Fitness Training
Training on the Move: Sasha DiGiulian
How pro climber Sasha DiGiulian maintains elite- level fitness as she travels around the world.
The clang of metal plates echoes off the climbing walls inside Ascend South Side, a cavernous gym tucked into Pittsburgh’s gritty industrial corridor. Sasha DiGiulian’s legs dangle from a pull-up bar, a weight belt cinched around her waist. There’s a colorful display hanging from it: a multitude of weight plates. First one, then another, until three huge plates sway between her knees. She hoists herself again, pulling until her chin is above the bar. It’s impressive, but it’s not just the power—it’s the control, the ritual, the nonchalance.
I’m standing just a few feet away, in a corner near the dumbbells, as I try to be invisible. The climbing gym is bustling with the usual pre-work crowd, but no one is lifting quite like DiGiulian. As she moves through her sets, she is drawing quiet stares from onlookers. Some of the climbers recognize her. Others just watch, clearly impressed. There’s a certain aura to it, like they know they’re witnessing something different.
This is DiGiulian’s first real training session since returning from a monthlong expedition to Madagascar just 10 days prior.There, she and felllow climber Marianna Ordóñez made the first female free ascent of Bravo Les Filles, a 12-pitch route on the 800-meter Tsaranoro Massif, a route established by climbing icon Lynn Hill and a banger team of female climbers in 1999. At the time, it was the most difficult big wall climb put up by a team of women, and the route was once considered too remote and sustained to attract repeat attention. And yet, DiGiulian and Ordóñez managed.
From Madagascar, she flew straight to Boston to visit her partner’s family before enjoying a couple days at home and then jetting to meet with us in Pittsburgh, where she’s in town to film a promotion for Dick’s House of Sport. Now, she is back in the gym, methodically stacking plates and pushing through reps.
“I travel like a nutcase,” DiGiulian says, acknowledging that she is gone at least two or three times per month. “I come home, and I’m already shifting into the next thing.”
Sasha never skips a warm up when training on the road.
© Rob Snow
That’s how life looks for DiGiulian: a never-ending cycle of airports, rental cars, training gyms and big walls. In a single year, she might climb in Europe, film in Asia, speak at events across the United States and sneak in a few weeks at home in Boulder, Colorado. For most elite athletes, this could disrupt performance. For DiGiulian, it’s her baseline.
She’s created a system that travels with her. “I always start with the same warm-up,” she says. “Myofascial release, mobility, dynamic stretching, then into activation.” Resistance bands, shoulder openers, lateral band walks and light kettlebell presses help fire up the joints and nervous system. Then comes pull-up progression: scapular holds, static top holds and negatives—allbefore the “real” lifting begins.
As I watch her move through this warm-up at Ascend, she pauses at the hangboard wall. It’s not just any ol’ hangboard; specifically, it’s a hangboard of her own design. “That’s my board,” she tells me, nodding toward the slender wood panel. It’s called the SendBoard by SDG, and it features edges as narrow as 6 millimeters, thinner than most commercial options. “It’s the smallest edge I could hang from,” she says with a grin before demonstrating with calm, practiced precision. She warms up here because she knows how easy it is to get injured, especially when she’s jumping back into a routine after travel. “I once popped a pulley when I wasn’t properly warmed up,” she tells me, referencing the time she tore a tendon in her finger. “Now, I never skip it.”
Even the way DiGiulian sets her shoulders before hanging— tightening her core, drawing her shoulder blades together—feels ritualistic. Each movement is deliberate, learned over years of adapting her training to fit into small spaces, odd schedules and less-than-ideal setups. Watching her, it’s clear this isn’t about squeezing in workouts. It’s about preserving a performance- ready edge no matter the location.
Sasha does weighted pull ups to train for carrying gear up a mountain.
© Rob Snow
Sasha hangs from a SendBoard by SDG, her own hangboard design.
© Rob Snow
When DiGiulian lifts, the routine is classic but dialed: barbell squats, weighted pull-ups, single-arm rows, tricep dips and core circuits with moves like weighted sit-ups. “I’m not trying to hit PRs,” she says. “I’m focused on the form and being sure to train stability and to train strength in a way that is going to transfer to my climbing.”
I watch her transition from warm-up to strength training without checking a phone or glancing at a timer. There is an ease to it, like her body knows the steps even if her mind is elsewhere. She adjusts the weights by instinct and moves into each new lift like it has been waiting for her.
On climbing days, she’ll warm up with some hangboard work first. Then, she follows with a movement circuit on the bouldering wall, completing 30 to 45 moves without touching the ground. “It’s not about the routes,” she says. “It’s about movement and priming the body.” But if it doesn’t go to plan, she adapts and finds whatever it is that will work for her on that particular day and location.
Sasha DiGiulian at the Ascend South Side climbing gym in Pittsburgh.
© Rob Snow
That adaptability is what makes the whole system work. “When I’m on the road, I still train five to six days a week,” she says. “If I don’t have a gym, I’ll use resistance bands, doorframe holds, do circuits in a hotel room.” In a pinch, she’s even turned a hotel floor into a makeshift studio. “I’ll throw down a towel on the carpet and do a 30-minute workout right there,” she says. “You just find a way.”
She tells me that travel often means letting go of expectations but not standards. In other words, just because the hotel gym only has 10-pound dumbbells doesn’t mean she skips strength entirely. “Sometimes I’ll do body weight but higher rep and banded resistance, so I get a little bit more intensity,” DiGiulian says. “Or just a longer mobility session if I’m stiff from flying.”
On rest days, she often opts for a mellow hike. “Even a restday might mean a walk around Boulder or something like Mt. Sanitas,” she says. “It gets my heart rate up without pounding my joints.” Of course, this can easily be done anywhere—including the streets of Pittsburgh. During one of our many chats, she details all of the sights she saw on her 5-mile run along the Three Rivers Trail after her flight landed.
She’s also surprisingly diligent about cardio, logging five days a week of running, cycling or intervals. “I probably do more cardio than most climbers,” she laughs, noting that it helps her on long approaches, so that she isn’t completely gassed before even reaching the rock. DiGiulian prefers running or biking outside, but she also uses a rowing machine, SkiErg or a VersaClimber while indoors. It just depends on what’s accessible.
I ask what happens when the logistics go sideways: missed flights, travel fatigue or just being wiped from an expedition. “When things get crazy, I try to keep moving in some way,” she says. “Even if it’s just something small to stay in rhythm. Travel throws things off, but I can still do resistance band stuff or mobility work in a hotel room.”
One of those routines includes fingerboard work, even while traveling. She’ll pack resistance bands, a portable hangboard or even a TRX suspension training system. She might do scapular pull-ups in a stairwell or tricep dips off a hotel bathtub. The point is, the habit sticks. “It’s not like this is an obligation,” she says. “This is what makes me feel good.”
Weighted sit-ups are part of Sasha's classic routine for climbing.
© Rob Snow
I’m focused on the form and being sure to trainstability and to train strength in a way that is going to transfer tomy climbing.
A few years ago, this entire regimen would have looked different. DiGiulian underwent five hip surgeries between 2020 and 2021, procedures that required months of rehab and a complete reimagining of her physical approach. Before her double hip reconstruction, she had insane flexibility on the wall due to hip dysplasia. But afterward, she had to relearn everything she thought she already knew.
“I needed to change the way that I climbed,” she says. “I needed to integrate a lot more strength and explosivity into my training rather than just rely on flexibility. A big part of this approach was training in a smarter way and building the right team [of nutritionists and physical therapists] around me, in large part thanks to Red Bull.”
Now in her early 30s, she takes a more holistic approach. Her weekly routine includes four to five days of climbing, two strength training sessions and four to five days of cardio. Rest days are active: mellow hikes with her dog, walks or mobility sessions. “I need to keep moving,” she says. “But I’ve also learned when to pull back.”
That includes listening to her mental state. After a major expedition, she often needs weeks off from formal training. “I get dopamine fatigue,” she explains. “After Madagascar, I couldn’t even think about my next climb. I just need to have two or four weeks of nothing because it’s so intense.” In those moments, she might stick to light movement and let herself be still. After all, rest is training, too.
Over the years, DiGiulian has also become more intentional about training as a woman. “What are the muscle groups that we tend to be stronger in versus weaker?” she asks. “Like, are we quad dominant or do we have hypermobility in certain areas? And how do we adjust training to that?” She doesn’t lay out a specific list of exercises, but her point is clear: Women may need different strategies, and tuning into those patterns can help prevent injury and build longevity.
This was Sasha's first training after an expedition in Madagascar.
© Rob Snow
For Sasha, travel often means letting go of expectations but not standards.
© Rob Snow
Just as impressive as her physical discipline is her schedule management. Tuesdays and Thursdays are packed with Zoom calls for Send Bars, the nutrition company she founded. Training happens between obligations. Gym time gets reshuffled when travel delays or media shoots pop up. She’s learned not to aim for perfection, just consistency.
In Pittsburgh, as DiGiulian finishes her last set of pull-ups and begins to transition to single-arm rows, the gym hums quietly around her. I glance at her chalked hands and the pulley system she’s rigged for added weight, plates still awkwardly banging against her knees. There’s an intensity to her process, but also a calm. Soon she’ll be off to her next stop. Another flight, another bed, another gym. The routine, in its way, is grounding.
“I just find a way,” she says. “Even if it’s just something small to stay in rhythm.”
Even when the plates get heavy.