[laughs] But I was really in love with ice climbing and South Fork was really kind of new on the map back then and I really just – I don’t know – it just became my passion so I was like, “I’m going to move and I’m going to climb every moment I can get,” and everything kind of started from there.

Through the years I’ve put up over a hundred first ascents in the South Fork and other places in the country and it just kind of went from there, I guess.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright. So would you consider yourself just an ice climber? Or do you do any other kind of climbing?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I would consider myself, for the most part, just an ice climber/alpine climber. Really, I do rock climb but I would never consider myself a rock climber because I actually would prefer not to rock climb, believe it or not, unless I have tools in my hand. I shouldn’t say it so much like that. It’s just that when ice climbing kind of ends and alpine season kind of ends, I’m really psyched to just not be on a rope and I get really excited to kayak, and so kayaking kind of becomes my spring/summer sport. I kind of do that with the same passion and I’ve kind of – I love it. I love just going to these new places I’ve never been, that people have never been to. That’s kind of the same passion that I have with ice climbing, kind of that adventure piece.

I’ve done a bunch of different first ascents across Wyoming and a bunch of other states and so summertime kind of becomes a paddling season. As soon as that kind of dries-up, I do kind of start rock climbing and get myself focused back to being on a rope and things like that, but I would not – there’s other things I guess I would choose to go do before I went to go rock climb. It’s also one of the things I’ve found that I have to do more to continue to push myself in the mixed climbing realm, so it has helped me a lot, and part of the training that I do is definitely more rock climbing. I am starting to enjoy it more, and I used to rock climb a lot, before I started kayaking. It’s just that kayaking kind of took over.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve never ice climbed but it seems like you’d have to use similar muscles and techniques as with climbing, but it’s certainly not exactly the same. Can you describe the differences and similarities between the two? And you just said that you’ve been training, or it’s something that you have to train more, in order to improve in your mixed climbing. Can you describe a little bit more about that?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, you know, I think I used to not rock climb at all very much and so when ice climbing season comes around, I had to really get used to being on a rope again, you know? It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing in the form that I don’t really get complacent, ever, which I think a lot of climbers do and accidents start to happen from there. When I start climbing, usually there will be two or three months that have passed since I’ve tied into a rope, so I’m looking at my rope and figuring out how to tie in again and I’m thinking about everything again. I get to an anchor and I’m thinking about everything again. It kind of resets the head that way, and I really enjoy that piece of it because I think it kind of keeps me a little bit sharp.

The training piece <unclear> it definitely just ties into getting better. When you’re mixed climbing and you’re upside down, it’s getting better at clipping, which seems – for some reason, when I ice climb it doesn’t seem like much at all but you know, when there’s all these other things going on and a lot of dynamic movement, which I wouldn’t say there is always in the ice climbing piece, just normal clipping and hanging off of a weird piece or tool is definitely something that’s pretty important. Getting used to being above gear and getting used to falling, that, for me, is probably one of the most important pieces for me to push myself. Mixed climbing is just getting used to falling because the sport of ice climbing – you don’t fall. It’s just not/it’s never an option and it’s never something you want to think about.

The limited times I’ve fallen on ice, each time I’ve never wanted to do it again and one of those times I put an ice axe into my bicep and I was six miles in the middle of nowhere. I was pretty stubborn and I was younger back then. I/we actually ended up staying where we were at because it was a newer area and there was a bunch of new ice climbs to get done, so every morning it just felt like someone had shot me in my arm. I’d try to stretch it back out and by the time my adrenaline was running, it was the last thing I thought about. Three days later I came back out and then went to the doctor and had it fixed and cleaned up and everything else, but you just don’t want to fall. In mixed climbing, if you want to push yourself, you’ve really got to be willing to take some falls and be okay with it. Rock climbing has definitely helped me with that and with trusting that everything is going to work the way it’s supposed to, but there’s just – you know, when all you do is ice climb you’re just not comfortable to fall. I just don’t want to, and your mindset is totally different.

 

Neely Quinn: But in mixed climbing, it’s going to happen more often that you’re going to fall?

 

Aaron Mulkey: For sure. For sure. Especially when you’re mixed climbing and you’re climbing on bolts. When you’re sport mixed climbing, it’s going to happen. When you push yourself, it’s going to happen for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so I have a lot of questions for you. I’m going to back up just a little here. How old are you? I’m trying to do the math and I think you’re 37 or 38?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, very close – 39.

 

Neely Quinn: 39. Okay, and so you started climbing in the 90s, so in your teens?

 

Aaron Mulkey: No, I started climbing/I first started rock climbing when I was 20, so it was 1997 maybe? Something like that? I’m not sure if the math works on that but I’m pretty sure it’s about when it was, when a buddy first started taking me out rock climbing. Then I ice climbed very soon within that same year, I believe, and I really fell in love with the ice climbing piece, and I moved to Cody in ‘99.

 

Neely Quinn: I read somewhere you’re from San Diego?

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s funny.

 

Aaron Mulkey: I was born in San Diego and grew up most of my life in Fresno, California, which rock climbers are like, “Oh! The rock climbing must have been great!” I didn’t even know of rock climbing. I mean, I knew it happened but most of my life was spent/my childhood was spent hunting and fishing and hiking with my family, and that was pretty much it.

I didn’t rock climb until I moved to Colorado in 1995 and went with a buddy I worked with. He was like, “Hey, you should come rock climbing,” and I was working in Boulder, Colorado, and I was like, “Oh, okay, I’ll try it.” I ended up kind of being this guy’s – I didn’t know it at the time, but I ended up kind of being this guy’s belay buddy. I was drug up some stuff I had no business being on. My third time rock climbing he drug me up Hallett’s Peak, which is a 1000-foot face that’s there, that was 5.9 if I remember right. We were hanging belays and stuff and I’m thinking, “Gah, what am I doing?”

 

Neely Quinn: That sounds terrible.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, I was like, “Alright.” I just didn’t know any better. I was just like, “This is what it is,” and little did I know, that summer I got to tick off some really cool classics. I just didn’t know any better, but that’s who I was to this guy. [laughs] That was interesting. Lots of other stories there, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: So you kind of went from that to – it seems you found your niche pretty quickly with ice climbing.

 

Aaron Mulkey: I did, and I don’t know why it was specifically ice climbing and what is was specific about ice climbing that I fell in love with. I think it was I have always enjoyed winter and I’ve always enjoyed just kind of adventure in itself. When I was a kid I would always try to go to places that I didn’t think other people had gone to. My dad was very similar to that. We would go quail hunting and we would drive for hours and go to this place and then we would hike for hours, and I was thinking, “Dad, what are we doing? This sucks.” But obviously, I kind of had a passion for that. For my dad, I think it was kind of more about going to these places that he didn’t think other people had gone to versus so much of the hunting piece. So much was just sharing that whole experience with me and I think that’s kind of ended up evolving to where I’m at today, which is my passion is definitely finding new things and going to places that maybe people haven’t been.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s kind of what I got from you when I read about you a little bit on the internet. You really like being in solitude, basically, finding places that you feel like other people haven’t been or doing routes that you feel like other people haven’t done and going out and exploring, where other people just might go to routes that have been done a million times. How much of that is your love for ice climbing, and climbing in general?

 

Aaron Mulkey: You know, I think it’s probably 90% to be honest. I think if I lived somewhere that didn’t have the exploration that I have in my backyard today, I don’t know that I would ice climb as much. I would still love it. To go out and do it and be with friends, but there’s no doubt that what drives me is going to these places and finding them. Some days you don’t ever climb and you just hike, but there’s no doubt that’s where my passion lies.

I think some of it, it’s also kind of mental for me as well. I get worked up about stuff in my head. If I know this really fantastic, big water ice 6 that people have raved about and it’s super hard, or it’s a super hard mixed ice thing, it kind of gets in my head. I’m just kind of like “Oh, you’re not going to be good enough to do that,” or I doubt myself, but there’s something about going and chasing something that’s never been done. None of that happens – you get there and you’re like, “I’m gonna do this,” and you figure it out. I can stay pretty mentally strong that way and it’s been something I’ve had to work through the years, to not get worked up about routes that I know people have done. It’s been kind of a training process for me as well.

 

Neely Quinn: Like, to not get super competitive?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Not necessarily competitive, just, I doubt myself sometimes. Like, you know, you’re just not going to be able to do it. You’re just not going to be successful with it. Somebody else has had this horror story with it and that’s going to happen. It’s kind of this weird mental game that I have with myself.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I mean obviously you’ve overcome that many times.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yes, I have, but it’s still there. It’s not like/it’s still always kind of in the back of my mind. One thing that’s definitely helped me with it is training. Training’s definitely been the thing that’s helped me take my climbing to the next level from the physical standpoint but, without a doubt, the mental standpoint as well.

 

Neely Quinn: So, I’m going to give you an opportunity here to brag about yourself. Honestly, I’m not that familiar with the ice climbing scene and I don’t think a ton of my audience is, either, so are there many people in the United States that are at your level of ice climbing?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Um, yeah. Oh yeah. I think there’s a good, more than a handful of people that are definitely really strong ice climbers. I think the hard part these days is the grading of ice climbing is just all over the place. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: Why’s that?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I don’t know. Things are just incredibly overrated and maybe I’m just old school. The grading system is just kind of outdated. There’s really not much difference there. The difference between water ice 5 and water ice 6 is huge, or it used to be huge, but now it’s really small and I see things that people say are water ice 6 and to me are easy water ice 5, or something like that. There’s just everybody’s idea of what it is and maybe mine’s wrong. Maybe what I think is water ice 5 is water ice 6. I don’t know, you know? The ratings are just kind of all over the place.

I think for me, it’s the climbing that I do – I think maybe some people would say the climbing that I do is kind of sketchy. I’ve climbed pillars or things that weren’t as solid as what other people would like and for sure my risk tolerance is probably much greater than others that are out there that ice climb. Probably I trust ice more than I probably should but I think as you put the amount of time and years on it that I have, I’ve kind of grown to kind of understand the ice a little bit better and know what’s good and what’s bad. Also, just trying to figure out the difference between me wanting something and is the risk worth it, and kind of working through that.

The mixed climbing is where I think it really separates the people as well because the mixed climbing is kind of the revolution of ice climbing. That has just really gone upwards really fast. The ratings are probably the same thing there that are going on with the ratings – what’s M15 or M13? There’s a whole other rating scale for that.

I think there’s definitely a good handful of really strong ice climbers that are out there. The thing that just separates me from others is definitely the uniqueness of going out and searching for new stuff. The first ascents is usually what separates me, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: So you’ve spent a lot of time even up in the air, like in helicopters or something? What do you do to go up in the air to find new routes?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, I have a couple of different buddies that have taken me up in their airplanes and, basically, it’s kind of a little Piper Cub. Basically what you would see in the smaller airplanes that people fly in Alaska. They’re super lightweight, very maneuverable, so you can get down into these canyons and see things that you can’t see if you’re in even a smaller jet plane, or even just a smaller prop plane. You can really kind of get around in the mountains and see.

Where I live, there’s just very few roads and there’s a lot of mountains with big, deep canyons and the terrain really kind of serves itself, the way that it’s as steep as it is. It’s also kind of volcanic. There’s just a lot of ice formations and a lot of places – I mean, I can think of places now where I still haven’t gotten to touch, and they’re really incredible places, but they’re 10 miles out in the middle of nowhere and just to get into them would take you days. They’re still on my list. I just haven’t gotten to get to them.

The other piece there is that the ice just kind of comes and goes. The main South Fork Valley sits at about 6,000 feet and the weather there can be 40°/50° in the wintertime and then the next it’s 10° so there’s this freeze/thaw that happens. There are plenty of things I’ve climbed that was probably climbable for one, maybe two days, and then it’s gone and it’s never been seen again. When you’re out there and you can kind of have the eye to look for these things, or you’ve seen it and it’s kind of starting to drip, and then it’s gone – there’ve been things that I’ve chased for years and I’ve never gotten them. There’s still things that I chase.

 

Neely Quinn: I find that so fascinating. You said there was this one climb you were talking about in an interview and you said, “Who knows? We may not see this climb again for 20 years.” I had never even thought about that. With rock climbs, they’re just there.

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Yeah. That’s kind of the cool uniqueness about it as well. A lot of the ice that’s here, it doesn’t get a lot of traffic so when you’re climbing on it, even if it does come in every year, you’re going to feel like the first one ever up it because you’re just not going to see the pick marks or where someone’s kicked into it or put screws into it. You’re not going to see anything like that.

 

Neely Quinn: Right, which makes it seem like a completely different climb once those things aren’t there, right?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Oh yeah, for sure. I think with climbing, a lot of people come to Cody and they feel like everything is kind of sandbagged [laughs] and the big difference is like, in Colorado and the other places that have high traffic, the ice starts to kind of look like a ladder. There are pick marks and you can kind of, well, then you’re just kind of hooking and stepping your way up versus here you’ve really got to work your way up. The ice doesn’t have any of those features built into it because it doesn’t get the traffic.

 

Neely Quinn: So does it get a different grade the first time that it’s climbed every year?

 

Aaron Mulkey: It doesn’t, no. That’s definitely one of the things. It doesn’t get – the more traffic doesn’t lessen the grade at all, which in many cases it definitely should, because you’re just hooking your way up the ice climb and you’re not having to make pick holds or footholds for yourself as you go up. It changes the grades tremendously, but what we really grade ice on is really just kind of the steepness of it and then what the gear is like, as well.

 

Neely Quinn: Tell me about your hardest ice climb. Can you describe it, like, what the route was like? And I don’t necessarily mean by numbers, just what the hardest thing for you was.

 

Aaron Mulkey: You know, one of the ones that probably comes to the top of my mind is a thing I called The Gambler. It basically – two weeks prior to actually climbing it, I found it. You’ve got to climb three or four pitches of ice and about 1,500/2,000 feet of terrain to get to it. Once you get to it/once we found it, it was this pretty skinny pillar that went up for 100 feet and then it kind of went into the ceiling of the rock, then another pillar was out in front of that that was free hanging. Then another one that kind of attached to that, and then another big hanging pillar that wasn’t touching in front of that. If you climbed the pillar, then you would hop on to this other hanging dagger, then you’d hop on to one more, and hop on to the final dagger that took you to the top. By the time you got to the final dagger, you were hanging on that final dagger and looking back towards the pillar, you were about 15-18 feet out from the pillar that you originally started on. You were kind of going out a roof of ice, if you will.

When I found it, it was barely touching. You could put your arms around it at the bottom. It just wasn’t safe at that point in time, so a week later I went there and we were late in the day. By this time in the day it was actually pouring with water but I just wanted it so badly that I thought I could get out of the water pretty quickly and so I climbed it. It was pretty thin. It was probably about, maybe, two body widths wide and it kinda got a little bit fatter as you got to the top. It really was kind of a no-fall zone. You just did not want to fall on it, because it was a small pillar and the gear was so-so.

Unfortunately, by the time when I got to the roof, where these other daggers of ice had started to form – really that’s when things were going to get pretty physical – I was soaked. Just absolutely soaking wet. My boots were/you could just feel the pouring water out of my boots and I started to kind of go hypothermic a little bit. I was just super cold. I ended up putting three screws in, right at the roof of the ice where it was attached, and ended up lowering off. I quickly got out of there before I got hypothermic.

I came back a week later and it had gotten a little bit bigger. I remember thinking, like, “You know what? I’m just going to start at the bottom and put as little amount of gear as possible,” because it really wasn’t going to matter at the end of it anyways, and I was going to get to those two screws that I had left at the top, because they should be really solid, right? And then I could start the traverse out. I could really be efficient that way. I remember I raced up the pillar and I got to those screws and they were, like, melted out. I just pulled them out with my hand. Just the solar/the sun on that metal created this little hole on that metal so they just pulled right out. I was able to put those in and get onto the dagger, then move to the other dagger, and then move to the final dagger.

I remember being on the final dagger thinking – at this point I was 15 feet out from the pillar I had first started on – I was just thinking, “I cannot fall.” I had just done this massive – the gear I had in the roof as I first started onto the pillars was decent, but it was still ice screws. For every ice screw you know that’s held somebody, somebody else could talk about one that had failed. I was so pumped out of my mind that I was just concentrating, holding onto one tool with both of my hands, looking at my hands, telling myself to hold on because they were just so pumped. It’s like when rock climbers, when you go to the gym and you’re so pumped you can’t hold onto jugs anymore. You’re, like, staring at it going, “Just hold on!” That was kind of the same feeling I had but I was a long ways out from screws in a no-fall place.

I was able to manage my way to get to the top and I remember it took, like, 25 minutes to a half hour before I could even rappel back off of it.

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Because you had to collect yourself.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, I had to collect myself and I just couldn’t grip anything. I had pushed so far past that pump that it was just painful. It was really painful. That was definitely one of the more memorable sends that I’ve had, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it sounds like a really physical and very mental send.

 

Aaron Mulkey: For sure, and I think in ice climbing, when you’re taking things on into the upper ranges of ice climbing, the mental game is just as strong as the physical game, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, and that’s what I want to talk to you about next. You just described yourself earlier as being very stubborn. It seems like that’s a quality you would have to have in order to be a successful ice climber and a person who spends hours out in the cold, looking for these routes and sometimes not even being able to climb because you don’t find anything. Tell me about that part of yourself, and do you think that that sets you apart?

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Yeah, I’m sure all of my partners would agree that I’m stubborn. Sometimes, I would like to think that I’m not stubborn but I definitely, probably, am. I get focused on something and definitely want to make it happen. I would say that, for sure, my determination and my willingness to maybe go and hike for an entire day and never find anything is much greater than others’, but I think that a lot of people don’t have a whole lot of time or whatever it might be. If they have a day to go ice climbing, they’re going to go ice climbing, right? They know that that things in, so why wouldn’t they go to that? It’s there, whereas for me, I would rather go to something that hasn’t been done or take the chance of hiking for a day and not finding anything, or you find something new and it’s great and that four-hour hike is your reward for doing very well.

My willingness to just kind of go out on a limb is much greater than others’, for sure, and the stubbornness to just kind of continue to push around the next corner and push another canyon past the last guy is definitely there.

 

Neely Quinn: So where do you think that comes from? Do you know?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I don’t know. I really don’t. I wish/I think my dad was somewhat like that. That’s the only thing I can kind of tie it back to is just – I remember being young and never being big into hiking or anything like that, and my dad would just force me to do it. He was always kind of stubborn about it and he would never let me let up on anything, whether it was with sports – I was big into soccer and there was times when I just didn’t want to deal with things, and he was pretty/he always pushed me. Never too – he would push me in a really good way, it wasn’t like “This is what you’re going to do and there’s nothing else. You’re going to do it.” It was really positive reinforcement that I needed and it’s the only thing I can figure that’s tied into the way that I am today, to just push beyond and push myself more than somebody else might.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s interesting. So it wasn’t like he was pushing you and saying, “If you don’t do this, you’re grounded,” or something. He was like, “You can do this, and you should do this.”

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, it was definitely a positive reinforcement, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Cool. I just think that that’s a trait that a lot of successful people have, is stubbornness. I think a lot of people want to cultivate more of it and it seems like you have it very naturally, so…

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: It seems to be working for you. The other thing that I wanted to ask you about is work, because I know you have a – do you have a full time job?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I do have a full time job, I do.

 

Neely Quinn: So it’s 40ish hours a week, or more?

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Gosh, I would love if it would just be 40 hours. It would be great. I’m a vice-president of operations and sales for a large healthcare company. I manage about 300 employees across the western US, and travel, I don’t know, I probably travel about 50% of the time so that keeps me on my toes. Work-wise, I do work from home.

It’s a great job because there’s definitely times where it becomes a bit much and in my recent position that I’m in right now, it’s definitely I’ve gotta be really smart about how I work, and smart about also trying to work my training into that, because it becomes so easy to just push training to the side. I also know for me, mentally, I’ve got to have that piece to kind of step away from it and make the time because I’m also more efficient at my work and even happier at my work when I know that I’ve got my training done for the day, or I’ve gotten a weekend in or a three-day weekend in and I’m really kind of focused in on ‘Alright, let’s get some work done and get back to it.’ So…

 

Neely Quinn: So that’s actually really impressive, that you work that much and that you have what seems like it could be a very stressful job, like, a lot of pressure having to manage that many people and travel.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, yeah, it is. I think, for me, climbing has become an addiction, because it’s the only time that I really don’t think about it at all. I can totally – when I go out climbing for a weekend or whatever it might be, I don’t think about work. It’s gone. It’s a full break mentally. I don’t think about it and so when I return to it, I do feel pretty refreshed to kind of get the work done. It’s a huge mental break. My wife, she’ll know in the summertimes because I’ve got to find my outlets once kayak season kind of ends. I hate to say it, but I’ve got to find that adrenaline piece to kind of keep me, but it does. If I don’t have that adventure or something that gets my mind fully focused on it, I just kind of/the work stress does start to creep up on me.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and for me, I don’t know if it’s like this for you, but it seems like the farther away I get from normalcy, the more I’m able to put it to the side. So like, if I go camping for the weekend as opposed to staying home for the weekend. Is that part of what drives you to go so far out there into the woods?

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Probably. I would imagine some of that’s there and I think it’s also, for me, I kind of like just going somewhere where I don’t know what I’m going to get myself into. You know? It’s just an adventurous spirit that I’ve got. My kayaking buddies get in and go – I have kayaking buddies that’ll just complain about it all the time, and my climbing buddies will also complain. They just all complain about it but they love it when we’re successful, and I would definitely say that my success rate of random missions has gotten much better in recent years.

It is funny, because I am kind of/they definitely are not built the same way. If you give them the choice to go climb the ice climb that’s the classic and go hike with me and maybe climb something for a day, they’re always going to choose the other. There’s not a lot of partners around here so they don’t really have a choice most of the time, which is kind of a good thing. It gets tough sometimes because your partners aren’t always motivated to go do that, and it’s a small town. I don’t actually climb with anybody that even lives here locally. People that I climb with are either in Montana or Colorado or other places that they come. I’ve kind of got a good group of people that there’s always somebody that’s willing and psyched.

 

Neely Quinn: You must have little fear of the unknown. You must be really comfortable with the unknown, which is something I’ve struggled with even in climbing, where you’re throwing to a hold and you don’t know what it is. It’s too scary to even make yourself do it, but you’re just, like, throwing yourself at these routes that are unknown, day-by-day, and going into places where you have no idea where you are. I commend you. I just want to say that. [laughs]

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, it’s interesting, for sure, because I definitely would prefer the unknown over the known every single day, every moment I would get the chance. I wish I could put my finger on exactly how that was created in my mind, that that is the choice to make, but for some reason it is.

 

Neely Quinn: I’m just going to stop here for a moment and let you guys know a little bit more about Rab, which is a clothing and equipment company out of the UK that’s actually a sponsor of Aaron Mulkey. I have their Neutrino jacket, which is a big puffy jacket. I have found that nothing even comes close to how comfortable and warm this jacket is. I’ve tried. I have bought other jackets and taken them back because they didn’t even come close. That’s the Neutrino jacket, and they have all other kinds of smaller jackets, rainproof jackets, windproof jackets, pants, shirts, shorts and, like I said, sleeping bags and tents. They’re kind of our one-stop shop for a lot of clothing and equipment for climbers.

They are being super generous with you guys, my faithful podcast listeners, and they’re giving you guys 20% off of everything, which is unprecedented for them. If you want to check out their stuff, go to www.trainingbeta.com/rab. I hope you enjoy their stuff as much as I do, and we’ll get back to the interview now.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, well, moving along, do you have kids? You said you have a wife. Do you have kids?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I do. I have two kids. I have a 13-year old and a 15-year old. I’ve had a divorce in my past and they live in Virginia Beach, and so they spend pretty much most of the summer with me, and the holidays, I think things like that. This last spring break my son – he’s getting 15 so hanging out with Dad isn’t quite as cool. I keep trying to tell him, “You know, other kids your age think I’m pretty cool,” but he still doesn’t believe me. In fact, I signed a poster the other month ago for a kid at some ice festival and my wife took a picture of me and this kid and I sent it to my son. I was like, “See? There’s kids your age that think I’m cool.” He just doesn’t believe it.

 

Neely Quinn: He was like, “You paid that kid. C’mon, Dad.”

 

Aaron Mulkey: Exactly, but my daughter – so, she came out and we went ice climbing and she loves it. I was like, “It’s probably not the spring break your friends got to go on. You got to go hang out in the cold all weekend,” but so… I really try to instill the same stuff that was instilled into me, and really get them out to go do the things that I love to do, and it took me awhile. Sometimes my kids didn’t really want to go do it. They would complain about it and they were kind of like my climbing partners. I had the idea, they would complain about it, then we would go do it and get back and they’d be like, “Okay, that was really great. I’m glad we did it.”

I’ve figured out that I’ve just got to push them a little bit through that and once I get them there, get them on the trail or get them climbing, then they enjoy it. The funny part is my daughter really loves rock climbing and so does my wife, so they keep kind of pulling me back to the rock climbing every moment they get.

 

Neely Quinn: Which brings me to my next question, which is about your training. Obviously, this is a training podcast. I’m really interested to know how you train as a mixed and ice climber. I saw a video of you indoors, dry tooling on plastic holds and you have, like, a pretty small setup. I think it was called The Alpine Training Center?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, so Connie is my coach, and she runs The Alpine Training Center in Boulder, Colorado.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I was wondering if it was the same one. I was wondering if there was just a similar one up there. Okay.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Nope. I’ve got a really, really great situation. Connie writes all of my training. She’s been doing that for about four years. I used to try to do a lot of my own stuff and I guess I was decent at it, but I came to a point to where I felt like I needed to be accountable to somebody. It really did, without a doubt, it changed my training. It changed the level of fitness in me tremendously because she’s got the time to put into making sure that I’ve got the right training, but the bigger part there is just that I was accountable to somebody. I could go do this workout and then I’ve got to report back to her what I actually did. Connie has no problem calling me out, whether I sat my way through it or whether I got down and actually got something good.

That’s been a really good motivational piece for me. She writes it and the place that I train at is called Heart Mountain Fitness, and it was started as a kind of crossfit gym and then she’s really turned away from crossfit, because there’s a lot of things she doesn’t like about crossfit, and she’s really kind of taken her programming to different places. She only does three classes a day so that leaves all the rest of the time open for me, and I have my own key to this really great facility. There was this upper area of the facility that was just kind of used as some storage and I was like, “Hey, you know, would you be alright if I built this climbing wall?” She was like, “Yeah, that’d be great. Would my kids be able to climb on it?” “Yeah, your kids can climb on it all they want. It’s going to be a little steep but that’s all going to be, for the most part, jugs,” so I was able to build this climbing wall that’s kind of a couple cave features and I can traverse around it. There’s chains and these hanging wood pieces that you hook into and do figure fours off of. I just recently built that, in September, and it’s been a massive game-changer for me, for my mixed climbing. To be able to spend that kind of time on my tools as I go into the season has been huge.

 

Neely Quinn: How were you training before you had that facility?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Before I had that, and really the way that my programming works is – I’ll break it up here. My programming for next season pretty much starts here in a week. In a week I go into full training mode for next year’s ice climbing season. When I say ‘ice climbing,’ ice climbing and mixed climbing are all kind of the same. For me, I also – because of the distances that I hike and because of the South Fork, the way it is, you’re going to climb and hike maybe six hours before you get to the thing that’s going to take all of the physical strength and everything that you’re training for. I can’t just be fit as far as how long I can hold onto something. I’ve also got to be really strong cardio-wise and just strength-wise.

Typically, I go through the cycles of strength and the endurance cycle – there’s a whole cycle of stuff like that – and as I get closer to about August, she starts programming a lot more time on my tools and doing things specifically in the cave. In the meantime, before then, she kind of gives me a break so I probably won’t be in the cave probably for the next two months, just to get a full break away from that and so there’s no overuse injuries or anything like that. It’s more of a power performance training that she’s doing. I’ll train up to about November, and then November I pretty much stop training and a key piece here is I used to not do that. I used to try to keep training on my own through that time. For the most part I’m climbing at least two or three days a week. Those days out are not just cragging days; they’re pretty full multi-mile days, multi-elevation gain days.

The key here is when you get to the climb you’ve got to feel 100%, right? If you’re feeling exhausted by the time you get to the climb, to the thing that you really need to have all of your strength together – it sucks. That’s kind of what happened to me early on. I was pretty fit to hang on but I didn’t have the fitness to go hike six miles, climb up 2,000 feet of other stuff. I’d get to the objective and I would be tired. I just couldn’t do it. Over the last couple of years, we’ve really worked through that.

The other piece there is that I used to try to keep training. I’d go out three days, really hard, and I’d take a day off then I’d go back to the gym and then I’d take a day off before the weekend, and then try to go out and climb. I did that for, really, actually, a couple of years and I just wasn’t at/I could never get full recovery. I was just always sort of tired and just not at the level of fitness that I could be, so now I just – November comes, as soon as the season really is in full effect, I stop training altogether and all I do is the days that I actually go out climbing, and that’s it. Now, if I climb three days, I’ve got four days at least of full rest, true recovery that’s happening there. When the next day comes I’m pretty much 100%.

I used to just not be that way and I think that you kind of get addicted to that feeling of training, just going down there, or that feeling in your muscles when you’ve just kind of – after training, or when you’re in those training cycles. It just feels good and you feel fit. To totally let go of that, it’s really hard. It took me failing on things to realize that I couldn’t continue at that level, and I’m also getting older so I don’t have the recovery time that I did when I was 20 years old. I’ve also noticed that my endurance is huge and, as I tell my wife, as long as I can continue to kick these guys that are in their 20s’ butts, I’m going to still continue to feel really good about myself. That’s the one thing that I still have, that most of my partners are in their 20s and when it comes to endurance, I can still beat them. I don’t look forward to the day that won’t happen, but I’m sure they’ll catch up to me.

 

Neely Quinn: Maybe, maybe not.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Let’s hope not.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so when is your season then? November through what?

 

Aaron Mulkey: November through pretty much about April first.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so it just ended.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, and I’ll usually start chasing things, depending on the weather, in October. Bigger alpine objectives I’ll start chasing in October but the seasons really kind of depend on when that happens. By November, things are pretty well in.

 

Neely Quinn: So, from November to April, that’s five months – wait, yeah, it’s five months. So you said that in November you’re just doing three-ish days outside and you’re not training. Are there any times during those five months where you do start training again? Or do you do a cycle to get some power back or anything? Or is that just the way it is for five months?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Well, it’s funny you ask. In, oh, I guess it was February this year, I found this area that was a big giant – I mean, people have probably heard of Vail amphitheater. It’s pretty well-known as this mixed climbing area. I found this really cool cave and this ice feature that rarely touches. Back in the day, a guy named Chad Chadwick had climbed it when it actually touched and it’s one of those things that touches probably every 10/15 years and that’s it. A buddy of mine had bolted one line up there. Sam Magro had bolted a line up there a couple years ago. I went back to it and just started seeing all these other lines and I was like, “Ah man, there’s all these other really rad mixed lines,” so I started bolting them. I was like, “I’m going to have to step up my game on my tools.”

I did go back and Connie and I worked out some training cycles on my tools that I started doing during the week, then I’d go up there and put that training to the test. It was really key for me. For about a month, I was training during the week I guess about two days, pretty hard on the tools, and then doing some recovery stuff during the week to kind of work all that out so that by the time when the weekend came that I was feeling pretty good and everything had kind of cycled through.

 

Neely Quinn: Can you describe what your training is going to be coming up? Can you give me a sample week of what you’re going to be doing?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, so the first phase is a power phase. She does/we spend more of my time on deadlifts and more the powerlifting type stuff, but not so much – I actually hate to say powerlifting, because it’s not so much into that. There’s definitely a lot more weight training that’s happening than just bodyweight training. That’s the kind of stuff that we’ll start to go into, and then the endurance type stuff starts to be where there’s more time spent on the Airdyne, which I hate.

 

Neely Quinn: What’s the – oh, the bike?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah. They call it ‘the Devil’s tricycle.’

 

Neely Quinn: That thing is awful.

 

Aaron Mulkey: It is horrible. There’s one thing that will make me puke during a workout and it’s the Airdyne. Although, I’ve spent more time on it lately, because I still like to go down and go to the gym and at least do stuff with kind of laziness, so I’ve spent more time, just like 30 minutes, just relaxing on the Airdyne. Now, with the Airdyne, I’m kind of liking it more and more versus the rower. I spend a lot of time on the Airdyne and the rower. There’s some segments there that’s built in for the endurance.

Some of those days look like where I do my workout in the morning and then I have a trail run, like a five- or six-mile trail run in the evenings to go do, or the next day it’s training during the day and then you’re going rock climbing in the evenings. Most of the time I try to do but there’s also times that I don’t. [laughs] That’s kind of what that looks like, and right now I’m kind of in this phase because I don’t start the full cycle – she’ll write kind of some random things for me.

Today’s training…I’ll just give you an idea of what today’s training was. It was basically a lot of/a segment of some burpees, some pull-ups, and things like that. I’ll just give you an idea of what that was, but this was a pretty simple one. It was – so I did five minutes on the Airdyne, five minutes on the rower, and then five minutes step-up on boxes, and then the training portion was 10 pull-ups, as fast as possible, 20 push-ups, 30 box jumps, 40 goblet squats – heavy, 50 kettlebell swings, 60 sit-ups, 70 burpees, and 10 pull-ups, and then the cool down was five minutes of plank.

 

Neely Quinn: How much rest is in there?

 

Aaron Mulkey: No, that’s going as fast as possible on that training piece.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, and you go through it once?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Correct, correct.

 

Neely Quinn: So how long did that take you?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Today it took me, I think it took me like – that’s actually a good question. I’m not sure if I wrote it down. I think it took me about, if I remember correct, I think it took be about six/seven minutes? Something like that?

 

Neely Quinn: Six or seven minutes total? No.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Hold on, I’m looking. Ten minutes. It was 10:05.

 

Neely Quinn: After you did the five minutes on the bike and five minutes on the rower.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah. So for me, during this time of the year, when she says, “As fast as possible,” I’m not trying to push myself to the max either right now. I’ll wait to do that stuff until I get into the training cycle so for me, as fast as possible is just trying to keep my cardio at a certain level, more of like a training level than a max level. That’s also a really key piece. When she writes my programming she’ll say, “Try to keep your heart rate at this level versus this level.”

 

Neely Quinn: So you wear a heart rate monitor?

 

Aaron Mulkey: During times. We’ve just started recently doing it.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, so that took you 10 minutes plus your warm-up. Are you going to do anything else today?

 

Aaron Mulkey: So, yeah, today/this afternoon I’m going to go mountain biking for a couple hours. Or trail running. I think a buddy wants to go mountain biking so we’ll go mountain biking. I was supposed to do a 50-mile bike race here in a couple months so I’m trying to spend more time on the bike. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: Oh man. So what would you call this phase that you’re in right now? What are you guys focusing on?

 

Aaron Mulkey: This is just kind of/there’s really no focus right now, to be honest. The season for ice just ended like two weeks ago and so she just writes me programming. At the beginning of the month I say, “Hey, I know I’m going to have these dead times,” so she’ll just write 10 programs for me and then once I get through those, I’ll call her and say, “Hey, send me some more.”

For right now, because we’re at the start of the cycle, everything changes. I think we’re planning on doing it here next week, I think is the plan, and I have to kind of work it in with my travel schedule. I have to try to figure out when I’m going to be home for a longer period of time to start the beginning cycle, and then as I’m traveling, I’ll also let her know. I’ll be like, “Hey, I’ll be gone these three days,” and then what I’ll usually do, I’ll look at the hotel where I’m staying at and I’ll send her a picture of what’s in the gym so she can write programming specifically for that. We’re always trying to change things around, but usually I’m always home at least the Mondays and Fridays – I’m usually home for the most part. I usually travel the three days during the week. If I have to get up early, I’ll get up early, but even in the main training cycle I would only say there’s three days that are probably really packed with an actual workout. She splits it up so that there’s a recovery workout that’s coming after it, and the recovery workouts have been really important in my training to kind of ease off whatever it was the day before.

 

Neely Quinn: So it’s kind of all over.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah. I think the next one I’m supposed to do tomorrow is just five minutes easy rowing, five minutes of five-second sprint, 55-second recovery on the rower, and then work up to heavy deadlift. Eight rounds, two deadlifts at 80-85% max, four minute jumping lunges total for max height, and then two minutes’ rest in between those rounds.

 

Neely Quinn: And then that’s it.

 

Aaron Mulkey: And then 10 rounds of 100-meter row sprint, one minute rest, and then match or better-pace each round.

 

Neely Quinn: Man. I’ve done her classes and they are brutal.

 

Aaron Mulkey: [laughs] Yeah, they are.

 

Neely Quinn: It sounds like you’re just doing them all year, almost. I mean, not really, but…

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Most of the year. So you found a difference between not having her make your programs and now. Like, you feel like you’ve sent more and are able to keep going throughout the day.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, it’s much more of a strategy behind it and I think when I used to do my own stuff, I always kind of did the stuff I liked to do, right? [laughs] Even when she sends me the 10 workouts, I look at the 10 and I’m like, “Oh I like this one. Let’s do this one.” When I get down to those other three, I’m like, “Alright.”

There’s the 300 calories on the Airdyne, and I can’t remember what the name of it is, it’s not ‘Airdyne to Hell,’ it’s something. I can’t remember what it is, but basically, you try to do the max calories as possible in 10 minutes, and the goal is to try to do 300 calories. Whenever I see that, I love to just push this out as far as I can, you know? I would never program that for myself because I hate it! When I get into the full programming cycle, I don’t have that choice because the way she does my programming, it’s like, “This is what you do Monday and this is what you’re going to do Tuesday,” and it builds all of my daily schedules into that.

 

Neely Quinn: So like, every Monday you’re throwing up on the Airdyne.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, unfortunately. I didn’t have an Airdyne for a while so she loves it that I now have an Airdyne. Then, it was just the rower, so now it’s a mix of the Airdyne and the rower. It forces you to work on your weaknesses when you have somebody else who’s doing the programming, and then there’s stuff that we’ve worked through, where she’s like, “Hey, this doesn’t work. We should try doing this a little bit differently,” and we’ve definitely, her and I have definitely learned things throughout the years for what works.

She does some ice climbing training specific there at the gym in Boulder, and I don’t think she starts that until, I think, I don’t think she starts it until September or October. By then, I’ve already done that, so what she’s doing then, we’ve already kind of worked out prior so I kind of end up being the guinea pig for some things. That can be fun. I can remember/I think I had to have an 80-pound pack and do 300 step-ups, you know? That sucked. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: Why? I mean, that sounds great to me.

 

Aaron Mulkey: It was just long and enduring, like, 300 step-ups takes a while to go through with 80 pounds on your back.

 

Neely Quinn: Was that the whole workout?

 

Aaron Mulkey: That wasn’t the whole workout. There were some others. That was the main portion. What she typically does when she programs, is there’s always the warm-up, and then there’s another kind of warm-up that’s geared towards the main exercise that’s going to happen, and then there’s definitely, “This is the workout. This is the bulk of what you’re going to do.” Then, there’s always something that’s a recovery piece that comes after that. So something that’s recovering off the main bulk of what the main workout was.

Most of my workouts are probably all about an hour to an hour and a half. When we get into the endurance stuff, there are definitely some that start to go much longer than that. There are times that I’ve definitely been in the gym for two hours.

 

Neely Quinn: Well, and then you’re going out running or mountain biking.

 

Aaron Mulkey: True, yep, and then I’m going out and doing something. For the most part, there’s always something that’s attached to it, and then there’s also recovery phases where there’s just a day where it’s just go out for a walk or just go for a hike. Just do that. There’s usually always once or twice during the programming phase, I’ll have a week that I’ll totally take off. It’s usually after about two months of pretty solid training, where we just do a week where I totally take off. Usually, what will happen is when I return, then we’re testing against something that we tested in the beginning so I’m pretty confident what will happen here in a week is she’ll have me do all of my deadlift maxes again, like deadlift press and all those types of things. Max step-ups in 10 minutes or a 2k row or there’s all of these testing things she kind of looks at, and then we’ll start testing those things again down the road to just see what the progress looks like.

 

Neely Quinn: Right. And have you seen progress?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Totally. I do. My deadlift went from, I mean – I keep kind of a log, and I can remember two years ago my deadlift was at 365 and when I ended last season, I got my max deadlift to 410.

 

Neely Quinn: Woah.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, that’s just one I can remember. My push-press went up pretty well/pretty significantly, and that was really, like, last year was the second year in a row where we went to this kind of more, you know, ‘These are the months that I’m going to be training and these are the months where you’re actually going to go out and do what you’re going to do.’

 

Neely Quinn: Do you really feel like your push-press and your deadlift, you can really feel that when you’re actually out there climbing?

 

Aaron Mulkey: I, for sure, feel way stronger than I have in the past, for sure. I do feel all those things. Yeah. I mean, I think in ice climbing there’s definitely a lot of stuff where, you think about ice climbing, you’re throwing that tool sometimes five or six times to get the placement. You think about climbing a 200-foot ice fall. If you think about the amount of times that you swing and kick, it’s pretty ridiculous the amount of times that you do it. I remember somebody actually counted one time because I was kind of curious, but it’s a lot, and all that comes within shoulders and legs and all that, and also just hiking straight up 2,000 feet and feeling great when you actually get to the base that you’re ready to climb. It definitely can be significant.

The mixed climbing piece, when you’re doing figure fours – I don’t know if you know what a figure four is, but you’re basically – a figure four is/when you have to do that is when you’re in basically a cave and there’s nothing to get really your feet on, and you need to kind of get that extra reach to get to the next hold. What the figure four is, you’re hanging on one tool and essentially one arm and you put your leg through your arm, so your leg is kind of on your elbow, and then you lock-off, and then you reach for the next hold that’s there. All your body weight and everything is just kind of dangling, and then you’ve got to power through that and lock-off and reach to the next thing, and a lot of times do another figure four after that. You’re basically campusing across a pretty big surface.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well do you do campusing?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, I do do a little bit of campusing. We do campusing with the tools a lot in the cave. We’ll just do campusing there.

 

Neely Quinn: Well, it sounds pretty effective. Very thorough, very comprehensive, and it’s been an hour so I don’t want to take up too much more time, but I do want to ask you about how you fuel all this activity. Can you tell me a little bit about your diet?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah. I [laughs] – as my wife says, “You have the worst diet, ever.” I wouldn’t say the worst diet. One of the things that has been a huge game changer for me is I drink a ton of water. A ton of water. If I don’t drink at least three liters of water a day, I have not gotten my intake of water and when I started doing that, I was pretty amazed at what my recovery was and just fuel in the mountains. Just going out and always being hydrated, like, I feel that I can go without water for a much longer period of time than I used to before. Not that you want to do that, but I definitely ended up having the ability to do it.

As far as eating, for the most part, I pretty much eat what I want when I’m in my training period. Even when I’m out of it, I don’t really limit myself to anything. I hate salad. I can’t/there’s something about the texture and the crunch that I just can’t get over and I’ve been that way since I was a kid. I don’t eat salads, I don’t like tomatoes, [laughs] – you’re probably thinking, “Well what do you eat?” I eat a lot of/I guess I eat a lot of meat products, for sure, and broccoli and cauliflower and things like that, and eggs in the morning. I wouldn’t say that I have a strict diet, and I love ice cream, which is my weakness. I probably have ice cream four days a week. [laughs] For me, it works, and it doesn’t necessarily work for everybody, but I eat healthy. I’m not eating super high-fat foods, I’m not eating a ton of candy, I don’t drink soda at all, I do have a Redbull every morning, but I wouldn’t say that I try to diet myself too much. I listen to my body.

I know there’s definitely times where I cut back on my food intake because my activity isn’t as high as it needs to be, but I wouldn’t say that there’s anything that is specific about my diet. I kind of/I figure if I’m working out and I’m training hard and I’m running and doing all these things, I want to be able to eat what I want to eat and that’s good for me. For the most part, my weight doesn’t really range at all, even during the training cycle or the off, because I’ve definitely eating more when I’m in the training cycle versus the off.

 

Neely Quinn: I was actually going to ask you, how tall are you and what do you weigh? If you don’t mind me asking.

 

Aaron Mulkey: I weigh 170 pounds and I’m 5’9”.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, yeah, it seems like you can’t really be a super duper skinny dude if you’re trying to be out there in the cold and do all that mileage and everything. It’s different, it seems like.

 

Aaron Mulkey: For sure, and I’ve been, usually when I get to the end of a cycle, especially the endurance cycle, I’ll lose/I’ll probably come down about five pounds or so but my body type is the kind where I tend to just put on mass, which is not necessarily a good thing. I’ve just got to carry that mass around. I’ve got other buddies that they can just lift all the weights they want and they’re still just super skinny, right? It’s definitely, for me, it’s one of the things that holds me back in the mixed climbing realm, as far as being able to push myself a little bit. I’ve got to figure out ways to lean myself out a little bit more because it’s like a sport climber that’s climbing 5.14. Not many 5.14 climbers have a whole lot of mass on them. They’re usually super strong but they’re not bulky, and I’m kind of the bulky type and it definitely affects me. When I start hanging upside down, I’ve got to work through ways to carry that mass through.

 

Neely Quinn: Cool. Well, do you want to give a shout out to your sponsors?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, that’d be great. I mean, Rab is my clothing sponsor. I’ve been with Rab for a long time, almost since they first came to the US, so we’ve been together for a long time and it’s been great. And then I’m with Scarpa, and I’m with Cilo Gear, and I’m with Grivel, and Beal Ropes, and then Julbo.

 

Neely Quinn: You’ve got a lot of sponsors.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s pretty much if I need something, I’ve got a sponsor I can pretty much get it from. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: Which is nice. Do you have any parting words for us? Any training wisdom for people listening?

 

Aaron Mulkey: Um, yeah, I think the biggest thing is having a structure. It’s really important and I think having somebody, either a training partner or a coach, is really important if you really want to kind of take yourself to another level. I think being accountable to somebody changes things dramatically, and that can be a partner or a coach. The other thing is, I think overtraining – I think, most of the time, and I think it kind of comes with the crossfit phase that people are in and people were drinking the Kool-aid, overtraining has become such a huge thing that I see. I see it all over the place.

I think just really kind of learning what’s good for your body and what’s not is important, and what I’ve seen with a lot of friends lately is that when it comes to the day they want to go out and send something, they’ve overtrained because they did something even two days ago and they’re just not recovered from it, you know? You’ve got to get really smart about when those big days in the gym are going to come and when your send days are going to come and being really smart about having that recovery. It’s just super important. I think we’ve kind of gotten away from thinking about how important that recovery is and I just think people kind of people forget about it. We like to have that feeling of, in your muscles, that you were just working out or you did some kind of training. You get addicted to that and when you don’t have it, you feel like a blob, but the muscles just take so much time to recover. Everybody’s different, but I think that’s a really important aspect of it, so…

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Wise words. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

 

Aaron Mulkey: Not a problem. Thanks for having me on.

 

Neely Quinn: Yep. Thanks so much for listening to that interview with Aaron Mulkey. I hope you enjoyed it. I definitely did. If you want to learn more about him, you can go to www.coldfear.com and he’s also on Instagram @coldfear and if you want to learn more about Connie, who he’s training with, you can go to www.thealpinetrainingcenter.com. That place is in Boulder. It’s pretty cool and I’ve actually been training with Connie myself. After this conversation, I was inspired to check her out and she’s been helping me with my fitness. I will warn you, if you go to her classes or you train with her one-one-one, she will crush you. She will kick your ass. I’ve basically been sore for two weeks straight and hopefully it’s working. I definitely feel something happening.

If you want anymore help with your training, you can always go to www.trainingbeta.com and there’s a tab at the top that’s ‘Training Programs,’ and you can find all of what we offer in there. If you’re like me, and you’re in a route climbing season and you want to train that, we have our route training program which gives you three unique workouts every week. You go through six-week cycles where you’re training power endurance or finger strength, or overall strength, or you’ll go through modes where you’re just projecting so you can kind of see what gains you’ve made. That is, again, at www.trainingbeta.com and we’ve had a lot of people say that they’ve gone from 5.11 to 5.12 on the program, or 5.10 to 5.11, or something in between, and it’s awesome hearing about people’s success.

Honestly, I think that if you just train at all, you’re going to make some success or have some success, and this program lets you go into the gym and just not think about it. It just gives you instructions on what to do, step-by-step.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I love your suggestions. You can always email me at neely@trainingbeta.com and I also love iTunes reviews, so if you leave me one, that will really help get the word out about this podcast. Thanks again and I will talk to you soon!

 

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