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Transcript 

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast, where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and today we’re on episode 46 where I talk with Jorg Verhoeven, who is an excellent climber.  He did the fourth free ascent of the Nose, he’s done hundreds of World Cups, and I wanted to talk to him about how he does all of that.

He’s really interesting in that he’s not your typical trainer; he’s not always on the fingerboard or the campus board. He will tell you all about his more, in my words, “natural” way of training. Before I get into the interview I want to let you know that my favorite chalk company, Friction Labs, is giving you guys some really great discounts on their chalk. If you want to try it out for yourself go over to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta.

A little update on my own training: I’ve been training with Kris Peters for the last couple weeks. I see him once a week for a couple of hours and then he’s also given me a weekly plan to follow and, basically, I’m exhausted.

I had to take lots of naps this weekend. I slept for almost 12 hours one day and it’s because of the work that I’m doing with him. I think it’s good. I’m going to take it down a small notch this week just so that I’m not quite so exhausted but I’m doing climbing drills on the wall: up-downs (so I go up then I climb down, then I go up and climb down) on boulders quite a few times; and then I’m doing timed treadwall stuff (so I’m on for three minutes, off for three minutes, on for three minutes and so on).

Then I’m doing weighted squats, deadlifts and TRX stuff, and I’s, Y’s and T’s, bent-over rows, running

[laughs] (none of which I’ve done in a really long time) so that’s why it’s kicking my ass and hopefully it’ll work. I trust him so I’ll keep you posted on that. If you want to work with Kris yourself you can, and he will do the same thing to you if you’re up for it.  If you want to do that you can go to www.trainingbeta.com. There’s a menu at the top and one of the things is “custom plans” and you can just choose “Kris Peters” and see what he has to offer.

So, without further adieu, I will get into my interview with Jorg.  I hope you enjoy it!

Neely Quinn: Okay, welcome to the show, Jorg, how are you doing?

Jorg Verhoeven: Thanks. Pretty fine, thanks! I’m back home in Innsbruck so it’s a little time delay [laughs].

Neely Quinn: A little time delay [laughs], yeah, you’re a little bit later than I am right now.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I guess so.

Neely Quinn: So, for anybody who doesn’t know who you are can you give me a description of yourself, like, in any words that you want to use?

Jorg Verhoeven: So – my name is Jorg Verhoeven, a pretty difficult name for most non-Dutch people. I live in Austria, in Innsbruck. I’ve kind of moved since I was 18 away from the Netherlands. I’ve been climbing for, I guess, almost 15 years now? Maybe even longer? I guess I moved to Austria for climbing. The Netherlands is pretty flat and, you know, there’s not much going on. I study Earth Sciences (mineralogy) and I’ve been climbing in the World Cup season or international competitions for, I don’t know, at least ten years now. So, that’s basically what I do.

Neely Quinn: Cool! And just some basic stats on you, like how old are you?

Jorg Verhoeven: I’m 30 right now.  I’m starting to get old [laughs] compared to the rest of the people I hang out with.

Neely Quinn: You’re right: I definitely know the feeling. So you started climbing when you were about 15?

Jorg Verhoeven: Actually, a little earlier.  I think 12 so that might put it to about 17 years or 18 years already.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and so you were doing World Cups/you were competing as a youth, too, right?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I started like I said when I was 12 and I started, obviously, in a climbing gym. I quickly got started into youth competitions in the Netherlands which, you know, climbing was a pretty small sport at that time. There was some gyms. It kind of just started, and there was some youth comps. I was really happy to participate. You know, I’m quite a competitive person and everything worked kind of well so I think I won the youth comp, the first youth competition I did, the National Championships. I moved on to senior National Championships when I was 14 or 15 and from there everything kind of went pretty fast. European Youth Cups, I think I did those for five or six years so the full term from 14 to 20 and then moved gradually to World Cups and international senior competitions.

Neely Quinn: And then how did you do in those?

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, I don’t know. I think I’m one of these people that gradually got better and better. The first competition I didn’t completely suck but I wasn’t very good. Like, compared to a lot of youngsters nowadays they do their first comp/first World Cup and they, either they win or they end up on a podium and it’s kind of a big, new star and I kind of ended up 30th or something. Which, back then, was pretty shit. I mean the World Cups back then were a lot smaller than they are right now. I kind of gradually got better and better and made my first final, which is top eight, and I was mainly lead climbing at that time. First podium, first victory, everything in maybe year distances, or several year distances, actually. I’ve been doing World Cups for a very long time now, like I said, I started off with 16/17 on the World Cup season and last time I checked or somebody actually checked for me, they counted the amount of World Cups and it was kinda mind-blowing. I think I’m at 150 or something.

Neely Quinn: 150?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah. It’s kinda ridiculous but I just really enjoy doing them so even though the last two years I haven’t been really successful I still enjoy doing them. Everybody, or a lot of people, are asking me like, “When are you gonna stop?” and “Isn’t it annoying to not be on the top anymore?” Of course it’s annoying but on the other side I still love doing them so – it’s just an adaptation of your level I guess.

Neely Quinn: Right. So you were doing bouldering and sport routes World Cups?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I kinda switched to bouldering completely maybe three years ago or four years ago? Before, I’ve had several years where I’ve done both disciplines. I never bothered with speed. I did a couple of comps there but that wasn’t really fun. I mainly focused on lead in the beginning and then the bouldering World Cups started to grow and get a little bigger and, obviously, training you do a lot of bouldering. I tried a couple of bouldering comps and it kind of worked well and of course, they’re really fun. I mean, for everybody that sport climbs and boulders there’s not big/there’s not much of a difference. So, there was some years where I did both seasons which means ten Lead Cups and ten Bouldering Cups and Championships and Masters and that kinda takes up your whole year.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, yeah.

Jorg Verhoeven: It’s a lot of comps but back then I was super psyched and I devoted my entire life to, well I still do, to climbing but back then I still had the energy to do competitions the whole year through. Which, for example, now Sean is the only one to (Sean McColl) is kind of the only one to do so. Everybody decided between a discipline and they’re either taking a small peek at the other discipline or they’re just sticking to their own.

Neely Quinn: I know that it can be kind of a big deal to travel that much and it can be expensive and time-consuming. Do you have sponsors that support you or has this just all been self-funded?

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, yeah, I do have sponsors but the World Cup/all my competition travels, they’ve always been paid by my federation.

Neely Quinn: Oh right – you’re not American [laughs].

Jorg Verhoeven: I’ve been very lucky with that. Yeah, exactly [laughs]. There is some countries that fund their climbers, like their competition climbers, and I’m lucky/I’ve always been lucky to be one of those climbers. So, yeah, that’s a lot of traveling but that’s actually one aspect about competition climbing that I’ve always enjoyed: the traveling; being abroad; visiting different places. It has it’s down turns, like we’ve done a lot of comps in places we don’t really want to go to like big, mega-cities in China or something, but most of the times I really enjoy being somewhere seeing new cultures and new stuff.

Neely Quinn: So, are you a full-time climber? Like, is that your profession?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I guess so [laughs]. I hate to call it like that but yeah, I think I’m a pro climber [laughs]. Like I said, I study, or I’ve been studying, for a very long time now since it always comes after climbing, so it’s been taking me way longer than it should normally.

Neely Quinn: So you’ve kind of been at University part time or something for a while?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, some years I haven’t done a lot. Some years I do a lot so it’s been kind of on and off on University.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so let’s go through the progression of your climbing because it seems you started as a child in the gyms and then eventually you ended up outside doing some pretty big stuff so how did that go?

Jorg Verhoeven: Hmmm – well, like I said, I started off in a gym and I was/I guess I was lucky that I ended up in a small training group of very motivated kids and some grown-ups. The major person that set-up that group was a very psyched climber of the last/the older generation for me. He had the feeling that the stuff we were doing in gyms, the gym training and stuff, was basically all for a preparation for rock climbing. Early in my climbing days I already had that feeling that gym climbing/there’s more than training or gym climbing. I was taken to Fontainebleau, which is five hours away, which is kind of the only place the Dutch ever go to climb rocks because everything else is so far away. I mean, we went to Southern France a lot, which is ten hours away. Basically my family’s vacations and holidays – they turned into climbing trips. My brother was pretty psyched for climbing but he has a fear of heights so he wasn’t that much into route climbing and my parents enjoyed it as well and they enjoyed taking us to see these places. We were already going on holidays to the Alps or something so we could always stop and do a little bit of climbing.

Neely Quinn: Nice. Then you found yourself out here in the States at what point?

Jorg Verhoeven: [laughs] That’s kind of a long way after. I kind of lived that life for a while, going to school, training in gyms, doing European Youth Cups, still in the Netherlands/living in the Netherlands and I quickly saw that I had to move. I needed/I felt that I needed mountains for climbing. To get better at climbing I needed to be abroad, so I moved around Europe for a while and ended up in Austria and never really moved. I kind of stayed here and I always felt at home in Innsbruck so – yeah, that’s kind of where my home base is right now. That’s where a lot of, like, a new phase in my life started. Competitions and training were still a part of it but also another part that accompanied it was doing trips, going outside climbing. I mean, obviously, America is one of the places to be. I think my first time was actually Hueco. It was quite a long time ago, maybe 2005 or something? 2004? Maybe even earlier? With, back then my girlfriend, now my wife, and a couple of other pretty strong, very motivated (back then) youth climbers and we had a blast. I mean Texas is a pretty funny place, especially for a first time in America. El Paso was something different for us and a lot of trips to the States followed. I’ve been to Boulder maybe three times now for a longer period and shorter periods as well for the competitions.

Neely Quinn: Okay. So, tell me about the Nose because it seems like one of the highlights of your career has been doing the fourth free ascent of the Nose.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yosemite has always been a pretty big goal for me. I saw the posters of, like, Alexander Huber and bigger pawns in climbing history in Europe and already back then, 15 years ago, I asked myself whether I would eventually be good enough to climb on a big wall like that. It obviously became clear that eventually I had to go to Yosemite. The first time I actually did was maybe six years ago or five years ago where my wife and I had a six-month road trip through the midwest of the USA and it was winter time because we were mainly bouldering. Bishop, Hueco, or Joe’s Valley, but I desperately wanted to go to Yosemite so we went and it was freezing cold but we could still climb because there was very little snow back then. We climbed for, like, a week straight on and my wife wasn’t very/she’s mainly a boulderer, or she was back then, so she had a very hard time especially in the cold in, minus 15 degrees, starting up your first granite crag. It was a very rough, rough week but it was very satisfying. We both had a great time and I knew that I had to come back. I quickly saw that there’s so many goals to/it seemed really interesting in Yosemite so I think two years after I came back with a friend from Austria. We stayed there for a month and I just tried to be on El Cap as much as possible. We climbed El Niño, I did Freerider – there was some problems with the park then. The government shut down so all the National Parks were closed so – I actually didn’t believe that could happen. They sent everybody out of Yosemite.

Neely Quinn: I don’t think anybody believed it could happen.

Jorg Verhoeven: No, [laughs] that’s how I understood it afterwards. Anyway, I was so psyched I hiked back into the park. I ditched my stuff in the forest somewhere, hiked back in and tried to hide on El Cap climbing Freerider by myself with a Grigri, which was a very fun experience. It just showed how much motivation I had to be on that wall. It just, I don’t know, I feel incredible climbing on that wall. It’s just such a nice experience. It doesn’t matter what you do/which route you climb. It’s always fun climbing on that wall. From the beginning on, obviously the Nose is a major goal or should be a major goal for everyone interested in or who has the capabilities of climbing it. Two years ago I did my third trip there. I took six weeks to climb it and I actually thought it would be a several year project and I ended up doing it the same year already, which was fun, but that wasn’t really the main point. I mean I wouldn’t have cared to come back three years. The whole process of working and climbing that route was so intense and so satisfying for me, I mean, it could have lasted ten years! It was almost a shame that it ended, you know? I guess everybody has that. You have a certain goal and you work really hard on it and it’s so much fun to be occupied with it and then all of a sudden, you climb it and it’s gone. It’s/I mean of course you could climb it a second time, but nobody really does that.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Jorg Verhoeven: You need to find yourself a new project, which is never that big a problem because there’s so much stuff to do but, still, with the Nose it almost felt like a bit of a disappointment that I climbed it and next time I’ll be on it, it won’t be the same anymore.

Neely Quinn: That’s so interesting, that it was disappointing that you climbed it.

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, yeah, it seems a little awkward…

Neely Quinn: No, I get it.

Jorg Verhoeven: Some people can understand.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, because where do you go from there? The Dawn Wall? And is that something you have in your sights?

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, I mean I’ve seen all the footage and photos and it looks amazing. I mean, the Nose is probably the most famous route on the wall but the Dawn Wall is for sure the hardest but also the most intimidating part of El Capitan. At first, when Tommy and Kevin hadn’t done it yet, I always said, “That’s nothing I’m ever gonna try. It’s way too hard.” I mean, if you live there obviously it’s fun to have a mega-project which you can work on for ten years but coming from Europe I would have to go there lots and lots of trips just to spend time and money, of course, on this route. With the Nose it was a little bit different. I felt like it should be doable within a couple of years and with the Dawn Wall it felt different and then Tommy and Kevin did it and I kinda saw that it’s possible, you know? Like, before they did it, it just changed something in me so that it became interesting to try. Which, back then, when it felt that way I wasn’t really happy with that decision that eventually I would try it because it’s going to cost me a shit ton of money and time and it’ll be fun as well, but it’s also/chances are there that I will never be able to climb it. It’s just a very time-consuming project. I hope I’m going to have a good time on it. I think the first time I’m going to try is probably this fall, so fall 2016.

Neely Quinn: Oh! I didn’t even realize you were going to try it! So, are you going there with a partner?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, [laughs] I didn’t either! I spoke to Adam last summer. I asked him when he was going to go to Yosemite. I told him he’s going to have such a good time and so he’d better get his ass over there.

He was like, “Yeah, yeah, not this season but maybe next,” and I was like, “Oh! Oh! Well I’m going. What are you going to try?”

“Maybe Dawn Wall..” and he was like, “Are you going to try?” [laughs]

So we’ll probably be there and try to work on it.

Neely Quinn: That’s funny. I was just going to say, tongue-in-cheek, that you should go over there with Adam Ondra and try it.

Jorg Verhoeven: No, I don’t think it works like that. I mean especially with Adam, there’s not really/I wouldn’t see Adam as a concurrent or something. He’s way beyond anybody’s level. Especially on the Dawn Wall, he’ll be totally different than everybody else. I’ve seen his strength on vertical style climbing and even though he’s never been to Yosemite I’m pretty sure he won’t have a very hard time on the style of climbing.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, yeah.

Jorg Verhoeven: He’s so incredibly strong and talented for that style.

Neely Quinn: So, do you feel like you learned a lot while you were there about that type of climbing? Like, had you had much experience with that before?

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, Yosemite is a very special place and especially the rock on El Cap is just so, so damn slippery. The glacier did a good job there. It’s a very/everybody always says you need to be able to crack climb very well to free climb on El Cap but I think it’s actually not that true. It’s actually the opposite. You need to slab climb very well and be accustomed to it’s rock and, like I said, it’s very slippery, slippery rock. The more hours or the more days you spend on the wall, the more accustomed you get to it and eventually the stuff that at first felt impossible or really hard eventually it will start feeling easy. Like, I remember my first time up Free Blast, which is 5.10/5.11 slab climbing and a little bit of crack or off-width and [laughs] I’ve gotta say, it felt really hard. Some of the 5.10 moves just felt like upper 5.12 to me. The time I did Freerider was the second or third time I was on Free Blast and I was on my own with a Grigri and it really felt like 5.10. I guess it’s/for everybody that’s in Yosemite he first time and meets that slippery granite, it’s got to feel really hard. The more you work on it the better you’ll be able to climb on it.

Neely Quinn: I’m going to interrupt here for just a minute to let you guys know that Friction Labs, like I said, is my favorite chalk company by far, and they’re giving you guys some pretty awesome discounts over at www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta . Basically, what they’re giving you is my favorite kind of their chalk which is Unicorn Dust. It’s all the same stuff and it all has a high content of magnesium carbonate, which makes it the best. The one I like the most is Unicorn Dust which is the finest one. It coats my hands the best. They’re giving you guys a ten-ounce bag for $19 instead of $37. Now, I know that that sounds really expensive but honestly, I think it’s worth it. It’s like buying a really good pair of shoes instead of a not-so-good pair of shoes. You guys all know what a difference that can make so they have that and they have a sample pack for you guys which is usually $17.50 and it’s $10 so you can try out all three of their kinds of chalk. I would go over to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta so you can get these deals. They change these up sometimes so if you don’t see what I just explained they’ll have something else awesome for you. So that’s Friction Labs! I hope you guys like them as much as I do! Now, back to the interview.

Neely Quinn: So, I have a couple questions: in that video that Louder Than 11 did, which is a really great portrayal of your journey up there, I noticed that you were wearing Solutions – on the Great Roof – and I was wondering why? It seems like you would wear different shoes. I know this is kind of an odd question but…

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I actually got that question quite a lot and I’m one of these climbers who hates small shoes. I mean, some people swear/especially the old generation they swear they need to have their shoes at least five/six sizes too small. I just, I don’t know, I don’t bear it so I guess I just understand the surprise of having small Solutions on a big wall but then again, I’m carrying a big haul bag and it has space for several shoes. I climbed all the pitches on very comfortable and large Katana laces and just switched to small and tiny painful shoes for those two pitches, which you really need. The feet on the Great Roof are/that pitch is all about the feet. It’s just small, edge-like foot holds so you need a very stiff, stiff shoe for it and the Changing Corners is basically the same. I actually did that with two different types of shoes, like one for the Katana/a small Katana for the right and a Solution for the left, just because there’s some very small, crimpy feet for the right and some smeary stuff for the left. There was, I don’t know, I put a lot of thought into which shoes I would use for which part of the wall.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s smart.

Jorg Verhoeven: And it worked out well but no, I haven’t climbed El Cap entirely with small, five-size-too-small shoes.

Neely Quinn: That makes sense. Another thing that was really notable about your ascent was that it seemed like most of the time that you worked it on your own, like you were alone for a lot of the time.

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, before going there we (Katha and I) spent a month in Colorado, actually, to boulder there in the Rocky Mountains. I met Tommy up there and I think the summer before we met Lynn so I told them my plans, that I would try and go free the Nose, or free climb the Nose. I asked them for tips, you know, for how to/like a plan. They both said that you need to work it top down and I wasn’t very happy with that since I’ve got my personal view on ethics, the way I want to climb routes. One of them was the “best” style possible was going ground up and then trying. Since the buddy I was in Yosemite with was only there for two weeks I kind of ended-up on my own. I could’ve rope-soloed all the way up there every time I wanted to try but it just felt like an impossibility so I did the same as Lynn and Tommy and I would kinda recommend to everybody trying the Nose to do similarly: hike to the top, rap down. Changing Corners is, I think, pitch 27 or something so it’s all the way at the very top and you rap three or four pitches and you need to be there early in the morning since as soon as the sun catches it, it’s kinda done. It heats up too quickly and you can’t move anymore so you need to be there at 8:00 in the morning, which sucks! I hate climbing in the morning but, you know, it’s kind of a necessity. Then you try it for an hour and you climb back up and you hike back down and you eat a pizza and the next day, similar. You do the same thing. I worked on especially Changing Corners since Great Roof is a bit harder to reach by yourself. Especially Changing Corners – I worked on it, I don’t know, like seven days or something like, seven times one hour in the morning and after, maybe, three or four times I felt like I could do it. I felt ready for an attempt but I didn’t know a lot of people in the Valley and, you know, everybody had their own plans so I had kind of a hard time to find somebody that would go up with me to do an attempt to free it. In the meantime I worked on it since what else can you do? If you’re there already then I might as well work the shit out of it. Eventually, I found a buddy that was really psyched to come up with me and I’d worked so much already so that the Changing Corners wasn’t that big a problem anymore.

Neely Quinn: Did you find that working it on your own – it seems like it would be harder to find the motivation to keep trying and keep trying.

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, it was one of the problems of free climbing bigger walls: it’s a lot of logistics. Like, you need to be on a position somewhere up on a wall to work a certain move and it takes such a long time just to get up there. It’s a bit of the annoying part maybe, but then again it’s also the satisfying part. It’s just a lot of work but, you know, if everything would be easy it wouldn’t be much fun, would it? I actually enjoyed the whole process of going up every time. I think I hiked to or jumared up East Ledges maybe ten times or something. It’s – it was just a fun process I guess. I spent some entire days on the summit of El Cap just because I didn’t want to hike down and hike back up the next morning. I stayed up there and slept on top and I hadn’t even thought about how boring it would be to spend an entire day on the Summit. It’s not really, I mean it’s a beautiful place, but there’s nothing to do. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that was the funny part of the video.

Jorg Verhoeven: I mean, there’s nobody up there. Yeah, I guess it’s portrayed in the video pretty well actually.

Neely Quinn: Okay. So I’d love to talk about how you trained for that and how you train in general.

Jorg Verhoeven: Just to finish up Yosemite, my training for Yosemite, I didn’t do much preparation. I thought about it back home, like: “How can I prepare myself?” I couldn’t really figure out how so I didn’t really do anything. I just bouldered a lot and then, like I said, I was in Colorado for a month and it proved to be the perfect preparation. I mean, I talked to Tommy and he says the exact same thing for climbing these big routes. You just need to be fit on bouldering. Especially on the Nose: 90-percent is 5.10 climbing and there’s some hard slab climbing at the start and then there’s Great Roof and Changing Corners, which are basically boulder problems somewhere up on the wall. I mean, Great Roof is sort of like a 15-move boulder problem after 5.11 climbing and Changing Corners is even more of a boulder problem. That proved to be really good. I had a certain bouldering fitness after one month in the park – also hiking fitness. I mean, you do a shit ton of hiking in the park so that proved to be very nice for Yosemite as well.

Neely Quinn: That’s interesting. You were climbing on granite in both places, too.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, yeah – exactly. You’re already a little accustomed to the rock but in general, of course, my training is totally different. I mean, if I take the last ten years or so they’ve always looked pretty similar in terms of training. We, as in my wife and I (Katha), and a lot of other competition climbers in Innsbruck, everybody kind of does similar training programs.

Neely Quinn: Because your wife is on the Austrian team, right?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah. Katharina Saurwein. She’s a/we’ve been a couple ever since I came here to Innsbruck and we got married this summer? Last summer? That was pretty cool.

Neely Quinn: That’s kind of cool that you guys are both very competitive and…

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, yeah, it’s very nice because, you know, we’re both spending 100 percent or 90 percent of our time in climbing so every holiday we go climbing. It’s just so much devotion to the sport that I think it’d be really hard to date a non-climber or, it’d be possible if it’d be a person that does something like they play an instrument very devoted so that the other person could at least understand why the heck you are spending so much time just for that certain sport.

Neely Quinn: Right, yeah.

Jorg Verhoeven: It’s always been very handy and it’s always worked out very well, which is nice. To get back to the training, if I would describe a year it would be a winter stop of about two or three weeks, like December or somewhere, and then training starts. The winter period is probably the most intense. We do maybe like a three- to four-month period where we train kind of as much as possible. It’s snowing pretty hard right now so there’s not a lot of outside climbing. We go outside a little bit and we go to Ticino and stuff but not as much as the rest of the year. We spend a lot of time in the gym. It’s not as much as a lot of people would think but it would be, for example, say five days a week maybe like six units (you could call them) of two- to three-hours. Some days you train twice if you’re really psyched but most days just for, like, a three-hour gym session. We’ve always separated different phases of training, for example first month is mainly volume-based, like a build-up period. Then one month of maximum power and one month to one-and-a-half month of some sort of endurance. It doesn’t really matter if you train for bouldering or if you train for lead climbing or even if you just train for rock climbing/sport climbing, because you can take that frame and then adjust it to your goals. It’s always worked very well for me and I’ve seen a lot of kids that have gotten really strong with that type of training. It’s not super specific. It’s not a big secret or something. There’s nothing really special about it, it’s just a lot of hard work, I guess.

Neely Quinn: Right. Do you work with a trainer or coach?

Jorg Verhoeven: No, not really. The Austrians have certain trainers. I’ve always been on a friendly basis with those trainers and Katharina has been training with certain/different trainers for the last ten years so she knows a lot about it. It doesn’t really feel like I need it. Not in a arrogant way [laughs], it sounds a bit arrogant maybe, but I’ve had so much experience with training I think the most important part of it is that you know yourself really well. The other important part is that you have people around you that can motivate you and can help you with evaluations and stuff. They can tell you where you suck at and where you’re good at, just to get a good view of yourself so that you can adjust your training to that image.

Neely Quinn: So, you’ve never worked with a trainer.

Jorg Verhoeven: Not really.

Neely Quinn: Have you read a bunch or talked to a lot of people?

Jorg Verhoeven: I talk to a lot of people and I mainly train or climb with a lot of people. I think that was one of the bigger reasons I moved from the Netherlands at the beginning to somewhere else, and eventually to Innsbruck. I just wanted to meet and climb with other persons similar to me. I lived in France for a year, I think, and then in Belgium for a year and Switzerland a little bit. I had friends everywhere, mainly from the youth comps, like I said, climbers similar to me back then. I just needed to hang out with people that did the same stuff as I do. I could learn so much from them. I’ve never been the person to have a cellar back home and train every day in the same place. I need to train with other people. I think it’s so much easier to train in a group of motivated climbers than to do your power exercises back home. I think a mixture could be very nice. Of course, not everybody has the opportunity to climb in a group of highly psyched, other strong climbers but I’m pretty sure everybody has the opportunity to, at least, to try to meet other people to go climbing together.

Neely Quinn: Right. You said that in your first month, in the most intense training period of the year, you’re doing volume and sort of building up.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, exactly, to get your body prepared for what’s to come. It’s like to create an empty shell and then afterwards you can fill it up with maximum power or endurance.

Neely Quinn: What do those workouts look like?

Jorg Verhoeven: For example, we have one really easy workout which is we create boulders which are very simple and it’s basically like you take crimps, you take slopers, you take whatever you want to be strong at, pinches, etc. You create boulders that have only these style of holds on it. You make a boulder ten, 15 moves, only on crimps and we climb this problem as hard as possible. We climb that problem, the other person climbs it, the first person climbs it, the other person climbs it, five or six or how often you want to do it. Then move to the next type of hold, for example. Like that, we do short circuits of holds-style or climbing style-wise problems and they get you very fit. For example, at the start of that phase my ability to dead-hang on a sloper is really, really bad and at the end I just feel in control. It’s a very easy way to get fit. You can do it together with a lot of power exercises like campusing, no-foot bouldering. I guess it is the same thing in American? In English? Campusing and campusing [laughs]. We have different words for campusing on a real campus board and campusing around in the gym, which is all very important. One-arms and basic power exercises that everybody does. I guess the training isn’t that different from what a lot of people do.

Neely Quinn: Are you using any weights?

Jorg Verhoeven: No. Very little. I’ve done it some years but at the end of the training. At the end of those three or four months, I think it’s if you can handle it then it’s probably a good thing but only in small proportions like two to five kilos. If you can do it with more, why not, but I don’t think it’s very necessary. Your own body weight is what you need to climb with so for most people that should be enough.

Neely Quinn: So even the Austrian team doesn’t have their athletes do that?

Jorg Verhoeven: I don’t know. I guess some, at the end of the training period, use weight vests for certain power exercises. If you can do ten one-armers then why not take a weight vest and try if you can do a one-armer with ten kilo extra? It’s very dangerous for your fingers if you boulder with a weight vest. It kind of messes up your coordination and I don’t think it’s really necessary.

Neely Quinn: In the second month you said that you’re doing max power. Can you describe what that looks like?

Jorg Verhoeven: That’s where we’re at right now. That’s basically where you move from slow and not really bouldering-coordinated exercises to real bouldering. We’re basically doing a lot more units a week or days a week where we’re just doing plain bouldering days.

Neely Quinn: Just bouldering on the hardest boulders that you can.

Jorg Verhoeven: Exactly. You can vary as much as you want. What I find very helpful is, for example, you create a certain move which you think is possible for you but you can’t do it at first and you try it a bunch. You try it as much as possible and eventually you can do it and then you make a boulder into it and see if you can still do it. I try to be as inventive as possible so that training doesn’t get boring. If I would do the same exercises week after week then motivation would just slightly go down. You’ll be just doing the exercises for doing the exercises, not because it’s fun, and that doesn’t really help the training. It’s much more effective if something is new or something is teasing you a little. [laughs]  I kind of try to/it helps if there’s other people around. I mean, a good boulder session is the best training session there is. Two or three hours of plain bouldering – I wouldn’t see a better training done than a good session.

Neely Quinn: A couple questions: when you’re making these boulder problems are you guys putting holds on the wall or are you just using what’s there?

Jorg Verhoeven: We’ve got one gym in Innsbruck which is pretty old. It used to be very futuristic but it’s not anymore. It’s very famous, especially in Europe. A lot of people come here to train, especially just before the competition season. At first they come here and they laugh because it’s such a famous gym and it kinda produced so many strong climbers and then they see it and it’s kinda small and shitty. It’s a very small place, especially the bouldering. It’s very limited, like, it’s not high enough. I think it’s just over three meters high so if you do two long moves then you’re already at the top, which kinda sucks. We try and create/we try and make the best out of it and it helps us well that there’s several trainers in Innsbruck. The main Austrian competition climbers – most of them are based in Innsbruck. The trainers are also there and the guy who owns the gym used to be one of those trainers so he’s very motivated to work with the Federation to try and create this place into a training base which is most effective as possible. We, yes, we try and help/there’s no route setting. We just have a bouldering room with as much holds on it as possible.

Neely Quinn: Oh.

Jorg Verhoeven: If we would set boulder problems like in the States we would have way too little stuff to do. We don’t have a lot of surface so what we do is the walls we have, we just put a shit ton of holds on them. Volumes, every type of holds – it’s basically like a lot of Japanese gyms. They’re similar. They’re just completely full of holds and then everybody can just make up boulder problems. There’s endless possibilities of making up new problems and I think twice a year we renew the whole thing. There’s no set or taped boulder problems at all, which can be a little shitty for the average amateur climber but I guess that’s a lesser problem that Innsbruck has.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. [laughs] That’s totally different than what we’re used to.

Jorg Verhoeven: It’s very useful. I’ve climbed in a lot of gyms around the world. I mean, Boulder has five gyms which are awesome, just bouldering gyms, but on the other hand I think one gym like the one we have can be as good as five gyms in different settings. If there’s set boulder problems eventually, after a couple of weeks and you’ve tried them all, you can do the ones you can do and the other ones you can still try but they’re still the same boulder problems. We keep creating new problems. I think it’s very effective to have at least a bouldering room where, like, CATS in Boulder is a good example.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. I know that a lot of people, when they’re training on boulders or trying to build endurance or build up volume, they’re timing themselves. They’re doing circuits so they’re timing their rests and maybe even time themselves on the wall. Do you ever use a stopwatch?

Jorg Verhoeven: Very little, actually. I do a lot on just gut feeling but maybe that’s mainly because I don’t know a lot about training theory. I haven’t read books on it. I don’t think there’s adequate books on climbing training. I mean, there’s obviously some but there’s so little. We’re not a big sport where there’s a ton of science behind it, you know? A lot of people have written books on climbing training but I think that was, a lot of times, based on gut feeling or the experiences they’ve had with other climbers or themselves.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yes, sometimes I use a stopwatch but I think it’s nicer to keep it a little loose and if you feel like a break, you take a break and if you’re doing circuits and, for example, you’ve got a partner or two partners and they’re doing the same exercise you can create your break just by the time they’re climbing. That kind of works as well.

Neely Quinn: During the second month, which you’re in right now, are you doing any campusing or finger strength?

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, but finger strength, like I said, campusing is incredibly important, especially for bouldering. I like to create a quick, explosive power. Finger strength, of course, is one of the main issues in bouldering. You need to have a decent finger strength but, at the same time, it’s very dangerous to try and improve on finger strength because of finger injuries. I’ve had my fair share. I’ve got pretty thin, piano-like fingers and they’re kinda – I get injured pretty quickly. If I hang on a campus board a lot, you know these Beastmakers and stuff that everybody works with, I’d love to work with it, but I’m a little anxious that I’ll mess up my fingers. I try to keep the power exercises just fixed on an actual climbing wall. Part of that is also because our campus board is pretty shitty. It’s actually really shitty. We can just do two moves and then we’re at the top. We’ve got very little space. I think there’s a new gym coming up and I think a lot of stuff will change but right now, the stuff we’re doing is a lot of the times just on an actual climbing wall.

Neely Quinn: The third month is endurance, you said. Can you explain a little bit about that?

Jorg Verhoeven: It really depends on your goals, again. If you’re training for a lead competition then obviously you’re going to climb on routes. If you’re training for a bouldering competition or bouldering on a rock it doesn’t mean you don’t want to do any endurance. I mean, also on rock you’re going to do longer boulder problems and if you just do one-movers in training then you’re going to suck outside, except on those one-movers maybe. All the stuff that you do in that month or month and a half of maximum power and endurance is going to relate directly to what you’re training for. If I take the bouldering World Cup season, which is one of the goals I train for, then we do stuff like “bouldering sessions,” we call it. It’s just a small, maybe half an hour long, small, little session where you try and recreate a bouldering comp. You’ve got five minutes of climbing and you’ve got five minutes of rest and in those five minutes of climbing you’re going to do three to four attempts on bouldering problems which have maybe six to ten moves. You can recreate that one-to-one in your gym. If you take, for example, a boulder problem you know already, then you can do it. Either you can set a clock or, like I said, you can work with somebody else. Give that boulder problem four tries, take five minutes of rest, and the next five minutes change to another problem. That gives you a certain ability of doing several good attempts within five minutes which, of course, you don’t need for rock climbing so if you’re going to boulder on rock then your training is going to look totally differently.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, you’re building up fitness that way.

Jorg Verhoeven: Exactly. You really need to adjust, I guess it’s obvious, but it just becomes hard if you’re training with different goals at the same time. I want to be fit for the World Cup season but at the same time I’ve got some projects on rock routes. I want to go to Yosemite and then all of a sudden you’ve got a mix of different abilities you need to train.

Neely Quinn: So if you were training for routes – do you guys have routes in your gym? Just boulders?

Jorg Verhoeven: That’s one of the reasons why a lot of people come to this gym. We have pretty good walls. It’s 60 meters high so, I don’t know, maybe 25 feet? It’s not huge but we can set a lot of really, really hard routes on it. By a lot, I mean 20 to 30 from 5.13-plus onwards. It’s very rare for a gym where there’s actually routes that are 5.15 but there are so many climbers in Innsbruck that kind of need those routes for their training that they actually are at the gym. It’s a very unique position. I’m very glad I can train at this gym because I don’t know a lot of other gyms where it’s similar.

Neely Quinn: No, I mean even in Boulder…

Jorg Verhoeven: Even in Boulder – they’ve got some very good – I love Movement. It’s a beautiful gym but at the same time it’s a commercial gym and it just doesn’t make sense for a commercial gym to have, like, ten 5.14s in the gym.

Neely Quinn: Will you guys do repeaters on routes? Or, not repeaters, but two and three?

Jorg Verhoeven: It’s similar to bouldering training. There’s a ton of exercises but it’s mainly just/what I’ve found really important is just good project tries. A route that you know you can do you just give it one good go. If you fall then you try to get back up and climb from your high point. Do that twice and then half an hour rest and then give another go, maybe on another route. It doesn’t really matter. It makes you adjust to climbing at your limit because if you only climb routes that are relatively easy for you, just that you’re always going to do, you’re training endurance but at the same time you’re training endurance at a very confident level. You need to be able to climb well at the very limit that those last couple of moves, where you’re actually going to fall but you can still do some stuff. That’s what really counts on competitions. To be able to battle against those last couple of moves.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Jorg Verhoeven: Then, of course, a general fitness for route climbing you need to have much more volume to be able to train much more. For bouldering – bouldering is so much more power/power-based. It’s so much shorter that the actual hours of training can be reduced to very little. I know some climbers who train, like, ten, 15 hours a week, which is not that much. For route climbing, if you want to be top of the world on competitions that’s not going to happen. You’re gonna train a lot more than that.

Neely Quinn: Do you do any cardio outside of just climbing fitness?

Jorg Verhoeven: No. Well, it’s a yes and no because I’m a highly motivated amateur alpinist. I just love to be out there. Whatever happens in the mountains, I always like it. A lot of times I hike a lot or go ski or climb a mountain or whatever. I have a general fitness but it’s not in the sense that I go running every week. I hate running. I can’t stand it. It gets me so aggressive and it’s similar to a fitness centers or something. It’s nothing that I ever work with.

Neely Quinn: So you do it but just for fun.

Jorg Verhoeven: Yeah, I have a certain level which is, I guess, high enough. It could be higher. Maybe it would help me but it’s always you have a certain energy. For example, if you take one week you have a certain amount of energy and you have to divide it. You can’t do everything. It’s the same with training of antagonists. It would be really nice if you could train all these antagonists – is that the word? Antagonist? It’s very, for prophylaxis of injuries it would be amazing if you could train the major antagonists. It almost just takes a certain energy you could spend on getting stronger on the muscles you’re actually using for climbing. You need to find a balance on staying healthy and not get injured, to not get into a big disbalance. If you really have a disbalance then you probably need to train or do something with your antagonists because if not, you’re going to get injured.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Jorg Verhoeven: But at the same time all of these side branches like cardio and the stuff that you actually don’t directly need for the training for your goal, they’re nice if you can do them but they kind of take away a part of the training that helps you directly.

Neely Quinn: I wanted to ask you about looking forward. What are you training for right now? Like, what are you looking forward to?

Jorg Verhoeven: My problem is I love to do so many different types of the sport that I always have problems with time, like, I want to do this at the same time I want to do that. You can’t do everything. That’s my main problem. It’s similar with training. I can’t train for everything at the same time but the training I’ve done the last couple of years makes you fit into a lot of different directions. With this training I can prepare myself for the World Cups but at the same time I can be as fit I want to be for rock routes. I’m going to Spain tomorrow for ten days just to try some endurance routes. I’ll see how that goes but I’m pretty sure I can still climb 5.14 or 5.14-plus with this training. I can go into a lot of different directions, which is really nice for me. I train not for one single purpose. If I would train only for, one single example, competitions and the competitions wouldn’t go well then the next year my motivation for the same training would be a lot lower. Like this, I force myself more. I spend four months in the gym basically and then the rest of the year I can have fun and be fit. Not always, I mean eventually you’re going to get less and less fit but that’s not the point. I can do a World Cup season and afterwards I’m still fit enough to make a bouldering trip to Australia, like we did last year, or to America. In Fall I can go to Yosemite and I can still gain/have that fitness from those months of training at the beginning of the year. It’s an investment for the entire year.

Neely Quinn: Right. It seems to be working for you.

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, it’s well worth it I guess. Right now I’m still very motivated to do this training. Sometimes it’s not always as fun as you want it to be but, at the same time, you’re always thinking on the goals that you want to achieve that you’re actually training for and that really helps. Especially if it’s a lot of different goals.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, which you seem to have. [laughs]

Jorg Verhoeven: [laughs] Yeah. That’s the main problem. I want to do too much stuff at the same time.

Neely Quinn: Well, it’s inspirational and I appreciate you being so forthcoming with your training and your experiences.

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, you know, like I said it’s not that big a secret. I don’t think we’re doing much that other people couldn’t be doing or don’t do already.

Neely Quinn: It sounds like you, for one, as opposed to a lot of people out there who are already doing weights and they’re on the fingerboard and they’re on the campus board, you seem to be one of those people who seem to be like, “If you just climb, and you’re smart about the way you are on the wall, then you can do whatever you want.”

Jorg Verhoeven: Well, I’m not saying that there’s not more roads to the same goal. I mean, everybody has their own training and I guess the more experience you have in training then the more you can train specifically for a certain type of goal and it will be more effective. If you have several years of experience, if you know you’re body already, if you know how you’re going to react to a certain type of training I’m pretty sure there’s several ways of achieving a similar fitness.

Neely Quinn: Well, in any case, I appreciate it and I’m gonna let you go now. Thank you very much for being on the show and talking to me.

Jorg Verhoeven: All right. No worries!

Neely Quinn: All right. I’ll talk to you soon.

Jorg Verhoeven: Thanks a lot. Okay.

Neely Quinn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Jorg. You can find him on Instagram and Facebook. He’s pretty active on Instagram so you can see some pretty sweet photos of what he’s been doing. Thanks, Jorg, for the interview.

Next week, or maybe this week, I have an interview – it’s not an interview, it’s a monologue, from myself on weight loss for climbing or just weight loss in general. That will be coming out. It’s just a short podcast episode. I was supposed to have an interview with Aicacia Young, who is a registered dietician and she wrote the nutrition ebook for our site but she had car trouble so I figured I would take the time and just talk about nutrition myself. Stay tuned for that.

Let’s see, what else do we have going on? If you want more training help for your own climbing goals we can definitely help you with that. We have programs for everybody. We have a power endurance program that has had quite a bit of success with people and I wanted to just read you something from a guy named Ben who used our six-week power endurance program. He says, “Hi, Neely. TrainingBeta has been extremely beneficial to me. I had no idea how to train for climbing besides some basic four-by-four workouts and I was having a hard time getting over the 5.10 grade for a couple years. Since doing your six-week power endurance program I am leading 5.11s and top roping 5.12a’s and I’m feeling a lot more confident in my ability to keep improving. TrainingBeta is definitely worth every penny and I highly recommend it to everyone I meet at the gym and the crag. You guys are awesome. Ben.” Thank you, Ben! I really appreciate that and I’m super happy to hear when anybody has success with our training programs because we try to make them as user-friendly and as fun and as varied as possible so you don’t get bored, and you actually have success. You can go to www.trainingbeta.com and you can go to climbing-training-programs or you can just find the training programs all over the site.

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I hope that they help you as much as they’ve helped Ben and I think that’s it for this week. Thanks for listening to the end and if you want to give me a review on iTunes I would love that. I will talk to you soon!

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