long trad endurance route so different so that's why I mean that's the beauty of climbing is that you can you know bring loads of things together but ultimately we do need to focus on what we feel we really want to.

succeeding, you know, we have a like, that's what I really want to do. And the other stuff, yeah, I mean, it's good to be good at that. But, you know, if I'm not so good at it, it doesn't really matter that much, but this is where I want to perform. And then you need to just make sure you're training in the right zone. Yeah. Yeah. So last question I have, and it kind of looks towards the future is what do you feel is either the approach or tools that

are still kind of lacking or need work or development in terms of climbing that hold us back from the next steps. Wow, what's holding us back from the next step? What are your feelings over? That's a bit of a question, isn't it? Flipping heck. I'm just trying to think of myself here. What's holding me back? I think what has held me back is...

the understanding of my sort of like body and the areas of weakness that I may have, which I don't know about. So if we just sort of like swing back to the question we've just had about like what you need to look at your projects and work out what you need to do to get up that project, you could look at it very simplicity and go, right, well, yeah, it's got some small holes and I get pumped on it. So I need to train on small holes.

for two minutes getting pumped. But it might be that, actually do you know what? Your shoulders are weak. That's what's holding you back. Or maybe it's, you know, your feet are weak. You know, there's a whole body going on here and it's a whole chain. And I think personally, my understanding of the chain, and I'm sure of it even now, has been poor, to say the least. And I think in order to progress, and this is, you know, talking about the cutting edge as well.

the top climbers will, and some of them will have this already, but a lot of them won't have access to like top quality trainers and coaches who do understand all that. Cause we're a young sport as well. How many top coaches know that anyway? You know, I mean, I spend a lot of time coaching people. I'm not the expert in all that stuff. And I think that's my weakness. In fact, as a total specific thing, my lack of crimp strength at the moment,

I'm not very good at crimps and I don't think I ever have been either really. My pure brute crimp strength I think is rubbish because I've got weak shoulders. I don't think it's because I've got wet fingers and it's taken me a while to sort of understand that and I'm thinking now wow I don't need to hang on a fingerboard on tiny edges I need to get my shoulders strong and you know I need someone to tell me that. Yeah it takes a while to realize that. Yeah so I'm realizing it now but

Somebody could maybe told me that years ago and go, yeah, your shoulders are feeble, mate. So that I think will be certainly for the maybe not for the cutting edge, who might have access to that already, but for the masses that are operating just below cutting edge, having access to that, that information, I think will be game changing because we've got facility wise. It's we've got plenty of that at the moment. So I don't think we're lacking facilities. It might require a bit of imagination to.

to use your facility in the right way. But yeah, education maybe is the cutting edge part of it. What do you think? Do you have an opinion? Yeah. I mean, you're helping, you're doing it. You're a Mr. Lattice. Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree with those points at all. I think they're, yeah, they are really relevant and those are a big part of the equation. I feel like now in terms of the next steps forward, it has to be,

has to also be coupled with enough of the top end climbing population having access to non -distracted time for 10 years. Because I think, like you said about actual training support, really good coaches with good knowledge in with that, you also need to be able to give 5 ,000, 10 ,000, 20 ,000 climbers across the world 10 years of undistracted time.

where they're not having to study for their professional qualifications. They're not having to hold down a job for 25 hours a week to somehow support their professional climbing career. They're not having to do all the other things that kind of pull us out of the time to be able to really focus on actually doing good quality work, which means that we use the knowledge that we have in terms of how to get good. Because climbing is such a time intensive thing, because it's a really complex sport.

So you can do all the training, which also takes loads of time, but you also need to practise loads. So yes, I mean, I feel like I'm a better climber now, technically than I've ever been, without a doubt. And I'm still getting better. I still notice like, Ooh, that's new. I'm doing that. That's a cool thing. So yes, time is for sure super important. And that's going to, whether we have enough athletes with access to that level of time.

I guess will depend on the size of the sport and the money that can flow into the sport. And I don't think we're there yet. Will we ever get there? I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of high profile sports out there where the people that are at the top of the game have full -time jobs. You know, there's loads of them. People that go to the Olympics that work all the time. Okay, so you've got footballers who get to train a lot. They are incredible.

whether we'll have a lot of climbers that have access to that kind of time. I don't know. I don't know. It's certainly, I feel like I've had a lot of time on rock, but I've had to balance it with, you know, full -time job, pretty much whole my whole life, family, kids, all of it. And would I have been better with just climbing? I don't know. I'd have been bored. Yeah, that is, that's a whole thing as well. This is something that me and Pete often talk about.

because we both have normal -ish careers as such and we don't spend all of our time climbing and we both go, I think we'd just go absolutely mad if we just did full -time pro climber. But I still think objectively I'd be a better climber if I had done that. Might have been demotivated or bored or, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. It's difficult to say. Yeah, it is interesting. I think one of the things I still love about climbing at the moment is that most of the...

Most of the really top -end climbers are just normal people. They're just normal people that have got kind of jobs, got families. They're just normal people and that I think is great. And the fact that you can be at the crag with someone who's a relative beginner and someone who is like the best, literally in the world, and everyone's having the same thing. They're all having the same challenge and they're all kind of the same. You're not gonna be...

feeling like, whoa, like I'm outclassed here. There's a bunch of like top end climbers doing their thing. Whether if some, if the society could support loads of climbers that just climbed, I think it might separate that from the masses as it were. You know, like footballers, footballers, you know, they're stars. They're like, they're bigger stars than film stars. They're like up on pedestals. And would that happen when climbing? Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, well, I guess we'll.

We'll find out in the future. Well Steve, it's been amazing having you back on the podcast again. And as always, I always really like hearing your perspectives on everything. And it's nice to be able to talk to someone who's spent, yeah, like likewise, all of their adult life in the climbing industry and so having that back and forth. So yeah, thanks for coming in and chatting again. Always a pleasure.