The TrainingBeta Podcast: A Climbing Training Podcast
Sports:Wilderness
Back in April, I published an episode with Thomas Cunningham all about how he trains efficiently as a busy dad and ER physician to be able to send up to 5.14c projects in only 10-15 days outside climbing per year. You can listen to that episode in the link below:
Listen to my first interview with Thomas
In that episode, we started talking about how he uses the Whoop (a wearable bio tracking device), continuous glucose meters, and some other biohacking type stuff, but the interview would’ve been reallllly long if we’d gone into all of it in details. So I asked him to come back for a second interview to talk about all of that. We’ll be doing another one soon on using bloodwork to optimize supplementation, etc. for climbing performance soon.
So who is Thomas?
Thomas is a 36-year-old emergency medicine physician and father of 3 children from Louisville, KY who’s been climbing for around 20 years. After talking to him for a while, I realized he is SUPER scientific about everything he does in climbing. This is no surprise because he’s quite an overachiever in his academic/professional life as well.
He’s published a bunch of academic papers, he was chief resident at the University of Louisville Department of Emergency Medicine a while back, and WHILE he was doing that, he started a medical device company, Inscope Medical, and was VP of Innovations. He also completed an IronMan while he was an intern resident.
Here is his CV if you’re interested.
He’s an ambitious person, to say the least, and that means he has less time than some of us for climbing and training.
Only getting outside climbing around 10-15 days per year, and focusing all of that time on very hard projects, he has learned that his training and all of his days outside have to be hyperfocused and specific.
He also has to optimize his body for all the training he does and to be in peak performance mode when he’s trying to send. He’s used a continouse glucose meter (CGM) on himself in the past and he asked Sam Elias and Jonathan Horst to start wearing one in order to help them optimize their fueling for climbing.
He came into this interview with data on both of them (and himself), including what they were eating before using the CGM, the changes they made to their diets after and while using it, and the effects it had on their climbing. The CGM basically takes a reading of your blood glucose every 5 minutes so you can see in real time how each food/meal affects you.
We also talk a little more about the Whoop in this episode, which I’ve now gotten 6 of my friends and family using. It’s really interesting looking at the data each day about your sleep quality/quantity, how recovered you are, your HRV, and all kinds of stuff I’ve never paid attention to before. Thomas goes into how exactly he uses the whoop and how I’ve been using it myself.
This episode was really fun for me because this stuff as a nutritionist is extremely interesting. I hope you love it too!
Oh, and if you want to work with Thomas, you can do that by clicking on the link below:
Work with Thomas on Your Own Biohacking
TBP 134 :: Matt Pincus On the Priniciples of Projecting
TBP 133 :: The Simplest Finger Training Protocol with Dr. Tyler Nelson
TBP 132: 5 Common Training Mistakes Climbers Make - Alex Bridgewater and Charlie Manganiello
TBP 131: James Lucas on Improving His Bouldering by.... Bouldering More
TBP 130 :: Dr. Jared Vagy on Healing Elbow Injuries
TBP 129: Josh Larson on Prepping the US Team for World Cups and the Olympics
TBP 128 :: Dr. Tyler Nelson's Surprising Methodologies for Healing Tendons
TBP 127: Sierra Blair Coyle on Training, Modeling, and Online Negativity
TBP 126: How Kyle Lindsay Trained to Send His First 13a after A 5.12 Plateau
TBP 125: Jonathan Siegrist's Prep and Process for Planta de Shiva 5.15b
TBP 124: Shaina Savoy on Going from 12a to 13a in 6 Months
TBP 123: How John Kettle Went from V7 to V11 & 5.11d to 5.13b in 18 Months
TBP 122 :: The Access Fund - How Our Behavior Threatens Climbing Access and How We Can Do Better
TBP 121: Life Coach Remy Franklin on Prioritizing and Taking Action to Reach Goals
TBP 120: How Brianna Greene Overcame Fear to Send Her First 5.12a
TBP 119: How Tom O'Halloran Climbs 9a While Raising A Daughter and Working Full-Time
TBP 118 :: Dr. Tyler Nelson on the Latest Tech for Finger Training and Testing
TBP 117: 15-Yr-Old Tanner Bauer on Training for 14b & Growth Plate Injury
TBP 116 :: Dr. Jared Vagy on Healing Finger Injuries
TBP 115 :: Dalton Bunker on Training, Comps, and Being Vegan
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