Strong Mind

In this episode, Hazel speaks with Allison Vest about her struggles and progress with mental training in climbing. They talk about how she found competitions hard psychologically and how some of those struggles have carried over to outdoor bouldering which is her main focus. They talk about the gains she's made with her mindset recently and the work she still has left to do. They talk about her recent sends and the psychological tools she used for those sends. They talk about how to balance the desire for the outcome with being focused on optimal performance in the moment. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, we talk a lot about breath! We look at the physical and mental benefits from 2 different perspectives with 2 experts in the field. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mindDr. Michael Melnychuk is a neuroscientist and climber who has conducted seminal research on brain plasticityand how the breath and brain activity are interrelated. He has engaged in meditation and breathing techniquessince he was a child, and his scientific work is heavily influenced by his practice. He has also been a rock climber for 30 years and suffered a near-fatal fall while free soloing, and because of this has a keen personal interestin Hazel’s methods which leverage the breath and mind control to overcome fear while climbing.Dr. Sundar Balasubramanian is a cell biology researcher from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA, and is a renowned yoga researcher specializing in breathing exercises. He is the Founder & CEO of PranaScience Institute and the Yoga Specialist at the MUSC Health & Wellness Institute. Sundar’s Yoga research provided evidence linking salivary biomarkers and Yogic breathing (also called Pranayama). He studies how breathing practices could promote well-being in health and disease. His current studies include testing a Yogic breathing app for cancer survivorship funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has developed several tools to improve the practice of Yogic breathing for employee wellness, cancer survivorship, ageing, and scleroderma. Sundar is the author of four books and several book chapters and his popular TEDx talk has over 1 million views.Jiri Balas' fascinating study on hormonal response to potential fall distance (adrenaline, catecholamines, skipping bolts):https://repository.derby.ac.uk/download/c8973104899db7691ac8c30cf3465bbb48d572e7c222b8ec1eb529873b142ab7/209907/Balas_2016_Hormonal_response_during_climbing_accepted_manuscript.pdfKox's study of Wim Hof Technique on e-coli toxemia challenge; examines many of the same markers as Balas (above) and also cytokines (pro/anti-inflammatory markers):https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1322174111Decreased blood lactate following respiratory training:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Urs-Boutellier/publication/13199745_Decreased_exercise_blood_lactate_concentrations_after_respiratory_endurance_training_in_humans/links/02e7e52cb02331649b000000/Decreased-exercise-blood-lactate-concentrations-after-respiratory-endurance-training-in-humans.pdfIncreased lactate (anaerobic) capacity with pranayama:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321338797_Effects_of_yoga_Pranayama_on_lung_function_and_lactate_kinetics_in_sedentary_adults_at_intermediate_altitude1. Mr. Feelgood magazine's recognition as seen here: https://mrfeelgood.com/articles/the-worlds-leading-breathwork-experts 2. Our new app called Humma, for improving breathing with humming: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranascience.humma

This is the second part of a conversation Hazel had with Aiden Roberts about mastery, flow and motivation in high-level bouldering. Check out part 1 first if you haven't listened to it yet.If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, Hazel speaks with Cameron Norsworthy (PhD in Flow and director of the Flow Centre) about flow. This conversation is a little bit of a deeper dive into flow. Hazel gets Cameron to challenge some of the misconceptions and common doubts about flow. They also talk about barriers to flow, how flow differs from other areas of sports psychology, how we can access flow by learning more about it and whether accessing flow is more about upskilling or removing barriers to flow. How finding flow in life doesn't have to just be about performance but also more of a lifestyle or life philosophy.If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

In this episode, Hazel talks to windsurfer Sarah Hauser. Sarah is one of the world's best windsurfers and has the record for the biggest wave ever windsurfed by a woman. In this conversation, Sarah talks about maximising intrinsic motivation, managing fear, mental management tools, hypnotherapy, and flow state among other interesting areas of psychology. If you already know a lot about windsurfing you could skip the first 20 minutes.

In this episode, Hazel chats with Mike Weeks. Mike is a serial entrepreneur, coach and speaker, specializing in resilience and peak performance for emergency services, police, special forces and elite athletes. After a decade of climbing around the world in full dirtbag style he briefly flirted with celebrity, leading Jack Osbourne up El Capitan for the TV series, Jack Osbourne Adrenaline Junkie, in between climbing various E8’s and falling off of E9’s!Mike currently lives in Bali, Indonesia, where he runs regenerative agriculture projects, restoring polluted rice paddies, cleaning river systems and developing a centre of excellence for farming. When he’s not rescuing far too many stray dogs (six and counting) he surfs whilst dreaming of rock and his next book. He is the author of three books, Un-train Your Brain, Resilience By Design and The little Speck of Life. We talk about Mike's upbringing, how he got out of a poor socioeconomic background through climbing, his TV work with the Osbournes, NLP, placebo, the power of the mind-body connection, sub-conscious processing, hemisphere differences and many other less-discussed areas of psychology.

In this episode, Hazel and Angus Kille chat about fear of falling. They talk about - what fear of falling is and discuss some nuances and misconceptions around it- how fear of falling holds back so many climbers - how many climbers have fear of falling and don't pay much attention to this fear as a limiting factor in their climbing - how culturally we've neglected to address this in the right ways- how easy it is to get fall practice wrong and how this has given fall practice a bad reputation - self-awareness as the missing ingredient to effective fall practiceIf you’d like to learn more about fear of falling and build more confidence in your climbing, you can join the waitlist for the next cohort of the Strong Mind Program here:https://www.strongmindclimbing.com/course/strong-mind-program

In this episode, Hazel speaks with race car driver coach Ross Bentley about how he uses psychological tools and strategies to help drivers perform at their best.If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind