Strong Mind

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 talks to former pro-climber Mason Earle about his journey with ME/CFS. Mason was living a life full of adventure before almost everything was taken away from him by a debilitating illness that he still doesn't fully understand. Mason is extremely smart and insightful and his story and perspective is a stark reminder that we shouldn't take what we have for granted.

If you are having a hard time, there's help available. Check out http://findahelpline.com to be directed to your country's helpline.02.26 | Reminiscing on climbing 03:36 | How his illness has made him a better person 04:15 | What is ME/CFS where he is right now with his illness? 6:52 | Cranial traction improving his symptoms 12:00 - 16:00 | How it started and how the nightmare unravelled 16:21 How does Mason endure so much suffering, how does he keep fighting18:52 | Was the fear that this was ‘forever’ always there? How does he weigh the consequences of his actions having this health condition21:00 | Does his climbing experience help him manage the consequences in his illness?24:00 | Where he gets his feel-good chemicals from these days 25:50 | What is his view on gratitude?31:27 | How does his illness affect his sense of identityHow does he deal with his health condition36:14 | How much responsibility can he take over getting better? 42:50 | Is he still climbing?44:41 | How does he maintain his personal relationships?48:00 | Toxic positivity49:30 | Mental health and its importance for everyone54:03 | What has he learned in the past four years?

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

In this episode, Hazel and Angus speak with Emma Wood, one of the great minds working in the space of psychology in our community. We talk about sports psychology for competition, what we can all learn from how competitors manage their mindset and attention under pressure, problems with how we approach psychology in climbing, how our community could be better at educating, understanding and welcoming psychological concepts, why don't instructors and guides get any training around psychological concepts (?!) trying hard, effort and how this can be trained, winning mastery and competition and how to balance them all, process versus outcome, self-awareness and psychological tools to manage stress, fear and pressure and much more. Emma is always a joy to speak with and one of our most trusted thought leaders working in this space. If you're already a member please go to the members-only RSS feed to listen to the whole conversation. Head to https://www.strongmindclimbing.com/podcast to become a member!

Also, 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 free-ride world champion Lorraine Huber about her journey to win. At first, Lorraine had a lot of anxiety around competing and focused all her attention on the podium. Through mental training and mindset shifts she learnt how to find flow and joy during competition and which enabled her to ski at her best. Lorraine is a true testament to how important the mind is in sport and also that we are all capable of training and changing our minds.

If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

This is the first part of a long conversation with Aidan. We mostly focus on mastery, goals, motivation and direction in climbing. To access the second half of the conversation where we further explore mastery, discuss flow in bouldering and talk about how Aidan focuses become a Podcast Community Member at strongmindclimbing.com/podcast

Also, if you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind

Hazel talks to Sue Jackson about flow, mindfulness and performance and how they all relate. Sue is a psychologist, researcher and mindfulness practitioner. She has a phD in flow and carried out the first in-depth qualitative investigation of the experience of flow by elite athletes. She studied under Csíkszentmihályi, who first coined the term flow and carried out the first research into flow as experienced by everyday people. Sue and Csíkszentmihályi wrote a book together called 'Flow in Sports' which was the first book addressing flow state in sport. Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in climbing, sport and life in general. If you’d like to explore how psychology can support your climbing performance, check out our free webinar: https://linktr.ee/strong.mind