RYAN

Ryan is our most experienced coach, having been with Stronghold since the original centre’s opening day and has coached and instructed across all of our offerings, working with beginners and experienced climbers alike.

As a dad of two, Ryan is a natural when it comes to coaching kids and along with Jon heads up our Stronghold Youth Squad as well as spearheading our NICAS bouldering setup.

Ryan’s structured sessions are great for learning and working on the fundamental climbing techniques whether you are a beginner or an intermediate and can help with building a strong foundation for your climbing.

MANON

Manon is our youngest coach, and has been climbing for 9 years. She started with lead with a comp focus and is now an avid boulderer. Her strengths include using climbing as a tool for mindfulness, developing comp tactics, mindset, body positioning and accuracy when climbing under pressure.

Finding a climbing/training and work/life balance can be difficult, as a university student and climbing instructor, Manon is a MASTER at this, and can help advise you too. Together you can develop a training plan which suits you, and your needs.

Manon’s always climbing so you’ll probably see her around!

JON

Jon has been climbing for 6 years, bouldering and sport climbing indoors and outdoors, his focus is being able to travel the world and visit as many different interesting crags as possible. Jon enjoys getting climbers more familiar using the gym to improve in climbing when not on the wall. Strength training is a vital part in climbing when wanting to progress through a plateau.

Climbing better over climbing harder, making climbing feel and look easy.

If you want to book in a coach who can help you build your own training programme, teach good habits on the wall and give you the basis for good climbing technique, Jon can help you progress past your climbing “wall”.

ILARIA

Ilaria is one of our newest qualified coaches but lives and breathes climbing! She started sport climbing 5 years ago and also developed her skills bouldering indoors and outdoors.

Ilaria’s style is about movement and technique, finding stability through conditioning, and she focuses on training your climbing to develop a stronger mindset. She is also studying for her Level 3 Personal Trainer Course with RSPH Nutrition and combine these to enhance all areas of your performance. She always pushes herself to do better and will find out what best suits each individual, if you want to book in a coach which will push you going through your limits and support you with knowledge and attitude in your climbing, Ilaria can help you to develop good habits.

Pagno

Alessio aka Pagno is one of our original staff members, he joined Stronghold just 6 months after we opened back in 2017.

He has been climbing for nearly 8 years, focusing on just bouldering, both indoors and outdoors. Regardless of being inside or outside, steep and powerful boulder problems are what he enjoys the most.

To complement his climbing sessions, Pagno also trains consistently on the finger board, a very useful tool to develop strong and healthy fingers, so if you’re an intermediate climber and are interested in getting started with it, or you are simply looking to improve your basic strength and power, he’s the person to go to.

Irma

Irma grew up scrambling up mountains, kayaking competitively, and free diving. She first discovered sport climbing before finding a passion for deep water soloing (the perfect combo – rock and water). In 2018, a few years after discovering climbing, she landed third place in the first Red Bull Psicobloc competition in the Middle East. Nowadays, Irma mostly boulders in the Peaks and deep water soloes on the Adriatic coast.

Together, you and Irma will assess your performance, mental and physical, and work on your self-motivation by setting realistic goals and plans to achieve them. Irma is great at delivering high motivation and high intensity sessions, and advising on strength and finger training.