How a Sport Climber Prepares for the Olympics

When sport climbing makes its second appearance in the Olympic Games later this month in Paris, Team USA’s Natalia Grossman will be a favorite to take home the gold. In just a few seasons, the 23-year-old has become one of the most decorated climbers of all time. But Grossman is also just flat out fun to watch. She’ll seemingly hang from a fingernail as she launches her wiry body, Spider-Man style, across a boulder wall. Or she’ll smile from ear to ear as she strategizes around a problem as a set of moves is called in the sport. After she works her way up from the ground, through a designated zone, and to the top of the wall, she’ll look back at the spectators below with contagious and unrestrained joy.

That cheer she brings to the sport gave her the motto “Smile and fight.” “My coach came up with it, because sometimes I get so in the zone that I forget that competitions are a celebration of all the hard work and not just about the outcome,” Grossman tells me. She competes in bouldering, which involves climbing an intricate set of routes over a four-meter-high wall without ropes, and lead, which is judged for time and number of moves made while climbing with ropes on walls that are up to 15 meters high.

Grossman had been a high-energy kid originally enrolled in gymnastics, but once she started climbing at age 6 she fell in love. She quickly showed potential in the sport, and at 15 she moved with her family from California to Boulder, Colorado, to further her climbing career. She now resides in Salt Lake City and doesn’t take her path to climbing dominance for granted. She’s acutely aware that the price of admission makes the sport out of reach for many, and while she can’t share details, she teases that her next steps include a project to help make climbing accessible to more people. This desire to help others is particularly on brand as away from the boulder wall, Grossman’s goal is to become a psychologist; she graduated from the University of Colorado in 2022 while training full time.

The Cut recently caught up with Grossman to learn how a climber prepares for the Olympics, what keeps her hooked on the sport, and what the future may hold after the Paris Games.

You recently claimed your tenth World Cup gold medal in front of a home crowd in Salt Lake City. How does that momentum feel going into the Olympics?

Before my first World Cup of the season, I was very much approaching the Olympics like, It’s a new experience, whatever happens will happen. I’m just excited to be there. And then the World Cup went really well, and I thought, Wait, maybe I could have goals. And maybe these goals are realistic. I’m just trying not to put pressure on myself and not expecting anything but believing that I can succeed.

Bouldering, and sport climbing in general, is still fairly new to the Olympics. What should people unfamiliar with it understand?  

Climbing, or at least boulder and lead, is unique in that we won’t have climbed on the route beforehand so we have absolutely no idea what to expect. When we turn around, we’re seeing this boulder for the first time. We have five minutes to figure it out and try to get to the top. It could totally be your style, or it could be the opposite of your style. You just don’t know. It’s important to have an open mind and to remain competent even when you don’t know what to expect. Because of how points are awarded, you could get to the top of every climb and still not win if you had falls, or you could get halfway and still win. So I like to perceive it as I’m competing against the climbs. I’m competing against the setters rather than the actual competitors.

You’ve mentioned that climbing is as much a mental challenge as a physical one and that you’re not necessarily the strongest climber out there. How do you train to overcome these mental demands? 

I’m very into psychology. I think having people who you can talk to: friends, family, coaches, physios — a support team — is important. I have such a strong relationship with my parents. But something that I’ve really focused on the past two years is being in tune with myself and feeling and dealing with emotions and thoughts rather than just avoiding them. Because, yeah, the stakes can be very high, but pretending that they’re not isn’t healthy. Sometimes, when I’m getting ready for a climb, I’ll start to get really anxious, or I’ll be feeling different somehow and I won’t know why. I’ll just feel very emotional. Instead of trying to squash it down, I’ll allow myself to feel it. My mom always says it’s okay to cry; you’ve got to let it out. When I got this knee injury, I wanted to be really tough. And my mom just said, “It’s okay. Let it out. Holding on to it isn’t going to do anything.” Once you process what you’re going through, you can move on.

Watching videos of your climbs, it sometimes seems like you’re hanging from a single fingertip. How do you develop that kind of strength, the right kind of calluses?

I always preach that less is more. Some people will train a lot more than me. Something that’s really important for me is to have time when I’m not thinking about the gym. Because in the past, I was climbing too much and overtraining. Now, I try to push it and see, Can I keep going? If I can’t, I’ll stop. Sometimes it’s really hard to stop — it helps if I have someone to say, “Okay, enough.” Workouts depend on whether I’m training bouldering or lead climbing. For bouldering, it could look like a strength workout, where you’re just working hard climbs, working on moves, or canvassing, which is climbing without feet and just working your upper body. We’ll also do hangboarding, where you hang from your fingers for a while. Whereas lead is an endurance sport, so training will involve lots of circuits.

Skin is also something that gets spoken about a lot in our sport. You don’t want your skin too dry, or else you’ll get cracks or splits, which is very painful. I file down my calluses so I don’t get a flapper, where it just tears off. You also don’t want it too wet (sometimes you’re constantly sweating). There are all kinds of products to combat these problems: drying agents, moisturizing agents.

What keeps you hooked on sport climbing?

Gymnastics, which I did as a kid, was very repetitive, trying to perfect something over and over again. Maybe you would move up a level and then there’d be something new that you’d repeat for a year. Versus climbing, you can go into the gym, make up a new move, or do a new workout. There’s just a lot more variety. Then there are those times, usually in competition, when you’ll top right at the last second and it just feels so good. Because you’re like, I did it. I pulled it together. I stayed focused — mentally I kept it together, I was able to execute and perform.

You’re often competing against the same small group of elite competitive women, many from a very young age. Are you friendly, or does the mental toll require you to silo away from one another?

I love training with my competitors and other strong women, but not everyone has that preference. It’s been hard finding people who feel the way I do. If I think about the World Cup roster, there are maybe 60 female athletes competing. Only one of them lives within an hour of me. So it’s not like I often hang out with my competitors. There’s this hub in Innsbruck, Austria, and lots of professional climbers will go there to train. I was there earlier this year and it was so fun to climb with some girls who were really open and psyched to work together. I loved hanging out with them, walking around the city, getting food, or climbing together, because I think we can elevate each other and push the level of our sport.

Bouldering isn’t the most accessible sport. What would you say to those hoping to get started, and where do you see the future of this sport heading?

Day passes to climbing gyms are getting increasingly more expensive. I have the resources, but how are people who don’t have the resources supposed to get into the sport? I don’t think there’s one answer or solution. I do have a fun project coming up in the fall, but USA Climbing currently isn’t doing anything for this at all. I have access to the U.S. Training Center, which isn’t open to the general public, and the climbing gyms where I live — they don’t work with the federation. It’d be cool to have a program across some of the bigger gym chains that could offer support to upcoming climbers.

After Paris, do you see yourself continuing to climb and compete? What is next for you?

I definitely want to return to school. You can’t do too much with just a bachelor’s degree in psychology. More recently, I’ve been thinking of going the sports-psych route. I don’t know when I’ll take that step, but I will eventually. For now, I’m just focusing on climbing, seeing where that can take me. I feel like a lot of women retire on the earlier side, but most make it to like 30, 32, if they’re really in it. I have plenty of time, hopefully a few more Olympic cycles. But it’s not just about the titles. I’ll still be smiling and fighting.