At the helm for 10 years of a leading digital media outlet in the field of sports climbing, Laurence Guyon looks back on her international career and the path that led her to the press. One conversation with Laurence helps us to understand why she and her husband decided to found La Fabrique Verticale, in a spirit of transmission and acculturation. The end game was not clear at all times, but their core values drove them to a rich experience that they couldn't have imagined when they embarked on this adventure.
Laurence Guyon, Journalist, Author, Coach and Founder
How long have you been climbing, and what have been your main achievements?
I started climbing in 1983. First, I did mountaineering, then sport climbing in all its forms (sport climbing and bouldering). With my brother Philippe, 7 years older than me, we climbed just about everywhere whenever the opportunity arose, both in the Mont Blanc Massif in the summer and in Fontainebleau in the winter when he was working as an engineer in Paris. I immediately fell in love with climbing and, during my studies, I began to practise regularly indoors, in the university's facilities.
I made a lot of progress at that point, which led to my first podium finish in an international competition in 1992, a bronze medal at the European Championships. In the years that followed, my results were up and down, and I probably had too many expectations. In fact, I didn't really come into my own until 1995, when I won two prestigious Masters in the same year, the Serre Chevalier Internationals and the Arco Masters, as well as several World Cup stages. I was also French Champion and World Vice-Champion that year.
How did your retraining go after your sporting career?
Career change is always a difficult stage for an athlete, and you have to know how to move on and learn from it. For me, as for many climbers in fact, the end of my competitive career didn't mean a complete end to sport climbing. In parallel with my studies, a PhD in French literature, I continued to explore this same passion and to try to push back my limits, no longer in the institutional framework of competition but outdoors, climbing the most difficult routes possible for me. In fact, if I look back over this period, I realize that from 1998 onwards (and indeed right up to the present day), I have climbed around 500 routes between 8a and 8c+ (5-13b to 5-14c), which is no mean feat!
But to come back to the notion of retraining, what delights me most in this story is to have been able to pass on my passion by becoming a journalist, the profession I dreamed of as a child, and thus talk about climbing to as many people as possible. I was able to combine my knowledge of the outdoor world with my taste for writing while continuing to climb! It all happened very gradually, not by chance, but by seizing opportunities discontinuously. The wind carried me towards what I wanted to do without really being aware of it. I first wrote for the specialist press, then for more mainstream media. I also worked in publishing and proofreading manuscripts. It was in this way, playing hooky and following a path that wasn't quite clear at the outset, that I finally became editor-in-chief of a climbing magazine. Life is made up of encounters and turning points.
How did you come to co-found the La Fabrique verticale media?
We co-founded La Fabrique Verticale almost 10 years ago, with my husband Olivier Broussouloux. We had already written several books together on climbing training (including Escalade et Performance, published by Amphora, which was an absolute best seller in France). He's a university professor specializing in the physiology of sports effort. I had this experience of high-level sport that I wanted to share, and also this knowledge of the world of the press, which enabled us to define better what we wanted to offer editorially. And so La Fabrique Verticale was born.
It was only natural for us to create a digital media outlet to share our knowledge as widely as possible and thus work towards a form of acculturation, bearing in mind that in a very short space of time, climbing has gone from a confidential sport to a trendy one, with its entry into the Olympic Games and the opening of numerous climbing gyms all over France and the world. And so there are many people who have discovered this activity very recently, often after the pandemic, and who don't have a very extensive climbing culture, such as we can have after 40 years of practice! They're looking for all kinds of information on equipment, history, how to train, safety. The information they find on the web is sometimes patchy, even fanciful. With La Fabrique Verticale, the idea was to provide quality content. To guide them and offer a 360° vision of climbing, embracing all facets of the activity and not just the narrow prism of indoor climbing. That's why we're reaching out to long-time climbers and newcomers alike, with a media that now has a very “core” image.
How did your climbing coaching business develop?
It wasn't long before La Fabrique Verticale was receiving requests for personalized climbing coaching from readers who were following us and appreciating the quality of our content. This is how we came to offer a remote coaching service. We had to invent tools and set up processes to create the conditions for the most personalized support possible. It's all done by hand. We start with a very detailed audit of what the climber is already doing, define with him the means and time at his disposal, and set objectives. We then propose a training plan and provide day-to-day support. There are currently 4 coaches in the team.
What's exciting and makes the work very stimulating is that we work with both top-level climbers (such as Solenne Piret, who has won the World Paraclimbing Championships 4 times) and more modest, passionate climbers who simply call on us to improve their skills. In the case of high-level climbers, the alchemy is complex to lead the athlete to the highest performance. In the case of less-titled climbers, the stakes may seem lower, but in reality, there's a whole lot of organization and anticipation required to be in phase with the individual. Many of our clients have highly responsible jobs in companies and hectic schedules, sometimes involving travel abroad. Managing to fit climbing into this tight schedule can be a real challenge.
How does your background influence the way you coach?
I'm now in my fifties, and it's obvious that you don't aim for the same sporting achievements at this age as when you're younger. However, I still practice at a very high level, and I'm still training (I even did 8c / 5-14b at the age of 46). What I've learned over the years is to adapt my training to my recovery capacities and current energy levels. This experience helps me a lot in coaching, especially with clients who are getting on in years and need a reasoned approach to their training. A healthy approach that takes into account the whole person. There are a lot of training videos on YouTube, but they're often made by young people who don't necessarily have that kind of distance from the activity.
I've also had a number of serious accidents in recent years, including a fall on my bike in 2021 with a traumatic brain injury and multiple fractures. I had several operations on my clavicle and went through a long rehabilitation and reathletization process. It was a difficult 3 years. I finally got back to a good level of climbing and sent challenging routes again. But in fact, my bones never fully healed, I have to take medication and I now have pseudarthrosis, which causes discomfort and pain. This doesn't prevent me from climbing, but it does require a very precise approach to training and particular attention to strengthening the shoulder muscles. Again, this long journey of resilience helps me in my relationship with the climbers I coach. In particular, I think it helps me to direct them with more empathy towards their feelings, to put them on the path to climbing for self-fulfilment, and not just for performance.
La Fabrique verticale is ten years old. What have you learned as an entrepreneur on this journey?
I think I'm still learning a lot. It's not enough to have a good idea. You have to be curious and appreciate these moments when you enrich yourself through contact with others. At La Fabrique verticale, we're lucky enough to meet a host of people with very different backgrounds, both in our coaching and journalistic activities. As a media outlet, we produce a wide range of subjects, from interviews with professional climbers to interviews with heads of specialist equipment manufacturers and climbing gym managers. It's this constant cross-fertilization of ideas that keeps the fire burning.
When you want to inform, you do it through as many channels as possible, and that's why we're just as committed to print and paper publications as we are to digital media and the video format. At La Fabrique Verticale, we have a YouTube channel on which we publish product test videos. It's a different way of communicating, and we've had to learn. We're still learning! It's very stimulating.
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