Richardsons Climbing Blog

In all my years of competing, I’ve come to an absolute conclusion: anyone can win a competition. Whether it’s a lucky turn of events, conditions that suit certain strengths, or a payoff of training, the results of a competition simply can’t be predicted. Underdogs keep winning championships

I started meditating because I wanted to be a better athlete. While that motivation is still present, meditation practice and theory has opened my eyes to its farther reaching benefits, benefits I once cared very little for. I held rock climbing up as the most important thing in my life.

Christmas day is a pretty major holiday. Most people get the day off work, there’s a good two, even three month ramp up, it even has its own genre of music. Along with it comes a certain atmosphere as well. Typically you think of a lazy day, with comfort

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a competition climber. I have little business being outside, but recently I thought I’d work some leisure days into my schedule. This was my first season outside in two and a half years. I had injured myself on a boulder in my

People often question whether I enjoy training. After all, training takes up the majority of my athletic life. If you don’t enjoy training, you can’t possibly enjoy being an athlete, and if you don’t enjoy being an athlete, “Why are you doing it?” People aren’t just

I was recently reading Clyde Brolin’s Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone, when a line caught my attention: “On the way up you have to believe you are the best or you won’t make it anywhere near the top… Once you have a world title a major element

In August of 2017, I was 16 years old and in Europe. I was there to attend the Youth World Championships in Austria, and my first Open World Cup (WC) in Germany. Qualifying to attend these competitions was, in a certain sense, scandalous. I injured myself shortly before youth Nationals

The first entry of my training log was dated March 12, 2018. The day I got the book, I opened the cover and wrote something in all caps along the top. It would guide every training session and competition round - everyday of my life - that followed. I wrote,

People love heroes. Most of the highest grossing films in history portray some heroic protagonist who fights through turmoil and adversity to achieve a greater good. A key element of a hero is their affinity to putting themselves in harm’s way. We like seeing heroes take crazy risks in

The selection process for astronauts. A place where thousands upon thousands of people ended their dreams to go to space, and a place where a remarkable few broke out of the crowd. To date, there have been 560 astronauts selected around the world. Canada has contributed 14 to that number.

In climbing, you can benefit a lot from being light. Many sports are the same. For women in climbing, the bar is particularly high (or rather, low) for being light. A lot of athletes pull out all the stops to be as small as possible on competition day, sometimes to

Many coaches have the dream of working with an Olympian or member of a National Team, but I couldn’t care less about that. I want a champion. If those titles seem synonymous, then we better clarify. Before I went to Canadian Open Nationals, I wrote a letter to myself

The 2020 Canadian Open Boulder National Championships - finals, problem one. I was ready. I knew it was going to be a dynamic start, so I was psyched out of my mind, ready to execute first try, ready to rip the holds off the wall and hand them to the

Few athletes can truly perform to the best of their abilities when they need to. Madison explains how to get motivation to try hard.

Meditation can be a powerful tool for sports performance. In the blog's first article, find out why.