Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
A New Mountain to Climb
11.9k Plays2 years ago
We are back! In this episode, Steve House (Uphill Athlete Co-Founder) and Alyssa Clark (Uphill Athlete Coach) sit down to talk about the evolution of Uphill Athlete. From the continuation of sound training principles, to stories of the mountains, to the future of Uphill Athlete, we cover it all. Join us on climbing a new mountain with a team who are ready to take on the challenge and help you be your mountain best.
Please rate, review and subscribe to our podcast on all podcast platforms. If you'd like more information on coaching, one of our training plans, our training groups or to connect, please visit www.uphillathlete.com, @uphill_athlete on instagram or email us at coach@uphillathlete.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. My name is Steve House and I'm here today with coach Alyssa Clark.
00:00:16
Speaker
You're welcome, Melissa. Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. Just a little bit about me. I'm a really long distance ultra runner, and I'm one of the new coaches at Apple Athlete, as well as helping with this podcast and a bunch of other awesome projects that we have coming up. So, Steve, we are here to talk about a lot of fun things, but first of all, I know you want to say something about Scott.
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I wanted to start off today because this is the first podcast in a long time and first podcast without Scott as part of uphill athlete. And I wanted to just send a big shout out of thanks and gratitude for all that Scott contributed to my life over the last almost 20 years that we've worked together and all of the great projects we've done and
00:01:11
Speaker
Last but certainly not least, this incredible project that is up a lot of things.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, well I think all of us in the mountain community and beyond can say that we're incredibly thankful for that partnership and all that it has brought to us. I mean it truly is an icon of mountain sports and you really have changed the way that we move in the mountains. So thank you both from all of us who are big fans. So I guess we'd want to start with
00:01:42
Speaker
What are some of the changes that you've seen in uphill athlete, but also maybe some of the things that have stayed the same?
Mission and Storytelling of Uphill Athlete
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, what fundamentally stays the same is what we do and why we do it. You know, we are here to educate and inspire mountain athletes. And we're going to continue to do that. We're going to continue to education for me is
00:02:08
Speaker
inclusive of coaching, our training groups, our training plans, and of course all the free content on the website or the content of the books. That to me is all education and the inspirational piece is one where we're supporting each other by telling stories and sharing stories and especially the stories of that are, you know, for me, those kind of gritty, raw,
00:02:39
Speaker
real life moments. For me, the stories are not the ones of the conquest or the wind or whatever. It's not that kind of a dialogue. It's more the stories of like, hey, it was really windy and snowy and cold today. And I went out and did my training and I screamed at the wind and I had my hood zipped all the way up and I got my workout in anyway.
00:03:04
Speaker
And yeah, all of that is uphill athlete because it's education, it's celebration, it's community, you know, it all comes down to, you know, sharing this incredible joy and awe that we all feel when we're moving in the mountains.
00:03:24
Speaker
for sure, and I can attest to the fact that I have definitely screamed at the wind in the past while training, because wind's not my favorite, but we're working on that. Yeah, I think those stories are super important. I think at the end of the day, in many ways, it is storytelling that we're trying, like it's education and storytelling. And I think without those, like, what do you have? They overlap too, right? They,
00:03:52
Speaker
education, the best stories educate and inspire. Absolutely. As an English teacher, former English teacher, it's really making my heart proud to hear that. And also too, it's like that's what inspires us is it's the stories of what we've heard in the past that are the reason why we get back out into those mountains. Yeah, I think we started basically on this singular idea of taking
00:04:20
Speaker
conventional endurance training methodologies and practices and translating them for unconventional athletes. And I hope you take that as a compliment, all of you listening. But by that, I mean, you know, of course, we started with alpinism, but you know,
00:04:37
Speaker
running 240 miles through the Utah desert like you recently did or whatever, those are also pretty unconventional. If you can even call them a sport, it's not a sport as much as a quest, right? And for me, that's what we've always done and that's what we'll always continue to do. And from that core, from that core piece, springs all kinds of
00:05:04
Speaker
of of stories and education and inspiration and mountains are awesome and awesomeness inspires us to do great things and we get to see ourselves do great things and we get to see others do great things. I mean there's nothing you were telling me about you know the other was it last weekend when you were pacing a friend at an ultra which which one was it?
Community and Teamwork in Mountain Sports
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah so I was pacing a friend at Rio de Lago, Hunter Myler, and she was going for a finish that
00:05:33
Speaker
was a struggle in a good way. Like, it was an emotional and physical journey for her. Yeah. Yeah. And you were there pacing her. And then one of our other coaches, Will, was there pacing a friend of his. And then Will pulled his hamstring after, what, like 17 miles. And then your husband Cody stepped in and paced this guy he didn't even know for how many miles?
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, so like 14. And yeah, and now they're best buds. So it's just so funny. And that's that's like, that's what these these stories are about these are about human connections and
00:06:20
Speaker
stepping into help a complete stranger, you know, we'll witness them pull, dig deep to do something, help them to dig deep to do something. And then you get a friendship out of it. I mean, it's just, it's just amazing. And like that, that's what, that's what mountain sports about that I feel like a lot of especially team competitive sport just sort of misses, at least in my experience.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that I always say that ultra running is about the community because it's not us versus us. It's us versus the challenge of the event or the challenge of the course. And I mean, similarly to mountain sports, it's like us, not necessarily versus the mountain, but versus the challenge of what we've set forth. And it's our job to help each other.
00:07:12
Speaker
get to our potential. Because I think it's not about standing on top of the mountain. It's about seeing if you can even come close to touching what you believe you're capable of doing. And I say that all the time when I'm asked about my own running is like, what, what are you trying to do? I'm like, I have so many people believing me and supporting me to try to even come close to seeing what my potential is. Like that's what I want to do. It's not win races. It's not,
00:07:40
Speaker
any of that. It's not conquering mountains. It's about how close can I get to what I believe I'm capable of. Um, but that being said, I mean, that's, yeah, sorry. No, I want to unpack that for a second because, you know, I want to give that a little perspective because let's, if I think back as a less than 150 years ago when Winper climbed the Matterhorn for the first time, it was 1865. And back then,
00:08:10
Speaker
you know climbing the you know it was the end of the romantic period
00:08:14
Speaker
People were realizing that there weren't actually evil spirits and dragons living on the tops of these mountains. And they thought, well, maybe we can climb up there and see what there is. And it was these sort of competition to try to get there to these summits the first time. They were incredible adventures. There was all kinds of close calls and loss of life along the way.
00:08:41
Speaker
And that was kind of the era from which mountain sports was born from.
00:08:48
Speaker
And then that, in my mind, continued until the World War I and II. And in the post-war era, mountaineering and mountainsport became this way of re-establishing national identity. If you were Italian and you were on the losing side of World War II, climbing K2 was an incredible
00:09:14
Speaker
thing, a incredible event for your national identity, it gave you pride again, gave you something to be proud of. And, you know, if that was, I think, continued until like the 80s, when I would say we entered what I call the Mezner era, where, you know, it was no longer about nationalism, it was actually about individualism. And it was about firsts, and it was about, and that led us into
00:09:43
Speaker
where we've kind of come in these last few years where it's about speed records, FKTs, new routes, and things like that. And I feel like we're actually closing that chapter for me, especially in the broadest sense of mountain sports, where we're entering the chapter that you just described, where
00:10:08
Speaker
uphill athlete as a community and the people who are uphill athletes and identify with what we do, they are out there trying to find out what they're capable of and writing their own stories. And those stories may be written on the same mountains as, you know, Wimber climbed in 1865.
00:10:30
Speaker
but they're still their stories and they're relevant mostly to them and probably nobody's going to write a book about those uh since you know 150 years from now but it doesn't matter we're past that we're in a different or different era it's the era of finding out what you're individually capable of and how we can show up for ourselves every day definitely i also think
00:10:57
Speaker
kind of touching on the point of the FKTs and speed records is that those are set with teams. Like that, those are not generally, yes, there might be one person running up the mountain, but it's generally a whole team that got them to the start. And it's a whole team that supporting them, that probably recced with them or like,
00:11:22
Speaker
looked at the course together that gave beta like it's almost like it's accepted that if you're going for a record, you talk to the person who had the record before. And it's like a sign of respect, but also
Community Support in FKTs
00:11:34
Speaker
a means of gathering data and information of how to get there. And a lot of these records are supported. And that I mean, that's just an enormous community investment that goes into that. So I think
00:11:48
Speaker
Um, that also is just a testament to like, we reach our potential by doing it together. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so cool. It's also like people support what they help create concept, right? Like, you know, you're going and you're gathering the, the, the Intel, if you will, from the prior FKT holder. And they're probably telling you like, Oh yeah, what I would have done different is this and that this is probably the 20 minutes that is the difference between.
00:12:17
Speaker
the two times in the end. And it may just be as simple as that. So I absolutely agree that that's where we're at. And I think that's one of the cool things about, as I go out in the mountains, at this stage in my life too,
00:12:34
Speaker
The people that I see every day on the trails, ski trails and mountain trails around here where I live, it's a lot of the same people all the time and we kind of know each other. I may not know their names, I may not know their addresses, but I recognize them and I see them out and we're sort of nodding each other and we all know we're kind of like in the same sort of brotherhood or sisterhood. It's great.
00:13:02
Speaker
Oh, definitely. And I think that actually ties in really well to what you see a pull athlete as this amazing foundation that we've built. Like, you know, we have hundreds of years of
00:13:16
Speaker
people who have climbed mountains that we can then go back and learn from. And here you have this foundation of uphill athlete that's been built in this beautiful and intentional way. What do you see are the things that now you look at and go, we can take this and we can do better and kind of what's that story behind
Future Projects and Vision for Uphill Athlete
00:13:34
Speaker
it? Yeah, great question. Well,
00:13:39
Speaker
There's so many things that are exciting for me right now. One is we're going to continue to work on the website. We're continuing to write. The website is not finished in terms of content.
00:13:51
Speaker
There's some big pieces of content coming around rock climbing, around training for tactical athletes, around diet and nutrition, sports psychology, mental health. There's a lot of big topics left for us to work on, and each of those topics deserves its own deep dive
00:14:18
Speaker
you know, I don't know what you want to call a landing page or a cornerstone page on the website. You know, these like our, like our mouth running or mountaineering land or strength training landing pages where it's, you know, those are eight, 10, 14,000 word articles there. They take a while to, they're almost mini booklets in themselves. And then, you know, there's a lot of, um,
00:14:42
Speaker
a lot of spaces in between for lots of interesting subjects that people are interested in that are admittedly narrow, but still very interesting. So I think that there's a ton of writing work to do. That's one area. The podcast, which we're going to continue and we're going to talk about, and I want you to talk about specifically more in a little bit. I think that there's also some really great
00:15:09
Speaker
uh, things to do, uh, with, with video, continuing to build on Chamonix mountain fit, uh, filming some more of that. Uh, we're also working on, uh, producing more strength training related video content in the follow the trainer genre. Um, I want to talk some more about that, but yeah, there's, there's a lot of, of great things coming. A lot of great, great stuff.
00:15:37
Speaker
Definitely. So I guess to go back a little bit, what
00:15:49
Speaker
Like, how did this kind of new, and I hate to say new, because again, we're, we're sticking, like we are, we do have the same values. We still have the, like the same training. We're, we are the same company in many ways, but we are different. What, um, kind of, how did that difference come up and like what.
00:16:09
Speaker
happened in the past that like we it's been talked about a fair amount on other podcasts and kind of I want to hear from you of what you saw as kind of that split and then this new kind of old direction, I guess. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that, you know, Scott and I just reached a point in our, you know, vision for uphill athlete, and where it just
00:16:39
Speaker
no longer made sense to continue in a partnership. And my vision, which is the only one I can speak to, is a pretty big vision. I think that sometimes I tell people this. This is the great thing about turning 50, at least. I hope you get this before you turn 50. But I'm not in any way
00:17:07
Speaker
you know, holding myself back anymore for people. I'm not, you know, I had to keep myself pretty small for a long time and within the context of uphill athlete. And I'm not a small guy. I mean, I'm not very big. I'm only five, 10. But I mean, that's small in the sense of I'm ambitious. And I use the analogy if people want to talk to me about
00:17:39
Speaker
No, I use the analogy of, of my climbing career. I was not a well-known climber because of my climb, the hardest moves. I think the only thing that built my climbing career was that I had big ideas and I had visions and other people couldn't see, and I was willing to work for 10, 15, 20 years really hard to realize those visions. And that's the kind of personality that's the kind of person I am.
00:18:09
Speaker
And I've been holding myself back in that way for the last few years because it was too overwhelming for some of the people that I worked with. And, you know, this was when it became clear that Scott and I weren't going to be able to continue working together. I also laid this out to the coaches and I said, hey, like, this is what I want to do.
00:18:38
Speaker
with uphill athlete. I don't intend to go anywhere. I have a three-year-old, a six-year-old. This is the second half of my life. I'm relatively young. I've got a big vision for what uphill athlete, not as a company, but as a community, can do for mountain sports. And I really think, I've said this many times, I really think we've just scratched the surface. For example, like,
00:19:08
Speaker
2,000 climbers go to Everest this spring to climb Mount Everest. And last year we trained 10. So what is that? It's like 0.005%. 10,000 people ran the UTMB. We coached one. That's 1,100th of a percent or something like that. We're barely scratching the surface. And one of the things that I said
00:19:38
Speaker
to that i've been saying to scott for a while and i laid out really clearly over the summer to the to the coaches was exactly how big my vision is and.
00:19:51
Speaker
I really do think that we can play a major role in shaping how people engage with mountain sports, how they prepare themselves physically, of course, but also how they prepare themselves mentally. I think that's an area we haven't done enough work on. And all of the things that contribute, for example, you know, one of the areas that we're growing into more is working with physical therapists to do online.
00:20:22
Speaker
consultations and screenings before an athlete starts coaching or starts on the training plan so that you can make sure you're not getting injured. Or if you're coming back from an injury, how do you know that you're ready to start training? Well, okay, how do we build that in? How do we build in a meal plan that is custom tailored to your training over a multi-month
00:20:50
Speaker
period. These are the kinds of things that we can do that I have ambitions to do and work on. And, you know, to be honest, I think that, you know, there are people that are attracted to these big ideas and want to contribute and help and dig in and love getting busy and working and working with purpose.
00:21:18
Speaker
And there are people that, you know, want to work 15 or 20 hours a week and go climbing a lot and that's also completely fine. I needed a bunch of people on my team that were really motivated to dig in and work and produce education content, tell stories,
00:21:40
Speaker
develop ideas and build them out and you know, that's a big that's a big ask and I think that you know, those were those are some of the kind of you know, big ideas that that I've been holding back for a number of years and I just Frankly wasn't willing to hold back anymore Well, thanks for sharing and personally I
00:22:06
Speaker
I'm super glad that you are going with it because I think we're very similar. We're big idea, big energy people. And from the, maybe sometimes to probably our spouses.
00:22:23
Speaker
Maybe we should get our spouses together. They could have a support group. Oh, yeah. That's probably a good idea. They'd probably appreciate that. But I think, first of all, really appreciate you sharing that. I think you can hear the emotion in your voice of how important this is to you. And I can understand that too, where it's like you're so passionate about
00:22:46
Speaker
helping people and helping make these changes that it feels like it's bursting out of you in a way. And I've seen this passion and drive just from the first conversation that we had. And so I fully believe that we can do this. And I know it comes from a place, again, that education and just celebration piece where
00:23:07
Speaker
I think when you're an athlete who's had a fair amount of success, I say fair for me, an enormous amount of success for you is that you know what that feels like and you want to share that. And you've said that over and over.
00:23:22
Speaker
uh, like through all the podcasts that I've heard and just this story that you tell about the beginning of uphill athlete. Um, and so I think that, you know, here's honestly just the beginning. Like I tentatively titled this episode a new mountain to climb. Um, and I think that we're standing there ready to, to climb, but we've already like not starting from the bottom, but starting from a new elevation. And like we've discovered a new mountain that we can go after.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that, you know, to me, that's what really good leadership is, is if you put it into an analogy, it's like climbing a mountain and getting the whole team to the top and everybody's on the top and they're celebrating in their site. And then like after a couple of minutes of celebration, leader says, okay, and now we're going to climb that one.
00:24:16
Speaker
And what do you guys think? How should we go about it? Where's the route? Who's going to pack the food? Who's going to take care of the gear? Who's going to do the route finding? And then you break it down and attack the next project.
00:24:36
Speaker
And I think that this is how we succeed together. And not just as a team of coaches and all the support staff we have as an athlete, but also as a team, as a community. Yeah, and from the group of coaches and the people that you've brought together, I can already see that every single one of those people would be like, yeah, and let's see the mountain after that, too. Yeah, pretty much.
00:25:06
Speaker
I gotta say at least, I mean, you've been, you're right. You're absolutely part of this. It's been such an incredible experience to have put my intention out into the universe. I don't want to sound too metaphysical here, but
00:25:25
Speaker
It was shocking how people just came in to look like it was a magnet or something. I don't know, like out of the woodwork and out of the community. And it's been absolutely incredible. And the quality of the coaches that we have now working and that we're developing some new coaches as well,
00:25:54
Speaker
It's kind of mind boggling. I honestly think we just have the best coaching team ever at this point. I don't know what happened. I couldn't explain it. It's just like, where did you come from? I know you've been in our community for years, but all of a sudden, it's just like,
00:26:17
Speaker
wow i mean and you know you're doing such amazing things with the podcast and you know everybody's got contributing and it's been one of the things i think that happened that was really clear for me because
00:26:32
Speaker
I had a minute to really think about how I wanted to proceed with uphill athlete. Once it was clear that I got to make all the decisions, at least on the outset, as to how to refocus as a company. One of the things that was really clear is I wanted to build a world-class team of coaches, of course.
00:26:55
Speaker
I wanted every coach to have their own unique superpower. And this is absolutely manifested. I don't know how, but like, you know, everybody, everybody has some, you know, whether it's you with your, your, your education, your podcasting background, or, you know, we have Alexa who has a, you know,
00:27:20
Speaker
Besides a master's in exercise physiology and a master's in sports psychology, she's working on her doctorate in sports psychology. She's been a race director. She's your aunt. I don't know how many ultras. I mean, not only is she an experienced coach with a bunch of years of experience, but she also has this whole other gift around an interest and passion around sports psychology. It's like, wow, okay, here's a person that we can bring her in as a coach and she's incredibly valuable.
00:27:48
Speaker
and good as a coach, but she also has this whole other incredible skill set that is going to be beneficial to us as a team of coaches internally, because we know if we have an athlete that's struggling, for example, getting back to training after an injury, and we suspect that there's maybe a mental component, we have somebody to call on that. Every one of you that's come in has that incredible, unique superpower, and it's really cool. It's really cool.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I can attest to that. Spoiler alert, I'm the one running the coach's email. So if you email the coach, it's most likely me responding. Coach at uphillathlete.com. Yeah, that is Alisa right now.
00:28:34
Speaker
it is me. So yeah, if you want to say hi, feel free to shoot an email to that. But I can say that there have been some really thoughtful and interesting emails that either
00:28:50
Speaker
out of my expertise. And I'm willing to fully admit that because I think that's another part of what Steve has kind of built is that we are not all experts at everything. We have our strengths, but we also need our, our other strength is relying on the team for parts that we feel less of an expert on. And I'm
00:29:10
Speaker
I try to always be very transparent that I want to ask for help and I have so much yet to learn. And so what's been amazing is I'll get an email and I'll be like, wow, that like I really want to help this person as best that I can, but I might not be the best equipped. So I'll shoot it into our group text.
00:29:30
Speaker
and all have like 10 incredibly thoughtful, amazing responses right away and like people already offering to help or like get on the phone with them. And so I've just seen this wealth of knowledge and also just, and I think this is another piece I'd love for you to touch on Steve because you talk about this a lot is that coaches have to be empathetic in many ways vulnerable. And so
00:29:55
Speaker
I think that that's something I see too. It's something I have always tried to practice as well as being an empathetic person because I don't really think you can be a good coach if you don't have empathy. Yeah, and I'd love to hear like your take on that too, Steve.
Empathy and Diversity in Coaching
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things that I feel very
00:30:18
Speaker
Convinced about both personally and professionally is this idea of leading with vulnerability and as I think you can attest to Lisa like I will frequently start any kind of conversation with coach whether it's individually or in a group by
00:30:36
Speaker
telling me exactly how I'm showing up. You know, maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm not having a good day, maybe I'm having a good day, but I'm not gonna, I will still then proceed to give by very best, you know, but I'm gonna be vulnerable with where I'm coming from and who I'm showing up at that day.
00:30:54
Speaker
I think that that's so key because that's how we have to relate to our athletes because our athletes that we, whether they're coach or working from a training plan, they're giving it their all. They're getting out the door as much as they can.
00:31:11
Speaker
If they miss two workouts within a week and they get some scolding from their coach, maybe that was okay in 1980, but I don't think that's okay, frankly, anymore. Frankly, I just don't think it's productive. I think that's not what people need. People need like, okay, you missed two days of training this week.
00:31:34
Speaker
This is, here's what that means. And here's how we're going to move forward based on that. And how can I help you only miss one workout next week or zero, you know, what's, you know, and, and work from, from a place of connection and empathy and understanding to try to get the athlete in a better place. And that's, I think, you know, that's, that's where the, that's where coaching can really change people's lives.
00:32:03
Speaker
So going off of that coach and the coach themselves being empathetic and vulnerable, I think that the act of asking for coaching is one of the most vulnerable states that a client or an athlete can put themselves in because you are
00:32:22
Speaker
A, admitting that you need someone else's help and asking for help, which can be a very hard thing to do. And also, I mean, if you think about the things that matter most to us, if you ask someone like, what's your goal for this 100K? Oftentimes people will tell you, they might not even tell you that they're running 100K because they're scared of being vulnerable and of failing. And so we are truly
00:32:50
Speaker
helping people reach that goal that is the scariest and puts them at their most vulnerable self. And that is something that's both, I think as a teacher, I used to say to my students, the greatest gift that you can give people is your vulnerability. And I think that at this like mountain sports are a place of vulnerability because you're chasing after a goal that you don't even know you can do.
00:33:20
Speaker
And that's really scary and also really amazing. And so I think as a coaching staff, it's our job and it's our duty in a way to hold that vulnerability very carefully.
00:33:38
Speaker
And so, you know, I think, again, as I've said, we have a coaching staff that I think that that can hold that vulnerability very carefully. And I know that you want to say a few more things about kind of who that who they are. And, you know, what you see the coaches are as in the upper athlete. So, yeah, that's just, I love talking. I love that. Yeah, and I think we're gonna get to talk.
00:34:04
Speaker
About it more i hope because i love what you said about asking for coaching is being vulnerable admitting that you're gonna try to run a hundred k or meeting that you're gonna try to run i mean there's.
00:34:21
Speaker
Honestly, this goes exactly to some of the things that we want to do with uphill athlete is we want to make it more accessible. I mean, what makes the mountains more accessible than fitness? And that's not just
00:34:40
Speaker
physical fitness either, honestly. It's mental health, too. And, you know, all these things are, of course, intertwined and related. But I think that that's a great observation. I love the words you shared about that. I was thinking, as I was, you know, putting this new team of coaches together with some of the, you know, bedrock coaches that had stayed with uphill athlete,
00:35:09
Speaker
that I wanted, as I said, I wanted everyone to be a great coach, but I also wanted them to have some unique power. And this goes back to a lesson I learned. As you know, I worked for Patagonia for a bunch of years, 22 years, and we used to be involved in all kinds of product development. And it was really fun work.
00:35:37
Speaker
And over those 22 years, I was working with and for a lot of different people who were in charge of different pieces of the company at different times, whether that was outerwear or backpacks or luggage or whatever it was. And one of the best lessons, I think, from this experience that I had was
00:36:04
Speaker
the backpacks. And I remember when we first introduced the Ascension as backpacks, as they're called, it took us, I want to say, I want to say it was five years. It was a really long time. And over those five years, people within, you know,
00:36:30
Speaker
within the company, touching that project or change because people would either move to another job or take a new job or whatever. And when we first came out with them, I thought that
00:36:47
Speaker
All things aside, I think that they were really super successful and really excellent packs. There are for sure things I would change in hindsight, but given what we had and what we knew then, we came out with three really great climbing mountain backpacks at three really great prices. And those are really great simple designs that lived up to our ethos and all that.
00:37:11
Speaker
So that continued, that launched a successful line of technical packs. And what happened was, people need to understand this, those of you that get frustrated when a product goes away, they need to understand the life cycle of most products that, you know, the first year product comes out, it's, of course, really successful. The second year, it's a little less successful. The third year, it's like 10% of what it did the first year. And that's just sort of the
00:37:41
Speaker
That's a consumer product life cycle for the most part there are for sure classics which i'll talk about some other stories probably because there's been lots of lessons from my time there but one of the lessons from this was that we had to redesign the backpacks roughly every three years.
00:37:57
Speaker
And one of the times, you know, I remember I was working with Josh Warden and Kelly Cordis and we were, the previous backpacks we just felt were an abomination. We just, we didn't like them. There was all kinds of things wrong with them, blah, blah, blah. We did a, we did a meeting and off-site and somehow Josh and I convinced the powers to be, to let he and I have full control.
00:38:23
Speaker
Let's just say that it was a complete disaster. I mean, they didn't allow us full control and they did make those backpacks and they did sell them, but they were horrible.
00:38:34
Speaker
And, you know, at the time we thought they were the best, you know, but then I didn't dawn on me how bad they were until the next year when I went to a product meeting and I watched one of my fellow ambassadors who didn't know that the backstory just completely just like what do a full walkthrough of why that backpack was complete crap junk and he was right.
00:39:01
Speaker
And I remember just sort of sitting there, listening and having it dawn on me. I was just like, he's totally right. Like he's right about that. He's right about every single thing. And I think that the problem with the backpack wasn't, the problem was the backpack was that there were only two people working on it. What was so great about the first backpacks is we had like probably 20 people working on it.
00:39:24
Speaker
and everybody contributed a little thing and everybody had a different viewpoint and there was still enough of a leadership structure to when it was necessary make the decisions on what were the what which ideas had enough merit to kind of trump the other ideas and come to some decisions because ultimately some decisions have to be made even when you're making something as simple as a backpack which is just cloth and straps
00:39:53
Speaker
And that for me...
00:39:56
Speaker
was very, very important learning experience. And so as we, as I relate to capital athlete, you know, I want a team of coaches that all has slightly different perspectives and slightly different experiences because that's how we're going to build the best product because everybody can bring something. If you have a completely flat structure where you can add like the 10, like the 10 Josh Wharton and since Steve houses and the, but if it's a flat structure,
00:40:26
Speaker
you're still going to produce a horrible backpack. You need 10 people or 20 people that all have different skills and you need a little bit of a leadership structure so that somebody at the end of the day can say, no, this is what we're going to do. And that's how it works, I'm afraid. And
00:40:49
Speaker
In my experience and i think that you know as i was building the coaching team and looking for those people you know it's not you can start to understand i think you didn't know like how many how much of you i was kind of interviewing in the sense when we started talking number of months ago,
00:41:09
Speaker
because it's not just coaching skill. It's like, can I work with this person? Does this person have ideas? Does this person have the confidence to project their ideas? Does this person have the self-awareness to be able to admit that they might not know something? All of these things are really important when you're building a team. You can't just build a team of people who all think they know everything because nothing's going to happen.
00:41:35
Speaker
And you also can't just have a team of one because that's too much of an echo chamber and that doesn't work either. And so the coaching team that we're putting together, I think it was incredible for all of these reasons. And I just, I just can't get over myself, like how excited I am about like all of the talent and passion and perspectives and creativity and humility and knowledge that we have in our, in our
00:42:05
Speaker
in our little room of coaches and athletes and not just coaches but also the broader team of people like our product manager that works on helping us improve the products and our advertising team that helps us figure out how to tell the world about what we do and all these other
00:42:27
Speaker
Yogash who's helping us with our writing and telling our stories more clearly and I mean Such great energy such great people Absolutely and I can attest to the fact that I have an ascensionist from 2014 and it's still my favorite backpack and it goes everywhere with me so something went right with that a lot of things went right with that but clearly that process worked quite well and
00:42:56
Speaker
The only thing I would change would be the fabric. But I can say the fabric was mostly a price decision because those packs retail, the 25 liter retail for like $59, just like half of what any other product pack that size retail for at that time. So it was a good enough
00:43:15
Speaker
a good enough fabric at an incredible price. And then if you got into better fabrics, it would pretty easily double or triple the price. And I think it was a good decision for launching the line. It was really good. I totally agree. And the fun thing is that I now have fun patches on it, just a few. And that gives it even more character. It's like a race bib. If you have a little bit of wear and tear on it, it means that you did something with it. You can't always have it pristine.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very proud. I have this one pack that's actually a demo or a proto from that era, and it was made out of non-woven Dyneema, which is a really durable, all-white fabric, and it's a little bit of an off-size, too. It's like 38 liter, maybe 40 liter, so it's a little bigger than normal. And I was supposed to test one of the things I did
00:44:11
Speaker
I sent it in and there wasn't enough wear on it. So they were where the people in Ventura were complaining that it hadn't been abused enough. So I actually drug it behind my car on the entire approach into the Black Canyon from the end of the pavement to the north rim. And it's got all these, it's amazing. It has all these little holes and tears, but I still use that pack.
00:44:35
Speaker
I still use it and i actually wish i had never drug it behind my car because that thing literally would have lasted my entire life had i not done that but anyway that's it's a bit of a decide but it's a great box how do we get talking about packs we're supposed to talk about the last i truly wish that there had been a video of you because i could just see some
00:44:58
Speaker
uh climber being like no there it goes stop it Steve um yeah well well first i tried like clipping it to my uh belay loop and just climbing with it hanging between my legs so it would like swing around and drag as much onto the rock as much as possible not only was that really not that fun to climb with but didn't really work that it didn't make any holes
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, anyway. Well, that's great. So I think, you know, is there anything else that you'd like to touch on before we kind of get to our last question, which we've already been talking about for quite a bit of the podcast, but anything more you want to add on? And we have so many great things to talk about and projects to share that are
00:45:53
Speaker
So many pots on the stove right now. If people haven't heard from us in a while and haven't heard from me in a while, it's not because I haven't been doing anything, it's just because I've been too busy to do anything but do things. And I'm so excited to share all that we have coming out these next months and years. Definitely. And I think you want to talk about the podcast.
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah, I do. I don't know if we want to get to like, what are if you could narrow it down the three things that you are most excited about? Yeah, it's a loaded question. You know, the most well, I'll just say, I mean, you probably know this, but it's it's the coaching team. You know, the coach coaching team is the kitchen where all the goodies are baked, you know,
00:46:41
Speaker
like the croissants, like the bread, like the tortillas, that's where all the good stuff comes around. And I think that that team, the team that's kind of coalescing around this is really amazing. And I'm excited about, you know, kind of filling in what I see as some missing pieces in the website content.
00:47:05
Speaker
And I'm excited about expanding our storytelling into more visual storytelling. I mean, there are certainly people at our readers, but there's a lot of people out there who listen and learn orally, like by podcast listener crowd, for example. But there's also a lot of people that want to watch a visually something story. And there's a ton of potential for us in the world of visual storytelling. And that's something I'm anxious to get
00:47:35
Speaker
get started on to next year. Definitely. No, I think that's awesome. I will say that one of the things I'm most excited for, and this kind of brings us to what is the future of the podcast? Because I know that that's a question that you've been getting a lot. Steve is kind of, when's the podcast going back? And we're here, we're back. And we are
00:48:00
Speaker
We are really excited because we're going to be bringing quite a bit of focus within the podcast. So we're going to be focusing on specific kind of doing a season with a specific topic that we'll be tackling with that season and asking guests and kind of bringing on industry experts as well as your stories onto this podcast focusing on this
00:48:31
Speaker
one specific topic. I don't know if we want to spoiler alert what it is, Steve. Not yet. Let's let them stew a little bit. And we still need to get our guest list squared away and whatnot. So let's wait on announcing that. But I know that you're super excited to that. This is taking on the role of podcast producer, and she's just brought so much great energy and ideas and
00:48:55
Speaker
Structure and we have an audio engineer now. We're remastering all the old podcasts of the audio is better and Something that a lot of people have been asking for a long time. So we're able to do that now and Yeah, it's every podcast is just going to become better in every way
00:49:16
Speaker
Definitely. And kind of our season podcast is a bit of a longer term project, but we will be putting out content at a more rapid process. So if you're going, no, we're going to have to wait for uphill. You're not because we are going to be touching on specifics within areas that uphill is growing and continuing to
00:49:41
Speaker
build education. So we'll have an educational component, also introducing some of our coaches to talk about these specific topics. But just to give you an idea of what's coming up, we have our female uphill athlete training groups and also just building on what's happened there. We've gotten a lot of requests for a tactical. So we'll be talking and doing a tactical episode. We are adding quite a few training plans and also just expanding upon that.
00:50:09
Speaker
translating them into different languages and getting those, getting it more compatible with those fitness tracker devices. That's a question we would often yes. We also have a new director of coaching that will be coming up, talking about our media space.
00:50:32
Speaker
the nutrition restructuring, because nutrition I know is such a huge part of what we do, we can't do it without it. And then our sports psychology and mental health can be so those are kind of things we have coming up, we will have education laced into all of those as we always do. So please look forward to that.
00:50:54
Speaker
and ask for all of you, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. That really helps us to grow. It helps us to bring on great guests and helps us to bring more content to you to help you climb your mountains. Thank you for listening to the Apple Athlete Podcast. Don't forget that you can access more resources or talk to a coach
00:51:21
Speaker
by visiting uphillathlete.com, check out our Instagram, uphill underscore athlete, or write to us, or write to Elisa, coach at uphillathlete.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks so much for listening.