Natasha Barnes: Know Your Climbing
Natasha Barnes is a former competitive climber, professional powerlifter, and a strength training and rehab coach for climbers. After 13 years of competitive climbing, she took 6 years off due to climbing related injuries. When she came back to climbing, she used KAYA to help her progress in a sustainable way without injury and without plateau. We sat down with her to talk about her comeback journey.
KAYA: How did you first get into climbing?
Natasha: The way that I got into climbing was because my dad took me when I was 11 years old. I was always climbing on trees, climbing on fences, climbing on things, so he thought I would like the sport. I was never very sporty before then, but I started to try climbing and kind of took right to it. I actually entered a climbing competition when I was 11 years old, like a junior comp, and won, and started to realize, "Hey, this is something I'm kind of good at," and wanted to continue on with it. It was a really fun sport. It doesn't feel like a sport. It doesn't feel like exercise. It's kind of like a brain body puzzle, which I really liked.
Originally I started out climbing as a competition climber, like a gym climber, and then as most
climbers do, got introduced to the outdoors and fell in love with it. It's almost a whole different kind of climbing. I originally grew up going to Joshua Tree, which is an epic landscape. And when I moved up to the Bay Area, I started going out to Yosemite, which is also an epic landscape with legendary climbs. Just being in that environment, seeing those epic lines and being in Yosemite Valley was just something that was pretty special, pretty awesome.
Like, this is why we do it. It's not to climb the hardest possible thing, even though it's like a shitty turd low ball. It's to be out in nature and be in these epic places, and to feel the sun on your back and be out there with friends.
KAYA: What were your goals when you started climbing?
Natasha: My goals when I started climbing were to compete in competitions and be the best at climbing competitions. And that was the driving force for a long time, until I got into climbing outdoors. And also, until I started getting injuries and realizing that there were other things to like about climbing than just competing.
My approach to climbing and training was not too structured, mostly just going into the gym and projecting and climbing a lot; Not really tracking how much I was climbing or how often I was climbing. If we had KAYA back then, it would be a lot easier to track progress, a lot easier to see progress. Like, sometimes you're training for climbing and you don't know if you're getting better because there's nothing attached to it. But with KAYA, you can literally see that. So I think it would've been helpful to see if my training was actually working or not, and potentially could have changed my training decisions if I had that information back then.
KAYA: When and why did you take a break from climbing?
Natasha: So when I had stopped climbing, I'd already been climbing for 15 years and I took six years off. I stopped climbing for a number of reasons. To focus on getting my doctorate degree, and because I was struggling with a bunch of climbing related injuries that I wasn't sure how to deal with and they were stopping me from climbing the way that I wanted to climb. Dealing with those injuries was the primary reason why I decided to go for my doctorate degree, because at the time I was trying to figure out ways to deal with climbing related injuries and doctors, physical therapists, didn't really understand climbing as a sport and therefore didn't really understand climbing related injuries. I was really frustrated. I was really depressed from not being able to climb from some of the injuries and that motivated me to go to school to learn about these injuries so that I could help myself and help other climbers so that they don't have to stop climbing.
“If we had KAYA back then, it would be a lot easier to track progress, a lot easier to see progress. Like, sometimes you’re training for climbing and you don’t know if you’re getting better because there’s nothing attached to it. But with KAYA, you can literally see that.”
KAYA: Tell us more about how it felt to make that decision and to take a break?
Natasha: It was a tough, tough decision to make, to focus on other things in life, especially for somebody who was climbing professionally and competing professionally and getting paid to rock climb to basically change career focuses. It was a big decision, for sure.
When I was injured, it was a pretty depressing time period in my life because I was losing my livelihood, and I was also losing the thing that I loved, which was climbing. And yeah, it was hard to not get to be around my community. I didn't have a reason to go to the gym, so I wasn't around my friends who were climbing. I wasn't able to get outside, and I didn't have a good excuse to go out into nature and be outside. And I didn't have anything physically to do with my body, and that's something that's really important to me. Being injured really took me out of that.
KAYA: How did this break change you as an athlete?
Natasha: I definitely changed as an athlete during that time because I got to learn a lot more about the body: anatomy, physiology. And then also through training for powerlifting, I learned a whole lot more about training.
The reason I got into powerlifting was actually because I was rehabbing some climbing related
injuries and I felt that I needed to be stronger, and I felt that it was something that was going to just help my climbing. I ended up getting into powerlifting for those reasons, but then I got hooked on the sport itself and getting stronger.
“I was really depressed from not being able to climb from some of the injuries and that motivated me to go to school to learn about these injuries so that I could help myself and help other climbers so that they don’t have to stop climbing.”
Something that I liked about powerlifting is that you can objectively track your progress; you're either stronger, or you're not. It's a little bit harder to do that with climbing. With KAYA, you can actually see those things because you can look at your velocity and see if you're sending things faster or in less sessions, you can look at your workload score and see what that looks like, and see if you're building fitness. There's a lot of different metrics that you can use KAYA for that actually make it so that you can objectively track your progress with climbing. Like in powerlifting, you're doing more and more and more weight; with climbing, you're not always climbing the next grade every week or every month. So being able to track your progress in other ways is really important.
KAYA: What was the trigger for you to get back into climbing?
Natasha: The reason I got back into climbing was actually because the pandemic happened and I wanted a way to have fun at home. So I built a climbing wall and just ended up getting back into climbing that way. It's been great returning back to the community. I still have a lot of friends who are in the community. I've always still been involved in the community, even when I wasn't climbing, just because I work with climbers primarily, and also met lots of new friends through climbing as well.
KAYA: How did it feel to start climbing again?
Natasha: Getting back into climbing was really fun. I remembered the joy of climbing; I remembered all of the things that I liked about it. I remembered that community aspect as well, and how much I enjoyed climbing with friends.
I think emotionally it kind of felt like riding a bike. You know, I've been climbing for so long
already, I was able to get right back to it. But I was definitely a little cautious about getting injured, so I knew I needed to be patient. Like, I was projecting V3s on the tension board when I first started and being patient with that, and not trying to force progress or force myself to get on harder things before I was ready for them. I just kind of had a big picture view of what I wanted my climbing to be and was willing to be very patient with it.
KAYA: You talked about needing to be patient. What were you most worried about and why is being patient so important?
Natasha: I definitely was worried about getting finger injuries, because that's usually the thing that happens for most climbers. If they ramp back into climbing too quickly, there's a risk of finger injuries because tendons and ligaments just don't adapt quite as quickly as muscle. So I had the muscle from powerlifting, I had the muscle memory from years and years of climbing, but I knew I was going to need to be patient getting back into it because of my fingers. And I also built a tension board, which is a 40 degree, overhung, very challenging board to climb on. So yeah, I knew going into it that I would need to be patient. And I actually did a bunch of hang boarding while we were building the board just to get prepared for that.
“Being patient with your climbing progress is difficult, but I think having some metrics tied to it that you can look at and make sure that you’re pacing yourself well is really important.”
Being patient with your climbing progress is difficult, but I think having some metrics tied to it that you can look at and make sure that you're pacing yourself well is really important. One of the things that I like about KAYA is the badges. Like getting your solid badge, it really forces you to spend time at a grade to get solid there. And you can spend time filling out all your V3s, and then filling out all your V4s and working your way up that way. And it's a really fun way to be patient with your climbing. It kind of gamifies it, you get a badge at the end of it, but you're also being slow and doing the climbing that you need to get back to where you want to be.
KAYA: How have you changed as a climber after taking the break and after starting to use KAYA?
Natasha: After taking six years off of climbing and getting back into it again, I'm stronger than I've ever been before. And I don't think I anticipated that that would happen. So over these last two years, I've definitely become more of a dual sport athlete. And the way that I'm able to do that is because I'm able to measure and manage my training a lot more carefully because I have these metrics to look at. The stats on KAYA really opened my eyes to what my climbing sessions actually look like and what things look like week to week and month to month.
I definitely think that becoming a better climber and a more well-rounded athlete is knowing where you are. What are your strength and weaknesses in climbing? What do your climbing sessions even look like to begin with? Because there's that saying, "What gets measured gets managed," right? And if you're not tracking, then how can you identify the deficits in your climbing without that?
I never thought that I could get to the level that I've been able to get while doing both sports. I'm literally climbing as hard as I ever have on the climbing wall, and I also recently competed in a powerlifting meet and set two state records at that powerlifting meet. So objectively, I'm as strong as I've ever been in climbing and in powerlifting right now.
KAYA: What advice do you have for other climbers?
Natasha: I think the most important advice for climbers at any level, that I can give, is to track your climbing sessions. Because then you know what's going on, you know if you're making progress or not, you know if you're ramping up too quick or not, and literally anybody can do it, even if you're climbing V0 or you're climbing V9. Without tracking, it's hard to tell if you're making progress. You may not make any progress because you're not stressing yourself enough to make progress, or you could risk doing too much and potentially getting injured.
I think the same advice could apply to people who have been climbing for a few years and maybe feel like they're potentially hitting a plateau. Because a lot of times, if you start tracking, you'll actually figure out the holes in your training and figure out that there are things that you can do with your training to be getting better. Or you might find out that you actually are making progress. If you're looking at your velocity and you see that's getting better, then you know you're making progress.
The app works for everybody. I use the same things with my clients. We can look at their velocity, we can look at their workload scores. We also talk about building out their pyramids and getting their badges on KAYA as a fun way to get better at climbing.
“I definitely think that becoming a better climber and a more well-rounded athlete is knowing where you are. What are your strength and weaknesses in climbing? What do your climbing sessions even look like to begin with? Because there’s that saying, ‘What gets measured gets managed,’ right? And if you’re not tracking, then how can you identify the deficits in your climbing without that?”
KAYA: Any last thoughts you want to leave us with?
Natasha: I want people to know that they should be more patient with their progress and really work on building a good solid foundation of strength and also foundation of just like a climbing base. A good climbing base is going to serve you really, really well. I think in the past, what I would do is like, "Okay, cool. I climbed to V7, where's the V8? Okay. I climbed to V8, where's the V9?" And you know, you can start climbing up the grades like that initially, but eventually you're going to plateau that way, or you're going to get an injury, which is what happened with me.
I want to see climbers get stronger, I want to see climbers have a more sustainable approach to their climbing, and I want them to become more well-rounded athletes so that they can enjoy a lifetime of climbing without injury.
