The Digest | New Jersey Magazine
Issue link: https://magazines.vuenj.com/i/1326760
What inspired you to try out climbing when you were an adolescent, and when did you begin climbing competitively? As a child, I had many other interests like musicals and acting, and they fell to the wayside pretty much immediately when I found climbing. I loved it [climbing] right away, and I started on a team that was competing at regionals, so I was pretty much thrown right into competition climbing. Did you experience any major setbacks in your early climbing career? When I was twelve years old I was diagnosed with severe idiopathic scoliosis, which meant that I would need to have spinal fusion surgery. is news came right when I was starting to burnout in climbing, so it was actually pretty good timing to have this surgery and have climbing taken away because it was then that I realized how much climbing meant to me. In fact, it wasn't until aer my back surgery that I started winning major competitions. Two years aer my back surgery was the first time I won Youth Nationals. To compete at your level, you must have a pretty rigorous workout routine. Can you explain a little bit about your training regimen and what it takes to stay in shape as a competitive climber? I think I am kinda known in climbing for my training. Growing up, I was on a team, but soon enough that changed, and I began training alone, which is pretty different from other climbers who mostly train in teams. Currently, I train five to six times a week; I usually rest on Wednesdays and Sundays. In climbing, you need those full-body rest days because there are so many small muscles involved in the sport. Something as simple as a finger injury is debilitating in climbing, so you really need to take rest days when you need them. As far as diet, climbing is a strength to body ratio sport, so it can get really dangerous to focus too much on what you're eating due to the history of eating disorders in the sport. I try really hard to not focus on diets but to just eat generally healthy, and I have been a vegetarian since I was eight years old. How important is the mental aspect of training, and what do you do to get into the right mindset to tackle tough climbs? For training, the biggest mental component is staying motivated. Climbing is 99 percent failure. Most of the time you're climbing, you're falling off a cliff, and if you're only climbing things you're not falling off of, you're probably not getting any better at the sport. is can be really hard for people who aren't good at accepting failure, so you have to find the wins in each situation. at's what I do–if I just make it one move further, but I don't make it to the top, then that's the win. Or even, the win could be learning something about the movement. In competitions, the mental aspect is huge. You have to be constantly reevaluating what you're doing in competitive climbing because you have never seen the course before, so you're making decisions on the wall and off the wall about what you're going to do. It's super different from say, a gymnastics routine that is fully planned. Who are your greatest role models in the sport of climbing? I'm inspired by the people I train with V U E N J . C O M 44