Meagan + C Lad - SPONSORED belayers?!

Well, one of the audience questions that came in was, I think a lot of people are probably wondering this, what's the differentiator between an average belayer and like an elite belayer? So like when they say that, oh, you like seem to do a better job belaying than other people.

Well, I mean, I think it's important to have a differentiation for what we do within the competition realm when we belay versus how you belay every day when you're at the gym, right? I mean, there is just a different approach, a different way that we give rope the amount of slack that we have in the system all the way through to the catch.

It really starts from the start of the engagement through the whole out to when we untie with the athlete.

So, but I think back to your question, what makes a good belayer? It's really just understanding the refinement and those fine tunes, how to anticipate what your climber might be doing next without reacting right then, right? Like you do not want to say, I think they're gonna slip and jerk on the rope, right? So I think it's like being calm, being competent, Knowing that you have like this whole set of tools within your toolkit of how to belay that climber and being able to stay calm as you might see something happening on the wall that you're like, oh, this might not go well.

And then just execute a catch.

flawlessly, lower them, put them onto the ground, untie, and go back and do another one.

And like in the belay program, the three pillars are safety, consistency, and professionalism.

So it all goes back to just like having a good understanding of those three pillars in every single thing that you do and in every competition that you do.

So like...

the belay that I'm giving to someone at a youth qualifier event and the belay that I'm giving to someone at team trials is going to be the same exact belay even from the beginning.

So it's like safety.

That's not just are you doing your safety checks in the beginning? That's also are you aware of where the climber is on the wall? Like if they fall right now, How much slack do I have in the system? Are they going to hit this volume? Where am I going to lower them to? And then it's like consistency.

Can you give essentially the same belay every single time, even through a really long round? Like I just did collegiate nationals and like the qualifier round for lead was like...

eight nine hours like can you do this for hours on end and then like professionalism it's you need to treat every single climber the same and then you also that also like goes towards your interactions with the other belayers and then like carrying yourself professionally like if you know that like you're starting to get tired and you need a break like you You need to be able to say that because there's a difference between like trying to push through and your belays get worse and worse.

And then just like knowing yourself and knowing, hey, I could sit down for 15 minutes and come back and belay way better than if I just tried to push through.

So

why not just like split up the eight hours? So there's like some people doing like for the first half and then some the second half.

I think typically when we deploy for a larger event, you're selecting that group of belayers that you think is gonna best serve that event.

And so you're also selecting a group of belayers that you know can work at a longer duration.

So to the point where we always look for consistency, you want those same belayers to be in the rotation delivering that same experience every time to each athlete.

Now, can they come out and say, I need a break? Absolutely.

We always offer that.

That's always something that we do.

We, you know, a hundred percent do that.

But it is optimal to retain that core group.