France Climbing Team Training Camp – Part 1 – Routesetting

In January 2023, we invited the France Climbing Team for a Training Camp at our gym in Colmar, France.
In this video, you will see all the work that the routesetters have to do so that the athletes can enjoy a real international-level competition simulation.
The French Climbing Federation decided to work with four very skilled routesetters for this event, and you will find more info about them below.

We hope you like this video, and if so, please don’t hesitate to like, comment and share it with your friends, and subscribe to our channel to show us your support. That means a lot to us and makes us want to create more videos. ❤️

🏋️ For the training products you see in the video: https://shopclimbing.com/agres-escalade/

📖 Chapters
00:00 DAY 1 – Getting the Gym ready
01:48 The LEAD WALL + KILTER
02:47 DAY 2 – The ROUTESETTERS are here
03:09 RÉMI SAMYN – Presentation
07:11 How to set LEAD ROUTES with Rémi Samyn
08:43 ESTEBAN DALIGAULT – Presentation
11:02 YOHANN DÉCHAMPS – Presentation
12:56 DAY 3 – TESTING & FINALIZING
13:41 PINCH CHALLENGE with the routesetters
15:58 FLORIAN BOURDON – Presentation
17:25 FINALIZING the LEAD ROUTES with Rémi & Florian
18:09 FINALIZING the BOULDERS with Yohann & Esteban
18:36 What RÉMI SAMYN thinks about the LFM Gym
19:55 LAST WORDS for the ATHLETES

🛠️ Routesetters

Rémi Samyn: an International IFSC routesetter, who was the Chief routesetter of the Bern 2023 World Championships.
www.instagram.com/remisamyn_climbing

Esteban Daligault: a freelance routesetter working mostly at Chambéry Escalade Club and also setting boulders and coaching at the French National Training Center in Voiron, France.
www.instagram.com/este.dlg

Yohann Déchamps: a National Chief routesetter mostly working at Vertical Art gyms and setting national-level competitions.
www.instagram.com/yohanndcp
www.instagram.com/climbwithus_

Florian Bourdon: the LFM Gym Chief routesetter, who has national- and international-level routesetting experience.

🎥 Camera and Editing
Thibaud Herr
@thibaudherrfilms
www.instagram.com/thibaudherrfilms

Hey, Mike. What are you doing? Hey! Welcome to my home gym. Today is a big day, because we work a lot, we take off all the holds to have a very clean wall because there is going to be a French Training Camp in my gym in two days. All routesetters come tomorrow in the morning. And normally the training camp is a World Cup competition simulation with the best climbers in France and in the world because French climbers are very very strong in the world. Like me So a lot of work for today, to have a clean wall and start to work tomorrow. Follow me. I’m going to show you all the systems in the gym and all the guys. You know, this guys is Vuk. Vuk is a monitor, a setter in the gym. Currently he’s taking off all the holds from the wall, and cleaning the mats to have the best place for the setting. Okay The big boss of the gym, of setting, of all technical systems in the gym He’s here, come. He’s here Florian. Yes! How are you? During this training camp He’s here for setting, to help… Florian: everything For everything yes. He’s a climber, he’s a setter, he’s everything. Yes. Come on. For the training camp. French training camp We have a part of lead climbing with two routes. One for women and one for men. Come with me I can show you… the lead gym. it’s a big wall, it’s 15 meters high It’s perfect because in comps, it’s the same we don’t have a big overhang, but it’s sufficient to have just two routes. and in the center of the room we have the Kilterboard That’s the best for workouts, to have a lot of power when you’re training and I think maybe, during the training camp we have a moment with the French Team to fight on the wall. The routesetters are here. So my name is Rémi Samyn I’m an international routesetter from France, from Paris. I grew up in Grenoble in the south east of France, and I started to set when I was something like 17 years old. So a long time ago, and I became an international routesetter in 2012, I think. so I started to set my first international competition at this time. I started climbing when I was ten years old with my older brother. I was an athlete, I was competing. I was a boulder specialist and I was a silver medallist in a 2005 World Cup. And after that I started to coach the French national team during about ten years, then routesetting and this is now I mean, the main part of my job. So I started to set when I was an athlete, because I was under 18. So it was just because climbing was always my passion. And I started to set also for my my personal training after that when I was a coach. it was also very important to set for the athletes that I was training. And after more and more I discovered this when I moved to Paris, I met Jacky Godoffe who is one of the legends of routesetting. So that’s why I, I started to set more and more and I did both when I was coaching, but at this time the combined format didn’t exist, so I was coaching the Boulder National team and at the same time setting for the international Lead World Cups. But now it’s important to split between coaching and setting. And that’s why now I said I’m only focusing on routesetting. And yes, I’m in more and more competitions and more in Boulder now. I was a routesetter for the World Championship in 2012, the World Championship in Lead. It was in Paris Bercy. So one of the biggest competitions in the world at this time. But yeah, I did something like 30 World Cups and maybe around ten World Cups as the chief routesetter Let’s go. Okay, so for this kind of training for the national team, we need first to be very efficient because we don’t have as much time as we can have for competitions. So we need to be efficient. It’s a combined simulation. So we have both disciplines to set, Lead and Boulder. So two routes on the lead wall, eight boulders on the boulder wall. So it’s kind of a lot of work in not a lot of time. So yes, we need to be efficient first then, we also need to think about this format because it’s a new format we didn’t set so many times, especially in Boulder, because in Boulder we have two zones. It’s a big difference compared to the World Cups circuit. So yes, in the end we also had to speak a lot, quite a lot with the team and to exchange all together to be sure that we will have the good ranking with the new point format for the combined Olympics format that will run in Paris in 2024. Okay, so now we start to set the lead routes and the first step on the lead routes is to put the volumes on the line. So we try to have a line first esthetic and also a line with these big volumes, because it’s easier to start first with the volumes. It takes a lot of space and it’s very heavy. So in the lift, it’s hard to have everything with the holds and everything. So it’s much easier to start putting all the volumes on the wall. And after we go back down and we start to take all the holds and we screw the first skeleton of the routes.. So this is the second step, it’s what we will do now and the last step after will be to climb, to try and to make some adjustments to have the good level. it’s the second day of routesetting here in the gym for the French training camp, and I’m very happy and excited to climb tomorrow Yes! so now the two routes are on the wall so the red route is for women and the blue one is for men yesterday evening we already had a try in the blue route We made some adjustments yesterday evening also. And now we’ll do the same in the red one. So one climb, some adjustments. a second climb, because we are two So we climb both each route, this way we can have different point of views and after the second try, we will still have a few more changes and we’ll stay on this version to propose to the athletes after So yeah, this is where we are now. Yeah, for me It’s the first time that I come to this gym. So I saw some pictures on the networks and I spoke also with Micka and Bass. But this is a super nice climbing gym. Really nice. I like the fact that everything is in this gym. The boulder part with a lot of big macro volumes, a lot of nice holds. Also, the lead wall, which is quite high because 15 meters is good for a lead wall, the speed wall but also a lot of training tools, like the kilterboard and many things. So it’s like, you have everything here, if you want anything about climbing, you can find it here. So I really like this gym. Like I said to Micka, also, I like the atmosphere because it looks like a big family and I really like the spirit we can feel in this gym. So I’m very happy for them, impressed about everything they did, because they are still professional athletes, they train more than 25 hours per week Plus, they run the gym, plus many, many things. So yes, it’s nice to see all the the energy they put in climbing. And in this project of this new gym now. I would say good luck to the athletes and thank you very much for everybody who welcomed us here and especially Micka, Bassa, and all the family and everybody.