Strong Mind – Details, episodes & analysis

Shauna Coxsey is one of the most decorated climbers of her generation, but this conversation goes far beyond competition results. We explore her journey through high-performance sport, injury, identity, mental health, and motherhood. Shauna shares her experiences with anxiety, disordered eating, and the often unseen challenges of life as a professional athlete, including supporting her husband through depression, being dropped by her main sponsor and coming back postpartum. It’s an honest and thoughtful conversation about values, positivity, life-philosophy, vulnerability, and what it means to stay true to yourself, on and off the wall.

Check out our free mindset workbook and guided reflection here.

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Mental health helpline for your country findahelpine.com

Timestamps:

00:02:22 - Hazel’s take on some of the themes in the conversation 

00:04:27 - Shauna’s climbing beginnings

00:08:27 - Choosing the path of a professional athlete

00:14:14 - Are you naturally competitive?

00:15:39 - Balancing personal motivation in competition

00:20:18 - When winning isn’t enough

00:26:40 - Shauna's doubts about competition climbing

00:28:16 - Injuries and the body’s messages

00:32:07 - The Olympic mindset

00:38:10 - The tension between performance and well-being

00:40:56 - Speaking out about mental health on social media

00:51:06 - Shauna and Ned’s story and relationship

00:58:24 - Struggles with depression and anxiety and sharing these topics publicly

01:05:07 - Managing anxiety today

01:11:04 - Mental health perspectives and real life

01:20:19 - Eating disorders in climbing

01:36:36 - Motherhood

01:45:32 - Adidas dropping Shauna

In this episode, I sit down with Barbara Zangler ( Babsi) and Jacopo Larcher to learn more about their ascent of Freerider on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. They both shared the same goal of flashing the route, however, only Babsi managed to achieve this, making her the first person to have ever flashed El Capitain. Hearing the story from both sides was interesting and unique. We discuss their motivations for climbing this route, what the road to get there looked like and what they both learned from the experience.

There is a movie about their ascents on the Black Diamond website, you can follow this link to check it out! Link to video

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We also have a free performance psychology webinair you can sign up for today, just follow this link.

- Timestamps -

00:00:00 - Intro and updates.

00:06:24 - When did you both decide to commit your lives 100% to climbing?

00:14:53 - Partnership and their climbing journey.

00:21:27 - Strategic approach to climbing throughout the year.

00:24:10 - Struggles of the first time climbing in Yosemite.

00:34:04 - When did flashing freerider become a goal for you?

00:41:25 - Did this goal have more meaning to you compared to others?

00:48:46- How did you manage the pressure?

00:54:15 - Jacopo’s fall on the boulder problem.

00:57:25 - Babsi’s flow experience on the boulder problem.

01:01:10 - Jacopo on supporting Babsi and managing his emotions after he failed.

01:06:34 - Jacopo’s inner critic vs. practising self-kindness.

01:09:50 - Babsi’s reflections after the climb.

01:14:46 - Is happiness tied to achievement?

01:19:27 - What lessons have you both learned from this journey?

In this episode, Hazel speaks with Cameron Norsworthy (PhD in Flow and director of the Flow Centre) about flow. This conversation is a little bit of a deeper dive into flow. Hazel gets Cameron to challenge some of the misconceptions and common doubts about flow. They also talk about barriers to flow, how flow differs from other areas of sports psychology, how we can access flow by learning more about it and whether accessing flow is more about upskilling or removing barriers to flow. How finding flow in life doesn't have to just be about performance but also more of a lifestyle or life philosophy.

In this podcast, Hazel speaks with musician, researcher and lecturer in philosophy of mind Lauri Jarvilehto. This is a more academic conversation but there are also practical takeaways. They talk about what intuition is, creativity and intuition, and the difference between system 1 (non-conscious mind) and system 2 (conscious mind). What processes in climbing require systems 1 and 2 and how expertise allows us to commit to system 1, the difference between skill and conceptualising that skill, how system 2 can distract us (choking in sport), flow and good performances in system 1, the differences and similarities between flow and intuition, pattern recognition, the difference between instinct and intuition, how to better access intuition and flow with this knowledge.

In this episode, Hazel talks to windsurfer Sarah Hauser. Sarah is one of the world's best windsurfers and has the record for the biggest wave ever windsurfed by a woman. In this conversation, Sarah talks about maximising intrinsic motivation, managing fear, mental management tools, hypnotherapy, and flow state among other interesting areas of psychology. If you already know a lot about windsurfing you could skip the first 20 minutes.

This episode was recorded live as a SHAFF (Sheffield adventure film festival) event, so it's a little different in format compared to our other episodes. Hazel talks to Adam about what makes a good climber, flow state, his childhood, motivation, mastery, processes, competitions, outcomes, the problem of under-eating in climbing, big goals and much more. To check out more about what we do head to strongmindclimbing.com

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. 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 fighting 18:52 | Was the fear that this was ‘forever’ always there? How does he weigh the consequences of his actions having this health condition 21:00 | 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 identity How does he deal with his health condition 36:14 | 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 positivity 49:30 | Mental health and its importance for everyone 54:03 | 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 practice If you'd like to learn more about fear of falling join the waitlist for Strong Mind's upcoming course and we'll send you 6 free videos in fall practice training. GO.STRONGMINDCLIMBING.COM

In this episode, Hazel speaks with climber, ex-base jumper and all-round adventurer Tim Emmett. They talk about Tim's relationship with all the risky activities he gets up to and what attracts him to sports with consequences. They talk about the extra risks in base jumping and how he has justified those risks in the past. Tim talks about being ready to walk away and focusing on controlling every controllable. Then they talk about why he eventually gave up base jumping. They then spend the final portion of the podcast focusing on Tim's recent process of trying to climb his hardest sport route which he hasn't yet done. Tim has been sharing a lot about this journey on social media which has been really positive but it has also added external pressure. He talks about how he's managed that and how he's tried to stay positive despite having not done the route.