Transcript

00:00:02.11
Neely Quinn
All right, welcome to the show, Frances. Thank you very much for talking with me today.

00:00:07.26
francis
Thank you for having me, Neely. Appreciate it.

00:00:09.88
Neely Quinn
Yeah. So for anybody who doesn’t know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:00:16.86
francis
Yeah, um okay, so I’m a climber. um I kind of do all the trades. I do a lot of sport, bouldering, you know ice climbing, all that good stuff, trad climbing. I’m based here in Colorado. I’ve been climbing about 30 years. I used to work at you know Rock and Ice. and um yeah I’m a writer too and you know got got some degrees in philosophy and things like that. and So yeah, i will I won’t bore you with any more details, but that’s you know a rough sketch probably of who I am.

00:00:53.98
Neely Quinn
That’s a really funny thing to say as an interviewee on a podcast. You’re not going to bore us with details. oh So your current profession for work you write or what do you do?

00:01:01.50
francis
right but

00:01:07.84
francis
Yeah, so yeah, I’m right. um But no no doubt in my day job, I work for an environmental nonprofit. And we work on like protecting landscapes in Western Colorado.

00:01:14.54
Neely Quinn
so

00:01:18.90
francis
So um you know I was in the climbing world for a while, and that was great and really good. um And then I kind of just transitioned to, you know I think,

00:01:30.06
francis
an area where it just felt like it had a lot of value and had a lot of things to add. And we work in climbing spaces with the Access Fund and we work with a lot of different, you know, a lot of different orgs to um make sure that we’re out out there able to play on these lands, you know, because almost everything climbers do, runners, mountain runners, ice climbers, we’re always on like, you know, public lands in some aspects.

00:01:50.78
francis
So, you know, that’s got to come first.

00:01:53.58
Neely Quinn
Yeah, that’s awesome.

00:01:54.47
francis
Yeah.

00:01:55.07
Neely Quinn
What a valuable, yeah, what valuable work you do. Thank you.

00:01:59.49
francis
Yeah, totally.

00:02:01.03
Neely Quinn
Yeah. So you got your PhD in the philosophy of religion, correct?

00:02:07.26
francis
I did. Yeah. Got it from Syracuse University um in the philosophy of religion. Yup. Yup.

00:02:14.46
Neely Quinn
and And so obviously we’re going to talk about your book today, which is about the zen of climbing. And so I’m assuming you studied zen and I know that you studied it on your own, but was that like part of your studies?

00:02:27.22
francis
Yeah. you know It’s a good question, actually. um Ironically, it was something that I probably didn’t like you know write papers on or present on, really, because it was so close to me as like a person that I just felt like you know I’m going to go in like a different direction in terms of like my academics right and things like that. But um you know just, I guess, to put it out that you know Zen was like introduced to me probably when I was 14 or 15.

00:02:57.58
francis
um And I just totally loved it. like i just you know i At a really early age, i just it just made sense to me. you know like The stories and what was getting transmitted, even though I couldn’t like really understand it intellectually, something about it really attracted me. And then it’s kind of been just like simmering in my subconscious for like decades.

00:03:20.96
francis
um and you know something i would consider myself a full-on practitioner in that way you know but just in the basic sense of trying to understand what your mind is doing trying to understand mind right consciousness and and um what you’re about as a person and what you’re not about as a person so i just kind of took that to heart and just you know, just kind of embodied that my personal life for so many decades.

00:03:43.68
francis
And, and ironically, the zena climbing book is the first time that I kind of came out of the closet as like a zen, a zen person, you know, I was like, okay, like, like, here it is, right?

00:03:50.52
Neely Quinn
Really?

00:03:54.32
francis
Yeah, I wasn’t really ready to probably write that book in any, any earlier time. But I finally was like, all right, it’s time to like, do this. And so there came the book, you know,

00:04:01.56
Neely Quinn
Hmm. Yeah, well, in it, it seems like your thoughts are quite, um I don’t know, complete, like you had put a lot of time and thought into this and also applied it to your own climbing and somewhat recently, too.

00:04:20.54
francis
yeah Yeah, no, that’s a good that’s a good call right there. I really um ah use myself as a total guinea pig for a lot of the stuff that that book is book is about. And and I like mean that in the truest sense. I’d like come upon like a tactic or something. I’d be like, I can’t write about this if it doesn’t work. right So I take it out to the crag. I take it out to a sketchy situation or a hard project I’m working on. And I’d be like,

00:04:42.78
francis
Huh, like, OK, that really does work. you know And then I would tell my friends about it. And I’d be like, dude, you got to try this one thing. And they’d be like, you know whatever, dude. And I’d be like, no, seriously, like this this probably works. and And so it was kind of just like, I really used myself for feedback. you know um So a book is very much, whether it’s some parts work for others or not, I can’t really say. But what I can say is that you know these things weren’t like creating in a vacuum. The ideas were <unk> definitely like ah applied. and um And yeah, so, um and that’s important to me to have for that book to have like all these different levels of of practice and applicability, right?

00:05:13.81
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:05:21.64
francis
that I think they apply. on our minds as as as we try to understand ourselves right and understand what mindset is in climbing and what it means to adopt the mindset and the dangers of adopting a mindset or the benefits of one, but also um just on the ground like how to move better over rock because I think everyone on your podcast is definitely wanting to be a better climber and so do I, you know what I’m saying? So that was, you know, I want the book to like move on all those levels, you know.

00:05:51.77
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, it definitely affected me like and I’ll tell you more about that, but um it’s a good book. So I just want to very first here, just plug the book.

00:06:04.38
Neely Quinn
It’s really good. But before we get into that, I do want people to know a little bit more about you um as a climber, too.

00:06:11.45
francis
Yeah.

00:06:13.02
Neely Quinn
And so first of all, where did where are you from? Where were you raised?

00:06:16.98
francis
Yeah, um I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, huge climbing epicenter of the East Coast.

00:06:22.33
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:06:23.82
francis
um But no, so obviously not really. Like I grew up um climbing on like some scrappy schist, you know, in Maryland, like riddled with like graffiti and poison ivy and like beer cans and And we were, you know, that was perfect, right? um But I grew up with a small crew back there. And, you know, it was interesting because there was like one gym, you know, and it was in Baltimore City. And in Baltimore City back then it was pretty rough, right? And so to get to this gym, we had to like take the subway or the light rail and and walk down some alleys that like our parents didn’t even want to drive down. And we only discovered a gym after about a year of climbing.

00:07:01.28
francis
um And um the gym eventually burnt down and all this stuff. But you know, so it’s just kind of scrappy. But I came across one guy who Jason Kiel, Jason Kiel, you know, like crypto child, you know, like we kind of started to connect really early. And like he was like a little older than me, but he was doing hard shit, you know, and I was like, oh, man, like this is what climbing is.

00:07:23.73
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

00:07:23.98
francis
And so I think he opened like my perspective a little bit on about, like especially what hard bouldering was. And then after that, you know I was just totally hooked. I totally, just totally hooked and made my way out to Colorado and went out here for college, actually, mainly to go bouldering at Horseshoe Reservoir. I mean, to be like totally honest, I just wanted to go bouldering following the footsteps of Gil. And um yeah, then the rest is kind of,

00:07:53.01
francis
history there. Yeah, and that’s kind of when I discovered ice climbing and alpine climbing and obviously crack climbing and in the whole kind of the whole shebang, you know, but yeah from Baltimore and just kind of made my way through the the deal, you know 45

00:08:01.91
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:08:06.39
Neely Quinn
Mm-hmm. And may I ask, how old are you?

00:08:11.83
francis
I think 45 46 I’m gonna go with 45 I think I know in that I never know

00:08:12.95
Neely Quinn
I think. OK. All right. and as

00:08:21.14
Neely Quinn
Yeah, that’s okay. I was going to say this very Zen of you, but I don’t actually know. um So as a climber, though, you have accomplished quite a bit.

00:08:32.56
Neely Quinn
And like, obviously that your, your psych for it is still going strong. You live in Carbondale and you climb a lot on the western slope, right in rifle and the pukes and all of that.

00:08:44.79
Neely Quinn
um And you’ve climbed up to 514A, is that correct?

00:08:44.85
francis
Yep. Yep. ye

00:08:51.43
Neely Quinn
And V 11 is that right.

00:08:53.85
francis
Yeah, maybe it was like an 11 slash 12, but it doesn’t matter. So yeah, that’s about right.

00:08:58.41
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and like, you’re still going after it, like you’re still trying hard routes and projecting and doing it.

00:08:58.70
francis
Yeah. Yeah.

00:09:07.83
francis
God, I know it’s it’s just I can’t shake it. You know, I am. I’m still my body still wants to try hard and it’s just I go second I I can and that’s okay. I’ve I’ve accepted that about myself. You know, um I think.

00:09:22.95
francis
Yeah, it’s just part of me that I love to really you know try to get better. Very different from great chasing, obviously. And I think ah hope that comes through in the book a lot.

00:09:34.95
francis
But um but yeah, I’m still getting after it. Yeah, all the time for sure. Climbed yesterday, kept their board on you know Sunday. Probably climb out tomorrow maybe. We’ll climb over the weekend.

00:09:45.08
francis
you know So yeah, still getting after it. Still dealing with pulley injuries and the whole deal. you know

00:09:52.41
Neely Quinn
you know yeah Yeah, and the reason I bring that up is not it’s to give people a sense of like who you are and what what you have taken Zen into, like what exactly you’re doing with Zen.

00:09:53.37
francis
You know how it goes.

00:10:04.28
francis
yeah

00:10:12.49
Neely Quinn
you know you’re not Not that there’s anything wrong with this, but you’re not like going out there and climbing on five eights and trying to use Zen there. You’re trying to do like high level elite climbing. And this is one thing that has helped you do that. Is that ah fair statement?

00:10:29.30
francis
Yeah, no, that’s a so that’s a great that’s a good read on that, Neely. um yeah i And of course, anyone who climbs 5.8, 5.6, 5.7, that’s great. you know And you said you should crush that.

00:10:39.32
Neely Quinn
Yeah, great.

00:10:41.65
francis
And most of those climbers have more fun than the rest of us, for sure.

00:10:44.65
Neely Quinn
Right. Exactly. Right.

00:10:46.49
francis
you know but um But yeah, like i um I would say that the book is kind of an insight into how I’ve

00:10:47.22
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:10:54.12
francis
Managed my own mind and maybe you could say the the longevity I’ve had in the sport the ability to stay, you know at a level um You know and especially to I think You know enjoy it at a deeper level, you know now than I ever have you know in large part because I’ve learned to see what I’ve the all the shit that I’ve put on top of my climbing throughout my life. It’s like an old attic, you know, like we have these sports and these things we do. And eventually, you know, like, when it’s time to move, you’re looking at it, you’re like, Oh, my God, like, what is all this stuff? Like, this is, you know, my old buddy’s thing, or my old girlfriend’s that. And I think,

00:11:36.23
francis
You know, in order to keep longevity and keep the stoke and keep your body durable and like fresh and keep learning, you need to really look what’s in that attic because things add up, um you know, without us knowing it. And that’s just the nature of how our minds work. Like we would just accumulate unconscious habits or unconscious assumptions all the time. Right. um And some of them more so than others. And I think the ability to, you know, like see those really clearly really frees up a lot of bandwidth to to be more playful with the sport.

00:12:05.61
francis
um to not be so concerned and We’re probably getting ahead of ourselves, but to ah hold it a little lighter so we can climb a little lighter. you know and there’s like yeah That’s really key here, and I think that’s pretty key in the book, um is that sense of lightness.

00:12:13.70
Neely Quinn
Hmm, hmm.

00:12:20.36
francis
and My climbing has that for me. you know My climbing has such a ah joy. i mean I go to it just all the time, and it’s just a beautiful thing. It’s always met me where I’m at, and um I’m so grateful to that.

00:12:31.40
francis
It’s just like amazing.

00:12:32.68
Neely Quinn
Yeah, it is. And I’m with you like at 46 years old. I definitely enjoy climbing more now than I ever have before. And it’s for some of these same reasons, and partly because I’ve done work on my mindset, including reading your book.

00:12:49.41
francis
Yeah.

00:12:49.42
Neely Quinn
And so what I’d like to know is um you said that you didn’t really you didn’t really app apply zen to your climbing until whatever.

00:13:01.23
Neely Quinn
I mean, how long ago do you feel like you started really applying it?

00:13:04.91
francis
Yeah, so I mean, if I had to think back, what I would say is it didn’t it wasn’t clear as to what I was doing until maybe five to seven years ago.

00:13:16.08
francis
But I think I had been like applying a lot of the principles with varying degrees of success like kind of throughout my life, um not always successfully, but I think that you know it finally came to a head until I really sat down and was like, OK, what’s going on here? And so maybe five to seven years, I’ve i’ve really been applying it. you know But I’d say throughout my life, I’ve just been supremely aware of what I’ve probably the states of mind I’ve been in when I’ve been climbing and where I’ve needed to go and which doesn’t say I’ve always been there but I think I always was really aware of you know why I always feeling a certain way or why I was doing X or you know the fact that I just really knew climbing another really hard grade even though my I’m still gonna

00:14:04.29
francis
try to do harder routes, that that’s not really going to make me a super happy person. I mean, you know that’s that’s that’s total bullshit that we’re going to be like a different, happier person version of ourselves after we climb like better grades.

00:14:17.80
francis
I mean, you know we have to see through that really quick as climbers, I think, especially to climb better, um which is ironic. But um I’m sure we’ll get to that. So anyhow, yeah.

00:14:26.94
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:14:29.78
Neely Quinn
Yeah, yeah, that is something that I wanted to talk about. But OK, so before we get there, tell us what it give me a doesn’t have to be brief, but not like super long description of what Zen is for a person who like, OK, we might have an idea of what Zen is because we kind of throw that term around.

00:14:35.15
francis
Yeah.

00:14:49.49
Neely Quinn
But what does it mean to you?

00:14:49.73
francis
Yeah. and Yeah. Yeah, you know, like I kind of struggled with the title of that book. So I was like, oh man, it’s going to be some kind of like people can be like, yeah, this is just some like bullshit applying Zen to like some new thing because it’s got like that catchy title. um But eventually we kept it because we felt it was real, you know, and it was integral to the book. But so for me, you know, um Zen is is basically a way of looking at yourself with sobriety and clarity and you know, it’s using it’s it’s basically focusing on your mind as the object of what your practice is. So for example, in contrast, right, you could say, if you are, um you know, a Muslim, then you would say, okay, my focus would be on like God or something like that, right? It’d be on like an external source or something like that, that you would focus on. Um,

00:15:45.15
francis
or Christians or ah you know like a Hindu may you may go to the temple right and have their kind of practice. I’d say Zen is not really a religion in that sense. right It’s more just a value system where it says, I’m going to really try to observe my own mind and figure out what’s going on. and in the process hopefully you know i like relieve my suffering which is how the story goes which i i believe is definitely the case but you study your own mind and that means day and night that means climbing that means in relationships right that means in not being a shitty friends you know not being like passive aggressive with

00:16:22.36
francis
people here and there. and you know It means really just trying to clean up your your system. and I think I finally was like, okay, I can take this to climb and apply it to climbing and climbers and the mentalities that we all have. i mean The only reason I feel like I can talk about climbers is because Like all my friends are climbers, ah you know, like everything I do ah is for climbing. I’m at crags or, you know, it’s like, and so I’m just of the cloth. And so I feel like I really know what we get attached to as climbers because I’ve been there. You know what I’m saying?

00:16:52.36
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:16:52.60
francis
So I feel like I can try to tease out a lot of the um the things that really bother climbers you know and the things they want to get better at or the things they want to get rid of. I feel like I have a really good personal intimate sense of that. And Zen is just a way to bring the scalpel. It’s an ability to like see that really clearly. you know

00:17:12.66
Neely Quinn
Yeah, give me an example of something that you find commonly among climbers that you feel like you can apply a Zen to.

00:17:22.57
francis
Yeah, you know, um, so I’ll just listen to a podcast a couple of weeks ago about this, like, you know, one of this, one of these like super high paid famous, um, NFL consultant mental performance coaches, right? You know, they’re like a diamond dozen on whatever. And you hear, you know, this guy was really good. That was really smart.

00:17:41.94
francis
And, you know, what he said, he’s like, you know, he got asked, you know, what’s one of the main things you see in your clients? And these are the kind of like the LeBron James or the Serena Williams type folks. And they said, and he said, you know, by far, the number one is the pressure people, ah athletes put on themselves and how crippling that can be. So that kind of performance anxiety. And And it you know wasn’t like sponsorship pressure or or trying to beat the opponent. It was like, um you put so much pressure on yourself to succeed.

00:18:14.51
francis
and you know That’s a hard thing to get out from under right as a climber. like Because we you know you arrive at the crag and you’re like, man, it’s my day. Temps are good. I’m rested. I’m going to send the proj today.

00:18:26.98
francis
right And you totally like screw yourself over because you’ve got nerves now.

00:18:28.09
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:18:32.26
francis
You’re like super invested in this thing. And you’re like you know you’ve just junked up the whole system. Imagine like this clean running machine. And you’re just throwing like rocks and pebbles in it. And if the machine just grind in.

00:18:43.78
francis
It’s like smoking. And that’s us at the crag, for the most part, um which is unfortunate because all we need to do is like do like ah a series of like physical you know movements to get to the top. like We don’t need all this other stuff. like You just don’t need it. But it’s there, and it’s hard to get away from. And I feel like that’s one thing.

00:19:03.94
francis
When you know you really look at your mind carefully what you can do is you can. You can pull away from that and then those pressures don’t have any power over you anymore right there just like you can see them they’re like your old friends like i see you like performance anxiety like i see you in security.

00:19:19.86
francis
you know, there you are, like, haha, and you know, um but you’re not, you know, you’re not getting that sweaty hands or like that high heart rate or, or that sense that, you know, like, I just, I don’t know if I can do it that doubt, like, Zen really helps you deal with that stuff. And that’s a big one. You know what I’m saying? That’s a huge one. So

00:19:41.88
Neely Quinn
Yeah, it’s a huge one and you do spend a lot of time in the book talking about it. I mean, for for people who don’t who haven’t read this book, it’s like a lot about performance anxiety, your your mental attitude towards climbing, how to be calmer basically when you’re climbing. But what I’m hearing you say is its but you use Zen to sort of be more of an observer of your but your mind um in order to take a step back and have perspective on those things and not make them mean so much.

00:20:16.18
francis
Yeah, that’s that’s a good way of putting it. And here’s another way. So you know I think, so mindset is a really popular term, right? You know it your you know mindset. But I think what I want to do is look at look at mind, look at the mind behind the mindset, right? So take a step back. So mindset is like, you know we we apply a certain mindset to a thing and you know we kind of try to assume that mindset, whether it’s like, I don’t know, um there’s various names for different types of mindsets, right?

00:20:45.83
francis
um However, I think climbing doesn’t lend itself to one particular mindset. And I think this is, I try to make this point in the book a lot, right? You know, it’s it’s a sport of extremes. like You can go, so for instance, you could be on you know, your 13A project or whatever and you’re cruising and and it feels really good and all of a sudden you break a hold, right? And then all of a sudden you have panic in your body. Like your forearms are good, your you’re over gripping and you’re like flush with lactic acid. And so all of a sudden it goes from like this chill kind of moment to this extreme panic.

00:21:21.63
francis
And I feel like that happens to me all the time in Climb. I think if you’re sensitive enough, especially if you notice it, it’s happening all the time. You used a different sequence, so now you’re doubting that you’re going to be able to do it because you used a more inefficient sequence, or you used the wrong sequence, or used a whole differently. You didn’t get the thumb catch, right? I think when we pop into different, when we come out of that one state, we’re always in another. And I think climbing is a state of extremes.

00:21:49.27
francis
And so I think a kind of a, ah yeah I guess you could say a Zen perspective is what it does, it allows you to kind of toggle between different intensities of, of your mind or different like energies in the body to do that with facility and to do that with intelligence. So you’re not just stuck into one like try hard phase, you know, or and in one moment you can say, okay, like I can really,

00:22:15.17
francis
relax on this one section. And then I know I need to turn it on for these next moves, but I know I need to come back when I get to the rest, the knee bar. I need to really relax and de-pump, you know? And you see this at the top climbers. If you look at like, like I don’t know, Adam, right? Adam Andre is a great example. He can go from super relaxed to just absolute aggro and they’ll pop back into some other zone like a techie thing really quickly.

00:22:41.30
francis
And he’s the world’s best climber because he can do those things. You know what I’m saying?

00:22:45.81
Neely Quinn
Oh.

00:22:46.11
francis
It’s not that he’s the world best climber because he’s got the strongest body. He’s the world best climber because he knows how to constantly move across effort levels, you know, which needs to be directed by something.

00:22:59.22
francis
um And the something is your deep sense of awareness that allows you to step back and and maybe not panic or or give you the right feedback loops.

00:23:00.97
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:23:09.81
francis
I hope that’s making sense. I hope I’m not like throwing out too much, you know?

00:23:13.29
Neely Quinn
No, no, that’s totally making sense. And I thought that it was really interesting in the book that you did take these examples of a bunch of elite climbers.

00:23:15.06
francis
ah

00:23:21.36
Neely Quinn
And you were like, look, what they’re doing right there is Zen. And it’s not like they’re at home practicing Zen. you know They’re just doing it.

00:23:29.08
francis
yeah to

00:23:30.25
Neely Quinn
And so that’s it also helped make it much more approachable and like tangible. that Oh, it’s just that. That’s all it is. I mean, not that. That’s all it is.

00:23:40.76
Neely Quinn
but you know

00:23:42.69
francis
Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:42.77
Neely Quinn
attainable.

00:23:43.89
francis
Yeah, like where’re people are doing are kind of practicing like a Zen mindset all the time without knowing it, for sure, 100%. A good, for example, is I start off the book um with like a hack that I used from Sharma for a while. you know he would he would He said, you know I think I first came across this 10 or 15 years ago, that he would say, you know before a hard send, like I’m not gonna do this today.

00:24:09.33
francis
like It’s not the day. Fuck it. you know This is just a practice burn. you know he was like So he’s about to do it, but he would have to like lie to himself to keep his body calm.

00:24:19.89
francis
right and And I tried that. And I was like floored of how amazing that tactic is. is like

00:24:26.31
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

00:24:27.57
francis
Okay, so what’s he doing there, right? he’s He’s introducing doubt, which most people would say is really toxic actually for athletes, but I can tell you it’s not. um And we can like talk about why doubt can actually be the thing a lot of climbers need. you know But um but what you what he was doing is he saw the energy in his body getting really toxic in the sense that he wanted too much and that that one desire was going to be a distraction so we kind of had to talk himself back down to a level where he could just execute moves without like mental interference you know without attachments coming in and that’s a totally a zen tactic um because the point is not to have any emotion right that’s not the zen thing that you know a zen thing wouldn’t be like

00:25:11.58
francis
Oh, I got to get to a place where I feel nothing. That’s not ever going to happen for any of us. The point is is to not be ensnared by that emotion where it’s overcoming you. You know what I’m saying? were Where you are one with it. you know The ability to pull back from it is um really essential because you know like climbers You know, like I think of, you know, one one parallel to other athletes is like saying tennis, right? You get, you can get beat by a opponent like during the match and you can feel really down on yourself, right? You’re getting beat. You’re getting just hammered by an opponent.

00:25:45.85
francis
um And you need to have the mental resilience not to fall into that trap. right The best athletes don’t fall into that trap. And the best climbers, even mid-route or during a project um you know period, they’re not going to fall into that trap. you know They’re going to be able to see that, see where their mind wants to go. Their mind wants to call themselves a failure. Their mind wants to like give up. they They’re hearing all these voices. But they’re not like getting consumed by them. And that’s a hard thing to do. That’s a really hard thing to do.

00:26:16.10
francis
And um but it’s a worthy thing to do. And it’ll improve your climbing you know just about as much as anything will.

00:26:23.39
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and it seems like if you’re going to take this into your climbing, you kind of have to, like you did, have it be part of your life in every aspect.

00:26:36.07
francis
Yeah, you know that this is where you know this is where it’s um it’s hard work, right? you know um And it’s a holistic approach. I think I take a holistic approach in the book in the sense that you know we can become more aware of people.

00:26:51.85
francis
and then in the process become more aware in our climbing. like I think you you need to do the work on a deep level. And that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book is because you know when I was at Rockin’ Ice, right we would have a lot of mental articles and mental fitness and mental health.

00:27:06.19
francis
and and And these guys were great. They’re they’re my friends and they’re they’re all like the big name writers and stuff like that. um But a lot of that those strategies and tactics are kind of like day of or night before kind of stuff.

00:27:17.60
Neely Quinn
No, no.

00:27:18.53
francis
You know, and that’s great. That has a place like you should use those things. However, they’re like, you know, um like putting duct tape on a sinking ship, right? You know, just like you need to like make sure that you’re not doing that just as like waters coming out of the boat. You need to make sure you do that early and you can see all that stuff come up so it’s not so like urgent all the time. And then I think after a lot of years, it just becomes common, you know, it becomes part of your practice where you’re always in the kind of the right mindset that you need and it’s always there. And that’s my, you know, hope for people have to read the book is that after these things settle in and they really start to see what what’s going on in their own minds when they’re climbing or when they’re not climbing,

00:28:05.25
francis
um that you know they can um yeah just it just comes naturally and and you bring that clarity to the life as well for sure um as well as you’re climbing because i don’t think you can improve here here’s i guess a core layer right i don’t think you can seriously and improve in a really deep way as a climber without doing the work on the foundation of yourself because like how could it be otherwise right you know i’m saying like

00:28:29.77
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

00:28:33.94
francis
You are what you bring to climb. like you to To your climbing, you bring your history. You bring like your shitty interactions that you had with someone the day before. You’re bringing all that stuff to the crag. You know what I’m saying? like You got too drunk last night. You made some bad decisions. right You brought those mistakes to the crag. You’re bringing your insecurities to the crag. You’re bringing your show off to the crag you know and all those things. and um you know and so you know you bring it You bring it all. And you know in order to like work on your climbing, you need to work on those things you’re bringing to it. And that to me seems really basic. And you know I’m sure people have figured out a way around it, but that would probably be just more denial and evasion, which um in the end probably wouldn’t pan out for them, if you know what I’m saying.

00:29:18.61
Neely Quinn
Yeah. No, I hear what you’re saying. So when you say do the deep work, like do this work every day, what does that look like in practice?

00:29:29.94
francis
Yeah, yeah a good question. um ah think So as a climber, I think one of the first things you can do is start to to realize like what state of mind you are in during certain workouts before you climb.

00:29:48.19
francis
before you go on tribolders or routes, like what’s your state of mind? I mean, so here’s like the funny thing, right? We go into the gym, like a typical, like, I’m gonna do my hangboard repeaters, I’m gonna do my squats, I’m gonna do like my way to pull ups, I’m gonna do my front leg. Like we have all these lists in our brain, the physical things we need to do as climbers, you know what I’m saying? Like I’m gonna campus, I’m gonna do the pegboard, I’m gonna do the moonboard, kilt the right, but like,

00:30:13.90
francis
Most climbers have no sense of what it means to go in there and like, how do I work my my mental strengths just in the same way, right? Like, we’re just never taught of how to do that. And I think the starting point is to, when you’re climbing, like you’re getting in those certain workouts, like, all right, I’m going to tick off this box. OK, what is, you ask yourself, what is like my lead head look like, right? Most people are scared of falling, for instance. That’s a big one.

00:30:43.17
francis
It like never goes away for most climbers. you know um So you could start to think, OK, at what point do I feel a fear about a certain route, lead climbing? um Is it on the car ride there or is the night before? Is it fine in front of other people? um Is it certain stances, certain routes? And so you really just start to figure out What your brain is doing you know what i’m saying like?

00:31:08.53
francis
Just what is happening to your mind when this is all this is all taking place and it doesn’t really take Extra effort to do it just takes a certain You know um Perspective in your mind to to see like oh, that’s how that’s what you’re doing francis like isn’t that really like interesting that you’re doing that um I’ll give you can I give you a good for example potentially um so

00:31:30.65
Neely Quinn
yeah yes

00:31:33.93
francis
I talked about this in the book a little bit too, so it was a long time I was like a boulder, you know, for a lot of couple years. I once I was a boulder, I um like just bowledered a lot, you know, um went to horse tooth and during college and so we developed by areas and I bowledered a lot. And so I was really powerful, but I had shit endurance, you know, and um I um I didn’t understand what it meant to be a like a true route endurance climber.

00:31:55.25
Neely Quinn
Yeah, it is.

00:31:59.74
francis
i just like i could do like The harder routes I’ve ever done have been short, just like really strong, or really hard hard moves with like a good rest to hard moves, like that kind of thing. and What I realized is that when I was climbing, I was just like,

00:32:12.99
francis
Just trying to rush through everything and like get to the rest and I i could just I felt so off, you know But what I was doing is I was convincing myself that slowing down was a bad idea And because I was just going to get pumped and if you slow down, right? This is my logic if you slow down you’re going to be on the wall long longer, you know therefore you will be more pumped and that was not true you know what I’m saying and it took me like watching a lot of tape as they say in boxing like I watched a lot of tape I watched a lot of climbers this was maybe a decade ago and I just realized how relaxed

00:32:48.63
francis
Climbers were on really long, pumpy routes. They’re so relaxed. Like, watch Pringle on um Jumbo Love is a great example. And he’s just so strolling through this thing, and he’s so relaxed. you know And it’s like, that’s the mind of a route setter.

00:33:05.29
francis
and or Sorry, that’s the mind of a lead climber, a really good relaxed lead climber. I bring that example up because I realized that about myself. I made the switch and I improved. I realized, stop rushing. That’s just a crap story you’re telling yourself.

00:33:20.78
francis
like you know own up to that, you know, and try something different. And when I did, I was like, wow, that’s a real big difference, you know, because the more relaxed I was, the less I was getting pumped, which is funny, even though I was on the wall longer, you know, I was just taking my time. Whereas before I was a lot stronger and I was trying to rush through it and I was getting more pumped, you know, you know, spending one third of the amount of time on like a sequence.

00:33:48.54
francis
So that’s just like a ah way to start thinking about your brain you know and what your brain is doing and the stories you’re telling yourself about yourself, I guess would be one way to put it.

00:34:00.39
Neely Quinn
Right. So it’s taking ah more of a third-person view of, oh, I have this assumption. I have this really deep-seated belief. And can I question that? And that seems to be the zen part of that. Is that correct?

00:34:16.75
francis
I’d say that’s a big part of it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, just some clarity about, you know, what your, what your mind is up to, man. if If you’re not watching what your own mind, you’re just getting ruled by it. That’s for sure. And I think stepping back, I think what, you know, the, a big value in like any Buddhist tradition is going to be awareness of self, right? You know, self awareness. And so that is clearly,

00:34:43.17
francis
kind of just like part of what I’m saying, right, is that that ah awareness of yourself, that deeper awareness of what you know Francis is doing, what’s he bringing to his climbing, has allowed me to remove all the junk from my climbing that has not enabled me to maybe enjoy it as much as I could have or or climb certain things. and and i would say that would be yeah i mean if there’s a zen component to it it would also just be that buddhist component of awareness of self you know awareness of what’s happening and not and not being basically like

00:35:12.25
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:35:18.50
francis
a um just a victim to your own thoughts. i mean this is you know this we’re all Half the day, we’re all just following our own weird little complexes, you know our own securities, our own jealousies, our own we’re chasing our shadows, we’re but chasing a sense of of greatness by trying to do hard routes.

00:35:27.51
Neely Quinn
so

00:35:36.12
francis
Once you look at that stuff, you can laugh at it and it’s pretty funny. and it’s It’s a pretty interesting journey to see all of that stuff kind of like for what it is. you know

00:35:45.34
Neely Quinn
Yeah. um So I would like to read some passages and get your thoughts on some things from the book. And this is this has to do with what you’re talking about. This was like a very good description of Zen, I think. You said, Zen is the art of pruning the mind and pruning oneself hurts. It’s savage and ruthless.

00:36:09.25
Neely Quinn
And then you go on and say some stuff but you said for climbers you may discover you climb for all the wrong reasons and that your friends do as well. You have to recalibrate. You might discover you have never really climbed despite having climbed all your life. You might discover that you have read books on the mental game of climbing but they were just vague bullet points on mental toughness and exhortations to embrace the process.

00:36:31.48
Neely Quinn
And so it does seem like you’re really taking a scalpel to like, what are my beliefs? What am I, what ah what could I be doing better? And more, yeah, cleanly, clearly.

00:36:44.60
francis
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, one ah one of the big ones is is I talk about you may be climbing for all the wrong reasons. I mean, you know, a lot of climbers climb, a lot of athletes, right? Is we, you know, we think we’re like goal-driven people, right? I know you are, you’re always projecting, you’re always talking about like training and getting better and I and i love that. and and um And me too, same way. And as climbers, were we’re goal-driven and we have numbers that are unfortunately attached to a lot of our levels. So for instance, if you could like compare that to like surfing, like surfers don’t really have such concrete manifestations of progress like climbers do.

00:37:21.34
francis
That doesn’t mean they’re not trying to ride harder waves or do better tricks, but it’s not as overt, right? um Unfortunately, climbers, despite kind of being like a soul surfing type of sport out in nature, you know, we’ve got really clear objective benchmarks that we have in our minds. And I think because of that, we get really attached to those. And what do I mean by attached to those? I mean, we invest our sense of self-worth in climbing harder grades like okay so what does that what does that even mean that means all right when i do my first five 12 or 13 or 14 i’m going to be x that and i’m going to be maybe happier i’m going to fulfill something about myself i’m going to scratch and itch i’ll be seen in a different light by friends i will you know like all of these things

00:38:13.48
francis
We all do as climbers. like um just Trust me, like ah you know I feel like a lot of us do are doing these things. right Whether we know it or not, we’re we’re thinking there’s something at the end of the rainbow. um But the funny thing is, there’s really nothing there. And that’s why we have to keep going to the next thing because the thing we got here never panned out. We weren’t a different person.

00:38:36.92
francis
Like we, you know, there’s an interview with Alex Honnold that just came out as great. He’s like, yeah, he’s like, you know, for a while I really thought that I’d like wake up and be a different person after I did this like crazy hard thing. And he’s like, turned out I was the same person, you know?

00:38:49.40
francis
like He’s like, well, didn’t that suck? and And it’s like, yes, that’s exactly right. And I love Alex cause he, he’s just brutally honest about that. And that’s, that’s like that, whether you do your five first five, 12 or five 13 is, you know, we, in the back of our mind, we fantasize that something’s going to happen.

00:38:57.26
Neely Quinn
So.

00:39:04.72
francis
Um, and we’re going to feel better, more content. But we never do. And that’s why we just keep going and we keep going. And you know, um, until you stop, until you realize that for what it is, that whole kind of like rat race that we do in our brains, you know, until you realize what that’s doing to you. Um, you know, you’re beholden to it. You’re just on the, you’re just on the track. You’re on the treadmill and it’s happening. It’s happening. It’s happening until you get out of it and you realize like, wow, that’s really interesting. Like.

00:39:36.21
francis
that’s not gonna change my life. It’s not gonna change who I am. And in fact, it probably is preventing me from being a better climber, which is really an irony that I try to like talk about in the book a lot is that actually by letting go, you can, you know, be a better climber, which is funny. And I think there’s a lot of resistance there, you know, in the community, like, oh, I gotta have goals, I gotta to like be driven, right? You know, like, if I let go of that, I’ll just be like,

00:40:02.36
francis
just out to lunch, you know the oars are out of water, or just be floating down the river of whatever. um But that’s not gonna be the case, you know because the things that are probably holding you back in your climbing most are the things you’ve placed there, you know unfortunately.

00:40:19.98
francis
so

00:40:20.15
Neely Quinn
like the expectations on yourself and the anxiety and all that.

00:40:24.95
francis
Yeah, I mean, just think about it. Yeah, think of why most people you know fall or don’t do their projects. It’s usually like, You know, first of all, it’s usually, ah you know, errors in awareness, you know, it’s bad beta, it’s over-training, it’s under-training, it’s botchiness, it’s, you know, missing a hold, right? You know, our sport is is largely a sport of awareness, you know, whether that’s nerves or something like that. Like, we we fall largely, you know, I think,

00:40:55.58
francis
you know, in in the in the bucket of awareness. That’s really where we where we go foul. And I think, you know, improving that one aspect can improve like so many things if you’re climbing, you know.

00:41:07.97
francis
So yeah, I feel like I got off, and I feel like I didn’t answer your question on that one though.

00:41:11.24
Neely Quinn
Oh, that’s okay.

00:41:12.67
francis
Okay.

00:41:12.92
Neely Quinn
um I did want to talk a little bit about though, like holding those two things, which is attachment to these goals that we have, while also not being attached.

00:41:20.42
francis
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:26.69
Neely Quinn
And one of the things that I came away from this book with the most, which I actually use with my mindset coaching clients and in climbing is like, look,

00:41:34.51
francis
Yeah.

00:41:37.89
Neely Quinn
You can get mad at yourself for doing the moves wrong. You can’t get mad at your body for not being strong enough or you you not being perfect, basically. But really, we’re just bodies climbing up rocks, like doing the best that we can.

00:41:47.76
francis
Yeah.

00:41:55.97
Neely Quinn
And we can’t get mad at ourselves for this kind of like we can’t it it doesn’t we don’t need to have these emotional responses to what is going on.

00:42:08.00
Neely Quinn
um and so is Did I take that from the book right? like What are your thoughts on that?

00:42:15.13
francis
No, you totally nailed that. And before I give you an answer, um I want to hear like how your clients usually take that.

00:42:21.27
Neely Quinn
They honestly, it’s usually like, you’re right. And it it feels very relieving to them, like, why am I assigning these judgments on myself? We’re just bodies moving up a wall. And they’ll say that back to me. They’re like, we’re just bodies moving up a wall. And it is it like when you look at it from that perspective, it’s very zoomed out and it gives you more perspective, I feel like.

00:42:46.40
francis
That’s great Zen work, Neil. You just nailed that, totally. um Yeah, no, that’s that’s beautiful.

00:42:49.74
Neely Quinn
Oh, thanks. Thank you.

00:42:53.02
francis
I couldn’t have done it any better, you know? Like, I think, so, I mean, one way to ground that thought, which I which i love, is um is failure. Like, no, yeah let’s be honest.

00:43:03.24
francis
Like, no one wants to feel like a failure, right? Like, no one wants to feel like a failure. And failure’s really toxic for any athlete. And so,

00:43:15.09
francis
But oftentimes, like when we don’t do something, we we feel like a failure, right? Like we’re like, God, like I did that wrong. Therefore, like I am insufficient or I’m not as good as X, Y, and Z, right? So we feel like a failure.

00:43:36.14
francis
But like what you’re saying, that’s the step we don’t need to take. We can acknowledge like that didn’t work out. That was a failure, but that doesn’t mean you need to feel like a failure because as you said, like, you know, climbing is not a sure thing.

00:43:51.15
francis
This is athletics, you know, like you can have bad conditions, you know, you’re, or you just, something happened that you just didn’t do it yeah or so or like you know something happened that you don’t know what happened.

00:44:00.66
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:44:04.79
francis
And so to, to go you know onto yourself and call yourself a failure is to me like a really key pivot. you know it’s our It’s a key moment where we learn to separate ourselves and avoid all the ah toxic downstream um emotions that come when we call ourselves a failure. you know Because a lot of bad stuff goes into that. What happens is we become less sure as climbers.

00:44:31.57
francis
we um we could potentially lose motivation or we could over train as a result of compensating for feeling like a failure, right? I can’t tell you how many like revenge training sessions I’ve had against myself and just like pop the tendon, you know? So I’m like, I’m so weak. I’m so bad. I need to like climb harder, right? You know, and like I blow some tendon.

00:44:51.22
francis
So uncoupling failure from the feeling of failure is really key. It’s hard to do. Because like you said, you kind of need to pan out and you need to say, OK, it doesn’t mean you’re not taking responsibility for it. It just means that you’re not going to let that toxic energy of failure like enter you. and um But that’s ah that’s a hard thing that’s a hard thing to do, I would say. you know Because it’s like, you know, um No one wants to get yelled at at work, right? You know, when someone tells you you’ve done something wrong, like our first thing is to do internalize it and just say, God, I’m just, you know, i’m not very good. Or in relationships, you get left by someone or they say something mean. And the first thing you do is, is you, you, you judge yourself, you know, you get a negative opinion or a negative value of yourself. And um that’s never good, you know, that’s never healthy. And so yeah, uncoupling, uncoupling that emotion is really key. And, um,

00:45:47.89
francis
and like you said it’s not what you’re not trying to do is get to a place where you have no emotion you’re trying to get to a place where you can see that emotion working you can be clear with it you know you can have some sobriety around it um but you know you don’t have to like become that emotion because emotions have this strange desire to overcome the body. That’s what they want to do. They always want to hijack and take over. And it’s kind of the athlete’s job in a lot of ways is to really be um really adept at emotion management, you know, because that’s really, that’s really important. In general, they can be pretty toxic in general, I would say, even even the the emotion of joy. And know this this may not like, people may not like this thought, but um

00:46:35.28
francis
You know, even when you do something really good that you’re proud of and you feel really stoked on, you should be careful about how you attribute success to yourself and pride to yourself, you know, because that also can give an inflated sense of ability and it can be just as toxic as feeling like a failure is also feeling like a success.

00:46:56.11
francis
And there’s a lot of nuances. What I’m not saying is you should just do something hard and say, fuck it, like, oh, whatever. Like, that means nothing. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, just be careful about that sense of, I don’t know, I don’t know what the word is I’m looking for.

00:47:12.55
francis
It’s just don’t indulge it too much, you know?

00:47:14.79
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

00:47:15.11
francis
Because if you indulge the highs, the higher you go, the lower you can go. And that’s always how it’s going to be, you know?

00:47:21.75
Neely Quinn
I really loved that that concept in the book and it actually changed me a bit.

00:47:21.77
francis
Maybe that’s

00:47:29.31
Neely Quinn
um

00:47:29.99
francis
tell my but Yeah.

00:47:30.18
Neely Quinn
because i’ve always i’ve always like When I would send something, I would be elated for a very long time and I i did have like and maybe an overinflated sense of ego about it and pride.

00:47:45.15
Neely Quinn
like ah And you talk about this in the book where you’re like, I did that and you didn’t, and I’m better than you. like There was some sense of that too.

00:47:54.84
francis
Yeah.

00:47:54.91
Neely Quinn
And when you said that in the book, I was like, oh my God. like If that’s what I’m living like trying to do in my climbing, then of course that’s going to swing the other way and the pendulum when it doesn’t go well.

00:48:09.54
Neely Quinn
um And so like I did this thing this summer and I remember and I even wrote about it. i I did this thing and I got to the top and I was really psyched, but I didn’t have that normal sense of elation.

00:48:15.03
francis
Hmm.

00:48:22.28
Neely Quinn
And I was like, that is good. Good job, Miele.

00:48:25.78
francis
Yes. Yes.

00:48:27.65
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:48:28.01
francis
I’m so proud of you, Millie. I love that.

00:48:30.10
Neely Quinn
Yeah. Yeah. And it was all the, and this is the other thing that I want to talk about a lot is mastery because you talk a lot about mastery. You talk about like hero, the sushi master, and which is a great movie if people haven’t seen it, but how like, you know, you’re, you can derive the most joy from climbing if your main goal is to just have mastery.

00:48:41.72
francis
Yeah.

00:48:55.78
Neely Quinn
And so it’s like, you know, process oriented, rather than outcome orientation. And, you know, we we’ve all been talking about this, but I think that it goes towards that because that whole project, um I was doing that I was like, what can I learn from this session? What can I learn from this move? What can I learn from this fall instead of like, I just want to send it, you know, and it’s a completely different experience.

00:49:20.00
francis
It’s totally different. Yeah. and ah how did like So you felt, when you didn’t indulge the elation, that you were able to see it, right?

00:49:27.66
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:49:27.71
francis
you know I imagine you just had a, as opposed to the high, the kind of like you know the buzz or the the the the needle shot of like, whatever that we used to get, it’s probably just a deeper sense of satisfaction that came in its place, you know?

00:49:42.01
Neely Quinn
Yes.

00:49:44.30
francis
And I hear you, I see you nodding.

00:49:44.51
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:49:45.46
francis
and And that, if you’re able to inhabit that space more, that’s what leads to like longevity in your sport, constant learning, and and the desire, the you’re really building the tools to become a master of that craft, because because that is now your, um like that’s what you’re valuing. You’re not valuing like the spike of the high send, because it’s like most climbers, and again, I speak from personal experience, like you’ve got these things, like you’re working a route and climbing’s only so fun when you’re just dogging the project, and then you may do it and you’re like, you think you’re up here, and then trust me, two days later,

00:50:22.26
francis
three days later after a hard send, you are back to like here scrounging around for the next morsel of success, you know, like, and I use it as I was writing this book, I like did a hard, you know, not a hard route, I did ah a route that i I tried for a couple of days.

00:50:29.56
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:50:37.17
francis
And I was like, okay, how long does this like emotion last of like, man, that was really fucking cool, you know, or that feel really proud. It lasted about three days. And then it was totally gone. Like that feeling of, it just was, I was back to normal. And I was like, that’s really interesting. Like that’s kind of the lifespan of that send. And that’s no, you know, most, again, if you want to be there, fine. But like there is another place where you don’t have to chase the highs or avoid the lows. You know, there’s a place you can have almost all the time you touch rock or ice or something, be a really amazing experience. And, um,

00:51:15.26
francis
I don’t want to get too romantic about it or whatever, but there’s something else there that when you can just climb, like that’s when you’re just climbing, right? Isn’t that that mode? That’s when you’re really climbing and inhabiting movement in a deeper way without like the ego chase of the high or the ego avoidance of the low, you know, like you’re there and that’s when you’re present with climbing.

00:51:36.00
francis
um It’s a beautiful thing. It is like, it’ll change your life. You know, it’s beautiful. It’s, um it’s artistic.

00:51:41.20
Neely Quinn
Yeah. Yeah, and you, you, you talk oh, sorry. You talk about that with, when you, you have a couple chapters, one on flow and one on, and I’m b blanking on it, but something similar, the zone, the zone.

00:51:56.63
francis
ah yeah yeah yeah

00:51:57.43
Neely Quinn
Yeah. Do you want to talk about that at all? about I feel like you you seem to think that people have misconceptions about what those things should look like and maybe how you could inhabit it in a more Zen way.

00:52:10.28
francis
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it’s kind of funny and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too, as a, as a mental coach, you know, but I feel like in the climbing world, there is a, um, there’s often been kind of like this mythology or this kind of allure of, you know, the zone, you know, and it’s kind of like, well, you know, I got to get into the zone in this kind of like, maybe this Dean Potter, like,

00:52:39.06
francis
you know super aggro or this like all you know this like super focused um type of zone. And if like i if I get into that place, then I’ll kind of be this optimal athlete. right um and And I’ll talk about flow in a second, but you know the zone is, I feel like this, we set this up on this pedestal as like this optimal um athletic place we need to be. Now, I have a little, I have some problems with that. I mean, isn’t, I mean, if you can get into the zone every time you climb, every time you try hard, I mean, fuck it. Don’t, don’t listen to what I’m about to say, like stay there. But the problem is we live, you know, and we climb 99% of the time outside of these optimal states.

00:53:22.59
francis
And so we should not be like really trying to get into the zone because that’s where we’ll climb. In fact, we should be trying to climb our best when things are not going according to plan. Like that’s what we need to do, right? We need to climb with uncomfort and irritability and and doubt, or we need to We need to really learn how to work with the negativity and not just chase the so-called peak high performance. We need to get better at the average conditions. And a good example of this is like, you know, I found these as I was writing the book, I found so many examples of these of athletes.

00:54:00.96
francis
um climbers too like performing like their best thing when they felt like really off um whether you’re talking about adam or stefano or um and that’s in the climbing world or um like rabbitu i think and that hard thing he did in ldell he’s like yeah it was a shitty day i was like third day on it like rained i had like no expectations but like he was able to really put forth solid efforts um and like really good

00:54:07.50
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

00:54:29.69
francis
you know attempts um despite not feeling in the zone right so he wasn’t worried that he wasn’t in this this great place um Michael Phelps has a ah great race where like I think he gets like water in his goggles or something like really early and he’s basically like swimming with just like water in his goggles and it’s like terrible and he’s just like You know, he won the race, I believe.

00:54:52.33
francis
um But he also had trained for that, which I was really impressed on. I think he’s like and his coach was like, you know, like, you’re going to fold when things go bad.

00:54:56.25
Neely Quinn
Mm.

00:55:01.34
francis
So you need to train yourself um in the bad, you know, because that’s because that’s going to be your situation. So he like, you know, didn’t react. He didn’t panic. He just kind of plowed through.

00:55:12.15
francis
And I think um You know, that’s, um you know, kind of like a short riff on zone. I think we chased the wrong thing sometimes. and um And I think that blocks where we should put our focus and it it could just be as easy as, you know, just really learning to be more comfortable with adversity and and and kind of not being comfortable. and and getting rid of the the negative states of mind that that tell us, like, you’re not in a good place, like, don’t do that, is to just ignore that and to try to just let your body do its thing, you know?

00:55:42.17
francis
um Because the body knows the body is much wiser than your mind. You know, the body’s doing its thing. It’s fighting diseases. It’s balancing you all the time without any conscious oversight. And the more you let the body do its thing, um the the better you will be, like, overall, I would say.

00:56:00.45
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

00:56:00.83
francis
So, yeah.

00:56:01.73
Neely Quinn
You wrote about this very eloquently, and I’m just going to read. I’m like trying to decide which one to read. I loved it. You said, the one who flows the best, perhaps, does not flow through perfectly executed moves, but rather flows from a botched sequence to a perfectly executed one, then back to botched.

00:56:18.79
Neely Quinn
This is the marriage of peak per peak experience and peak performance to the point where the two are indistinguishable. This is the discipline of the toggle, which you mentioned earlier. Yeah.

00:56:29.20
francis
Yeah, nice. Yeah, thank you for that.

00:56:31.62
Neely Quinn
yeah

00:56:31.82
francis
Thank you for that.

00:56:33.75
Neely Quinn
um so So what does this bring up for you? Like, where do we go from here? I have a lot more um highlights in the book. But is this reminding you of anything or anything else you want to talk about in your own life or?

00:56:53.08
francis
Yeah. um I guess, I mean, ah you asked about flow earlier, you know, I think flow So, I mean, like here’s here’s like another thing I think with with flow, right? Is um I don’t think there’s anything wrong with like getting into a flow state. What I think is is that people, it it becomes an attachment and they go towards, again, that flow state with, they kind of put it up on a pendulum or put it up on a pedestal as kind of like a

00:57:26.10
francis
You know something that you know they really need to inhabit or how to get into and and I’m kind of like critiquing a little bit of the sports mentality like 10 things are getting to flow and just just like the constant chasing of optimization and peak performance.

00:57:41.80
francis
the cottage the cottage industry around that stuff, right? I mean, I feel like we are so awash in just bullshit about what non-athletes think athletes should be doing, you know? um I can’t tell you like how many Like, you know, when I’m on like tech talk or something, I’ll just come upon some so supposedly like deep statement on athletic performance by but someone who’s not really in the game, you know? And I guess that that has caused me to want to stand up for athletes and like what our experience really is, you know? um And so yeah, I guess I can, all I can, that’s all I’ll say about that. But I mean, I’m kind of interested too in like what some things that,

00:58:25.97
francis
your, um your clients like, you know, really bring up a lot. And we could talk about that, you know, maybe there’s some, some things that you see a lot like a pattern, you know, um and it’s gonna, it could be us, you know.

00:58:35.77
Neely Quinn
Well, you know, yeah, one of the things that you brought up earlier, because I think that a lot of people think of climbing and they think immediately like, oh, maybe this Zen of climbing will help me be less scared.

00:58:49.16
francis
Hmm.

00:58:49.37
Neely Quinn
So, you know, it as a sport climber or a boulder who is dealing with fear, like how how do you really let Zen help you with that?

00:58:57.91
francis
and

00:59:01.73
francis
Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a great one. I’m glad you brought that up, actually. um so I’ll give you a, for example, um and maybe like build off of that. A couple of years ago, I was like doing an ice route around here and it was like a little bit above my ability, you know, I didn’t know it like standing at the bottom, but I got into a situation that um just kind of freaked me out. Like, you know, my nervous system was, I got through up and my nervous system was just like really not happy with me about that, that I had put myself in such a really hard situation. um

00:59:37.97
francis
And i e what happened afterward is that I really just lost motivation for a couple months to really put myself in kind of like pointed positions on the sharp end, you know? And what you know basic basically like what I’m trying to say is is that fear um is not something that like you should just experience like wholesale in like big quantities, you know like I did, because that will set you back. right That will really mess with your your like nervous system. like what i think

01:00:12.26
francis
you you know, my tactic in dealing with fear, whether it’s on hard trad routes or ice routes is to really try to introduce it incrementally and let like your nervous system really digest that, you know, digest that experience, really try to see like, were was I really comfortable in that situation? And, you know, how would I have done something differently? And then, um you know, trying to just like make little adjustments, but doing it really piecemeal, like giving yourself a lot of time to kind of like, I don’t know,

01:00:41.46
francis
get into like more scary or sketchy situations. and And so, you know, someone who’s like afraid of falling, you know, that’s a hard one because, I mean, there’s obviously like whip therapy. There’s all like these like really tried and true methods for dealing with like fear of falling. But I think fear, if if you look at your fear, what you’re going to do is you’re going to start to realize that it it happens in your thought patterns way before you arrive at the crag or way before you’re about to fall.

01:01:08.73
francis
You know, um, I was actually talking to someone about this, you know, um, a couple of weeks ago, they had like reached out on Instagram.

01:01:09.46
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

01:01:15.57
francis
They’re like, Hey, like I have a terrible fear of falling. How do I get over this enough? And I was like, you know, my guess is that this is like. happening the night before or like you’re starting to get these nerves and they’re they’re able to run a muck in your body because you’re not like seeing them really clean by the time you get to um you know like you’re actually climbing like they’re so bad that they’re just like whatever you call it um they’re paralyzing right they feel so strong that there’s no way around it and so you know my advice is is one try to reroute your nervous system try to if you’re going to the crag that day or whatever just avoid anything that you’re feeling those little panicky nerves about just don’t Don’t do it.

01:01:44.46
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

01:01:57.76
francis
like don’t force Don’t force yourself. Just do something else. It could be for a couple weeks. Take another tack, whether you need to top rope or something. like Stop kind of like traumatizing yourself.

01:02:08.14
francis
right Because if you’re traumatizing yourself, you’re not doing yourself any favors. You need to like build those scaffolds. um you know The more you can see about where that fear is entering your brain, you know earlier and better, the less you will just be beholden to it, the less it’s going to take over. and and I don’t know why that works. That’s just a function of our brains, the way they work. The more distance you can get from like an emotion, the less you’ll your body will be ensnared by it. It’s just a fact of the matter. so um You know, the the first thing, again, I keep coming back to is just figuring out where and when that fear is popping up in your brain, in your mind.

01:02:43.37
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

01:02:44.12
francis
When? Is it just before the route? Because if it is, if you think it is, I doubt it. Your brain is going to be running things or your something’s earlier and the early you can catch it. the the more you can chip away at it. And that’s when the work, the work, it’s hard to do. It’s hard work, but um it does work. And then I don’t want to ignore the the practical things too, Neely. Introducing you know Falls, every session is really important. And you know I was just listening to a podcast with Hazel and she’s like, I still do whip therapy. She’s a pro climber. you know

01:03:16.38
francis
like great ah multidisciplinary climber. And she’s like, I still have to do whip therapy. you know So we got top level climbers here who are still dealing with the fear of fall falling. And take that to heart, I would say, to any of your clients. like That’s OK. It’s a normal thing to have. It’s just something you can never take your eye off of, I would say. um So that’s another piece of advice. I guess just the other thing is is just figure out you know maybe just your your strategies. like Are you the kind of person that that like clips too low or something because you’re nervous and so you got too much slack out you know low clippers are like you know feeding like in their teeth two and three times right um which actually increases your chance of a bigger fall you know and maybe training yourself to

01:03:58.90
Neely Quinn
All right.

01:04:01.39
francis
to clip yeah at your waist because it’s a more relaxed clipping um position and you might not activate like that fight or flight response um all the time. And I climbed with Delaney Miller a lot when we were at Rock and Ice. She was a gym climber and you know She’s a world club you know athlete, and um she clips at her waist almost all the time. It was beautiful. she just was like would climb I’d clip like two, three three feet before her, but she would just get up there and clip. and it was as I learned a lot from watching her just clip. you know um That was a nice tactic because, again, I see my kids do it too as they’re climbing. I tell them, like

01:04:39.53
francis
Don’t try too hard to clip because you’re going to create those little panics as you’re trying to reach up super high and out of your reach. If you would just do two more moves, you’re going to avoid the pump, you’re going to avoid the stress, and you’re going to avoid what clipping even means for you. Clipping means something totally different.

01:04:56.97
francis
um

01:04:58.23
Neely Quinn
Yeah and that goes back to kind of what you were saying earlier is like you have this deep-seated belief that if you clip from lower it’s safer and it’s better and you have to really take a scalpel to those beliefs and then say well what’s actually true here and even the even if I don’t like it and can I change that?

01:05:19.51
Neely Quinn
And um I’m at the Red, as you know, and I actually had a really interesting experience with fear here that I haven’t had in the past because I also have fear of falling and um I have to take whips all the time too and do practice work with it. But I’m working on this route called Silky Smooth. It’s a 13C in the chocolate factory. and the the bolts are kind of run out.

01:05:45.86
Neely Quinn
And I saw my friend on it and I was like, God, I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to do those clips.

01:05:46.02
francis
Yeah.

01:05:53.11
Neely Quinn
It’s scary. And um and but what I’ve ended up doing is actually so my friend Alex has done it and she gave me a video of her sending it.

01:05:54.89
francis
Yeah.

01:06:04.20
Neely Quinn
And in that video, she’s so calm and so collected, and the clips are just not a big deal for her. And I’ve been like channeling that energy. I’m like, what if I could pretend that I could be that calm and collected and brave?

01:06:20.14
Neely Quinn
What if I could pretend that I could do that?

01:06:20.26
francis
Hmm.

01:06:23.02
Neely Quinn
And then I’ve been doing the clips, I’ve been doing links, I’ve been doing all the things, and it’s like really working for me. And I feel like it’s kind of a Zen thing because I’m like zooming out and like not being emotion in my emotions about it.

01:06:30.10
francis
um

01:06:33.79
francis
Yeah. Hmm. That’s great. That’s Yeah, that’s beautiful. Um, are you do when you visualize, are you kind of like, visualizing at a granular level, like visualizing your body and your arm making the clip and stuff like that?

01:06:50.26
Neely Quinn
Yes, exactly. And even, yeah, so like when I’m doing my visualization of doing the root, I’m like, and then I’m going to be breathing really calmly and let’s get my heart rate down and like all of it.

01:07:01.55
francis
Yeah would be chill as hell here’s okay.

01:07:01.90
Neely Quinn
And then when I’m up there, I’m like, all right, what would Alex do here? or She would be chill.

01:07:08.54
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

01:07:09.04
francis
This is a good one. This is a good one. So Something I often tell people and i’ll i’ll do myself is So you’re like even if they’re warming up or something or maybe they’re trying something like at the middle of their grade is like I don’t want you to do Anything else as you go up this other than try to focus on your breath

01:07:26.89
Neely Quinn
Mm-hmm.

01:07:27.07
francis
And and like nothing else if you like like literally just be like, okay i’m breathing it’s funny like just climb and just be there with your breath be there with your breath because If you can master that you will never get fearful because if you’re focused on your breath fear is will not enter your system and it just won’t and I don’t know how else to say it. and other than like That’s a great strategy because then what you can do if you say, okay, my goal on this climb is to literally just focus on breathing to the exclusion of anything else, to the exclusion of clipping, getting to the top, doing being smooth, just focus on your breathing.

01:08:07.55
francis
Once you do that, you will realize that fear and like those other things will will come into your mind with like more clarity and more like starkness, which makes you like more aware of them and easier to combat them. um That’s something I do all the time. like Even on like a hard send, you would think that like I need to focus on the moves. I need to like focus on that sequence. I’m telling you,

01:08:33.57
francis
you do not like You do not need to be like, all right, I need to go right, left hand. If you’ve got ah some sense of bodily awareness, which I think most climbers do, and you’ve done that sequence but before, it’s amazing how much your body will just execute that sequence without any conscious oversight.

01:08:46.76
Neely Quinn
Hmm. Hmm.

01:08:51.00
francis
In fact, it will do it better. you know The less conscious conscious oversight you have. um And it’s a profound thing, and I’ve had a lot of people say, I’ve literally been in a crag, and I’ll be like, all right, I want you to do this.

01:08:57.64
Neely Quinn
e Yeah.

01:09:03.49
francis
I did this with my friend at Rifle last season, and he was trying this project. And I was like, dude, that last thing, you were shaky, you were nervous. I could tell he’s doing the climber thing, just botching his foot around and tacking his feet up.

01:09:16.75
francis
I was like, just breathe. Do not do anything other than breathe. And I swear to God, he clipped the chains. oh I’m telling you, he did. He clipped the chains. And um I was like, dude, you climbed so smooth. like I just had never seen him climb that smooth. It was really just like cool to see. And he just was like, man, thank you. like i just I didn’t know what I needed to do. you know And that was really cool to see.

01:09:38.67
Neely Quinn
Yeah, you you talked about that in the book.

01:09:39.03
francis
um

01:09:41.39
Neely Quinn
I’m sorry to interrupt you ah if I did.

01:09:43.05
francis
Oh, no, no.

01:09:44.52
Neely Quinn
But you talked about this in terms of belief and you talking about how you don’t need to like, psych yourself up.

01:09:47.74
francis
there

01:09:52.44
Neely Quinn
And I believe I can do this. It’s like it seemed like it was almost a waste of energy in your mind. And you said you think believing is essential because without belief, there is negativity, right?

01:10:04.57
Neely Quinn
Opposite belief is debilitating doubt, right?

01:10:04.74
francis
Yeah.

01:10:07.61
Neely Quinn
Not so. If I’m good at golf, I can still swing a golf club even though I might not believe I can. I can spend an entire day convincing myself I can’t swing a club, but sure enough, when I step up to the green and swing, my body does it. You cannot try and you can self-sapotage, but that isn’t related to belief. The body doesn’t really care what your mind stream believes. I thought that was really, really cool.

01:10:31.48
francis
Yeah, that’s funny. I forgot how snarky I was in that one um a little bit.

01:10:35.85
Neely Quinn
I it.

01:10:35.95
francis
But yeah, and I would say this too to your listeners and or to like whoever. So next time you go out there, I mean, just try to convince yourself you can’t do it. Just be like, I can’t do this.

01:10:46.64
francis
And like try to go as deep down into doubt. This is just an experiment for them. Go as deep down as you can into doubt and see what happens and just try to take away The assumption that you think you need to do something to do it.

01:11:03.39
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

01:11:03.47
francis
Like you can walk up the stairs and be like, I cannot walk up these stairs, but you can walk up the stairs. Like your body’s just going to go like, dinging like, it doesn’t, you know, like. it doesn’t um It doesn’t help your body execute, like the the pressure that we put on our bodies through belief or especially confidence. And now this is actually related to confidence, so this is interesting. um you know One thing that people have asked me a lot about this book and this related to belief and confidence, what I brought up is like, don’t you need to be confident to be an athlete? you know like Don’t you need to like think you’re gonna do something and fucking believe it really hard.

01:11:41.23
francis
and You know, I don’t want to pretend to have like the first or last word here. um But what I can tell you is that a lot of top coaches will, so will and I got this actually from I think a guy named Ken Klaza, a famous coach. he’s He’s famous for the line that confidence is like way overrated for athletes. Like in other words, like you can just do away with your supposed confidence and probably you’ll do better. um And it’s basically because It doesn’t matter like you’re, if you’re well-trained and your body’s good and you it kind of have like a deep sense of muscle memory and like, you know, you visualized it, you can get to the bottom of a climb and just say, I’m not going to do it. Like Sharma does or had done, like I told you earlier, and you’re still, and you’re going to do it.

01:12:28.42
francis
So why not try to get rid of all these things that we tell ourselves? Why not try to let the body really do its thing, right the wisdom of the body, the power of the body, un-hijacked by like analytical or calculative thinking? um And here’s another interesting study I talked about in the book. I loved this one study. it was um It had to do with these these like researchers were studying the influence of like co cognition on like weightlifting, I think it was, or in exercises. And what they did, I think, and someone you know maybe crooked them wrong, but it was like they would have like people bench pressing and doing harder exercises while trying to do math problems.

01:13:09.73
francis
You know, and it’s really funny. It’s a funny experiment, but what they found was that people who tried to do like math problems while they’re doing a hard exercise were significantly less powerful.

01:13:21.95
francis
Right. So in other words, like people that would just get in there and and would shut off their minds were stronger than anyone that was like using mental bandwidth while they’re doing that exercise. And so that got me thinking about climbing. Like when you really break climbing down, if you’re going to a hard sequence and you’re just trying to think, okay, like get the thumb, like get the foot. If you’re going into that sequence with that type of problem solving mentality, not only are you really like um sabotaging mental bandwidth, precious mental bandwidth, but your your muscles are actually firing with less intensity.

01:13:59.24
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

01:13:59.94
francis
And for strong climbers, there’s ah that’s a pretty big deal. When you’re climbing at your limit you know and you’re 5% less powerful, like your fibers or our are shooting with 5% less intensity, holy shit, man, like you’re not going to do it.

01:14:14.53
francis
you know so

01:14:16.07
Neely Quinn
Well, and and bringing this back to Zen, it’s like, if you think of Hiro and his rice making employee who’s been making rice for 40 years and is the master of rice, like, he doesn’t think about how to make the rice, or an artist doesn’t think about ah exactly how to do a brushstroke, they just know it.

01:14:28.81
francis
Yeah.

01:14:38.21
Neely Quinn
And so I think that the lesson here might be, this is the value of practice. like practice, practice, practice of mastery, whether it’s you’re on your project and you practice the moves over and over again, which is like a basic thing we teach beginner climbers when they’re learning how to project, but even like taking it to the next level in more elite climbing, like it, it does matter because in, you said in your book, you interviewed Jonathan Segress and he was like, with climbing, I’m just, when I’m sending something, I’m just letting my,

01:14:53.87
francis
Yeah.

01:15:10.34
Neely Quinn
my I’m making my mind get out of my way so my body can do what it knows how to do or something like that.

01:15:16.08
francis
Oh, exactly. Yeah, 100%. And you know I always ah come back to Andra because he’s so smart. and like He’s just a treasure trove of not only like amazing climbing, but amazing insight you know that I’ve kind of like, OK, I’ll i’ll like use him sometimes as a sounding board of like some things that I’ll think about. And I’ll be like, ah you know I would just like watch a lot of tape of him and or or try to figure out what he’s saying. and um you know He talks a lot about um like movement. so So I think about movement like this, and I think you know Adam talks a lot about it as well, is like it’s a language we need to inhabit. right And so it’s not something that you need to… You can’t force your way through movement. like What you’re doing is you’re training your body to adapt naturally in the space of movement. you know And what that means is is you are you’re you’re not trying to… like

01:16:09.81
francis
force your will through a sequence. You’re not trying to have this clear vision of like I must do it that way. What you’re trying to do is really create a feedback system where you’re you’re kind of like constantly um in tune with what that was what Rock is asking of you, I should say.

01:16:27.71
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

01:16:28.77
francis
And um he’s like really amazing at that. And there’s a reason why a lot of the top climbers are also top on-siders, is because they have the ability like in real time to to to move in such an intuitive way that if you thought about it, you could never get it done. like You can’t really on-site, you know what I’m saying, at a really hard level and be like, oh, like must go right hand. but Like they, those guys have relinquished control, like cognitive cognitive control of their climbing and they’ve turned it over to their body. They’ve turned it over to a different awareness system. And that different awareness system is kind of like pre-conceptual in a lot of ways. They’re just kind of trying to react as they’re climbing. Of course, they got their moments where they got to think about it, of course, but in general, you know, hard on sighting. And I love on sighting for this reason as well, because it really tests your ability to

01:17:23.17
francis
climb without a sense of strong control. um climb outside of your comfort zone or something like this and really try to react intuitively. And I think that’s a really nice skill to have. And um I think on-siting is just like another good practice. like i’ll never I almost never waste a good on-site. I’ll just try to on-site everything. Even if I take like the whip, like fuck it. I’m going to try to on-site it because I’m going to learn a lot about myself you know um when I’m trying to on-site and my weaknesses, I should say, too. so

01:17:56.10
francis
um

01:17:56.10
Neely Quinn
yeah Yeah, you have a whole chapter which I really enjoyed about control as a quite controlling person myself. so yeah and you you

01:18:05.61
francis
Consoles a hard one to kick, Nealey. Tell me about your battle with control. I know it well.

01:18:12.17
Neely Quinn
Yeah, I mean, I just want to know what every hold feels like. And and so I really have forced myself to do a lot of on-siting, even when I walk up to something and I’m like, I’m really intimidated by that. and And I just have made myself do it a lot so that I can stop being so intimidated.

01:18:33.45
Neely Quinn
and like not be so afraid of the failure that might come with on-siting. Because that’s, you know, I just had it yesterday.

01:18:39.74
francis
Yeah.

01:18:41.44
Neely Quinn
I was like, well, this is 12A and I should be able to on-site this. But if I don’t, I’m going to be really embarrassed. And then I’m like, am I, though? It doesn’t matter because we’re just bodies climbing up walls.

01:18:52.54
francis
That’s right.

01:18:53.67
Neely Quinn
I might make a mistake and that’s OK.

01:18:54.44
francis
yeah

01:18:57.24
Neely Quinn
So, yeah, it’s like that.

01:18:59.70
francis
I know FOPO, fear of other people’s opinions is a big one. It’s a hard one. you know um I know i know a a climber I climb with here in town and he avoided like going to rifle for a decade because he just knew he had encountered people he’d see and he wasn’t you know he didn’t want to be judged by those by that crowd.

01:19:05.06
Neely Quinn
Yes.

01:19:20.23
francis
you know um And that’s that’s real. like whether we you know Most people maybe don’t want to admit i admit it, but um It’s a big that’s a big one. you know um fear of other Yeah, that’s that’s ah that’s a huge one.

01:19:33.98
francis
And I think you know we haven’t talked about like social media pressure, but that’s a whole another type of fear of other people’s opinions and all the things that the kind of ego inflation we do there.

01:19:45.42
francis
But and but anyhow, yeah, no, that’s a big one.

01:19:47.45
Neely Quinn
Well, what would you say about that using Zen tactics? or philosophies to like when you’re at a busy crag, this happens to me a lot. I don’t like climbing at busy crags because I don’t want people judging me and I don’t want to, you know, take too much time or whatever. So what are things within the Zen philosophy that you can do even in that moment to help ease your mind?

01:20:16.20
francis
Yeah, yep, I hear you. you know um i like I mean, humor you know is like laughing at yourself a little bit for the shallowness of of like that sense.

01:20:28.70
francis
i think that’s I think that’s always fun. I mean, I’ll get those emotions, too. I’ll feel it, too. You know what I’m saying? like i’ll I’ll notice them. And then you just kind of laugh at them. And you’ve got to have to be OK with yourself at a deep level, I’d say. you know At like a really deep level, like you’re a good climber, Neely.

01:20:49.77
francis
you know um and you know turning it back onto yourself. I guess it’s like another way of looking at it. It’s like, OK, when you see somebody else who’s really good fall on something, are you like in the back of your mind, oh my god, like what a loser. Like, fuck that. I mean, probably not. You’re probably like, yeah, good for them. Like, they climb 5.15 and they dogged on a 12D. Like, good for them. You know, like, you’re kind of like, you kind of learn something about them that’s fun. And i’ve I’ve climbed with some people. I’ve climbed with like 5.15 climbers.

01:21:23.88
francis
and seeing them like really like fall on hard like five twelves, you know, and What was really cool was that they didn’t give a shit. you know like it’s own It’s like they knew who they were.

01:21:34.46
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

01:21:37.58
francis
They don this is like they didn’t they were so solid in their you know their sense of self, I should say, that they just like weren’t really phased by it. And i I feel like a lot of the posturing maybe happens in the middle.

01:21:50.66
francis
you know Not quite the beginners, not like the the big dogs, but it’s always like in the middle jockeying around for status.

01:21:50.81
Neely Quinn
Yeah, totally.

01:21:56.83
francis
You know what I’m saying?

01:21:57.92
Neely Quinn
yeah totally

01:21:58.04
francis
Where I feel like a lot of that happens. um But I don’t know, I always just try to have some humor at myself and just try to get on anyway, you know, get on the climb anyway, fall and then get over that initial sense of embarrassment. And then you realize it’s not as bad as you thought. And if it is as bad as you thought, then do some work on it in your mind, you know, like go home and and think about, you know, the fact that you can be really torn up because maybe you fell on something, you know, that’s not a good place to be mentally. Right. You know,

01:22:30.49
Neely Quinn
Yeah, right. Yeah, these are the hard. These are the hard challenges. And on that note, I do want to tell a funny story that was I saw Daniel Woods like struggling up Hingham High.

01:22:39.40
francis
Yes.

01:22:45.21
Neely Quinn
And then I was climbing next to him later. And I was like, I have to say, Daniel, it was really funny watching you struggle up Hingham High.

01:22:51.49
francis
yeah

01:22:52.95
Neely Quinn
And she was like, I thought it was really funny, too. But it’s a perfect example of what you just said, like having a sense of humor about it. It really did add levity, I think, to him, too, because I’m sure he was kind of like, oh, my God, what the fuck?

01:23:08.40
francis
Oh, totally.

01:23:09.42
Neely Quinn
Yeah. So um yeah.

01:23:12.63
francis
that

01:23:13.82
Neely Quinn
Anyway, these things are really hard, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time. This is getting to be ah sort of a longer episode, but I feel like I could talk to you about all of these things at length, um and hopefully I get to do that.

01:23:25.98
francis
Oh, yeah. yeah oh yeah

01:23:28.46
Neely Quinn
um But actually, I do want to talk about one more thing. which is that when we spoke um a couple of days ago, you had told me that you just lost a parent and you lost another parent very recently too.

01:23:46.29
francis
Mm hmm.

01:23:46.37
Neely Quinn
And we wanted to touch on grief and how it relates to Zen. So first of all, I just want to say I’m very, very sorry um for your losses.

01:23:54.87
francis
Yeah. Yeah.

01:23:56.15
Neely Quinn
And so, yeah, anything you want to share about that.

01:23:59.55
francis
I’m glad you brought that up. It’s a, you know, it’s, um, yes, I wouldn’t say it’s a hugely talked about item, but in climbing, you know, but I think we’re all going through loss. you know And so it’s it’s relevant, right? um Whether we’re losing jobs or girlfriends or boyfriends, parents, you know like things like that. Yeah, so my my mom died about a month ago. um She had like a type of neurocognitive disease that basically took away her ability to function and so ended up yeah ended up dying

01:24:32.00
francis
after three weeks, but it’s been a long process with her, unfortunately. My dad died about 13 months ago, so about just about a year ago of cancer. And yeah, it was really tough, you know, because I live in Colorado and I was just flying back like constantly, you know, and trying to be there, you know, spend, I would spend like two weeks there, come home for like two months, spend two weeks there, come home. You know, I really wanted to be present with my parents. They were great people. They supported me and basically like everything I did, you know, so I wanted to make sure that, you know, I got them off right, you know.

01:25:07.34
francis
And so that that felt really good. you know um But you know as a I guess as it pertains to our discussion, you know what I found was was just really interesting. you know like I found my you know My inability to do dangerous types of climbing just totally vanished for a bit.

01:25:25.33
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

01:25:25.74
francis
I just like could not get myself to do like really hard trad climbs, sketchy towers or things in the Black Canyon. like I just could not get my body there.

01:25:36.57
francis
I couldn’t imagine myself doing hard alpine routes or hard ice and mixed routes. And I just, it was a funny thing. I’d never had that in my life, you know, but I just realized I could like see, you talked about visualization, I could see myself in those situations. I was like, okay, like I need to put myself up one lead. And it felt so wrong, you know, that I just backed away from it entirely. So that felt, I’m glad I kind of like made those decisions. But, you know, I think like allostatic load is something that gets thrown around a lot in training circles. And it’s like the, you know, the

01:26:10.77
francis
What is it? The um the way our our nervous system adapts to kind of constant stress. you know And I think when ah when you’re losing both your parents, you’re whether you know it or are not, your body’s in a constant state of stress.

01:26:22.92
francis
It’s trying to untangle your history from theirs. And and in my case, I’m like literally watching like some pretty rough struggles. you know like And so that’s that was really tough.

01:26:31.32
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

01:26:33.32
francis
and you know it It just gave me a new respect for you know people that have like dealt with loss. It gave me like a new respect for places inside of like you know my you know basically my brain that were just giving me signals like, just back off. you know like hit Hit the boards, hit the kilter, hit the moonboard, as opposed to like going out and trying like some projects. and at first i actually thought i was like oh no like i’m okay i can still like go out and try hard but i was making like a lot of mistakes you know and i just didn’t it didn’t feel right so i kind of just

01:27:09.11
francis
backed off for a while there and was like hitting kind of safe types of training. so that that you know That was one like adaptation that I made. you know I was really just like trying to be kind to myself and understanding that.

01:27:19.98
francis
i’m going you know It was a really tough time. um A funny thing is I ah definitely got tendinitis in every part of my body because I always

01:27:28.10
Neely Quinn
on the boards.

01:27:29.56
francis
right I was like, yeah, I’m on the board. So I blew something there. And I was like, oh, well, good. So I got to take you know time off of climbing for a bit to heal my finger up.

01:27:39.63
francis
So I like i started running. I do a lot of running, you know mountain running. And so I just totally overcompensated in running.

01:27:44.74
Neely Quinn
Oh my gosh.

01:27:45.05
francis
you know And I had like got tendonitis in both my heels within like three months. you know and to But, you know, it’s just classic. Like what it just taught me was I just like saw my own patterns really clearly. And I realized I’d have been kind of doing that my whole life. Like, you know, really just running myself, you know, like too hard. And I think what it what it taught me is is the art of backing off to go forward, you know, um and to not like creating, you know, mental, I don’t know, like hang ups about

01:28:16.81
francis
you know trying to have to train too hard while both your parents are dying. you know like that’s ah That’s a tough thing. And that’s kind of crazy to do, but um I don’t know.

01:28:25.57
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and going back to some of the things you’ve said, it’s like you you didn’t. take the time or like you didn’t allow yourself to re-examine these emotional ruts you were in.

01:28:41.44
Neely Quinn
You were like, well, this is how I cope with life. I do these hard things.

01:28:45.30
francis
Yeah.

01:28:45.58
Neely Quinn
And this time it really wasn’t working. And so it was like you needed to to take a step back and reassess and figure out what was right for you. And then your body just kept telling you, no, no, no, this is not right.

01:28:59.88
Neely Quinn
So in hindsight, I’m curious, what should you what do you think would have been the best thing for you to do?

01:29:06.02
francis
Yeah, that’s ah that’s a good that’s a good one. um I mean, so the good news is that, you know, since my mom just passed, i like I kind of learned the tendonitis thing came after my dad, where I was just like, ah, you know, like I must like physical activity, right?

01:29:19.89
francis
and um But, you know, I think with my mom, I think, gosh, what is it?

01:29:20.22
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

01:29:27.72
francis
I just, maybe the training loads, I’ve lowered my training loads a little bit and I’ve been sensitive to that. So like all my life, I forced hard training loads down my throat, you know, and I’ve just been like, of the mind, like train, just train harder and the results will follow. And I now know that to be absolutely not the case.

01:29:48.34
francis
um And, you know, slowness and giving your body proper recovery is very hard to do, I think, because we think that we just the more we build, the better we get.

01:30:00.15
francis
But, I mean, Ben Moon is famous for saying, like, if you could change anything about climate in his 20s, that he was taking more rest days.

01:30:04.89
Neely Quinn
Hmm.

01:30:05.72
francis
You know what I’m saying?

01:30:06.51
Neely Quinn
Mm hmm.

01:30:06.96
francis
and And i I really see like what he’s saying with that is because it’s an assumption we have of overdoing of constantly using all of our time and all of our energy to just like constant constant constant improvement constant building constant construction, and that’s a trap, you know, and There’s a reason why anxiety, you know, maybe and depression and mental health is like the the key of our time is because we’re we’re constantly trying to be productive and produce. And I’ve been guilty of that and guilty of that in an athletic sense. And I’ve realized what I was really doing just, I was missing the over-training piece. I wasn’t aware of myself in the over-training piece. And so that was kind of humbling, you know, it taught it like,

01:30:53.75
francis
taught me a good, light lesson in life. It also was just like a nice reminder of how much I love climbing, you know, even though despite all those those things, I never once like lost my deep love to just like even just go scramble around like the Appalachians with my son. I mean, just just a great joy and and bringing my kid, you know, just bringing my kids up, you know, really putting some time into that too has been, you know, just really paid a lot of dividends, you know. um So yeah, just learning learning the art of you know backing off a little bit is is phenomenal. It’s a phenomenal lesson in life that you can get. you know

01:31:32.58
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and I think it’s really notable that you literally wrote the book called The Zen of Climbing, right? And you are, it’s a constant lesson in teaching through life.

01:31:40.25
francis
Yeah. Yeah.

01:31:45.52
Neely Quinn
Like you have these stressful things happen, you have to step back and be like, oh, here’s what I need to be doing. This is Zen, this is my life philosophy. And I forgot for a minute, but here it is now for me.

01:31:59.19
Neely Quinn
And so it’s like, this isn’t something that you just perfect.

01:31:59.45
francis
so

01:32:02.77
Neely Quinn
And all of a sudden, you’re the the Buddha you know himself.

01:32:06.27
francis
Oh, fuck that one.

01:32:07.55
Neely Quinn
It’s just something that like you use as guideposts for yourself, it seems like.

01:32:14.15
francis
Yeah, i liked I like the way you phrased that, that’s awesome. It is absolutely an unfinished project and it’s something that I’ll carry with me. Yeah, it’s never like a static, like I’ve arrived, you know, like, oh, I’m done, like I’m good to go. It’s it’s more that like I’ve got, I know the tools, and I know where the toolbox is now, you know? and um And so I know what to grab for and I’m able to like get out of those,

01:32:41.10
francis
You know what what could potentially be really disruptive experiences for somebody is like losing both your parents in like a quick time with in a pretty gnarly way that could you know go really downhill. you know And I feel like my my practice has really maybe helped me stay a little bit resilient. you know It also helped me be there you know for those for my parents you know in a way that felt really healthy and all that stuff. So yeah, it’s paid dividends. And it is a work in progress. You’re darn right. And I expect to have something happen next week, to be quite honest. I just don’t know what it is yet.

01:33:11.97
Neely Quinn
Yeah, right. Yeah. And I imagine that when you were in those big emotions, when you lost your mom and your dad, it it probably helped you like get some distance from that and have some perspective when you needed it.

01:33:27.41
francis
Yep.

01:33:27.43
Neely Quinn
Is that what you mean by it gave it gave you resilience?

01:33:31.74
francis
Yeah, yeah, I think it gave me resilience and it gave me, um you know, I never fell into despair or or grief. I was able to, and I don’t say it with pride, or I just say that as a matter of fact, like I was able to to stay pretty even you know in those really trying times and and um and stay joyful. like Even ah you know like the bedside of you know your’ your mom who’s just taking her last breath, I was able to find some joy in that. And and maybe that’s weird to say, but

01:34:08.33
francis
you know um it doesn’t feel weird to experience you know it was it was like you know this is okay this is this is part of it i can see the grief wanting to maybe like take a hold but i was able to you know it didn’t need to to like tank my life or anything like that i was able to really be at peace with it and because that i was able to be with her in a real in a real sincere present way, in the same way that I’m able to be with my climbing in a really, it’s like the same, it’s like the same skill, you know, if that makes sense.

01:34:34.22
Neely Quinn
Right.

01:34:39.93
francis
I was able, just as I’m able to be present, maybe on a hard lead or able to really see what’s needed, I was, you know, I was able to be there for them. And that was, that was, that felt pretty nice. You know, that felt, that felt good, you know.

01:34:52.46
Neely Quinn
yeah I was actually just thinking about that the other day, like when I’m dying, do I want the person who’s sitting next to me, hopefully there will be a person sitting next to me, like despairing or do I want them to be present with me?

01:35:05.57
Neely Quinn
And I definitely do not want them despairing.

01:35:08.28
francis
you You just hit on a huge, so my my wife actually works with the death and dying a lot and you know um she works a lot of the space and one of the worst things you can do is have someone in the room who is not present with like the that that person who’s dying.

01:35:08.43
Neely Quinn
So.

01:35:23.67
francis
like It’s one of the worst things you can do for the patient is because It just creates like a very, I don’t know, um unsettling atmosphere. And you’re not able to actually be there for that person. you know So yeah, you’ you definitely want someone there who can square up you know um and be really clear-headed. Yeah, you’re that’s great that you made that connection. that’s ah That’s a big one in care circles, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

01:35:50.06
Neely Quinn
Yeah, this is big stuff. um I’m going to ask you for, and thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable with that. I appreciate it.

01:35:59.58
francis
Oh yeah.

01:36:00.36
Neely Quinn
I’m going to ask you for resources now. So like if people want to learn more about Zen and obviously you have your book for them, but are there any go to resources that you would direct people to?

01:36:13.60
francis
Yeah. um I mean, let’s see Zen mind beginner’s mind I think is a really great book. That’s a really nice one to just like pick up, and you can read, I think that’s a really, really good one. Um, I would say people should sit down and practice like the fundamentals of meditation, and I think we haven’t really spoken about that but that’s an implicit implicit practice that is it central for every part of that book and every part of my life is and you don’t have to think yourself as doing Buddhist things or doing Zen things. You just have to say, okay, like I’m going to be with my mind you know sitting here and I’m going to be aware and try to feel what it’s doing. and That’s all meditation really is. you’re not You don’t have to stare at candles or recite fucking mantras or something. Just be there and notice what’s passing around through your brain. I would say,

01:37:03.79
francis
If I had to pass along any like go start doing start doing something, I would say start doing that that. That’s a really powerful practice. It’s like, you know, um climbers, you know, campus and young kids, you know, kick soccer balls around cones when they’re young. It’s like a fundamental to the sport. I would say meditation is fundamental to life in that sense and to what I’m trying to do with this book. So I can’t ah probably emphasize that enough.

01:37:30.95
francis
So yeah, I would say that’s that’s a that’s an important one.

01:37:33.73
Neely Quinn
Great, wonderful. Yeah, that’s the practice right there.

01:37:37.97
francis
That is a practice. It’s a potent practice. like You’re not going to do push-ups to grow your biceps, right? um You’re going to do bicep curls. Why is that? I don’t know, just the way the body works.

01:37:49.89
francis
But to get sharp in your mind, do meditation. Don’t like play video games. It’s just the way it works.

01:37:56.12
Neely Quinn
first

01:37:56.73
francis
It’s the same thing.

01:37:57.76
Neely Quinn
Dang it.

01:37:57.97
francis
like Yeah, sorry.

01:37:59.91
Neely Quinn
Yeah.

01:38:00.06
francis
Put down, you know, fucking whatever it is you’re playing, Neely, you know, no more games, you know.

01:38:03.76
Neely Quinn
Yeah. yeah Well, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I so appreciate you agreeing to do this interview. So thank you very much.

01:38:17.04
francis
Thank you, Neil. I really enjoyed it. I’ve always you knowve been looking forward to chatting with you, and you got such a great mind for the sport. And you’re you’re also just like so vulnerable and asking all the right questions. And yeah, it’s it’s awesome. It’s great to see that you yeah you struggle just like we all struggle, and that’s really important. you know

01:38:34.08
Neely Quinn
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, you too, obviously. And I hope to see you out at the crag sometime. That would be great.

01:38:39.90
francis
I know. You’re in Colorado?

01:38:41.70
Neely Quinn
Yeah, I’m sure we’ve been that rifle at the same time, 100 times.

01:38:46.19
francis
Yeah, I know. All right. Yeah. Well, yeah, we’ll have to connect. Yep. That sounds good.

01:38:48.69
Neely Quinn
All right. Well, thanks, Francis. Have a good one.

01:38:52.44
francis
You too, Neely. Thank you.