TBP 037 :: Thomasina Pidgeon on Climbing V12 at Age 40

Project Description

Podcast is on iTunes is HERE

Direct Download: LINK

Date: December 7th, 2015

About Thomasina Pidgeon

Thomasina Pidgeon is a Canadian boulderer – one of the strongest Canadian female climbers, actually, having done over 40 boulders V11 to V12. She’s also competed quite a bit, and has been quite successful on national and international levels. She does this at the age of 40, all while living out of her van, which she’s done since she was 19 years old, and while raising her 9 year-old daughter.

I got to interview this very inspirational woman recently, and I hope you enjoy our talk!

What We Talked About

Van life and being a mom

Her training regimen designed by Steve Maisch

What’s different in her climbing now that she’s 40

How she trains now vs before she started competing

Her success on a high fat diet

Related Links

Thomasina’s website: www.thomasinapidgeon.blogspot.com

Thomasina on Facebook

Thomasina on Instagram

Training Programs for You

Check out our Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities.

Our other training programs: Training Programs Page.

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Photo Credit

Tobias Leipnitz

Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and today I talked with Thomasina Pidgeon, who is a V12 boulderer and competition climber out of – well, she lives out of her van but she is stationed in Squamish right now and she’s from Canada. She’s on the Canadian climbing team.

I talked to her about living out of a van, her training program that she’s designed with Steve Maisch, and her goals, and what it’s like climbing as a 40-year old woman and mother. It was really interesting talking to her.

One other thing I wanted to talk about before the interview is just my shoulder. I’ve had several people write in and ask for sort of an update about what’s going on with my shoulder and with Seth’s shoulder. We might do an episode just on that but, basically, I’m a year out from having shoulder surgery on my left shoulder. I had a tenodesis and a bone spur removed. I didn’t have anchors put in, I didn’t have an actual ‘repair’ done. They just basically removed my biceps tendon from my shoulder and stuck it into my arm bone below it so that the tendon would stop giving me problems. That’s, a lot of times, what they do nowadays.

Basically, at one point I got back up to where I normally was climbing, like 5.13- in the gym and I haven’t really climbed outside much but my shoulder is good. It’s honestly – I was doing curls yesterday and it’s stronger than my other shoulder, which it’s never been before. It’s just more stable than my other shoulder. Sometimes I’ll have pain with it and I’ll have to go to my body worker here who’s like my god in ways because he kind of dictates whether or not I can climb. His name is Steve Melis and he fixes it up for me.

That’s one thing that I encourage anyone to do is to get really harsh, painful, tear-jerking body work done, whether you’ve had surgery or if you’re considering having surgery. I just asked him the other day what would happen if I went and got an MRI on my other shoulder, which has been bothering me, and they told me that my labrum was torn. He said, “Well, we would do about 4-6 sessions on it,” so basically 4-6 weeks of work on it, “and if we couldn’t get it to work right, then you would go down the surgery road.” I kind of wonder if I had to have this type of body work done before I had my other shoulder done if I would have had to have surgery at all, so it’s pretty powerful stuff if you can get somebody who knows what they’re doing. I might have Steve Melis on sometime soon.

That was kind of a long update but I just have had a lot of people ask me about it because I think a lot of us have shoulder issues, so I’ll do whatever I can to share with you guys what I know.

I’m just going to get into the interview now. Here is Thomasina Pidgeon. Enjoy.

Neely Quinn: Alright, welcome to the show Thomasina. Thank you very much for being with me today.

Thomasina Pidgeon: Thanks for having me.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So, for anybody who doesn’t know who Thomasina Pidgeon is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Thomasina Pidgeon: I’m mostly a boulderer. I started bouldering in 2001. I’m a Canadian, I’m from Canada. I travel a lot so I like to say I’m half American, too, because I spend so much of my time in the States but the passport is Canadian. I’m a mother. That’s it, I guess.