The Psychology of Climbing — Patrick Boudreau on Flow, Performance and Nature
In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Patrick Boudreau about the psychology of climbing, flow and other states associated with excellent performance, the differences between climbing indoors and outdoors, and whether physical activity in nature may offer distinct psychological benefits.
CiTR 101.9 FM / The Blue Hour
Pre-recorded in Whistler, British Columbia, on July 30, 2026
Listen: CiTR | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
The Blue Hour, hosted by Farha Guerrero, airs every Tuesday at 2 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and at citr.ca.
Patrick Boudreau, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre and in the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at Concordia University. His research brings together behavioural medicine, sport and exercise psychology, adventure recreation and psychological well-being.
Much of our conversation centres on climbing and the psychological differences between experiencing the sport indoors and outdoors. Patrick's research with climbers has explored themes including identity, connection, engagement, exploration and risk, and how these may take different forms at the climbing gym and on natural rock.
We discuss why outdoor climbing can feel psychologically different from indoor climbing, and whether those differences come from nature itself or from the larger outdoor experience, including uncertainty, changing conditions, sensory experience, risk, exploration and greater autonomy.
Patrick has also studied the psychological states associated with excellent performance in sport. His recent work challenges the familiar idea that exceptional performance depends on reaching a single ideal mental state, or "the zone." Instead, athletes may perform exceptionally well through different psychological states, from the relative effortlessness of flow to more demanding states involving deliberate concentration, effort and control.
We also turn to Patrick's ongoing umbrella review comparing the psychological outcomes of physical activity performed in nature with those of physical activity performed indoors. By bringing together evidence from existing systematic reviews, the project asks a deceptively simple question: not only whether physical activity is good for us, but whether where we do it might matter as well.
Our conversation considers climbing as both sport and experience: flow and fear, indoor training and outdoor exploration, psychological well-being and performance, and the possibility that natural environments may shape the way physical activity feels.
Transcript
Transcript lightly edited for clarity while preserving the natural rhythm of the conversation.
Farha: Hello, I'm Farha Guerrero, and this is The Blue Hour on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that CiTR broadcasts from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. This interview was pre-recorded in Whistler on the shared, unceded territories of the Squamish and Lil'wat Nations.
Today's program is the second in a two-part series exploring rock climbing, physical activity and psychological well-being. In Part One of the series, I spoke with Sophie Alexander, a Master's student in Kinesiology at the University of Victoria. Today, in Part Two, we turn more directly toward the psychological experience of climbing and physical activity in nature.
My guest today is Dr. Patrick Boudreau, a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre and in the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at Concordia University. He recently co-authored a major review titled Psychological States Underlying Excellent Performance in Sport: A Paradigm Shift Toward Multiple-State Perspectives. He is also currently working on an umbrella review comparing the psychological outcomes of physical activity performed in nature with those of physical activity performed indoors.
In our conversation, Patrick and I discuss flow and other psychological states associated with climbing, the mental preparation required for adventure in demanding environments, and what the research currently tells us about exercising indoors compared with moving through natural environments.
Welcome, Patrick, to The Blue Hour.
Patrick: Thank you so much for having me.
Farha: I am really excited to speak with you for many reasons, and one has everything to do with your current research. You are someone that I sought out in the world, and you asked me how, and I told you, I am embarrassed to say, AI found you for me. Really, what I was looking for was to talk to researchers in the academic world who are studying climbers and specifically the differences between kinds of climbing.
Climbing is very vast, and there are many forms of climbing. But before we get into your research, Patrick, I thought it might be fun if you could tell me about your background as a climber and whether that influenced you to do the work that you are doing today.
Patrick: Sure. I think it started more than 15 years ago. I was in Scouts, and I got to try different types of climbing, including climbing outdoors, which is one of the areas of research we might talk about today.
I then did a Master's looking at how climbing impacted high school students. I was looking at confidence specifically, and how a climbing program that took place at Stelly's High School near Victoria, British Columbia, changed the high school students' confidence levels over time.
That was really the impetus for starting to research rock climbing. But I've always been in love with it. Whether it's an indoor climbing gym or outdoor rock, there's always been a love for it.
During the internship I was doing at the high school, I ended up getting my certification with the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. I did that for a bit and then went back to Quebec. With the Fédération Québécoise de la Montagne et de l'Escalade, the equivalent to the Canadian Mountain Guides, because Quebec likes to do things a bit differently, I did via ferrata guiding and rescuing at the national park in Mont-Tremblant.
So I've always been involved in climbing in all its forms.
Farha: You come in as a climber, and you've now been a guide. With the high school students, you were looking at young people and interested in the psychology, it sounds like, what makes a climber a climber, which I'd love to talk about.
Is there anything else from your background that you think influences what you're doing today? Are there still missing questions, given that you know the sport not just from an analytical or qualitative research side, but also from a personal side?
Patrick: For sure. A big thing that impacted my interest in adventure sports and adventure recreation, things like climbing, but also skydiving or paragliding, was the state of flow, being able to be fully immersed in an activity and not think about anything else except what you're doing in that specific moment.
It's a very enjoyable state, something that people strive to achieve in sports, but also in music or whatever activity you really enjoy doing. Flow state is often the epitome of what you can get from your activity.
That was very much an aspect of research that I wanted to get more information about. That's what led me to pursue my PhD. I did that at the University of Otago in New Zealand, looking at flow state.
It turns out I focused on alternative states of mind that go beyond flow state, looking at something also called clutch state, which is more pressure-based and more recent in research. There are starting to be some applied guidelines on how that can be facilitated, and how we can facilitate clutch states differently from flow states.
Essentially, flow state can be very enjoyable in the moment and can be facilitated more often when you're being playful or exploratory. A clutch state might happen more often if you're under pressure. At the end of a game, or on a very hard, challenging or risky climb, perhaps you might have a clutch state as opposed to a flow state.
Farha: For people who have never heard these terms, can you describe very briefly what they mean? Imagine someone listening who has never heard what flow state or clutch state could be. What does it actually mean?
Patrick: Both states overlap. There are lots of characteristics that they both have.
If we summarize both of them under an umbrella term, we can say "being in the zone." That's the term that's been used since the researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the state of flow.
If you're trying to compare flow state with clutch state, flow often feels more effortless. It feels really easy. Maybe you're doing a climb, but all the holds seem like they're holding really well and you know exactly where to go without thinking about it. It's automatic.
Clutch is much more, "I need to do this." It feels very effortful. It feels really challenging. Maybe it's hurting, maybe it's painful, maybe you can feel the spiky rock on your hand, but you really have a desire to persevere.
It's a bit of the opposite of what athletes would call a choke state, not being able to perform at your best when normally it would be something you should be able to do. Clutch state is essentially the opposite of that. It's the mental state that would underpin a clutch moment.
Farha: But in both flow and clutch, would you say that the climber, even in the flow state, may not be feeling the difficulty because they're in that state of flow? Their mind might be overpowering their body in some ways, maybe.
But technically, they could be doing the exact same thing, right? So this is really the psychology of the climber itself?
Patrick: Yes, very much an aspect of the psychology of climbing, and something that still needs to be understood better.
There are lots of neuroscience-related theories trying to explain why the state appears and how we make it more likely to appear. That's something that needs to be better understood, I think, before we can make clear indications of why that happens.
There are theories like the default mode network, which would typically be on when we're not doing anything specifically. There's lots of rumination, or your brain is always thinking. But when you're in a flow state, you're potentially better able to turn that off and really focus on what you're doing.
In a flow state, it feels really easy, as opposed to a clutch state, which would feel a lot more challenging.
Farha: The cognitive side of things is very interesting, and that's what you're interested in studying. You're going deep into this brain network of what is actually happening in the brain of people who climb, which is fascinating.
But I also think, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is still quite novel research. There aren't a lot of people in the world who may be studying this right now.
Climbing, at least to me, still feels quite young in the spectrum of mountain sports compared with something like skiing or other sports that maybe have longer histories. Even if we look at technology, I can think of a few devices that are relatively recent that were game changers in climbing.
Can you speak to why this is an important area of research?
Patrick: One area of research that I find particularly fascinating is trying to understand the experience of the climber.
I briefly talked about some of the neuroscience research that's coming out, and it's typically quite challenging at the moment. We do have some technologies that help us better understand that.
I did some trial research looking at EEG, or electroencephalography, looking at brain waves and seeing how beginner climbers might differ in their climbing or their ability to read a route compared with an expert climber. That gave us some indication that we can use EEG to differentiate between those two types of climbers.
We were using a device called the Muse at the University of Victoria. I think the summary of that research is that, for now, we don't have devices accurate enough to measure those brain waves while someone is climbing. There's a lot of noise that happens.
It's quite challenging, and I think maybe with the development of AI, we might be better able to control that noise and see the true signal between the brain waves. But I'd say that was probably, for now, a failed attempt at trying to understand it.
What I find even more interesting is the psychological experience. Using methods like interviewing people, having people write journals or keep videos, doing focus groups, using more of a qualitative approach to understand how people are climbing and what's going on in terms of their experience. I find that even more fascinating.
Farha: We talked briefly before about statistics. It's hard to know how many climbers exist in the world, but from at least one 2019 statistic, you said there were about 44 million. Maybe that's increased since then.
Maybe during the pandemic it increased because people were trying to get some breathing air and were recreating more in the mountains. But let's put a grand number and say 50 million people climb.
That sounds like a lot of people, but compared with other sports, it's still a niche number. We're going to talk about indoor climbing, because that's something your research looks at.
From the qualitative side of research, in the paper we're going to talk about that you told me will be published soon, you're looking at just a handful of people. You're not looking at a huge number.
Your research wasn't just starting at the climb itself, seeing the climbers on the wall. You were even interviewing them as you were getting to the crag. For people who don't know this, sometimes you have to hike for 30 minutes to get to a particular crag.
You've got this process where you're spending a few hours with them, depending on the indoor or outdoor scene, and there's also the aftermath. You're capturing the experiences right away.
Why was that immediacy important to you?
Patrick: Lots of reasons. Just to backtrack a bit, to put the sheer number of 44 million climbers in perspective, that's more than the population of Canada.
Farha: That's true. I was thinking more of eight billion!
And of course there are the more traditional physical activities out there, like football. Obviously that's more popular.
Patrick: Climbing is very much a growing sport and one of the fastest-growing physical activities out there. It's interesting to consider how quickly it's increasing and how different forms of climbing are increasing at different rates.
There are about five million indoor climbers in the USA, which is double the number of outdoor climbers.
You talked about the relatively recent history that climbing has compared with mountaineering, but it's accelerating at a very fast pace. There are over 120 gyms in Canada right now, and that keeps growing. I'm currently based in Montreal, where we have more than 12 gyms.
There is very expedited growth, especially in indoor climbing. It's quite interesting how that's maybe diverged a bit from the traditional roots of what climbing was.
Farha: That's good that you clarified that, because sometimes maybe you can't compare the numbers. But at the same time, the popularity is there. You can go to a crag where I live in the Sea to Sky area and it can be busy.
Patrick: Especially in some parts that are more idyllic for climbing, you'll have a greater number of people who climb.
I also find it interesting in terms of what climbing might provide people. I used to be a physical and health education teacher in Quebec, and I would often see students perform really well at sport, but not all students enjoyed those traditional group-based or team-based sports.
It's quite interesting to look at other activities that could be considered more alternative but provide those opportunities for physical activity, which I think is really crucial.
It's about finding something that someone will enjoy doing as a physical activity. People who perform at high levels in team sports might or might not be attracted to climbing, but it gives us another activity to provide as an opportunity for people who might not be interested in traditional team-based sports.
Farha: Exactly. Now, to return to that question about immediacy in the qualitative research, why was it important to talk with the climbers either before their climb or right after their climb versus, let's say, a week or two later?
Patrick: Having it in situ, immediately after the climb, means it's more recent in your mind.
I was spending sometimes an entire day with a climber before conducting that interview with him or her. It was really an opportunity to get a clear indication of how that specific climb felt immediately afterwards.
There had been some research that looked more generally at people's climbing experiences, but not so much a direct comparison with the same climber between their indoor experience and their outdoor experience.
Farha: This is really where we'll frame that comparison.
Your research brings together adventure psychology, exercise psychology and the study of nature-based physical activity. This paper is looking at the comparison between indoor and outdoor climbing.
Some of the demographics were very interesting because, in this qualitative research, you don't have a huge number of people, but certainly people of different backgrounds, men and women, and people from different parts of the world.
You also include in the table their preferences, whether they prefer outdoors or indoors, and you looked at the years they had been climbing. Most of them had many years, but some had only a few.
What can you say about this approach from a research perspective?
What I really liked in your paper is how you quote from them directly. The participants are speaking right to your research. They're telling you these experiences that they have, and you're trying to put some threads together because, as you go through your paper, you start to see patterns of observation.
Patrick: That's right. The patterns were obtained through thematic analysis, essentially doing an analysis of the themes and what's coming out.
This is qualitative research, so the purpose isn't necessarily to have a representation of how all climbers perceive indoor climbing and how all climbers perceive outdoor climbing. It's more about what might be possible. What kinds of experiences might be possible in indoor climbing? What kinds of experiences could be possible in outdoor climbing?
We had 12 participants and were able to do 18 interviews. Whenever possible, we had participants do both the indoor and outdoor climbing sessions on different days and then conducted the research with each of them.
Some had a few years of experience, but the average was 20 years of climbing experience. The minimum eligibility to be part of the study was to have climbed for at least one year.
Lots of these climbers were climbing both indoors and outdoors regularly, but they tended to have a preference for outdoor climbing.
It was quite challenging to find climbers, at least in New Zealand, where the research took place. I was doing it as a portion of my PhD at the University of Otago, where I was supervised by Ken Hodge and Susan Hogan-McKenzie.
It was quite interesting to see the number of people who wanted to talk about outdoor climbing but weren't as interested in the indoor climbing experience. Maybe that says a bit about what people are like when they're climbing in New Zealand.
Farha: That's still one context. But certainly there were these broad themes that emerged from the interviews: identity, their connection with spaces, whether indoor or outdoor, and engagement.
Community was a big part of the sociability of indoor climbing. Then there were things like exploration, the freedom of movement that maybe the outdoor settings provided, and of course risk and the kinds of challenges that climbers face.
But what was interesting was that these weren't exclusive to one or the other. There was risk in both, because sometimes indoor climbers get injured too.
Patrick: Very much. If I had to give one summary of the research, contrary to what I might have expected, it's that there isn't really an indoor versus outdoor climbing experience. They're not competing psychological experiences, but complement each other. They both bring aspects of each other in different ways.
You mentioned social connection. There's very much social connection that happens in nature and in indoor gyms, but it's different in the way that it presents itself.
People will sometimes use an indoor gym as more of a social hub, a chance to meet people, and an opportunity to have more relaxed time in between climbing routes and chat.
That happens in nature also, but people tend to pair off more often when they're climbing outdoors and be in smaller groups. Social connection is happening in both varieties of climbing, indoor and nature-based.
That sense of exploration similarly appears in both. In indoor climbing, climbers reported feeling great joy in exploring different types of routes.
One of the recommendations I made from this paper to indoor gym managers was to ensure that they have a great variety of ways that people can move and that they continue to modify those climbing routes regularly, because exploration remains really important for climbers in indoor settings too.
It's more about exploring what kinds of movements they can do. Sometimes it can be a really playful movement and you feel like you're climbing like a superhero. Other times, it might feel like you're climbing like a monkey, or you're between little cracks and it's painful.
There are lots of different ways people can move, and being able to explore that autonomously is really important for climbers both indoors and outdoors.
Farha: There was definitely that feeling for me that the conclusion isn't so black and white, one is this and one is the other, even though one might be a training ground for the other.
We live in Canada, a country that has a lot of very Montreal weather! Indoor climbing definitely has an appeal. On those rainy days that we get on the West Coast, indoor climbing will bring in a lot of climbers.
I also like the point about sociability. I've already learned that if you're distracted while you're belaying, that's not very good. If you're belaying your partner and start chatting with the person next to you, your partner may not appreciate that because the partner may fall.
Whereas in a bouldering gym especially, because no one's really strapped onto anything, you see people taking turns. Bouldering is very physical, so you get that social, community-hub feeling, which is especially nice in urban centres.
Patrick: There's definitely that good vibe. There's going to be lots of variability in both types of climbing.
If you're going to a gym that has more rope climbing, compared with a bouldering gym, you might have very different social experiences.
In a bouldering gym, it's relatively high-intensity climbing that happens in short bursts. You climb up, climb back down ideally, or sometimes jump off, which isn't recommended by most gym managers, and then you'll go and chat with your friends.
That's opposed to rope climbing, where you'll be on the wall for a more prolonged period and not necessarily talking to your belayer during that time.
There's lots of variability between indoor climbing and nature climbing, but also within the different varieties of indoor climbing.
Farha: I want to push forward with outdoor climbing, because one thing that felt very strong in your work was the idea of adventure.
Even though, as you say, routes can be changed in indoor gyms and people can get a similar exploratory experience, there was something about the unpredictability outdoors.
From the people you interviewed, it seemed that predictability is reduced in this outdoor space, so you have many factors beyond the climb itself. Wind was one example. Someone said that can change how someone feels even on the rock and can alter anxiety levels to some extent.
Then of course the consequences of falling, especially if you're lead climbing, are very real.
The flow state seemed to be possible in both indoor and outdoor settings, but perhaps on the outdoor side there's also the scenery, whether it's the sound of birds, the calmness of a forest or simply the aesthetic beauty of some of these places.
There are places very close to where I live where you can literally climb above the Cheakamus River, and you've got the river right there and it's gorgeous. The energy is embodied in you.
Did you feel that was pretty much across the board with outdoor climbers?
Patrick: Very much. A key theme that appeared from climbers immediately after their outdoor climb was the sense of adventure that came from outdoor climbing that wasn't really replicated in indoor climbing.
Indoor climbers sometimes talked about exploring different moves and different ways they can climb up or out, but for outdoor climbers, adventure was a key part.
One climber said, "I love the adventure of outdoor climbing because it is a bit like solving a puzzle."
There's a lot of this sense of lack of predictability. You're making things up as you go along. You're trying to find your route as you go through it.
That sense of exploration appears to be one way that you can facilitate a flow state. Whether it's climbing, your work, or something else you're doing, being more exploratory and playful in what you're doing seems more likely to lead to a flow state, allowing you to more automatically and effortlessly continue your activity.
There are definitely opportunities to have a flow state in indoor climbing, but for the climbers, at least in this research, it appeared more likely to happen in an outdoor scene.
Part of that is maybe because the setting itself is more exploratory or adventurous in the first place. They don't really know what it's going to be like, whether that's the weather, a new route they're discovering, a new crag or a new climbing area they're discovering for the first time.
There's always going to be something new when it's outdoors, and that might lead you to feel more exploratory in the first place.
Farha: For anyone listening, there are many kinds of climbing outside, many forms of it, but essentially you've got a challenge ahead of you. However, in something like sport climbing, there is still a route that's been set by someone else.
Patrick: This specific research was exploring sport climbing. That's a route that's already bolted. There's already protection on the wall and you're essentially putting your rope through a carabiner, with the carabiner attached to the bolt.
So it's already preset in some ways. But when you're outdoors compared with indoors, you can use a whole variety of things.
Whatever the rock is providing, you have the opportunity to use that. Sometimes a route might be set by someone who's six foot two, but you're five foot five. Your experience is going to be vastly different and you're going to be exploring a very different route, even though it was set ahead of time by someone else.
Farha: It almost feels a little philosophical, more existentialist, the idea that you're making more choices. Would you agree with that, or am I going a little bit too deep?
Patrick: Possibly. I think climbing can very much be philosophical in the first place.
The sense of autonomy is quite interesting. That's something that's very important in terms of motivation.
There's a theory called self-determination theory. Are you doing something for its own sake? Are you doing something because you really love it?
Maybe you really love climbing, not because you're getting paid. Often you're going to have to pay to go to the gym or pay for all that expensive equipment, but you're doing it because you absolutely adore it.
That's what's labelled intrinsic motivation.
We can contrast intrinsic motivation with something like extrinsic motivation, which could be derived from your parent telling you to go clean your room. You're going to be motivated to clean your room simply because you don't want to have the shame of not doing it.
But for climbers, often what drives them to climb is that intrinsic motivation. One of the key reasons you'll get intrinsic motivation is if you fulfil your psychological needs.
Based on SDT, self-determination theory, we've got three psychological needs. We've got the need for competence, a need to feel like you're doing something really well, that you're competent in it.
Then we have the need for relatedness, the need to feel like you belong with people and belong in the group that you're in.
That will often happen in climbing. People will report, "I feel like I'm in a climbing community. People take care of me and I take care of them."
Then we've got the third psychological need, which is also universal. Everybody has these needs. That's the need for autonomy, feeling like you can choose to do what you want.
Very much so, when you're outdoor climbing compared with indoor climbing, you have a lot more choices. You're not just choosing those red plastic holds that tell you exactly where you're going to climb up.
You can choose to use a crack or a little piece of rock that will barely hold the edges of your fingertips. You get to choose. You have the autonomy, much more so, I think, in an outdoor climb compared with an indoor gym climb.
Farha: Another participant described outdoor climbing as restorative, almost meditative, even spiritual, which extends to the flow state, I think. That was very interesting. It seemed that a lot of people felt there was something deeper than the sport itself.
Patrick: For a lot of the outdoor climbers, or the people who preferred outdoor climbing in the research, they very much showed that connection to nature.
They felt calmer. As soon as they got to the crag, their whole world just disappeared. They could really focus on climbing. They could focus on being in the present moment.
Farha: And I circled "time stoppage." It was one phrase that you used.
Patrick: Feeling like you are not aware of time seemed to occur more often in outdoor climbers.
There's one quote I can pull out. A climber said that climbing outdoors makes them feel "alive and connected to the world and myself."
It's very much that connection to nature, whether you can hear the birds, touch grass and really feel like you're part of nature.
That identity of being a climber is very strong for the outdoor climbing community. Maybe not so much for an indoor climber.
There were quotes in the research about how some participants felt that only climbing outdoors was "real" or "authentic" climbing. For them, they could only see themselves as rock climbers if they were climbing outdoors.
When they were climbing indoors, it sometimes felt more like training for the outdoors.
But it really depends on each person. There were some climbers who preferred indoor climbing. For them, it's about competition or preparing for sport climbing competition. Each person will have their own preference.
Farha: I've certainly met indoor climbers who have never climbed outside and don't have any desire to.
Patrick: Very much so. And it's wonderful that they have the opportunity to climb however they want to climb.
Anything that will move you, both spiritually and physically. My background here at the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre means I'm very much concerned with whether we can get people to lead healthy lives, and how we get that to happen.
We all know physical activity is important, but it's quite hard. We know it's important, but how do we actually get it to happen?
One way, I think, is to really enjoy what you're doing and have that intrinsic motivation. It's about figuring out what the thing is that drives you.
It could be outdoor climbing, indoor climbing, or something that's not even climbing.
Farha: Just one thing to add with the flow state, for someone who doesn't know what this looks like. You have to imagine someone's never climbed before. They may think it might take an hour to come up one route.
In essence, it's actually not that. Sometimes it's just minutes. You could spend just a few minutes climbing from the bottom to the top. You could be quite high up even in those few minutes.
Of course, this could be after you've practised. There's a word, "project," which you even define in this paper, because every climber has a project they're working on.
Let's say you've worked on your project, you're ready to do it, and finally you achieve it. But that may be just a few minutes.
That time stoppage, at least for someone like me who's a bit obsessed with time as a writer, I find really interesting, because in this moment that could actually be very brief, you could experience this almost transcendence.
Was "transcendence" in your paper, or is that a word I read somewhere else?
Patrick: It has definitely appeared in lots of research on flow state. I don't think it appeared in quotes from participants in this research.
It's quite challenging in terms of explaining flow. Sometimes people will be aware of what it is based on research, so it can be confusing as to where the description is coming from. Is it just a repeating of an experience that you expect, and therefore that's what you get as an experience?
But there are lots of similarities in how people describe the experience of being fully immersed in the activity.
Time distortion is one of them. That's a big one, and it seems to be especially the case in physical activities and sport.
There's also complete concentration in what you're doing, being fully immersed in what you're doing, and a lack of awareness of what's not pertinent.
If you're not thinking about your credit card bill while you're climbing, that's going to be helpful for climbing. That flow state ends up being helpful in accomplishing the task that you're doing.
Farha: Exactly. We're going to transition to something you're also working on at the moment.
You'll have to define what you call an umbrella review. It's really looking at nature-based physical activity and how it can be studied in this broader way, where you're taking data from different research, if I'm not mistaken, and trying to understand it.
Can you tell us about that and how this relates to your research?
Patrick: Of course. First, I might want to have you imagine hearing about a new medicine.
Imagine this medicine can lower your cholesterol. It can reduce your chances of heart attacks. At the same time, it can also reduce your levels of anxiety and depression, and it might even improve your overall psychological well-being.
You might have heard of drugs like GLP-1s, things like Ozempic. This new drug that I'm telling you about can even reduce cancer risks.
It's essentially the magical pill. Would you take it if you could?
Farha: One hundred percent.
Patrick: Luckily for you, I feel like I sound like a salesperson, which I very much am. I'm selling this. It's free. It's physical activity.
Physical activity is the medicine.
What we're doing here is research on understanding not just physical activity and how we get people to move more, but how we can get that medicine to be even more effective.
We're specifically looking at how being physically active in nature might be more beneficial, or might be different, from being physically active in non-nature spaces.
We're doing an umbrella review. It's research that will essentially encompass systematic reviews.
A systematic review is a systematic process. This sounds very interesting for methodological nerds, but not so much if you've never heard of this before, so bear with me.
Research that people conduct will sometimes be reviewed systematically. Trying to find all the research on a similar topic is called a systematic review.
Sometimes we'll do a meta-analysis, where we're going to statistically look at an effect size, statistically look at how much of an effect something has.
With an umbrella review, there are so many systematic reviews out there that there's a need to be able to understand them.
We're doing an umbrella review of systematic reviews, and we're looking at how physical activity done in nature compares with physical activity done in indoor settings or on the sidewalk in urban settings, and how that impacts any type of psychological outcome.
We can look at things like anxiety, depression, emotional regulation, motivation, how much enjoyment you get out of it, how likely it is to increase your adherence to physical activity, whether it makes you want to do more physical activity, stress and overall well-being.
With any type of psychological outcome, we're trying to assess what research is out there. There are lots of systematic reviews that have already been done on this topic.
The problem is that they don't always agree. Some find that outdoor exercise is substantially better. I think that's a bias that a lot of people might have, that being in nature is better for you.
But there are systematic reviews that have found that the differences are quite modest, or that there's no difference.
Some more recent systematic reviews have found that doing exercise outdoors would increase your enjoyment, but found inconsistent effects for how much perceived exertion you'll have.
You might find, for example, that running outdoors versus running indoors doesn't feel easier or harder, depending on the context.
I'd probably encourage people to do treadmill running just as much as nature running if they're really looking for the benefit of doing something that feels easy. We don't really seem to have an answer for that. It doesn't seem to be much different.
But it seems that being outdoors when you're exercising might increase your enjoyment. It might be more fun, and that could also mean it increases your motivation to want to do it again.
Farha: You've got randomized and non-randomized research too. How do you account for those different kinds of conclusions? You're looking at a lot. It's quite a broad array of methodology.
Patrick: The big point of this umbrella review is to figure out what we know so far. What have we done in terms of research?
There's a lot of research. Instead of just putting more public funds into understanding this topic, we need to understand what we've done so far so we're not repeating what has already been done.
At this stage of the research, we've already screened all the articles that might be eligible, from the start of the databases all the way to the latest systematic review that has been published.
The oldest systematic review that was eligible for this review was published in 2005. It spans over 20 years of research.
We already have some good information. We found 33 systematic reviews that were eligible for this review. That's over 2,000 articles that we had to screen.
We have to figure out, is this relevant to the research question? Is this going to tell us some information? Does adding nature to your physical activity session actually give you any psychological benefit or not?
The main purpose of this umbrella review is to figure out what has been done.
One of the key outcomes, unfortunately, is that there's more work to be done. But we actually know a bit more about what we need to find out.
There's some good research around anxiety. Especially in terms of short-term anxiety, or what's called state anxiety, there seem to be some additional benefits if you're doing that physical activity in nature compared with doing it indoors.
When we look at things like depression, there don't seem to be enough long-term studies. Longitudinal studies haven't been done yet that assess depression.
We know that physical activity seems to improve depression symptoms, or reduce depression symptoms. It's possible that doing physical activity in nature does that even more so, but we don't yet know because we don't have enough of those longitudinal studies.
Farha: There have also got to be factors beyond the unpredictability of conditions outside.
Did you find anything about whether climate change is affecting these decisions too? As we have hotter summers, I recently heard an interview on CBC Ideas where they were talking about people having something similar to the winter blues, but during summer because it is so hot.
We're certainly seeing that in Europe right now, with another heat wave that has engulfed the continent.
Did you take those sorts of environmental factors into account?
Patrick: This umbrella review is based on what's already published. There wasn't anything that specifically addressed climate change, which is an incredibly important topic and something that needs to be better understood.
Better understanding how that's going to impact people's ability to move is also going to be very important.
There's some work I'm currently involved with at Unity Health in Toronto that is essentially a park prescription, getting people to move more by prescribing not pharmaceutical medicine, but more time in parks.
We know from research that improving or increasing the amount of green space in cities has enormous benefits in terms of reducing heat-wave effects and potentially improving the psychological well-being of people who live close to these nature spaces.
Trying to increase both the accessibility and equity of nature spaces within cities, but also increasing our understanding of how that can be related, is going to be really important.
Farha: Maybe finally, to close this idea, indoor spaces are perhaps one way to deal with hotter summers or varying issues that can differ.
Even smoke is becoming more and more of a concern in Canada. Air quality is affecting people's ability to be outside.
You said you've got more than 12 indoor climbing gyms in Montreal. Something in your paper that I didn't mention was that you also talk about the design of gyms and the kinds of challenges that they can provide.
A person can get that experience of an overhang or other challenges that they might experience outside.
Maybe it goes back to that conclusion I felt was in your paper, that both of these indoor and outdoor forms of recreation allow people to move their bodies. Even if they can't do something outside at a particular time, they can still do it inside. They don't have to sit at home hoping that the smoke goes away.
Patrick: It's definitely important to increase those opportunities to be physically active.
Based on that paper on climbers, it's very much not the case that people wanted to replicate the outdoor environment itself.
That's how lots of indoor gyms started out. They made walls that looked like rocks. They made cracks that looked like they were mimicking rocks.
What people seem to appreciate in indoor climbing gyms is the variety of climbing routes and the creativity that can be possible with different types of holds.
It's probably a very good investment to hire some great route setters for your climbing gym. That's going to have much more of a benefit, it seems, than trying to include trees or pictures of nature indoors.
Farha: I was at a gym the other day and there was a slab wall. You've got a wall that's devoted to someone who may want to practise slab techniques, then you may have a wall that's very technical or a wall that's got a lot of overhang.
Patrick: Very much so. It's going to be very helpful when climbers who climb outdoors go indoors.
They want something that can mimic as closely as possible what they're trying to achieve outside on their project, or what they're really striving to accomplish.
They'll be able to do it over and over again indoors in a safer environment.
It's very interesting to see the back and forth, especially with climbers, between indoor and outdoor climbing. Because of weather, or because they're going to be socializing with more friends, they might choose one setting or the other.
Find whatever works for you. Find the thing that brings you joy and that can intrinsically motivate you to either get out there or find your local indoor climbing gym or your CrossFit gym.
Whatever it is that brings you joy and makes you want to move, just for its own sake, is going to be the crucial thing.
Farha: That's a beautiful way to sum things up. Thank you for your time. Take care.
Patrick: Thanks so much.
Farha: Take care.
Further reading
Patrick Boudreau et al., Psychological States Underlying Excellent Performance in Sport: A Paradigm Shift Toward Multiple-State Perspectives (2025), Journal of Applied Sport Psychology.
Patrick Boudreau et al., A Sport Psychologist's Perspective on the Mental Preparation Required for High-Altitude Trekking (2025), Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism.