In this episode, Impact Driver host Holly Chen speaks with Taylor Fragomeni. Like many other professional routesetters, Taylor’s career started at her university’s climbing wall, which for her was in in Bozeman, Montana, in 2012. Taylor then moved into working in the climbing space full-time. She’s worn various hats over the years, the most significant being Head Routesetter and Head Coach at Spire Climbing and Fitness. She has set for dozens of local comps—many of which she chiefed—as well as several USAC youth comps up to the divisional level for both sport and bouldering. Now Taylor has stepped back from full-time routesetting to work with the Bozeman Climbing team again. She’s also focusing on her own business, Tangent Climbing, where she coaches youth athletes, league climbers and other routesetters with the mission of helping folks develop a lifelong, sustainable relationship with the sport we love.
When she’s not on the wall or mentoring the next generation, Taylor enjoys writing and listening to music, indulging in thrillers, and connecting with her community. On the podcast, Taylor and Holly talk about routesetting occupational hazards, both physical and mental burnout, and how to tackle these challenges. They dissect differences between common injuries in competition setting and commercial setting, how those injuries can lead to physical burnout in routesetting, and how you can form budget-conscious partnerships with local businesses that benefit routesetters. Taylor also speaks on private coaching and the inspiration behind her business. Finally, they break down some routesetting efficiencies and injury prevention tips for various levels of routesetting, workloads, and ability levels.
Thank you Butora and Essential Climbing for your support!
And thank you Devin Dabney for your music!
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
05:17 – Common Routesetter Issues and Injuries
06:51 – Factors That Lead to Mental Burnout in Routesetting
10:48 – Competition vs. Commercial Routesetting Injuries
13:43 – Preparing for a Heavy Routesetting Week
16:40 – Managing Social Pressure During Competition Routesetting
22:36 – Avoiding Burnout in Commercial Routesetting
25:36 – Assessing Your Team
27:39 – Advocating for Your Team
34: 37 – About Tangent Climbing
38:07 – Preventing Injury and Burnout as a Novice Routesetter
45:06 – Training for Climbing as a Novice Routesetter
48:01 – Warming Up and Isometrics
51:07 – Training for Climbing as a Seasoned Routesetter
58:28 – Balancing Routesetting and Training for Climbing
01:04:03 – Routesetting Department Red Flags
01:07:45 – Last Thoughts
1:08:15 – Closing
Abridged Transcript
…In your experience as both a setter and a coach, what are some common issues that setters deal with that are a result of the demands of their work? What are some common injuries?
In my experience, they don’t seem to differ much from what tend to be common injuries in climbing, which makes sense. But I think setters are maybe a little bit more prone to things like elbow tendonitis and stuff like that—things that are more like overuse issues versus just acute kinds of things. That being said, I have myself and seen other setters acutely hurt fingers and shoulders and stuff like that, too. The only one I can think of that would maybe vary or differ a little bit from common climbing injuries is lower back pain and stuff like that…
…With these common injuries and what you’ve been seeing in your career, is there a difference between the common injuries that commercial setters deal with versus competition setters?…
This is one of the questions where I don’t know if I really have a good answer for that. I don’t think I see a big difference. I think my instinct is telling me that there’s maybe a little bit more of a risk for acute injuries during competition setting because it’s generally a really big week, compared to what you might normally be doing. So, if you go into it not well rested or also sometimes you’re setting with a bunch of people who you’ve never set with before, that can be an added factor. Usually, comp weeks are more work. So, I think that there’s probably more potential there to pop a finger or whatever.
How can we, as setters, better prepare ourselves for [a] heavy week of comp setting?
I think this kind of treads into the training thing a little bit, but making sure that you’re able to have a really high capacity for hard climbing specifically. At this sport divisional I recently set for, I finally got to work with Molly Beard—which was sick, by the way; she’s awesome. But we didn’t set anything easier than 12b or 12c. And most of the routes were 5.13 and up. And then when you think about bouldering—like bouldering comps, generally—we’re throwing ourselves around. We’re doing these really high-impact moves. It’s a lot. It’s a lot on your joints and your skin…It’s a lot more power and for much more time.
The capacity is so important. I think having a general baseline of high strength is also really helpful. Being able to lift a lot of weight over and over again, making sure your lower body is good too. I think people skate over that a lot of the time. But if you’re impacting the pads over and over again, making sure you have healthy ankles and knees and hips and all of that is also going to help. I think the thing that’s hard is a lot of it is preparatory. You have to do it well in advance in order to have that capacity going into the comp.
…[During] comp week, often you might be working with entirely new crews and there is a social pressure to perform, to climb your best, to put up your best product…What are some tips from you to manage that kind of pressure and to avoid that mental burnout?
That’s a really good question because I think of it, again, almost more over the long term, like feeling confident in your abilities as a setter and knowing on a personal level, like, “Oh, if I botch this one boulder, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad routesetter.” Or like, “Oh my God, my finals boulder is not working.” I’ve seen a lot of really good setters just be like, “I just need to strip this boulder and start over.” It happens. So, I think having confidence that one boulder doesn’t define you is really big. I also feel like it’s really important here to say that this experience might be so different for people who are more marginalized in routesetting because I think we often feel like we have something to prove. I still feel that way sometimes. I’ve been setting forever and I still have days where I’m acting like I need to prove something…
But I also think a lot of the time with competition setting, people are going to be psyched if you’re fun to work with and you’re good to work with. So, that could be things like, yeah, maybe you didn’t put up the perfect boulder, but they’re like, “Oh, man, this person constantly checks in to see if I need help with anything. They’re always cleaning things up when they have any sort of downtime. They’re fun to be around,” or whatever. Not that you have to be fun if you don’t feel like you’re like a quote-unquote “fun person.” But building that confidence over time, outside of those competition settings, I think can be really helpful too…
In your experience as head setter, how do you kind of assess your team?… How do you do that assessment and mitigate that sustainability in your crew?
…I hate telling people what to do. I want to know how everyone’s feeling, and then I’m going to suggest workflows for the day. And, like, “Oh, hey, you’re feeling really wrecked; what if I got all this stuff set up for you so that you don’t have to do a bunch of heavy lifting? And what if I help you forerun?” And I might not be able to do all the moves, but I have the experience that I can get in the positions and watch other people climb on it and know if it’s going to be a feasible thing. So, a lot of it, again, just goes back to communicating and knowing what’s going on in people’s lives outside of routesetting. Because stress outside of setting is also a really big contributor to burnout. We don’t immediately drop into a different box of life when we’re in the gym versus not.
…What are some ways that you can advocate for your team, in terms of better benefits or pay or things like physical therapy? What are some techniques that you’ve seen work?
…I think if you’re in some sort of leadership [role], sometimes you have to get a little creative. Because sometimes the money is just not there. But, as routesetters, you’re literally creating the product that keeps the gym going.
In St. George, for instance, we had conversations like, “If we don’t make the routesetting sick, there is no reason for people to have memberships here because there are tons of really good rock climbing…The leadership has since changed there, but we were really fortunate at that time that our general manager was very much an employee-first person. They were like, “If our employees are taken care of, the gym is going to do well.” Which I think in practice we all know is true, but it’s actually really hard to prove that because it’s not like a direct line of, “Look, we’re taking care of our setting crew and therefore businesses…” There’s no way to track that. So, I think people have a hard time trusting that. But it is true. They also allowed us a lot of flexibility as far as, you know, sometimes we would get paid to go climb at Moe’s together.
…Having the flexibility and the fact that our leadership in that gym really cared about what our goals were outside of the gym as well [was a] big plus. But in general, I think having some sort of partnership with someone who does some sort of bodywork, whether it’s a massage therapist, a PT…Fostering those community connections too; get to know people in your community. Make little partnerships, if you can be like, “Hey, what if we give you and your family free membership, and in exchange you work on our setters for whatever amount of time feels like a fair trade.” Stuff like that is worth it and it’s something you can do even if you have no budget for it.
…Let’s say you are approached by a novice setter, [who has] under a year of setting, and they’re thinking ahead. They’re thinking, how do I avoid burnout? How do I avoid injury? And how do I maintain a baseline of fitness and strength to do my job and to climb my own things? Keeping this parameter in mind, what are some general tips that you might have for this setter?
So, first of all, good on this hypothetical setter for thinking ahead. Kudos. But I think one of the biggest things is learning to be efficient. And that could mean a lot of different things. So, if you’re not setting off a lift, hauling is a big thing. How are you hauling things? I really like getting everything set up through a protraction and then just putting my jumar with my foot loop on the haul side and pulling my bucket up with my leg primarily—great way to not put extra force on your elbows if you’re already jugging, and stuff like that. But efficiency could also be really flexible in the way of, “How are you going about setting something each day based off of what you’re setting?”
So, for example, with routes, sometimes if I’m setting something easier, I’ll just set top down, which people think I’m crazy for, but it’s so much easier. You just haul your bucket up, and then you already know where you need to put the feet while you’re going down. And so, you don’t have to do the whole up-down thing. You get closer to the ground instead of farther from the ground as you’re going. It’s nice. So, I think that is a good thing to explore, especially in certain scenarios. There may be some scenarios in which that doesn’t work as well. Setting through really steep terrain, for instance, is not as ideal of a process to do with that. Really often, like if I’m going up to strip, I will kind of already have an idea of what holds I’m going to put on the wall. And if there’s any volumes or features or anything, I’m putting those up as I’m stripping. Because otherwise you’re having to deal with the logistics of getting them up and yada yada…And if you’re just doing it while you’re stripping, you already have your lines open and set up and you can take holds off and put holds up at the same time. Again, there’s scenarios where it’s not going to be feasible to do that, but just trying to get creative with it and be like, “Okay, do a little problem-solving. Given what I’m doing today, what makes the most sense for me to do? If I go up to strip and I’m not putting any big things up, I could probably bring up enough holds to set the headwall of the route or the two routes that I’m setting while I’m stripping, so I don’t have to jug all the way to the top of the wall. Again, even little things like that, or set what you can off a ladder. People don’t like to do that. I love that.
…For this same setter, this novice setter with little to no experience in training, how do you recommend someone start with both actual strength training or just maintenance, where they want to maintain a baseline?
So, my advice there—and we touched on this a little bit earlier—is to start small. I think a lot of the time with training, it’s easy to go from, like, “I haven’t really been doing any real training,” into doing way too much. And it might feel really silly to be like, “Oh, I’m just going to do this one lift after setting and that’s it. That’s my training for the day.” But that is the kind of drop in the bucket that we were talking about earlier of moving things in the right direction so you can sustainably build and not do too much and then get burnt out or hurt.
I think deadlifts are so good for setters; they’re good for climbing in general. I think we’ve all seen deadlifts explode as good training for climbing over the last several years. But, man, when I was deadlifting really heavy, I was like, “Wow, lifting bins of holds is so easy. I could throw these around.” It reduces your work so much, you’re like, “Oh, this bin of holds only weighs like 50 pounds. I got that.” Deadlifts are great. And you could just do them a couple of days a week. Learn how to do them properly and then do it twice a week, after setting or before setting. If you’re more of a morning person and you’d rather do it fresh, then do it before. Or it could be on a separate day, maybe. I’m a big fan for setters having these mini-sessions…
…Do you believe there can be a perfect balance between a full-time routesetting workload and full-time training?…
Well, I think if they’re both full-time, then neither of them are full-time. That’s kind of impossible. We could look at prioritizing things differently, and there might be seasons where you can prioritize one over the other more. I don’t think you can sustainably do both. You might be able to get away with it for a while, but probably not for a sustained period of time. And it’s probably pretty risky. Which is the sad reality of being a routesetter; if you also want to be really good at rock climbing, it’s a tough balance to strike, and it takes a lot of problem-solving and a lot of experimenting.
…What are some red flags that you can look out for as a setter in the interview process that tell you this gym is not being great about taking care of your setters?
Anytime you are interviewing for something, you’re also allowed to ask questions. I think people forget that sometimes and it could be like, “Okay, can you tell me about benefits your setters have?” Ask them directly. If they don’t have an answer or they seem confused about what you’re asking, that’s probably a red flag…So, definitely ask that question. Undoubtedly…At the end of the day, our setting community is growing, but it’s not that big. If you have some connections in different places or you know people who know people, like asking, “Hey, do you know anyone that’s set at this gym? What’s the vibe? What’s the deal?” Because a lot of the time, some places are going to over-promise and under-deliver and that’s something to be careful of, too. So, I would always try to get some sort of information, if you can, from people who have worked there—that can be really, really helpful…
