Art of Prevention
Our mission is to decrease the prevalence of preventable injuries and athletes therein optimizing performance by decreasing the time that our athletes spend benched due to injury. We are going to distill information and practices from experts in the field of injury prevention. High level coaches and top performing athletes. We believe this information should be accessible to everyone so that we can reduce the rates of preventable injuries.
Art of Prevention
Secrets to Safe and Effective Climbing and setting: Insights from Mike Kimmel
Unlock the secrets to climbing like never before as we chat with Mike Kimmel, the brilliant mind behind Grip Bouldering in Colorado. Curious about how climbing gyms have evolved to prioritize fun and ergonomic designs over rock-like environments? Join us as Mike, a seasoned coach and route setter, takes us through his remarkable journey from a middle school climbing team to leading one of the most innovative bouldering gyms. You'll gain invaluable insights into how the sport has transformed and what it takes to keep climbers engaged and injury-free with constantly fresh and creative challenges.
Ever wondered how to foster a love for climbing beyond just physical training? Mike shares his wisdom on coaching young climbers to find joy in the process rather than just chasing grades. Discover key strategies for recognizing internal signals of fatigue and differentiating between quality practice and sheer volume. We delve into the importance of managing energy during training and competitions, emphasizing quick adaptation and strategic practice sessions. Whether you're an aspiring athlete or a seasoned climber, learn how different climbing styles and locations can significantly impact performance.
Safety and diversity in climbing are paramount, and Mike covers it all. From the critical aspects of route setting and selecting appropriate holds to prevent injuries, to effective training techniques for both indoor and outdoor climbs, this episode is packed with expert advice. Learn about using climbing boards like the grasshopper and kilter boards to improve specific techniques, and how to build endurance for longer outdoor routes even if you're limited to a bouldering gym. Tune in to understand the principles of injury prevention, including monitoring your workload and recognizing the importance of personalized training plans. Don't miss this comprehensive exploration of enhancing performance and safety in the climbing world.
Follow Grip Bouldering @gripbouldering
Website https://www.gripbouldering.com/
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Hello everyone and welcome to yet another episode of the Art of Prevention podcast and, as always, I have another very special guest and today, a little bit of a different tactic. We're still going with climbing as the topic, but I'm talking to somebody who actually has one-on-one access to athletes and all of the things that we're climbing on in a gym. Today I'm sitting down with Mike Kimmel, who is the head coach and head route setter and part owner of Grip Bouldering out in the Western Slope of Colorado. So sitting down with Mike today we're gonna be talking all about how he got into climbing and then all about route setting and coaching and how we can route set and coach to prevent injuries. So, mike, thank you so much for sitting down with me today and let's get a little bit more of your background. What initially got you into rock climbing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a real succinct intro, sorry. Oh, thank you. Uh, yeah, so I started climbing when I was like 13, 14 years old. I got introduced to it from a middle school climbing team. Um, so I've moved around a lot, but at that time I was living in telluride, colorado, and climbing was just a sport offered by the school. I had a lot of friends who were in it and within a few sessions of trying it out it was very clear like this is the thing I really enjoy doing and pretty much dropped all other sports and extracurricular activities. Telluride has ski PE. You get Thursday and Friday's afternoons off to just go ski in classes. Everyone's a pretty skilled skier by high school. Start ditching skiing to go climb with the climbing gym. Like the other sports has played soccer, did muay thai and boxing, quit everything and basically focused on climbing and that's been kind of like the driving force from that point on.
Speaker 2:So moved to Tacoma, washington for college, met some climbers. My first week there a climbing gym was just opening in Tacoma, washington for college, met some climbers. My first week there, a climbing gym was just opening in Tacoma. That first week got hired pretty much immediately. So I've been working in climbing gyms since maybe like 2003, 2004. So ran youth programs for Edgeworks climbing in Tacoma, did route setting for them, moved to Jackson, wyoming, set and coached at the enclosure. Moved to vale for a long time uh, coached and set at the vale athletic club and then in around 2016 2017, we moved to grand junction, started coaching a climbing team here and then the last few years, myself and a couple other partners opened up grips. That's the abridged version of how we got here.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, that's awesome and I've you know grip is like my home gym now. So I feel like I've been very fortunate to benefit from all the experience that you have with route setting and coaching, because I go in there and coming from like the summit climbing gym, where you know it's like I was one of the setters and I'm like not a very great setter, you know, going out to where you guys are like putting in some really high level setting and refreshing boulder problems really frequently. It's been a pretty awesome experience for me and I think it's really going to benefit my climbing. So I'm a little bit selfish and I'm like psyched on grip right now.
Speaker 2:I'm a little bit selfish and then I'm like psyched on grip right now. Oh, thanks, I'm glad to hear that. We definitely like yeah, the entire team definitely puts a lot of effort into setting and we refresh the gym pretty much every month. So, yeah, definitely tries to keep people climbing and keep it novel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that spray wall on there is pretty legit as well.
Speaker 2:Hopefully the next round is even better. I like where it's at right now. So we just finished filling it in a bit more this morning. Hopefully we'll have it on Stoked by next week. We'll leave it up this week and get some more feedback, make some last adjustments, but then let people start adding problems. They'll be good.
Speaker 1:Nice, and one thing that we were talking about a little bit before we started recording was the changes that we've seen in climbing. So I mean, I've only been climbing for like 11 or 12 years at this point, but even in that time span I've seen really huge changes, not only in hold types and hold manufacturing, but also the movements of climbing, specifically competition climbing. So you've been setting and climbing for and you have way more experience than I do in this scenario. What are some of the changes that you've seen with climbing in general but really like setting and hold styles?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean like looking at setting hold style, wall style. If you look back at older climbing gym designs, there's definitely a tendency towards making it look and feel like real rock for a while and that dictated a lot of how you could set and what could go on those walls. So if you've been to like an old climbing gym where you may have some kind of concrete-ish feeling structure and there's these little divots and different features embedded into the walls, a lot of modern holds just don't work well on that kind of surface. It's not a flat surface to affix something towards. And a lot of those older holds if you remember the old metolius swirly colored things but like they're meant to kind of look and feel more like rock holds and weren't being really treated as they're their own category of climbing. And now you've made this trend towards.
Speaker 2:All of this is really meant to be ergonomic, shiny, fun, good looking things to climb on for a very purposeful climbing gym environment, right. So it's not necessarily that you're going to the climbing gym to replicate what it feels like to climb on a rock so that you can train to go climb on a rock. There's a ton of people who are going to the climbing gym because the climbing gym is just fun and that's where they want to go and having these cool big holes and shapes to climb on is fun and that's where they want to go and having these cool big holds and shapes to climb on is fun. Movement-wise, it does make the movement in modern climbing gyms in some cases way more dynamic because the holds are much larger, they tend to be pretty ergonomic and you can hit some holds at pretty high speed and still control it well.
Speaker 1:But that does create this bigger variability in movement style, like there are moves that I'll do in a climbing gym that just don't appear very often when I'm bouldering or sport climbing outside right yeah, I totally agree and, you know, looking at like even like world cups and national championships from like the 2010s, where you saw people with just like insane brute force of like finger strength, all all of the holds, it was like, okay, well, in order to make this hard, we're going to do small, crappy holds with difficult, extended movements, something that we were kind of talking about before and now.
Speaker 2:It's just so dynamic and it's like geez, it feels like you need to be like a pretty decent gymnast in order to do many of the boulder problems, because it's, you know, double paddling and jumping towards these larger volumes yeah, there's definitely a much higher emphasis on coordination and your ability to kind of chain momentum together between movements than there used to be that older style of competition where you know it centers around finger strength and a few bad holds and hard positions.
Speaker 2:It's also kind of difficult visually as a competition or a spectator sport, because one tiny crimp versus another tiny crimp is kind of hard to differentiate how hard this move is. But watching some sequence of like oh here's a paddle dino where someone has to skate across four holds, one athlete hits hits two, one athlete hits three, one athlete hits four that's really easy for a spectator to see and differentiate the difficulty between. So I can see the rationale behind some of those shifts. But you're also right, the general level of finger strength has just gotten better and there's a lot of people who can probably just pull through most crimps that are given to them, which makes it less of a good test to differentiate skill level between climbers in that competition. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it almost feels like just having freakishly strong fingers is a prerequisite. It's your ticket to entry and a ticket to get through semis and qualifiers before you get to these very spectacle driven finals where it is like we're trying to get the crowd going with these big jumps and dynamic movements and coordination movements.
Speaker 2:Well, it's something like there are a lot of climbers like everyone looks solid on the wall, it looks like they can hold on to anything. But I guarantee there's going to be a big range of actual finger strength metrics between those athletes and there are some that probably are like off the charts your one arm hanging plus 50 kilos, whatever. And I would not be surprised if there's some athletes that really can't do a good one arm hang on a small edge. But that effect doesn't really play out when they're climbing. They have so many other skills they've developed and they may understand how to use their strength really well that they can jump to a hold and position themselves very quickly. And yeah, the I guess what we see as a spectator is, in both cases it looks like you can just latch that hold, but there may be different factors for why they're able to hold on so well, right, yeah, I know like one.
Speaker 1:Whenever I see like, um, like a lot of the usa athletes, especially like natalia grossman or someone like that, it feels like every single competition that I've seen natalia grossman in, they always actually talk about her ankle dorsiflexion and her ankle mobility because it just it looks like her toes can basically touch her shin in that case and the whenever she's on those slopes downwards holds, she's able to put way more surface area and shoe rubber on those and then get way more grip from those than many of the other competitors. It seems like people comment on that quite a bit. I think that kind of attests to the point that you're making, where maybe natalia grossman doesn't have the strongest fingers in the entire competition but she might have the most top outs, which is really like what we've seen a lot of times, right, yeah, yeah, that's exactly the point, right?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of competitors have little factors like that. We're like oh, you've specialized this other skill pretty well and that may compensate for whatever aspect here you're a little weaker on what are a few more intangibles?
Speaker 1:so you're also the head coach for the Brit bouldering team. What are some of the intangibles that you try to distill down to your athletes to make them better climbers but also less injury prone? That's a broad subject. Well, like beyond, like just finger strength. So we know we have to have good finger strength as a prerequisite for climbing. But like there are other things too, like how do you train coordination? Or is it like you find that kid with poor mobility and you try and do things to improve their mobility versus the other kids that are just Gumby style flexible, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I would say like I think all the ones you're describing are actually still pretty tangible things, right, so I can see like, oh, this, this kid is really struggling to hold on or this kid is really struggling in terms of their flexibility. Those are the easier ones to fix. The ones that I think are probably more conceptual for them is understanding, like the enjoyment of being challenged in a process, right right. So like, yeah, you feel good when you flash. Whatever grade is hard for you, that's a good little ego boost. This thing that may be a grade lower, that's outside of your style, is probably the more beneficial climb for you to get better at climbing.
Speaker 2:So learning to kind of differentiate between the grade and the personal challenge of it and enjoying that personal challenge and on the injury side, probably the toughest one is teaching kids to train in moderation and understanding that, like, once you get psyched on this, more time in the gym doesn't necessarily mean better results. There's like a definite differentiation between quality practice and, just you know, in some cases we use the phrase like jump mileage. Right, you're coming in there and you're climbing, but you're not really improving as a result of those sessions. So things will do within a single session if they're projecting. Once you start showing negative progress on a climb, that's probably a good sign to walk away and that's probably a good sign to prevent injury as well too, because those muscles, those joints, everything you're using there, are clearly getting fatigued. You no longer have the coordination or accuracy you had at the start of the attempts. You're more likely to make a mistake that overloads something or get into a weird position that you can't get out of quick enough. That's where we want to kind of avoid.
Speaker 2:So many things that you just talked about just resonated with me, so like those two factors that were probably the biggest ones right Understanding, like what is your body's capacity and how do you read those internal signals? What are you getting enjoyment from in this process? And if it's just the grades or it's just the top outs, it's going to be short lived and if you can get them to enjoy the full process of trying hard and improvement, they're just going to continue to get better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got smacked down on something that grade wise I was like this shouldn't smack. I was like end of the day, I'll just do this. You know, baby brothers in rifle. And I was up in the correct sequence and I was having a really hard time, like mobility wise, like getting my foot up in that like kind of gas stone move before you get to that surfboard thing that you can sit on, and I was like super frustrated. But when I was like lowering after, like finally getting up it, I was like gosh, like that's just such a good thing for me to do right now. So I wish that we had done this interview before Cause. Then maybe I would have like liked that frustration a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm like this kind of diverges a bit. But that idea of having a grade or a climb that you feel like, oh, I should do this because it's that number or that grade, really doesn't take into account that grade at Rifle, that grade at Shelf Road, that grade at Maple Canyon, at shelf road, that grade at maple canyon. Like there are different styles of movement, it's all climbing, but you have to learn how to read the rock, you have to learn how to accommodate whatever's going on at that place. Things that think like both spaces. If it's more run out than someone's used to, the great difficulty of movement may not matter, it's the both spacing that's in their head and it makes it feel harder, right? So realizing that like, oh, that number I should do, you're right, it's not necessarily a number you should do, but it is a learning experience if you feel like, oh, I'm physically capable at this grade, but this thing is shutting me down, what's off?
Speaker 1:right, yeah, yeah. So I'm like definitely learning and like processing that kind of stuff with my climbing personally as well. Now, when you're coaching these kids, all these kids have super duper high energy. They're able to pop off the wall, pop right back on the wall and seemingly have the same amount of energy throughout the entire session and sometimes like having that frustration from the boulder gives them more psych and more energy. What are some of the cues that you look at to peel that kid off the wall and be like hey, you need to take a break, you need to move on to the next boulder problem.
Speaker 2:Depends where we're at within a season or a practice and what the goals of the session are Right. So if we're training for competition, a lot of it is what can you red point within a very short time period? Because competition. You have four minutes, you want to flash and if you're not going to flash, you're really trying to get as high as you can within three to four tries. Outside of certain coordination move scenarios where we may play with tactics, but generally you're trying to flash and if you're not flashing, you're trying to flash, and if you're not flashing, you're trying to get it the next two or three tries. You're trying to get it pretty quickly. So we train in that way.
Speaker 2:Here's your four projects. Here's your set amount of time on each one. Doesn't matter how much progress you're making. Once the timer goes, everyone shifts on to the next problem. We do a lot of games that have set numbers of attempts and that games that have set numbers of attempts and that's part of the challenge. You will get three tries to do this thing I just made up and at the end of three tries it's gone. If you memorize it, great, you can come back and work on it on your own time, but for the sake of what we're doing, it's a three attempt game, so you really have to kind of leverage your attempts and not hop on if you're not ready. For some kids it definitely is harder than than others. I think they just adapt to it over time. The younger you are, the harder it tends to be to rest. The older you get, the more you realize like, oh, I really do want to chalk up and brush those holes because I really do want to finish this I, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's something that also commentators at world cups really remark on quite a bit is when you see somebody and the clock is winding down they've given two attempts and they've got three minutes left on the on the clock and they'll just sit there and they'll just wait for like a minute and they're like wow, like look at the emotional regulation capacity of that climber to let that clock run down, get a little bit back in their musculature that they just taxed, so then they can put it all into that last effort and then hopefully get a little bit back in their musculature that they just taxed, so then they can put it all into that last effort and then hopefully get a little bit higher.
Speaker 2:Um, when you tend to see that quite often, for with experienced climbers and experienced competitors, right like very rarely do you see someone in finals who is rushing attempts. The outlying scenarios you may see may be like a tricky coordination start. You'll see a climber put in each one of attempts. If it's just run and jump and balance on the wall in the right way, yeah, they might fire off that 10 or 15 times because once you stick that move you can move on to the problem and it's not really finger strength or really taxing. But that's a unique scenario. Right, most, most climbs, you're not just gunning at it over and over in four minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, putting the setter hat back on. Now. One of the questions that I like to ask a lot of people who do programming or clinicians is if you wanted someone to get injured, what would you do in this scenario? Because oftentimes, when we figure out what makes people get injured in a very practical sense, we can recognize these things and these patterns and these trends, and then we can do the opposite of that or figure out some of the nuances behind. How can we still accomplish the outcome required without going towards injury? And the question is if you're setting to injure somebody, what would you set and how would you set that?
Speaker 2:I feel like there's a lot of things that you could do in this scenario. The ones that would come to mind first setting moves where the hands are likely to slip and the feet are really high, high up on the wall, so something where your heel or toe hooking up really high, both hands are on a sloper where it's very possible if you could just hop off backwards would be a risky position.
Speaker 1:Things where and that's from from a fall perspective, right, or are you talking about something like it? I'm thinking from a fall perspective.
Speaker 2:Okay, like there's another kind of question you're asking. This is something we're going over on every round of route. Setting is we're going back to. We're looking for these spots, as we've said, of like did we create any risky scenarios? Did we create a spot where I think someone can hurt themselves?
Speaker 2:Falling from the top of the wall is a hold gonna hurt someone? There is another example body position like a really extended gas stone overhead on a steep wall puts a lot of stress in the shoulder joint. If the hold is positive and people really want to keep throwing themselves at it because it's positive, they're just going to keep loading their shoulder in this overloaded position, right, and it makes it more like they hurt themselves. So there are different things. We'll tweak around that.
Speaker 2:If it's going to be that kind of position, maybe we make it a black dot climb. We make it a very hard climb and we know that'll be a deterrent for a lot of people who may otherwise want to jump on it. A lot. They can see this is meant to be very hard. So maybe that's not a position I want to get into. Or what we tend to do is we replace things with something that is going to be more comfortable, because it's a climbing gym and the majority of people are coming in to enjoy climbing. So if it's a painful position, it's not enjoyable. Don't need to have it yeah, that's another like theme.
Speaker 1:is the last thing that you want to do? Is you want to get hurt in training so that then you can't go outside and enjoy, like outdoor climbing or whatever it is you truly care about? What about like hold selection?
Speaker 2:Hold selection, I think is a tricky one for me. I think it depends on what your focus on in climbing is. So from us as a route setting team, thinking about serving a bunch of different user groups, we're looking at hold selection throughout the range of the wall, the range of climbers we're going to have. So, as an example, easier climbs things in that v0 to v2 range we tend to avoid using that many pocket just because things that are isolating the fingers it's going to put more structural lumbar muscles right. It's going to put more span muscles and if someone doesn't really know how to climb very well, their fingers are in a pocket and their foot slips off. They're more likely to acutely overload something. So if it's like a pocketing climb on an overhang, very unlikely that it's going to go down to a lower grade because we think it's going to be a higher injury risk to those climbers. Um, middle grades are probably the trickiest right that v4 to v6 range where if you want to improve at climbing you have to start adapting to being able to use different types of holds and some of those types of holds, especially outside, will be less ergonomic than what is ideal. You'll hit holds outside that spread your fingers like. It's definitely famous routes. You think a rifle, the spot holds things that like purposely spread out. That's not an ideal position for your hand, but if you want to do that route, you got to be able to figure out how to fold your hand in that position. So indoor climbing is like the easiest way to learn this. You have a lot of different options to grip these different positions keeping moves If the hand position is awkward, allowing people to hit the hold and control is an important factor.
Speaker 2:So it could be a bad hold, but if I can go to it from a static position and slowly load it correctly, that is much safer than if the only option is to jump to it right.
Speaker 2:So we think about that as the variation in some movements as well too. Some holds will work better based on the style of the climb Certain holds. If we're doing a large, large, dynamic movement, very rarely is it going to go to a very smaller, sharp grip like. Even if that's something you may do outside, that's something that may just be uncomfortable in a climbing gym, and if you lose skin in your session early, your session ends early and it's not as fun. So in some cases you know we're thinking about keeping people safe from hold positions that they may overload inadvertently Real basketball society right now, I guess, yeah. And then positions where we think about what is going to be enjoyable for people to climb on at different grades, even if it's something that you can hold on to and it's sharp and we know climbers are strong enough to pull through it. If it's unpleasant to pull through it, not that many people are going to climb it, in which case it doesn't have as much value in a commercial climbing set.
Speaker 1:Totally and I like that you remarked on the diversity of things that you're trying to prepare people for. Things that you're trying to prepare people for, because you may have some people that are like me and just going to rifle on the weekends so it's like, oh, we need to give you, like really big blocky holds, a couple of crimps, some good overhanging, climbing, but weird, like awkward positions that you can strengthen with compression and like thuggy movements, whereas some people may be going to Tensleep Wyoming, where it's like, oh well, now we have to be able to do two finger pockets and monos on more like vertical type terrain.
Speaker 2:And I would say there's probably a good percentage of our members that really aren't going anywhere. I don't think they're really actually interested necessarily in climbing as much outside right like the gym is the thing that they enjoy. They enjoy progressing through the climbing grades at the gym. It's not necessarily to build them up for some outdoor project but they like seeing climbing is just fun, like to some extent grade chasing right like there's this easy numerical progression that you can see and a lot of people get caught up with that in outdoor grades.
Speaker 2:But we see the same thing in the gym of like, oh I've done all the things in the blue circuit, Now I want to start working on the red circuit. So we think, for those climbers as well too, making sure there's a variety of movement and holds, like variety of hold type and movement style across the grades. So if you work on this v2 heel hook climb and you get good at it, there's probably a v4 heel hook climb somewhere nearby where that skill that you just worked on in the gym you can find it somewhere else in the gym and keep improving right yeah, and it's kind of interesting this like you know new wave like as climbing becomes more mainstream and stuff like that, it's like not a bad thing to just love going to the climbing gym.
Speaker 1:You know, like people love going to the regular gym and like or like doing crossfit and stuff like that, and it's just like, yeah, you're doing like the same stuff like over and over again in the same place, but it's still fun and it's still a really fun thing to show progression and to have discipline and get better at stuff, which is all stuff you can do at the climbing gym.
Speaker 2:I climb outdoors a lot. I care about my outdoor climbing. I've also really like, to some extent it's just as arbitrary as anything else, though right, like me sending that problem outside versus me sending a problem on the moon board. Either way, I could text my wife and be like I just did this. It's like great, cool, whatever, right. And there's definitely been seasons like the first gym I was at that had a 2016 moon board. The benchmark game was a very fun game and I was very focused on that for like a year. It's like 2016 moon board. There's a leaderboard. I just want to be on the front page of this leaderboard. I just want to get into the top 30 for rankings. Once I did that, then I just like digressed on the moon board and like but it's just a different game. Like indoor climbing can be fun.
Speaker 1:It can be its own game, right yeah, and it's like kind of interesting that that's just a new facet of climbing, where there are now people that are like yeah, I mean, I don't really climb outside, I just climb in a gym and there's nothing really like wrong or we don't need to be judgmental about those things, cause it's just what climbing is now.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know some savage climbers like that. We have a couple of guest centers for competitions. Because we're a smaller gym for us to do an on-site format comp we basically have to film every problem for every group of athletes that's coming through right. One of our guest setters is a young kid. Does some setting at usa climbing's training facilities, now full-time setter up in portland like absolutely smashing everything. Does it multiple times, doesn't even look like it's high effort. You can establish on things like just starting. This feels hard, you're smooth at it, not real interested in going outside. He loves climbing, he loves the climbing gym, he loves setting, he loves that community and scene of it. Going on bouldering, going and dragging pads out to a rock just doesn't seem as appealing and that's totally fine.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, it's unique because I mean, I feel like, especially for like older generation climbers, like the whole thing was like going outside and like being cold or like being hot or like being dirty, and like that's like part of it is the grittiness. But now we don't really like have to have that. We can just go to the gym and like, or like for me, like I'm working a ton right, so like it's hard to go outside and it's nice to have people like you that are setting really cool stuff so that I can just go to the gym.
Speaker 2:Great, try to help.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts on like boards and utilizing boards for training I mean, grip has a couple of awesome boards that I've had a lot of fun on and what are your thoughts on those for preparing for things like dynamic movements and also like finger safety, through just strengthening the heck out of them with board training?
Speaker 2:No, I really like board training. I think there's like whatever boards you have, you can get benefits from it. There are some boards that do certain things better than others, or that it's easier to do certain things on better than others might be a better way of phrasing it. But I really prefer boards to hang boards for finger strength, just because there's an aspect of coordination and movement to it that makes it way better practice for climbing. So you can get really strong fingers just doing a lot of different hangboard protocols and less climbing. But I think you sacrifice a lot of movement and climbing ability or efficiency for that For some climbers. If you're an elite climber and you're just trying to up your finger strength because there are certain holds on what you're trying to do that are at your limit, maybe that's the cycle that you need. But that's a unique scenario For most climbers, especially most climbers in the gym. Learning how to use crimps and smaller holds on a board in a way that's controlled. We'll have better translation to commercial climbing or climbing outside. So I really like boards for that extent.
Speaker 2:With the boards that we have and if you've climbed at Maple Canyon, the grasshopper board kind of gives me that feeling as a sport area of like. It's kind of rounded. Even on the positive holds you can shake out. There's these big egg-like features that really lend themselves to heel and toe hooking and it's the only board with really big holds and I think that's a beneficial style of movement to learn compression and it's helpful. It's unique. The kilter board is fun. I think it's a very fun board for a lot of people. Most holds are positive. They're all relatively in cut. You can jump and swing quite hard at a steep angle and still climb a lot of problems. So for that kind of ability, so maybe a place like joe's valley where you're pulling on crimps and jumping to things, shelterboard feels like it works really well for that kind of movement.
Speaker 2:What we just played with resetting the spray wall um, just, there are lots of different apps that you can use for a spray wall. Stoked is the one we use. We like it because the visual on it's really good. It's really easy to select and move around, make problems up on it. Spray wall is fun. It's probably the most community centered one, especially at our gym, and because we have the most leeway and hold selection of what we want to put up on it.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably the one that has the most benefit for outdoor climbing. Um, the one challenge with a lot of boards is just because it's so almost uniform, I think the children. It is very uniform, grid like pattern. All the holds need to be about the same size for that to work. The movements you end up going into go into this kind of smaller box of options. The spray wall, being a little more chaotic, gives on. Chaotic might not be the best word. There's definitely a lot of thought going into that one as well too, but the volume and different style of moves we end up doing on it is just bigger and for a lot of outdoor climbs that are not just straight board climbs, those different movement skills are really useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I'll go ahead. Sorry, oh, I was just going to say I'm really excited to get more into like spray wall training. Oh, I was just going to say I'm really excited to get more into like spray wall training. I really love training on boards, but at a certain point it's like gosh, can I find like a V whatever that doesn't start with this specific hold pattern? And sometimes it can get kind of difficult, especially when you like run out of other like benchmark V5s, and now it's like great, I've got like a couple of benchmark V5s left, but they all start in this one thing which I just don't enjoy doing, or I just don't want to do it because I'm like got something tweaked or something like that.
Speaker 2:Well, there's also a memorization and creativity aspect to it. That's a little trickier. Like board climbing tends to be pretty straightforward and it's lit up for you. I know where to go next. And if it's really confusing, quite often there's even beta videos you can see oh, that's the trick and that's how you're supposed to do it On the spray wall.
Speaker 2:You have to actually memorize your hold sequence and that makes it a bit more like outdoor climbing as well. Immediately, where I don't just have the foothold lit up for me, I have to figure out where it is on a rock. And where I don't just have the foothold lit up for me, I have to figure out where it is on a rock, and it could be that dot of black where shoe rubber's been, or it could just be smearing. But it's a little more complicated and there's no lighting up anything Like. I have to actually remember my sequence and you think of how many times you watch a climber, particularly like if it's on a sport climber on rope where they lose the sequence and they start feeling around for a hold and that just draws a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:Better, you are at memorization unless that happens. Like, oh yeah, like you look down when you're in rifle and there are like five black smudges that different people have used you know, like gosh, which black smudge from shoe rubber and use is like the one that I used the last time and then you're staring at your foot and meanwhile you're getting pumped out in your hands and then you're off the wall or whatever yeah.
Speaker 2:So definitely a lot of, a lot of use and boards, what we've been playing with lately. This might be a good drill for you but, like, since I've had the climbing team going to rifle every wednesday, like in summers, we basically shift the sport climbing mode and go outside as much as we can, and something they catch on to pretty quick is like yeah, dude, the moves that you can do after sitting on a rope are harder when you're trying to link into them. Just tire it to be able to consistently do the hard section after you've done a bunch of moves. So I'll put them on the kilter board and have them just do like a 10 to 15 move circuit into a lit up problem at the end that they could do so. Like, oh, you can do v6 on the kilter board. Problem at the end that they could do so. Like, oh, you can do V6 on the kilter board.
Speaker 2:Let's add a 15 move intro sequence on jugs and then do the V6. And now it's going to feel a little bit more like what it would feel like when you're on rope, where you're coming into this sequence with a bit of fatigue and have to still carry it through. So even though like 15 moves is not a full route by any means. Just the idea of adding in a longer intro sequence before the hard section is a good little mental training tactic too, to understanding that like, oh, my limit of movement is not just what I sit down and start with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little bit of like playing with some different types of fatigue, whether that be peripheral fatigue in the muscles or even just like the mental fatigue. Like I've got to memorize this 15 move sequence and then I've got to do like turn on my try hard hat a little bit more for like a v6 or a harder sequence exactly and I think, like you know, differences between sport climbing and bouldering training to some extent.
Speaker 2:Right in bouldering you tend to not have as much of that moment of like. Okay, here comes the hard part and I have to get ready to rally and go hard. Whereas I can think of that sensation quite a bit, sport climbing of like you are fatiguing. I'm gonna have this rest, but then I'm gonna have to really battle at that last section and you know you're physically capable of doing the moves. It's really. Do you have the wherewithal and endurance to keep it together? So it's a different kind of mental challenge and the more, I think, you put yourself in that state, the easier it is to deal with. When you're actually there, you're just used to the idea that life yeah, go ahead. Simon.
Speaker 1:No, no, you go ahead. I'm just soaking up all you're saying.
Speaker 2:I was going to say. We're used to the idea that I am going to start trying hard even when I'm fatigued. If you're doing that in the gym all the time, it's not that different when you're doing that on rock or in your actual performance setting. Obviously, some aspects are different. The fatigue may feel the same, but there's usually a difference in fear or exposure depending on someone's experience level. But you can manage that stuff with exposure as well too.
Speaker 1:So then these are all just awesome pearls of wisdom. Because I've been transitioning um, last couple years I've been a little bit more focused on bouldering and transitioning back to sport. Climbing has been a little bit drawn out and I'm like, oh yeah, I can't just like hold my breath like the entire route because, like a lot of boulder problems, you can take like two or three breaths and like you're fine, you know sport climbing. If it's a hundred foot long sport route, like there's no way. And in all the, in all the easier sections, you need to be like building up breath and like making sure that you're still breathing even when you feel like you don't need to, so that then you're not crossing into like a little bit of like a lactate threshold sort of scenario for your forearms when you do approach the crux, which may be 80 feet off the deck and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like same thing, so I've kind of or go ahead, oh no, no, no, I was saying something like I've transitioned back and forth the last like 15 years between sport, climbing and bouldering a lot. So like when I was 21 I tore my labrum pretty severely. I had three surgeries on that left shoulder in the span of like five or six years, so wow, you know, after that last surgery I was concerned like a really good surgeon, stedman clinic and and they really really helped me through that.
Speaker 2:But you know, I really didn't think I'd be bouldering hard again, right? I just assumed like hard bouldering was going to be too much stress on the shoulders. So we just really focused on rope climbing for like five or six years. But by the end of that I was realizing like okay, most of the sequences I'm doing on a rope at this point are just as hard as anything I would do bouldering, like I'm still doing a four points off dyno and catching with my left arm. Like that's not that different than what I would do, I just have a rope.
Speaker 2:So then we spent about five or six years focusing on bouldering. Like we booked a trip to rockland, spent a year kind of building up to that and like oh, I got back, my wife got pregnant, and so basically the last like four or five years have been really boulder focused and now that we're outside with kids and summer and rifle just go back to shifting back and forth between the two. But I think there's benefits in both. Like your sport climbing will make you a better boulder, your bouldering will make you a better sport climber. There's no real negative on here, like.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, especially in a place like rifle, where it's like it really feels like bouldering on a rope. You know all that really three dimensional climbing and you know big thuggy movements that ordinarily, or more traditionally, you would associate more with just bouldering.
Speaker 2:Yeah some of it. For sure. I was like there's such a huge range of climbing and rifle right. But like, yeah, right now it's a fun game where you've got to pick and choose what is going to suit you and what's going to help you grow. Like I know, for routes like 50 to 60 feet my endurance isn't great, but I'm in a bouldering gym all the time. I'm saying all the time my power is real high. I can get through a short route pretty quickly without needing to rest that much. Even an easier route like uh kielbasa run we're playing with on the side of the ruckman cave, it's like a 35 meter 12a. That felt much harder to me than harder routes, because I'm just not used to climbing 120 feet, so that was a much like. That was a much better learning time for sure of. Oh, I need to remember how to recover a lot more often than I'm used to, because at 60 feet I can just bang it out and once it gets beyond there, I can feel a ceiling occur real quick.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. What are some tips that you have for people that are maybe have more access to a bouldering gym, but their goals are longer routes outside? So like this is like I'm being selfish again and asking more for myself, really. Um, and how do you manage intensity with volume? Because that can be tricky in a bouldering gym where it's like, yeah, I can climb v whatever, insert your highest level, like v grade or something that you can climb first try. But the thing is, if we're trying to train for 80 feet or 90 feet or you know the 35 meter climb like kielbasa, then like how do we do that in the bouldering gym?
Speaker 2:all right, a couple easy strategies circuits, links, depending on what. You have access to, a tread wall, um circuits are probably the main one. We'll do so, basically you know whether it's on the kilter board or the grasshopper board, spray wall, whatever. If you can do with a partner grade, just having someone point out moves for you to go on and just keep doing moves until it's about the length of the routes you're trying to complete, so you go out, you do a project, count out how many hand movements it took you to do it. If you need to do 40 to 50 hand movements to be able to get up that route, you start training. 40 to 50 move circuits Kind of recreate the approximate range of time you need to be able to stay under tension, right? So that's one option. Another one is linking boulder problems together, so easier when the gym's a little quieter or if you have a section of the gym that's kind of to yourself for a little bit. But maybe you do like a V2 and you down climb and then you do a V4 and then you down climb and you do another V2 and you down climb and you adjust the difficulty of the sequence based on what you're trying to climb or where you're at in the training cycle, right. So if this is a new activity for you, maybe I would start with the harder routes and go easier as you go so that you can just try to manage the fatigue. On easy climbing, if you've been training this for a while and your route has a crux at the top, you do the opposite you do a bunch of the easy climbing and you try to finish with a hard section, right. So those are a couple easy strategies.
Speaker 2:The tread wall is definitely one of the best options if you have access to one, because you can just climb to the right distance. Um, but even there, like drills have been making the team do on the tread wall, because the tread wall is great for continuous movement, but generally when you're climbing outside, you don't get to flow that fast like. It's rare that you can climb at the same pace you could sprint on a tread wall on actual rock, unless you have a route really well dialed and you barely have to pause to clip right. So on the tread wall, I'll force them to take a lot more pauses or force them to touch holds they're not going to use before they're allowed to use the actual holds. For example, maybe I'm on my right hand on this hold.
Speaker 2:You have to touch these three holds before you get to your target hold and you can take your right hand off, which which recreates the kind of awkward pace of onsite climbing a little bit better, especially in a place like where we're climbing, where there's a lot of stuff that's chalked up that you're not going to use. You're probably going to touch it and realize you can't use it and have to move on. So getting that time under tension per hand up from like four or five seconds and thinking more 10 to 12 could be what their onsite attempts look like. But just being cognizant of that A lot of it is self-awareness realizing when I climb I stay on hooks for about this long it takes me this long to clip. You start matching your training to accommodate it.
Speaker 1:I think those are all just amazing actionable items for people. Do you guys do?
Speaker 2:any kind of Try to be a good coach.
Speaker 1:Oh, heck, yeah, dude, I mean, geez, this is all like great stuff and I'm selfishly just like taking mental notes and like what I'm going to do my next sessions in the gym.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, rally, turn to the gym and see what you've done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Unfortunately, now I feel like I've got to get on the tread wall again which is such in which, such a love-hate relationship.
Speaker 2:Well, some of this is like, you don't have to do it a ton, right? Like you know, we talk about injury prevention, right? Probably the biggest cause of injury I think I tend to see in the gym is people ramping up too quickly. Right, you got really psyched on something and now you want to train more and all of a sudden you're training a lot more and your body is not used to that sudden increase in volume and that just becomes riskier across the board. Right Now your chances of injury are higher. So I'm not saying you need to add in like these three hour treadmill sessions, but maybe on a recovery day you do three 80 foot laps and you're adding in three more sections of time where, yeah, you've added 20 minutes 20 minutes total to your week's worth of climbing. It's a small increase but that over time will compound and you'll get better, but it's not going to do it so quickly that you just get hurt.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I mean what you're saying follows the literature of injury prevention quite well. In fact, there's this PhD researcher named Tim Gabbett and he's accredited with the acute to chronic workload ratio. So what have you been in the acute setting Like? What did you do over this past seven days and what is that versus your chronic workload? So what have you been doing over the past 28 days or the past four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, and is there a massive discrepancy there? And the tricky thing there also is that oftentimes, especially like when you look at like the running literature, you won't actually see the injury in that week that you do the acute spike you'll typically see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll typically see it like two or three weeks later, you know, and that's tough because then when you're looking back it's like what did I do in this? You know? And that's tough because then when you're looking back it's like what did I do in this past week?
Speaker 2:and it's like no, you got to look at like the accumulation of load and stress over multiple weeks and then the differences that you've input over the more acute couple of days or whatever well, and it's also tricky because, like and I'm sure you've seen this, but depending on someone's level of training or level of self-awareness, their understanding of the pain sensations they're having can be very broad. And, like, you could have someone who's catastrophizing over something that really is not that severe of an injury, but because they're so concerned on it, that pain sensation and signal seems so acute. At that moment when, like, maybe that's not really that big of an issue, you are making it worse. And, on the flip side, how many people you know of who, like, your body gave you a clear signal here that you are going a bit too hard and you chose to ignore it and that thing became worse, right? So so much of this is really predicated on, like, are you paying attention and reading your body's signals appropriately?
Speaker 1:oh my gosh like yeah, you are just like preaching to like the choir, because in and reading our own signals is also tough oh. Oh yeah, it's very hard and that's why, you know, I still suck at it man, I've been trying to do this for like 20 years.
Speaker 1:I'm lucky in that I got injured a ton running. So I like know those signals a little bit better and know when to back off. So like, knock on wood, I've been doing okay with my climbing injuries and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean mean, unfortunately for a lot of people it takes a lot of cycles of like actually getting injured and then having to recover slowly and then getting injured again and then having to recover slowly to be like, oh, now I know what this signal is telling me from my body and now I know what this sensation is versus this other sensation.
Speaker 2:I think talking to the coach is important too how many climbers you know of who are chronically injured in some way. And it's not a factor of like no, you're not just picking these routes and like you're not acutely injured all the time. You're chronically overusing something and there's something in your either training volume, your lifestyle, the habits of how you're climbing that's causing this to happen. That aren't getting addressed and that's why it keeps happening. I think that's the much harder thing for most people to deal with. You keep getting injuries to your fingers because of something that you're doing that you don't want to deal with.
Speaker 1:Which is why I have a day job, yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of stuff we've talked about. I've had to practice quite a bit too right. So, like, if we're setting two days a week, I basically will have two limit boulder sessions per week that come at the end of a pyramid. So I pretty much guarantee like I don't do anything real like high intensity or power training, because I know I'm already going to have that within the session, like today when we were for running on the spray wall, there were some fun moves that I wanted to keep trying on.
Speaker 2:But I also understand that if I want to climb outside tomorrow, I'm just going to have to cut this session early, because I can't have it both ways and if I do too much now, I'm either going to like regret it by going too hard tomorrow and being too fatigued and the days after will be worse, or I just won't be able to go as hard as I want to tomorrow. So, like you, just learn how to read your body and modulate how much you're going to actually try, and understanding that athletes are different, like I have people that I train with that can tolerate a lot more training load than I can. So even if they want to do another 20 sets, I'm not going to do that and feel okay tomorrow, like, so I have to understand the difference between like oh, we may be climbing around the same grade, even if we don't train it all the same.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, and like people's response to those levels of stimulus is also really different too. Actually, nolan sent me a podcast with uh will anglin when he was on the test piece climbing show and he was talking about training with, like daniel woods right, and daniel woods is able to just handle so much load and so much volume at super high intensities. And then he he says on the podcast, like after a while I had to figure out like I'm not daniel woods, you know it's. No, I'm not potentially the best boulder in the world, you know.
Speaker 2:So no, but it is. I think that is not an uncommon difficult thing for people of like. Pretty much every pro. Every pro climber has a YouTube channel. It's very easy to listen to them talk about how they train and how they approach training and to feel like, oh well, if I want to climb V16 and that's what v16 climbers are doing, that's what I should be doing, but that's like at the end of a long line of things they've already done to get to that point. So it's like if you had 15 years of experience and you've been climbing v14s and you need that next bump up, maybe their advice is better at that point. If you're a v5 climber in the gym, there's a lot of other things that are probably going to get you better, faster, in the long term, even if it feels slower in the short term, and one of those things is like rest days.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think that's something that you mentioned right at the beginning of this podcast dialing in psych a little bit, you know, sometimes we're just too incredibly psyched because climbing and training is so fun that we're just doing it so much, but we can't really handle it or about, like you know, other little tricks you can do is like balancing your own training into like reward and work cycles.
Speaker 2:So like the kind of climbing that you most enjoy, that gets to be the reward climbing and the kind of climbing that you most enjoy, that gets to be the reward climbing.
Speaker 2:And the kind of climbing that you feel like you struggle at is the work climbing and you can do a balanced session of that. So like, yeah, if all you're doing is the work stuff, it can be harder on you mentally. It makes it less fun to climb and if it really is harder for you it could be tweakier. You're not as good at it. So if you balance out like I'm going to do a half hour of this like work and then I'm going to give myself a half hour play time on the style, that's fun for me, I've kind of limited the amount of volume. I'm going to put it on the stuff that's harder for me in general, so I'm not going to put as much risk into it and I get to end feeling happy because I've done the kind of climbing that makes me feel successful, so more likely to go back and keep training. It's a lot of self-trick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I might need to go in and put some more like work treadmill, tread wall sessions in and then the the fun flashing v5s in like after that or something.
Speaker 2:Well, that one's where it makes us. Like you know generally in terms of structure of training, I will push people do high power, high coordination first. Okay, like the hard bouldering. You need those muscles firing at full, you need your coordination at full to be able to do it.
Speaker 2:You making a mistake on something that's actually limit for you is where you easily overload something. If you're doing just light endurance on a tread wall, you're just climbing 80 to 100 feet of jugs to get your body to get used to recovering on long climbs. But the coordination risk is pretty low. Like you're not really going to blow a move in a way that's going to be weird. So that stuff I feel fine stacking afterwards a little bit slab climbing I'll pretty much stack after. Anything like that's just skill building training. There's very and generally compared to most climbing it's not nearly as intensive on finger strength or on skin. It's probably the most useful competition style of climbing to really train on. So it's really easy for me after any session like well, I could still do a half hour slab like if you need more volume, you're not going to hurt yourself as much and you'll just build up a different skill and nothing's worse than being in rifle and pulling over a roof and getting to the slab section of the route and going.
Speaker 2:Oh crap, no, yeah you want to feel like that should that should be relaxed right. That should be where you get to recover, because you don't have to pull anymore.
Speaker 1:But if you don't practice, it won't feel that way and I love that you commented and kind of corrected me on like the order of operations for those climbing sessions, like high power, high strength and coordination moves or like maybe like more overhanging stuff, more in the beginning of that climbing session when you're more fresh, and then moving to that endurance base, like easier movement, more just taxing on the musculature kinds of things after that, and then you can always throw in some slab and coordination work like that at the end and I guarantee you probably see this in like every aspect of climbing literature now, the idea of like don't hard hangboard after a session.
Speaker 2:Like don't campus after a session like this is pretty much standard operating for, like I, would be hard pressed to find someone that advocated like yeah, dude, go till failure on the hangboard after your climbing session, which I guarantee is what we did 20 years ago like, oh, yeah, and then, like when hangboards first came out, there was such a huge stigma about like oh yeah, these injure people, you know, because we'd get done with a hard climbing session.
Speaker 1:Be like, all right time to get some stronger fingers, you know.
Speaker 2:And then bam, we're gonna do heavy weighted hangs with high volume on the hangboard you know, yeah, it's not a really, really good idea, like right now, I think, even in our gym, and you'll see this, I think, everywhere else as well too. Now, like ways of individually targeting finger strengths, there's a lot of options. Right, you get the hang board lifting block, tension block, uh, 10 deck there's so many variations on it. Whatever you're using really doesn't matter, as long as you're doing things appropriately and you're using the same thing consistently over time. So, whether you want to use a lifting block or other, you want to use the hangboard. Don't go super hard after your session yeah make it its own thing.
Speaker 2:That's its own max strength training. Don't measure one against the other. Don't do a hangboard session and see like, oh, I can do body weight plus 20 pounds, so I'm going to do body weight plus 20 pounds off the ground. It's not going to translate one-to-one. So getting people to understand like, yeah, you have all these different tools, they all can work pretty well. You being consistent about what you choose to train on and what you choose to measure with is probably more important than any of those specific tools. Maybe, in some cases, being really specific, like if someone has an issue with their shoulders, a lifting block versus a like that kind of scenario. Right, like, oh, hanging makes my shoulders sore, I'd rather do a lifting block because it puts less overhead position on the shoulder. Great, use a lifting block. Like there are scenarios where there's a rational reason to choose one over the other, but beyond that, like all of them will get you stronger over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're saying, if you load your fingers, your fingers will get stronger Wow.
Speaker 2:I know it's a crazy concept you load your fingers and let them rest appropriate.
Speaker 1:Yes, I should have added that caveat, because you can just also just injure your fingers too. No gosh. Well, mike, we we've talked about so many different things today.
Speaker 1:That was a rapid hour dude yeah, we, um, we've talked about, uh, some of your background that we went to changes in climbing holds, changes in climbing movements, especially in competitions. If we wanted to injure somebody, what would we do? And then we spent the last half hour just talking about basically climbing movement tons of fun stuff that I didn't even think we're going to talk about, which is always like the fun parts of these conversations. Now, if we had to wrap up this whole thing and distill it down into one ounce of prevention, what would you tell people to wrap up this whole hour-long conversation?
Speaker 2:so it's awful. I think, like the most valuable one is the hardest. One is, like learn how to read your body signals, and that is probably the hardest one for people, though, of like, are you really understanding how to read the pain you're feeling in your finger? And that's what I think of. Even talking with PTs of times where, like I have a hard time describing like, yeah, man, it's kind of an aching throb, but a sharp aching throb. Like what does that mean, right? Like, did I really hurt myself or not? It's not a question you can answer based off my really subjective description of it, right? So getting people to like really kind of have better self awareness of what is your body telling you at this time about how you feel and what you should do next, is probably the most important one. Next is probably the most important one. Beyond that, moderation and variety Do different things. Don't do any one thing too much. That's probably the best way to stay healthy and be a better climber. Get good at all different styles of rock, different angles, different boards.
Speaker 1:Don't get stuck on just doing one thing and don't get stuck on doing one thing for too long. I love it. I love it. I love it. Awesome Mike. Well, tell us about where people can find you, whether it be or like how to get to your gym, things like that, I know, because I want to support your gym and everything. So yeah, tell us where it's at it's Grip Bouldering.
Speaker 2:We're in Grand Junction, we do. You know one of our owners, Ben Roofe, is a professional climber. We actually do personal training. Ben does a lot of remote work as well too. So if people have outdoor goals, specific things they want training plans for, we definitely have the resources for that as well. But yeah, if you're ever in Western Colorado, come check us out. Heck, yeah, If you're traveling through, if you're rained rained out at rifle right now, it's beautiful, but like hey, that's the nearby spot, Come play.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Mike.
Speaker 2:No worries, good talking to you, man.
Speaker 1:I hope that you enjoyed this episode of the Art of Prevention podcast. If you did enjoy and or benefit from some of the information in this podcast, please be sure to like, subscribe and share this podcast, or please give us a five-star review on any platform that you find podcasts. One thing to note that this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. No patient is formed and if you are having any difficulty, pain, discomfort, etc. With any of the movements or ideas described within this podcast, please seek the help of a qualified and board-certified medical professional, such as your medical doctor or a sports chiropractor, physical therapist, etc.