Climbing
The undefeated Pan-American Champ pushes herself to be the best on and off the rocks.
As the saying goes, “It’s lonely at the top.” And with good reason. Sometimes the top is hard to reach and other times there’s no one else who can keep up and make the ascent with you. For world-renowned rock climber Sasha DiGiulian, it’s both.
DiGiulian’s interest in rock climbing began at the age 6 when her brother celebrated his birthday at a climbing gym.
“I loved the challenge of it,” she said. “Getting to the top of the wall gave me a sense of control and a sense of empowerment. My success was up to me.”
The two-time Female Overall World Champion has used the idea of making her own success to propel her to the peak in both climbing and business. In addition to climbing, she’s the founder of adventure superfood company Send Bars and works as an activist with organizations like The Mountain Partnership of the United Nations voluntary alliance.
“I am proud of building my career and creating my own path in the sport,” DiGiulian said. “When I started climbing, the sport was very niche and very few people actually made a living from it. I am proud of my competition successes and my achievements on the rocks, but climbing has enabled me to build a future for myself both on and off of them.”
Part of DiGiulian’s recent success off the rocks led to the completion of an IRONMAN—the long-distance triathlon race where athletes compete in successive swim, bike, and marathon events. After undergoing a first set of hip surgeries and being told she may never be able to climb professionally again, DiGiulian’s new recovery training gave her a new sense of strength.
“The idea of being a high performing athlete again felt so far away, and so uncertain,” she said. “Leading up to these operations, I couldn’t do big lower body loads because my hips were so weak and out of alignment. Even long hikes to my climbs would lead to a sensation of my femur popping out of its socket. As I made my comeback to climbing, I could finally challenge my lower body with the right hip structure—and through physical therapy—fell back in love with swimming, since it was at times the only form of exercise I could complete. An IRONMAN felt like a new fun challenge that was complimentary to the cross training I was completing to reach my climbing goals.”
To train for the IRONMAN, DiGiulian focused on meeting her climbing goals and race goals simultaneously—increasing her cardio from around five hours per week to around 10 hours.
“While it wasn’t too much load to add, climbing is a very upper body and core dominant sport,” she said. While lower body strength makes a difference, it’s not the primary focus. Contrarily—for the IRONMAN—it was almost all lower body training, and my legs definitely gained muscle, which felt empowering.”
Whether it’s maintaining her regular climbing training schedule or training for both climbing and the IRONMAN, DiGiulian likes to include a Red Bull as part of her routine.
“I like to drink a Red Bull pre-workout or during my workout,” DiGiulian said. “Now that I started a company, I sometimes have really long days of meetings. Red Bull breaks up my meeting fatigue and enables a smoother and energized transition to training. When I am on a wall, I like to have a Red Bull for the eighth hour or so—when I’ve been climbing for a good portion of the day and want some energy to keep me aiming for the top.”
Though what helped keep DiGiulian going for the race was actually climbing itself.
“Mentally, climbing made the race feel easy to get through,” she said. “What feels mentally more challenging to me is climbing the 12th pitch of a hard big wall in a day—when your fingers are bleeding and your feet are suffering in tiny rubber shoes, and you’re scared because it’s really exposed—or pushing one foot in front of the other when you’ve been going for a few hours. Climbing is more mentally taxing because I still need to solve the puzzle of the sequences and push my mind and my body in order to get through the hardest portions of the wall. But with cardio, I’ve always found it a bit easier to do when my mind feels tired because it feels like I can move without too much mental thought. I’m an amateur in IRONMAN, so it is not meant to take away from the mental fortitude of professional Triathlon athletes, but climbing has enabled me to develop really strong mental perseverance.”
It’s strong mental perseverance that DiGiulian hopes to apply to an IRONMAN each year. But for now, she’s focused on her climbing goals.
“I was just in Yosemite working on one of these goals—a climb on El Capitan,” DiGiulian said. “It’s a big project that I’m still learning about and working on, but one that excites me. I also have a film (Here to Climb) on MAX out now, and so I’ve been traveling promoting that as well.”
Whether it’s climbing, an IRONMAN, or running her business, DiGiulian remains focused on one thing: Being the best she can be and letting everything else work itself out.
“I like feeling proud of how I perform in climbing and in life,” she said. “Having worked as hard as I can and feeling at peace with the outcome.”