VauxWall Climbing will be hosting an exclusive Bouldering Babes Climbing Girls Run The World Tour! event – where extraordinary women create an encouraging space to connect with one another, and have a kick-ass time keeping fit!
This is an exclusive use closed event. You will have the entire centre to yourself along with like minded climbers.
Places are limited and to guarantee yours please book by clicking here
Price: £25 (incl. entry fee)
Every so often, we’ll interview extraordinary girls doing extraordinary things: this is Girl Crush. This week, we’re stoked to profile Auckland-based athlete Sarah Hay, who recently competed and crushed at the first two New Zealand National Climbing and Bouldering Competitions of the series.
“Climbing has also taken me to places and countries I’d never otherwise have thought to visit and I’m lucky enough to have parents who live in Queenstown which is gorgeous and close to so much great rock.“
-Sarah Hay | Climbing Athlete
Brooklyn Boulders Queensbridge will be hosting an exclusive Bouldering Babes Bootcamp – where extraordinary women create an encouraging space to connect withone another, and have a kick-ass time keeping fit!
Join experienced female instructors Jeanne Fu and Joy Chen for two days of high energy and holistic fitness designed for women, by women. We’ll integrate female-focused bouldering techniques with high intensity interval training, core conditioning, and yoga.
We love climbing with hip flexibility, flawless footwork, strong core work, mobility, and balance to create fluidity with the wall, so there will be some of that. We hate injuries, so there will be none of that!
Bouldering Babes Bootcamp is all about taking women from ‘I can’t’ – which affects everything in her life, and how she relates to the world – to feeling 100% empowered.
Kristin is a mother to a super rad 3-year-old, an alternative high school and local community college teacher, doctoral candidate, and entrepreneur.
An active member of the rock climbing community in the northeastern United States, she is extremely devoted to the empowerment of women through climbing, and teaches ladies technique clinics at climbing gyms in Rhode Island.
I began climbing in 2011, nurturing my newfound obsession as the spring and summer gave way to the crisp air that provided the best friction. That fall, I went on my first real climbing trip to the Red River Gorge, led my first 5.11, and began working my first V4. Then, my intuition told me something was wrong; I took a pregnancy test before going to the gym one night, and my fear became a reality.
Every so often, we’ll interview extraordinary girls doing extraordinary things: this is Girl Crush. This week, we’re thrilled to feature Cambodia-based climbing entrepreneur Mary Lüthy, whose passion project is Phnom Climb, Phnom Penh’s first rock climbing gym.
Mary is super stoked about rock climbing because it builds community, a safe and supportive environment, trust, self-esteem, confidence and perseverance amongst locals and expats climbers.
“Most people don’t immediately think that a low income country like Cambodia would need something like a climbing gym. Yet, after living here for over 5 years, we are convinced that our beloved city, Phnom Penh, would be better off if there were more fun, constructive, and healthy activities available. We have watched the rapid growth of the economy and consumer possibilities, but no parallel growth of sports or extracurricular activities for young people. Phnom Penh is hungry for a rock climbing gym!”
-Mary Lüthy | Co-Founder, Phnom Climb
From Sheryl Sandberg to Bey (as in Beyoncé), there is a certain sense of gravitas (and, quite frankly, privilege) that lends itself to the image of the woman who ‘has it all’.
For some, it is the quintessential model of balancing a happy home, healthy relationships, and a hearty career; for me, it has been about crafting what I call a ‘corporate bohemian’ lifestyle (or, quite simply, ‘work life balance’) to create financial stability while having the freedom to pursue all of my passions – most of which involve travel, climbing, or the optimal pairing of both.
Admittedly, I’d been one of those nay-saying ladies in my earlier years, and just as I did not believe that women could have it all from a personal and professional standpoint (for reasons I won’t delve in here), so I did not believe that I could ‘have it all’ as a female climber.
We’re big believers that that rock climbing is perfectly suited as a metaphor for life, and Matthew Childs’ TED talk, 9 Life Lessons from Rock Climbing, nicely encapsulates this view:
Rule #1: Don’t let go
Rule #2: Hesitation is bad
Rule #3: Have a plan
Rule #4: The Move is the End
Rule #5: Know how to rest
Rule #6: Fear Sucks
Rule #7: Opposites are good
Rule #8: Strength doesn’t always equal success
Rule #9: Know how to let go
At first glance, it might look like Rule #1 and Rule #9 contradict one another, and luckily Rule #7 helps to clear things up 🙂
Climbing and I have a complicated relationship. Sometimes my connection with climbing is tenuous at best, and though it may always appear bright from our shiny Instagram-filtered worlds, only I am aware of its lackluster days. It is for these reasons that climbing has been my greatest mirror, and best metaphor for personal relationships.
It is the longest relationship I have had (outside of familial ones), and like all meaningful relationships, we find ourselves feeling accomplished, worthy, truly loved, happy, free and (literally) on top of the world at times, but it is not without its challenges. In fact, it is this constant struggle that I have with climbing to continue to grow my physical strength and technique and emotional capacity to deal with failure and unforeseen situations that makes it a truly special relationship.
We all know the aforementioned positive emotions well – how freeing it can feel to be on top – whether it’s the first overhanging v0 we sent after repeat visits to the 45 degree wall, or the first rays of light we reach at the the summit after days of climbing up steep alpine terrain with unforgiving mountain conditions. These feelings fuel our very being, give us life and light and hope. But we speak less of the lackluster days – we know those well, too. The ones where, despite days/weeks/months of projecting project X, we still can’t seem to nail that crux move, or we had to back away from the summit bid due to unforeseen circumstances (e.g. we simply ran out of time). Or maybe it’s just that we had a bad climbing day – our heart wasn’t in it, we felt uninspired, and we simply didn’t want it badly enough. Climbing can feel treacherous like that – one day we’re BFFs, and the next it’s like ‘hey, I thought we were friends, man – what’s up?’. And we want to run. Far away. From the flappers, shoulder tendinitis, badly chipped manicures, toe spurs, callouses, crooked bulging fingers, and lingering lower back pain. But we can’t. Because it hurts so good.
Am I advocating masochism here? Surely not. The pain to which I refer is the pain of growth – of becoming. And I think that all meaningful relationships to our personhood are like that – they’re rocky and beautiful, tense and intense and all-around awesome all at the same time, within the same hour of the same day. They envelope us in their womb of loving kindness and shape us in ways we could not even imagine. They stretch us to become the kind of person that we used to only read about in magazines and see in social feeds and never believed we could truly be. Until we do.
And so yes, it’s been a rocky relationship, and I celebrate your rugged edges, Climbing.
Happy New Year.
Love,
Jeanne
This edition of Gear Talk – girls talking gear and all things awesome – features one of our badass BFFs FrictionLabs, a high-end purveyor of climbing chalk who uses science to engineer the best chalk for rock climbing success to help climbers #climbyourimpossible
We caught up with FrictionLabs founders Kevin and Keah to chat about chalk matters.
In Thrive, Arianna Huffington makes an impassioned and compelling case for the need to redefine success and creating a life of well-being, wisdom, and wonder. Her secret? Meditation, Mindfulness, Unplugging, and Giving.
Self-care is like that. Thriving in climbing is staying injury-free, but self-care is often an afterthought. Admittedly, our own cultivation of a self-care practice has emerged out of treating rather than preventing injuries over the past few years, and we’ve been working to remedy this.
We’ve observed a strong correlation between self-care and injury prevention, and are super stoked to share some of our self-care best practices below and celebrate many more injury-free years to accompany our climbing!
Bouldering Babes 