[laughs], and experimenting with the ideas from the podcast. That’s been while we’ve been working on some really ambitious projects in Rifle and in other places as well.

Neely Quinn: I’m so excited to hear what you changed and what you did with your training through these couple of years. But let’s take a step back. Tell me when did you start climbing, where are you from, all that good stuff.

Danny Robertson: I grew up in Lexington, KY. I think I was introduced to climbing in ’91-ish, ’92-ish. I climbed in my last year of high school, and then I moved to Colorado, with the mindset of snowboarding. For a great deal of time, I was in and out of the sport. Largely I was just so bad [laughs]. The sport was so demoralizing, but also the nature of my personality seemed to just do one thing obsessively. So that’s been snowboarding, a brief stint of kayaking, mountain biking, and then more in the later ‘90s I was introduced to bouldering, and that was sort of a game changer for me. That really kind of caught my interest, so the obsession turned back to climbing.

In Colorado, I lived in Crested Butte in Gunnison, and completed school there, and then moved to the Roaring Fork Valley, in 2001. For the most part, I’ve been pretty obsessive about sport climbing since then. I’ve just kind of worked my way up through the grades at Rifle, and had some phases where I was a little bit in and out, but mostly pretty obsessive sport climber since 2001. A lot of that has been at Rifle, but I’ve also climbed in Ceuse, I’ve climbed in Rodellar, and taken some bouldering trips to the really popular places like Hueco and Bishop and Joe’s Valley. That’s about the history of it, I suppose.

Neely Quinn: So you kind of were a late starter. If I’m doing the math correctly, you sort of started getting into it seriously when you were 26?

Danny Robertson: Yeah, my mid to later 20’s, it really kind of caught hold of my attention, and dominated my time [laughs].

Neely Quinn: And then you started bouldering more, but now you route climb mostly. What changed?

Danny Robertson: Well, when I lived in Gunnison, bouldering was the best game in town. There is some pretty good bouldering- Skyland is awesome. The people I climbed with were… I had the choice between traditional, pure trad climbers and boulderers, and for me, I chose the bouldering side of things. The people I climbed with, we went bouldering. We did do some sport climbing, but predominantly we would boulder, because that was what was good in the area. It was the best climbing to do, and that was kind of just the interest at the time.

I’d taken trips to Rifle, and got the typical absolute shut down, that is the experience of being introduced to Rifle, so I knew of it. Then when I moved to the Valley, then again you’re just going to do what’s best, and the best thing in the Valley is sport climbing- we’re pretty limited on bouldering. And it’s honestly what I enjoy the most, and I definitely tend to do best on longer routes, where the difficulty is dispersed over larger distances. I seem to have some of the greatest epics on the short bouldery routes at Rifle. They’ve really put me through some of the greatest number of tries and time- a large number of those have been the short routes.

Neely Quinn: You guys go to the VRG sometimes too, right? And those are really long.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, I love the VRG. It’s kind of awful and awesome all at the same time. The worst setting imaginable, but the best cliff. It kind of filters out- it seems like the people that climb there are really focused on the climbing, and that takes precedent over being buy a highway, just overwhelmed by noise and wind, and all the horrible things about it. But the routes are awesome.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it definitely filtered me out [laughs].

Danny Robertson: It’s funny that it doesn’t actually keep the numbers that low, but it’s usually mobbed with people. It’s crazy.

Neely Quinn: So tell me about your progression. You said that you sucked in the beginning, as we all do, but tell me about your progression through the grades. How has it gone for you?

Danny Robertson: During my first early trips to Rifle, I was just climbing on 5.11’s, or failing on 5.11’s, and just being completely demoralized, and just sort of in awe of all the really good climbers. That was definitely the era where Rifle really lived up to its reputation of arrogant, unfriendly people who were super good rock climbers. I remember one off my first trips, walking into the Wicked Cave, and Chris Knuth was in a pair of cut off jeans starting up The Crew, and I was just like “Whoa”. I just felt like I was on the outside. I was just so intimidated and demoralized by the experience, but when I moved to the Valley, my first project was Slaggissimo, which is a 12d. And it just kind of progressed from there- just pick something, work on it, it would take some amount of time, just a huge number of tries, others not so much. Essentially I just tried to tick off the classic routes, starting at that mid 12 range and progress into the 13’s, and then I guess maybe somewhere around 2005-ish, or so, I worked on my first 5.14, which was Zulu. That took forever. I don’t count the number of tries, but some friends actually know. They’ll tell you “That was like 78 tries”- I don’t do that. But the estimate, it was definitely up there. Maybe not a hundred, but it was definitely up there.

I guess from that point, I felt like I basically climbed the same for a large period of time, maybe close to a decade. I don’t think I climbed anything harder than that, but it was just the same process. I’d pick a route, work on it, maybe eventually do it, and I don’t feel like I ever really stepped out of that comfort zone of being on a route where the first time up I could do all the moves- or at least understand the moves and see this as a process of just putting them together. The few times I kind of stepped out of that comfort zone, I didn’t really like it. I tested the waters on a couple of routes that might be considered to be really hard, and it wasn’t something I felt comfortable with, so I just kind of avoided it. I guess that kind of leads up to- I think it goes all the way back to the fall of 2014. I started this process of working on The Crew, and it was sort of an intentional experiment that I started on myself, I guess. My intention- the question was- can I actually elevate my level of performance above this hard ceiling that I was up against. I felt like I’d climbed through the grades, the routes that I could do, and then there was this other collection of routes that were this significant step out, above my ability level. I tried to intentionally step out of that zone of comfort, and just undertake this super ambitious project that was way too hard for me [laughs]. That process has gone on from the fall of 2014, and finally ended just this past November 2016. It was epic.

Neely Quinn: Okay. I have a couple of questions to set the scene here. You said that from 2005 when you were on Zulu, which is basically when I met you, I think. When I first met you, you were eon Zulu, so I was like “This guy is strong”. So when you describe yourself on flailing on 5.11’s, I can’t imagine that. Anyway, you said that you would ge ton 14a or below, and you would try them a lot of times, and then you would eventually send them. Did that continue up until 2014? Were you still trying 14a’s one hundred times, or seventy times?

Danny Robertson: The range of routes that I would try would be somewhere between 13c to 14a. Maybe I climbed a couple of routes that were given a grade of 14b, but I don’t know. There’s definitely a difference between the old school routes of Rifle that were bolted in the 90s, and then there is a resurgence in the bolting, and there’s this collection of new routes that I think a lot of people would honestly say are generously graded. A couple of the routes that I did had the grade of 14b, but I honestly feel like if you were to go back to just that benchmark of Zulu, or 7pm Show or something… I’m not sure if they were actually any harder, or just kind of much of the same. I would just work on routes, essentially between 13c to 14a. Some of those routes went in a reasonable amount of time, some of them were just complete epics. Going through that whole process of routine failure, and all the ups and downs that go with that. It could range from a reasonable number of tries, maybe 5 days, to multiple seasons, just kind of depending on the route. What would really work me over were these short, nasty bouldery routes. I had some of my darkest days on those, for sure. But then others would go and wouldn’t be so bad, it was just kind of unique to the route. Some of them were 13’s, up to 14a or b.

Neely Quinn: So you sent The Crew, which is 14c, correct?

Danny Robertson: Yes.

Neely Quinn: Do you feel like when you finally did it- do you feel like you’re at a different point in your climbing? Do you feel like if you got on 14a’s, or b’s, or c’s, that they would be more possible for you, or that you would do them quicker?

Danny Robertson: Well, the a process of climbing The Crew, I kind of took this approach of having a hard project, and then I have an offset project. You might say you have your main project, then you have your self esteem project, kind of thing. During this process of working on it for three years, I completed like seven other routes graded 14a, one graded 14b, and quite a few 5.13’s. I did feel that experience of basically just getting wrecked on The Crew, or just feeling really down on myself, or feeling weak and not strong enough, not good enough. But then getting some positive feedback from going on some of the other routes. I was able to do some routes that were big goals for me, I think largely as a result of the effort that was put into The Crew. So I did kind of experience the level of project that I was working was significantly higher than what I’d done in the past, and as a result the level of climb that I could do more quickly, or in a more reasonable amount of time, increased as well. On some of the trips we went to- we went to the Virgin River Gorge- I was able to do Horse Latitudes, and that was a route that I had kind of left hanging from the past, and I was able to go down and do that in four days work.

Neely Quinn: Oh in one trip. And how hard is that?

Danny Robertson: That’s 14a, in the Virgin River Gorge.

Neely Quinn: Which is stout.

Danny Robertson: Yeah… you would say that they’re pretty solid grades. The climbing is interesting. I don’t do adventure climbing, I don’t really do much trad climbing, and that’s kind of my idea of an adventure. The routes are kind of- they’re not dangerously bolted- but you certainly have to climb to your bolts, and you’re regularly standing six to eight feet above a bolt and doing challenging, hard climbing. The routes are long, and you’re in this sensory overload, this environment is windy, there’s this horrible busy highway below you, and so you can’t hear anything.

Neely Quinn: Your belayer can’t hear you.

Danny Robertson: And eventually they can’t see you, because the routes start out pretty overhanging, but they always roll out into the death slab. So you can’t hear anything, your belayer can’t see you, and your on a slab [laughter]. It’s like a masochistic pleasure, I guess. But so I was able to do Horse Latitudes, which was a huge goal of mine. At the end of that trip, I was able to do a route- Captain Fantastic 13c, and I was able to do that in a day. That was a huge goal of mine. That was a route I’d always known about and hadn’t had the chance to get on. That trip was basically at the end of a season on failure eon The Crew, which was a downer, but then I got this positive feedback. I think that was the winter of 2015-16.

From then we took at trip to Spain, we went to Chulilla. I was able to do an 8b+, or a 14a there, and that was the first time I’d ever done a route of that grade in Europe. That was a little benchmark for me. We only had two weeks, but I was able to do a stack of climbs. I definitely think that the process of going through it, I definitely felt some change in my climbing physically, and I think another part of it was mentally, that allowed me to do well on other lesser projects.

Neely Quinn: Yeah you broke through some barriers.

Danny Robertson: For sure. It was interesting, just getting beat up. Absolutely roughed up on The Crew. Just to fail, and fail, and kind of go through this mental taxation of that process. And then, often get down on myself and whatever, like “I suck, blah blah blah”. It’s almost like doing things with a weight vest on- when the baseball players swing their bat around with a big weight, and then they drop the weight and suddenly you feel lighter. For me to go onto a different route was like dropping off the weight vest and suddenly feel like “Oh I can rock climb”.

Neely Quinn: That’s a lovely analogy, I like it.

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Neely Quinn: It sounds like this whole changing things up for you is really important. I think it’s a good lesson for all of us. You have your- what did you call them? You ego projects? Your self esteem projects. I want to talk about that for just a sec. Are you working on those on the same days that you were climbing on The Crew, or what would you do with that.

Danny Robertson: So depending on the route, it can take a role of part of your warm up. I have this warm up routine that I do, and essentially it starts with… I’m trying to recall the physical therapist that was on your show, Jared Vagy? He spoke to this idea of the dynamic warm up as opposed to a static stretching. That warm up that he describes- he has Jonathan Siegrist doing it on some video on the internet. So I essentially do that. Then it would start with warming up on something fairly easy, similar to an easy jog, but then we have this term well call “shock the monkey”, which is essentially like, do something where you have to try hard and really wake up the fingers and the whole system. Turn it on. That might be a route that might just be a repeat, or if the route is of the right difficulty and it’s not going to tear up the skin too bad, that side project can take the role of that final effort in preparation for trying The Crew. The Crew goes into the shade in the afternoon, so it’s this process of waiting for it. The side project could take on that role of a final warm up. Or I would follow a routine of just basically warming up on day one trying The Crew, whether than be actually trying to redpoint or just putting in the work session- that would be Saturday, say.

Then day two, that would be Sunday, I would try the side project and then go and maybe work only a part of The Crew, maybe only the endurance section of it, as opposed to trying to do the entire route. It’s kind of like juggling the routine a little bit. There was a route called Double Rainbow I was doing on day two, but I’d always be so tired that I couldn’t really do it, because I was so tired from working on The Crew before that. I remember getting to a point where I felt like I could do it, so I decided to switch, and try that one before I got on The Crew, and suddenly it felt like a different route. It felt much more easy, and I was able to do that. That just gives you this little does of happiness, or positivity, before you go back and get back into the trenches of suffering on a hard project.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Suffering and sucking!

Danny Robertson: Yeah, and throwing wobblers and stuff.

Neely Quinn: It’s another example of taking the weight vest off.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, you know, if you try something and you’re just absolutely fatigued and you have tape on multiple tips, and your skin is all torn up, it’s not gonna feel very good. But then you actually try it rested and fresh, and you’re like “wow, this feels way better”.

Neely Quinn: So then on that day when you sent Double Rainbow, did you go and then work on The Crew? Did you send them both in the same day?

Danny Robertson: No, this was a little chapter in the process. This is thinking back to maybe the fall of 2015, or so? I think that might have been the season prior.

Neely Quinn: Oh okay. I’m just trying get an idea of how you work. I always have struggled a little bit when I try something that’s too hard for me in the morning, then I’ll have an afternoon project, and I’ll go and I’m just wasted. I think it’s a really fine balance.

Danny Robertson: Yeah it’s not something that I’ve figured out. I think that’s what everyone is trying to do, is you get exposed to training. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do. How do I fit this in? How do the fingerboard, how do I campus, how do I boulder, how do I actually go rock climbing, how do I do whatever, muscle ups? Where does all this fit in?

Neely Quinn: I know!

Danny Robertson: Training- what is it? Is training climbing, or should I not be climbing? Am I training or am I climbing? What am I doing? I don’t have it figured out, but again, it was a three year process. I kind of went in and out from just basically putting the sole focus on The Crew, to almost becoming mentally fatigued and needing to add in some other things, because I’m not sure if I’m even an advocate of limit climbing. If you’re trying something at your absolute limit, it’s like climbing hard is hardly climbing. You spend so much time just sitting around, not doing anything. It’s so much time just perseverating on this one thing. I found myself often in this state of “What am I missing out on? I’m coming out to Rifle and hardly climbing and then going home [laughs]”. It was just a state of constantly questioning, like should I even be doing this, why am I doing this, should I be doing other things, should I not be doing other things? There’s no hard and fast answer to it.

Neely Quinn: But you did send, so you figured something out. Tell me the difference between this summer- actually this year. What you did to prepare of the season last spring or whenever, and the difference between that and what you were doing in 2013 or something.

Danny Robertson: I guess when I started The Crew, in the fall of 2014, I would basically break it down into a really hard short route, and a long route, all combined. It starts out with about 4 bolts of climbing, I would probably say it is approximately v11 or really hard v10 level climbing, which the problem for me is that v10 is like my max bouldering grade [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Not anymore.

Danny Robertson: You go work on your max boulder, but typically you don’t climb 25 feet up the wall and clip and then try your hardest boulder. Typically you’re standing on the ground. But anyways, basically the progression is you scamper up a short distance of jugs, and then you’re at this position and at this point the wall really kicks back and you do what might be a v4 little sequence, and you do a strenuous clip, and then there is a sequence that’s about, maybe a v10 boulder, and that lands you at a 3 finger pocket, and you clip, and you immediately do a v8 boulder. Upon completing that I’d say you climb about a 14a.

Neely Quinn: No big deal, sounds easy!

Danny Robertson: So through every possible problem, weakness is a big problem. I literally couldn’t do- the entire first fall I worked on it, I didn’t do a move.That first v10 I completed basically starting halfway through it, but I never did the moves starting from the clipping holds. That kind of progressed to me being able to do the route once basically halfway through that first boulder. The winter that followed I was really motivated to train, but really poorly informed. I basically just took this approach of just doing a lot of everything. We had this insane schedule where we were motivated to train but at the same time we had this crazy winter where we were able to climb outside almost through the entire winter. So the schedule would be we’d do yoga on Monday, then we’d boulder on Tuesday, we’d do yoga on Wednesday, then we’d do the campus board on Thursday, then yoga, then we’d climb Saturday and Sunday, and if we weren’t outside we’d climb on plastic, and then that whole cycle would just repeat itself through the winter, so that was basically January, February and March.

Then in April, we went out climbing and that spring of 2015, what often will happen in Rifle is you can go out there really early, and the water will still be frozen. There’s a lot of snow, but it hasn’t started seeping yet, and you can get these little windows of opportunity where you can get on the routes really early in the spring. They’ll become wet, and then they’ll get dry in the summer. I remember day one, the first try, day one on The Crew, I did that boulder problem. I mean I had definitely gotten stronger, but right about that time, my friend Andrew told about the Anderson Brothers- the Rock Climber’s Training Manual. So I got on the internet, I just bought the whole kit, you know? Hangboard, book… so the hangboard shows up, I’ve got my pulleys, all this stuff, and I was like, alright! And it was just adding another thing, and I think I hangboarded once or twice, and I had an injury from the past- this weird thing with my middle finger that devolves into carpal tunnel syndrome. So I’d had that in the past and I was over it, but then that came back. So I basically just ruined myself in an effort to get better. Then the weather just turned awful. It was a spring where it rained and snowed all the way through June, and nothing was dry. Everything just collapsed. In the attempt to get better I ruined my season. I was injured through the spring, then we went to Maple that summer, and that was kind of the catalyst for wanting to try to learn something about training, so this doesn’t happen again.

It was the fall of 2015 where we found out about Training Beta, and I was on the website, and we started listening to the podcast when we were driving out to climb. The first ones we were listening to was Steve Bechtel, and those are awesome. He has a way of telling you the hard truths using really funny analogies.

Neely Quinn: I know I love that guy.

Danny Robertson: And so then it kind of progressed from there. Then that rolled into fall of 2015, and I think what really was a breakthrough then, was listening to Steve Maisch. This idea of how he combined strength training with- I think he called it capacity or interval training. So basically we formed this strategy of during the week while we were working, we would do strength training, like hangboarding. Then when we went out to Rifle, I took a mentality of training onto the route. I would basically break The Crew in half- so it has the lower half and then the upper half. On try one, I would go up and just focus on the lower part, the bouldering. I would try to repeat each of these sections, if you cut them into isolated boulder problems. The first boulder, I would try to do it three times. Then I would proceed to the second boulder, and I would try to do that three times. Then I would go to the next-  you go up these stacked boulder problems, and then you go up and you arrive at this okay kneebar rest, but it’s not that comfortable. Then immediately after than, you go into this endurance section of the route, which I think is the actual crux of the route- it’s a long patch of power endurance climbing. You really have to go for it, you skip clips, and you’re racing to this position- if you can reach this one position, you’re just in a game of recovering. There’s still some hard boulder problems, but you’re essentially able to get some no hands kneebars. It just becomes a game of recovering and then bouldering. It’s this race to this one point on the route, a little over halfway on the route, at which it changes from being uncertain, to if you reach this one point you can very well do the route. I would try that section three times, and then I would lower, and then rest.

Then try two, I would pull through the climbing at the bottom, and I would repeat that process on the top of that route. There’s three boulders, I would do each of those three times, and then that was my day. I’ve never been that devastated, never felt that level of impact from climbing, you know? It was really… it seemed kind of simple and minimal but it was really difficult as far as the impact and the soreness and stuff. Wendy was doing a similar thing on her project, on The Path, and we both saw these significant gains in our climbing. So that was kind of a big breakthrough. That fall I basically climbed all the hard climbing- I climbed it from the third bolt to the top, just minus a short 5.12 [laughs]. A short three bolt 5.12 at the bottom.

Neely Quinn: Oh no.

Danny Robertson: The thing that led me to keep working on it was I’d see this small progression. Just getting from one season or one session to the next, I’d see this little, subtle progression that made me think wow, maybe I should keep trying it. I fell short that fall 2015, then went and had some really good trips in other places. The winter following that, the winter of 2015 into ’16, when we came back from our trips, so from about January into May, the goal was to try and follow a rough linear progression. That progression that is described in the Anderson Brother’s book of the strength- the limit bouldering to the power endurance. We stuck to the plan of doing nine hangboard workouts, and it was really strange. It seemed like we weren’t doing anything. I wasn’t sure if it was the hangboarding that was helping- my fingers felt good- or if it was the fact that I was just preventing myself from climbing, was why my fingers felt so good.

Neely Quinn: You mean because you kept increasing your weights on the hangboard or something so you knew you were getting stronger?

Danny Robertson: It was really hard to tell- my fingers felt good in a way that they didn’t hurt, and my knuckles weren’t all swollen, which is kind of a common experience. My fingers felt good, they felt kind of healthy, and I didn’t have any trouble with injuries or something in any of my fingers. They felt really good, but it’s just really hard to tell, like is this helping me? It just seems like you’re doing so little as compared to just climbing all the time.

Neely Quinn: Right, because if you were following the Anderson Brothers, you weren’t climbing, you were just doing a fingerboard workout, two days rest, fingerboard workout, right?

Danny Robertson: Right exactly. I was trying to stay disciplined and stick to that program, of the rest-hangboard-rest. Then that led into bouldering, and we tried to incorporate some trips to Joe’s Valley as part of that bouldering phase. I exited Joe’s Valley- I came back with an injured ring finger and a strained hamstring [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Oh no! That’s what you get for climbing.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, bouldering especially! I don’t know, I feel like maybe at times I’m getting old, and like man, this sport might be a young person’s game [laughs]. I got roughed up.

Neely Quinn: Did you feel strong though, before you got the injuries? Or was that first day.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, I was able to climb some of the goals. I went into the goal of trying to climb Fingerhut, and there was another problem called Playmate of the Year. Those were the two big goals, going into this week we spent at Joe’s. I was able to do those.

Neely Quinn: How hard are those?

Danny Robertson: Finger Hut is a v10, and other one is a v9. They’re really cool. But for me, the classic boulders, I subscribe more and more to just really lowball problems heavily padded. Both of these, you have a much greater risk of dabbing than you do of getting injured in any way. You’re just barely off the ground, so they were perfect.

Neely Quinn: But you injured yourself. How did your training proceed from there?

Danny Robertson: From there we started moving into more of the route climbing, and more of the power endurance. We tried just to repeat what had worked the fall prior. We went in to the spring and basically the bottoms of all the routes were wet, so I started just trying to climb The Crew from as low as possible. I would stick clip or yard through where the route was wet, and start as low as I could, and then just start repeating that idea of the intervals of repeating the sections on as much of the route as I could. Kind of building toward May or June, when the route would be dry. So the spring, late May until June, we actually stuck around in June with the goal of actually doing our projects. We often just leave when we are done with work, we’ll go on our summer trip, but we stuck around to try it, and again, we made these micro progressions, but again fell short of the goal [laughs]. We built up to the point where we were super close, but then we started getting compromised by skin. This move on The Crew, I kind of hook my pinky behind this little broken spike of rock, and that would dig a hole into my pinky, and I couldn’t do the move with tape on it, so essentially it was just my skin deteriorating. At the very same time, Wendy had this horrific split on her finger, that basically looked like a half moon parallel to her fingernail. The top of her finger was just opening up like a tulip. We wanted to keep trying, but physically deteriorated, and then it started to get really hot. We ended again- again, made progressions. My high point from the bottom of the route was getting better, and my consistency on the bouldering was getting better, but I fell short of the goal again.

Then we went to Maple Canyon during the summer, and I was able to climb a route, Divine Fury, which was kind of a big goal of mine. I think what bringing some of those tactics and bringing that kind of mindset of working a hard route, bringing that from The Crew to that route, I was able to do it. I mean I didn’t do it fast, but I was able to do it in a reasonable amount of time, in a couple of weeks time. It was refreshing to have some success on that thing instead of constant failure.

Neely Quinn: A self esteem route. How hard is that one?

Danny Robertson: That one is given 14b. It was really challenging for me, but it was awesome to kind of get that feedback. Like, wow, what I’m doing is working, even though I’m not getting the main goal accomplished. But all the work I’m doing on the route and off the route is helping me to climb well and be in good shape. At that point, another kind of error in the training that I’d make prior, I had this idea that I had to do rings, and I’m not sure why. I ordered the rings- most of the training has just been a comedy of errors. But I ordered up the rings, and was like, I’m going to do this! I was just incredibly sore, and then I went out climbing, and I injured my shoulder as a result of trying to climb fatigued. At that point, in the summer, my shoulder was a mess. It was keeping me up at night, and I wasn’t able to do a pushup on my knees at that point. Something that I started doing that really helped was yoga. I think that has been a really big help for me, as far as I’m back to where I’m able to do the full pushup, or the full Chatarunga or whatever, and my body feels really good.

Neely Quinn: How often are you doing it?

Danny Robertson: Maybe two to three times a week? You have to kind of be careful. On your podcast, the yoga teacher, Jess Simmons? You were talking about how it’s a pretty strenuous strength workout. I do yoga just on my phone- I don’t go to an actual class anymore- but I have these apps on my phone and I regularly just tap out [laughs]. I guess I’m emerging from this process, and what I’m trying to do is what I think is the hardest thing to do in training, and that’s rest. I’m trying to put the focus and effort more into sustaining the impact of the climbing, and trying to have more of a mind for longevity, and climbing when I feel good as opposed to the blitzkrieg approach to climbing training.

Neely Quinn: Two questions about that- who do you feel like instilled that in you the most? The rest?

Danny Robertson: Well I think it’s just been this experience of getting old. I’m starting more and more to deal with these injuries, and starting to think about, you know… I think I would much rather just be out climbing and enjoying it, as opposed to doing one really hard project at the expense of spending a good amount of my time injured. I think that idea comes back to the beginning. It’s funny that I bought the Rock Climber’s Training Manual, and that led to the first of series of injuries. But if you read that, or if you look at some of the videos on their blogs, there’s some quote- I’m not sure which person it is- but they say the real challenge is to get strong and not get injured. They say something to that effect. Like, anyone can get strong, but it’s really hard to get strong and not get injured. It’s sort of a takeaway from the process, and it’s true. I think we are all doing probably way too much, and in the interest, or in the desire of getting better and sending, there’s so many people- if you just go out to Rifle, or you go out to any popular destination, there’s so many people that are climbing really well. There’s so much motivation, and everyone wants to do this route, or do this boulder problem, but I think most of us are probably going about it in- it’s like we filter out, even if we are exposed to the training, we filter out so much of what’s good for us, and just take this blitzkrieg approach. Like if I just work hard or do more. But I think especially when you’re getting little older and stuff, I think a less is more approach is gonna have better results. Or at least you’ll enjoy climbing while feeling good as opposed to just always feeling damaged and broken down and fatigued.

I guess those two things, this idea of really trying to put the focus into doing all of those little things that I always avoid, the little maintenance and therapy exercises, the recovery, and putting as much or more focus into that as opposed to whatever campus 1-5-8 exercise I can do- which I can’t do that by the way.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: I was like, “Damn Danny!”.

Danny Robertson: I was just referencing that, I would love to be able to do that, but I’m too weak.

Neely Quinn: Okay so you’re in Maple, you injure your shoulder-

Danny Robertson: The shoulder developed- it was this developing problem. It reached this point of being in really bad shape, and so that’s when I started incorporating some of the yoga into the program.

Neely Quinn: Because then you went from Maple and you sent in the fall, so it must not have been super bad?

Danny Robertson: I saw some really good improvement in my shoulder as a result of doing the yoga. I went from it basically feeling agitated a lot of the time, and some sort of restrictions in the mobility, and it seemed to be worse at night. It would interfere with my sleep. I saw this improvement, literally trying to do a pushup on my knees being basically out of the question, way too painful, to being able to do the full pushup with my elbows in. I think just generally my body has felt really good as a result of doing that practice regularly.

Neely Quinn: That’s good, that’s very good. I hope other people do it too.

Danny Robertson: As far as my shoulder, I’m glad I finally did send, because there was an undercling move on the route that just felt like whatever in my shoulder was compromised, it was tugging on that. I was hoping to just get enough mileage on it to do the route, before it pulled it apart or whatever.

Neely Quinn: So you did it- and did you feel like after Maple and after getting your shoulder back into working order, did it come pretty easily for you?

Danny Robertson: Oh no, it was a battle. It was epic. Just all through September, all through October. We got really lucky- the weather stayed really nice and warm all the way into late November. It was mid to late November when I finally sent. I was just really lucky to have an extended season. Every week we’d take days off work, multiple times, to come out. I came out two or three Wednesdays. It was not easy at all [laughs]. It was just pure work.

Neely Quinn: Do you feel like everything that you did with working the route in those sections- I mean were you still fingerboarding and doing any training while you were still projecting?

Danny Robertson: Yeah well when we came back I wanted to climb in a gym. There’s a little gym in a local private highschool that we can climb at. But when we went back to work, the weather was so warm, it was so miserable to try and climb in the gym that instead I took to hangboarding. On Tuesday I did this strange sort of hybrid workout- I’d do more of a max hang protocol, where I did the maximum weight where I could hang for ten seconds. Then on Wednesday I would switch that and do the repeaters that are prescribed in the Rock Climber’s Training Manual- the seven on three off. Then on Thursday, I would do more rigorous strength oriented yoga, and then on Friday I would just totally chill. At most just go for a walk. Then Saturday-Sunday, hitting it hard at climbing. Monday I would do something more restorative. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday- unless we planned to take the day off work, like if we were going to come out and climb on Wednesday- I would just rest Monday and Tuesday, and put all the chips into just that day of trying to send on Wednesday.  Never worked.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: You sent on a weekend?

Danny Robertson: Yeah, I sent on Saturday.

Neely Quinn: Well your story is inspirational. It makes me want to persevere on projects that I’ve wanted to give up on, and I’m sure it’s done that for other people who are listening.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, thanks for your interest. Like I said, we love the show. Thanks for doing it, it’s super helpful.

Neely Quinn: Well thanks so much for being such a great supporter! I will see you out there in April or May.

Danny Robertson: Yeah, awesome. We’ll look forward to it.

Neely Quinn: Alright, thanks again Danny.

Danny Robertson: Alright, talk to you soon.

Neely Quinn: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Danny Robertson. Maybe he inspired you to change up some of your training and do things a little differently. I think what I took from him the most was his ingenuity outside- not having such great training facilities inside, and making the most of what he has outside. I think that’s really cool, and a lot of people could learn from something like that. I think we could all have a little more perseverance.

So coming up on the podcast we have Margarita Martinez. She is the sixty year old woman who Esther Smith mentioned in our episode about shoulders, who just climbed her first 13d this summer, which I find to be extremely inspirational. I’m going to talk to her about that, and I have some other good episodes coming up. Next week I will probably not do another episode again, because I was asked to commentate at Bouldering Nationals in Salt Lake City. Along with Chris Weidener and Brian Runnells, I’ll be on TV- not real TV, but climbing TV- talking about the competitors. Wish me luck, I am honestly terrified and very nervous, so hopefully I won’t suck too bad. I’ve definitely never commentated on any sporting event, so it should be interesting.

If you need any help with your training, we have all kinds of resources for you at Training Beta. You can find our training programs, which are very affordable, so that you can follow them on your own. We have subscription programs for boulderers and route climbers, for endurance and power endurance. Definitely check that stuff out at trainingbeta.com, and we also, like I mentioned, have Mercedes Pollmeier doing personal training online, and you can find that at trainingbeta.com/mercedes. I think that’s it! I will talk to you soon, not next week but the week after, and I hope you have a great couple of weeks. Thanks for listening.