[laughs] That was very different then than it is now.

Neely Quinn: Yes, very different. Man. Those were the glory days.

Bill Ramsey: Definitely.

Neely Quinn: So you put up Transworld Depravity and Omaha. Were you climbing 5.14 at that point?

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, I had decided to start spending my summers back in central Oregon so around ‘93/’94 I had started spending my summers in Bend. I had a lot of friends in Bend, my family still lived in central Oregon, so it just seemed like the thing to do. I was climbing at Smith and you can actually climb throughout the summer in the Aggro Gully if you get up early enough.

I had kind of worked up through the grades in the Aggro Gully and, let’s see, I guess it was in ‘98 that I did Badman in the Agro Gulley. So, I had climbed a 5.14 before and I think by the time I had done Transworld, I had maybe done two or three or four, maybe five others in other parts of the country, but that was the first one I think I did. I think the first one that was 5.14 that I had done at the Red was Transworld. When I did Omaha Beach we all kind of agreed that it was just really hard .13d so it didn’t get the higher grade until more holds had broken off since I did it.

Neely Quinn: What would you say is your best accomplishment as a climber?

Bill Ramsey: Wow. Well, I feel pretty good about this thing I just did. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Which we will talk about at length.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, doing a .14b at my age I feel pretty good about. You know, I feel proud about those routes, the ones at the Red. It’s awesome to hear about world class climbers coming through the Red and climbing on them and having a great time and thinking they’re really neat routes. That’s a great feeling to have made that kind of contribution.

You know, going all the way back, I was involved in the first free ascent of Monkey Face at Smith and I thought that was important and noteworthy so those are the things I remember, at least in terms of my own achievements. I kind of like helping other people get up climbs, too, and whenever I can contribute to somebody else’s success I consider that as a plus in my favor, too.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So – shoot. I just had a question and I forgot. Oh, I wanted to ask what the hardest route was that you’ve ever done.

Bill Ramsey: That’s a really good question. You know, for me, the hardest I’ve ever worked on a climb was on Golden. That probably took the most out of me than anything I’ve ever done. I’m not sure it’s the hardest 8c I’ve done. Maybe a case could be made that Supertweet was harder/is harder but just, for me, trying to do it at 54, I felt like that really was the deepest I had to dig to get up something. I’ll put it that way.

Neely Quinn: The reason I ask is because, as a – how old are you now?

Bill Ramsey: 54.

Neely Quinn: Okay. You probably just said that and I was spacing out. The reason I ask is because I’m wondering how your performance now compares to what you were doing before. I mean, was .14b sort of your limit even back when you were a little younger?

Bill Ramsey: Oh yeah. When I did Supertweet I was 42 and I remember saying, at the time, “I will never climb 8c again. I will never do another .14b. This is just way too hard at this age.” [laughs] Since then I think I’ve done six of them but yeah, obviously you never know. There’s no question that as you get older everything gets harder. You’re just a lot more prone to injury, it takes a lot longer to recover from a hard day of climbing, it takes a lot longer from a hard day of training, and you can train a lot more and you’re not going to make as much progress.

The thing is, you will make some progress. There are still incremental gains to be had but you’re reaching this point of diminishing returns where you just have to work so much more just to get a little bit out of it. That’s what I’m finding.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, which I want to talk to you about because you just said earlier today in a conversation that your philosophy has always been that more is better, so I want to talk to you about that. Do you think that 10 years ago you would have done Golden quicker?

Bill Ramsey: Yes, I do. I definitely do. I think I would have been stronger, I probably would have learned the moves a lot faster, or I wouldn’t have learned the moves faster necessarily but I would have been able to get more fit for the route quicker 10 years ago, without a doubt.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so let’s not talk about the route just yet but I want to talk about the pain box.

Bill Ramsey: Several years ago I was sort of trying to come up with some sort of a representation for my attitude, I guess my philosophy, towards training and I had this image of basically, what’s really going on is it’s a form of pain reallocation. You have one kind of pain which is all the pain associated with hard work and sacrifice and dieting and things like that, things you know you should be doing but it’s just tough to do, and then you have on the other hand the kind of pain that’s associated with, let’s face it, sucking. Failing. Not performing your goals. Not doing what you want to do.

What I kind of recognized is that there’s an inverse relationship between the two. I had this image of there being a box and on the left side you have the kind of pain that is involved with hard work and on the second, right side, you had this pain associated with failure. So, I imagined this bar and the bar in the middle separates the two but you can move it in either direction.

Let’s suppose that, like most of us, you want to reduce the quantity of the pain associated with frustration and failure. You can reduce the quantity of that in your life but only if you move the bar to the right. Geometrically, you can see that if you move the bar to the right the only way that happens is if you increase the amount of pain associated with hard work and suffering and so on. That’s basically the pain box.

I guess it is sort of an expression of my viewpoint, which is more is more. It seems that, right now, I’ve noticed a lot of trends in training. I think training can be very trend-oriented and in my time it seems there are different phases that people go through. Right now I would say the trend that seems at least somewhat popular is the idea that less is more. You hear these mottos that ‘training to failure is failing to train’ or things like ‘train smart, don’t train more’ and I guess I still resist that outlook. I think that, for me at least, that’s not the right approach. I don’t think that’s right.

For example, I’m not quite sure what people mean when they say something like, “Training to failure is failing to train.” Right? The only translation I can come up for that is: don’t try very hard. Don’t try too hard. You can imagine somebody, maybe they’re trying to do a 4×4 or maybe they’re on the treadwall and they get to the point where they’re starting to get really tired and their hands are opening up. If they take that philosophy to heart, training to failure is failing to train, it seems like oh, you should just stop. You’re stopping before you fail and to my mind, that’s exactly when you should start really trying really hard.

I’ve always bought into the motto that if you’re going to do 30 pull-ups, the first 28 are just getting you to where you want to be and it’s the next two or three that are really doing all the good, so I kind of don’t really understand this current perspective that a lot of people have. In my experience it always has been more of: the harder I workout, the more benefit I get.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so let’s talk about this now. When we first moved to Vegas last year you were just this mythical man in my mind. I didn’t know you and all I knew was I might see you at The Garage and you might be there for 10 hours straight. That’s just the status quo for Bill, so tell me about your training.

Bill Ramsey: Well, I think part of it is that I’m kind of a bit of a hoarder so I do this with regard to training regimens. I’ve been doing this for so long. I’ve been training before there were fingerboards, before there were gyms, before there were system training, so I was kind of there when all of these things were introduced. I would hear about it and be like, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting. That sounds good. I need to start trying that.’ But I wouldn’t want to replace what I was already doing so I would just add it on.

Over the years, the whole regime gets pretty big after a while. I should say I don’t do this all of the time. I don’t have these big days where I go really big but I do believe, I think, unlike a lot of the current trainers and coaches and climbers, I actually do believe in high volume days. I do believe that there’s value in high volume days and one of the reasons, for example, is when you go climbing at the cliff for a day. Like, the other day I was up at The Cathedral and I did this one climb – I think you know it – The Cross. I did it my fourth try of the day at 6:00 in the evening. I notice that for most people, by the time it gets to 6:00 or something they’re done. They’ve given their project a couple tries and they’re out, whereas I’m still feeling pretty good. I still feel like I can get up something and in fact I do sometimes. I think part of the reason why I have a more full day like that is because I’ve kind of trained my body for these long sessions.

Do you want to hear what a big day would be like? Is that what you’re asking?

Neely Quinn: Heck yeah.

Bill Ramsey: Like what it would involve?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Bill Ramsey: Okay, well first off I would get up really early and crawl down the stairs and get a cup of coffee.

Neely Quinn: What’s ‘really early’ for you?

Bill Ramsey: Lately, because it’s been sort of warm and I want to do my fingerboard session when it’s cold, it’s been 5:00 in the morning.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Bill Ramsey: I’ll get started at 5:00 in the morning. I’ll try to cool down my garage and then I’ll basically spend an hour warming up and stretching. I’m a very strong believer in gradually easing into it. By warming up I mean going to the fingerboard and just hanging for a couple seconds, and then hanging again for five seconds, then hanging again for 20 seconds, then doing one pull-up, then doing five pull-ups, then doing 15 pull-ups and just really gradually easing into the day. I’m a really firm believer in that and I think it’s one of the reasons why I’ve, more or less, been able to avoid injuries.

So, it will entail that then I will do my fingerboard workout and generally what I do is something of a variant that other people are doing. Right now, one very popular trend involves the repeaters, right? What everyone seems to be doing is seven seconds on, three seconds off and doing a number of sets of those. I think that’s actually valuable. I try to incorporate that into my fingerboard training but I don’t view it as a pure contact strength training regiment.

For real finger strength, what I’ll do is more along the lines of seven seconds on with a lot more weight and then take a minute rest and do that six or seven times. I’ll try to do that on different kinds of edges, on pockets, on slopers, just a variety of different sorts of holds.

That whole process might take a couple or three hours or something like that? Even maybe four hours if you include the warming up and then what I’ll do is I’ll switch over to/maybe I’ll do weighted fingertip pull-ups. I seem to be the only person left who believes that there’s some value in those. I’ll do that and then I’ll switch over to system training. I have a system wall in my garage and I’ll do different kinds of system training where I’m wearing maybe a seven pound weight belt or a 15 pound weight vest and I’m trying there to work on my lockoff strength. I’ll try to lock off a pocket with my right hand with my left foot high and I’ll try to hold that for three or four seconds and go up and down the system wall that way.

Neely Quinn: So you’ll do this all in one day?

Bill Ramsey: This is just getting started. This is just the morning session.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Okay.

Bill Ramsey: I’ll do that. I might do a few other things. For example, when I was working Golden I had replicated the crux in my garage, kind of/sort of, so I would try doing the crux six or seven times, maybe with a weight belt on, just trying to get that motion down.

Okay, so then that takes care of the garage and then I’ll typically go to the climbing gym and I’ll get on different boulder problems. I’m trying to, again, sort of focus on strength there but I might also do a little bit of 4×4’s, a little bit of endurance training. The one gym has the long ramp which I think is really beneficial. I’ll just basically go there and play around and do a bunch of different boulder problems and try to get a kind of bouldering workout in.

Then what I’ll do is I’ll drive over to The Garage, that’s where I met you, and we have a treadwall there. On the treadwall I have a very specific sort of regimen that I try to do. We have it set up so there’s different kinds of climbs on it. Mike Doyle did a great job of setting routes on it so we have a crimping route, a pinching route, a sloper route, and then I have a variety of different kinds of routes with all different sorts of holds.

I’ll do a variety of different workouts on that. I’ll try to do some longer endurance climbs, I’ll try to do some power endurance climbs that are much steeper where I’ll try to get through two rotations, and lately I’ve been experimenting. I got this book, the Kraft book, Gimme Kraft and there was an exercise in there that was explained that I’ve been trying to incorporate on the treadwall where I’ll try to do one and a half rotations, like a rotation of one route and then go into about half of another route, and then I’ll only give myself about 30 seconds rest or 35 seconds. Then, I’ll do it again on a different combination of a route and a half and then wait 30 seconds and then do another one. I’ll try to do that seven or eight times. I find that to be pretty devastating so I do that towards the end of the workout.

Then, typically what I’ll do – we’re maybe kind of getting into the evening now – is I’ll start working on core workouts. I’ll do different kinds of leg lifts, maybe working on front levers, and then I might do a little bit of weight lifting. In particular, some lat pulls and tricep pulls. Then, as I said to somebody else, I’ll have a beer and pass out. [laughs] So that’s the day.

No, actually I forgot something. I left something out. When it’s all said and done and I’m driving back to have the beer and pass out, I’ve started using these Ivanko hand gripper devices where you can still get a pretty good hand workout in with this grip thing. This is one thing that climbers have neglected, is the idea of moving your fingers. This woman who did this V14 said that was the exercise that really built up her finger strength. These fingertip pull-ups, basically, where she’s – you see Daniel Woods doing it in one of these videos. He’s doing it on a campus rung. You can replicate that while you’re driving home with these Ivanko things and so I try to do a number of series of those as well.

Neely Quinn: I think I saw a picture of you on Evening Sends.

Bill Ramsey: Right. Exactly. When I was working on Golden I was trying to get a little bit of a workout in on the hike down so I’d take those grip devices up there and then I could workout on the hike down as well.

Neely Quinn: So it replicates – what’s it replicating again? Like, what were you saying Daniel will do?

Bill Ramsey: What Daniel will do, and for a long time people would say, “Look. In climbing you’re just statically holding a hold so you should never move your fingers. You should just work on statically holding onto something.” Actually, that’s false, right? When you grab a hold, quite often you have to reel it in. You might reel it in to a closed crimp so you’re getting a full range of motion in the fingers.

What you see Daniel doing, and I think this is really a good way to go and I think we need to see more people recommending it, is he’ll get on a campus rung but he won’t just hang. He’ll literally curl his fingers up while he’s hanging on this campus rung and pull himself up, just with his fingers. His arms are staying completely straight while this is happening. I think they’re called finger rolls or finger pull-ups or something like that. I think that’s enormously beneficial.

Neely Quinn: I do to. I actually trained that in The Garage because Jonathan told me to do it. I mean, I agree with it but I didn’t do it very much. I think too much of it is probably not good for you.

Bill Ramsey: That’s probably true. It’s pretty hard, but what I’ve found is, with these grip devices, you can set them on your hand in a way where one side of it is way back on the heel of your thumb and you can basically replicate that same kind of motion, only you’re not hanging off of anything. You’re just moving your fingers a half an inch in the same way.

Neely Quinn: So, by the time you go pass out at home how many hours has this been?

Bill Ramsey: I mean, it depends. A lot of times I’m working, too, during the day. I’ll try to do a route on the treadwall then I’ll rest 40 minutes so I’ll be grading papers or something like that. But, there have been days where I’ve started at five in the morning and I’ve ended maybe at 9:00 at night. Those are big days and I don’t recommend those right out of the gate. I don’t think anybody should do that but at the same time, for me, the way this has sort of happened is I always ended up breaking up my training into different days during the week. There was something like I was going to be gone for a conference or something and I wasn’t going to be able to do anything for three or four days and I was just like, ‘I know. I’ll just go really big one day.’

I had sort of plateaued in my training and I did that and then I took the three or four days off and I came back and man – I felt really strong. As something to just do maybe occasionally to kind of shock load your body, as long as you take a sufficient number of rest days afterwards, that’s the critical part. You can’t just do that and then take a rest day. If you do something like that I think you need two or three days off.

Neely Quinn: On that vein, what are the things that you’ve found? I mean, obviously you’ve tried a lot of things and I’m assuming that you’ve read a lot of research or books into training. What are the things that you’ve actually seen work for you?

Bill Ramsey: I think when I read training books my feeling has been that with most of the books out there I agree with about 80% of what they have to say but I already know it. I maybe disagree with about 10% of what they say. And then there’s always 10% that’s new, that’s helpful, that’s beneficial, that I’m like, ‘Oh okay. I’ve got to try that. That makes sense.’

The one thing that sort of stays as a constant, the one training principle that’s always been there, is incremental increasing of difficulty. You want there to be a regiment of some kind where you keep increasing the difficulty of the exercise every week and making your body adjust but not in such a dramatic way that you just can’t do anything. To me, that is the most fundamental principle of training.

The thing is, it’s kind of hard to do in climbing because if you go to the gym, you’ll have these boulder problems that you’re trying and maybe you’ll get up them and maybe next week you come back and it’s a different set of boulder problems. You don’t really get that straightforward kind of regiment. I do think you can get it from fingerboarding but that’s one of the things I like about the treadwall, for example, is that you can have a route there that you’re trying to do and then every week you can tip it back another degree to make it slightly harder.

Another thing you can do – I think Eric Horst is absolutely right about this – is you can just gradually add more weight to a weight belt. I think that’s beneficial but what you’re trying to do is what people do in every sport, which is train by incrementally increasing the difficulty and sticking to a regiment. That’s the most important thing.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so on a regular basis it sounds like those really long days aren’t typical for you. When you were training – let’s talk about Golden. I was lucky enough to see you working it and I know how hard you were training for it, too. Can we talk about how you trained for that and how your training evolved over the couple of years you were working on it?

Bill Ramsey: Sure. I mean, it was a lot of what I just described. I maybe wouldn’t do it all in one day. I maybe would stretch it out over a couple or three days in a week. Golden is this climb where you have to do a pretty hard little power endurance climb, maybe .13d, and then you get a bad rest and then you go into a pretty hard little boulder problem. I recognized that I needed to have that sort of fitness where I have – I don’t know what they call it now. They seem to come up with a new term every time. It used to be something called ‘power endurance’ where you’re doing a continual number of moves, maybe 16/17/18 moves in a row and they’re all fairly demanding but they’re not at your max. No one move is at your limit. Then, getting through something like that being fairly fresh, being able to then recover and then try to do this boulder problem.

Well, I think that in climbing I’m a firm believer in the specificity of training so what I wanted to do is replicate that climb as much as possible so I would try to do climbs on the treadwall that reflected the nature of the headwall on Golden. I actually replicated the rest in my garage so I would put on a weight vest and hang out on this horrific undercling while I would be trying to watch tv or read a book or something. It’s just absolutely torture. Then I replicated the different components of the boulder problem and I really tried to dial those in as well.

I’m a really firm believer in specifying your training to the boulder problem or to the route that you’re trying to do, so that’s what I would be doing. I would go through phases where I couldn’t climb on it and then I would work on more foundational things. Maybe that’s when I would work on the finger strength on the fingerboard, maybe I’d do a little more weightlifting during that time period to try to get the opposition muscles in shape but generally, my main thing was trying to hone in on those particular strengths I needed to get up that climb and develop those strengths.

Neely Quinn: So in a typical week – I always like to know how much people are training, especially when they’re trying to send. Obviously there’s going to be off seasons where you’re training more.

Bill Ramsey: So, there’s different phases and the thing that I think is interesting, or this was interesting for me this last winter, is it was so warm in January. I’d planned on really training hard in January and bouldering a lot in January to kind of get my power up but it was so warm I could climb on it. I thought, ‘Hey! Why not do this? Why not maintain/stay with that training attitude but make getting on the route part of your training?’

I would actually get up and train for three or four hours on the fingerboard then I would go get on Golden. I knew I would be at diminished capacity. I knew I wouldn’t be able to redpoint it in that state but I also knew that by incorporating the actual route into my training, it would help me quite a bit. I would get on it a couple times and then I would go train afterwards and then I would maybe take two or three days off. I actually found that really, really beneficial. Even when you’re in your diminished capacity I would still make progress on Golden. I would still figure things out. I would still get fit for that particular route because, if you think about it, if you’re doing a big training day there’s always going to be a middle part of your day when you want to do a boulder problem and if you keep going back to it you’ll get better on that boulder problem in the gym. It’s the same thing with a route.

I actually am a firm believer in getting on the route, getting on your project as part of your training regimen while you’re in training mode. Then, when I decided I was getting close to where I wanted to start to try redpointing it, when the conditions got good, I stopped everything and I just focused on the climb and that’s when I did it.

Neely Quinn: Do you think that was a tipping point? You incorporating the route into your training?

Bill Ramsey: I think it definitely helped me. I definitely think it helped me. I mean, I was getting sufficiently close in the fall that I kind of had a good sense that I was going to do it but I think having that combination – because a lot of times the problem is, when you step away from a project just to train, by the time you go back to the project you feel like you kind of have to relearn it. You have to get comfortable with it again. This thing had long runouts so you have to sort of get used to that whereas as long as you keep it fresh in your mind and you keep fresh in everything while you’re training, then when you just drop all the training you suddenly feel really strong and really fit when you’re getting on your redpoint burns.

It works really well, if you can do it. Obviously, not everybody can do it. A lot of times people’s’ projects are quite a ways away from where they’re training but if you can sort of incorporate all that into a single day, I think that’s a pretty good strategy. It worked for me.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it’s interesting. It brings up a question. The Anderson brothers, in my podcast with them, they were like, ‘Yeah, we think if you can’t do a route or a problem within five or seven tries, you should stop. You should stop working on it and go train and then come back when you’re strong enough to do it.’ What do you say to that?

Bill Ramsey: I don’t buy that. Obviously, I don’t buy that. I mean, I think that actually, when you look at all the major advances that have taken place in climbing like, say, Chris Sharma doing Realization or Tommy and Kevin doing the Dawn Wall, in truth, any major advance in a sport – look at how many times a gymnast might have to try a dismount, or how many times a skateboarder might try a given trick. We’re talking thousands of times perhaps. It’s always required more than just six or seven tries.

I would say keep trying it but that doesn’t mean you should just stop training or you should stop trying to get stronger. I don’t see the either/or ideas. I don’t understand why it has to be, ‘Okay, we’ll either train or work on your project but you can’t do both.’ You know, a lot of people- it’s frustrating to have to deal with repeated failure when you’re working on a project for a long time. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to. You might get frustrated and burned-out but if you can somehow sort of maintain the psychological aspect of it then I don’t really see any reason why it has to be one or the other. I don’t see any reason why you can’t continue working on a project and learning about a project, as long as you’re making progress on a project and, at the same time, keep training as well.

Neely Quinn: How many times do you think you tried Golden?

Bill Ramsey: Oh God. I don’t even want to think about it. A lot. Let’s just say a lot. I first got on it, I guess, the same spring when Dan did Solid Gold – Dan Mirsky. I just got on it to kind of check it out and I thought, ‘Okay, this might be worth playing on.’ The following fall, which I guess would be the fall of 2013, I just got on it to work the beta, to figure things out, get used to climbing on it, and then I was going to try to do it in the spring of 2014. Got pretty close, was falling in the boulder problem, didn’t happen, came back in the fall, got ridiculously close in the fall but, as it turns out, the top of this boulder problem is really tricky. It’s pretty hard so I was falling at the top of the boulder problem and then I did that thing I was talking about and I think that put me over.

I don’t know. Definitely more than 100 I’m sure. [laughs] I frankly try not to think about it but yeah, it’s something that I guess I’m kind of known for. I’ve projected things for extended periods of time in the past. If you can sort of get over the frustration involved, if you can make each of the failures into a positive so far as you’ve made progress in some way or learned something new – I’ve always felt routes have a lot of secrets to tell us and you have to interrogate them. What makes it interesting, what makes projecting like that so interesting, is you may think you understand the route, you’ve got all the beta figured out, there’s nothing more to do and then it’s like, ‘Oh, just let me try this,’ or there’s some other nuance about the foot. A lot of times that’s what makes it fun. That’s what makes it interesting. I’ll be lying in bed at night and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I wonder if I can somehow make things a little more efficient by putting my foot over here?’

There’s a scene in that movie Apollo 13, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, where they’re trying to figure out a way to fire back up the engines in the Apollo spacecraft. They know they only have a certain amount of energy so they’re going through all these different possible sequences and all these different possibilities, trying to find the absolutely most efficient way of doing it. I think that’s kind of what projecting a route is. You’re trying all these different sorts of things, trying to figure out the absolutely most efficient way to do something. To me, that process is really intellectually enjoyable. It’s a lot like what happens in philosophy when you do problem-solving. It’s just that you get to do it in these great locations and you get to use your body in the process, so I actually enjoy that process.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and I witnessed that. It was actually kind of astounding to me sometimes. You would be up on Golden and you would fall in the same place, just like everybody does on that route, and you would come off and you wouldn’t scream. Well, sometimes I heard you scream, but you would come off and you’d be like, ‘Oh! I think I just found a new way to put my foot on like this,’ or some super-nuanced change that you had discovered right before you fell. So that must have kept you going.

Bill Ramsey: Without a doubt. There’s all these psychological battles you’re fighting when you’re trying to do a big project like this. To me, what keeps me interested and what keeps it from being just pure drudgery is this problem-solving process. I always feel like, when I’m going up on a climb, I’m always kind of curious to try something new. It’s like, ‘Hey, that last time I was on it I found this thing. I want to see what that feels like this time.’ That keeps it interesting. That keeps it intriguing and that’s what I enjoy.

Neely Quinn: How do you think your being a philosophy PhD and professor ties into your approach to climbing?

Bill Ramsey: Probably very much the way I just described. When I’m working on a philosophical project, when I’m working on a book, I’ll try to break it down piecemeal. There’s these aspects of the problem I need to work on. There’s these aspects of the issue I don’t fully understand. I need to figure out how this argument is going to go. I need to come up with a new example to make this point. I’m continually thinking this stuff through and trying new things and tinkering over here and putting something else aside and tinkering later on that. It’s that whole process and then putting it all together into a paper or into a book or something like that that’s really rewarding.

It’s very much the same process in climbing as well. When you’re projecting you’re tinkering over here, you’re trying some new things over there, and you’re trying to figure out what’s going wrong, where the weaknesses are, you’re constantly analyzing and reanalyzing the process, and if you enjoy that sort of problem solving then you’re going to be attracted to a career like philosophy and you’re going to be attracted to a sport like climbing. I think that’s why, when you look around, there are so many climbers at the cliff who have PhDs in engineering and physics and mathematics and computer science or they’re programmers. It’s because it’s the sort of people who have that mind.

Climbers are a very cerebral sort of athlete. I’ve often said that climbers are really just geeks trapped in an athlete’s body because I think the good climbers are people that are very cognitively engaged and they like that kind of problem solving.

Neely Quinn: That does make sense why there are so many very highly-educated people at the cliffs.

You said, before we started this recording, that you’re in really good shape right now and you’re feeling super strong. Do you have any idea why that is right now?

Bill Ramsey: I think anytime you do a big project you just get this huge boost of confidence. You just get this great boost and you just get psyched. I remember at the end of last spring I had just come off of this kind of dismal failure of getting really close on Golden but not succeeding and just being like, ‘Oh god. Now I’ve got to tran.’ It’s just so much drudgery, it seemed. It kind of picked me up to go to Rifle for the summer because it’s such a fun place but now I’m like, ‘Oh sweet. I’ve got some positive feedback.’ I’m going to try to ride that for awhile and maybe do a little more training and look forward to hopefully having a good season in Rifle this summer.

Neely Quinn: Last season in Rifle, I know that you went there and you were like, ‘I’m not going to try anything hard. I’m just going to do things that are fun for me.’ What are you doing this season?

Bill Ramsey: I think the same thing. I really think, you know, there’s maybe one or two. There’s maybe a .14a or something that I might check out but for the most part I just want to have an enjoyable summer where I get to climb on a lot of the new routes there, do a number of mid-range 5.13s, and just have fun and enjoy climbing. Get a little bit away from the feeling of pressure and, ‘I have to perform and that the clock’s running down if I don’t get up this thing. Oh my god, what am I going to do?’ Just enjoy climbing again.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy working on Golden, but it also did get to be work in a sense. To do it more in a way that’s fun.

What’s interesting is I do go back and forth. There have been times when I’ve done that. When I’ve gone to Rifle or gone someplace and I just do a bunch of kind of enjoyable routes and that’s a lot of fun, but it also can get to be a little boring, too. Where you always know that you’re going to succeed. You know that there’s no doubt that you’re going to get up this thing. It’s not that bad. That’s enjoyable but there’s also something to be said for really challenging yourself as well. I don’t know if I’m ever going to do it like I did on Golden, where I’m really challenging myself, but there’s something to be said for that as well.

Neely Quinn: It seems like good advice to sort of change it up with your mental challenges that you’re throwing at yourself.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, definitely. Definitely mix it up a little bit.

Neely Quinn: So you don’t have plans, like in the spring, to do something big again? You don’t have any big projects?

Bill Ramsey: No, I don’t. I really think I need to take a bit of a break from big projects. There’s all these routes at The Cathedral that I haven’t been able to climb on so it’s actually nice to be able to go up there and do a bunch of these things now and just get them done pretty quickly. Just do a bunch of stuff and not have them be these massive, drawn out sieges.

Neely Quinn: Can we talk about your age a little bit more?

Bill Ramsey: Sure thing.

Neely Quinn: What – I think that there are a lot of people in their 50s and 60s and beyond who are trying to climb, and trying to climb hard. I’m wondering – you said that it takes more effort, you don’t recover as quickly – are there things that you’re doing to change your training that you could bestow upon other people?

Bill Ramsey: More of it. [laughs] I do think the main thing that I’ve noticed is the recovery time. The formula I use is that basically, now, one day of rest feels like second day on used to feel when I was in my 30s. Two days of rest feels like one day of rest used to feel like. Three days of rest feels like two days of rest used to feel like. You can see how it goes.

I just think that the main thing I’ve been trying to do is be patient with it in that way. Just really expect to take a day off. Really, I’ve just given up on trying to climb hard two days in a row. I mean, two full days in a row? I just don’t really do that anymore.

The other thing I can suggest is simply be very patient with warming up and stretching. Flexibility is something that I think gets poo-pooed or isn’t taken sufficiently seriously. That’s one thing that you can actually maintain at a high level, even as you get older. I’ve really been focusing on stretching and static stretching.

I know static stretching gets a bad rap because it’s another one of those kind of trendy things. There were a couple studies done a few years ago about how people suggested that static stretching wasn’t helpful. You might even be more prone to injury if you statically stretch but it’s another case where people sort of don’t necessarily think the study through properly. These studies had to do with very long static stretches and often, immediate use of the muscle group.

In my mind I just sort of step back and think, ‘Well, let’s think this through.’ I mean, you’ve seen gymnastics, right? You’ve seen ballet. You’ve seen the range of motion that those people have. Would that range of motion be beneficial for climbing? Of course it would. How did you those people get that range of motion? It wasn’t from high kicks. It was from a very steady regimen of static stretching.

There’s stretching that you need to do for warming up that may not be always static but there’s a kind of stretching you do at the end of the day or after a workout that I think should be static and I think should be focusing on expanding that range of motion to keep you from getting injured and to enable you to, say at a rest, take more weight off your hands. I’m a very firm believer in stretching and things like that and I guess just the usual things. Try to eat well, try to get as much sleep as possible, and basically just be patient with the process and enjoy it. Just recognize that you’re going to have some disadvantages compared to when you were younger.

Neely Quinn: In terms of taking rest days it sounded like, when you were describing your schedule, you were training three days a week and then you were climbing also?

Bill Ramsey: You mean just recently with regard to Golden?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Bill Ramsey: What would happen, typically, is if I was in training mode I would go really hard. I would train before getting on Golden, I would get on Golden a couple of times at diminished capacity, then I would train a little bit more. Then, I would take at least two days off and then I would try to repeat the process. When I was climbing on Golden I think the schedule when I was trying to redpoint it would be like one day on, one day off, one day on, two days off. Something like that.

Neely Quinn: Okay. So you were climbing like three days a week, total.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, something along those lines. Exactly. The thing about my volume is I don’t believe you can actually overtrain in a single day. I think that overtraining means that you’re not giving yourself enough rest between training days. In my mind, when I feel like I’m getting overtrained or feeling like I’m doing too much, it’s not necessarily because I’ve done too much in one day. I feel like, instead, I’m trying to cram too many sessions into a given week.

Neely Quinn: What happens to you? That’s your main way of avoiding injury, I’m assuming?

Bill Ramsey: Yeah. Take longer rests and if I do feel overtrained, if I do feel like I’m a little over but I still want to get some workout in, then just go easy. Don’t be hard on myself if I don’t do my maximum dead hangs on the fingerboard or don’t be hard on myself if I can’t do something on the treadwall. Just recognize that you’re in a phase right now where you’re a little overtrained, have an easier day, then plan on taking two or three days off. You’ve got to learn to listen to your body, basically. You’ve got to pay attention to what’s going on with your body and I feel like I’ve been doing this long enough that I have a pretty good sense of what’s going on inside me.

Neely Quinn: Do you run? Or do cardio?

Bill Ramsey: I do run. Well, I don’t know. If you saw what I was doing you may not call it running. [laughs] It looks pretty pathetic but I do go for a run/jog but not long. Maybe only a couple miles but then what I’ve been trying to do is interval training on the treadmill because what I feel like you’re trying to do on these aerobic days is you’re really trying to get your heart rate up and get your body accustomed to dropping its heart rate.

Like, when you’ve done a hard section of climbing and then you get to a rest, you want your heart rate to drop down as rapidly as possible. I feel like I get that kind of training on a treadmill by doing intervals. I’ll maybe go pretty hard for maybe 40 seconds or something like that and maybe go not so hard for a minute or maybe just walk for 30 seconds and maybe go hard again. Again, what I’m trying to do there is replicate the aerobic demands that take place on, say, a big route where you’re going to punch it for a ways and then you’re going to maybe get to not such a great rest but you want to drop your heart rate and your breathing down while you’re at the rest. That’s what I’m trying to do with the aerobic stuff.

I mean, I know lots of people are sort of down on running. It’s true it’s not going to build your finger strength up. It’s not going to improve your technique, but the reasons you do it is because you want to try to develop that cardio fitness that I think is important, especially on longer routes.

Neely Quinn: It seems like the consensus nowadays is: if you have no fitness at all, then you should take some time to do some cardio, but if you already have a lot of fitness it might help you to stop running so much.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, and I remember that Jonathan, when he was working things, would go on these huge runs on his rest days. I would think, ‘Right. That’s way too much. You’re going for a seven or eight mile run on your rest days? You’re not going to recover properly.’ I don’t recommend that but I do think there’s something to be said for very targeted running exercise where you’re not going very far but maybe just getting in the habit of getting your heart rate up and dropping it back down rapidly.

Neely Quinn: When you are running and doing the intervals – sorry, my dog is drinking in the background.

Bill Ramsey: Hey, Zoloft.

Neely Quinn: My dog’s name is Zala and Bill calls her Zoloft. Some people call her Zulu but anyway, do you do anything to help yourself get your heart rate down? I mean obviously, you stop running quite as fast but we want to be able to efficiently get our heart rate down. Are there things that you have found that work?

Bill Ramsey: Well, I’ve looked into what biathletes do because I think that’s what that’s all about. That sport is: you sprint on these cross-country skis and then you’ve got to just sit there and be dead on when you shoot at the target. One thing that they do is they start breathing differently when they come close to a rest. I think they start taking much deeper breaths when they come close to where they’re going to have to shoot and that, taking really deep breaths, evidently has an effect on your heart rate. It has something to do with the carbon monoxide in the system so I think something along the lines of just getting in the habit of really jacking it up fast and then dropping it down and trying to get it down quickly is beneficial.

I need to look more into it, quite frankly, but I think biathletes are the athletes that have sort of mastered that particular skill.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, because like on Golden, I know because I saw you guys – because Seth was working the route at the same time as Bill, by the way.

Bill Ramsey: And he crushed it.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, he crushed it but he felt bad, actually, when he did. You weren’t even there that day and he was like, ‘Oh shit. Bill. Oh man.’ [laughs]

Bill Ramsey: I thought it was awesome that he did it. It was great.

Neely Quinn: But I just know that you guys would get to that rest, and it’s sort of a bad rest, and you would be really tired and it was just a matter of getting your heart rate down and feeling good to keep going.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, that rest is basically a stressor position. I think they use it at Guantanamo Bay. You get there and you’re already – I think Anne wore a heart rate monitor one time and she was up to 160 or 170 on the headwall and the lowest it got at the rest was 140, so it’s not like you’re just chilling there. It’s pretty taxing. It’s getting used to being in that sort of stress state. That’s the thing.

When you watch really good climbers, when you watch someone like Justen Sjong or Mike Doyle or some of these people, what they’re really good at is what I call ‘pink-lining.’ By that I mean that it’s not that these guys don’t get pumped. They do get pumped but they’re very good at maintaining and maintaining their technique and finding little shakes here and there and they’re really good at keeping going when they’re fatigued, when they’re in that kind of state. I always feel like that’s what I’m trying to do when I’m training.

I’m trying to get to that pink-lining state, where I’m not quite redlining but I’m getting used to and I’m getting comfortable with being in this zone where you’re fatigued and you feel the lactic acid in the system and you’re close to failing but you’re not quite there and you’re still in the game. I think that’s what a lot of really good climbers develop the ability to spend a lot of time in that zone. I think that’s important.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I wish I could spend more time in that zone.

Bill Ramsey: It seems like everytime I get there I check out, so I need to work on it, too.

Neely Quinn: I’m looking at our time. We have 10 minutes. I want to ask you something that I don’t normally ask people because I realize that our audience is a lot built of more beginners or more moderate climbers and I’m wondering if you have certain advice. You’ve gone through the grades and you have studied training a lot. You know, like, if you’re trying to go from climbing 5.10 to 5.11, say, what advice do you have for people?

Bill Ramsey: The one thing I would say, and it’s interesting, is it’s just not that different. The efforts and struggles and training you want to do to go from 5.10 to 5.11, quite frankly, there’s a lot less of it but the mindset and the general philosophy is not that different than Adam Ondra trying to go from .15b to .15c. I mean, basically, you want to set a goal for yourself. You want to maybe find a target climb that you’re going to do and then you’ve just got to assess what changes need to take place to get there. A lot of times it’s going to entail getting stronger but a lot of times, especially at that level, it’s going to entail climbing relaxed and it’s going to entail working on your footwork and working on your technique and just getting a lot of mileage in.

Especially people who are starting out, I think that probably, a lot of the energy should be focused on technique. That doesn’t mean you maybe shouldn’t try to get stronger but it’s also really beneficial if you can get somebody to help you with your footwork or show you different strategies for all these tricks in climbing like heel hooks and drop kneeing and things like that. Concentrate on that because in the long run that’s what’s going to be beneficial. That’s what’s really going to help you when you’re getting in the upper grades.

The other thing is just don’t get frustrated. Enjoy the process. We’ve all been there. We’ve all gone through it. I’ll come off of some down time and I have to just swallow my pride and go into the climbing gym and fall off a 5.10 or fall off a 5.11 or something like that. The main thing is that you’re going to make progress if you stick with it but you have to stick with it. I think what’s beneficial, like I said at the outset, is to have a kind of regiment where you somehow find a way to measure incremental improvement. That’s why I think the fingerboard is actually beneficial, at least for finger strength, because you can start at one week and hang off of a pretty good hold with 10 pounds off or with 10 pounds on or whatever, and just every week try to get a little bit stronger. That, to me, is the key to training. Not just in climbing but in, frankly, anything.

Neely Quinn: Do you think there’s a certain point at which people should start using tools like the fingerboard and the campus board and all of the other things that you do?

Bill Ramsey: You know, I don’t necessarily think that those have to be only used by experts or top level climbers. I don’t see any reason why a 5.10 climber can’t get on the fingerboard and work on his or her finger strength. I don’t see any reason why a 5.10 or 5.11 or even 5.12 climber can’t start getting some benefit from a system training or a system wall. It seems to me that all of the different training devices and regiments we now use are going to be beneficial to people at all the different grades. I don’t actually think that: no, you really shouldn’t get on the fingerboard until you’ve broken into 5.12. I don’t think that at all. I think that if you’re just starting out, it’s going to be beneficial if you’re a 5.10 climber and you’re probably going to be less prone to injury if you spend a little time on the fingerboard and get the finger strength up a little bit.

Neely Quinn: You’re so unconventional, Bill.

Bill Ramsey: I am. I am the outlier. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Okay. I have about five more minutes and as a nutritionist I always ask people about their diets. Do you want to talk about your’s?

Bill Ramsey: Yeah. I mean I think, again, diets can be kind of trendy but I sort of feel like we have a lot to learn. I’m more inclined to kind of stick with the conventional wisdom here and just be very boring. The night before climbing or the night before a training session I’m going to try to have a sort of carb-intensive diet. I’ll eat a lot of brown rice, whole wheat pasta maybe, and then the night after a training day or a climbing day, maybe more protein-oriented. I’ll get the carbs from the beer or something like that but I’ll try to have more protein in my diet after a workout. I think that’s sort of the conventional view.

Lately I’ve noticed that when I try to get it from fish and chicken, I’ve noticed lately I’ve been having more organic, healthy steaks and I really feel great the next day. I really feel energized so I think there’s even something to be said for red meat.

When I’m at the cliff, quite often I’ll try to get my calories through some kind of liquid meal replacement substance. Some kind of carb/protein shake combination. I feel like the calories get into the system faster that way and I also feel like if I’m getting my calories through some sort of liquid form it keeps me from being dehydrated, or at least I get less dehydrated that way. I use something called Metabolol or Metabolol II or something like that. It’s made by Champion Nutrition. Who knows if it really works? It’s probably 99% a placebo effect but I do feel, drinking that all day, I do feel pretty energized at the end of the day.

Neely Quinn: Is that like a whey protein or something?

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, I think it’s whey but I don’t think it’s simply protein. The thing is, during the day – that’s the whole problem with the Atkins craze – you try to go get an energy bar now and they’re all protein, but what you really need during the day is you need fast carbs. I think it has fast carbs in it as well.

Then, I’ll just have an apple, maybe, or Power Bars. I’ve been eating these Kind bars lately. They are so awesome and they taste so good. I really and sincerely hope they’re good for you because I really, really like them. Just kind of standard stuff like that.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Pretty well-rounded. You feel like that keeps you, obviously, at a good weight? I mean, you’re a fit guy.

Bill Ramsey: I mean, my weight fluctuates and I think if you’re working on a hard project it probably should. It’s kind of a natural thing. We’re in this strength-to-weight ratio sport so when I’m in that training mode I’m going to be a little bit heavier and then when I go into that redpoint mode I’m going to drop a few pounds to try to get up something.

For a long time, in the climbing literature, nobody could actually say there was actually some value in dropping a few pounds because everybody was terrified of promoting anorexia or bulimia or something like that but realistically, that’s not really that common. In other sports I know people do it like in wrestling. When I wrestled that’s what we did. People are in a lot of sports where they manipulate their weight and monitor their weight and change it when it’s appropriate for different phases of their performance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It doesn’t mean that you have an eating disorder. I just think it’s kind of a natural thing to do so that’s what I’ll do.

Now I’m kind of more in a training phase so I’m a little heavier now. Probably, at some point this summer in Rifle, if I want to get up something I might drop a couple pounds or something like that.

Neely Quinn: How will you do that?

Bill Ramsey: Just eat less. It’s a pretty straightforward formula. It’s not complicated. Eat less and maintain the same energy level and you’re going to burn more calories. By eat less I don’t even necessarily mean a lot less, even, just eat smaller portions. Same kind of food, just slightly smaller portions. Maybe cut out – and this is very difficult. This is the hardest part of training, but maybe cut out beer for a night or two or something like that. I know. It’s crazy, it’s insane, but it’s the pain box thing.

That’s basically what I would do and, again, there’s all the difference in the world between sensibly monitoring your weight and manipulating it as an athlete and on the other hand, having some kind of an eating disorder. Those are just very different.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, they are. It seems like what you do is get down a little bit then you come back up when you’re training. You kind of loosen the reins a little bit.

Bill Ramsey: Exactly.

Neely Quinn: That seems to be the trend. Pretty much everybody I’ve talked to has said the same thing.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah, it just makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is pretending that weight is irrelevant to climbing. It’s not irrelevant. It is a variable but you can’t take it too seriously. Obviously, if you drop too much you’re going to really start having problems. You’re going to actually wind up being weaker.

The one thing I find is, when I drop those one or two pounds, I actually feel great. I feel super energized, I feel super motivated, I feel like I’ve really got a lot of energy. I don’t really know what’s going on there but I don’t ever feel weaker when I drop just a little bit of weight to get up something.

Neely Quinn: So it’s not even a lot. You’re saying two or three pounds.

Bill Ramsey: Yeah. I think my everyday, when I’m just kind of living, I’m around 143/144 and I think to get up Golden I dropped down to 139/140 or something like that.

Neely Quinn: And you’re how tall?

Bill Ramsey: I think I’m 5’10” although I think I’m shrinking. Somebody measured me the other day and said I was below that so I don’t know.

Neely Quinn: Either way, you’re pretty fit. Cool. I think that’s all my questions. This was good. I mean, you gave us a good idea of how crazy you can be about training.

Bill Ramsey: I should say, as a qualifier, I do what I’ve been doing but I’m no expert. I have no training in physiology or nutrition or anything like that. I think that the coaches that are out there, the trainers that are out there, they’re doing the smart thing. They’re looking at the best science of the day so, insofar as I might disagree with them, everybody should take what I’m saying with a really huge grain of salt because those people actually do their homework whereas I probably don’t as much as I should.

Neely Quinn: It sounds like you just listen to your body and do what you think is going to work for you.

Bill Ramsey: Exactly.

Neely Quinn: Well, it’s working. Good job.

Bill Ramsey: So far, so good.

Neely Quinn: Congratulations. When you sent that thing and actually, Stevie Danvoys told me about it, I freaked out. I was so excited and happy.

Bill Ramsey: I did too. [laughs] I almost really freaked out when I thought I was going to fall going to the anchors. I was like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ Thankfully, I pulled it off.

Neely Quinn: Well, great work Bill. I hope I see you this summer in Rifle.

Bill Ramsey: Yes. I definitely hope you folks make it over. That will be really fun.

Neely Quinn: Thanks again.

Bill Ramsey: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Neely Quinn: Thanks so much for listening to episode 22 of the TrainingBeta podcast. That was Bill Ramsey. Thank you, Bill, for that awesome interview. I’m Neely Quinn.

Bill has written a lot. If you want to get more into the head of the great Bill Ramsey he has written a lot for the climbing community so if you Google him, a lot will come up. He’s written for Evening Sends, he wrote for us, but also he did write that document we were talking about called, “The Pain Box,” and he allowed us to publish it on the show page. If you go to www.trainingbeta.com and then you go to the podcast page, look for episode 22 and you’ll find the PDF in there if you want to understand more about what he was talking about there.

So, let’s see. Next week I have Hazel Findlay. She is definitely a role model for me in terms of her ability to push through seemingly fearful experiences. I talk to her a lot about that. Hazel doesn’t really train and she kind of made a joke about it so we didn’t talk about her physical training but we did talk a lot about how she deals with stuff mentally and emotionally, and she gives a lot of great advice. She also just had shoulder surgery so we talked a lot about that, too. She has interesting things to say so that will be out next week. Don’t miss that.

Then, the other announcement that I wanted to make is that we’re doing a giveaway on TrainingBeta right now. We’re giving away a gym rope from Sterling. It’s a 30-meter, 10.1 gym rope and also a year membership to our route training program. All in all, that’s worth about $250 and we’re giving it to one lucky winner. If you go to www.trainingbeta.com/giveaways/route-giveaway (link no longer available). I know it’s not the shortest URL but again, it’s www.trainingbeta.com/giveaways/route-giveaway (link no longer available) you can enter there.

If you enter you’ll actually get an email with a link in it that you can share. Every time you share it you get two more entries into the giveaway. That will go until June 2, I believe. Then, we’ll pick a winner next week. Sorry for everybody who didn’t get to be involved in this but we’ll keep doing giveaways hopefully every month so that you guys can get some cool stuff.

Other than that, if you guys want more help with your training, that’s what we’re here for. That’s what TrainingBeta was created for. We have awesome information on the blog and in our videos but we also have training programs that we created so that you don’t have to think about your programs, or your training program. We’ll make it for you.

We have our route and bouldering subscription programs which give you three unique workouts every week. It involves finger strength and bouldering or route climbing, depending on what you’re training. It involves campusing for certain people at a certain level. It involves weight training and it also gives you a lot of injury prevention exercises to do. Kris Peters has made this really accessible, easy to use, very clear instructions, so you get a two week free trial period if you want to see what it’s like before you really commit. Those are all on www.trainingbeta.com under the ‘Training Programs’ tabs, so check those out.

We’ve also got other programs on there but people are really liking these subscription programs so check those out. If you guys do support us in that way it really keeps the podcast going, it helps keep the blog going, it helps keep us going, so we appreciate all the support you guys have given us so far. Speaking of that, if you want to, we would love a review on iTunes of the podcast. It helps get the word out about this podcast. I really appreciate all the awesome reviews that we’ve gotten so far. I really appreciate it.

I think that’s it for this week. I hope you have a great week of climbing and training and I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening!