[laughs] Yeah.

Lee Sheftel: I mean at one point my bouldering ability was… I did a couple of v9s back about 25 years ago. But that’s as high as I ever got, and I know I wouldn’t be able to do that now, or I don’t think I would be able to now. But at any rate, the thing about age is that other than the power thing, which you know, is sad, I think the way I got strong, the number one reason is my passion for the sport. As soon as I started the sport, literally the first day I went out and actually took a lesson- I almost killed myself climbing the Flat Irons one day, and I decided I better take a lesson. I took a lesson from his 18 year old kid, he took me out, and at the time I was living in California. He took me out in a place in Santa Barbara, and at the end of the day he asked me “So, what do you think?”. And my reaction was like, “Oh my god, where the heck has this sport been all my life?”.

So I immediately fell in love with it, and I pursued it with a passion. From that point on, you know, back then there wasn’t anything such as sport climbing, so I did nothing but trad climbing, but it doesn’t really matter. I pursued it by climbing any chance I got, training however I could train. Back then, there were no training facilities per se. I remember we used to have this wall- a rock wall that was built around this park. We used to just traverse on this wall for hours to train, after work. I just kept pursuing training and climbing and top roping after work, and going trad climbing on the weekends.

Neely Quinn: Was that in California?

Lee Sheftel: No, I only was in California for one year, when I first learned to climb, and then I moved out to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Neely Quinn: Oh okay. So how much time did you spend in Santa Fe?

Lee Sheftel: Twenty years.

Neely Quinn: Whoa.

Lee Sheftel: Well I built my business there. That’s when I started my tax practice. That’s what I do for a living- taxes.

Neely Quinn: You’re an accountant.

Lee Sheftel: I am an accountant. So while I was building my practice, at first, I wasn’t really working tat much. I didn’t really have that much work yet, so I spent an awful lot of my time traveling and climbing. It was kind of simultaneously, when I got super busy in my business and I had to devote a lot of my time to my business, at the same time, sport climbing was happening in the early 80s, and it just worked for me. It doesn’t take that much time to go sport climbing, and if I wanted to go to Nepal, that would take a lot of time. If I wanted to do big walls, that would take a lot of time- although I did some of that. But mostly I just got into sport climbing.

Neely Quinn: So you did a lot of that in New Mexico?

Lee Sheftel: Yes.

Neely Quinn: Do you like the climbing there?

Lee Sheftel: Um, interesting question. So, I like the climbing there, it’s just that at the time, it was limiting in terms of a lot of the climbing areas that we had were kind of… the kind of genre in New Mexico at that time were very short rock climbs and bouldery. And then the Enchanted Tower was discovered in the 80s by a friend. Then I became pretty obsessed with that place, because as you know, as most people know, they are long, overhanging sport routes.

Neely Quinn: Which fit your endurance.

Lee Sheftel: Yes. It suites my style better. I do like bouldering, and boulder-type routes, but in general, like I said, my strength is not my power. So if something is going to shut me down on a route, or give me a severe problem, it’s going to be the crux, not the endurance part of a route. Never has it ever been problem for me on an endurance. Sure I get pumped and I fall off like everybody else, but that’s not going to stop me from doing a route- it’s going to be a specific move or movements that stop me.

Neely Quinn: So you used to be a marathon runner before you started climbing, right?

Lee Sheftel: I did a couple marathons, yes.

Neely Quinn: So I’m assuming you trained your endurance quite a bit?

Lee Sheftel: I did. As a matter of fact, it might not have been the best way to do it, but what I started to do to train my endurance was at the end of a day, especially when I went to the Enchanted Tower, I would just get on some route that I knew I could complete, but I wasn’t sure how many times, and I would just lap it. Without any rest, I would just do the route, come down, get back on the route. Do it again, come down, get back on the route, do it again. Sometimes I would do five, six laps on a route until I would just fall off.

Neely Quinn: Do you think that your running sort of translated over into your climbing at all?

Lee Sheftel: No [laughs].

Neely Quinn: No? Your aerobic capacity? Not at all?

Lee Sheftel: Well, I’ve read that it doesn’t really transfer over, except that if you have those types of slow twitch muscles, endurance muscles, then you probably have them all over your body. So maybe it translates in that way. But I do remember when I started rock climbing- I mean, I remember in high school I took this physical fitness test and I remember that I could do, like, an awful lot of pull-ups. When I started climbing, I think I could do four or five pull-ups, that was it. I was weak on my upper arms, because I was just running all the time. I had pipe arms, and I could hardly pull on anything. I had to build that.

Neely Quinn: So then you started doing five or six laps on routes at the Enchanted Tower.

Lee Sheftel: Well, eventually, yeah. I’d been climbing for a number of years at that point.

Neely Quinn: So then you left that area though, and you’ve been in the Rifle area for a while- you live in Carbondale, right?

Lee Sheftel: Seventeen years.

Neely Quinn: And you’ve been an accountant there, and it seems like you have a pretty awesome schedule.

Lee Sheftel: Pretty awesome?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Lee Sheftel: Well, the thing is that I prioritize. I tell a lot of people this when they say they don’t have any time. They have a hard time budgeting their time for recreation- what they consider to be recreation. But I like to think that it’s your life. It’s not just recreation. It’s almost like saying something’s recreation is like watching TV or something. It’s not. It’s an important part of your life if you are passionate about it, and you need to prioritize. So that’s what I did.

What I would do is budget in my time, and if somebody asked me “Oh we need to schedule an appointment, I can see you on Tuesday”, and they don’t need to know what it is, but I say “Well, actually I am already scheduled out for Tuesday”. I don’t say I’m gong rock climbing, even though that’s what I’m doing. It’s really not their business what I’m doing. I’m scheduled to go rock climbing- that’s my schedule [laughs].

Neely Quinn: That is what is on the agenda.

Lee Sheftel: That’s right. So that’s what I did. I prioritized it, and that’s kind of been my MO since. In fact, I’m working on prioritizing it even more. I’m actually phasing my business down quite a bit.

Neely Quinn: And yeah I wonder, is that why you made you own business, so you could be in control of your schedule?

Lee Sheftel: That is one of the main reasons. But the other main reason is that when I first decided that I needed to make money to live- because for a long time I did a lot of what a lot of people do and pieced it together and just exist. I decided that no, I need to have a career of some sort. I tried a few things, like some carpentry and stuff like that, but finally, I decided to use my education- which was a major in business and accounting in college- and I tried to get a job at first, working for somebody else. When I found out how hard I was going to have to work and what horrible pay I was going to get- this was in Santa Fe, at least 37 years ago. I decided that I needed to start my own business. I need to have my own free time, and I need to start my own business, and go after it. It wasn’t that easy at first, but it came together after a couple of years.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and you’ve been doing it ever since, and you get to climb a few days a week in Rifle every week, right?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, I do.

Neely Quinn: Because I’ve seen you out there on the weekdays, and I’m like, “That’s amazing, it’s fantastic”.

Lee Sheftel: Well I just schedule it in, just like anything else. The only time period where I’m not really out there during the week, of course, during that time period, you don’t really want to be out during the week, instead I’m skiing- February and March are brutal for me, tax wise.

Neely Quinn: Oh yeah. Well, I guess we all gotta work hard sometimes.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, well the interesting thing that attracted me to Rifle was- my friend Matt Samet, when he gave me a call back in 1990-sh. He was like “Lee, you gotta come up here and check this place out. This is the future”. So I remember the first day I came up to Rifle, I was still living in Santa Fe, of course. There were twelve routes.

Neely Quinn: Twelve routes?

Lee Sheftel: Twelve routes.

Neely Quinn: Nice.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: And you loved it?

Lee Sheftel: Oh god yeah. I loved the climbing in Rifle so much better than the climbing in New Mexico, instantly. Because it’s long, as you know, it’s engaging mentally, physically, everything. And it was brand new, and it was exciting.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So tell me about the evolution of you as a climber, because I’m assuming that at a certain point- I have read that you take like two or three rest days after a big climbing day. For a lot of people, and probably for even you when you were a little bit younger, that was a lot.

Lee Sheftel: You’re right.

Neely Quinn: I’m wondering, what happened through the years? What has changed for your climbing and training? How do you do things differently now?

Lee Sheftel: Well, I think I’ve gotten smarter about training for routes, for one thing, but I’ll get into that in a second. But firstly, and I talked to this with Bill Ramsey a few times- a good friend of mine. Bill and I were like- he’s the one that said this, so I’m actually paraphrasing him- he’s like “So these days”- and he’s eleven years younger than me, maybe a little bit more.

Neely Quinn: I think he’s 56.

Lee Sheftel: No he’s a little older than that.

Neely Quinn: 57 maybe?

Lee Sheftel: So he’s fourteen years younger than me. Hmm. But anyways, he’s already discovered that. He’s like, “Well, these days, one rest day is basically like, used to be no rest day. And two rest days is one rest day”.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: So just add a day.

Lee Sheftel: So right- you just add a day, is what’s happened. And I agree with it. I remember when I was first climbing with Dave Pegg a bunch, both in New Mexico and in Rifle, and Dave and I would like, we would climb two days on, take a rest day, climb another day, take a rest day. I mean, then every once in a while take two rest days. And if I took two rest days, I felt stale!

Neely Quinn: Yeah, you got weaker.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, kind of. I was like “Oh my god”, but I needed to rest days, but at the same time I felt a little stale. Whereas now I take two rest days, and it’s like “Oh yeah, I feel great”, and then if I take three, I feel even better, depending on how hard I climbed, and it also depends on the area.

Neely Quinn: Of course. When you say rest days, what do you mean? What do you do on your rest days?

Lee Sheftel: Well, I do a lot of aerobic activity typically. I’ll do a fair amount of hiking in the mountains, and if it’s in the winter and I’m training, I do a lot of skiing. So a rest day to me, what people affectionately call an “active rest day”. But for me, a rest day means no climbing at all, no training at all. I mean, I’m not doing anything other than stretching, and like I said, if I’m hiking. I mean, if I’m really trying to do a project in Rifle or anywhere, I’m probably not even going to aerobic train if I only take one rest day. So what I like to do is time it, so if I’m taking two rest days, the day after I climb I do something aerobic, like hiking in the mountains, and then the day after that is a total rest day where I do nothing, except maybe stretch and work and whatever. But I don’t do anything very active at all.

Neely Quinn: Do you feel like going hiking helps work some stuff out of your body, or is that just something you really like to do, or both?

Lee Sheftel: I would say both. I think doing- I mean, I probably… going on hikes if you are used to hiking- I mean, my theory about any kind of exercise, is if you’re doing something you’re not used to doing, then you’re going to deplete your body and it’s not really resting. But if you are used to hiking- and some people run- if you’re used to hiking or running six miles in a day and then you do that, and you’re not really pushing it particularly- you’re just going out and enjoying yourself. Yeah, sure it gets a lot of lactic acid out of your muscles, and it also helps to keep your weight down.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, can we talk about that actually a little bit? I know we have a lot more to talk about. But I’m wondering about- because a lot of times people say when they get older it’s just harder to keep weight off. What have you found for yourself?

Lee Sheftel: I do not find that. But, for myself. That might be part of my metabolism, but my experience in general is that for me, anyway, I’m very disciplined with my diet, and my exercise. I’m not a binge eater, I don’t care that much about food. I like food, but I mean, I’m not a sugar guy, and I think that’s- I’ve heard from a lot of other climbers that if you’re really into sugar, and you’re enticed by desserts and stuff like that, it’s not a good thing. And I’m not enticed by those things. I’m never really… since I’ve been climbing I’ve never really had any kind of weight issue, no.

Neely Quinn: But you do keep an eye on it, and I’ve read that you sort of drop a little bit of weight when it’s climbing season, or sending season.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, but the only thing that I do diet wise to do that is, I mean, I do have food weaknesses [laughs]. They are things like potato chips, corn chips, and stuff like that. What I’ll do is I will just eliminate that stuff, if I’m trying to get fit for climbing. But the thing is that the weight loss happens naturally for me, during climbing season, simply because- I mean some of it might just have to do with our bodies with where we tend to store fat more in the winter. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems to be that way. I seem to always, no matter what I do, I gain five to seven pounds in the winter. Then in the summer, once I start training and climbing a bunch, and hiking in the mountains, I drop the weight. Of course these days, I carry five pounds extra anyway.

Neely Quinn: Five pounds extra from when?

Lee Sheftel: Ever since I had my hips replaced.

Neely Quinn: Oh- you had both of your hips replaced?

Lee Sheftel: Yes.

Neely Quinn: And now you carry five pounds extra because of that?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, it’s metal.

Neely Quinn: Oh- oh my god, I never even thought about that. Did you notice a difference with that?

Lee Sheftel: Yup- yup, right away. And they told me they weighed four or five pounds, and I was like “Yeah, okay, really?”. And so when I was really, really fit, I would get down to about… I’m 5’9” now, I’ve shrunk, but I used to get down to about 137. Now I can’t go down below 142.

Neely Quinn: That’s still really lean. That’s really lean.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Holy moly.

Lee Sheftel: I’m a pretty lean guy in general. They call me “Ectomorph”- is that what it is?

Neely Quinn: Oh yeah, that would make sense.

Lee Sheftel: Something like that.

Neely Quinn: Can I ask what kinds of things you do eat?

Lee Sheftel: Well these days, I’ve gone through various permutations as far as diet goes. At one point I was- my most extreme diet I’ve been on which I was on for four years, was I was a raw food vegan.

Neely Quinn: Whoa, that’s intense.

Lee Sheftel: That was before I was a climber actually.

Neely Quinn: Oh when you were a runner?

Lee Sheftel: Yup. But I was in California. It’s much easies to do in California than Colorado. Southern California. But now I actually went back to being a vegetarian about six months ago.

Neely Quinn: What were you doing between the raw food vegan until now?

Lee Sheftel: Um, I started introducing fish and then meat back into my diet again. Up until a few months ago I was eating normal average diet, except that I’m pretty conscientious about eating organically. And eating a lot of raw food in my diet. I’ve always wanted to do that, I love to eat salads, and I eat a lot of salad. Sometimes I eat salad for dinner. I eat almost nothing but whole grains, and probably 98% organic.

Neely Quinn: And so you’ve felt pretty good on that for all these years? You must have, since you’ve been climbing so strong.

Lee Sheftel: You know, the weird thing is, unless I eat bad food, which doesn’t happen very often- if I do, I don’t feel very good. Typically when I say bad food, typically when I got certain restaurants I’ll eat something, and restaurants have way too much salt in food. I never feel good on that kind of food. But the weird thing is, no matter what diet I’ve ever been on, I don’t really notice- I mean, I know a lot of people say, “How do you get your protein on a vegetarian diet”, and it’s like, I don’t know, there’s protein everywhere. I make certain conscious efforts to make sure I get protein, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference in terms of whenever I train, no matter what I eat. Unless I’m not eating or doing something dumb, I’ve never really noticed that one particular diet is any better than another one. Other than it makes me feel healthier or better.

Neely Quinn: You sound like a very adaptable person.

Lee Sheftel: I’m adaptable that way [laughs]. I’m not sure about other ways.

Neely Quinn: Well, out of curiosity, how are you feeling being a vegetarian now for the past six months? I know you haven’t been climbing much since you had back surgery.

Lee Sheftel: Well I climb quite a bit and trained quite a bit up until a couple of months ago. But um, I feel fine, I feel great. I don’t feel like I’m lacking anything.

Neely Quinn: If I did that I would just sleep all day.

Lee Sheftel: Really, why?

Neely Quinn: I just don’t do well on a vegetarian diet. I just find it fascinating that people can survive and thrive on such different diets.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, well, keep in mind that I make a conscious effort to eat certain foods that I know have a… I mean some people who are on a vegetarian diet, they eat pasta and then they eat veggies. I don’t hardly even eat pasta.

Neely Quinn: Oh, what do you eat?

Lee Sheftel: I eat quite a bit of quinoa, brown rice, and I don’t have wheat allergies so I eat bread, and I eat eggs. I eat some cheese- I don’t eat a lot of cheese. I don’t like eating a lot of cheese in my diet, but I do eat a fair amount of eggs. I also use a protein supplement every morning.

Neely Quinn: Like a vegan one?

Lee Sheftel: Uhuh. Yup. And I found one that I really like. Over the years there’s a few that I’ve liked, but this one I just use. And for dinners, I have a lot of mushrooms in my diet, which are also kind of strong in protein. Typically I do eat quinoa with my meals. I don’t know, I just don’t often feel like I’m lacking.

Neely Quinn: Well that’s great, that’s awesome. I’m wondering about your body, because it seems like it’s hard to, as you get older, to keep muscle on, and to stay as toned as maybe you once were. I’m not really sure in your case. Have you found that experience at all?

Lee Sheftel: I have noticed that I have lost something in climbing. It used to be that I would say, muscularly, I would say that I’m just not as strong as I used to be. I’m not sure how that has to do with how I’m training, but for sure, I don’t have as much power as I used to have. I can tell also in how long it takes me to do a particular grade of a route, so I think that’s kind of a good barometer, if you will.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, can you give me an example of that?

Lee Sheftel: Well, for example, the grade of 13a. I would say ten years ago even, even at 60, typically I would do a 13a somewhere between three and six tries, on a 13a.

Neely Quinn: Mhmm.

Lee Sheftel: And now, it takes me longer than that. It takes me typically at least eight or ten tries, and sometimes up to fifteen.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Lee Sheftel: However, the thing is, is that I’ve never been that good, like I said before, I’ve never been that great on power routes. I’ve kind of run out of endurance routes in Rifle [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Me too! [laughs]

Lee Sheftel: So the last couple of years, I’ve said, you know what the hell, I keep avoiding these power routes, I’m gonna get on them and I’m gonna do them, or I’m gonna try them. And so that’s what I’ve done. So just by chance, it takes me longer to do them. I mean, just by the way I am, because they’re power routes. One of those routes, was up at the Zone of Silence, you know that wall?

Neely Quinn: Umm, no. I mean, probably, I’m really bad with names.

Lee Sheftel: Well it’s kind of a hike to it. Darek Krol put up a lot of those routes, after he rediscovered the wall. There was actually one route on it that was badly bolted, and that was it, and now there’s about seven or eight routes on it. Anyways, it was a fairly short 13a that’s pretty bouldery, called All Quiet on the Western Slope.

Neely Quinn: Oh, right.

Lee Sheftel: That route just kicked my ass.

Neely Quinn: Yeah?

Lee Sheftel: I mean, it took me at least, I’d say at least fifteen tries, maybe more, to do that route.

Neely Quinn: Well it would be interesting to see you on an endurance route. Maybe all this power climbing has made you even better.

Lee Sheftel: [sighs] Yeah, maybe [laughs]. But at the same time, I’ve lost power. I can tell. If I go to repeat a route, or get on a route I haven’t been on in a long time that I’ve done, I’m really kind of stunned at how the routes seem, how the moves seem to me.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I mean, you did a bunch of 13c’s and d’s in your sixties, right?

Lee Sheftel: Yes I did.

Neely Quinn: That wasn’t too long ago- do you ever get back on those?

Lee Sheftel: I have. So one route I got back on, because I wanted to do and I have not done it, but I’m thinking about getting back on it, because I should be able to repeat that first section of the route. One of the routes that I did, probably in my late fifties, when I did Cryptic Egyptian.

Neely Quinn: Mhm.

Lee Sheftel: That’s 13c. I remember that the bottom part of that route is probably 13b, or hard 13a, just to get to the rest. Of course I worked on it a while, then I got to where I would almost never fall on that section. I would just go right up there, and my crux on that route was the upper part. So I finally did the route, and I just remembered that for the route. So fast forward twelve years later, to when I was in my late sixties- sixty-eight or sixty-nine- and Dave Pegg put up the alternate route called Quicktick. So you do the whole bottom, which is half of Cryptic, and then you cut out right and it’s slightly easier. Actually it is easier.

So anyway, I got back on that route, and I was just thinking to myself- and it might just be me, thinking “Yeah, oh yeah I know what to do on this bottom part, I’ll just rework it”. And I remember getting on the bottom of that route and just thinking “Holy crap, this thing is hard!”. I worked on it a little bit, and it felt really hard to me.

Neely Quinn: Really?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah the moves felt way harder than I remember then.

Neely Quinn: Well… did you ever wire it again?

Lee Sheftel: No. I need to though. I want to get back on it, because since then I’ve done a bunch of power training and I intended- my thoughts are, I’m kind of psyched now that my back is not a problem.

Neely Quinn: Mhmm.

Lee Sheftel: And at least not the same problem. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. And I’m kind of psyched to train on the MoonBoard, and I’ve already trained somewhat on it, but I didn’t take it super seriously. So I’m thinking I really need to take it more seriously, and see what that does for me. Maybe I can get some serious power back up again.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, maybe you can. Maybe you can send 13d and 14a again.

Lee Sheftel: Well, maybe [laughs].

Neely Quinn: I mean, you’d be all of our heroes if you did.

Lee Sheftel: Well, I’d be my own hero.

Neely Quinn: I have sort of a weird question about testosterone. Or any sort of performance enhancing drugs. What do you think about- because as you get older you naturally have less testosterone, and that affects your recovery, that affects your strength. What do you think about taking that?

Lee Sheftel: Well that’s interesting your bring that up. What do you know about that regarding me, anything?

Neely Quinn: I actually don’t know anything about you regarding that.

Lee Sheftel: Okay. Okay, so I have actually experimented with various supplements. Under a doctor’s supervision, for about three years, I actually did injectable testosterone.

Neely Quinn: Really.

Lee Sheftel: Mhmm. However, for me, it didn’t do anything.

Neely Quinn: Nothing?

Lee Sheftel: Pretty much nothing, yeah.

Neely Quinn: Whoa, that’s weird.

Lee Sheftel: Yup.

Neely Quinn: Did it raise your testosterone levels at least?

Lee Sheftel: Oh yeah.

Neely Quinn: But you didn’t feel any different?

Lee Sheftel: Not particularly, no.

Neely Quinn: That’s interesting.

Lee Sheftel: And now I’m completely off of it, because it did some bad things.

Neely Quinn: Oh.

Lee Sheftel: Well it raised my PSA and I had to go the urologist and he thought I might have cancer.

Neely Quinn: Oh, prostate cancer.

Lee Sheftel: Yes. He wanted to do a biopsy, and I’d already had a biopsy years ago to make sure I didn’t have cancer. He wanted to a biopsy and I said “Well wait a second, maybe it’s the testosterone”, and he said “Well it’s possible, why don’t you just go off of it and we will re-test you in a couple months, three months”. So I went off of it, and I got re-tested, and sure enough, my PSA level just dropped.

Neely Quinn: Wow.

Lee Sheftel: To one third.

Neely Quinn: Oh, whoa.

Lee Sheftel: Of what it was on the testosterone. And my testosterone levels at one point were pretty damn high.

Neely Quinn: Like too high?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, yeah. Well it depends on your definition of what too high is, or the doctor’s definition. I was under a doctor’s supervision, and at one point it just got too high, and we modified the dose. But he encouraged me to keep doing it, even though I said I don’t really experience any performance enhancement, because that was the main reason I was taking it. Other people take it for other reasons, where they have super, super low energy. I’ve never had low energy, so I decided to take it for performance enhancement. I couldn’t tell that it was really working.

Neely Quinn: So you just got off of it after that?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: And you didn’t notice anything?

Lee Sheftel: No.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Lee Sheftel: But some people swear by it, and I also tried, at one point, injectable HGH.

Neely Quinn: Human growth hormone.

Yeah.

Neely Quinn: How’d that work?

It didn’t do anything either?

Neely Quinn: What? [laughs]

However, however, according to anyone I’ve talked to who knows anything about such things, I wasn’t taking anywhere near the dose that I should be taking, and it’s really expensive. And it’s like, you know what, I don’t want to screw around with that crap anymore. I just don’t want to take a chance, what it’s going to do, I don’t think there’s been enough research, you know? A friend of mine, recently said hey, I can get a really, really inexpensive source of HGH- and you know what, I don’t want to do it. You know what, I just want to eat healthy, be healthy, go rock climbing, whatever. Other than natural supplements, I don’t want to do any of that stuff.

Neely Quinn: So how long did you take the HGH?

Lee Sheftel: That I didn’t do very long. A couple of months.

Neely Quinn: So you didn’t have any major sends when you were taking these things?

Lee Sheftel: No, I did not. Because the biggest sends I’ve ever done were long before I ever tried any of that stuff.

Neely Quinn: Mhmm.

Lee Sheftel: The only reason I tried it was because, well maybe they’re right, maybe I can keep my level up by taking, you know, boosting my testosterone level. That’s what all these things do, they boost your testosterone levels in different ways. But nope, I don’t want to do it anymore, and it didn’t really work. I could see the allure if you start taking it and actually, I don’t want to mention his name, but a really good friend of mine decided to take supplemental injectable testosterone, but for him it really worked. But he had very low testosterone, and he had very low energy climbing. He would do warm-ups and do one route, one run on his project, and he was done for the day.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. That’s a problem.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah. And then he started doing this injectable testosterone and he was totally different.

Neely Quinn: Now he’s climbing 5.15?

Lee Sheftel: Well, it wasn’t that dramatic, but…

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: It’s an interesting conversation, you know? Some people say it’s like cheating, and some people don’t. It just makes them normal, so…

Lee Sheftel: Well, if it’s making you normal, if you have a problem, I don’t think it’s cheating. Of course this is just my own personal opinion. But if you’re a competition, especially if you are a competition athlete, and you’re taking these massive- some of these people take massive doses. They’re taking anabolic steroids, and if you’re taking those things in massive doses and then you start boosting your performance level, it’s cheating. It’s not fair.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it’s one thing-

Lee Sheftel: You’re putting your body at risk. The thing is, if you are taking this stuff and putting your body at risk, and you’re beating people say, in a bike rice- use a different sport- and therefore the other person can’t possibly win unless they put their body at risk- that’s the way I look at it. That’s not fair, it’s not right.

Neely Quinn: Yeah I totally agree. It’s one thing to be a competition climber and it’s another thing to be a recreational climber where you’re not actually competing against anybody.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, I mean, that’s true. But you’re also, if you take too much of this stuff, you are putting your body at risk.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, as you found out the hard way. Right. Well, thanks for being so forthcoming with that, I appreciate it.

Lee Sheftel: Sure.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so I want to get to- you told me before this conversation that you get a lot of questions on social media and stuff from people who want to know how to train when they’re older, what to expect when they’re older, are they too old to train or climb. Can you tell me a little bit about what you tell those people?

Lee Sheftel: Sure. One of the main things I tell people, the first one is tongue in cheek, so it’s a joke, But people say “Well what do you recommend for older athletes?”, and my response is “Well, don’t get old”.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Thanks Lee.

Lee Sheftel: But on a more serious level, is the way not to functionally get old, is never stop. I think that’s the biggest key that I’ve noticed for other people, is… I’ve never had kids, so having a kid is such a huge commitment. I think that for a lot of people, when they have kids, they can’t recreate, they can’t go out as much, they can’t climb as much, they can’t train as much- unless they make an amazing effort to do so. And that doesn’t mean that they can’t, it just means that it’s harder. And then they gain weight, and then they aren’t climbing, and it’s just super hard to get back into at what, fifty? Sixty? I’ve never stopped, so I think a big key is to keep at what you’re passionate about and keep training.

The other thing I say is sometimes I’ve read where people say “You need to be super careful when you’re older with how you train”, and how much you need to warm up, in terms of power, maybe you shouldn’t do hang board exercises, maybe you shouldn’t do a lot of power training. I actually disagree with that.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Lee Sheftel: In a way. Because I think that you should be careful about your training and warming up no matter what are you’re at, because a lot of these kids that get injured- you notice these young kids with pulley injuries, they got all kinds of injuries. That’s because they’re kids and they don’t understand that they need to warm up, they need to be aware of what their body is telling them, and they need to be aware not to overtrain. That’s true for everyone. I think an older athlete is most of us, when we get to be even thirty, especially forty and above. We’re naturally already experiencing some issues with our body, our knees hurt a little more, our fingers hurt a little more, whatever. And just through experience, we know that we need to warm up, we need to be conscious of when we are overtraining, and if it doesn’t feel like you should be pushing it anymore, you don’t push it. I think you just become a little smarter that way.

I think that it has nothing to do, necessarily, with the age of the body. I train doing hangboarding, I train doing all those things. It’s just that you need to be conscious that if you do have an issue, yeah, obviously you have an issue with a finger- I mean at one point I had a really bad pulley injury on my middle finger on my left hand, and I couldn’t do pockets with that finger. So whenever I did hangboard training or endurance training on routes that I had set- I have a wall in my garage built years ago that I train on a fair amount in the winter- and I just avoided those types of movements, because otherwise, I’m going to seriously injure my finger. But it’s pretty healed now- it is healed, it’s fine. And so I continue to hangboard and train on pockets and small edges and boulder, and I think it’s fine.

Neely Quinn: I’ve heard you say- well I haven’t heard you, but in the articles I’ve read by you and about you- you say the word “patience” a lot, and you differentiate between older and younger people by how much patience they have. Can you talk about that?

Lee Sheftel: Sure. Well, yeah. It’s an interesting topic because,  yeah, there are certain disadvantages to becoming an older athlete. You lose some power, or it’s very difficult to gain power, or you have some injuries that continue [unclear], et cetera. But you have an advantage as well. One of the advantages I just mentioned, what I just said, is the advantage of being more in tune with your body, and when you are overtraining, and when you should be warming up and all that. That’s an advantage, to keep you [unclear]. Another advantage is that, I think, you are more patient with- let’s just talk about redpointing. You go and try to redpoint a route, if you ever watch an older athlete and they fail on a route, it’s much more general. And by older athlete I mean even someone in their thirties. They’re pretty methodical about, okay, let’s work this section of the route. Let’s see what I’m doing wrong.

What I often see with kids that are just way stronger than me, they don’t have any patience on a route. They’ll get up on a route, or a lot of it has to do with experience too, but they’re like, “Screw this route”. Or just “Dirt me”. I remember one particular guy who was trying to do this route in Rifle, this 13c that I had done, which was Spray-A-Thon. He would get to one of the upper cruxes and he would fall, and yell “Dirt me!”, he goes down, and he takes like a half hour rest or whatever he took, goes up there again, and falls in the same spot. And it’s just the same thing, “Dirt me”. I actually walked up to him, and I go, “So just out of curiosity, I just watched you fall off that route at the same spot twice, how come you don’t re-work it?’. “Well I already know what to do”. “I know, but you didn’t do it”.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Did you say that to him? Because I can imagine you saying that to him.

Lee Sheftel: Yes! Yeah, I did. I said “Yeah but you didn’t do it, and the reason you didn’t do it is because you had to do all these other moves beforehand, which depletes your body to a certain degree. And just because you can hang on the rope and do the moves a certain way, maybe you should- just a suggestion- maybe you should try a more efficient way to make the move”. I mean, one of the most amazing “efficient ways to do a route guy” is Bill Ramsey. He’s even way better than I am at it. He’s really patient [laughs].

Mhmm, yeah.

Lee Sheftel: I call him the Professor of Rock Climbing. He’ll get up there on a crux, and he’s like, “Huh, that’s interesting. If I move my toe slightly to the right…”

Neely Quinn: Yup.

Lee Sheftel: “And if I angle my elbow this way…”, and I’m just like, “Jesus, really?”. He’ll just keep messing around with the move, and you know, that’s the kind of patience that I’m talking about.

Neely Quinn: It’s true, you don’t see as many wobblers out of older folks as you do in younger folks.

Lee Sheftel: Yes, exactly. Actually one of the most interesting comments that was made to me about patience, was by a climber that’s a dear friend of mine, and everybody knows this name, of course, is Lynn Hill. It was probably about seven or eight years ago [unclear] and I was working on a route that I was just trying to repeat. I was like “I’m just getting frustrated on this route”. And I remember seeing her on a route, where I was like “God Lynn, that was amazing, you went up and down this one section”- she was trying to onsight this route, and she did- and she was going up and down on it, up and down, just remarkable endurance and all that. But I was just amazed at how she was so persistent, and finally she figured out the moves. She looks at me and she goes “Patience, Lee. It takes patience”.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Yes, Lynn.

Lee Sheftel: And it stuck. And lo and behold, the route I was trying to repeat on my next try, or next two tries, I did the route, because she was like “You’re rushing the moves. You’re not resting long enough, you’re too anxious. Just be patient, sit there and just relax”. It was great advice. And that’s another thing- a lot of people don’t know how long to- this is another key thing. This is more technical. You’re climbing up a route, and you get to a spot where you’re going to rest, this is where you’re going to shake out. There’s a question: how long do you stay there?

Neely Quinn: Mhmm.

Lee Sheftel: Well, for a lot of people it’s a hard question to answer. They either get antsy, and I’ve had people actually say that- they go “Well are you rested enough?” “I don’t know, I get antsy”. So for me, it’s become developing an awareness of where the point of diminishing returns is on a rest. And that takes practice. You have to figure out, is my breathing back down? I remember reading that from [unclear]- he used to talk about his breathing. You want to get your heart rate back down, you want to feel like when you’re shaking out, you’re actually holding onto the holds more easily. But at some point, the opposite is going to happen- you’re just going to get more pumped.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Lee Sheftel: And so you need to be in tune with that. And again, all of the young kids, they’r not in tune with that at all. And of course, a lot of them have so much power that they figure that they’re going to power through the route.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Which is not something that you count on for yourself.

Lee Sheftel: No, I don’t.

Neely Quinn: How do you train through the year, in general, whether it’s climbing outside season or not?

Lee Sheftel: Okay, well climbing outside season is different than climbing inside season. Optimally, what helps me the most is, when I’m not outside, is to focus on power and power endurance, and pretty much forget about endurance. It’s so hard to train endurance inside, unless you have a gym and you can really lap out on some big huge holds. I mean, I’d be training completely differently if I was at Momentum Climbing, but we don’t have that around here. I pretty much have my indoor wall, and I’ve got a Moon wall that I can train on. I want to concentrate on power and power endurance, and I want to be able to keep it fun. For me, if you can’t keep it fun, then I kind of lose motivation, at least I do.

Neely Quinn: Mhmm.

Lee Sheftel: When it’s in the outside season, when I’m climbing- and this has taken years to develop for me- is I would tend to just climb outside and not train. I found that to be counterproductive, because if I’m just climbing outside, especially at Rifle, or the Red, or any of these places that I like to climb, or even Maple- pretty much endurance climbing, I’m just climbing all day long. You’re naturally going to boost your endurance and start to climb really well endurance wise, and it’s also good for your technique on the rock, obviously. I tend to tune in more to onsighting, and climbing and everything, but I lose power. So I’m finding it more productive to have at least one power training session a week, whether it’s indoors, or bouldering outside, or whatever it is, where you are focusing on power.

Neely Quinn: And that’s throughout the year?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Lee Sheftel: Well more- two times a week power training during the winter though, for me. Because I can’t handle more than that. I need more rest- remember we talked about rest? So if I do a hard bouldering session, I gotta have two days rest.

Neely Quinn: So a power training session for you might look like- can you give me an example of a day?

Lee Sheftel: Well, sure. So if it’s on my own wall, if it’s pure power… typically if it’s on my own wall, I’m doing a combination of pure power and power endurance. Typically what I’ll do is I like to warm up on the wall and do a few easier routes, and then I start trying these power endurance routes. Then when I’m done with the power endurance routes, and I might also just do some boulder problems too, then I go to the hangboard. I think- hangboards are boring, but if I combine it with the wall, it feels not so bad. It’s typically about a half hour to forty-five minutes of intense hangboarding after. I’m not depleted from the climbing- you don’t want to do it when you’re depleted I don’t think.

Neely Quinn: Then on another day, the MoonBoard- I have this access in Glenwood Springs to this MoonBoard. Basically I’m just doing boulder problems on the MoonBoard.

Neely Quinn: Just taking as much rest as you need?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah, when it comes to that, yeah. I’m not super into- except on the hangboard- the hangboard I’m timing everything- doing very disciplined, how many seconds I’m on, how many minutes I’m off. But when it comes to doing the MoonBoard or power endurance, I just leave it open as to how I feel.

Neely Quinn: And so would you campus on a MoonBoard day? Or when would you campus?

Lee Sheftel: Actually I don’t have any access these days to campus rungs, so I don’t really campus.

Neely Quinn: Hmm.

Lee Sheftel: Actually that’s a good point. That would be good- I think that would be good to incorporate some campusing.

Neely Quinn: Do you lift at all? Weights?

Lee Sheftel: Not very much, no.

Neely Quinn: Do you think that would help you at this point?

Lee Sheftel: Well, actually yes. Starting about two years ago I started working with this personal trainer in Carbondale, and old friend of mine. She moved here about two and a half years ago and she started her own athletic training business. She’s amazing- she’s the most amazing physical trainer that I’ve ever been to, or ever even heard of.

Neely Quinn: Who is she?

Lee Sheftel: Her name is Caroline Parker, and the name of her gym and business is The Ripple Effect, and she’s got a following, and I’m one of them. I’m going to start training with her again, actually next week. I haven’t been able to do that because of my back surgery, and I’m ready to start in again. But yeah, we do some weight training in there as well. It’s not the normal weight training though, that you can imagine.

Neely Quinn: Oh, what is it?

Lee Sheftel: Well she’s got very- her training is very specific to what your needs are. So before she even starts training any individual, she analyzes their body, she checks them out, there’s all these physical tests that she gives to see what their weaknesses are, what their strengths are, and what their goals are- what they really want to work on in terms of what they do. Because she is an athlete herself- she’s an ex-mountain bike racer, she’s a fully certified mountain guide- she doesn’t do it anymore but she did it for many years- she’s a skier, she’s a climber… she knows all these sports. That’s incredibly helpful for someone that’s an athletic trainer. She knows what people want to do, what they need to do, and she knows how to get it accomplished. She also knows how to solve problems, because she solved my wife’s back problem. She solved my shoulder problem, just through exercises.

Neely Quinn: That’s awesome.

Lee Sheftel: Yeah she’s awesome. And so anyway, a lot of the stuff that she does involves weights, but they’re very specific types of exercises. She has a repertoire of exercises that she uses, but she also decides whether they’re appropriate for you or me, or not.

Neely Quinn: So you’ll start up with her again?

Lee Sheftel: Yeah definitely.

Neely Quinn: And how many days a week do you think you’ll train with her?

Lee Sheftel: Typically I go once a week, and then I do some of her stuff at home, because she gives you these things you can do at home. A lot of these things that I’m talking about you can do at home. It probably would be better to go twice a week- I might start doing that in the winter.

Neely Quinn: But, so typically it sounds like you maybe have one or two complete rest days per week, maybe one?

Lee Sheftel: Uh, let’s say two.

Neely Quinn: Two, complete, not an active rest day?

Lee Sheftel: I would say two.

Neely Quinn: And you’re climbing three days a week? Climbing or training for climbing?

Lee Sheftel: Yup.

Neely Quinn: Okay. That’s pretty good. Alright, last parting words for people who are over the age of thirty, who want to start climbing but they wonder if they’re too old. What would you say to them?

Lee Sheftel: Age is just a number. Forget the age. Forget it. Just don’t even think about your age. Just think about what you are passionate about, and think about if you’ve got issues. I mean everybody’s got issues. You need to work around your issues- you need to work on your issues I should say, not work around them. And just get into it. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think people should think about their age.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Lee Sheftel: I mean, why? I mean, you should think about the condition of your body, and a lot of that might be a result of years of not using it. So you definitely have to think about that. I mean, I have a brother who is ridiculously overweight, and he doesn’t done any physical activity for thirty, forty years. So if he suddenly turned to me and said “Do you think I’m too old to get into rock climbing?”, I’d be like “Well, Ken, for one thing, if you’re going to rock climb you need to lose at least another forty pounds, and you need to start maybe lifting some weights. Get off the ground!”.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Lee Sheftel: So you know, you have to take into consideration your body, what it’s limitations are, where you’re at, but I’d say forget about age. What age.

Neely Quinn: So to your brother, you’d basically be like, “No I don’t think you’re too old, but I think you’re not fit enough”.

YLee Sheftel: eat that’s putting it mildly.

[laughter]

Neely Quinn: Right. Hopefully your brother doesn’t listen to this. Or maybe he should.

Lee Sheftel: He knows it’s true, he knows it’s true. He’s lazy. He doesn’t care that much anymore. He used to be into certain sports, he’s got a bad back, and he likes to use that as an excuse. Which brings up another final parting thought, I guess, is that if you have a bad back, what it means is that you need to work on it. There’s physical therapy, there’s people you can work with to make your back better. I mean, for Chrissakes, Caroline Parker I just told you about, she works with people who are in wheelchairs, and then they start walking. You can’t think about the limit, like “Hey the doctors told me I’d never walk again, I have a bad back so I can’t rock climb, or I have elbow tendinitis”… It’s like, then figure out a way to work on it.

Neely Quinn: I’m assuming you worked on your back a lot before you broke down and had surgery.

Lee Sheftel: I did. I had more back problems before, and actually Caroline helped me solve it. But this time, what happened to me was sudden. Suddenly I had these shooting nerve pains going down my legs, and yeah. I tried dry needling, I tried chiropractic, I tried physical therapy, I tried various exercises, I tried an inversion board. Nothing worked, and then finally I got an MRI- I even tried a steroidal injection, and steroids, catabolic steroids, that actually worked a little bit, but then it came roaring back again. You can’t stay on those things forever. And finally I got an MRI, and the MRI told a sorry tale [laughs].

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Well hopefully- it sounds like the surgery has been successful so far.

Lee Sheftel: Yes, actually I am more than pleased.

Neely Quinn: It sounds like both of us are going to be back in Rifle at the same time, in a couple of months.

Lee Sheftel: What was your problem? What was your issue?

Neely Quinn: I just had shoulder surgery.

Lee Sheftel: Right right, you told me that. Well, how’s that going?

Neely Quinn: It’s going well, but I won’t be climbing for another few weeks.

Lee Sheftel: Well okay, then I look forward to seeing you out in Rifle.

Neely Quinn: Exactly. Well thank you so much for talking to me, and being so honest and wise. Thank you for your wisdom.

Lee Sheftel: Well, whatever it’s worth, okay. Thank you.

Neely Quinn: Well see you soon.

Lee Sheftel: Okay, same here.

Neely Quinn: Alright, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Lee Sheftel, hopefully he gave you some information that you can use to keep climbing into your sixties, seventies, eighties, who knows how long we can keep climbing if we do it the right way and we are patient and wise. So thank you Lee, for that candid interview. I appreciate it.

Coming up on the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Esther Smith again, my favorite physical therapist. This time we are going to be talking about back and neck stuff. That’s going to be coming up in the next few weeks. Then I got a really smart request from a listener to have us do a conversation about knee injuries. We’re going to be doing that in the next few months if you have knee stuff.

Speaking of injuries, I get a lot of e-mails and comments on the blog asking for information about shoulder stuff. If you want to know more about my shoulder surgery, or injury, or rehab or whatever, I am always totally open to e-mails, You can always e-mail me at neely@trainingbeta.com, or info@trainingbeta.com. I’m happy to talk about that stuff.

Then once again, I really hope to see you at the International Climbers Festival. You can go to climbersfestival.org for more information about that. It’s in Lander, Wyoming, next week- July 12th-16th.

And lastly, if you need any help with your training and you want some training programs that are already set up for you, we have those at TrainingBeta. If you got to trainingbeta.com, you’ll find a tab at the top that says “Training Programs”. All of our stuff is in there, so we have stuff for boulderers, programs for route climbers, programs on just power endurance, finger strength, and we also have programs by Steve Bechtel and other well known trainers and people in the community. Whenever you purchase any of those programs, it supports TrainingBeta and this podcast and everything we do here, and we appreciate it.

I think that’s it. Thanks for listening all the way to the end, and I’ll talk to you not next week, but the week after that, I hope. Until then, have a great couple of weeks.