Ep. 136: Successful Climbing Coaching with Will Hammersla
As the National Coach for Sport Climbing Australia, Will Hammersla has a tough job. The Olympics are now in play, and in a country as spread out as Australia, where it can be 10 hours between major cities, cultivating a "team" is damn near impossible. But he's working at it on a bedrock of solid principles and philosophies, and the work seems to be paying off.
This Bouldering World Cup season, Oceana Mackenzie, a young Australian climber coached by Will, made her first adult finals in Japan. She did so by topping a problem that neither Shauna Coxsey or Akiyo Noguchi were successful on, and in the process, inspired Australia to pay more attention to their competitive climbers.