#196 James Pearson — Climbing For Yourself, Expanding Your Skillset, and Why You Should Start Trad Climbing

Intro

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Once you've got something, it's so easy to get back to that level. That always intrigues me why why that is. Like every grade that we break into, it takes so much time and effort, or every new skill that we learn, it takes so long to learn. But then you cannot do it for six months. And then it's like, oh God, I'm getting off the couch. It's gonna be a really long journey. Like, think about how much time it took me before to get here, and in in a few weeks or maybe a few months, you're like, oh wow, that happened quicker than I expected. So I just think that the more things that you do, like the bigger you can make your climbing repertoire, like the bigger you can make your skill set, the better it is for everything.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Welcome to the Test Peace Podcast. This podcast is about all things high-level climbing. How to go from good to great. I'm your host, Joshua Horsley. I've been climbing for over 30 years. We recently updated our Patreon, and now you get exclusive content from the guests that you love. You get your episodes before everyone else, and they're ad-free. Try it out now at patreon.com slash testpeace with a free seven-day trial. Okay, let's start the show. James Pearson, welcome to Test Peace Podcast, man. How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

It's going really, really well. Thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Did you just laugh at me because I like mispronounced my own podcast name? I kind of stumbled on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Slightly. But again, I was just really like surprised at how quickly you transitioned to be Mr. Professional Podcaster. Yeah. You took me a little off guard. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I do try to warn people, like, although podcasts should be just us talking about climbing, I mean, it still is a podcast. You got the vibe shifts a little. That's because it's it's about you today, James. It's not about me. It's about you.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Well, we'll see. I'm gonna ask you lots of questions about yourself. So this might actually turn into sort of a 50-50 deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Well, I'll do my best to hold up my side of it, but you've got you've got a little more experience than me. Uh James, I feel like this podcast was meant to be because Ollie Torr came on the podcast a while ago. He was like, hey, maybe you want to talk to James Pearson. You've heard of him. He's a legend. I said, yes, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Oh, I thought you were going to say you hadn't heard of me.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

No, no, that is not true at all. Everyone's heard of you. Uh I didn't even introduce you uh as like with all your accomplishments because I just assume, I just assume that people have heard of you. Okay, maybe the the viewers can ask ask a question when they actually if they actually want to find out who I am. Well, the thing that prompted me, well, two things prompted me to reach out to you is first I saw you did the finish line, which is you know an 8C in Rocklands that maybe some people think is like the best looking climb in the world. I I may be one of those people. It kinda it's one of those. And I was impressed, James, but not surprised because, dude, you just seem to climb like the best climbs in the world. Like I feel like your eye for aesthetics either it matches mine or it's just you know, you're a trendsetter. I don't know. I love the lines that you pick out to climb.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

I don't know about being a trendsetter, but I I definitely agree with you that lines are something that are really important for me and they've always been really important. I think for for a start, you know, the finish line climbed by Nari Huketaival. I think him for me is like one of the greatest visionaries of modern bouldering. And I actually went out to Rocklands with my kind of eyes set on another line. The finish line was back up. I wanted to try and do Living Large. And uh and I got so shut down on it that uh I started working on the finish line. And actually, deep down, I think I do believe the finish line is probably an even better line than living large. Um, not necessarily saying a better climb, but the line is just incredible. Um, but I'd watch videos of both of them and I thought the finish line looked just a little bit too powerful for me. And Living Large seemed like it was going to be kind of a little bit more balancy, and I'd maybe get away with some of the difficulty just because it was high and really scary. And it actually turns out it's just absolutely desperate, that thing. And so um finish line was a really nice consolation prize. I was really, really surprised to get it done. Um super, super happy that I got it done fast because it's pretty sharp. And I think if I hadn't done, I would have spiraled into this kind of series of, you know, oh is my skin too thin, am I gonna rest today? Uh because if I'm not careful with myself, then I can fall into some old habits. I guess we can talk about that later. But um no, it was such a such a joy to get a climb that that line, and really it's one off the the life list, I think. It doesn't get much better than that.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I'm kind of surprised that living large was the one that shut you down. And I I don't blame you for having your eyes set on that because I mean it's iconic as well. I guess it's stunning, isn't it? I I think there's something about I kind of have a thing for Aretz, and although Living Large kind of has an Aret-esque quality to it, it's not when you look at it as a line, it doesn't jump out. But you know, for for those who maybe don't know who you are exactly or haven't heard of all of your sins, especially because to be honest, my podcast seems to be more focused on the US, so you know, you're you were based, you were based out of the UK, you've climbed a lot on gridstone, you even did the world's first E12. A lot of listeners may not even know what that means. Uh but live in large It's just details. It's yeah, but doesn't live in large like if I were to write your baseball card, it would be like, you know, maybe a little less than ver trad climbing or delicate climbing is something you've excelled at in the past. So live in large would have suited me down too.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

I'm surprised I would have thought, yeah. It turns out it's brutally just so so hard. And I mean you get you kind of you should really know that when you look at how many people have actually repeated it and the names of the people that have repeated it. I think it got repeated once this season, despite quite a few people trying it, and it's just wow, so so impressive. Um it's a very, very, very, very conditions-dependent climb, so I'm just gonna put that out there. Not you know, trying to set up any excuses, but it is a hard one. It bakes in the sun all day and it's you know pretty slopey. But my goodness, is it is it a beautiful rock climb. Both of them actually climb in a similar way, although uh the finish line's way more powerful. But they both have this kind of well, it's it's you know, to do with climbing arets. You've got this this moment where you're completely out of balance, not even out of balance, you can't you can't hold on to the wall, you're so it's it feels so incredibly powerful, and then you shift your weight to one side or the other, and suddenly you're in almost a no-hands rest. Uh even though the finish line is really, really, really steep, you get the same kind of thing. You can see people when they climb it, they they're switching from one side to the other, really like getting high over one foot or the other, kind of almost sitting on their own heels. Toe would be on like a small little nubbin, and you're like then leaning off the arret, and you're kind of almost in a semi-comfortable position, and then you're like, okay, well, I guess I'm going back the other way now, and then you've got to find a way to move back to the other side, and you go through this crazy powerful movement. And so it's it kind of it really reminded me of a lot of the climbing um kind of movement patterns that I learned on the gritstone when I was when I was younger, but just way steeper, way more powerful, way harder. Because the gritstone's only um you know, it's almost it's very rarely overhanging. And so your question actually earlier about why why lines were really important to me, I think a lot of it comes from my kind of experience as a youth growing up on the gritstone. And I do think that like a lot of the stuff that defines us as adults in in later life is actually, you know, it's already been kind of implanted in us as kids or as teenagers, or at least it's really hard to shift and get rid of those habits. And for me, that was climbing on the gritstone, so kind of having this balancey, kind of bouncy climbing style. But mainly it was my just absolute love for lines because gritstones are a rock type that doesn't have it doesn't really have many holds kind of to grab on and pull on, but it's got features, and you basically spend your entire life climbing features, and that's you know, usually it's aretes, corners, or big blank faces. And for me, those three things are just just amazing. There's a fourth one, and that's cracks, but uh since I don't really like crack climbing, I just left that one out. That's kind of funny. Most people think I'm a crack climber when I tell them I'm a trad climber, and then I have to explain that actually. I'm a tread climber that tries to avoid cracks whenever it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Well, you then

James's Origins As A Gritstone Climber

SPEAKER_00 8:39

told me that most people think of you as a trad climber, and you're actually mainly a boulderer, which is That's also very true.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, yeah. So I grow up um I grew up on the grit. Um I got into climbing pretty late, actually. I was probably about yeah, I'd say I was 16 when I really got into it seriously. I probably tried it for the first time, probably at 15. Um, but I'd always been sort of semi-obsessed with climbing as a kid. So with my family, uh we grew up in a little town called Matlock, which is just on the outskirts of the Peak District. And we'd often go hiking, that was kind of one of the main activities we did as a as a family. And um the Peak District is just full of these kind of amazing gritstone outcrops, and you'd walk around and I'd see people climbing. And I just from a really early age, I wanted to be part of that that world, but neither of my parents climbed, we didn't really know anyone else that that climbed. And at that time, especially in the UK, there weren't that many sort of climbing gyms. I mean, definitely not like there is now. Um, and the gyms that they were were a little bit sort of more, let's say, serious or maybe clicky. I mean, I think probably the the the main reason was just they were quite far from where we lived. My parents didn't have time to take me to one. And so, despite like a few efforts on their behalf to find some way into the sport for me, um, it never happened. And I can kind of understand, you know, most most adults in the UK at that time, they they only saw climbing through the lens of trad climbing and mountaineering, and for so many years that's what it was in the UK. And so, you know, what kind of parent in their right mind wants to send their kids into a sport where they believe that people are hanging on for dear life by their fingertips and you know, yeah, any mistake is certain death.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Wait, that is kind of what gritstone climbing is, I thought.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yes, and no, like if you go in a certain direction, then you can find really, really dangerous routes, but you can also find a load of really safe routes and you can find everything and in between. But eventually, you know, these this kind of public perception of the sport has changed because we've got way more climbing gyms, climbing's become an Olympic sport, uh, bouldering's become much more of a thing. So eventually now, like it's so much easier for kids in the UK to get into climbing, and that's I mean, that's nothing but but awesome. And I think that's why you're seeing the standards skyrocketing, because probably back then, you know, I was just one of relatively few young people who were kind of getting into it, so it was much easier to maybe rise to the top. Um, yeah, so like I said, I'd always been obsessed with the idea of it, but hadn't really kind of tried it until quite later on in life. And um eventually I made some new friends at uh a new school, went out climbing with them and and their dad, and he was like a pretty good climber, and one of uh his sons was also a pretty good climber. But I can just remember being there like on the first day, borrowing their climbing shoes, because I didn't have anything in my uh my own, and then climbing better than the son, who was the good one of the two sons, and being like, Oh, that's that's kind of interesting, and then on the second day went out climbing better than the dad. And at that point, I remember thinking, oh, maybe this is like my my sport, because I'd always been obsessed with finding sort of a sport that I was pretty good at, and I don't really know why that is. My dad was always pretty good at rugby, so I played rugby for a while, but I was probably a little bit too small. Uh I tried like a lot of inline skating and things like that. I can remember from a really early age being kind of intrigued. I was gonna say obsessed, but I I didn't know enough about it to be obsessed, but intrigued by the idea of sponsorship, thinking like I want to be a sponsored athlete at something. I didn't know what what it was gonna be, just because I thought it sounded really cool that I don't know, you get maybe paid. I don't even think I knew you got paid at that point, you just got free stuff, and that sounded cool enough already. Um, and then so when I found climbing, it was immediately like, oh, maybe this is this is my thing. And then I just I was really lucky just to meet the right sort of people, and the people I met were kind of interested in trad. Trad was probably a little bit out of fashion at that time in the UK, so this would have been like mid-mid-2000s, and during like the 90s and the early 2000s, it was like the hard grit era. I don't know if you've ever seen that film.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, that I was literally gonna ask when when did hard grit come out? Because that made a big impact on me.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

So that came out in 1997, that was filmed over the winter of 1997, and so for a few years after that, people were obviously really, really psyched on it. But then, you know, things changed just like they do nowadays, and fashion kind of moved from one thing to another, and I don't remember whether it went back to sport climbing or bouldering, but track climbing was definitely out, and I think it was just kind of like a case of being in the right place at the right time for me. I was pretty good by using the definition that I was doing things that other young people weren't doing, so whether that's good in the grand scheme of things, you know, I was kind of the only one at the time doing it, which kind of helped to get me recognized. And I think there were probably a lot of people who were still pretty psyched on track climbing, even though the general public perception had moved. I think some people were kind of watching me come through and do some of these hard routes from that that period and being like, oh, that's kind of cool. You know, I I remember when Seth Greve or like Neil Bentley climbed that route, and now it's cool to see like a 16, 17, 18-year-old doing these things.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

When did KJ and Alex come through? What video was that? Because that was like that was a big deal for us over here because uh after you know, growing up watching hard grit, and I've never climbed in the peak district, but hard grit made a big impression on us, especially because I kind of was of the era of like starting to climb taller boulders, and we looked at those and we were like, those are tall, but they're not boulders, but they're not sport roots, but they're not. Yeah, where do you draw the line? And there was this fear and danger room. And so we were proud when KJ uh Kevin Jorgensen and Alex Honnold went over and did well over there. But they were like, oh, like those aren't so mythical. Like we held them in our heads, like what could they do? Yeah, when did that happen? Were you around for that? What video was that? I don't even remember what that was.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Uh it was a video called Progression. Was it Progression? Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I don't man, it's been a long time.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

I think it might have been progression, but I remember when it happened. I'd spoken to Matt, I think, because I was already in the North Face team, and Matt Seagal also was in the North Face team with me. So I think he told me they were coming. But I think I was away in maybe in China or something when that when that happened. So I only kind of read about it, and actually that was we're skipping over some of the early years, and that kind of comes in like the beginning. I I would say the beginning of the end of my my my first climbing life. I feel like I've lived quite a few different climbing lives over the years. That trip was definitely sort of the the downfall of everything, the really rickety house of cards that I built up to that time.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

I'm sorry, that's not that was not my intention to to uh blindsided that one.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

No, no, no, it's all cool. I've I've done a lot of um I've done a lot of thinking about all of that stuff over the years, and actually um yeah, I actually ended up even going to like therapy about it all uh fairly fairly recently because as kind of like a typical um Englishman, I'd just I'd buried all of those bad feelings deep down inside and just pretended that where they belong, just exactly where they will never be spoken of again. And um and so this all obviously all links together and eventually it kind of all came to a head again with with Bon Voyage. But let me try and give you a brief um rundown of of what happened because I I know we only have like an hour and a half or so to do this, and otherwise we won't get on to even your first question. So basically, I grew up on the grit, I was kind of this this young hotshot, and I think I let all of that really, really go to my head. I was pretty good at very specific style of climbing. So I'd I'd repeated some of the hardest routes on the gritstone really, really quickly when I was still like equilibrium, which was the hardest route at the time, which was I think the first E10 in in the world, maybe. I did it in like four days or something when I was barely 19. And so I yeah, I kind of thought like I was I was the shit kind of thing. And um, and then I'd got this really, really cool sponsorship with the North Face and a few uh a few other companies and started travelling the world and you know just felt like you know, the kind of the world was my oyster and everything was just there for the taking. And um hadn't quite realised at that point that I was just massively unbalanced as a climber. You know, I had one very, very particular skill set, but had never developed anything else. So I sucked at sport climbing, I sucked at anything long, I sucked at anything basically they didn't look like gritstone, so it wasn't like a two-minute effort on a 10 to 15 meter piece of balancey, pretty grippy rock. And um so Team America came, they repeated a lot of other grit roots really, really quickly, because like you said, grits actually, if you look at it from the perspective of a highball boulderer, it's not that different. It's just that we were always looking at it from the perspective of gritstone climbers. Um, you know, and even I was when I was climbing my my roots, I was purposefully climbing them without crash pads, so just you know, just just over the floor. Because I felt like it was really hard to to quantify the amount of danger that uh that a crash pad potentially removed. This this is gonna sound completely stupid to people like sort of style. Yeah, and I and I and I agree that it is really, really stupid because the priority should be you know not breaking your legs. But on routes that were graded, like the e-grade is a weird one because it really takes into account the difficulty and the danger of of something at the same time. So it's not like um you know the the the grades you have over there in the US where you have like the physical difficulty of the route and then you tag on the the X or the RX or whatever it is. The e-grade is all mixed together. So like using a grade that a big part of it came from the danger. I was like, well, it it makes sense to set kind of a baseline. So I grade these routes without pads. If people want to come along and use you know pads, that's fine to do so. They know that it's making it slightly easier, so it's normal that they're gonna feel like the route is slightly easier as well. Um that was at least the concept, but it seemed like it was only myself that really understood what I was trying to do. Um did they use pads? Yeah, yeah. So people came along and effectively highballed these things, um, which makes perfect sense if you want to be safe and go and do another route the next day.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

I just gotta point out because you you probably know, but maybe you don't that at that time uh when KJ and Alex came over, I mean Alex is a phenomenal cli. Well, he's Alex Honnold. He has the best head on his shoulders out of anyone, and I've climbed with him uh a bit, and he also has like unbelievably good technique. Uh like the way he puts weight on his feet, and then combining that with his understanding of or his calmness as understanding of movement. But then people probably when they think of KJ, they think of like Donwall KJ, you know, because that was really what he made his name for. But his tear in Bishop bouldering was incredible. And even in Waco, he did some gnarly stuff in Waco as well. He was a boulder. I mean, he was a young kid boulder, so strong and so good. So, you know, um, it's not like who we sent over, not that we sent them over, but who went over were kind of like our B players. Those guys were a plus at the time. And 100%.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah. And I'm I'm saying that you know, using crash pads makes a difference. What makes the biggest difference is just being absolutely mutantly strong and amazingly good. I mean, you said that Alex is good at standing on his feet. You'd hope so if you're gonna stand on those free blast smears without a rope. Without a rope. Oh, dude. Anyway, so I I always find it really interesting how and I and I've seen this a few times over the years, when you have like people coming from a different climbing culture, they they're able to sort of just look at what is happening in an area objectively. And sometimes they they get involved and it and it makes sense, and sometimes they're just like, well, that's kind of a bit weird. Like, why don't you do it like this? And um, and also like you don't have the kind of the weight of previous generations on your shoulders. Like, you know, I grew up watching sort of heroes of mine do these these things and then getting to do them yourself, you feel like, oh my god, this is this is this rude, or this is that rude, or this is the one that this person broke their leg on, or this one that this person took ages to climb, and it feels it makes them harder. Whereas if you just come along and they're like, oh, what's this thing? It looks nice, without that pressure, it makes a big difference. Anyway, um sorry. The story. So these guys came over, they repeated some of my first ascents that I'd made after doing Equilibrium and uh basically downgraded everything. And then at the same time, I'd already claimed the world's first E12, which was like the the kind of pinnacle of my like young, arrogant, just ridiculous kind of decisions that I made back then. I made a lot of them, and this was definitely the the biggest of them. So this was a route called the Walk of Life, um, which was not on the gritstone. It was still in the UK, but it was in a completely different part of the country, completely different style to the gritstone, and just Exactly, kind of played into this idea that I was a one-trick pony and wasn't really capable to do anything else. But I hadn't figured that out at the time. So the way I used to grade things, and I know some people don't agree with this, but I feel like the kind of time you invest in something to me has always been a pretty good indicator of how hard it would be. Although I'm saying this out loud right now, and the fact that I messed up almost all of the grades that I've used that process for is probably a good enough reason just to skip that process altogether for anybody else. But anyway, I did like Equilibrium in four days. Uh this route called The Promise that I also gave E10 to I took like 10 days on it. Um then I did something called the Groove, which was like a Johnny Dawes project, one of the most famous amazing, amazing looking line. And this took me, I don't know, maybe like 20 days or something. So I said this was a bit harder still. And like to me, this this all made sense, but this is what I'm I'm talking about, my shaky house of cards, because I hadn't actually done that that many routes. I'd kind of just done like one of each each difficulty level. So I didn't really have much of a base at this pyramid. It was just like this kind of kind of terrifyingly out of balance skyscraper. And then I did the walk of life, which took me you know several months. And I mean I can remember leading the route, and unlike the gritstone routes that were over in maybe two minutes or something, this this thing took me about an hour to lead. And I remember being on that route and for the entire almost the entire hour of climbing it, and actually it was almost it was an hour and a half because I fell off it once and I had to go back and do it again. Um, I took probably the biggest one of the biggest falls of my career.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

It's kind of low angle, too, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:34

That's like a nasty it's a nasty one, yeah. Like a I think it was like a 20 to 25 meter, but down a slab, so you bounce a bit. Um and uh anyway, I remember just being on that route, especially the second time, and just feeling like literally every second that you're moving on it, and there's a lot of seconds in an hour. If someone's good at maths, they can work that out. It's I basically was like, I'm I'm I'm gonna die on this thing. I am this is the last thing I'm doing in my in my life. I'm I'm not getting to the top, I'm gonna try as hard as I can, but at some point I'm gonna fall and I'm gonna die. And that was not really like the nicest experience to go through. And I was still, I was pretty young, I was still like 22-ish or something. So it's kind of a lot to lot to deal with. And then basically that got repeated just after Team America. So Team America would come and kind of like set the this this this skyscraper on fire, and people were already starting to question. And I think the maybe it's the same in the US as well, but in the UK, I really felt like at that time at least we loved kind of building people up just to knock them down again, like this kind of celebrity uh I don't know, cult culture. Um and uh so I feel like people were probably just pretty tired of of listening to me talk about all these new hard roots and you know just seeing endless photos of me because I was kind of a bit of a media whore as well. Like I think one of the reasons I've I've been a pretty good professional climber is because I learned really early on how to play the game. But that playing that game often involves pulling a lot of attention onto you, and there were plenty of other climbers in the UK at that time that you know probably deserved more attention than than than me. You know, they were far better climbers than me, but I was just good at building relationships with the right people, kind of creating situations where I would be in the right place at the right time, and um and so there was yeah, there was there was a lot of a lot of media with me, and I guess it just got a little bit oversaturated. So Dave McLeod, this amazing Scottish track climber, came to repeat to or at least to try my route, the walk of life, which I'd graded E12. Felt to me like the hardest thing I'd ever done. He'd done the only other E11 in existence, a route that I'd tried and I'd failed on, publicly citing other reasons for not wanting to do the route. Again, not the smartest thing that I've ever done. And um, and so rightly so like I mean Dave found the route, the walk of life really, really easy. He repeated it in a couple of days or something. I think one of the biggest downgrades in in climbing history, at least in British tried climbing history, E12 to E9. And I remember just reading that news and being like, wow, this is like this is finished.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

And you're only 22 at the time.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Yeah, yeah, so something something like something like that. Um and basically, so then I uh effectively ran away. This is now why I effectively live in Europe. Um I'm in France now, but first of all, I went to Austria. And it wasn't simply no, it was partly running away from the UK. It was also partly kind of desperately grabbing at anything I could that I felt like might salvage my climbing career because I absolutely loved climbing. Like despite not necessarily maybe going about it in like the purest way in in those early years, I absolutely loved it, and I was still that young, young kid, just desperate to go climbing. Yeah, I didn't want to give that up. So I eventually, after a lot of soul searching, I think I realized that it wasn't just people being mean, like I was actually missing something. So for me, what I was missing was just a greater understanding of what climbing was and specifically a massive lack of any sort of sport climbing or you know, just longer climbing fitness. Um I developed a system of being, I think, really, really good for a couple of minutes. This allowed me to do these gritstone routes, so I remember actually getting to the point where I could I could lead routes, you know, go on the sharp end that I hadn't actually really been able to top rope in one. Because on the gritstone, a lot of the time we we call it headpointing. It's when you basically practice something on a top rope and then you uh and then you decide to to lead it. Um once you know where all the kind of dangerous and sketchy bits are, how to place all the gear. So it's like kind of like stripping all of the really scary and obvious things about tread climbing away and just leaving the the climbing with like a few, it's almost like designer danger kind of thing. You decide how much risk you you want to take. Um it's also a style of trad climbing that is like by the serious tread climbers is very looked down on because it's um it's kind of taking traad climbing as much towards sport climbing or bouldering as you can. Um but that's something that always always kind of clicked with me. And so these these routes that I'd been able to do on the gritstone, I'd often not been able to top rope them or not been able to top rope them cleanly the day I led it, just because I I kind of realized that when I got on the sharp end and when there was you know all these really high consequences, I'd actually climb better. And it wasn't that I'd just feel stronger, it wasn't like you know a survival thing, it was more like this moment of clarity. And for me, climbing, and this is still something that actually happens today, I don't do that many really sketchy routes anymore, but whenever I do, I get the same, the same feeling, the same kind of set of emotions and experiences where I'm just like in this perfect bubble of calm, peaceful, tranquil, just at ease with everything. And you know, the the idea that something bad might happen or that there are consequences doesn't even come into my head. I I I lose kind of all attachments to the exterior world, and I'm just there in the climbing. And I think a lot of people in different sports get this. It's often referred to as like you know being in the zone or flow state. And for me, trad climbing is really the only place in climbing that I've ever found this. I've had some really cool experiences bouldering and sport climbing, but just time after time after time when I go trad climbing, I could get this, and it's it feels amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

I think that's what everyone is chasing, but I just don't know if they all need to like I I bet you my when I enter into that zone, the consequences are much lower for me, and it still allows me to access that.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

I hope so. I would love to be able to find it with lesser consequences.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Well, I mean, you know, we're talking about Alex Hall. It seems like he doesn't get into the zone unless he's you know 2,000 feet off the deck. Um James, I I didn't mean to uh make you relive your early years where I knew there was controversy uh around you uh This is fine.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

No, like I said, I I've I've kind of come to terms with it and it it made me who I am. And like although those experiences at the time were pretty painful to live through, a lot of a lot well, all of the best things in my life have come out of that or you know as a result of that. And so I'm really thankful to have lived through that experience, and I feel like I learned a lot. Um, and I'm just hopeful that by sharing that with other people, maybe they they don't need to live it themselves to learn it.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Uh good luck with that, though. It's hard to uh learn from someone else's lesson. Well, uh a couple things I wanted to point out is uh you're a young man. Like, I don't know. This is something that as I've gotten older and I think about 20-year-old Josh, I don't know if I'd like that guy. And so I'm always careful when I uh work or or you know, talk to younger people and maybe they do something or act in a way that I don't agree with. I'm like, let's give them a little bit of time.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Try to remember, yeah. I think sometimes one of the reasons that I I don't like the way that some of the younger climbers uh or younger people act is because I can see so much of myself in them. And it almost like brings brings back some of those those feelings.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

So something that I'm curious about is that I know that you have done well in all disciplines, um, and you kind of called yourself a one-trick pony in those early years. Um, but what I'm curious about is starting out on gridstone, where there's a big mental component, there's a big technical component, and there's even like, you know, a technical component of understanding gear and and that kind of side of climbing. Uh, I know you've gone on to Boulder Heart, I mean, do everything at high level. Was that actually a really good thing to kind of have as your where your initial skills were formed and though you needed to round yourself out? I would actually argue that might be a really good place to start.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Um, it's it's hard to say because obviously the skills that you pick up that you learn from a from an early age and stay with you, you always consider them really, really easy to learn. You're not impressed by that skill set. So, like when I look at climbers that can hang on to you know endless overhanging limestone jugs, I'm just like, wow, those. I mean, I don't know how they do it. And for me, this has always been the hardest thing to get is this just low-intensity, high-volume kind of euro limestone pumpy uh climbing style. But arguably, I I can see how the technical element of climbing could be really difficult to learn as an older climber, uh, especially if you've already developed a skill set in other areas. It's really hard to stop relying on that. Like if you're actually the few times we've done some coaching in the past, I always noticed that the hardest people to work with and to progress were like the really strong guys, you know, the guys that come from like a kind of a fitness background or like a you know a bodybuilding background. It's really, really hard to show them climbing technique, explain them climbing technique, and get them to feel that the technique makes sense because you know it takes a certain amount of time to actually build those movement patterns and to actually get that technique to flow rather than feel clunky. And up until it does, they've got so much power elsewhere trying to kind of lean away from their comfort zone and do something that they generally don't feel very good at doing yet, often makes it feel way, way harder. So you explain to them, oh, it'd be great, you know, drop me there or do a put a heel hook in there, and they're like, well, if I just bend my arms, I can do the move ten times. And you're trying to explain to them, okay, but you know, you might be able to do that now, but you know, put 10 moves into it or 50 moves into it, and it's a different case. So we'd often get them to do like I think some of the worst ex examples we had. Like, I got them to do like a hundred pull-ups before before trying an exercise, just to try and get rid of those things that you've built. But for for me, I think the gritstone obviously gave me a really varied skill set. And I think you can actually see this in and not just in the gritstone, like we're really lucky in the UK to have a very incredibly varied rock types and incredibly varied climbing styles, and genuinely pretty terrible weather. So you see a lot of the the climbers who grow up on the gritstone or climbing in the UK, and like our our roots are laughably small. Like, I remember the first time I took Caroline to like one of the premier multi-pitch destinations in the UK, and she was like, I mean, w what are we even looking at here? Like, I can't even I see a hill covered with grass and like some rocky bit sticking out of it. I'm like, yeah, that's it. But you look at what bimers, like, you know, for example, Leo Holding have have been able to done, or like a new example will be someone like Jim Pope. You know, they haven't got much experience doing big alpine stuff, but then they can just go to places like Yosemite's easy because the weather's generally amazing, but you even go further afield and you end up in places like you know the Himalaya or the Karakorum or you know some kind of long forgotten valley in Greenland, and they can just do these amazing things because they're used to climbing in really complicated situations where the rock quality is not always the best, the gear management is complicated, and the weather is often pretty poor. So when they go somewhere where they've got you know one less of those things to worry about, they're like, oh, this is this is sweet, this is easy. So that's kind of cool. But for me personally, becoming like I was gonna say becoming a sport climber, I don't think I ever really became a sport climber, but at least beginning that journey to being like a semi-credible sport climber was a really, really long, long road. It took a lot of of effort, and and in the end, it basically took me. Not that everyone needs to marry a French woman, but it basically took me meeting Caroline, who's who's my wife, and she was a world. Exactly, and just following her blindly for years and years and years, listening to everything that she said, and finally it started to kind of make

Support From Patreon

SPEAKER_02 36:10

sense.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Quick break while I tell you about today's sponsor. Thank you to all the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join them so you can get episodes early before anyone else, and those episodes are ad-free. As a patron, you also get to submit questions for upcoming guests. The answers to those questions are only available to patrons. Follow the link in the show notes to join now. You also get access to a private Discord where you'll find me and other people who want to go from good to great. Okay, back to the pod. Just before I forget, because I thought it was funny your anecdote about working with people who have like a fitness background and trying to teach them technique. And it's this probably this is like a bit of a blanket statement, but you know, give me a give me a break here. What I've noticed is that people who don't really have a background in sport, they have more of a background in like working out or you know, fitness. I think that when they think about doing something physical, it's almost like they try to make it hard. Where in sports is easy, you know what I mean? Like it's like, no, I know you can do that move like that.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

If it's not feeling hard, they must be doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Yeah, yeah. Um, I think it's funny that you were talking about sport climbing and hanging on to limestone jugs. And last time we were talking, you showed me one of your favorite sport FAs. It's like a 45 or 50 meter thing in Turkey that is just overhung and looks pumpy and then some and beautiful. Again, beautiful lines, man.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Oh, yeah, that's that's an amazing line for sure. But this was you know, this was probably like the high point of my my sport climbing career when I was I was just an only sport climbing every day. Caro and I were were sport climbing or training, you know, between her comps, and um, and that's basically that was kind of my high point. And I've even even at that time, you know, we I'd go climbing with Caro, and we'd have a pretty similar level, like a sport climbing level, and then I'd go bouldering with her, and I wasn't bouldering much at that at that time, and we we'd have like a full number grade of difference, and it just shows how efficient certain people can be. Like she was probably at the time, she was probably struggling to, she definitely wasn't able to climb every 7A boulder, and she was sport climbing like consistently 8C, 8C plus. And at the time I was probably still capable of doing most 8As, and like maybe a little bit harder if I was lucky, and you know, I basically had the same the same level, and so that's goes back to you know, I think when you efficiency, yeah, when purely efficiency, she had, and I didn't, and I still don't, but um it's hard to step away from everything that you developed when you were when you were a kid, or when you were just starting out something, and so at some point I feel like you just have to accept this is who I am and I've gotta find a way to play to my strengths rather than try to transform myself into something that I'm not. Obviously, you can always improve, and I think it's always good to have a reasonable level in in every sort of discipline, and we're lucky that climbing has so many disciplines, and that's one of the things I love most about it. But if you've got strengths, like if you naturally find something a little easier, there's nothing wrong with playing into that, as long as it's not holding you back from something else that you wanted to do. And so, what I wanted to do at the time, when when I met Caroline and you know, when we were training together, it wasn't necessarily about becoming the best sport climber I could be. I just wanted to get better at sport climbing to give me a level that was good enough to take me back to trad and to do all the things in trad that I wanted.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

It's funny how I I have this line where I like saying you should be ridiculously optimistic, like you should assume that you can be the best climber in the world, you know, especially in your specific type, but then you have to be absolutely realistic with yourself and not lie to yourself. And it's like if you think you're gonna be one of the best climbers in the world, but you can't even climb A-A sport climbing, you know, it's it's a big slap in the face. And I I had this moment that I'll never forget. I was in Oleana with um Ethan Pringle and Walker Emerson, some good buddies of mine. And I was pretty strong at the time in bouldering. I don't know. I'm probably like was a solid V12 climber or something. Um couldn't couldn't sport climb very well. I go up Los Humildes Picasa, uh, which I just, if you've seen King Lions, you know, it's just this, I mean if you know how to smoke climbing two first. Otherwise, you're like Yeah, I go up it, get my butt kicked, um, you know, on my uh you know, my first go. I was I would say like my flash go or on psycho. It was not because there was no way I was ever going to flash on psycho. Get my butt kicked, have a blast, like, and it's you know, it's a journey. That thing must be 40, 45 meters. Um come down. Had a I mean, I really had fun with it, but it was a struggle for me to even get to the top. It's uh 13D or 14A, you know, 8B, 8B plus. Come down. And then a woman, I actually I'm not gonna say woman, a girl, I think she was like 16 or 17. I can't remember where she was from. She on sites it or flashes it. And I just remember saying to Ethan, like, dude, like, like she just kicked my butt there. And he was like, Oh, Josh, she's a much better rock climber than you. And I was like, Oh, thanks, bud. Like, it just hit me. I mean, that was like 15 years ago. It really stuck with me of like, it's like, great, you're strong. You did this, you know, good job. You climbed V12 and Bishop. It's like, that we're not in Bishop anymore. Good luck, you know. I and because if I would have had to rate that climb, I would have been like, you guys, this is really hard. But other people come along and just cruise it. So I was gonna ask you then about you did a lot of sport climbing, you did a lot of trad climbing, you just made some comment about how you wanted to be able to come back to trad climbing and use those well-rounded skills, but you also made a comment to me about how

The Salespitch For Trad Climbing

SPEAKER_00 42:20

you want to explain trad climbing to the younger generation. And you know, I I kind of want to hear your your sales pitch for trad climbing for the younger generation because you know Yeah, because I've not really been selling it very well, I think, in the in the beginning of this podcast. Bad conditions, uh not very impressive lines. Okay. Yeah, sounds like a great scene. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

So I took I touched on this this briefly earlier, that I think one of my biggest strengths for being a professional climber is that I was always pretty professional at it. Kind of I knew what question I was being asked, and I answered that question rather than trying to find a way around it. So like I was always drawn back to trad climbing because I was good at it. And so for a long time I felt like I needed to trad climb because this is kind of this is what paid the bills at the end of the day. Um, and this I think was definitely mixed up in the beginning with this ego thing. So I had kind of my own my own idea of who I was as a climber, and who I was as a climber was effectively who I was as a person because that's the only really thing that was in my life at that time, and who I was as a climber was directly related to effectively how much publicity I was getting, because that's kind of what mattered to me because I needed to get that to be able to have decent sponsorship deals, because that was the only way I could go climbing in the first place, because I didn't have a lot of money growing up as a kid. So, pretty early on, like making it as a pro climber was kind of a necessity if I wanted to actually be a climber, or at least to the level that I was hoping to be able to do. So I I think in the early days. Trad was kind of something that I felt obliged to do, even though I was, you know, I was really, really good at it. But I actually almost enjoyed bouldering more than trad, and I spent probably most of my time bouldering. And again, I think it was a pretty good thing for climbing on the grit. Like being strong helps for the gritstone roots, being fit doesn't really help. So the bouldering side was always something that I enjoyed. I was also naturally relatively good at, and so I could lean into it because I felt like it helped my tread climbing. But the tread climbing was where I really needed to invest my serious attention every now and again, just to make sure that I was kind of ticking those boxes for the sponsors. And so for the first couple of years, that's definitely what tread climbing was for me. And I was also, I think, I was developing as a trad climber at the time. I was kind of learning and discovering it. So my first trad routes were an absolute shambles. I was so scared, you know, climbing them with like shaking legs and you know, doing the dumbest things on the on the lead, making such bad mistakes. Um I mentioned it earlier that in the end I could I could lead things harder than I was able to top rope. In the beginning, it wasn't that at all. When you listen to Alex talk about it, he also says, you know, I wasn't you know born to be a like a free soloist. I got scared in the first few and I had to develop it. And I can really kind of relate to that because it was the same for me with with my Trad kind of mental control skills. Um first few routes I was doing, I made sure that I could like top rope them 10 times in a row just to allow myself to go on the lead because I knew I would make a mistake and make it you know twice as hard as it needed to be and nearly fall off. And I very nearly did. God, like I often think about what I'll do if one day like one of my kids wants to get into tread climbing. Because the amount of times that I nearly died when I was when I was 18 that my parents have no clue about. I'm just thinking, my goodness, like it was so so so stupid. But as an 18-year-old, especially as an 18-year-old guy, you think you know everything. Anyway, so tread climbing was something like I felt like I needed to do, bouldering was something that I really like to do, but the more I tread climb, the more I think I got better at the mental side of it, and that's when I really started to feel these incredibly pure sensations that we spoke about earlier, you know, really get going in into the zone or finding finding the flow. And that is something that has stayed with me like right up until this day. So even though I've stepped away, I think, probably more than ever from trad climbing, as in I'm I'm just doing way less of it than than I once did, and I'm bouldering probably more than ever now, mainly because it's a really easy thing to do with kids. I still kind of get the urge to go back to trad every now and again. Uh and I've got this uh this big project that I'm I'm I'm working on right now that you know I might put a little bit of time into the end of this year. I did a route called Echo Wall a couple of years ago. Um obviously I did Bon Voyage. Like every every few years I kind of have to go back into it just so I can get these feelings because for me, these feelings that I get from Trad are like nothing else. Nothing else that I've ever experienced in climbing. And to me, that's worth everything. And that's something that I I really struggle, especially now as a father, like to to justify this effectively incredibly selfish desire to take risks just to feel something good. And I think that's something that I don't think I'll ever be able to justify or really find a reason. I've just got to to live with it and accept that it's part of of who I am. Um I try obviously I try to minimize those risks. I feel like I do it in a much safer and more predictable way than than I climbed in the past. But yeah, it's it's still a risk just to have those amazing feelings, but those feelings are like like nothing else. And so I often hear young climbers talk about Trad as either something that they feel like they're not capable of doing because of like the the barrier for entry is too high, you know, it's too scary, it's too uh kind of technically dependent, it takes a long time to learn, you need to find someone to to teach you the ropes. And I I think a lot of those things are true. You need a good master, mentor, let's use that as a better word. Otherwise, you probably will end up probably having an accident. The other thing I hear often is that I'll I'll try to climb when I'm older, as in it's something that you know it's it's less physically dependent. So when I'm when I'm done with bouldering, when I'm done with sport climbing, you know, I'll be able to go and drag myself up some five nines somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

I've definitely said this before, James. I've definitely said this before.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Also, I think I mean that's also totally cool, and and I think it's a really smart way to go about it because for sure, physically speaking, like bouldering and sport climbing are way more taxing than than than trad can be. But I really do feel like there's there are trad routes out there, and there are not many of them because there's not many people doing it, which again is a reason why I would love for more people to do it, partly selfishly, so I'd have more routes to go and try. But just I think there's so much potential out there for people to to explore and to develop. And for me, like I absolutely love developing roots, partly to do with this desire and dream to find the best lines out there and climb them. But like combining the fact that you can go and find these incredible lines, the fact that you can go and climb things that are actually pretty damn hard. Like, look at tribe, like Jacopo's uh route from Cadaresi. It's like an probably like an 8B boulder in the middle of that thing. You get to do those two things and then potentially have like the most intense, I won't say spiritual, but like I don't really have any other really ways of describing it. It's such an intense experience. I was like, I mean, why why wouldn't you want to do that? So I guess I mean you you told me that this podcast, like your audience is generally a little bit on the younger end of the spectrum, focused on the sort of the performance element of climbing. And I mean, and I totally get that. I spend most of my time bouldering, I'm really into the performance side of things. But if if I could do one thing in this podcast and maybe just get one of those listeners to sort of think, ah, you know, maybe it's worth a try, that I think would be would be really cool. And you know, they don't like it, that's also totally fine. I think the key is just trying loads of things, and that's that's the way I've always approached climbing is just to never say no to anything, never say that, ah, you know, I don't really get that, or that seems a bit stupid, or that doesn't seem like my thing. Just just give it a try. You never know. Like once I find myself in in Japan climbing up waterfalls, like climbing up flowing waterfalls. I think I remember that video, yeah. And honestly, when when Toru, who was uh Toru Nakajima, who was actually another absolutely amazing boulderer, and one of the one of the strongest people I'd ever climbed with, when he told me that this is what he does in summer in Japan, I was like, this sounds I mean, this goes against everything that I know about climbing, you know. For me, climbing is all about controlling the conditions and making sure that you can perform in your very best way. And he's basically taking away all those things, you know, the friction that we all like love to obsess over and talk about and stress about, and he's just doing something that seems so alien to me. But then I remembered, okay, like give it a try. So we I went and tried it, and uh, I went with Caroline, and we also climbed with Yuji Hiray, who's like a really good friend of ours. He was his first time doing it as well. Absolute legend. And honestly, it was still to this day. I've done a lot of expedition, I've been so lucky to have done just some really incredible things thanks to climbing. But a lot of time expeditions are tough, they take a lot out of you, and it's kind of sometimes you know, type two fun, even though the Faroe Islands, for example, was an absolute blast of a trip. I wouldn't necessarily have gone back to do it again just because it was so sketchy. But Sawana Bore, if you if you'd give me a time machine and like the day I got back home after that trip, if you'd said, okay, like do you want to put the clock back three weeks and go and do it all again? Knowing how exhausted we were, how hard it was, how scary it was sometimes, but my god, just how fun it was doing something completely new and getting to feel you're not just a beginner, the fur but you you you are a beginner on the first day because you know nothing about it, but then all of the skills that you have in climbing suddenly sort of start to make sense, or you find a way to use them in an environment that makes no sense to you, and you just get this like kind of sped-up development process, which was just so gratifying to live. Like you feel like a complete beginner on day one, and at the end of the trip, you're like, ah, wow, I feel like I kind of get this, and that that was amazing. That you know, we we spend hours and and well no, we spend we spend months and years like working on improving one tiny element of our climbing repertoire just to you know potentially bump up like half a grade, and we're so happy and proud of ourselves. And to be able to go on a trip like that where condensed into three weeks, you go from being like a complete, like almost nothing, like zero to hero. It was it was it was really yeah, really, really cool.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

So let me uh yeah, let me say my interpretation of some of this back to you to see if I understand why you've found so much joy and love in trad climbing. Um it's kind of a uh a thing that uh I think I encourage people to seek out disciplines that they haven't done. Because what I think is really special in climbing is that you will have these moments that call upon many different parts of your faculties. So there is a strength component, there's a technical component, there is a a fear component. Um, there there can be like even understanding the weather and nature and conditions, and and you know, so I do have a love for absolute pure performance in like one move on it could be on a board, you know, inside. Like there's something beautiful about that. But I think even when it comes to something like a competition, one of the reasons why competitions can be so fun is because there's also like dealing with the pressure of people watching. And so I just think that these areas in climbing where, or not just it can be an area or a discipline, but these moments in climbing where many things are called upon versus just one thing can can really lead to peak experiences. And so I think that when you add danger into the equation, well, actually, let me ask you this then. You've done a lot of highball bouldering too, James. Like, I mean, I I would assume that you could probably slap an E-grade onto something like Live and Large or some of the other just tall boulders you've done. Is there something about traditional climbing that is separate from just the kind of risk element that gets brought upon by it could be even a sport climb that's like an ex-sport climb with no with not many bolts or a really tall boulder? Like, is there a difference there? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:28

Um I mean there's yeah, the the there's there's always a difference, but not really. I think it's going in the same direction. What you said about just bringing all these different elements together, I think is exactly why why I love trod climbing so much. And you can really see this in the way that Caroline kind of fell in love with trad climbing. So she was a pure product of the French Federation. Um, she says that herself, so I'm I'm not kind of um reducing her to anything, anything um that doesn't sound bad at all.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

I mean, dude, that sounds like they spit out some of the best climbers the world has ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

So exactly, exactly. But like when when we met, like she was a pure so much of a pure product of the French Federation that she literally had blinkers on to anything outside of competition climbing, you know, anything outside of competition climbing, it didn't exist. She didn't need to worry about it because it wasn't a problem that she was being challenged with. She needed just to purely focus on on comps. And so the first time she actually track climbed was with me in the UK between two World Cups, and it was on a trip that I'd it was actually my first time backtrack climbing in like two or three years since leaving the UK, since meeting Caro, since climbing with her. Um, so I talked a little bit about it with her. She knew that I liked that sort of stuff, but up until that point, we'd only been really mean sport climbing together. And at some point I told her I want to go back to this place, I want to try and flash an E10, which had never been done before. And it was kind of using all of the sport fitness that I developed with Caro to improve my tread climbing, and that was kind of the ultimate goal. And uh and she was like, Okay, if that's something that you want to do, I'm not gonna stop you, but I don't want to be involved with it because uh it scares me too much, and plus I've got competitions to worry about, like I don't need to waste my time on some stupid project of yours in the UK. And then typically I'm pretty unorganized, and it got to uh you know last minute, and I didn't have a B layer set up. Um and so I was like, Okay, do you think maybe you could come out like just for a few days and give me a Belay? So she ended up in this tread climbing area, b-laying me on this really, really uh what she considered to be a completely stupid, pointless thing, obviously really scared that I was gonna hurt myself. And whilst whilst we were there, I was like, Oh, do you not want to try and like lead a few roots? And at first she was like, No, this is just stupid, like, why would I want to do that? And then later she told me the only reason she tried her first trad routes was to basically confirm that I was an idiot and that she had no real interest in actually continuing our relationship together and it was gonna make it make it easier to basically separate. And um, and so she tried it. She did like one relatively easy route to learn to place gear, and then I sent her on a really, really like a objectively it was a hard route, but it was one that was very easy, easy to protect. Um, I was sure that you know she wasn't gonna hurt herself, the protection's good. Uh, I could see I it's a route I'd already done, I could see from the floor, tell her exactly what to place. And it was effectively a very, very, very run-out sport route. And it was probably something around 8A. And like at the time, I mean, she on sighted every every 8A that she looked at. Like, you know, before breakfast, she would wait, James.

SPEAKER_00 58:57

I was gonna ask you, like, what great like was it like a HVS or something? And you're telling me it was an E. It was an E8. Yeah, like so the second trad route she'd ever done it, you put her on, you had her lead an E8, which and and it was like an 8A version of E8. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 59:13

So 8A at E8. So like I said before, the E-grade is like a combination of difficulty and danger. So at around like French 8A, the route has to be quite safe for it to get E8. If it's if it's more dangerous than that, then it it would be E9 or or maybe even harder. So like it sounds crazy.

SPEAKER_00 59:31

It is crazy. But I know what you're saying. I understand how e-grades work, but I also like as someone who has been dabbling in trad climbing, um, and people will put me on stuff that'll be like, Josh, you know, you know, Josh, you want site 8A. You can do this. And I know just mentally, and my understanding of placements and my comfort drops me down quite a few number grades because I feel like when I place gear, I kind of want to have a a no-hand stance. I'm like, is it this cam? No. Is it this one? No, is it this one?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:04

But this is what's what's really, really interesting about it, and and I don't know how to actually achieve this. This is something that just happens, uh it's definitely more from luck than judgment. But basically, what what you need to try to do is you need to get to a point where that stops being an issue, where actually you stop worrying about about the gear and you get so invested in the actual climbing that you forget where you are. So, this is exactly what happened with with Caro. So she'd she was on this route and she's climbing, and she's obviously getting kind of pumped because she's taking quite a while to place to place the gear because she's not super efficient. But I know she's got you know stacks of endurance, she can hang on forever. And then she gets into the hard part, which is also like the run-out bit. Uh, so like at the top of it, you're probably taking like an eight to ten meter run-out. James, it's huge. It's it's it's it's it's a big huge, it's a big fall, but you're falling, it's a clean fall, and so she basically missed a hold because you know that their track lines is not that much traffic on them, so they're not you know as chalked as like an overhanging sport route in Spain would be. So yeah, she she missed a hold, she made a mistake at the end of the thing, she fell off. Doesn't really normally happen in an in an 8A, took probably the biggest fall she'd ever taken. And I was beeling her, and I was like, Onto gear.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

On to gear, then she placed yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:25

I remember thinking as she was in the air, I was thinking, well, you know, this might be like this might actually be the end of uh of of it all. Not the end of Caroline, like I knew that she wished she would be safe, but like it would confirm everything. She would get down, she would hate me, she would leave the UK, and we would never see each other again. And she gets down, and I'm like, oh my god, like are you are you okay? Like that was a big one, and she's just like so angry. I'm like, oh god, here it comes. Like she's so pissed at me, and she just pulls, pulls her rope, ties on again, and gets back on the wall and climbs the thing, like second try without any rest. And I'm like, Well, do you not want to like rest for a bit? You know, maybe take like 20 minutes. So she just like doesn't say anything. She gets to the top, she does the route. I follow her, I clean the route, get to the top of the crag. I'm like, so what did you think? And she's just looking at me and she's like, I can just see in her eyes, and she's like, Wow, I've never felt something like that from climbing before. And so, I mean, I don't think that was the only reason that she quit competition climbing. I think it was also naturally like the time to do it, but she did the rest of that season. I think that was actually the season that she she won her first World Cup. Um, and so she was like clearly, you know, still in a really good place. And at the end of that season, she was like, No, I I want to I want to be a professional climber, so let's like see if we can make that happen with you. I'm I don't think I can be a professional climber as a competition climber for many years still to come. And she was like, Trad seems so cool, and the adventures that you've been on seem so cool, so let's like try and do some of that together. And that's kind of how that part of it started. All right, that was a good sales pitch.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:07

That was a good sales pitch. Uh okay, like well, but it is true, it's like it's these moments, it like you said you used the word adventure, and it's something that I I don't want to say is it's not lost in climbing at all, and people have amazing adventures. But you you also said something earlier where those there can be these defining moments, almost like you didn't use this word, but like you can get really scared when you're young or something, like and it sticks in you. Like, and I kind of had some of those when I was really young. They were actually sport climbing, really run-out sport climbing. And I I mean, I objectively in hindsight, I probably was just fine, but it deeply scared me. And I think it like then made me want to go do it more. And so, this idea of adventure, I'm sometimes on mission to get people out of the gym. You know, I was I was a a gym kid, but then I got taken out and they scared me. Uh, and I just want to make sure that people that come into climbing, participate in climbing, have a great time climbing, at least get to go out and try and have an adventure and see if maybe that strikes something in them that they're like, ooh, oh, this could be climbing? Like, I want more of this, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:17

Exactly. Just just go try some things. It might not be your thing, and that's totally fine. But I feel like it's it's pretty rare that you do something and you're like, well, I didn't, I didn't learn anything from that experience, and it also cost me something else. Like you're not gonna, you know, go tread climbing for a few weeks with someone and then be like, well, you know, maybe you'll say, like, that sucked, I didn't like it, but you're not then gonna go back to bouldering and sport climbing and be like, oh my god, now I'm just terrible. I'm never gonna get back to where I was. Like you might have lost a little bit of uh basic, like raw power or a little bit of fitness, but like in in a couple of weeks it comes back. Once you've got something, it's so easy to get back to that that level. That always intrigues me why that is. Um like every bre every grade that we break into, it takes so much time and effort, or every new skill that we learn, it takes so long to learn. But then you cannot do it for six months, and then it's it's like, oh god, I'm getting off the couch, it's gonna be a really long journey. Like, think about how much time it took me before to get here, and in in a few weeks or maybe a few months, you're like, oh wow, that happened quicker than I expected. So I just think that the more things that you do, like the bigger you can make your climbing repertoire, like the bigger you can make your skill set, the better it is for everything. Because who knows? Maybe you you you find your dream boulder and it's like a bit of a high ball. And like if you're not good at dealing with the mental side of things, that could be a really limiting factor. Maybe that you know stops you or limits you from climbing one of the best lines that you've ever had the chance to climb.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

The physicality and the repertoire of bouldering and movement or you or movement uh outside of bouldering, it's just you're making me think of something that happened to me that blew. My mind where I was more of a boulderer. I went and I kind of trained for sport climbing, and I shouldn't say I trained. I like roped up a few times and I went to Columnos for a month, had a blast, did nothing but on siding. And although it is like steep limestone stuff, when you are dealing with 40 meters, you spend a lot of time just standing on your feet and really focusing on standing on your feet because otherwise you're going to get really tired. And I came back and I went to Yosemite and I was bouldering, and there's this climb. I don't know if you, I don't know if you boulder in Yosemite. There's a climb called Yabo Roof. Actually got shut down now, but uh cool climb. Um and I had tried it the season before, like I was like, I think I can do this, but it's pretty hard. And then I came back and I was out of shape for bouldering. My fingers were weak. I was kind of heavy too after uh sitting on the that Greek beach drinking alphas.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:56

The food, the food out there is something special. It's one of my special places, kalumnos.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

And then I did that boulder third try. Uh, and it was it's a hard boulder. It's not easy for it for me. It's it's no joke of a boulder. Um, and I was like, okay, you just went and onsite a bunch of, you know, for me like 12s and like low 13s, yeah. And I went and did a V12 third try that I was like taking.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:18

I was likely doing nothing that that should prepare yourself for that type of climbing, but for some reason it helped. Or, and this is another really interesting thing, doing something different, it just releases so much pressure from yourself because when you go back to something, you're not expecting to be in shape, you're not expecting to send. And sometimes that can have even bigger of an impact on your actual ability than actually being in shape, just not caring that you're not in shape.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:47

Yeah, tell me more about that because I know you were in the limelight. You I mean, you've been, honestly, James, despite that kind of early thing where you're in the limelight and then you kind of maybe uh weren't as much like I think maybe because I have a different view because I'm over here in the US, like I I don't know if that controversy was as big over here as it was over there, but you were kind of in and out of the limelight like for the last couple of decades.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:11

I don't think it was as big for anybody that wasn't like in my head in my head. This is what

Evolving To Handle Pressure

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

I'm learning now.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Yeah, so tell me about how you've evolved over the years to you know deal with pressure and you know let's go into that topic because I know you've dealt with it before.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:26

Yeah, so um I feel like I'm I keep repeating myself, but we talked about how like early, early on for me it was really about kind of trying to be as smart as I can to invest my time in doing the right sort of things that were gonna get me media attention to allow me to maintain my career as a pro climber. And so a lot of those early years, I kind of forced myself to stay away from some of the things that I really wanted to do if they didn't feel like they were immediately gonna be beneficial to my career. And so um, bouldering was one of these things, as much as I loved doing it when I was younger, always in the back of my mind was like, okay, this isn't how I pay the bills, go do some trad routes. And so at first I would boulder quite a lot and then do a trad route every you know six months or so, and that felt like a good enough uh rhythm to maintain my kind of professional climbing career. Um, I actually got reasonably okay at bouldering when I was when I was younger, just a little bit before the walk of life and everything happened. I was probably at my peak when I was like doing the first couple of trips to to Chino and climbing some of those. I remember seeing some amazing boulders in the Dosage movies and being like, wow, I gotta go try them. And then the walk of life happened, and I kind of decided that I needed to focus fully on sport climbing. So bouldering really went out the window. Okay, no bouldering because I know I was quite good at that. I know I can build power and strength. What I need is endurance, so I'm only going to sport climb. I'm not even trad climbing because right now I'm I don't feel like I'm good enough at tread climbing to do anything meaningful, so I'm only sport climbing. So I said this is what I'm doing. And so for two years with Caro, sport climbing, sport climbing, sport climbing, sport climbing. And then when I kind of went back to trad, um, saw that that recipe had worked, I continued doing that for the next few years. So we would train sport climbing, sport climbing, sport climbing, and then I would climb tread routes that were helped by that sport climbing fitness. So instead of the gritstone-style tread routes that I was good at in my youth, I'd do like longer, more kind of overhanging sport climbing style tread routes.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

And they'd still make you famous. Like they they would be things that you know that people expected out of you that you know your sponsors wanted to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

Exactly. And at the same time, because Carol and I had decided that we kind of wanted to do something together, um, and as much as she really liked tread climbing, she wasn't 100% down for like the dangerous, sketchy style that I was probably the best at. Um so we kind of found this middle ground which was more like going on big, big adventure projects and doing them. So we travel all around the world. This is really when we started to spend a lot of time climbing with Yuji. Um, so like we ended up going to Mount Kinabalu. There's a kind of a funny real rock film where there's Daniel Woods and Yuji Higama. And we're like the um we're like the stand-in actors, you know. If something didn't happen with Daniel or Yuji, then they would they would maybe film us.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:17

But we were there and he get burnt Daniel got burnt to a crisp. That was that was like all I remember. So if something did happen, he just kept on going.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:24

Exactly, but he just kept on climbing because Daniel is a machine. Like, just you know, if I decide I can do something, I can do something regardless of what obstacles stand in my way. Anyway, um, so we like went to Chinabalu, we did lots of things in the Philippines, we were in Japan, Faroe Islands, all sorts of crazy places. I came to the US quite a few times to look for big, big cool trad routes, and um and all like all through these years, my love for bouldering didn't go anywhere. Like I really, I really, really, really enjoyed it, but I just felt like I couldn't justify doing it because I wasn't very good anymore. And so back in the day, I mentioned earlier that you know I really respect Nali and all the lines that he's done. And I think one of the reasons that's so true is because I kind of grew up bouldering with Nali, like going to similar places and doing similar boulder problems. I can remember the first time I was in Switzerland and I did uh this boulder problem called Vicoleone, which is like a classic 8B in uh in Brioney. At the time it was like pretty hard and like really like absolutely pristine. And I remember like being there on a day with Nali, we were both projecting it, and like none of us did it on that day, and then I went back a couple of days later and did it, and then Nali did it a few days after that. And we were kind of a bit like that, like going on trips, doing similar, similar boulders. We weren't really climbing together, but we'd sort of see him around, and like I'd you know, give him like a nod, and he'd like nod back, and that was about the extent of our relationship. But I always really, really, really respected him, and then when I stopped bouldering, and I remember just like watching his his journey to becoming you know literally the the best in the world, and I climbed with him actually a couple of years later on a Lasportiva athlete meeting, and I remember just thinking like, oh my goodness, like we used to be able to play in on the same boulders, and like now he's literally in a different universe to me. This guy is I just don't understand this level of strength and and of technical ability, was mind-blowing for me to to see that progression, and that almost reinforces that idea that okay, well, I can't boulder anymore because I'm just like a joke now. And um, so there was always this, I always, always kind of had this pressure about what people thought about me. Um, and that turned into like a massive pressure that I put on myself to perform. And I can remember, you know, I'd I'd find any excuse not to try something, especially when other people were around, because I was I was scared about what they would think about me, but I was more scared about what I would think about myself. You kind of sometimes you invent these stories or you you play a character that you really want to be, and not living up to your own idea of who you are is is is really difficult. And so I'd often go to the crag and it would you know be warm or you know, just not like the perfect day, and I'd just find these excuses and I I wouldn't even climb, I'd I'd say, Oh, I'll come back tomorrow, you know. Because I had at that time I had all the time in the world. That's the probably you know the the one thing I really had in in spades was was time. Um and then that kind of led up to 2018 was the last big expedition that Caro and I did before we had kids, and then we basically had kids, and then and then the our world was flipped on its head. I mean, you know what that's like. But yes, you go from you go it's wonderful. It's wonderful. That's where wonderful, just it takes a time to uh to adapt. And um so Garo and I we'd talk, we'd always talked about having kids, and um it was always something that we you know we thought we would do together. I've I've got a sister, she's got a sister, like it just it made perfect sense. When it actually came down to it, I don't I guess maybe this is a guy thing, because Garo was definitely less stressed about it than I was. I was just like, well, all of this, I'm not, I'm not ready to to give everything that I've built up. You know, I've worked really hard for this, like especially, you know, I had the walk of life and all that happened, and I felt like I was, you know, all I almost lost everything, and I managed to build it back, and I've got to a place where I'm like really psyched, and I feel like I can do all these cool things, and you know, I haven't I haven't kind of realized my my dreams, like my dream trad root's still out there somewhere. I I know I can find it one day, I know I can do something that's like my next level. I don't know how that's gonna fit in with having having babies. And um, so eventually, you know, yeah, I'll I'll I'll shortcut through the the many long conversations that we had about it. And um, so we had kids, and the first six months Arthur was Arthur's our our our first our boy, he's seven now, and he's absolutely incredible. But the first six months were tricky. And I think neither of us really spoke to each other about it because we didn't want to admit that we we'd made like the biggest mistakes in our lives. But I think we were both thinking, God, what what what's life gonna look like in the future? Um and then eventually you kind of you figure out these little these just little ways to make it work, and so you know the first the first big result was that we could just actually go climbing again together, and it was on some scrappy piece of rock. We were on holiday somewhere in our in our camper van, and it was on some scrappy piece of rock at the side of the side of the road, you know. I don't think there were even any like developed climbs on it, and we had like maybe like a 30-minute session where both of us could climb because Arthur fell asleep, and we were both just like wow, this is awesome, this is so good. And then little by little you just kind of you learn tricks, but then you also reframe what climbing means to you, and that I think unbeknownst at the time to me, that was probably one of the best things that that I've ever done, or at least I've ever learned to do, was just to stop caring so much about it. Like if you have a good day, great. If you have a bad day, I mean they happen and great as well, because you probably still learn something. And whether you learn something about climbing or whether you learn something about how to look after your kids or family life, like there's there's always something that you can learn which is going to make you into a better person. So there's always something that you can take away. And what effectively started happening is about I'd say a year, a year and six months or so into parenthood, not training at all, still sleeping really badly, not climbing anywhere near as much as we used to, being in this pretty sternly graded uh area in France where we actually live right now because it's absolutely beautiful and the climbing's incredible, but like grades are definitely not soft touches here. And um being at this at this crag and just like, oh, what am I gonna do today? Oh, I remember having like a poster of Tony Lemish climbing this this this route when I was a kid, like in my room. Like, ah, I'm here, like I've got to have a lot of. Which climb is this? It's called Kun Kunde Schuck, it's a 9A at Entregue. There's a there's a I think it was a petzel or a Beal poster, probably no a Beal poster of Tony. That's a good shout out. Just like hitting this edge and like swinging, like feet swinging out behind him, like pure board style problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

And uh probably one of the hardest climbs in the world at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:51

At the time, yeah, yeah. And that and I was like, oh I gotta I mean I've got to give that a go. Like, I've always been a better bowler than I have a sport route, it's short, it's like powerful, it might suit me, and plus, like, I mean, I'm I'm not here every day, I'll just get on and try this thing. And getting on and me like doing the moves pretty quickly, and then like a couple of sessions later, sending the thing on like my last try of the day, uh, on like one of the last, I think it was the last day of the trip. And this is something that I I remember watching dosage videos of of Sharma, especially, always doing this, like, you know, it's the last try, my skin's dead, I'm I'm exhausted, but I'm gonna give it one more try and like you know, Hail Mary, maybe it's gonna work. And it always worked for him, and it never worked for me. Like, I would be the person that would just fail repeatedly on the last day, like dropping sport roots below the Belay or like uh boulders on like easy top-outs, and then come back a couple of months later and do it first try of the of the trip. Like I just there was just so much pressure on me to perform when I was younger. Reading between the lines, I think this is basically what happened when I had kids, and I stopped putting that pressure on me because I had no reason to put pressure on me, I had no reason to expect that I was gonna be able to do something. Then like your body just takes over somehow, and actually you allow yourself to really kind of use a decent chunk. I was gonna say 100% of your potential. I think I'm still way away from using, I'm still so inefficient in comparison to climbers like Caroline or Yuji. Um, but I think I'm able to use more than than than I could before, and I think that's probably one of the main reasons why I've been able to actually continue progressing like through my 30s and into my forties with kids, even though objectively everything that has been kind of built around climbing is way less kind of beneficial than it than it was, you know, 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:50

So uh pressure and yeah, uh this idea where when you just have everything hanging over you on the last day on the last try, and especially for someone like you who maybe had sponsors that you you know you wanted to, well, not just impress, but like had to because you wanted to keep being able to pay the bills, you know, people feel that same pressure even if objectively they shouldn't. You know, it's like, hey, like no one cares if you climb you know this V5, like, you know, but that doesn't mean we don't feel that. And I I'm just wondering uh if having uh kids is off the table for someone who wants to deal with uh excessive pressure, because that's a big uh step to take if you really are just dealing with pressure. Um, what would you tell like you know, younger James? Because do I when we were talking about this before, you told me that story about off the wagon, and I feel like I want to use if you're willing to share that story again, but yeah, what would you tell that James who had that uh I don't want to you know spoil the the story too much, but um what would you tell that young James given what you know now? I mean it's it's it's so easy just to say like just to say don't care as much.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:00

Um but I think especially nowadays, especially the way and the speed that we consume media and and and achievements, honestly, nowadays no one really cares. And like that's probably I don't want that to sound mean or spiteful. I think it hopefully and it may end up being genuinely helpful for people to realize that. But like there's so many good climbers out there. If it's just doing like another hard send of you know, if it's not pure like the the most impressive cutting-edge boulder, I think these days like no one really cares that much. And even if someone has an opinion of it, whether it's positive or negative, they've already moved on to something else before like you even have time to assess what all that means. So I would just, and this is a massive cliche, but I would just say just try try to go climbing for for you and and do the things that that feel meaningful to you, but not for you know any reason that may be related to trying to impress other people. And that's really way easier to say than than than to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:07

So I'm gonna push, yeah, I'm gonna push back on that, uh, and I'm gonna tell the story that I was trying to get you to tell where you almost did the FA of off the wagon and fell off of like the jug top out.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:17

Um I mean it wasn't the jug top out. I fell off swinging off the the jug at the beginning of the top out. So like it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like in the five plus kind of just Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:28

I'm just giving you crap because dude, uh that that was a cool story, but um that I told for you. But anyways, my the thing that I would uh that I want to like pick at a little bit is that what you just gave advice on is for those people who are worried about you know impressing the world, but also oftentimes we put undue pressure on ourselves internally and we think like if I do this, you know, V10 then it will make a difference. Then I finally made it, you know, finally I've climbed V10 or whatever. And so how do you deal with that internal pressure um even if it has no relation to you know the external reality?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:08

So from from someone who's always been looking for that next level, the level that will finally allow me to feel like I've made it, the one thing I can tell you is that you never get there. Like even though in the last few years I've I've done quite a lot of work on this because I realized I was just still still in a pretty unhappy place from everything that had happened to me when I was younger. And mainly I still hadn't come to terms with a lot of my old demons, and now I'm really trying to attach myself less to performance and achievements and just focus on actually enjoying it for what it is. I still find myself thinking, oh, like I've done a few HC boulders now, like maybe I can do HC Plus. I think I'd be really happy if I did that. And if I can do H C plus, then 9A, that's like a much nicer round number. That would be a really good one to do. And honestly, I I don't think I I'll ever find a way to come to terms with that and to be in a truly healthy place, even though I'd like to think that it's possible. Um, but that doesn't mean that other people can't. And so what I would what I would say, maybe what I was saying before about it like no one caring was maybe like just a little bit reductive, but what I think climbers, and this again, so this again goes back to our work now as sort of map helping to manage the the athlete or part of the athlete team at Lasportiva and advice that I give to a lot of the younger climbers, and not actually just the young climbers, just any of the climbers trying to make it as a pro. It's just that there's so there are so many people nowadays climbing insanely hard grades. Whilst maybe at one time it was enough, like just to just to do some really hard, hard moves. Like maybe when I was starting to kind of enter into the world of professional climbing, you know, the the the the media landscape was completely different. You know, it was had such a slower turnaround because of the internet was barely there, social media didn't exist, everything was kind of based on on magazines, whereas nowadays it's just like this constant flow. It's not even a flow, it's like a jet of um jet stream, yeah. Yeah. Basically, whatever you do, unless unless you are, you know, someone like Andra or or Yanya, climbing the loan isn't isn't gonna cut it. So like just uh don't stress about thinking maybe that next grade is gonna make the difference because it it probably won't. What I would suggest trying to focus on, and this again is another thing that's way easier said than done, is you've got to think about the things that make you special, that make you unique, not necessarily unique, but just different from the other climbers out there. Because in a world where like everyone is is doing 8C and 9A plus roots, like there's there's gotta be something more to your story. And so I guess this also m perhaps goes back to what we were saying earlier about trying other disciplines, learning like different skill sets, because those skill sets can allow you to uh uh uh interpret climbing in a different way. Hopefully, then with all of those other things that you've discovered, you can make climbing into something that's genuinely unique and special and that people want to follow and learn about.

unknown 1:27:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:34

That is good advice for I mean, I don't actually think I gave anyone any advice. I just I just said this is what you should try and do, but I don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:42

But I mean to me what you're saying, i it to me this is like all it's like authenticity. It's like find the kind of climbing that you deeply, deeply enjoy, want to seek out, and you know, organize yourself around that versus just trying to find the things that make other people happy or

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

Yeah, yeah. But also try to explore that type of climbing that you deeply naturally in enjoy in somewhat of a creative way. That's where it's open to interpretation, and I don't really have any advice. But one of the things that we we do now with athletes at Las Bortiver is basically try to help them to create their own projects and sort of think a little bit outside the box.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:23

One thing I wanted to add to the idea of chasing grades, and that you said something about like maybe be healthier if I could, you know, come to terms with that idea that it's always just going to be a treadmill. Is my kind of thinking on that is that I will always be chasing the next level and I'm okay with that. And I know that I'll never reach some pinnacle. But that in some ways that also speaks to me in that if I'm you know 65 and I'm you know weaker objectively and not able to climb a higher grade, I still want to be doing my best and trying my best. And so I like the idea of instead of it being like I'm trying to reach some level, it's more just like I'm always trying to be better than I was the day before. And I think that's an okay journey. I think that's a healthy way.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:14

I think that's absolutely 100% healthy. And that's if I if I could do that, I would be genuinely happy with all the progress that I've made. And it's something that I absolutely try to do. But I mean, maybe you're there and and that would be amazing. But like, you know, I all it all it takes is for me to go out and decide, okay, let's let's maybe try like uh an 8B today, and if I can't do it, then I'm suddenly starting to think, okay, what's happening? Let alone you know 8B plus or an 8C. Like you once you've once you've done something subconsciously or consciously, you think, oh, I should be able to do everything at that level. And it's just not true because the harder things get, the more specific they get. And I feel like climbing is diversifying more than than it ever has, you know, just in the in the different types of challenges that you can find, even within the same kind of subsport as as bouldering, you know, there's there's so many different styles right now, so many different techniques that you have to spend realistically years of your life mastering if you want to be the best. And and it's just almost impossible to be good at everything. And so I know that there are loads and loads and loads and loads of of HCs out there that I won't move on. But still, because I've done a few now, in my head, I'm like, oh, now I should be trying HC Plus.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:38

I hear you, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:39

To the point where like I won't even I often won't try some HCs, like if I've heard, oh, that one's a really hard one. Because I don't want to have to go through that, and and it would be an absolutely amazing thing for me to do. And what I should be doing is, oh, I've heard that that one's a really hard one. I've heard that that one doesn't suit me. This is what I should be doing. And Caroline's always told me, like, one of the things we used to do when we were training together, she'd often like ask me, like, what do you want to do today? And I'd be like, Oh, I would always lean to you know, some sort of power-related exercise because that's what I'm good at. You know, I hated doing anything that was to do with like short or or especially long endurance, and she'd be like, Well, that's what we're doing because we we need to do the thing that you don't want to do because that's what you need to get better at.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:22

That's this classic thing where they call it uh eating the frog. This is from like my corporate days where it's not.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:27

I mean she's French, so yeah, she they eat a lot of frogs.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:31

Oh, that's too good. Um it's just was this idea like look on your to-do list, whichever is the thing you least want to do, that's the one you need to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:39

And it's such a simple concept. Like, it's what I teach my kids when they when they have their dinner plate in front of them and they don't want to eat this one thing and like get eat the frog. Exactly. Get it down straight away and leave what you like until the until the end. And I was like, why why am I incapable of doing that myself? You just need to have more kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:58

I don't know, like maybe that worked for that last thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:01

Yeah, yeah, kids, no more kids. We've done Arthur, so A. Zoeli is our second one, so she's she's Zed, and that's the alphabet done. So uh that was a conscious effort.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:13

And then uh Well, James, I'm sorry. I I am not your guru. I got no answers here, and quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:21

But tell me one day if you do. I'd love I'd love to hear.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:24

That's why I say people well, and that's why I I mean in some ways I don't I don't think there is any fundamental answers, and it's why it's fun to talk to a bunch of people, and you know, everyone has their own journey and they learn things along the way. And that's why those cliches you put out are so cliched, is because in some ways they mean nothing, but in some ways they mean everything, and when you get them at the right time, it can be like a little flash of light, and that's why I do this, where I often ask people just like you, James, and that's

How To Go From Good To Great

SPEAKER_00 1:32:53

uh how do you go from good to great? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:56

You told me that you were gonna ask me this question in our little pre-interview, and I completely forgot about it. Uh no, I had I had an answer, and then I was like, oh, this is gonna sound so awkward, but I think it basically tags on to what we were what we were just saying, that there's there's so much out there to learn, there's so many things to do in the climbing kind of sphere. I don't know whether this is what took me from good to great because to be honest, I wouldn't even say I'm great. I think that some days I'm lucky and I'm able to climb relatively tricky climbs, but some days I can't. And I'm still trying to understand why you know certain things come easily and others don't. Um, I couldn't even tell you what style of a climber I am because some days I seem to be good on crimps, others I seem to be good on slopers or compression. There's just so many mysteries around it that for me the important thing that I'm really, really trying to do right now is to stop caring so much about things that you can't really control and make sure that whenever you have the opportunity to learn something new, you take that opportunity because there's very few things that I would be unhappy and frustrated about in life. But if I find myself in a situation in X amount of years' time when I'm I'm doing something and I think, oh, now I don't know how to do this, and I remember a specific moment where I had the chance to learn that skill, that's something that I would be genuinely annoyed at myself, not having taken that chance when life presented it. So not wanting to put too many cliches out there because we've already done enough of them, but yeah, basically, when when life gives you a chance to learn something new, I think you gotta seize that chance because there's so much out there to learn, and it's usually it it benefits you in probably ways that you'll never even imagine or realize. But hey, someday you might need that.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

I think that is great advice. I want to add a little meta advice to that, and that's being the type of person that's open to learning lessons because I think that sometimes happens when you're a kid. This could, you know, when you're a hotshot kid, you often think like I know it all, and you don't. Anytime you think you know it all, that's when the world shows you you don't. Oh man, the world has a good way at teaching you that's 25.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:28

I thought I knew it all. And at 35, I thought I knew it all. And I'm pretty sure at 45, I'm 40. Figured all out.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:34

We've got it all figured out. Uh oh gosh. Um, well, good stuff. I'm gonna move us on to some uh bonus questions and my Discord, my Patreon uh people wanted to know about Exodia. And I didn't uh do you know anything about Exodia? Have you tried Exodia? I I didn't even know that that they were the one who brought it up, but why why did they ask me to ask you what do you think about Exodia?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:00

I'm impressed that your Discord people know that I've tried Exodia.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:06

If you want to hear that QA and other extra behind the scenes content from this episode and others, head over to patreon.com slash test piece to sign up now. Patrons also get their episodes early and ad-free. There's hours and hours of bonus content there to help you on your own path of going from good to great. Still not sure? There's a free seven day trial for you to check it out. And to help the show grow, please share this episode with someone who would love it. Okay, see you next week.