Hi friends! It’s been a while, I know. Whoops. What have I been doing, you ask? I’ve been training! I also started taking aerial classes, and man am I having the time of my life.

But Melissa, that’s pretty random. Why are you taking aerial classes?

The short answer is, its fun! There’s something about being upside down on an apparatus that just feels right. I feel so free, and Bobby (my circus coach) says I look more at home that way.

The long answer is that I’m going to join a circus at some point soon!

Melissa…what?

Yep! So my friend Wilder comes from a family of artists. His dad is an opera singer, and his mom is a dancer. They have a family friend named Connie who does dance classes and performances with people with disabilities. Connie went to a conference one day and met someone names Lisa. Lisa is the founder of a circus called Omnium. Omnium Circus has a show called I’mpossible, where people of all abilities and backgrounds perform their various talents. Connie introduced me to Lisa, and Lisa took a liking to me. She asked if I wanted to join the circus some day soon, and I said yes. Now I’m taking circus and ballet classes with the end goal being that I join the circus soon.

The thing about aerial art is that it looks smooth and effortless, but its really really hard. It demands a lot from your core and arms. My arms are strong, but my core isn’t. Or at least, not as strong as my arms are. So my arms are left doing a lot of the work. Now, that doesn’t mean that my core does nothing. I can do a lot because my core had some baseline strength, and my arms compensate for the rest.

That said, my core is getting really strong really fast. Flips and levers ask for a lot of strength and control, which is coming along. There is much more work to be done, and many more things left to learn, but so far I love it as much as I love climbing.

So, are you going to quit climbing?

No of course not! Aerial art is just another thing that I do now. I will join the circus, but I also have El Cap to do, and the Olympics, and so many more climbing goals. Aerial is amazing cross training for all of that. Along with the aforementioned core and arm workouts I’m getting, I’m also working on my mental game. Aerial acts are done off the ground, and in an actual show you can be as high as 20-30 feet! That means learning your routine inside and out, and knowing it so well that you could do it in your sleep. It also means learning to trust your body. You have to know for a fact that your body will do what you trained it to do. This carries over to climbing by making me trust my hands way more than I did before! If I can hang off the trapeze with my legs folded over my arms with just one hand, I can also hold myself on a wall with my feet assisting me (or without them, honestly). There’s also the fact that you learn how to catch yourself to get yourself out of potentially dangerous situations, so you learn to trust that you can do the same thing while climbing. As a result, my overall climbing has gotten way better. I’ve learned that I can trust my body more, and take better falls, so I feel more comfortable making harder or scarier throws. Of course, it also helps that I get a full body workout by doing all the aerials. So while I love the aerials and will absolutely join the circus when I’m ready, I love climbing way too much to give it up. I also can’t wait to see how much more my climbing will improve with all this aerial training.

But talking about it is one thing. Take a look for yourselves!

This is a video of the beginnings of a routine that Bobby created for me. This apparatus is called a dance trapeze, and in this video it’s attached at to something overhead by a swivel (there’s more to it but that’s the basic idea). The swivel, along with the fact that it’s held up by a single point rather than the ropes being separated at the top is what lets it swing and spin.

And here are some photos of the other apparatuses that we use during our sessions:

This one on straps. Straps are somewhat easier for me to use because I have more arm control than I do on the other apparatuses. The core has slightly less work to do because my lats are strong enough to take over for it when needed. That doesn’t always work, but so far it’s been pretty reliable.

And this one is the lyra. The lyra is a little harder for me because my lower body has to be more engaged. The curvature of the ring makes it easier for me to orient my hands in a way that helps me keep my lower body under my control. My arms are still the main control point for me, but the lyra forces you to ask the rest of the body to participate. I should add that the lyra makes me feel pretty. It brings strength and gracefullness together in a way that feels the most aesthetically pleasing when I use it.

Here is another example of the dance trapeze. The dance trapeze combines the raw strength and power of the straps with the beauty and grace of the lyra. It’s slightly harder for me to use than the lyra is, but it still adds a level of elegance that makes the performance really pop.

Aerial art has only been in my life for the last month, but it’s already made a difference in my life. I feel like I finally found something that plays to my strengths while also adding an element of grace and beauty that I’m not used to having. I highly recommend that you try it for yourself if you can.

That’s a wrap on the second World Cup of the season! This World Cup was held in Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck is a small town with beautiful mountain views and one of the best climbing gyms in the world (in my opinion). The gym is called Kletterzenstrum. The walls are tall and the routes are hard. It’s always nice to go early and climb in the gym for fun.

The competition routes are even better. They’re tall and always creatively set. This year was no different. I mean, just look at this!

It’s also easier to train for, since the wall is the same every year.

Now let’s talk about the competition itself. I mentioned in my last blog post that I was having a hard time with training prior to this competition. I don’t really know why, but something had just switched off and made training into a chore. In the same post, I mentioned that I was able to pull myself out of it in the nick of time. I was able to pull out my training tools and get to work, and it paid off!

Like I said, the routes at the Innsbruck competition are always really well-set. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re easy. The RP1 routes had pretty good hands, but the movement was tricky at times. I found myself having to change my beta a few times mid climb (there’ll be a post about beta changing mid climb at a later time). I ended up not topping any of the routes, sadly, although I did get pretty far. I ran out of steam faster than I would’ve liked, and that probably had something to do with needing to change beta as I climbed.

Was the beta changing the only reason you couldn’t finish the routes?

No, it sure was not. The walls at the Innsbruck gym are longer than most of the routes I’ve ever climbed. The competition wall has the most interesting features I’ve ever seen. I’ve worked on endurance a lot over the years, but somehow it never seems to be enough for Innsbruck. We don’t have features like the ones on the wall in Innsbruck, and our walls aren’t as tall. In addition, there’s something about competitions that really tire me out. No matter how much endurance and power endurance training I do I always fall short. One other thing for this year specifically was that the heat was immense. Cerebral palsy and extreme weather conditions just don’t get along. Cold conditions locks my muscles to the point where I almost literally can’t move them. This tends to make moving pretty painful. The flipside of this is extreme heat, which was the problem I was having in Innsbruck. When it gets really hot and/or humid, my muscles take longer to listen to me. It will often take actual thought to get my legs to move. The strength is there, but moving takes so much effort that I get tired out quickly. Once the legs are over tired the arms have to take over, which results in them getting pumped faster than they otherwise would, which ultimately causes me to fall.

All that said though, I’m really happy with my performance! On both qualification routes I got almost three quarters of the way up. For finals I got a little more than halfway up. Given that I had to almost restart my training due to a mental block that I was having (as I described in my [2025-06-21-training_block.markdown] post), I would say the comp went pretty well.

Okay, so enough about me. I go to these competitions to show off my climbing on the world stage, but that wouldn’t be possible without my fellow competitiors. This time around there were much more people in the RP1 category, and you could really see all the training that people put in! Returning competitors wowed both the crowd and myself with all the improvements they’ve made over time. New people joined the competition and showed the world what they could do.

This year, there were four women from the USA in the RP1 category: Tiffany, Jackie, Hannah, and myself. Seeing their progress so far has been amazing. I was blown away by the way Tiffany learned how to use her off hand to hold onto holds in order to get the main hand up. I was amazed by the continuous progress that Hannah brought to this comp. I was so proud of Jackie. It’s her first year and she’s made finals at both World Cups that she’s been to so far. She wowed the crowd and got second place at a competition that is considered to be pretty hard, especially for beginners. The best part? We managed to pull off a full USA podium! Seriously, this competition was amazing.

Here’s the four USA RP1 competitors. From left to right we have Hannah, Jackie, myself, and Tiffany.

Here are some photos of my friends in action!

This is a photo of Jackie climbing one of the qualifier routes. Look at how she holds herself on the wall despite how overhung it is!

Here’s Hannah climbing the Finals route. Notice how she keeps her left hip in as she holds on with the right hand and reaches up with the left.

And this one is of Tiffany climbing on of the qualifier routes. She’s keeping her body close to the wall using a left-side heel hook.

Want to see how everyone in the women’s RP1 category (as well as everyone who competed) did at this competition? Find the results here.

Want to watch myself and my fellow competitors climb in the finals round? You can watch the full finals round here.

Have you been keeping up with the paraclimbing competition circuit? Have any questions, or people you’d like me to highlight? Let me know! I love spotlighting people, so if you suggest someone I’ll do my best. There will be more specific spotlight posts for people that I want to show off, so keep an eye out for those.

Happy climbing!

Wow it’s been a bit! There’s been some exciting news, planning travel for the next World Cup, and finding new ways to train. I know that all sounds cool, but that’s not what this is about.

See, for the last few weeks I felt kinda stuck. I felt like I couldn’t train properly. Nothing I tried would work. My legs were stiffer than they’ve been for a while, and no amount of stretching or muscle relaxers or stretching changed that. I also couldn’t campus for some reason. I couldn’t trust my hands, and my arms couldn’t do big pulls. I was essentially stuck in a rut. I felt discouraged because the Innsbruck World Cup is right around the corner, and I didn’t feel as ready for it as I’d like.

Let’s talk about that. Training ruts happen every so often. Mine seem to pop up when there’s a change in temperature. In the winter, my muscles lock up and it takes me a bit to figure out how to cope with that. The transition to warm weather is almost worse because heat makes controlling the muscles really difficult. It makes me feel like there’s weights on my legs, so lifting and moving them just feels impossible sometimes. This spring/summer transition is no different.

This also happens when there’s a competition I’m particularly excited about. Innsbruck is my favorite World Cup of them all, so I’m very excited for it. I get to see all my international friends, eat fun Austrian food, and go to my favorite gym in the world. I also love that comp because the routes are usually really overhung and very creatively set. The last thing I need is to be fighting with my legs while I’m just trying to enjoy the vibes of the city and the comp itself.

So then, what do you do about it?

The thing is, you just have to push through it. I’d changed up how I train, again, and it seems to be working so far. I was doing what’s called phase training, where you focus on different aspects of training for long periods of time before moving on to the next one. The order we’ve been going in is endurance, strength, power, and power endurance. That was working for a while, but then it stopped working. I’m not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I stopped trusting the process. There’s also the fact that my normal training has gotten me very far, so when comp season rolls around it might be good to transition back into doing what I know how to do rather than phase training the whole time.

But aren’t you already in Europe for the next World Cup?

Yep, I sure am! Luckily I’d gone through this before, so I was able to snap out of it before it got bad. I regained my strength and endurance quickly enough, and the power endurance wasn’t far behind. I spent the winter building up a lot of leg and arm strength, so I just had to retrain my brain to activate it and then trust it.

Wait, so you just snapped out of it? Well, no. There are steps that I take to help me. The first step was to make training more of a fun activity. If it feels like a reward, you’re more likely to want to do it. My way of doing this is to just go to a gym and climb up and down on autobelays. As I’m more of a boulderer now, I reward myself with some bouldering afterwards. This is fun to me, but it also really wakes up the legs and makes it so that I can pull stronger leg moves on rope routes, and not get as tired on tall wall. When I’m at my boulder gym, I’ll try a bunch of v0s on the kilterboard. I can do more of the leg moves that they ask for on these routes, which makes me feel confident, so I really enjoy doing it. I follow it up with trying to campus the holds on the same route.

The next step is to figure out how to take that fun and make it a bit more structured so that you can accomplish certain training goals. It helps to get others involved at this point. If you have a training partner, it becomes easier to do the workouts that feel less fun. I’ve also started to do the autobelay, boulder, rope climb thing in that order each time. It helps because it keeps me from getting bored, I get to do my own thing for a while, and then I get to play around on boulders and fun top rope. It all works out.

The third, and arguably most important, step is to remind yourself why you’re doing this. What’s the point? I do it to fuel my love of climbing. I get to go to Europe with my partner, see a lot of my international friends, and climb on walls that are made specifically for us. All of that fuels my training, so I take that and find a way to use that to break the rut.

The thing to keep in mind is that this feeling will pass. It’s not permanent. It will go away, and once it does you’ll feel better and stronger for having pushed through it. Remember that your chosen sport is supposed to be fun, and that whatever you put out is what you will get back. If you tell yourself that you’ll get through it and come out on top, you’ll gain the will and strength to do the work to help yourself.

It took a bit, but I eventually got my mojo back. I can once again lead and boulder the way I want. My mental game has improved which has let me get my dynamic power back. I feel more ready for this comp than I did even for the Salt Lake comp. And once this comp is over, I’ll restart my training progress so I can be ready for Seoul.

What do you guys do when you’re finding it hard to train for your sport? How do you get yourself out of it? Share your thoughts either by emailing me or commenting on the Instagram post!

Anyway, happy climbing y’all!

It’s that time again! The International Competition Season is upon us once more, and it starts with Salt Lake City.

As you can probably tell from the title, I ended up missing the gold. I fell one hold below Hannah (the gold medalist). Before I go on, I’d like to make one thing clear: I couldn’t be more proud of Hannah. She’s been training super hard and has come a very long way in her climbing journey. It’s been great to watch her training journey all these years.

That said, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t upset about getting second, I was upset about the way or reason that I fell so early. The finals route for RP1 was set on what’s called an arette (think of an outer corner). Arettes are one of the few things I actively avoid because I can’t turn my feet inwards to get good purchase on a foot hold. I’ve been working on that, but I still have a very hard time with it.

The part of the route that threw me went around an arette. But what’s worse is that the foot that was given was also a pocket. Pocket feet are as bad as arettes because I also don’t have good ankle control. The good news is that there were two different ways to get up: I could throw my left foot around the arette into the pocket, or I could get my foot onto a really high foot hold and push up on that without being able to use higher hand holds to help me get up. Turns out, I could do neither of those things. I tried the high foot and only had a side pull that was about the height of my hip, so I couldn’t use my arms to help, and my legs just aren’t strong enough to pull off a move like that.

That said, I’m happy about how the comp went. Competitions feel to me like a way to showcase all of the training that was done over the previos year. It’s also a great way to find new and exciting things to train. Every time I fall off a competition route, whether I win or lose, I learn something.

Here are some examples:

Last year, 2024, I got 4th place at the comp in Salt Lake City. I had tied with two other people in both qualifiers and finals and would’ve ended up taking second place if not for one move. I needed to campus to the next hold, but from where I was it looked like too far of a pull and I weasn’t confident that I could pull it off. Had I tried it, I probably would’ve been okay. Even if I missed, I would’ve gotten a plus and secured second place. Instead, we tied for 2nd, so the results came down to the amount of time it took each of us to get to where we were on the wall. I am a particularly slow climber, so ended up in 4th. That comp taught me that me that I need to train my campusing even more, and that I need to trust that my arms will figure it out.

The year before that, 2023 I actually won the SLC competition against someone I never thought I could out climb. I fell due to not being able to span a gap in an inner corner (also known as a dihedral), but was able to secure gold because the 2nd place person ended up slipping two holds below me. That comp taught me to trust my climbing more, because you never know what will happen when you get to finals.

The year before that, 2022, I ended up in 5th place. I’d missed 4th by falling 3 holds below the person who got 4th place. This was the same year that I’d gotten my first win at Nationals, so I was convinced that I had done enough training to at least make finals. Having missed it, I ended up feeling very upset. I had gone into that comp feeling like I had to beat the other people in my category. I’ll admit I thought I was owed the opportunity to get into finals. That comp taught me to view competions differently. No one owed me anything. Everyone who attended that competition trained to be there. We had each earned the results that we got. Rather than focusing on what I think I was owed, I needed to focus on how I could improve my training even more. That lesson helped a lot, because I ended up winning silver at the next two comps that same year.

Now back to this competition: I walked away with a silver medal, and gained new training focuses. We have a month between now and the next World Cup in Innsbruck Austria, so I have time to get my legs stronger and to continue to work on inner and outer leg rotation. I don’t know what’s going to happen nex, but man am I excited to find out. Stay tuned to see what happens!

Anyway, here’s all of the results of the competition.

And here’s the YouTube video of the finals round.

Enjoy!

Hi friends! It’s been a while since I’ve posted a fun post, so here we are.

So as some of you may know, I tend to do things that can be considered pretty…questionable. My reputation must be getting around because a kid recently asked “What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”

My immediate answer to that was “I recently bought a skateboard!”

Yep, I bought a skateboard. But there’s a story behind it!

So, I’d gone to a sports store recently to get insoles for my shoes (my arches are really flat so I wanted to see if I could change that). I got the arches, and then went downstairs to see how much a Bosu Ball would cost (I don’t know if you guys remember, but I love that thing). The first thing you see when you go downstairs, though, is skateboards. I was with Ben at the time, who jokingly said “Do you wanna buy a skateboard?” I said something like “No, I’ll probably die.” To which he said something like “Do you want to at least try it?”

Now, there was a staff member on the floor who’d happened to overhear us. He said something like “Why not try one out? I’ll help you!” That was all the convincing I needed (it’s not all that hard to get me to do/try something crazy).

So he picked up this nice skateboard that had pretty big wheels that were also pretty soft. He later explained that big and soft wheels are the best option since they create a little more friction than harder wheels would, which helps the beginner avoid getting thrown off.

Anyway so he pulled out this beginner-style skateboard, put it down, and helped me get on. He tells me to just stand for a bit, so I did. And I didn’t die! It actually reminded me of a Bosu Ball because of the way that it rocked when I leaned slightly forward or backwards. The staff member explained that rocking like that is how we turn the skateboard while we ride it.

So by now I was already convinced that this thing was the best toy I’ve ever played with. I was still standing on the skateboard (on my own, I might add), when the staff member says “Alright, let’s try moving a bit.”

That’s when I probably should’ve said “No thanks” and gotten off. But, me being me, I instead said “Okay!” So the staff member pulled me along slowly and told me when to rock forwards and backwards to avoid obstacles in the store.

Believe me when I tell you, I was over the moon! I was riding a skateboard, and I still hadn’t died! It felt amazing, so I decided right then and there that I would get one.

That brings us back to the present. I’d gone onto Amazon and gotten myself a cheap board to mess around with. I figured that if I liked riding it, and could get pretty decent at using it without getting too injured, I’ll spend a little more money to get a better one.

This is my skateboard! It’s small, but that’s because I didn’t want to pay more money for a better one without knowing if I’d like it.

And look, I haven’t gotten injured! I haven’t even fallen off of it yet, so that’s a good start. I mostly just stand on it in my apartment and rock back and forth, as well as side to side. I do it in an area that has walls I can grab if and when I need to.

Take a look!

So far, it’s going great. Stay tuned for progress updates that I’ll be posting as both blogs and instagram posts!

Also, I want to hear from you! What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done? And have you ever ridden a skateboard? If so, how’d it go? Do you have any tips? If you haven’t, would you? Send me an email or comment on the instagram post if you want.

And, just because, here’s some more photos:

Rygel got to try it out:

Now I’m just posing with the board because why not:

Rygel decided to photobomb my shot.

Here’s one without Rygel. I should add that standing like this on a skateboard is terrifying because if I lean slightly too hard on the arm that’s leaning on the wall, the board would be pushed out from under me and I’d fall off.

This one was Ben’s idea! I love how the shot came out though.

Enjoy!

Okay, so let’s have a chat. By now, you all know about me having Cerebral Palsy (CP). CP comes in many forms, and effects people in many different ways. Some people have limited mobility or control. In severe cases, an individual might not be able to do anything independently at all.

Thankfully, that’s not my situation. My CP is considered to be very mild, which means that I can get away with doing things that may seem pretty questionable for someone like me.

One of those activities is bouldering. Bouldering is climbing up a wall without a rope and either free falling or climbing down after finishing a route. Some people consider bouldering to be scarier or harder than rope climbing, but I beg to differ. Bouldering to me feels more like a power workout. It requires more mental control on my end, and the routes being short means that the problems are arguably more complicated than a typical rope route.

That said, I do still love it. Figuring out how to complete a moderate level route is sometimes frustrating, but very entertaining. And the fun thing about bouldering is that if you need to come down because your solution didn’t work for the climb, you can always just hop back on without having to complete a long part of a route first.

So Melissa, how do you get down from a boulder route?

Well, I tend to just drop. Depending on how I’m feeling, I’ll either drop straight down from the top of a route (a typical boulder wall is about 10-12 feet), or I’ll climb down and drop from a lower point on the wall. Either way though, I tend to just drop.

But Melissa, how does dropping up to 10 feet feel?

Well to be honest, it’s scary. As I’m falling, or when I’m about to fall, I tend to think about the fact that I could snap an ankle by mistake. Especially when I get up high and there isn’t a reasonable way to climb down. I often would rather just drop than to get too tired trying to climb down and falling anyway.

On the other hand, it’s also really fun. There’s something really freeing about taking a 10 foot fall. The temporary free fall makes me feel light, and happy. For a very brief moment, I can pretend that I don’t have a disability.

Yes, but what does the landing feel like?

Oh, well that’s also really fun. The sudden catch at the end feels powerful. As long as my legs are beneath me, they can absorb the shock and then I can either stand right back up or just sit. My drops do look a little strange though. My feet don’t align with my knees. My feet turn outward when my knees are straight (this is called knee-knocker). As a result, I end up in a W sit before springing back up. Onlookers, especially those who don’t know me as well, will sometimes come and ask “Doesn’t that hurt?”

The answer, in short, is no. My legs just fold that way naturally. The distance of the drop doesn’t effect the feeling of the impact. It just effects my level of fear. And that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes they fold straight forwards and then I roll forward, landing on my hands and knees.

What happens when you fall unexpectedly, or when you don’t land on your feet?

That’s a little more complicated. It took a long time to figure out how to fall at all. Getting myself to drop from high up took even longer. Figuring out how to protect an unexpected fall is a recent development. I actually had to do a lot of core work to get to that point.

Why core though?

You might not realize it, but the ability to stop your back from collapsing backwards and causing your head to ricochet off the ground when you fall backwards comes from your core. I would describe it as a reverse crunch, because a person is unfurling backwards upon hitting the ground. I’ll sometimes also fall to the side, wherein the obliques will take over so that I don’t bang my head sideways.

So… can we see??

Yep! I’m putting some examples down below the text of the post. Watch how my legs fold inward, or just forward, when I hit the ground. I tend to roll forwards onto my hands, but I’m in complete control of it…usually. I’m also including a few falls that aren’t planned, where I don’t have my feet directly beneath me. None are from that high up, so it’s not all that bad, but I figured they’d be fun to show. Enjoy!

Here’s an example of me climbing down before dropping off a wall. When I climb, I gauge the likelihood of a fall, and what the fall would look like. If I feel like a fall is going to be painful or not well controlled I’ll bail on the climb. Depending on the climb and the move I was afraid of falling on, I may decide that the fall won’t be all that bad and take the risk. Or I’ll decide to just skip the climb entirely.

This one’s an example of a fall that I knew would be less within my control. I used momentum to try to grab a hold that wasn’t all that good. It would for sure have been better if I’d used my left hand, but I couldn’t get there. Since I went for a left-hand hold with my right hand without being able stabilize with my feet, I got thrown off the climb. My momentum kept going so I ‘barn-doored’ to the left and landed on my side. Ben is spotting me because I knew the momentum might throw me off. My main fear was flying off the mat entirely. The fall itself was totally fine.

I don’t always know exactly when I fall. In fact, I will sometimes do something until failure, which means I’ll fall because of fatigue. This is an example of that. I was doing a ‘no hesitation’ campusing drill, where I have to just reach for what I can grab without thinking about where my hands are going. It’s a fun drill, but a fall is imminent. In this video, I went to grab a hold and slipped off, which threw me off the wall. I didn’t think about whether I could actually use the hold (which is the point of the drill) so I ended up falling off.

I’ve been working falling since I’d started bouldering. Over the years, I would drop from higher and higher points just to test the limits. This video shows one of the farthest falls I’ve ever taken. This is one of those times where climbing down would’ve been too much work so I just dropped. Since I chose to fall, my feet were beneath me and I was in full control.

And those are some of my bouldering falls! It took a long time to get comfortable with falls like these. And these are just bouldering falls! At some point I’ll talk about what it’s like to take a lead fall.

In the meantime, feel free to email or message me about your experience with boulder falls! Falling is terrifying so it’s always exciting and useful to hear other peoples’ experiences with falling.

Cheers!

This is a rock

And this is me climbing a rock

A little while back, I posted about climbing a route called Something Interesting. That was the beginning of what is probably going to be a very good season. I’ve gone out a couple times since, and I’ve been having a ton of fun doing it.

But the post is titled Imposter Syndrome. So, let’s talk about that.

As you all probably know by now, I have a disability. My disability is a Cerebral Palsy, which is a neurological disability that effects my movement, strength, and overall endurance. I wrote a whole post titled Cerebral Palsy where I go into details about how I’m effected by the disability.

Anyway, so I have Cerebral Palsy (CP). CP makes life interesting, to say the least. Like I said, my movement is affected, as well as strength and endurance. I say my life is interesting because I have goals that arguably don’t make that much sense when you consider how my disability effects me.

One of those goals is to lead up to the top of El Capitan. To do that, I’m trying to go outdoor climbing as often as I can to get in some lead and aid climbing practice.

Outdoor climbing is great. I love touching rock, meeting people out on the crag, and just being out in nature. It makes me very happy to know that I can hike and climb out there just like everyone else can. Years ago I could only dream of going out, hiking to a crag, and leading up some routes. Now it’s a reality, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

But happiness isn’t the only emotion I have regarding outdoor climbing. There’s always a twinge of sadness that I get sometimes when I climb outside, or even when I’m in the gym. It’s the same feeling I get every so often when I hang out in a group of able-bodied people.

That sadness is attributed to Imposter Syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome effects many people in many different ways. Mine rears its head whenever I am surrounded by able-bodied people. I find myself thinking about what I would be like if I weren’t disabled. I fantasize about what I’d be able to do if my legs worked. I’d probably be a runner, or a wrestler.

But obviously, that’s not the life I was given. I instead make the best of this life. That doesn’t stop me from feeling sad sometimes though. I sometimes find myself feeling like I don’t belong in the climbing world. I train hard at the gym, and try to climb hard too, but I often feel like I’m not doing enough. Other people at the gym are leading harder routes. People are pulling off moves that I don’t have a hope of ever doing in this lifetime. Climbs with high or far foot moves are almost always climbs that I just can’t do. I can lift heavy weights but I can’t carry them to where I need them. I need a spot for certain exercises because my balance is so bad.

The gym isn’t the only place where that feeling rears its head. Like I said earlier, I do a fair amount of outdoor climbing these days. But I have a hard time hiking, walking, and climbing. Trad climbing terrifies me. I can’t do long days like my able-bodied friends can. There’s often the lingering feeling that my climbing partners would rather go outside with people who won’t walk as slow, or who can have longer days, or who can climb harder things. These things get to me, you know?

These feelings were particularly strong the last time I went out climbing. I don’t know exactly why, but I suddenly found myself feeling particularly sad. Ben and I went up to a two-pitch climb. The hardest part of the climb was supposed to be the bottom part, but I found most of the first pitch to be difficult. When we came down we went to a different climb called Easy Overhang. This climb is a 5.2, and everyone who talks about it calls it easy. I tried going up it and just could not get very far. I came down and thought: Wow, what right do I have to be out here? Why do I feel like I have the right to be out here like the able-bodied people do? That’s not the first time I’d had that thought, but as familiar as it was it still felt bad.

But here’s the thing: Most people deal with Imposter Syndrome. There are a lot of talented people in the world, and being among them is scary. But I’ve been learning how to handle it. It’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter how talented the people around you are. If you’re trying your best, you too deserve to be considered one of those talented people.

I’m learning this lesson too, and I think I will be for a long time. I’m working on celebrating the small improvements I make during my training so that I don’t lose track of my progress. I also learned that it also helps to not make comparisons to those around you. I’ve known this for a while, but I still find it hard to remember sometimes.

Oh also! It also helps to reward yourself for making progress on your goals. My self-reward is milkshakes!

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome is hard. When does it pop up for you? How do you guys deal with it? Do you have self-reward systems? Share your thoughts with me via email, or via my instagram. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This one’s a long one, so bear with me. Anyway, read on!

Spring has arrived! Sorta… Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and the weather is nicer. That’s great and all, but that also means something very important: Outdoor season is upon us!

Wait, but what does that mean? What’s outdoor season?

Warm weather means that outdoor climbing can finally happen! To be fair, some climbers have already gone outside. There have been a few somewhat nice days, and some people go outside even before the weather gets warm.

Why haven’t I just done the same thing? Well, here’s the thing: Cerebral Palsy, or at least my specific Cerebral Palsy, doesn’t mix well with the cold. The cold makes my muscles so stiff that moving them is much harder than it normally is. Climbing in the cold is sometimes just painful. I’ve gone climbing in the cold before, and it usually doesn’t go well.

Anyway, so my partner and I, along with two other friends, just embarked on our first outdoor trip of the season. We went to the Shawangunk Mountain Range, or The Gunks, in Upstate NY. I wanted to do a 5.3 climb that was in the same area called Three Pines, but since it was a nice day there were a few other parties waiting for that climb. Since there was a line, we ended up on a different climb in the area called Something Interesting. Something Interesting is said to be a 5.7+, which is the hardest grade I’ve ever tried to lead. So naturally, I was nervous.

Why didn’t we just wait? Would it not have made more sense to wait for the easier climb?

Well, here’s the thing. Climbing grades don’t make sense for me. This is especially true for outdoor climbs. Lower graded climbs usually have more hands and feet, and the route paths are usually easier to find. The problem, though, is that those feet are high and sometimes pretty far apart. These climbs also have more balance-heavy movements. My Cerebral Palsy doesn’t like that. My legs are weaker than the average person’s, and are also much stiffer. This makes navigating climbs with those types of movements much more difficult.

Here’s another thing to keep in mind. When I go outdoor climbing, I’m trad leading a lot of these climbs. That means that I’m putting my own gear into the wall and clipping myself in to those pieces as I go. Trad is terrifying because any fall you take would be onto gear that you placed yourself, which means that you have to trust that you’ve placed them really well. Trad is even more scary for me when you consider the fact that my legs like to act up whenever I’m afraid, so falling is more likely for me. The fear of trad climbing gets easier to control the more often you do it, so I try to do it as often as I can.

When I’m trad leading, climbs with high or wide foot moves feel much more dangerous and scary to me.

Scary climbs shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Well, they are. When I’m afraid, my body decides that a dramatic response is the best response. My legs get really stiff, and I start to over grip the holds that I’m using, which makes my hands really tired. My legs also start to spasm a lot. My arms being tired, plus the spasms, makes controlling my legs harder than it usually is. The lack of control causes the fear response to escalate, thus worsening the effects.

I’ve done Three Pines with my partner before, so we’re familiar with the moves on that climb. About 20 feet up there’s a move where you have to stretch your leg across a 3 or 4 foot gap. The first time we went, I couldn’t do that move on lead because my legs were stiffer then than they are now. That caused the fear response that I described earlier to kick in so I had to come down and ask my partner to lead that first pitch. When we went back this time, I wanted to see if I could do that wide foot move.

Like I said though, there was a line for Three Pines. The choice then became do we wait for the climb to open up or do we do the harder climb that had a much shorter line. Keeping in mind that grades don’t make sense for my climbing, my partner had me look at each climb and make a decision based on how the climbs themselves looked. I did just that, and decided that the climb that was graded higher was probably a better fit for me than the climb with the easier grade. The harder climb played more to my strengths, as you’ll see later.

But let’s get back to Something Interesting. Something Interesting was, well, interesting (yes, pun intended). I’ve never climbed that hard in The Gunks before, so we were exploring a whole new world. There’s a crack that goes up the climb that makes finding places to put gear a little easier. That doesn’t mean that the climb felt any less scary. As I started up the climb, my legs moved really slowly and started shaking like they normally do. They did this on and off throughout the entire climb.

The movements on the climb were fun though. I’ve been working on smearing on the wall (using just the wall instead of a foothold to get higher), so I was excited to do that outside. See how small that foot is?!

I also got to do more high steps and wide foot moves, both of which I had been working on during the off-season. At one point I even got to break out one of my ‘signature moves.’ Yes, I know that sounds corny. Anyway so I do this thing where I’ll pick my foot up with my hand to about hip height. I then place the foot on the hold, but I put it on upside down. Then I stand up using the top part of my foot in order to get my other leg up so that I can stand normally. Observe:

This is one of my favorite climbing moves, but I’d never done it while trad leading. And for good reason! As you saw my hip gets pushed out pretty far, which makes the hold that I’m gripping a little less reliable. I ended up having to place a piece above me so that a fall wouldn’t be hat bad.

It took me at least an hour, I think, but I eventually got to the top of the first pitch. But we weren’t done yet. I belayed my partner up and then the others come up, and then I start up the second pitch.

The second pitch felt about as hard as the first pitch. By this time though, I was exhausted from doing the first pitch, my feet were hurting from being in my shoes for so long, and there was a different party coming down from a higher point that crossed directly through our climb. I had to fight much harder this time, and do moves that felt much scarier. I got as far as the crux (the hardest part of the climb), but then I had to bail. The last part of the crux was a scary move that I was highly likely to fall on, and I couldn’t get any pieces above me before trying it.

Bailing on Something Interesting didn’t feel good, but the climb itself felt amazing. It was scary and exciting. I got to do moves that I wasn’t able to do last year. I successfully led up the first pitch of a 5.7+, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. This season is going to be full of hard climbs and fun times, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Anyway here’s some more photos from the climb!

Here’s Ben (my partner), Vicki, and I before beginning our climb:

Here’s me placing a piece towards the beginning of the climb:

And here’s Vicki and I on the top of the first pitch:

For those of you who climb at the Gunks: What are your favorite climbs? Do you trad/rope climb or is bouldering more your style?

For those of you who don’t climb at the Gunks: Do you want/plan to? What climbs would you want to try?

Share your thoughts by either messaging me on Instagram or by shooting me an email.

And we’re back! This time I want to talk a bit about training. This will be a multi-part post, so keep an eye out for the rest of it.

I’ve been climbing for about 7 years now. Crazy, right? I’d never done any sports before that. I was always into working out though, so I had some strength, but I wasn’t a climber. I didn’t know anything about how to train for competitions, or just climbing in general.

Now fast forward to 6 years later. I’d learned a little more about how to train. I would work out a lot. I climbed often. I did everything I knew how to do in order to get better. But it didn’t feel like enough.

Almost a year ago, my partner introduced me to the idea of periodic training. Periodic training is hard, slow, and effective. The overarching idea is that it helps you learn how to understand your body in a very different way.

There are a few different phases in periodic training: endurance, strength, power, and power endurance. By the end of the power endurance phase, you should hit your ‘performance peak.’ Periodic training lets you choose when that performance peak is. One would make a goal, figure out when they want to hit that goal, and then plan out the lengths of their phases.

We were in our strength phase for a while, but we cut it short. We’d realized that strengthening my legs meant that I would have to try harder to control the new strength in them. It also meant that my legs were stiffer, so my running and bouldering had taken a hit.

That happens though. We’ve moved on to the power phase of our training now, and my legs are already doing better. Power training means doing things that are hard enough that you can only do them in short bursts. In this phase, we’re doing kilter board circuits, campus circuits, and hard bouldering or rope routes. We also do more intense, but shorter, strength workouts. The workouts are fun and hard, and they’ll get their own post because I really want to show them off.

Here’s a kilter board warm-up we were doing:

We start by warming up for about 20-30 minutes off the wall. Then we move our warm-ups to the kilter board. We work our way up from V0 routes to V2. After the warm-up, we move on to projecting.

Here’s a V1 project I’m working on at the moment:

For campus circuits, I will either do rapid movements on the kilter board, or I’ll do dynamic moves up the campus board. In both cases, the idea is to go quickly and to pull with as much effort as possible. On the campus board, I’m working on not pausing between hand moves. I’m also working on being able to pull harder and pop more accurately to the edges.

Here’s some campus board workouts I’m doing:

On the kilter board, I’m working on moving to holds without thinking about where I’m going. The goal is to grab whatever I grab and hold on well enough to not fall, and then go from there until I fall off. Pausing is also discouraged for this workout, although you’ll see that I end up pausing a bit anyway.

Here’s some kilter board campusing:

The workout portion, as you’ll see in a different post, are going to look pretty similar to normal strength workouts. The difference between the two is that power workouts are shorter, more intense, workouts. The exercises should be done with heavy enough weights, or be hard enough, that you can only do sets of 4-6. My general rule of thumb is that if you can do more than 6 reps for an exercise, then weight needs to be added.

The power phase of the overall workout cycle is crucial because it gives you the ability to apply your strength training to your climbs. It helps you be explosive, dynamic, and improves your commitment to harder movements. Power has helped me become better at doing bigger, more explosive campus moves. My foot placement is more direct and the footwork itself is more accurate. My high steps are more useful, and I can use them much more dynamically. Overall, the power phase is going well.

Do you all do power workouts? Share suggestions, questions, or workout videos with me either via my email or by messaging me on Instagram!

Hi all! When I created this website, it was with the intention of sharing updates on my climbing and training. But I also wanted to have a space where I can highlight people in the para-sports community. And that’s exactly what this post is for! As you can probably tell from the title, this post is going to be highlighting my friend Akeem.

This is Akeem:

Akeem is a bilateral amputee (specifically an above knee and below knee amputee) who got into climbing back in July of 2024. He was already really into handcycling, but he decided to try climbing because he thought it looked cool. He used to climb with no prosthesis, and would do a cool mix of pull-ups and smearing with his nubs to get up the wall.

On Sunday (4/6), I had the opportunity to coach a training day camp hosted by Adaptive Climbing Group. The purpose of this camp was to prepare athletes for the upcoming World Cup in Salt Lake, and to give athletes not going to the World Cup the tools to train for the next competition season. Akeem was one of the participants who attended this camp, and I loved everything I saw!

Akeem made the decision to climb with one prosthesis, and that really took his climbing up a notch! I’d seen him climb before the training camp since making that switch, but I was still impressed by what I saw! On the routes he was given, he would smear with his nub and step up with the prosthesis. He could flag with the nub and found ways to rest with most of his weight on it to give the other leg a break. It was so cool to watch. He looked so smooth as he climbed up the 40+ foot wall! I’m so proud of the effort he’s made, and I want you all to see it so I’m adding it here.

I can’t wait to see where Akeem’s climbing journey takes him. Follow him on instagram here to see all his cool training! He posts some really cool stuff, and you don’t want to miss any of it!

Hi friends!

As some of you may know by now, I have a neurological disability called Cerebral Palsy. March was Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, and as the month comes to an end I wanted to leave you with some knowledge about Cerebral Palsy, as well as share my personal journey with learning how to deal with it over time.

So what is Cerebral Palsy? Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a congenial neurological disorder. It is usually caused by damage being done to a baby either in the womb or during birth. There are 5 major types of CP: monoplegia, diplegia, hemipligia, triplegia, and quadroplegia.

Someone with monoplegia usually feels symptoms in one limb. Someone with diplegia has symptoms in either the lower or upper half of their body. Someone with hemiplegia is affected on either the entire right or entire left side of their body. Triplegia refers to three limbs being affected by the CP. Lastly, quadroplegia refers to all four limbs being affected by the condition. These are all very different, but the symptoms that present themselves are usually pretty similar. Some of these symptoms include stiffness, lack of muscle control, balance and/or coordination issues, and fatigue. These are just a few examples, but of course there are many more. Cerebral Palsy varies from person to person, so no two people with the condition will experience it the same way.

The type of Cerebral Palsy that I have is called Ataxic Spastic Diplegia. Ataxic, or ataxia, means that that there is limited balance and coordination. Basically, I fall over a lot. Whoops. Anyway Diplegia refers to the limbs that are affected, which in this case are my legs. Actually my entire lower body from the middle of my torso down is affected. The Spastic part refers to the spasticity. That said, my CP is on the milder side. While there is no cure, one can work on managing symptoms to improve quality of life.

And that’s exactly what I do! I decided at some point that I wanted what my seemingly able-bodied peers had: a normal, working body. I didn’t know how I would do it, or if it were going to be physically possible, but I’m stubborn so I figured I’d try anyway. That desire never really changed, but it evolved into me wanting the convenience that the able-bodied life seemed to have.

The problem though was that I was starting off in a wheelchair. Yep, a wheelchair. I had almost no use of my legs at all. Around the time I’d turned 6 or 7, I think, I’d moved on to using a walker. I don’t remember that transition very well, but I know I wasn’t happy about it. The walker was clunky and loud and overall just unpleasant. So around the time I was 9 or 10, my doctor had suggested using forearm crutches. Lo and behold, I hated those too. But they gave me something I didn’t have before: speed. I’d always wanted to be fast, but my legs would get in the way. The crutches were fun because I could just hop and swing on them using my arms to propel me forward. Suddenly I was fast. I could play with my peers. I wasn’t as fast as they were, but boy could I move. The added benefit was that my upper body became super ripped because of all the shoulder hopping. It was like doing dips constantly.

This is around the time that I learned that I wanted more. I wanted to be able to do what the others could do. If I could learn to balance on crutches, why not do more? I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point I decided to try walking with just one crutch. Having balance issues made this very scary, and it took a long while to get used to it. But that one crutch life made navigating NYC a lot easier. I had a spare hand to carry things, I had an easier time going down subway steps, and I could catch myself more safely when I inevitably fell over. For a while, that was the life.

But in true Melissa fashion, I wanted more. I didn’t like how heavy the crutch was, and it was also clunky and annoying. So when I was about 22, I randomly decided to buy a cane. I had been working more on balance, and I figured that the switch wouldn’t be all that bad. It was terrifying, but it payed off. It got easier over time to trust my balance and it was much less clunky than crutches. The other fun thing about having a cane is that I get to buy fun and fashionable ones!

That brings us to now. I’m still using a cane, but I have days where I can walk without it. My drive to do more has led me to figuring out how to strengthen my legs in fun, new ways. I’ve taught myself how to run, learned to deadlift, and learned how to take pretty long falls off of a boulder wall without breaking myself somehow. I’m constantly looking for new ways to get better and stronger, and the journey only gets better.

All that to say that every person with Cerebral Palsy is on their own path, and going on their own journey. My stubborn personality, plus my love for independance and convenience, has helped me get much farther than I ever thought I could go. Ultimately I’m trying to have fun and push the bounderies as far as I can get away with.

Do you know someone with Cerebral Palsy? Do you have CP yourself? Let’s talk about it! Share your thoughts and experiences with me either email or Instagram messaging.

It’s important to train hard in order to gain skill and strength in climbing. But it’s equally important to to take rest days. Rest days are fun because they give you time to nurse your aching body, but also because they give you a chance to work on your hobbies, or try new things. So what do I do on my rest days?

Sometimes I knit:

Sometimes I bake:

I tried rollerskating a few times:

And I even got back into playing violin:

Sometimes I have to just sit, or stretch, or massage my muscles, because my body is too sore to do anything else. There are even days where I go back and forth between sleeping and petting my cats.

Rest days important, so anything you do should be light, different from your main training focus, and most importantly, fun.

What do you guys do on your rest days? Is there something else that I should try? Send me your thoughts on Instagram!

Greetings!

Competition season has begun! The first World Cup of the season is in May in Salt Lake City, so of course I’ve been training hard.

Every year I find new ways to improve my training. Two years ago, for example, the most helpful thing I’d learned was the importance of having different warm-up plans for different comps (I’ll share those at some point). Last year I learned how to really train my legs so that I could rely on them more (I’d also hurt my right shoulder so campusing didn’t feel all that safe). This year, I learned more about strength training. I also learned more about how to improve cardio fitness, but that’s a story for another time.

Strength training interesting though. As an athlete with a neurological disability (Cerebral Palsy), learning how to strengthen my legs has always been tricky. I learned better ways to control the inevitable spasms, and how to know when to rest so that said spasms don’t throw me off the wall. I was also able to improve their flexibility, to some extent. But I didn’t know good ways to actually make them stronger. I tried weighted squats, but they would often hurt my back. I tried jumping rope, but my lack of cardio endurance would make it so I couldn’t do it for very long at a time. My legs also were’nt strong enough to handle very much of that while still being able to maintain functionality. The result was that I was able to get to higher foot holds, and I could even do heel hooks occasionally.

But I couldn’t use any of my newfound abilities. This year, though, I finally figured some stuff out. As it turns out, I can do things like deadlifts, box jumps, and Bosu ball squats. I learned that dropping off a bouldering wall from various heights is a great pylometric exercise that helps with doing deadpoints. I also learned that using a stationary bike that has cages on the pedals is a great way to make it so that I can move my legs one at a time rather than both of them trying to move when I only want to move one. Those are all good exercises. The issue I’m having with some of them is that my form looks incorrect compared to that of an able-bodied person’s.

Take deadlifts for example. Deadlifts are a great leg-strenghtening exercise. One bends at the knees until their thighs are paralell to the ground while their body is hinged forward at the hips. They grab the bar, stand straight up while pulling the shoulders back, and then bringing the bar back down and repeating the process. My balance is a little wonky, so these look a little different for me.

That said, I found that leaning my knees against a bench and taking the balance aspect out of it is a good way to for me to work on form. I also found out that I’ve been doing Romanian deadlifts rather than traditional deadlifts. These are better for my balance and they let me focus on weight and form more.

Box jumps are another fun and weird exercise. They should look similar to ‘proper’ squats. One sinks down with their knees at about 90 degrees and springs up and forward onto a platform of some kind. When they land on the platform, they should have their knees bent at 90 degrees and their thighs parallel to the ground. Then one could either jump down into another squat or step down and repeat the process. Mine, on the other hand, like this:

I need a good while to psych myself up to do the jump. I don’t sink as low as one is supposed to, and I land on the insides of my feet. My body will sometimes take a while to respond to me trying to straighten it up before the actual jump. When I do jump, I sometimes need to lean forward on my partner. I can do them independently, but no matter how I do them, my knees buckle inward.

They’re hard, and terrifying, but I still do these exercises. I like to jump off before repeating the rep, which is another good pylometric exercise. Jumping up onto the platform also helps me work on springing quickly while I’m on the wall. I’ve missed before and banged my shin, and I’ve even fallen backwards when I tried to do it independently on a mat. Like I said though, it’s still an exercise that’s worth doing.

Here’s one more example. There’s a ‘right’ way to fall off of a boulder wall. Ideally one would fall feet first and let their body roll backwards. The arms are crossed in front. I’ve actually shown people how to do this. I also tell them what we usally tell people: try not to land just on your feet. That said, I would also show them my way. My way of falling off a boulder wall is, in fact, to land just on my feet. I show this because it’s bound to happen anyway. I tell people to make sure that they land with their knees bent, so as to absorb the shock of the fall.

That all sounds pretty normal, right? The thing is, I don’t just land on my feet or roll backwards. I sometimes fall feet first and let my legs fold inward, like in a ‘W’ sit. We tell people not to let their hands hit the floor when they fall, but mine don’t follow the rules. None of this hurts, it just look a little weird.

I do this because I found that it’s safer to let my legs do whatever they naturally want to do rather than forcing them to land ‘correctly.’ They don’t get as stiff on the way down, which means that I don’t get as scared.

So, what does good form mean? Should one stop doing exercises because their bodies don’t let them do the exercises in the pre-approved ways? I’m sure that people would say that unless the form can be done well doing the exercise isn’t worth it. I, however, think that exercises have their uses with or without perfect form. If the exercise can be done with form that is close enough, and doing the exercise doesn’t pose a risk to the person, they should be fair game. If I only did exercises when the form was perfect, I wouldn’t have gotten as far in my fitness journey as I have so far. To me, the goal is to get the most out of the exercise that I possibly can. I try to stay as true to form as I can, but I prioritize doing the exercise and getting the most out of it.

I had to take a break from editing my site because I started to train much more rigorously.

I’ll be posting more about my training this week. There have been some pretty fun gains that I can’t wait to talk about.

In the meantime, here’s some photos of Rygel and Bernie bravely venturing out into the world just outside my apartment door.

This is a fun cave route at Movement LIC. I tend to use the cave as a way to learn to trust my campusing. Hero clipping on a literal roof forces one to trust that they can hang on just one arm while they clip. All the while there’s the constant thought that missing said clip would result in a pretty big fall into a wide-open space.

That’s what’s happening in the cave climbing video. I’m campusing on a roof and then trying to hang on my right arm while trying to clip with the left. The problem is that I tweaked my right shoulder last year, so campusing like this after not doing it at all in the last year was really scary.

I was still able to campus, but I would have to pull primarily with the left arm. I would also only campus on overhangs that aren’t too steep. Hanging like I’m doing in this video hurt too much, and I was afraid that I would accidentally hurt my left shoulder too.

So let’s talk about it! Shoulder injuries are common in the climbing world. First-time and experienced climbers alike will sometimes overload their shoulders by accident. It takes one weird move to cause pain, or even damage, to their shoulders.

While focusing on my footwork last year, I was also retraining my campus muscles. I decided to really slow down the process so as to get my shoulder as strong as possible so I can be less afraid to campus during a competition.

I started with shoulder stretching. I then moved on to doing scapular pull-ups. That step took a long time because my shoulder would hurt whenever I would try to put weight on it. When I could eventually put do scap pull-ups, I moved on to doing static normal pull-ups. From there I went on to doing dynamic power pull-ups. By this time I was also able to get back to the point where I could do one-arm scap pull-ups.

These steps helped my shoulders a lot. I was working hanging on one arm at a time for a while, and doing this helped alongside the previously mentioned steps helped me get back to where I felt comfortable hero clipping.

That brings us back to this video. What you’re seeing is the result of all the work I put in over the last year. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but progress is being made.

If there’s one exercise I really enjoy it’s climbing, of course. But another exercise I really enjoy is running. Yes, I know that sounds odd. Surely I mean running with my crutches, right?

Nope! Ever since I was a kid I’d wanted to run a marathon. The problem is, I didn’t think I could run at all. But at some point I read a book about Wilma Rudolph. She was a track and field star who overvame Polio (I’ll talk more about her in a different post). I remember thinking something like ‘wow, I wanna do that!’ Now, I could just run on my crutches, and I sometimes still do. It’s great for the shoulders and it doesn’t take as much thought. But I wanted to run without my crutches.

When I was about 20 years old, I used to watch people run. I’d pay attention to how people used their legs. For example, When people start their spring, the back leg pushes pretty hard off the ground, and for a moment the runner is in the air until they bring that back leg forward so it becomes the front leg. There’s also the fact that people tend to spring and land on their toes.

Here’s the thing though: sheer willpower isn’t always enough. It’s one thing to learn the mechanics of an exercise, but that doesn’t mean your body can just magically do it. But, as some of you know, I can be very stubborn, so I worked at it until I could do something that loosly resembled running. I spent the next few years training my body and mind to do what I saw. I did things like jumping rope, using exercise bikes, and even learning how to deadlift (that’s more recent), and eventually it started to come together.

Fast forward to this week. I went running yesterday for the first time in a bit. I’d gone running off and on before, but it’s been a particularly long amount of time since my last steady running stint so I knew it was going to be hard.

And hard it was. It’s cold out these days, so I’m stiffer than I was the last time I tried. I was also running on less even terrain than the last time, so there’s also that. As a result, I ended up falling a few times. But the first fall wasn’t a normal fall. I got yeeted and skidded along tha pavement. My hands took quite the beating as a result. And when I wasn’t falling over, I was still causing a ton of damage to my shoes.

That’s actually one of the hardest parts about running. My shoes get absolutely destroyed when I’m just starting out, which means I would have to buy 3 or 4 pairs in the span of a month or else I just can’t run. That happens because I tend to drag my feet due to weak ankle control. When I run more consistently, my body figures out and remembers how to avoid that, somewhat, so my sneakers and body take less of a beating.

This is what things looked like after yesterday. I’d torn up the palms of my hands and my sneakers became literally unusable.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop. It just means that I’ll have to be more careful about how I reintroduce running to my legs. I went a mile (no I didn’t run the whole time; it was a mix of running and walking), so maybe keeping it to about a block or so at a time would’ve been better. It’ll get better, it’s just going to take a while. When I get better at it (and if I get myself a head cam) I’ll do a live on instagram and take you all with me.

I’ll be doing a part two to this where I go into a more in-depth explanation of the various exercises that helped me get to the point where I could run at all, so keep an eye out for that.

I’m still trying to decide how often I’ll be posting on here, but I did decide to make Fridays fun days. Basically I’ll be subjecting you all to photos of my cats (and trust me, I have a lot).

I’ll also use Fridays to post about fun non-training shenanigans. So keep an eye out for all that.

Like with my Shout Outs page, feel free to send me some funny moments you’ve had and I’ll add some of them on this page. You can send them here!

Anyway, here’s a photo of my cats!

From left to right there’s Bernie, Rygel, and George.

This is a page for, well, shout outs! This is where I’ll be talking about cool things people are doing in the community. Have something new you’re trying or doing and want to share it? Send that my way and I’ll post it here in the Shout Outs tab. Know someone else who’s trying or doing something cool? Send them my way and I’ll add them there too!

Send your thoughts here!

This is my first ever blog post. How exciting!

The first weekend in March marked the the beginning of the main 2025 Para climbing Competitive season! Everyone climbed amazingly. You can really see the effort that each person has put into their training this season. Check out how everyone did below!

Here is the link to watch the entire Finals round.

Here are the results from the 2025 Para National competition.