Month: July 2015

Progress Equals Happiness

/ Jeanne / Leave a comment

Progress moves us forward, even if it’s tiny. It may sound self-helpy, but even reputable academic sources such as Harvard Business Review recognize the key role that progress plays in feeling good:

Consider, for example, how progress relates to one component of inner work life: overall mood ratings. Steps forward occurred on 76% of people’s best-mood days. By contrast, setbacks occurred on only 13% of those days.

–The Power of Small Wins, HBR

Rock climbing is like that. We’ve often felt happiest in our climbing when we are making progress (whether it’s sending harder routes, leveraging better technique, or getting stronger). Recently, we’ve overcome a decade-long plateau and are climbing harder, faster, stronger, and better than before, and have felt more connected and joyous with climbing than ever. It’s all upside, baby.

Photo by Eric McCoy

Photo by Eric McCoy

Now the burning question: How?

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Girl Crush: An Interview with Kathy Karlo

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Every so often, we’ll interview extraordinary girls doing extraordinary things: this is Girl Crush.  This week, we’re stoked to feature for the love of climbing author Kathy Karlo.

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Kathy Karlo is a rock climber based out of Brooklyn, NY. When she’s not on the road, she owns a Brooklyn and Boulder-based nanny agency. Between baking and loving’ on dogs, she’s desperately trying not to kill the last few living basil plants in her apartment.

Her love of rock and ice has been a life changing experience. She encourages anyone and everyone to try it! Her belief that climbing a rock is so much more than that…it’s a life journey that forever tests the limits of possibility.

Kathy is adopted from Korea, has a brown dog named Shooter, and a severely irrational fear of both zombies and dinosaurs.

If it isn’t ridiculous, then what’s the point?

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Gear Talk: An Interview with Totem Cams

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As our inspiring community of badass climbing ladies continues to grow, we strive to bring best-in-class content.

Our inaugural edition of Gear Talk – girls talking gear and all things awesome – features Totem Cams, an innovative Cooperative Work company based in Basque Country, Spain.

What strikes us most about Totem Cams is not only the high quality gear (a patented, exclusively designed Direct Loading Camming Device system for all-around use and broader placement possibilities) they produce entirely in Hernani (Gipuzkoa), but also their overall vision and mission around community:

Our efforts are focused to improve the production processes and management systems to achieve what is demanded by the customer: good products, competitive price and on time delivery.

All this supported on core values that are very important for us: give priority to the climber’s interest, fair working relationships, democratic decisions, share the wealth with our neighbor, man/woman equality and be environmentally friendly.

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We spoke with Mikel Apezetxea of Totem Cams about their origin story, community-building vision, and the evolution of trad climbing.

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Bouldering Basics and Best Practices

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Anytime we feel stuck or in a climbing rut, we love getting back to basics.  Our wardrobe is full of functional basics – white tees, blue jeans, black dress – and our arsenal of bouldering basics are just as key as building blocks to awesomeness.

Photo by Asha Agnish

Photo by Asha Agnish

Here are some bouldering basics and best practices to keep in mind for your next send:

  • Warm it up, stretch it out: Properly warming up before climbing maximizes your time on the rock/wall by increasing blood flow to the working muscles, which results in more limber joints and less risk of injury.

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