About Pete Whittaker

Pete Whittaker is a 28-year-old climber from Sheffield who’s made a name for himself in first ascent crack climbing and suffer-fests in general. If you recall the “Wide Boyz” film (here’s a good trailer), Pete and his friend Tom Randall, who now runs Lattice Training, trained for 2 years in Tom’s cellar on homemade crack systems. They then came to the U.S. and proceeded to crush just about every hard offwidth in the country, including a first ascent of Century Crack, 5.14b, the world’s first 5.14b offwidth.

Since then, Pete has done some other very impressive things in climbing. In 2016, he became the first person to solo-free (rope solo free-climb) El Capitan in under 24 hours. That year he and Tom also did the first ascent of the colossal 100m roof crack, Millennium Arch, 5.14. In 2019, Pete did the 3rd free ascent of one of the hardest trad climbs in the world, The Recovery Drink, 5.14c in Norway.

Honestly, I could go on and on about Pete’s accomplishments. He’s a very successful guy, and he shares his wisdom as a public speaker at various events. He also just wrote a book called Crack Climbing: The Definitive Guide, and I thought he’d be the perfect person to talk to about training for crack climbing.

I really enjoyed my talk with Pete, partly because it’s a topic I know very little about and I learned a lot of things, but also just because he’s a staunchly disciplined guy who really loves suffering on a lot of levels. And while he loves to suffer, he also laughs about it and makes fun of himself in a very entertaining British way. He’s fascinating to me. In the interview, we talk a lot about how he’s trained for various projects, how he and Tom trained for their first trip to the States, his diet, and why he is the way he is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Pete Whittaker Interview Details

• Wide Boyz training details for Century Crack
• Why their crack training was different
• Transferring wooden cracks to real rock
• Training offwidths vs hand/finger cracks
• His training sessions for The Recovery Drink 5.14c
• How changing his diet helped him send The Recovery Drink
• Weight loss lessons
• About his new book
• His objectives now

Pete Whittaker Links

• Pete’s Website: PeteWhittaker.co.uk
• Pete’s New Book: Crack Climbing: The Definitive Guide
• Wide Boyz film
• Wide Boyz Film Trailer
• Other videos about Pete
• Pete’s Instagram: @petewhittaker01

Training Programs for You

• Check out our Route Climbing Training Program for route climbers of all abilities.
• Our other training programs: Training Programs Page.

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Photo Credit

Photo of Pete by Mike Hutton @mike.hutton.771

Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn, and I want to remind you that the TrainingBeta podcast is actually an offshoot of a website I created, trainingbeta.com, which is all about training for rock climbing. 

Over there we have regular blog posts, we have training programs for boulderers or route climbers or people who just want to train finger strength or power endurance. We also have online personal training with Matt Pincus as well as nutrition consulting with myself. I am also a nutritionist. Hopefully one or more of those resources will help you become a better rock climber. 

You can find us at trainingbeta.com and you can follow us on social media @trainingbeta.

Welcome to episode 144 of the podcast. Today I am coming at you from Las Vegas, Nevada, which is my favorite home away from home. Of course the second we arrived in Vegas I want to move here and I’m looking at houses to get. That’s not going to happen for a while but it is my dream. It is my dream to live here and in Colorado part time but that is hard to do when you’re not rich, so we’ll wait.

Anyways, I’ve just been training a lot and climbing outside a little bit and visiting places I’ve never been to, so it’s been fun. Mostly it’s that a lot of our best friends live here and we get to hang out with them pretty much all of the time, which is super fun.

Moving along, today’s episode is something different. I’m not a crack climber and I’m certainly not an offwidth climber, yet. Who knows? Maybe I will be someday. I honestly haven’t had that many people on the podcast who are so for all of you crack climbers, I’m really sorry that I have not included you very much in my podcast episodes. Today I hope to make up for that just a little bit.

Today I have Pete Whittaker on the show. He is famous for being one of the Wide Boyz with Tom Randall. In 2011 they had trained for a couple years in Tom Randall’s cellar in Sheffield, England. They climbed on these man made wooden crack systems that traversed his whole cellar and they made a whole video about this. Then they went to the United States and took down a bunch of hard offwidths and did the first ascent of a climb called Century Crack, which is a 14b and I believe it was the first 14b offwidth ever. He’s really good at crack climbing.

Since then he’s done tons more stuff including being the first person to solo free El Capitan in 24 hours, which means that he was rope soloing. He had a rope but he was by himself and he was free climbing. He did that and he and Tom also sent the Millennium Arch. They did the first ascent of that which is a 100-meter roof crack in Utah, which sounds like a lot of climbing. Apparently each of their ascents took two hours each. [laughs] They did it all in one pitch.

Anyway, recently, last year in 2019 he did the third ascent of this trad climb in Norway called The Recovery Drink. Needless to say, he is a super good climber, like really good. Top notch. I was psyched to have him on the show.

In this interview we talk about how he trained for the first Wide Boyz excursion and then some of the other excursions that they have taken together and then we talk a lot about how he trained for The Recovery Drink, which was something different for him. He says he’s not as strong but that he’s a better climber now. We talk a lot about the techniques he uses to train for cracks and trad climbing and also specific days of his training program and what they look like. He gives a lot of details. I feel like I was stealing secrets from him but he was very open about it. He just wrote a book about it called Crack Climbing: The Definitive Guide. There’s not really anything out there like it and that’s why he wrote it.

Without further adieu I’ll just let Pete tell you all of the things. Here’s Pete Whittaker. I’ll talk to you on the other side.

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the show, Pete. Thanks very much for talking with me.

Pete Whittaker: Thank you. Cheers. Thanks for having me on.

Neely Quinn: You’re kind of a big deal so I’m honored to have you on the show. Thanks so much. For anybody who doesn’t know who you are, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Pete Whittaker: My name is Pete Whittaker. I am from England, in the UK. I’m a professional rock climber and I guess all the other things that come around professional rock climbing like speaking and a bit of coaching and climbing. All the kinds of things that come around it. My climbing passion is crack climbing and trad climbing and big walling and rope solo climbing, and also training as well. I really do love training. All of those things.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, you kind of do a lot of things. Before this interview I was looking on your website and it looks like you’ve kind of diversified a lot in the speaking and the coaching. You started out – actually, why don’t you tell us? How did this whole thing get started for you as a pro climber?

Pete Whittaker: Very originally I used to do tree surgery work, so with chainsaws in trees, arborist work. Gradually, I started improving as a climber and going on bigger trips. I guess coming off trips and getting more involved with the companies that I work with and gradually getting sponsorship deals, from the age of about 20 up until now – I’m 28 – I’ve sort of filtered out the work that isn’t to do with rock climbing, so like the tree surgery work is kind of filtered out. I’ve gradually gotten into the lines of work which are more related to my climbing. You could say it’s been a gradual, natural, organic process. I’ve kind of got all avenues of different little things that I do but they all sort of revolve around my climbing, I guess. 

More recently within the last year to two years it’s definitely revolved around I would say crack climbing, especially with writing about it and bringing a book out and also with the coaching and the crack schools and sort of teaching people different techniques and all that kind of stuff. I would say I kind of make a living around crack climbing now. [laughs] You could just pin it down to that, which is quite odd, really. It’s kind of working for the moment so I’m going with it. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: It is quite niche-y. [laughs] It makes sense because it’s kind of how you became more well known, as one of the Wide Boyz.

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I guess so. That whole Wide Boyz thing came about in 2011. It was a long time ago, like nine years ago.

Neely Quinn: It must seem like a lifetime ago.

Pete Whittaker: Um, yeah some aspects of it seem like a long time ago and some aspects don’t seem like that long ago in some ways. All of that training that I did for that Century Crack project back in 2011, I was like 18 when I started doing that. That feels like a long time ago. That was 10 years ago when I started doing all that sort of dedicated training towards that project. It seems like a while ago now. [laughs] Like you say, it’s quite funny to see the progression of what’s happened and where I am now.

Neely Quinn: I don’t know if this is true but it seems like what you guys did and accomplished in your cellars was sort of groundbreaking in terms of training for cracks. Am I off there?

Pete Whittaker: I think even in the late 80s and 90s people and climbers had built crack machines and crack simulators to train on. Who was it I was speaking to…? Paul Nyland used to work at Sterling Rope and I used to have contact with him. He sent me some photos of crack machines that they were training on over 20 years ago now. I think maybe the slight difference with what me and Tom did is maybe we were a bit more systematic with the whole thing and maybe more dedicated to just that style of climbing for that period of time. Maybe that’s what sort of made the difference in being able to push standards again.

Neely Quinn: And it worked. All that dedication and having a single focus, you guys went out and crushed the world. [laughs] How did that change your life? What happened after that?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I suppose – as I was saying before, after coming back off that trip it’s not like it massively changed my life. I just went back to work as a tree surgeon. [laughs] It’s not like it really changed my life at all in the sense that I suddenly became a professional climber or anything. The whole ‘being a professional climber’ has, like I was saying before, grown naturally and there hasn’t really been one point where I’ve gone, “Now this is what I’m doing.” I’ve just sort of filled it out with the other stuff that I’ve done and then replaced it with a little bit more climbing stuff and it’s kind of happened naturally. That’s kind of what has happened there.

Neely Quinn: So it’s not like an Alex Honnold moment?

Pete Whittaker: No, I would say no, but I guess people do – I guess that’s the thing people remember the most maybe about the things that I’ve done, even though it’s potentially not the hardest or for me, it’s not the hardest thing I’ve done but it’s still one of the most significant things I’ve done so I guess people remember it for that in a way. 

I sort of think it was the whole aspect of being Brit. We’re not necessarily known for being fantastic crack climbers. I think putting that dedication into climbing on wooden cracks and just wooden cracks and then transferring it to climbing outside was the thing people were kind of like, ‘Oh my god? What is this? They’ve been training for two years but on wooden cracks and suddenly they can climb these cracks outside?’ 

Neely Quinn: It is pretty crazy and it must have transferred pretty well, wouldn’t you say?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. It is pretty funny that on that 2011 trip me and Tom were actually really, really fit and strong. It’s probably one of the fittest and strongest I’ve been in terms of that style of climbing, like ever in my whole life. I was in really good shape and I think it was being in that good shape that is what made the difference. We hadn’t been climbing on the rock very much so I would say our technique in that sort of climbing definitely wasn’t the best compared to some American climbers but I think our strength and fitness that we built up sort of compensated for that. I guess that’s why we did well. We were overly fit and strong, I would say, but our technique wasn’t quite as good.

Now, eight years on, I’m nowhere near as fit and strong as I was back then when I was 20 in that style of climbing but over those eight years I’ve climbed a lot more in America and on rock and in that style and my technique has massively improved. It’s vastly improved in those eight years and now I feel like it’s my technique rather than my fitness and strength that plays its part and it’s why I can get up these routes now. It’s sort of changed over the years.

Neely Quinn: You just did your hardest climb recently, didn’t you?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I did, yeah. That was a different style. I guess I was talking about offwidth climbing then and being fit and strong for offwidth climbing but this year I did my hardest trad climb. It was a different style of crack. It was hands and fingers. 

Neely Quinn: Would you say that that sentiment that you just mentioned before still holds? Where you’re not as strong or as fit as maybe you were eight years ago but your technique is really good.

Pete Whittaker: I think my technique is definitely better now in hands and finger cracks as well, for sure. I trained pretty hard this year for that route that I did but again, I trained in the specific style that I needed so I’m not as fit and strong in terms of offwidthing. In terms of hand and finger crack style of climbing I think this year was actually the year where I was fittest in that style of climbing because I did a lot of training for it and I think also my technique is massively better in that style of climbing than it was a few years ago. I think they both came together and I managed to have quite a good year.

Neely Quinn: Can you tell me a little bit about the route? 

Pete Whittaker: The route that I did is called Recovery Drink and it’s an 8c+ which would be 14c. It’s over in Norway. It’s done on traditional cams and wires and stuff. It’s just a very steep, overhanging, unforgiving wall. The wall is quite funny – when you walk up there it doesn’t actually look that steep and then you get on it and you’re like, ‘Holy crap! This thing is incredibly steep!’ It’s quite deceiving in a way. The route is very power endurance oriented and so the crux isn’t that hard in terms of difficulty of moves, like maybe it’s a 7C+ boulder problem or an 8A, but to be able to get there fresh enough to be able to do it is sort of the crux of the route. 

Neely Quinn: I would love to talk about the differences between how you trained for offwidths and then how you trained for this. Is that something we could talk about?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Let’s just start with this one. How did you train for it?

Pete Whittaker: For this one, because the start of the route is quite simple – well I say simple. It’s a hand crack and a little bit easier compared to the rest of the route. Then the top two-thirds of the route is more power endurancy and there are some face moves outside the crack and there are some difficult finger jamming moves and it’s also sort – of imagine a double train track sort of crack, so parallel cracks running side-by-side.

When I was training for this one I focused a lot on power endurance. I actually counted the amount of moves that it took to get from the resting position to the crux. It was like 28 moves so I made circuits of 25-28 moves or something and broke those down and gradually started adding weight while doing the moves in my training sessions.

Neely Quinn: Like with a weight vest or belt?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, with a weight belt. I also made it so it was quite specific because you have these train track-like cracks and it’s very difficult to take one hand off and shake. You can’t really do that in the crux so you’re always sort of in this open position. I made sure I was training in this train track-type position, this wide open fridge hugging position.

Neely Quinn: How do you make sure you’re training in that position?

Pete Whittaker: It basically got to where me and Tom got a load of Lattice rungs and screwed them onto the board in his garden in the width that they are on Recovery Drink.

Neely Quinn: That’s amazing. [laughs] Wait, was he working on it at the same time?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, Tom was working it, too. He wasn’t working on it this year but he was working on it in previous years. We just essentially replicated the crux of the route and we just used these Lattice rungs because they work quite well. In that sense, I didn’t really train the finger jamming aspect like that. I trained more on face holds and then I trained the finger jamming and hand jamming a little bit more in Tom’s cellar.

Neely Quinn: On the same contraptions you used before?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, quite similar. Some newer things that we built just to sort of warm the fingers into the twisting action that you need for finger crack climbing and also for the thumb pump aspect that you need for hand crack climbing.

Neely Quinn: Thumb pump?

Pete Whittaker: The thumb pump, yeah.

Neely Quinn: What is that? [laughs] I don’t know what that is.

Pete Whittaker: [laughs] Basically, when you’re hand jamming and especially when you’re either cupped out or thin, the pulp and the muscle at the bottom and base of your thumb can get incredibly pumped, especially when it’s difficult or you’re doing a lot of it. If you’re having to squeeze quite hard it’s like that muscle that gives out, that muscle at the bottom of the thumb. I’ve found it’s really important to make sure that it is up to strength. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Can you describe the new things you’re created to help you train that? 

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. Simply, it was just building some slightly thinner cracks in Tom’s cellar to be able to get that pump and fatigue in the thumbs. With the offwidthing stuff you don’t get the same. It’s an entirely different pump altogether. You don’t really get it in the hands like you do with hands and thin hands cracks. We just built some thinner cracks to be able to hang off and climb along to be able to achieve that pump that we wanted.

Neely Quinn: So you’d have one kind of workout where you’d be on his wall out in the garden and that would be for that compression-y type strength that you needed?

Pete Whittaker: Totally.

Neely Quinn: And then you would have another day where you would go into the cellar and do this kind of power endurance work? Or what?

Pete Whittaker: I guess, yeah. You could do it on the same day or separate days. I’m never massively structured in that I would do this, this day and this, this day or whatever. I guess they were two sessions, you could say, that I did to work towards that project. You would have a session on the board outside or you would have a session in the cellar working the thumbs and the hand jamming pump.

Neely Quinn: Can you describe what a session would look like for you?

Pete Whittaker: Let’s take the session in the garden for example. It would be warming up on easier Lattice rungs and getting warm and then I would pretty much go straight into the sort of hard bouldering sequences that we set on the board. I would do those sequences with a high weight, basically. Then, as I got more tired – I was never so structured that I was doing this many laps on this boulder problem. It was more that I would do the set boulder problem with an amount of weight until I started to fail massively or I would start to get tired on that. Then I would drop the level of weight and start doing more moves. Slightly easier moves, still within that same compression thing, but just making the boulder problem or the sets of moves slightly easier and with less weight. I would gradually lessen the weight and lessen the weight and make the moves easier and easier until I was doing more of a, you could say endurance type session where you’re doing lots and lots of moves.

Neely Quinn: That’s so interesting. You’re doing it in the same session, going gradually from basically strength to endurance. You’re never failing – well, you did say you were failing in the beginning. 

Pete Whittaker: I always go to – I often train to failure quite a lot. Within all these things, as I was on a high weight I would always do it to failure and I would stay at that weight until I was failing, where it didn’t feel like it was doing anything anymore. Then I would lower the weight and keep lowering the weight and gradually build the number of moves and make it slightly easier but I would still go to failure in those as well, you know? It was just you get a different feeling. You’ve gone from powered out to completely boxed out of your mind. 

I guess that would be an example of one session I did out there. Another, more simpler, session would be I had a set boulder problem. You know how I was saying those 28 moves consisted of the rest to above the crux? I’d basically set a replica of those 28 moves and a session would be simply working those 28 moves and trying to do it in one go. That would be another session as well.

Neely Quinn: How long would these sessions last?

Pete Whittaker: Again, I never really have a set time or a set number of sets. I usually do it more on how I’m feeling. If I’m feeling really good I like to have a good session and if it’s not feeling that great then I’m okay with stopping a session even though I might not have done as much as I would have liked to.

Neely Quinn: When you say, “not feeling great,” do you mean like you were feeling tweaky, or just tired, or either?

Pete Whittaker: Maybe just tired or like you’ve done too many days in a row but you’re still psyched and you’ve gone to the session and you’re like, ‘Oh no. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. [laughs] I’ve definitely overcooked it here. I need to step back.’ I guess these sessions could take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half to two hours.

Neely Quinn: And you’re giving yourself ample rest between these goes?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I think you have to take a rest in between them to be able to give it a proper go. You want to give it a proper go to get the best training effect. I guess in the more power oriented things you want to have more rest so you’re not falling off after one move. You want to give a good go at the boulder problem you’re doing, the 5-10 moves, and you want it to be good. I always try to make sure that I have an ample amount of rest between those types of things or else it’s just kind of completely pointless. Between the more endurance-y types sets you’d be gradually getting more and more tired and you feel like you’re getting back on the wall a little bit pumped sometimes.

Neely Quinn: Which is kind of what you’re going for. You said there was a 28, or maybe it was a 25, move section. How long is Tom’s wall?

Pete Whittaker: [laughs] Not that long. We’d climb up and down. We had four different boulder problems up on the wall which made the 28 moves, I think. We’d basically climb one and down climb something to get back to the bottom of the board without jumping off.

Neely Quinn: Oh, I see. You’re down climbing something easy. You’re not down climbing as part of your 28 moves.

Pete Whittaker: Not down climbing as part of the 28 moves, no, but we made sure we weren’t down climbing on recovery-type climbing holds. We were down climbing where it was still hard.

Neely Quinn: So you were doing even more moves than you needed to be doing on the route.

Pete Whittaker: I guess so, yeah. 

Neely Quinn: So you were over prepared for that amount of moves?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I guess you could say that. It’s always good to be overprepared. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: I mean, it did the trick, right? [laughs] What about one of your sessions in the cellar?

Pete Whittaker: For that route again?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Pete Whittaker: I guess for the sessions in the cellar for me it was all about the thumb pump. It wasn’t so specific to the route in terms of movement. It was more just about getting the thumb pump that was needed. Literally that just consisted of going backwards and forwards to failure on Tom’s crack with weights and without weights, until you had sufficient thumb pump. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: What I’m imagining is this crack on the ceiling so it’s totally horizontal. Is that correct? 

Pete Whittaker: Yes, horizontal.

Neely Quinn: But the crack on your route, Recovery Drink, it wasn’t a horizontal crack, right? It’s just overhung.

Pete Whittaker: It’s like a 30-35°.

Neely Quinn: So you were overpreparing yourself, right?

Pete Whittaker: I think for the climbing in the cellar it was mainly about getting pump in the thumbs rather than being so specific. If climbing on a vertical crack or a 45° crack did the same thing then that would be totally fine as well. It just so happens that Tom’s got a big roof crack and it does the job really well. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: So I’m assuming you’d do the same thing where you’d go back and forth, back and forth, you’d get really pumped, then you’d rest, and then you would continue getting on when you were more and more progressively pumped?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. I think the crack in Tom’s cellar – it weaves around quite a lot – is maybe 20 meters long. It goes through a number of different rooms under his house. It’s quite a journey. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Oh. [laughs] That’s pretty long.

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, it’s pretty long so we would do a double lap, like 40 meters, and it was a mixture of hands, cupped hands, and thin hands. Doing that three times in a session was pretty brutal. It was quite hard just doing three sets of that. That was pretty much all you could do.

Neely Quinn: It sounds kind of painful, too. What are they made of? 

Pete Whittaker: Wood. We have some of our own Wide Boyz volumes down there and they have a softer, rubbery liner in them which is quite nice and in between those we have wooden cracks as well.

Neely Quinn: Are you taped up when you’re doing this?

Pete Whittaker: Oh yeah, taped up. 

Neely Quinn: Do you get bloody while you’re training?

Pete Whittaker: Not usually. No blood is drawn but I guess after a training session it’s usually more like pressure wounds rather than actually drawing blood from abrasion because the cracks are either soft or they’re wood and you’re taped up so you’re never going to really cut your hands. It’s more that your hands can feel quite sensitive just to touch. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: And how many of these sessions are you doing a week?

Pete Whittaker: You definitely can’t do more than three sessions in Tom’s cellar in a week. It’s impossible because your hands just get too sore. I would say two is normal. Three is a lot and I don’t think you would be able to do three sessions two weeks in a row. Doing six sessions in two weeks is just loads. Your hands would be so painful.

Neely Quinn: Is this something you and Tom both agree about?

Pete Whittaker: I would say we would both agree on that, I think.

Neely Quinn: Compared with a normal member of society, how much more do you think you can tolerate pain?

Pete Whittaker: That’s a good question. I don’t really know. I like some forms of pain, you know? That sort of training and trying hard and lactate pain and the burn. I like that. To be honest, I also don’t mind the sort of pressure wounds from crack climbing as well. That doesn’t bother me so much. I don’t mind pain. It doesn’t bother me but I guess the general public do mind pain. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Have you ever had to have surgery on anything or where you would have had to have pain medication?

Pete Whittaker: No. Sorry – how do you mean?

Neely Quinn: Like I had shoulder surgery and they gave me oxycodone. I needed it. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t need it?

Pete Whittaker: Like if they were doing something like that if I was like, ‘Oh, don’t give me the painkillers. I’m keen for the pain.’ [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Yeah. ‘I’m fine.’ 

Pete Whittaker: No. I remember when I was getting my wisdom tooth pulled out obviously the injection hadn’t gone in properly, like into my gum, and when they started I could feel them. They started pulling my tooth and I was like, ‘Oh my god! That’s incredibly painful! Stop!’ I don’t want to feel my tooth being pulled out or somebody doing some bizarre thing on my shoulder or something like that.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] So you’re not impervious to pain, is what you’re saying. 

Pete Whittaker: No. 

Neely Quinn: I wonder about you guys sometimes. You just go out there and thrash yourselves. 

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I think there’s a slight difference. 

Neely Quinn: I guess it’s different when you’re enjoying it.

So anyway, you got fit enough or even overly fit doing what you just described. You sent that route when?

Pete Whittaker: I think it was in August.

Neely Quinn: How long had you been preparing for it?

Pete Whittaker: I did a whole bunch of training for it back in 2018 and I didn’t quite manage to finish it off that year before the weather closed in. This year, in 2019, I actually left my training a little later to start with and I think I dedicated about three months to it before going out there. Dedicated training – maybe 2.5-3 months but I was sort of vaguely staying in shape before that and in those last 2.5-3 months I sort of knuckled down. I wasn’t going hard for like six months or something.

Neely Quinn: I read an article you wrote about it, or maybe it was an interview, and it seemed like it really did make a difference. It seemed like you went out there and you were like, ‘I’m stronger.’ Is this true?

Pete Whittaker: This time I think so, yeah. I think I was stronger and also a little bit more prepared and knowledgeable from 2018. I learned from a few mistakes I made in that year and I made sure I rectified them to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake again. 

Neely Quinn: What was that?

Pete Whittaker: One of them was actually diet. Back in 2018, for the first time ever on any route or project, I decided I was going to try and consciously lose a little bit of weight to become lighter to help me on the route. What I did back in 2018 was as I lost weight, in my training I put the weight back on in terms of a weight belt. As I lost half a kilo I did all my training, all my warm-up, everything with that extra half a kilo on. Then when I lost a kilo I did all that with the extra kilo on so I was always training at my old weight. I thought, ‘When I go out I’m going to feel incredibly light and strong.’ I was getting stronger and stronger but I was actually just training at my old weight as I was getting lighter as well.

Neely Quinn: That is brilliant. [laughs] It’s like the simplest thing ever but it makes so much sense.

Pete Whittaker: But this is the interesting thing – I did that, and like I said I did all my training with that extra weight on. I would warm-up with the extra weight on, I’d do the training with the extra weight on, if I was doing-one arm training or assisted one-arm training I would do the assisted one-armers but with the weight on me. Even though I was doing it with assistance and I would still use assistance, I would put weight on me. I went to extreme lengths, climbing with this weight on.

The problem was, when I got out to the route and I went there I suddenly took all this weight off and I was four kilos lighter or something. I’ve never felt so strong in my whole life. I felt incredible in that year, in 2018, when I did that but the bizarre thing was I actually think my technique suffered from doing it like that. I could feel in my climbing that I’d got so strong that I was pulling way too hard with my arms. In a way, I had forgotten how much I could weight my feet and I wasn’t being as efficient in my climbing because overnight I’d gone from 72 kilos to 68 kilos.

Neely Quinn: Which is like 9-10 pounds for us.

Pete Whittaker: I’d been training with those four kilos on and I went out to Norway and it wasn’t like I was going to climb the route with those four kilos. I took the four kilos off and suddenly I was four kilos lighter. I could sort of sense it, in a way, that my technique was suffering because I wasn’t used to climbing at that weight. 

Neely Quinn: That’s crazy.

Pete Whittaker: It was a really bizarre thing. Even though I knew I was feeling incredibly strong I think that’s a slight mistake that I made. 

Neely Quinn: How did you rectify that?

Pete Whittaker: In 2019, this year, I did the same thing with the weights so as I lost a bit of weight I put the weight on in my training but I mixed it between climbing with the weight and without the weight so I got used to standing properly on my feet at my new weight. I basically just didn’t make the same mistake of never practicing at my new weight.

Neely Quinn: So you still did your strength training with it on but not all the climbing?

Pete Whittaker: I did half and half, basically. I did half with my new weight, with no weight on, and then half with the extra weight on the weight belt just to make sure my technique didn’t suffer and that I was standing on my feet properly.

Neely Quinn: That’s so surprising. You would never predict something like that would happen.

Pete Whittaker: No, I think that was one factor I felt why I didn’t do it in 2018 amongst some other factors like the weather. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Learned from that [laughs] and then you had better weather the next time?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I had better weather the next time.

Neely Quinn: Can I ask you a detail about how you strapped weight on you all the time? Is it a waist belt or is it a vest?

Pete Whittaker: I was using a weight belt. I just had like what scuba divers use. You can slide weight on and off it. It’s a very simple thing.

Neely Quinn: I can’t remember what your beginning weight was but as you would lose the weight you would just add weight to your belt, as if you were your beginning weight. It was not like you would just add two kilos and that was it?

Pete Whittaker: No, I would always go what my beginning weight was. Before I decided, ‘Okay, I’m going to get a bit leaner and lose a bit of weight,’ I weighed myself and whatever I was, like 72 kilos or something, as I lost one kilo I would put one kilo on. I never went over and put two kilos or three kilos on, it was always just training at my old normal weight.

Neely Quinn: How did you lose the weight?

Pete Whittaker: Well, eating a bit less. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Rocket science. [laughs]

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, and not eating cakes. What did I do in the first year…? 

Again, this was a thing I did sort of differently compared to the two years. In the first year I don’t think I did it very well, the whole losing the weight. I did it over a 6-8 week period, I think, and to be honest I found the whole thing a bit brutal. I really like eating. I just like eating and I’m just hungry and I found the whole thing a bit of a struggle, to be honest. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that. Before that, I would just eat whatever I want whenever I want and that was totally fine. 

It felt quite difficult doing that but I remember I did it week-by-week. The first week I cut out eating any sort of cakes or treats or pastries or anything like that. The second week I cut out eating anything between meals, so whatever meals I was having like breakfast, dinner, and tea. Then after that I just made sure that I was eating much smaller portions than what I would usually eat.

Neely Quinn: Were you just hungry all the time?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I was pretty hungry all the time. I don’t think I did it very well because I was also very grumpy as well. [laughs] I think that also had an effect on the trip and the climbing that I did out there. I sort of wasn’t in – I was thinking about eating so much that it affected my climbing.

Neely Quinn: And this was in 2018 when you didn’t send?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Did you keep restricting while you were on your trip?

Pete Whittaker: I didn’t keep restricting but I kept a lower level so I wouldn’t just suddenly start putting weight back on. I guess when you do that, as soon as you start eating your body is going to go, ‘Oh yes!’ and suddenly just start putting weight back on, which is what happened after the trip. I was so psyched to eat like I normally ate. I went from the lightest I’d ever been to the heaviest I’d ever been in like eight weeks.

Neely Quinn: Oh wow. Okay. So you did learn from that.

Pete Whittaker: Oh yeah. In 2019 I did it a little more gradually and in 2018 I did it over 6-8 weeks and I was losing half a kilo a week and I think I lost about four kilos total. I think it was 72 to 68 whereas in 2019 I did it a little bit more gradually, more over a five month period. I just sort of really gradually tried to drop it down and that way it didn’t feel quite as brutal. Sometimes I would just be completely eating normally and other times for a week or two I might be more conscious to take a small amount of weight off and I would eat a little bit more normally again then try to be more conscious. Gradually I managed to drop it down, but over a five month period, and it felt more natural and normal and easier.

Neely Quinn: And you weren’t as grumpy, I’m assuming. 

Pete Whittaker: No, definitely not. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Which probably helped you on your trip.

Pete Whittaker: Totally. I think I really learned some things from that first trip. I was trying things I’d never tried before so I was sort of experimenting with things and I realized the things I had done wrong and I sort of improved on them in 2019.

Neely Quinn: That’s good. I’m sort of harping on this because I want people to hear this. I want them to learn from your mistakes, really, because obviously we’re a strength-to-weight ratio sport and I’m assuming that you losing the weight either way probably helped you but it didn’t make you perform your best the first time. The second time it probably supported the training that you did.

Pete Whittaker: No, it didn’t. I was actually lighter on that first trip, in 2018. I didn’t lose as much weight in 2019 but I performed much better.

Neely Quinn: That’s a really good lesson too, huh?

Pete Whittaker: It was way more controlled and better. It was much better. [laughs] I learned.

Neely Quinn: It’s cool to listen to your evolution and your learning process. It’s really interesting.

We don’t have too much time and I want to know about your training for your adventure in the States, when you guys made the Wide Boyz video and all of that. We were going to do a comparison of training for this route and how you trained for offwidths.

Pete Whittaker: For the Recovery Drink route I guess it was more like what you would classify as a normal sort of climbing with normal climbing muscles whereas with the offwidthing, it’s definitely not your normal climbing muscles. It’s nothing to do with fingers or forearm power or endurance, it’s more to do with core and legs and biceps and the bigger muscle groups in your body, I think. That was the real difference there. 

I remember before going out on that 2011 offwidthing trip I hadn’t really done that much normal climbing and I remember going to the climbing gym and just being total crap on normal style climbing. I had been doing so much in the bigger muscle groups.

Neely Quinn: So how do you prepare for something like that?

Pete Whittaker: Basically, we built a replica-type thing so we really focused on training very specifically and climbing on the size and width of crack that we were going to be climbing on out in America. We started climbing on that crack and what we kind of did was just do sessions and be like, ‘What is giving out? What is making us fall off? What’s getting tired first?’ Then we would be like, ‘Alright, it’s the core muscles for being able to sit up and reach into stacks. That’s what is the limiting factor.’

We went away and we did lots of core workouts and core exercises away from climbing on the offwidth and then we’d carry on training on the offwidth. We’d find that as we’d been training the core it wasn’t the core giving out anymore while we were climbing on the offwidth. Then we were like, ‘Ah, now our core is strong enough. I can actually feel the pain in my biceps and my biceps are giving out.’ So then we were like, ‘We need to work on our biceps then.’ So then we went away and worked on getting stronger and better endurance in the biceps so you could hold yourself up in the crack.

Neely Quinn: What kinds of things would you do for biceps?

Pete Whittaker: It was mainly quite a lot of dumbbell work. 

Neely Quinn: Curls?

Pete Whittaker: Pretty much curls in different weights and sets and reps.

Neely Quinn: Oh yeah, that’s a thing – because it’s a lot of power endurance were you doing a lot of high reps low weight?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, we did pretty high reps. I remember we were doing – we did a whole bunch of things but we were definitely doing high reps on the biceps because it’s more of a gradual burn rather than being a total strength thing.

Neely Quinn: Did you guys just get enormous biceps? [laughs]

Pete Whittaker: [laughs] Probably not, no.

Neely Quinn: Did they get bigger? Let’s ask that.

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. I think in general I definitely built quite a lot of muscle back then. I was also doing quite a lot of pull-up work as well because that’s good for the back and the biceps and that sort of stuff.

In terms of building muscle I would say that was probably the time when I built the most. I don’t have as much muscle as I did back then, I don’t think.

Neely Quinn: So you guys first did the core and then you realized it was your biceps, you worked on your biceps and then what?

Pete Whittaker: When the biceps stopped giving out first then it was the legs and the feet. I guess to train the legs and the feet we did it in the offwidth but we used better handholds so we were able to get really good leg and foot – a good endurance pump in the legs and you weren’t having to concentrate too much on the hands.

Neely Quinn: How in the world do you – I’m imagining when you’re in an offwidth and your feet are on one side and your back is on the other wall, right? Is that kind of what you’re talking about with your feet getting tired?

Pete Whittaker: No. I guess you’re thinking more of a chimney. We were more in if you imagine a 5-6 inch width of crack on the ceiling, so in a roof. We were sticking our feet up into it and camming our feet inside and hanging off it like a bat, you know?

Neely Quinn: Oh, you were hanging off of it?

Pete Whittaker: Yes. By our feet and our legs.

Neely Quinn: Oh my god. Just for a timed amount?

Pete Whittaker: I guess so, and sort of moving backwards and forwards. 

Neely Quinn: Oh okay. Wow. That is dedication.

Pete Whittaker: I think with that style of offwidthing it was those three things and probably in that order that was most beneficial. Doing the core first then the biceps and then the legs and feet.

Neely Quinn: I assume you had to continue doing all of it, like even while you were doing your biceps I’m assuming you were doing your core work.

Pete Whittaker: Totally, yeah. We just kept building in these new things as we realized different parts of our bodies were hurting.

Neely Quinn: How long did it take you guys to prepare for this?

Pete Whittaker: We spent two years preparing to go to America. We started in 2009 and went in 2011.

Neely Quinn: A lot of people have seen the film and read about you guys but what would you say was your crowning achievement there? Or a couple of them.

Pete Whittaker: Of that specific trip?

Neely Quinn: Yeah, from that trip. 

Pete Whittaker: I mean, definitely doing Century Crack was the pinnacle of that trip.

Neely Quinn: Can you describe that just briefly?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. It’s a 100-foot, or 40-meter, horizontal roof in that width that I was talking about, so 5-6 inch. You’re using that technique of hanging upside down by your feet and you’re using something called a hand stack where you use a hand jam and a fist jam together to fill the space. They kind of work together as a single unit and then you hang off your hand and your fist stack and you move your leg, then you move your other leg, and you’re sort of crabbing along this roof upside down. That’s how you climb it.

Neely Quinn: That’s a long time and a long way to do that for, 100 feet.

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, and I think the difficult thing about that route is every single move is kind of exactly the same so you get this really difficult and hard fatigue to contend with because it’s just constantly hammering exactly the same muscles and the same move over and over and over again. Usually, in more conventional climbing you can get a little bit of respite by using a different grip position or you have a slightly different move or you have a bigger hold or you have a crimpy sequence and then a layback sequence so it’s sort of changing all the time, and the crux is more through the difficulty whereas with this, it wasn’t very difficult it was just an incredible amount of – it was like your ability to overcome that lactate buildup.

Neely Quinn: Is that something that you still enjoy? Is that type of climbing something you still do?

Pete Whittaker: I don’t specifically seek out offwidth climbing, definitely not anymore. If I’m traveling and I’m at a crag and there’s an offwidth I’ll probably give it a go because I still really enjoy that type of climbing but I don’t seek it out. If it’s there it’s always good fun.

Neely Quinn: I want to talk a little bit about what you do as a coach and a little bit about your book. Can you tell me about your book first?

Pete Whittaker: I’m bringing out a book in the middle of January. It’s sort of launched already. It’s basically a very technical book. It’s a crack climbing technique book and it covers everything from tips and finger cracks, where you can just get the first knuckle of your finger into the crack, all the way up to body bridging in cracks where you’ve got your hands on one wall and your feet on another wall. It takes in all the sizes of cracks and all the techniques in between that. 

I’ve sort of split it three – well, I split it down into chapters of different sizes, so fingers, hands, fists, the basic sizes, but then within those chapters I looked at the technique that you use on the rock to sort of hold you on there. If you’re doing a hand jam, how you orientate your hand and how you put your hand in the crack and what you do with your hand in the crack to make it stick. 

The second part is I looked at body positioning and how your body needs to be positioned on the rock to enable you to move in the most efficient way for the type of crack that you’re climbing. 

The third thing I looked at was movement and how you move and the most efficient ways of moving. 

So I had all the chapters and all the sizes then I broke it down into those broad three things. 

Neely Quinn: Wow. I’m assuming there are a lot of pictures involved?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, it’s illustrated sort of all the way through with techniques. The book wouldn’t be what it is without the illustrations but I think there’s a lot more information past the illustrations if you read into the text as well.

Neely Quinn: Is there anything like that book out there?

Pete Whittaker: There’s one other crack climbing book out in America but just one other. I guess maybe nothing quite as extensive and not quite as in so much detail. I really tried to get across what you’re doing and which way you’re pushing and which way you’re pulling and where the pressure is in all these different jams to make them work.

Neely Quinn: It’s like a mathematical vector.

Pete Whittaker: I guess so, yeah. [laughs] I think that’s the thing that people potentially struggle with in jamming. They’re just not quite sure. You can show somebody how to do it but they don’t know particularly where you’re pushing or where the weight is going or where the pressure is through the crack walls. I kind of wanted to make sure I covered all of that. 

Neely Quinn: It seems like a much needed resource.

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I don’t really think there’s anything in quite as much detail out there

Neely Quinn: People can buy it now?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah. If you’re American or Canadian you can buy it from Mountaineers Books. They’re a publisher in Seattle, I think. If you’re anywhere else in the world – UK, Europe, Australia, Asia – wherever it might be, South America, you can buy it from the UK publisher called Vertebrate Publishing.

Neely Quinn: What’s it called again?

Pete Whittaker: Just simply Crack Climbing. It’s got two different subheadings, actually. We’ll just keep it simple and say it’s called Crack Climbing.

Neely Quinn: I’ll put a link to it, too, in the show notes for this episode.

You also do some coaching. Can you talk about that a little?

Pete Whittaker: It’s mainly the crack schools that I do. I guess it’s in line with the Wide Boyz business that I’ve started up. We make crack climbing volumes and holds and we’ve sort of taken the coaching aspect alongside these holds, so basically teaching people – it’s kind of like the book. It’s a very technical and instructional way that we teach. It’s not like a training coach, it’s more of an instructing coach showing techniques.

Neely Quinn: Are you guys doing any coming up here?

Pete Whittaker: We don’t – it’s more like…

Neely Quinn: Like on request?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, it’s a bit sort of like on request and it depends on our schedule a little bit. It’s not like you can book either me or Tom. We kind of do it alongside climbing gyms that have bought our climbing holds so it’s a little more on and off. There’s not a specific place you can go to book.

Neely Quinn: In any case, like you said in the beginning you have a whole career that is based on crack climbing. You have your holds and your volumes or whatever. They’re crack climbing holds? Is that what you call them?

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, holds or volumes. 

Neely Quinn: Then you’re doing these clinics sometimes, you wrote a book, and you climb on cracks and get paid so you’re a pro climber. Congratulations to you for that. 

Pete Whittaker: Yeah, I wouldn’t really have thought that when I left school but I have started to make a living off of crack climbing I guess you could say. We’ll see where it goes.

Neely Quinn: Do you have objectives now?

Pete Whittaker: I guess in terms of business and stuff I’m quite keen on getting the Wide Boyz business grown and take it forward. I’m actually quite keen to bring crack climbing to the community in a way because I feel like it’s perceived as this dark art which is a little bit painful and nobody really knows how to do it and I just want to break that mentality and show people that it is actually really fun. You can do some really cool and fun style of moves with it and if you want to take it further you can go to some amazing places. If you want to take it further than that you can climb some amazing walls by having good crack technique so yeah, that’s kind of where I want to take the business side of things, bringing crack to the people. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Cool. Do you have any projects right now with climbing?

Pete Whittaker: I have some projects for the – I guess my big projects are for autumn 2020. I’ve gotten a little into mixed and winter climbing in the last few years so I’m hoping to do a bigger expedition with a couple of friends to the greater ranges, so a more mountaineer-y type of objective which is something I’ve never done before. It’s going to be interesting to see what that’s like. I think it can be quite interesting because the objective has a bit of rock climbing on it so I’m keen to bring my skills as a rock climber to the team. I think that can be quite good.

I also have another project out in Yosemite which I’ve been working on for the last few years on and off. I’ll just try to progress and keep chipping away at that and try and get that done.

Neely Quinn: Aren’t you coming here sometime soon?

Pete Whittaker: I know Tom is going in January. Tom is going to the desert, in the Moab area, in January but I am not going. It’s just Tom meeting some other friends out there.

Neely Quinn: So you’re not coming to Yosemite anytime soon?

Pete Whittaker: No, not anytime soon. I’ve just come back, actually.

Neely Quinn: You just got finished working on that objective.

Pete Whittaker: Exactly.

Neely Quinn: I hope this little break and being at home offers you the time that you need to do some of the things that you want to do with the business. I wish you the best with that. Hopefully people will check out your book. I really appreciate you being on the show. 

Pete Whittaker: Thanks for having me. It’s been great. It’s interesting to chat over different things and also training as well. I love training so it’s good to talk about it and share those few things with people who are listening.

Neely Quinn: Basically thank you for sharing your secrets because I think a lot of people are going to use them. Thanks a lot. Take care, Pete.

Pete Whittaker: Thank you.

Neely Quinn: Alright. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Pete Whittaker. You can find him on Instagram @petewhittaker01. His website, which talks a lot about who he is and you can also hire him as a speaker and he also does art, is petewhittaker.co.uk.  

I put up a few links up to films that he’s in, the Wide Boyz film, the Wide Boyz film trailer that I really liked, and his Instagram, and his book on the website at trainingbeta.com. Just search Pete Whittaker. His book you can find on Amazon. It’s called Crack Climbing: The Definitive Guide. If you’re into crack climbing it seems like he would be a really good resource.

Coming up on the podcast I’m going to have something all about core training again. I had Zahan on all about core training recently and that was all about floor exercises. Next time I’m going to have this guy Mark Campbell on the podcast who owns a gym that is all about using the TRX. He’s a TRX expert and we’re going to talk about how he saw huge gains very quickly when he first started climbing because he had been TRX-ing forever and how he teaches TRX classes now to climbers and what the TRX can offer to our strength as climbers. That’s coming up. I have lots more in store for you. 

As always, we have training programs for you and you can find those at trainingbeta.com/programs. We have things for route climbers or boulderers or people who just want to do finger training or power endurance training. All of our programs are made to be super easy to follow so that you don’t ever have to ask questions about what you need to do in the gym or how often you need to be going to the gym. They’re also very affordable. That’s why I made this site, to make training super accessible to everybody. 

We have subscription programs that are $14.99 a month and you just get continual workouts every week. We have eBooks that are around $39 for the entire program.

Again, you can find those all at trainingbeta.com/programs.

I think that’s it for this week. You can find us on social media @trainingbeta. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate it and I’ll talk to you soon.

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