Climbing Performance & Education

Meet the Founder

I discovered bouldering in my mid 20’s and it was this perfect mix of everything I enjoyed from the flow of the movement like in my dance training to being part of a community of like-minded others that are outdoorsy, loved a good puzzle and are down to earth.

At the time I was working as a physio in a sports clinic with mostly field based athletes playing soccer, rugby and footy on the weekends and had also just started working in performing arts and gymnastics. All of these sports had specific rehab protocols to return back from injury and years of research to back up training methodologies, whilst the sport of climbing was still so new but quickly growing.

It bothered me that there was no clear return to falling and rolling off a 4m boulder problem post ankle injury and climbers were being told to simply see how they go! Or that the demand on the shoulders for competition climbing with parkour style movements and acrobatics was not reflected in the off the wall preparation when recovering from injury.

In 2021 I started my own climbing clinic operating out of Boulder Lab Clayton to support climbers getting back on the wall with clear return to climbing plans and performance testing to guide progressions. Where return to climbing protocols did not yet exist I created my own based on many years of work in contact sports plenty of falling and rolling there and artistic sports such as gymnastics with higher level upper body skills and weight bearing demands on the hands that you just don’t see in many sports.

The biggest gap that I saw in climbing rehab was the grey area between when pain has initially settled down post injury and climbing performance. And that’s where I have chosen to focus my attention by

-         Completing on the wall climbing movement assessments to see what else could be contributing to recurring injuries and to provide insights on why certain areas where being overloaded

-         Creating the Climb Strong Assessment to help identify where to focus training efforts on and off the wall

-         Running workshops and webinars for climbers and those working with climbers to share my approach

-         Regularly posting on social media on @climb_cc on what I do every day with my clients, sharing valuable research that’s being done and connecting climbers with other like minded health care professionals that get it

Welcome to Climb Care Collective and thank you for reading along this far.