The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast TrainingBeta Podcast

Bronwyn Hodgins is a 31-year-old Squamish-based professional climber and climbing guide whose main focus until recently was big wall and crack climbing. In 2022 she sent Necronomicon (5.13d/14a), which is one of the hardest roof cracks in the world. Before that send, she had climbed up to 5.13d sport and 5.13c trad.
In the summer of 2022, Hodgins and a team (including her husband, Jacob Cook) made a film about an expedition where they spent 65 days putting up many first ascents in Greenland, traveling between climbs via sea kayak. In fact, she’s made a lot of films and you can find them all here.
Needless to say, she is an accomplished, well-rounded climber and adventurer and I have a lot of respect for that. When I read about her recent ascent of La Rubia (5.14c / 8c+) in Villanueva del Rosario, Spain, I was intrigued. How did a big waller who’d climbed just one 5.14a sport route sent a long, burly 14c in Spain? So I asked her to be on the show to talk about her training and preparation for the route.
Turns out it’s a great story and she has a lot of wisdom to offer us.
Bronwyn Hodgins Interview Details
Her climbing story – how she became a pro climber
Big wall experience
Crack climbing training
How she got shut down hard on La Rubia and then trained for a year to send it
Visualization on projects
Managing fear of falling
The festival for women and gender expansive people she’s putting on in July
How running mid distance for so long prepared her for route climbing
Bonus Content on Patreon
redpointing tactics on outdoor routes
her diet
what her lifestyle and finances are like as a pro climber
sexism in climbing and guiding
Support the show and get all of the bonus episodes plus nutrition and mindset training at www.patreon.com/trainingbeta
 
 

In this bonus episode just for subscribers, Bronwyn gets real about what it's like to be a pro climber in terms of finances and lifestyle. We also talk about her diet - what she eats to fuel herself at the crag and at home. And we go into what it's been like for her as a female in the guiding world and as a pro climber, as well as some of her redpointing tactics.

This is a replay of an episode that originally aired in January, 2023. I talk with Coach Alex Stiger about the most common mistakes amde by climbers who are trying to break into 5.12 climbing. Sending 5.12 is the most common goal among her clients, so she has quite a bit of experience with the minutiae of what it takes to do that.
She will share her personal experience of her first 5.12’s and what she learned from her trials and tribulations. She’ll then go into the mindset shifts that are required to jump into the coveted 5.12 territory, and how she helps people do that.
While you might predict that strength training is one of the main tools Alex uses with her clients in this situation, it is not, as she says it is very rare to find a person who is climbing 5.11 who can not climb 5.12 with the strength they already have.
So while we spend a few minutes talking about strength training, you’ll find compelling evidence in this episode that that may not be your issue. Here are some of the other topics we discuss:
Why technique and staying calm are so important
Honing the skill of resting
How to decrease intimidation of the grade
How to learn from your falling experiences
How to have more of a competition mindset
What to climb on in the gym if you’re trying to send 5.12
A better alternative to having a perfect pyramid before entering into 5.12 territory
Why repeating climbs that are sort of hard for you is an important strategy
We talk about a lot in this episode, and I highly recommend it if you’re at the 5.10 or 5.11 level, or if you’re just not consistently climbing 5.12’s and you’d like to. Even if you are climbing 5.12’s consistently, I think a lot of her tactics will help you!


Show Links
Get the 5.12 Breakthrough Series AND the Steep Climbing Workshop for 30% Off
Work with Alex as your coach
Have questions? Email alex@trainingbeta.com or neely@trainingbeta.com

Ben Hanna is a 25-year-old professional climber originally from New Mexico. He climbs hard sport routes outside and he’s active in competition climbing. He started climbing at the age of 10 and quickly gained notoriety as a youth competitor. He’s gone on to podium at 2 national championships and climb 5.15a. I wanted to talk to Ben about how he trains, what his competition mindset strategies are, and what it’s like to be a professional, full-time climber.
He goes into detail about his “early life crisis” when he decided to put his faith in a coach to help him really level up his climbing abilities. It worked, and we go into exactly what he did during that long training phase and how it changed his body.
We also talk about the mindset tools he uses, the books he reads on the subject, and how he implements having a growth mindset and having a different definition of success than just winning and sending.
Bonus Content on Patreon
redpointing tactics on outdoor routes
his diet
honest conversation about his weight management tactics and my thoughts on that
You can find all of that bonus content and the uncut, ad-free video episode without intro or outro on my Patreon page.
GET THE AD-FREE INTERVIEW AND BONUS CONTENT

In this episode just for subscribers, Ben Hanna talks about the three most important redpointing tactics he uses to send hard climbs. These are all very relatable for any grade. We also discussed his diet and how he changes it when he wants to lose weight for an important event. Weight is a big topic in climbing for obvious reasons, and we talk about why dropping weight is important to him sometimes and how he tries to do it in the healthiest way possible, and what my thoughts are as a nutritionist on that.

This is an extra episode for subscribers only. In it, I explain how you can use a communication tool called DEARMAN to kindly ask a belayer who you don't feel safe with to make some changes to help you feel safer.

A lot of people experience bad belays, and unfortunately, some people don't feel comfortable being belayed by even their most frequent partner. That can make them unwilling to try hard above their bolts, which can take the fun out of climbing. And it can cause a lot of tension in the relationship. So you can use this tool - or this exact conversation I lay out for you - to kindly but firmly request that changes be made.

You can use this tool with legitimately ANY difficult conversation you want to have. It helps take any accusations and insults out of the equation, it keeps the conversation focused on your requests and your feelings, and it helps the person understand that you really care about them and want to make this situation better for both of you. It's a win-win.