About Catalyst
Louis Parkinson started climbing at age 13. As a shy and not-very-sporty child, climbing became an all-consuming passion and source of confidence, strength and fulfilment. Louis was so passionate about climbing and loved practicing so much that several years later, he was selected to join the GB Climbing Team at the age of 20, representing the nation at the 2015 Climbing World Championships. Over his near 2 decades of climbing Louis has earned a long list of competition victories, climbed in beautiful places around the world, and built a powerful online presence and reputation for being one of the most enthusiastic and personable climbers around.
Being very aware of how much discovering climbing had benefited his life, Louis began sharing his passion by becoming a freelance coach in his early 20s. After several years of honing his craft, Louis founded Catalyst Climbing LTD in 2017, with a few simple aims:
To provide affordable, enjoyable climbing coaching and training to make climbing coaching more accessible for beginners and not just for elite climbers.
To create more work for aspiring climbing coaches.
To share the joy of climbing with the world!
8 years later, Catalyst Climbing has a large team of highly-trained coaches, a rapidly growing Youtube Channel, a thriving community of students (both online and in person) and has worked with THOUSANDS of climbers, from total novices taking their first steps into the world of climbing to supporting our Junior and Senior Athletes as they win National titles.
Catalyst Climbing has an exclusive partnership with London Climbing Centres (LCC). To find your closest Catalyst-partnered gym, click here!
The Team
Sadie joined the Catalyst team as Administrative Manager in 2023 and spends her time managing bookings and team memberships, while ensuring everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. She began bouldering in 2020, but has since branched out into sport climbing too. When she's not working or at the gym, she can be found reading, or training longsword and dagger with her local HEMA group.
Sam has been climbing for nearly 3 years. He has been at Catalyst for 2 years - his role as Creative Director means he’s responsible for the production of our YouTube channel, sponsorships and any visual output.
Facts about Sam; he was captain of the Futsal team at university (a Brazilian variation of football), lead-singer of a band and before Catalyst started a photography and videography studio.
Sol has been climbing for about 9, going on 10 years now (with an aim of climbing 8A before he turns 30). Of those 9 years, about 6 years of them have been spent with Catalyst - he’s worked as a coach, helped film and edit our youtube videos, and currently manages our social media channels! As is company policy, Sol does of course have regular access to cats, (though they belong to his parents) and are named Rudy, Rosie and Molly. In terms of non-climbing things, Sol is a keen trail runner, and also used to be skilled with a sword, having competing regionally in fencing!