Nov. 27, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:11:29
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! | ||
| Hello, Emily. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| What's happening? | ||
| You seem very normal. | ||
| And that's what always stuns me about people who do insane things. | ||
| Like they're just, like Alex Honnold, I've met him a few times, had him on the show a couple times. | ||
| Super normal guy, but does what you do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would argue Alex isn't as normal as me. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, really? | |
| How so? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| You've met him. | ||
| I think he's normal. | ||
| He's pretty normal. | ||
| He's very mellow. | ||
| What he does is exponentially more dangerous than what I do, I would argue. | ||
| Because there's no ropes at all. | ||
| He doesn't use ropes. | ||
| I do use ropes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Listen, it's dangerous. | ||
| What you do is dangerous. | ||
| We'll get there. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Tell people what you did, because it's pretty crazy. | ||
| Um, so I did what's called free climbing. | ||
| I free climbed a route on El Capitan, which is a 3,200 foot cliff in Yosemite National Park, and I did it in under 24 hours. | ||
| That is a long way to go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 3,200 and... | ||
| It's something. | ||
| 3,200 feet is what I say. | ||
| I think it might just be like a little more than that. | ||
| When you're halfway there, Emily Harrington becomes the first woman to scale El Capitan via its notoriously difficult Golden Gate route. | ||
| Why is that route more difficult? | ||
| Well, okay, so... | ||
| Is it route or route? | ||
| It really matters. | ||
| I say root. | ||
| So essentially, El Cap is this giant cliff face. | ||
| And there's hundreds of routes up El Cap, different pathways you can take. | ||
| And right now, there's currently only 15 ways to get up it via free climbing. | ||
| Free climbing being using only your hands and feet to ascend and a rope in case you fall. | ||
| And I chose The route called Golden Gate, which is more difficult than the route Free Rider, which people are very familiar with because that's the route that Alex Honnold free soloed, meaning he climbed it without a rope. | ||
| Yeah, that seems insane. | ||
| So you're less insane than him. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Definitely less insane than him. | ||
| Alex is a dear friend of mine, but there are some things I don't understand about him. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if he understands those things about him. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I mean, I have an enormous amount of respect for him, but what he does is truly remarkable. | ||
| You bonked your head while you're doing it too, huh? | ||
| I could see the mark on your forehead. | ||
| Yeah, you can see the scar. | ||
| Yeah, and that's actually the second time I hit my head. | ||
| uh trying to trying to do this uh last year I had a really bad fall um wound up in the hospital full concussion the whole thing this time it was slightly less uh less serious but maybe more dramatic because it happened like way higher up on the wall how high were you up um 2800 feet I'd say like almost to the top It was very dramatic. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| So the day was actually going really well. | ||
| I've been trying to do this for a few years now. | ||
| I would say three years I've been working towards this goal. | ||
| And I'd actually done the route in 2015 over the course of six days. | ||
| And I really wanted to do the same route in 24 hours. | ||
| Can I stop you there? | ||
| When you do it over six days, do you sleep on the route? | ||
| Yeah, that's how most people climb El Cap. | ||
| They sleep on the wall. | ||
| It takes like five to seven days or so. | ||
| That seems more sketchy. | ||
| It's different because there's a lot more logistics involved, right? | ||
| Like imagine you have to like live in the vertical world for days on end. | ||
| So think about everything you do like from when you wake up to when you go to bed. | ||
| Including pooing. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| You have to poo vertically. | ||
| Yeah, we use like, we use wag bags or like, you know, little like plastic bags and you like go in that bag and then you put it in another bag and... | ||
| And then carry it with you? | ||
| So you carry your poo for seven days? | ||
| Yeah, you put it in another bag and then you like hang it below everything and you take it up with you. | ||
| And then you like, you take it, yeah, you don't leave it, obviously. | ||
| Oh no, I would imagine. | ||
| Stuff it in a crack up there. | ||
| Is that someone pooing? | ||
| No, that's just someone hanging out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh. | |
| That's like how you do it when you live on the wall. | ||
| So you have that ledge. | ||
| Like the Michael Jackson song. | ||
| What? | ||
| Living on the wall. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Know that song? | ||
| No. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I'm not familiar. | ||
| It's a famous song. | ||
| So you sleep in that thing. | ||
| I would get zero sleep. | ||
| I don't like sleep when I'm near the edge of my bed. | ||
| I get nervous. | ||
| It's amazing how... | ||
| Exhausted you are at the end of the day and how used to it you get. | ||
| You just adjust. | ||
| Humans are really remarkable in their ability to adapt to things. | ||
| And so it's pretty cool how, yeah, it's really scary at first, but then the more you do it, the more you're just like, okay, well, this is kind of... | ||
| When you're sleeping in that thing, are you fully harnessed in and strapped in? | ||
| You sleep in a harness, and you just usually have a loose rope or sling or something attached to the anchor point. | ||
| So if you're one of those people that rolls out of bed at night, then you don't fall to your death. | ||
| Can you imagine? | ||
| No! | ||
| Just the feeling of waking up swinging, hanging from your harness. | ||
| See how he has that sling around his waist? | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah, that's like last resort. | ||
| That's Tommy Caldwell. | ||
| Tommy Caldwell, you're a psycho. | ||
| He free climbed perhaps the hardest big wall in the world, also on El Cap, called the Dawn Wall. | ||
| And he was up there for 17 days. | ||
| So you'd imagine 17 days. | ||
| Look at all his stuff. | ||
| He's like a homeless person up there. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. | ||
| You know like the homeless people at those little camps? | ||
| He's a maniac. | ||
| That's a crazy person. | ||
| Look at him, checking his fingernails. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You see, he's also actually missing a finger, which is pretty rare for an elite level rock climber. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| What happened to his finger? | ||
| I believe it was a table saw accident, home improvement accident. | ||
| And so he's using everything but his index. | ||
| Yeah, he kind of climbs like this and uses the little... | ||
| The nub? | ||
| The nub. | ||
| He's, yeah, definitely... | ||
| Tommy's one of my true heroes. | ||
| Ultimate climbing hero. | ||
| That is a very small clique, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Of savage psychos that are willing to climb gigantic mountain faces. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's a relatively small group. | ||
| I mean, it's growing. | ||
| Climbing is definitely growing in popularity, but it definitely used to be like a little bit, like a small little community, and I think we still feel that way. | ||
| Is there a danger in the climbing world, or not a danger, a concern, I should say, of people who are seeing people like Alex Honnold and yourself become famous and get all this attention From these very dangerous climbs and they want to perhaps accelerate their progress and jump right in and try to do some really risky things. | ||
| I mean, I could see that being a danger, especially with what Alex does, climbing without a rope. | ||
| I would still argue that what I do is a relatively safe form of climbing. | ||
| I climb with a rope. | ||
| When I fall, the rope catches me. | ||
| It's super safe. | ||
| When I fall, the rope catches me. | ||
| Free climbing El Cap in a day, what I just did, I definitely cut some corners and took more risk. | ||
| But that's an achievement that not many people have done or really strive to do. | ||
| And so I think for the most part, climbing is actually a very controlled, very safe activity, and you can make it as dangerous as you want it to be. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| Yes, I understand what you're saying. | ||
| So if you're a person like Alex is deciding, you know, he maps these routes, he does them with ropes, and then he's like, I can do this. | ||
| Yes, and Alex is so unique in a way and I think anyone that watches the movie Free Solo, anyone that talks to Alex understands that what he does is, it's so well thought out and it's so well planned and every single decision he makes is very calculated. | ||
| And I think that's a testament to what climbing is truly about. | ||
| We're not out to go feel an adrenaline rush when we go climbing. | ||
| If you're feeling adrenaline, it essentially means you messed up. | ||
| Something's wrong. | ||
| Climbing is very much more about the movement and the challenge and the mental challenge of all of it than going out and trying to get a thrill. | ||
| How did you get involved in this? | ||
| I started climbing when I was 10 years old. | ||
| I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and my parents used to take me to the Boulder Reservoir, this lake. | ||
| Me and my cousins. | ||
| Do you have a Subaru? | ||
| I did have a Subaru. | ||
| Everyone in Boulder has a Subaru. | ||
| I got a Subaru for my 16th birthday. | ||
| That's like 70% of the cars out there. | ||
| Yeah, green Subaru. | ||
| These are so practical. | ||
| They work in the snow. | ||
| Yeah, I had it for years. | ||
| So anyway, my parents took me to the lake and they had this little festival there. | ||
| And I grew up... | ||
| I'm an only child. | ||
| I grew up with my two cousins who were boys. | ||
| And we were just like super competitive with each other all the time. | ||
| Like all I wanted to do was be better than them at like literally anything. | ||
| It didn't matter what it was. | ||
| So we were at this lake and they had a little festival with one of those tower rock towers, you know, the ones that they let the kids climb on. | ||
| And we all tried to climb the wall. | ||
| And I just remember it was like, well, I have to go to the top because they went to the top. | ||
| And, you know, there was like no other option. | ||
| But the interesting thing that happened when I was climbing was it was just this feeling of like, oh, this is what I this is what I'm meant to do. | ||
| I just felt like I belonged up there. | ||
| And I remember the feeling so vividly, even now, 23 years later. | ||
| It was like I was scared, but I kind of liked it. | ||
| I got down and I was like, Dad, I want to go climbing. | ||
| That's what I want to do. | ||
| I want to quit everything else. | ||
| I was a gymnast. | ||
| I played soccer. | ||
| I was a ski racer. | ||
| I was like, I don't want to do any of that anymore. | ||
| I just want to climb. | ||
| Why? | ||
| What about climbing? | ||
| Canceled all those other things out in your interests? | ||
| I think part of it was because I was good at it, and I kind of knew that I was good at it. | ||
| I was strong from gymnastics. | ||
| I had a lot of body awareness. | ||
| It just felt like something that I could be good at, and I really enjoyed climbing. | ||
| Just the feeling of being up high, the feeling of the exposure, and I really enjoyed the process of solving it. | ||
| I loved that cerebral, like, how am I going to get to the top? | ||
| How am I going to solve this puzzle? | ||
| So what was the course of progression? | ||
| Did you start out just climbing small things with friends, and then did you eventually get a coach? | ||
| How did you get into serious hardcore climbing? | ||
| I was among the first generation of kids, climbers, who started out in a climbing gym, so like in an artificial setting. | ||
| A lot of people before me started, you know, in Yosemite, outdoors, like in the mountains. | ||
| But I grew up like in the 90s and that was sort of like the beginning of climbing gyms. | ||
| And so I started in a gym on plastic and my dad took me to the local climbing gym in Boulder. | ||
| It's called the Boulder Rock Club. | ||
| And he enrolled me in like a kids class. | ||
| And they sort of noticed a little bit of talent I think in me and they invited me to join their junior climbing team. | ||
| Like there's junior climbing teams. | ||
| Now every gym in the country has a junior climbing team. | ||
| Is there a benefit to learning on plastic first? | ||
| I mean, I think access, for one. | ||
| Like, if you live in a place where there's no rocks, it's pretty easy to still go climbing. | ||
| You could go to the gym. | ||
| That said, it's very much become its own discipline, gym climbing. | ||
| And I use gym climbing still for training. | ||
| Like, I think it makes you strong. | ||
| It's a really easy, it's an easy way to get a workout in. | ||
| Like, the body awareness factor, you can kind of like distill down all the like the movements and in a really controlled setting. | ||
| It's also super safe. | ||
| When you say training, if you're going to practice for a big climb, something like you just did, do you have a training schedule? | ||
| Do you try to peak like an athlete would for the Olympics or for some other kind of event? | ||
| How do you train? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I do try to train so that I am peaking at a certain time. | ||
| It's a little bit experimental though, honestly. | ||
| I've been working towards this goal in particular for many years, really experimenting with how to train for it because it does require such a variety of skills. | ||
| Like you need the strength and endurance of a technical rock climber in order to like climb the pitches cleanly. | ||
| But you also need logistical support. | ||
| So it has to be like the right time of year. | ||
| You need the right partner. | ||
| You need a good weather. | ||
| And then you need like the stamina to be climbing for 21 hours. | ||
| And so a lot of it was just trial and error for me. | ||
| But I did spend a lot of time in the gym training on plastic. | ||
| And then I would supplement that with really long trail runs and big days in the Eastern Sierra, like climbing bigger routes. | ||
| And then also there's a mental component. | ||
| So I had to sort of get my head back, especially after my accident last year. | ||
| I had to get my head back in the game and feel comfortable leading on run-out terrain with big fall potential again. | ||
| So there was just like a lot. | ||
| And I did... | ||
| I think this year in particular, because of COVID, I was actually able to focus a lot more. | ||
| Like, I think that was sort of the key for me. | ||
| I stopped traveling. | ||
| I was at home. | ||
| I had, like, a routine. | ||
| I had, like, a good sleep schedule going on. | ||
| I had, like, my days that I was training. | ||
| And I was able to, like, have a really good routine. | ||
| And then when the season started, I felt really well prepared. | ||
| When you train, do you have someone who is a coach who sets aside a training schedule? | ||
| Or do you just do it yourself? | ||
| Is it an intuition? | ||
| Like you just like have a sense of what you need to train? | ||
| Like how do you decide what you do? | ||
| I used to have a coach. | ||
| Because when I first started climbing, I was basically just only doing climbing competitions. | ||
| So I just was a competition climber. | ||
| So I have a really solid base in training and how to train. | ||
| I no longer work with a coach. | ||
| But I definitely read a lot and I... Kind of like grab bits and pieces of information from my friends. | ||
| And so yeah, I do have a set training schedule approach that I kind of like build out in my head and try to stick to it. | ||
| That said, I'm like pretty flexible. | ||
| But I do not just climb, like if that's what you're asking. | ||
| I do a lot of specific training. | ||
| Mostly I try to train what I'm weakest at, which is like pure power, pure strength. | ||
| So you're saying that you do trail runs, too, and you find that that helps you? | ||
| I do think running helps me. | ||
| A lot of climbers would say that running is, like, not that good for climbing. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because it makes you tired, essentially, and it decreases your power and your ability to, like, really pull hard. | ||
| Like, you're not really supposed to go running on your rest days, but I do it anyway. | ||
| And for me, sanity-wise, like, I just love running. | ||
| Just good for the head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so they think that just exhausting your legs from running will mess you up when you're climbing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that the idea? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I think it just depletes your ability to have pure power. | ||
| If you're doing a weightlifting workout, it seems like you're not supposed to go run a few miles before you try to bench press your hardest. | ||
| Yeah, is there two schools of thought on that? | ||
| Because it seems like another school of thought would be if you can condition your body to run and climb, you'll have a stronger body than one that just climbs. | ||
| Well, that's my philosophy, yeah. | ||
| And obviously you're out there kicking ass. | ||
| Well, I mean, I'm a work in progress. | ||
| Well, aren't we all? | ||
| So you basically are self-trained in that sense, where you don't have someone who sets a schedule aside for you, like today you're going to lift weights, today you're going to run. | ||
| And so how do you do that? | ||
| Is it just based on how you feel? | ||
| Do you write it out? | ||
| Like when Emily wakes up in the morning and decides today is a what day, how do you do that? | ||
| I... It's a lot of how I feel. | ||
| Sometimes I plan it out. | ||
| Sometimes I write it out. | ||
| I... It depends on how much time I have. | ||
| Like, if I have a chunk of time to train, then I'll build, like, a training schedule. | ||
| Like, if I have a month, I'll be like, okay, I'm going to climb two days on, one day off for the next month. | ||
| And then on the first day, I'm going to do, like, more power-style training. | ||
| So, like... | ||
| Shorter workouts, you know, like shorter workouts, higher reps or whatever you want to call it. | ||
| Like fingerboard, bouldering, stuff that really like increases my power. | ||
| And then on the second day, I'll focus more on like power endurance or endurance. | ||
| And that's sort of how I structure it. | ||
| And I climb, I do hangboard workouts, which is essentially just like hanging on different grips. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen those things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a really effective way to train your fingers. | ||
| You can't get manicures, can you? | ||
| I mean, I actually do get manicures. | ||
| They just don't turn out that well. | ||
| You're digging into rocks all the time. | ||
| They chip off really fast. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| I like to feel girly sometimes. | ||
| Just recognize that it's very temporary in terms of manicure at least. | ||
| Yeah, it's temporary. | ||
| So when you're training, do you use heart rate monitors? | ||
| Do you register or record your recovery? | ||
| How do you do all that stuff? | ||
| I don't do that as much. | ||
| I've actually played around a little bit with heart rate monitors. | ||
| A lot of times when I'm like resting on the wall, that's something I'm really focused on. | ||
| Like a lot of times when you're climbing and you get really tired, a lot of times you'll feel it in your forearms, they'll get really like We call it pumped. | ||
| There's a lot of lactic acid buildup, and that causes you to panic in a way, get a little bit of tunnel vision, and essentially you'll just fall. | ||
| A lot of times what I focus on when I'm in that place is trying to lower my heart rate very consciously. | ||
| I've used a heart rate monitor to do that, but I don't do it while I'm climbing anymore. | ||
| It's more just me recognizing that that's what needs to happen and putting effort into lowering my heart rate. | ||
| Well, you know, we were talking before with your fiancé and we were talking about whoop straps, you know, and, like, the idea of checking your recovery and making sure, like, do you do any of that when you wake up in the morning and you make sure that you're good to go? | ||
| So does that in any way affect, like, how rigorous your training is going to be? | ||
| Do you measure your heart rate when you wake up or anything? | ||
| I don't do that. | ||
| And it's been for a specific reason. | ||
| I actually am... | ||
| I'm planning on starting to do that, but because I had this project sort of looming the last few months, I didn't really want to change my approach because I thought it might mess with me psychologically. | ||
| Right, if you wake up and you say, oh my god, I'm not that recovered. | ||
| Yeah, and you're like, oh no, I'm not recovered. | ||
| What do I do? | ||
| I try to be really intuitive about it. | ||
| I used to be very data-driven and very focused and very obsessed with everything that I did. | ||
| And honestly, in some ways, I feel like it kind of hindered me. | ||
| And so now I try to be a little more intuitive. | ||
| But I think it's a balance. | ||
| I'm kind of like going back into maybe I need to start tracking my sleep a little bit more because I'm a notoriously bad sleeper. | ||
| Because I would imagine, the reason why I'm asking all these questions about training is because I would imagine that when you're doing something that's literally, I know you're saying it's relatively safe, but for a person like me who's a big chicken shit, it's not relatively safe, it seems quite insane, and I would imagine you would want every single edge. | ||
| So I would imagine that if I was going to do something like that, I would want to know exactly how my workouts are affecting my body. | ||
| Like, okay, I lifted weights this day, and then the next day I felt pretty beat up. | ||
| So I did this, and then I recovered. | ||
| I checked my heart rate. | ||
| All right, I'm back. | ||
| I'm good to go. | ||
| So now this day I'm going to run, or this day I'm going to do fingerboard exercises. | ||
| I would imagine that There's so much mindfuckery going on when you're going to do something that difficult that you want to put all these pieces in place the best way possible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And see, I would argue that all of that is like, it's like too much. | ||
| It's like too much data and it's like, that actually gives me a mindfuck. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| Versus me just waking up and being like, oh, I feel good today. | ||
| I'm going to listen to that. | ||
| Like that little internal voice. | ||
| I think I'm a little bit more – a lot of people are super data-driven, especially in climbing. | ||
| And they write everything down. | ||
| I'm a little bit more – and Adrian, my fiance, is very much like that as well. | ||
| He loves the data. | ||
| And for me, I find it to... | ||
| I think it messes with me a little bit. | ||
| And so to a certain extent, I'm a little more focused on my own mental state and my own psychology and sort of trying to just figure out how to have confidence up there. | ||
| Have you ever seen the movie Dirtbag? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, it's amazing. | ||
| What's it about? | ||
| It's about a climber. | ||
| About a guy who literally climbed his whole life. | ||
| I forget the gentleman's name. | ||
| Dirtbag? | ||
| He's a famous climber. | ||
| Fred Becky. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I know who Fred Becky is. | ||
| Dirtbag meaning that, you know, he would just... | ||
| Camp out and sleep on people's couches and climb all across the world. | ||
| And was meticulous in his recording. | ||
| It's an amazing documentary. | ||
| Even for someone like me, he has zero interest in doing that. | ||
| But he climbed till he died. | ||
| Yep, he did. | ||
| I mean, he just kept going. | ||
| And it shows it in the film. | ||
| You know, you see footage of him when he was younger. | ||
| I mean, there he is. | ||
| Like, overnight camping prohibited? | ||
| Nope, fuck you, I'm sleeping here. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| He just slept everywhere. | ||
| And it just shows how bizarre his obsession with hiking and camping and climbing was. | ||
| I mean, he just wanted to get out there and climb all these different peaks and all these different mountains and all these different paths and recorded everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like super meticulously had boxes and boxes of notes and he would go over the notes and show people routes and all the different things that he learned while he was doing it. | ||
| I mean, he was obsessed. | ||
| I am just fascinated by people that have a singular obsession like that and carry it for their entire life. | ||
| Yeah, I mean I think climbing for me, I personally think climbing is very easy to become obsessed with because there's so many different facets to experience it in. | ||
| Like you can go to the climbing gym and just play around on some plastic holds or you can work towards climbing something like Mount Everest and then like everything in the middle. | ||
| And so there's just a lot to do. | ||
| Like I just feel like I don't even have, I have like a lifetime's worth of things to do in climbing. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I mean, watching that guy, watching the Fred Becky movie, Becky, right? | ||
| Watching that movie and seeing his lifelong obsession, seeing other climbers sort of talk about him and the experiences they had with him. | ||
| There's more going on than just climbing, right? | ||
| There's some sort of strange... | ||
| It's a chase of a mental state. | ||
| There seems to be a mental state of people that climb and want to reach the peaks of these things and navigate these difficult routes. | ||
| There's some sort of a game going on in your mind, and there's rewards. | ||
| There's this good feeling that everyone is getting while they're doing this. | ||
| You're filling yourself up with endorphins when you're accomplishing these things. | ||
| Is that safe to say? | ||
| Yeah, I could agree with that. | ||
| I mean, I think for me, climbing is my passion and it is essentially my vehicle for experiencing the wide spectrum of emotions that we all have. | ||
| It's my vehicle for exploring fear. | ||
| It's my vehicle for exploring achievement and success and ego and confidence. | ||
| And, you know, I think you could really, like, use anything in order to explore those emotions. | ||
| But everyone, I think, in some way is trying to find what their vehicle is to explore those emotions. | ||
| And for me, it truly is climbing, like, up there on LCAP. Like, I went through the whole spectrum of emotions the whole day, just up and down in, like, the most extreme ways possible. | ||
| When you have these moments where things don't go well, where you have a fall or when you had your concussion and you got really banged up, Overcoming those things, what is that like? | ||
| Because I would imagine that it's such a scary thing to do. | ||
| Well, maybe for me, I don't know as much for you, but I'm watching pictures of you. | ||
| My hands sweat. | ||
| Legitimately. | ||
| Alex Honnold freaks me out. | ||
| Every time I see videos of him, because he's got nothing saving him, my hands start sweating. | ||
| I can't handle it. | ||
| No, I think all our hands sweat when we watch him. | ||
| Yeah, so for me, it's... | ||
| I think, for example, when I hit my head this time, the time I got the scar, I was on one of... | ||
| My day had gone so perfectly. | ||
| Like, I was climbing super well. | ||
| Everything was great. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Ouchie. | ||
| Yeah, that was the rock bottom moment. | ||
| So, I was climbing... | ||
| And I was in the sun. | ||
| I slipped off. | ||
| I felt like I was just going to have a really normal fall. | ||
| Super safe. | ||
| Like, nothing bad was going to happen. | ||
| And then I hit my head. | ||
| And I instantly, like, just felt the blood pouring down my face. | ||
| And it was super dramatic. | ||
| And it was super scary. | ||
| And I lowered down. | ||
| And Adrian sort of assessed me for concussion symptoms. | ||
| And tried to, you know, figure out if there was anything super serious. | ||
| And it turns out that there wasn't really. | ||
| And so... | ||
| It came time to decide, should I keep going or should I give up? | ||
| What's the best course of action now? | ||
| And honestly, in my head, part of me was like, I don't want to keep climbing. | ||
| I'm emotionally kind of destroyed and drained. | ||
| Tell me how it happened. | ||
| What was the sequence of events? | ||
| So I was climbing this pitch, and it's a pitch that I've never fallen on before. | ||
| And the next pitch is the hard one, which is where I think I went wrong. | ||
| Because I was sort of thinking ahead. | ||
| Like, I wasn't focusing on what was happening in front of me. | ||
| I was thinking about the next pitch. | ||
| And I was like, I need to get this one out of the way so that I can focus on the hard one. | ||
| And therefore, I was climbing the sun when it's too hot. | ||
| Like, the friction's not as good. | ||
| It's more slippery. | ||
| All those things. | ||
| And I was rushing it. | ||
| I didn't rest enough. | ||
| The friction is not as good when it's hot? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why is that? | |
| You want it to be cold. | ||
| Because your skin sweats. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| And the rubber on your shoes isn't as sticky. | ||
| It's just the heat radiates off the rock. | ||
| It just gets more slippery. | ||
| Imagine a granite face just baking in the sun. | ||
| Everything's more slippery. | ||
| And you're all sweaty. | ||
| And so it's just not ideal. | ||
| And I could have waited, but I didn't. | ||
| So I was climbing and I was like kind of traversing. | ||
| And so I was trying to do this move and I rushed it and I slipped and I fell. | ||
| But I had like a piece of gear down and to my right. | ||
| And I just didn't anticipate the physics of how I was going to fall, and I kind of fell sideways, and I couldn't get my feet out in front of me in time. | ||
| And we watched the footage later. | ||
| It was kind of like my head just bounces off the wall like a basketball. | ||
| And I must have just hit like a crystal or something with my forehead like some sort of something sticking out of the rock and there was just blood everywhere like head wounds they just you know they bleed they bleed a lot and so there was a lot of blood and I lowered down and I was super bummed it was just like my confidence was sort of shattered like I could I just kept thinking back to last year I was like oh no my attempts over everything was going so well like This sucks. | ||
| And I was letting myself go to that place of doubt and that place of like, it's over. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| And last year when you hit your head, you hit your head much harder? | ||
| Last year I fell on the first pitch of the route, so close to the ground. | ||
| But I fell like 50 feet and I hit a ledge and the rope didn't catch me. | ||
| I hit the ledge. | ||
| Because I was, again, rushing and not placing enough protection and So you fell 50 feet without being caught? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| I hit a ledge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my god. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It was pretty gnarly. | ||
| How did you hit it? | ||
| I don't remember because I got knocked out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I had this crazy rope burn on my neck. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was pretty... | ||
| I had... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had to get rescued like full on ambulance to the hospital like... | ||
| Spinal injury, worries, all that. | ||
| It was pretty serious. | ||
| It was definitely the worst accident I've ever had. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| I walked out of the hospital that day, which is incredible. | ||
| Like, that just doesn't happen very often. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's you. | |
| There's me. | ||
| Dressed up like a burrito. | ||
| And what... | ||
| So this is when they were carrying you to the hospital? | ||
| Yeah, that's a rope burn. | ||
| Look at that rope burn. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I also don't know how that happened. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And there's no footage of this, right? | ||
| You didn't review footage of it? | ||
| Well, it was dark when I started climbing. | ||
| So there actually is footage of... | ||
| Alex Honnold was belaying me. | ||
| There's footage of him belaying me. | ||
| What does belay mean? | ||
| Belaying is the person who holds your rope at the bottom. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So he was essentially holding my rope. | ||
| But... | ||
| It's a little bit nuanced because the way we were climbing, we were doing something called simul climbing. | ||
| Essentially, I was tied onto the top of the rope, he was tied onto the bottom of the rope, and we were climbing together up the wall simultaneously in order to save time. | ||
| And it's actually, it is a more dangerous form of climbing than just one person climbing while the other person belays them, and then I would stop and bring him up, and then we'd go on from there. | ||
| Instead, we were climbing together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| That makes me nervous just thinking about it. | ||
| So if someone falls, you're kind of connected to them? | ||
| Yeah, we are always connected to somebody when you fall. | ||
| But if he had fallen, it's kind of a complicated form of climbing that not many people do. | ||
| It's definitely like an advanced strategy. | ||
| So was someone filming? | ||
| Yeah, I have a filmer who's making like a movie about me and he was filming because he was there filming that attempt and he was filming Alex as Alex was like sitting on the ground getting ready. | ||
| And have you reviewed the footage? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What is it like watching yourself? | ||
| It's pretty like, it's hard. | ||
| It was hard. | ||
| I didn't watch it for the first few months. | ||
| I was like, I don't really want to see it. | ||
| How long does it take to fall 50 feet? | ||
| Imagine that's a few seconds. | ||
| Like a... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What's the... | ||
| How fast do you fall? | ||
| Isn't it like 9... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 9.8 meters per second. | ||
| So it's a couple seconds at least. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At least it felt that way. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| So that was something like a mental hurdle to get over for this year. | ||
| And then this year, something similar happens, only I was way higher on the wall, but I was really close to succeeding this time. | ||
| And I had this... | ||
| Part of me was like, well, I just want to give up. | ||
| Like, I don't want to do this anymore. | ||
| I want to be done. | ||
| Like, I'm tired of this project. | ||
| I'm over it. | ||
| When you got over the first injury, the really bad one from last year, what was the process of recovery? | ||
| How long did it take before you felt comfortable enough to climb again? | ||
| I was super lucky. | ||
| I think I definitely got away with one. | ||
| It was one of those things where I got away with one. | ||
| I walked out of the hospital. | ||
| I was back climbing. | ||
| I think I took a month off, but I went to Ecuador and climbed a volcano with my dad and went skiing and just did a bunch of things. | ||
| How long afterwards? | ||
| We went to Ecuador like four days later. | ||
| What? | ||
| What kind of crazy father do you have? | ||
| He's awesome. | ||
| My dad loves all sports and activities, and he's super passionate about everything. | ||
| And this was his dream, was to go climb this volcano in Ecuador, and we'd been planning it for months. | ||
| That was one of the reasons I felt so bad that I got hurt. | ||
| I was like, oh no, I'm supposed to go on this trip with my dad. | ||
| We had this whole plan. | ||
| He's been training. | ||
| He trained for months. | ||
| He's 65 years old. | ||
| It was one of those things. | ||
| So we went and we climbed the mountain, and thankfully I was able to do that with him. | ||
| It was really cool. | ||
| What kind of physical damage did you suffer in terms of how long did it take for you to recover? | ||
| Honestly, I would say I felt pretty normal within a month. | ||
| Real? | ||
| Yeah, a little back pain. | ||
| But concussion, right? | ||
| Concussion. | ||
| Yeah, the concussion symptoms were a little gnarly for a little while. | ||
| But four days later, you're climbing a goddamn volcano. | ||
| Yeah, well, we're headed there. | ||
| How long after that before you were actually climbing? | ||
| I... Maybe like three weeks. | ||
| So, while you were suffering from some, at least, concussion symptoms, you were climbing. | ||
| Yeah, not recommended. | ||
| We went to the doctor and she was like, you can't go to Ecuador. | ||
| You shouldn't do that. | ||
| And I was like... | ||
| Yeah, that's nice. | ||
| See ya. | ||
| When you watch the footage of the fall and you see yourself hit the wall and just the impact and what happened to you, does that obviously didn't deter you from doing anything, but has it changed the way you approach climbing? | ||
| Yes and no. | ||
| I think the reason that it was a little bit easier for me to overcome that hurdle was because it was really obvious what had gone wrong. | ||
| And it was really obvious that what had gone wrong was within my control. | ||
| I simply had not placed enough protection for the difficulty of the route. | ||
| It was an easy, easy climbing for me, but it was really dark, it was cold, it was slippery, and I was like, I was just going too fast and not placing enough gear. | ||
| So, but can you explain that to people? | ||
| So, when you're doing a route... | ||
| Or a route. | ||
| When you're on your way up, you decide, okay, I need to place something here in case I fall. | ||
| And you do it more when it's more difficult. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And you gave yourself a lot of space. | ||
| I did. | ||
| I gave myself a lot of space because I'd done it so many times before and I wanted to... | ||
| So you only have like a certain number, like a certain amount of pieces of gear, right? | ||
| And Alex and I were trying to go really fast and climb the first part of the route within a couple hours. | ||
| And so I was trying to conserve the gear. | ||
| So I was trying to like not use it very often so we could cover more distance in one go, you know, because otherwise you then you have to stop and then like because he follows me and takes the gear out. | ||
| So I place it. | ||
| He takes it out on the way up and then we meet and he gives it back to me and then we start again. | ||
| And so I was essentially just trying to conserve gear. | ||
| I wasn't placing enough. | ||
| And so the next time around, I was like, well, I'll just place more gear. | ||
| Like, I'll just be a little more conservative. | ||
| And so this season, it was a lot of... | ||
| It was some baby steps of, like, going back to that route and just placing a lot of gear so that I felt super safe. | ||
| And then, you know, climbing it in the same style that I was going to climb it with Alex, simul climbing it, but still placing more gear. | ||
| And then during my try this year, I actually told Alex, because he was... | ||
| He's definitely more comfortable than almost anyone I know on LCAP. | ||
| Most people at least feel a little bit of intimidation, a little bit of fear. | ||
| Like, you know, there's a little bit of anxiety around it. | ||
| And he's just so casual that he was like, "Yeah, you should just like, you know, just run it out. | ||
| Go all the way." Like, he was basically just wanting me to do it the same way that I was doing it before And I was like, you know, Alex, I'm going to be a little slower this time. | ||
| Like, I just, I think I need that for my head. | ||
| So he felt like you should do it with the same amount of gear that you did before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just don't fall. | |
| Just don't fall this time, Emily. | ||
| Kind of. | ||
| Real simple. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was like, you know, but Alex, one thing he always says is he's just like, okay, follow your heart. | ||
| And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to go slower. | ||
| Well, just so the audience knows, Alex told me that he did a route once and on his way up realized that he hadn't brought any chalk. | ||
| So he had to borrow it from someone else who was strapped to ropes. | ||
| So he's free soloing. | ||
| No chalk. | ||
| Says, hey, I don't have any chalk. | ||
| And the guy gives him a bag. | ||
| And he left the bag at the top so that when they got to the top, they could retrieve the bag. | ||
| Yeah, that's a classic Alex situation. | ||
| You know, what? | ||
| Like, how do you not bring... | ||
| Like, if you lift weights, you like chalk. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| Yeah, for me too. | ||
| I'm kind of obsessed with having chalk. | ||
| If I don't have chalk, I just won't go climbing. | ||
| I just can't imagine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But, you know, I think he's the type of person that, you know, going back to, like, talking about heart rate, like, I bet when he's in those types of situations, like, he's so relaxed, and his heart rate is so low, and he's just, he's a different, I think he's truly unique. | ||
| I think that he just has a different brain chemistry than a lot of us in terms of how he feels fear and how he can maintain that composure in a very dangerous situation. | ||
| Well, he's remarkably calm all the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, he just seems always, like, on this one plane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's got, like, this, like, 55 beats per minute that he just stays at all the time. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And it's great climbing with him, actually, because it kind of rubs off on me a little bit. | ||
| Like, when I climb with Alex, I feel more confident. | ||
| I feel more capable. | ||
| I tend to climb better. | ||
| Even though he kind of gives me shit all the time for being nervous. | ||
| He's always like, you're always nervous. | ||
| Like, you're... | ||
| You're always stressing out, but it's actually when I'm with him, I'm like, you know what? | ||
| I can chill out a little bit. | ||
| I can be on that wavelength a little bit more. | ||
| So that's part of the reason why I like climbing with him up there and why I chose him for this project. | ||
| Well, that makes sense. | ||
| I mean, I guess when you're around people that are, if you're doing a thing and you're around people that are excellent at that thing, it's contagious or at least inspirational. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think it's important to, like, do, yeah, to practice things that you want to be better at with people who are better than you. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| Do you remember vividly your first day climbing after the injury? | ||
| Yeah, it was in Ecuador. | ||
| I went to this little, like, crag, little climbing area after we climbed the volcano. | ||
| And I remember climbing, but I had, like, back pain. | ||
| From the injury? | ||
| Yeah, from the injury. | ||
| And I just remember thinking, oh, I'm still not back. | ||
| Maybe I'm not ready yet. | ||
| For me, I've always been the person who I don't really give myself a break very easily. | ||
| And I'm pretty hard on myself. | ||
| But this time, I think I learned a pretty valuable lesson that was I do need to be a little bit more gentle with myself. | ||
| And be okay with taking a step back. | ||
| So I actually tried climbing and was like, nope, not today. | ||
| I'm not going to do it today. | ||
| And I just took photos for the rest of the day. | ||
| And then I didn't climb again until maybe three weeks later. | ||
| What do you do to try to recover from something like that in terms of physical recovery? | ||
| Do you take ice baths? | ||
| Do you try to stretch? | ||
| Do you get massaged? | ||
| When you feel beat up from something like that, how do you bounce back? | ||
| Yeah, massage I do as often as I can, not enough. | ||
| And then really, really light stretching, like foam rolling. | ||
| I have like a little travel lacrosse ball that I lay on sometimes. | ||
| But again, I am not as diligent with it as I probably should be. | ||
| But then after I got injured, I was really diligent about it. | ||
| I think it's something that you kind of should maintain though. | ||
| And I definitely don't do that. | ||
| Now, do you do this professionally? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is this all you do? | ||
| How long has that been the case? | ||
| Well, I guess I should say that I became a true professional rock climber when I joined the North Face team. | ||
| And that was in 2008, right after I graduated from college. | ||
| That's a long time. | ||
| It's a really long time, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so you've been a pro for 12 years? | ||
| Yeah, 12 years. | ||
| And before that, I was doing a lot of competitions and You know, had sponsors and stuff like that, but I was also in school and then I went to university and I wanted to be a lawyer actually. | ||
| So I graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder and I was gonna like study for the LSAT and that's when the North Face approached me and I was like okay well I'll try this for a little while and see how it goes. | ||
| Like it's a cool opportunity to travel and see the world and keep climbing and then I just didn't Were you hesitant? | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| No. | ||
| But you went to school for something else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're doing something physical. | ||
| That's always weird, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because you're relying on your body, which can break. | ||
| But you can always go back. | ||
| My mindset, I think I was 20 years old. | ||
| I didn't have a super good... | ||
| Ten-year plan or whatever. | ||
| I was like, I'll do this for a few years and then I can just go back to school. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| But now, being a professional athlete has sort of morphed into this viable option to make a living. | ||
| For me, at least. | ||
| And when you're sponsored, how does that work? | ||
| Are you required to do a certain amount of climbs per year? | ||
| Are you required to make social media posts? | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| Yeah, so I work with a bunch of companies, but the North Face is the main one. | ||
| And... | ||
| It's essentially like a marketing job. | ||
| We are expected, I wouldn't say required, but expected to participate in social media, tell our stories, be open about that. | ||
| And then we do a lot of photo shoots. | ||
| We do a lot of expeditions, a lot of big trips, and then personal projects as well. | ||
| And And yeah, kind of expected to tell the stories of those and to work with the brand to make it worth their while as well. | ||
| So they just kind of want you to be cool and wear their stuff? | ||
| Like, you're out there doing cool stuff and you're wearing the North's face? | ||
| And be active within the brand and like, yeah. | ||
| How does that feel? | ||
| Like, that's what you do for a living? | ||
| I would be lying if I... I said that I didn't feel sometimes a little bit of, like, imposter syndrome, you know? | ||
| I'm kind of like, oh, like, do I actually deserve this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| That happens with everybody, though. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, why am I here? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, I don't... | ||
| I'm not special. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, that's probably why you're special. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I think people that actually think they're special genuinely, that's more of a hindrance. | ||
| I think you're better off with, yeah, I think you're better off feeling like shit. | ||
| Okay, I'm going to continue with that then. | ||
| I do, because I think it makes you work harder. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I think the people that think they deserve success, the people that think they're awesome, I think you don't have as much nervousness or at least doubt which forces you to work harder. | ||
| I think there's real value in feeling fake. | ||
| Like feeling like... | ||
| How am I here? | ||
| These other people, they're really good. | ||
| I know so many successful people that think that way, whether it's athletes or comedians. | ||
| So many people suffer from imposter syndrome. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| I've experienced it. | ||
| I think it's important. | ||
| I think it makes you work harder. | ||
| I think if you just think you're the shit, you're not going to have that extra edge. | ||
| Yeah, and I guess like admitting to it, it also like makes you more relatable to people, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Like admitting that you struggle with self-confidence and like imposter syndrome and feeling like you're not good enough all the time is... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It helps other people be like, oh yeah. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cool. | |
| I feel that way too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I think it's valuable for all of us. | ||
| Because we want to know that you're human, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're doing a superhuman thing, right? | ||
| You're climbing the face of a giant goddamn mountain. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| When someone does something that everyone else is terrified of, we want to know, like, what is that lady like? | ||
| And you're like, oh, I feel like a fake. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People are like, oh, she's like me. | ||
| I'm terrified most of the time. | ||
| And I cry a lot. | ||
| That's what it's like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, see, people love to hear that. | ||
| They do. | ||
| They really do. | ||
| It's very valuable when you can relate, like, genuine anxiety and fears and things to people because you are doing an extraordinary thing with your life. | ||
| I mean, how many professional rock climbers are there? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there's a few. | ||
| There's not many. | ||
| There's more now. | ||
| A lot more lawyers. | ||
| Yeah, it's true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a lot more now than when you first started. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I mean, climbing has kind of exploded in popularity in a way with the resurgence of climbing gyms. | ||
| There's climbing gyms in every city now. | ||
| Multiple. | ||
| It's a really good way to get a workout. | ||
| People don't realize how hard it is to do. | ||
| It's really hard. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Yeah, I love it. | ||
| I think it's so cool that people now have access to experience climbing in the inner city if they want to. | ||
| I think it's rad. | ||
| And also now it's an Olympic sport. | ||
| It will be in the Olympics next year. | ||
| It was meant to be in Tokyo. | ||
| How do they do it as an Olympic sport? | ||
| They have a particular path that you have to try to climb up? | ||
| So it's three disciplines because it's a new sport. | ||
| They've essentially combined the three main disciplines of competition climbing into one. | ||
| So there's one medal and they combine the scores and they have lead climbing, which is with a rope, but the roots are longer, like say, I don't know, 50 feet or so. | ||
| So it's sort of like an endurance challenge. | ||
| And it's like they set a path and it's meant to be difficult. | ||
| And each person gets one try. | ||
| And whoever gets the highest wins that discipline. | ||
| And then there's bouldering, which is like shorter, no ropes. | ||
| The movements are like more powerful, more explosive. | ||
| There's a little bit of a parkour element. | ||
| There's like a lot of jumping around. | ||
| Yeah, there you go. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| Lots of like big features, like volumes. | ||
| Where's that guy going? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Where's he going? | ||
| It's really confusing. | ||
| It's super entertaining. | ||
| If you're hanging in that position, what is your next viable option? | ||
| He's going to throw his feet up to where his left hand is, and then he's going to bring his left hand into his right hand. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What? | ||
| That's my estimate. | ||
| That's me reading it. | ||
| And then where does he go? | ||
| And then he's going to go to that next red one with a sticker on it. | ||
| That one? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| It's incredible. | ||
| Like, bouldering competitions are so cool. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| They're super entertaining. | ||
| And they all have that sort of Alex Honnold body. | ||
| Long, lean, very thin, but not too thin. | ||
| But not everyone. | ||
| A lot of the women are quite small. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Climbing is unique because it's really complicated and it kind of caters to all different body types. | ||
| In a lot of ways it's better to be taller, but in other ways it's sometimes better to be shorter because it's always different. | ||
| The roots are always different. | ||
| I would imagine tall would be better because you have a longer reach. | ||
| You can reach up and grab a hold of stuff. | ||
| Most of the time, but I can put my feet a lot higher than a lot of people, and I'm a lot more flexible than most people. | ||
| What do you mean by you can put your feet higher? | ||
| I can put my foot above my head if I want to. | ||
| Oh, because you're flexible from gymnastics? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| And do you maintain that? | ||
| Do you work on your flexibility just specifically for that? | ||
| I should. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| There's a lot of this with you. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Oh, I should get more massages. | ||
| You can't do everything. | ||
| Oh, I guess. | ||
| So that's lead climbing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that's with the rope. | ||
| And you just get one try on the route. | ||
| With the bouldering, you get like, they call them problems. | ||
| So you get maybe four or five of those problems. | ||
| And you get five minutes on each one. | ||
| And however you do on each one gives you a score. | ||
| And then you have speed, which is right there. | ||
| Same route, everywhere, all the time. | ||
| And it's just, it's speed. | ||
| I've seen some of those speed ones. | ||
| We've watched them on the show. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| Yeah, it's really fast. | ||
| They go flying. | ||
| Super, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really, really cool. | ||
| It doesn't seem real. | ||
| Like, how does a person get up a wall like that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, they also have a different... | ||
| Like, speed climbers actually have a different body type than a lot of the, like, sport climbers and boulders. | ||
| Because a lot of it is, like, really lower body explosion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's Olympics. | ||
| Whoops. | ||
| This is music to the explosion. | ||
| Oh, look at these guys going. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, the rope is not helping them. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Because if you saw someone just make up their way up a wall like that with no rope. | ||
| No, the rope's not helping them. | ||
| That is insane. | ||
| Yeah, so that's speed climbing. | ||
| You have to be so strong to do that. | ||
| I mean, that is just bonkers. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I've actually never speed climbed, really. | ||
| Really? | ||
| How come? | ||
| Not like that. | ||
| Just because I've always focused so much on technical, difficult rock climbing. | ||
| And other things, like mountains and all these other disciplines. | ||
| What is this person doing? | ||
| That's bouldering. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So this is trying to figure out how to do it. | ||
| She's trying to solve the problem of like... | ||
| She has no rope. | ||
| No rope. | ||
| So if she falls, she's just going to what? | ||
| She's just going to hit the pads. | ||
| The pads are super thick. | ||
| They're almost like pole vaulting pads kind of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Maybe a little more firm than that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's wild to see. | ||
| Yeah, so that's the Olympics. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're not interested in that? | ||
| I mean, I would have been if I was like 10 years younger. | ||
| You've passed that. | ||
| There's no way I could qualify for the Olympics. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| Why do you say that? | ||
| Because it's such a different, it's a different, it's almost like a different sport. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I understand. | |
| And it takes like the dedication to only doing that for years and years and years. | ||
| And I did that throughout my teenage years and then I kind of moved on to other things. | ||
| I would imagine that hand strength is one of the most important things. | ||
| Like the ability to hang on to stuff. | ||
| Yeah, that's why I travel with my hangboard and hang all the time and do a lot of... | ||
| Where do you put the hangboard when you travel? | ||
| Yeah, I bring those pull-up bars that you screw on between the door jamb and then I hang it from there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then you just hang. | ||
| So if you're staying in a hotel, you just hang in the bathroom wall on the door? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And do you do it for time? | ||
| Do you do reps? | ||
| Do you chin-ups? | ||
| What do you do on that? | ||
| Yeah, all of that. | ||
| There's exercises you can do. | ||
| There's a lot of I have research now that's been done on finger strength. | ||
| So that's one of the things you use like that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The one I have is wood because the wood is actually a little bit friendlier for your skin. | ||
| But yeah, similar. | ||
| You do different hand positions and sometimes you'll hang for like five seconds and then take ten seconds off and do it again. | ||
| And then sometimes you put weight on your body. | ||
| Mono? | ||
| Yeah, mono. | ||
| Someone can hang from one finger? | ||
| People can do crazy stuff. | ||
| People can do pull-ups from one finger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What?! | |
| One hand, one finger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pull-ups. | |
| Yeah, people can do front levers from, like, one finger. | ||
| Climbers are amazing. | ||
| What is the front lever? | ||
| When you, like, put your body to parallel to the ground. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, when you lean back? | |
| Oh, Christ. | ||
| I bet you could find a video of that. | ||
| Sure you could. | ||
| I'm nervous now. | ||
| So, someone can... | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I can't do that. | ||
| That is freaky. | ||
| Jan Hoger is a beastie single finger plank man machine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I would agree with that statement. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That's crazy that he can do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That guy must have ridiculous fingers. | ||
| He's one of the strongest climbers in the world. | ||
| Yeah, I would imagine. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| Is this him climbing stuff with no feet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Yeah, that's the tendons and all the stuff in your fingers and your hands. | ||
| They must be ridiculous. | ||
| Those are pinkies, yeah. | ||
| Oh my god, that's crazy. | ||
| I just heard something. | ||
| If you lost your pinky, you lose 50% of the strength in your hand. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't have confirmation on that. | ||
| It's one of those like Snapple fact type facts I saw on the internet recently. | ||
| How's that possible? | ||
| That's a bummer. | ||
| That doesn't seem right. | ||
| Because when I draw my bow back, I'm only using three fingers. | ||
| But maybe it's like the way it's all connected. | ||
| It doesn't feel weak at all. | ||
| I think it's like if you cut it off, not like if you've done other work to strengthen the rest of your hand. | ||
| I guess if I'm drawing my bow back, I'm barely using it. | ||
| I mean, my hand is just kind of locked in place. | ||
| It's more my back and shoulders. | ||
| But I feel like that's not real. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Maybe it's hacked off. | ||
| Yeah, but it's all linked back into here, you know? | ||
| Right, in your forearms and everything. | ||
| That's what makes sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you squeeze it. | ||
| Your pinky provides half your hand strength. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Stick your pinkies out and raise your glasses to toast your fifth finger. | ||
| Without it, your hand would be half as strong. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's weird that things are connected in that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, there's a sort of, it's a unit. | ||
| It's not one thing. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's all working together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So when you do your hand strength exercises, do you have like a routine where you go one, two, three, four, you'll work all of them? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I tend to do like hand grip positions. | ||
| Like I'll hold on to something like this and I'll hold on to something like this and I'll hold on to something like this. | ||
| So you must have, like, ridiculous hands. | ||
| I mean, my hands are strong, but they're not, like... | ||
| That's one of my weaknesses, I think, in climbing is my finger strength. | ||
| So I'm always working on it. | ||
| Do you have to make sure that your body weight is very light when you do something like that, too? | ||
| Like, do you dye it down before you do something to make sure that you're as light as possible? | ||
| Yeah, it's an interesting subject because climbing is like a strength to weight ratio sport. | ||
| It does benefit you to be lighter, but at the same time, it's really easy to take it too far. | ||
| And then once you take it too far, it can be very bad. | ||
| Injuries, weaker. | ||
| And eating disorders is definitely a thing in climbing. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I was going to get to. | ||
| And I suffered from it when I was younger, when I was heavily involved in competitions. | ||
| And it's like once you start to experience a little bit of success from losing weight, there's so much more incentive to just keep going down that road. | ||
| And I think it's actually a pretty dangerous road, and it's something that we're... | ||
| Climbers are starting to talk about more, which I think is super good and super healthy, especially with the growth of climbing competitions and with the growth of youth becoming more interested in climbing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The edge that you get from doing that is not worth pursuing because there's a lot of negative drawbacks to it. | ||
| It is, and it's pretty temporary, and it's not very sustainable. | ||
| In a lot of ways, I feel lucky that I came out of that period and kept climbing because it's hard to... | ||
| To go through that phase and then come out of it and have to deal with not climbing as well for a while. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| It's kind of a mindfuck. | ||
| That's why I talk about data the way I do because sometimes I can't emotionally handle it. | ||
| I need to take a step back and just be intuitive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sometimes there's too much data and not enough just being. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was one of those athletes when I was younger that I was like obsessed with the number on the scale. | ||
| I was obsessed with how much I ate. | ||
| I was obsessed with every little thing. | ||
| And it got to the point where it just almost destroyed me, if that makes sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's a giant problem with people, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just in general, being obsessed with the scale and the numbers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're in a sport where you're literally carrying your body weight up a mountain, it's not just... | ||
| So many girls are obsessed with the scale for whatever reason, even if they look good. | ||
| They don't like the number. | ||
| You look great, but you weigh 145 pounds. | ||
| Shit, I hate that. | ||
| I want to be 135. But you don't. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's complicated because then I think, yeah, society, especially as a woman, you kind of tie your self-worth to it and then you tie like your, yeah, your value to society to it. | ||
| And then if you bring in the athletic side, it's like a lot to handle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, that's something I've, I mean, I still struggle with it. | ||
| It's so interesting. | ||
| There's this woman who is on Instagram. | ||
| I forget her name, but she's a beast. | ||
| And I mean that in the best way. | ||
| She's just a fucking tank. | ||
| She's so strong. | ||
| And I don't know what she does, some sort of fitness trainer or something like that, but she got on a scale to show that she's 180 pounds. | ||
| And she's like, I'm 180 pounds all week. | ||
| She looks fantastic. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| She's in amazing shape. | ||
| But she's a big gal. | ||
| But by getting on that scale and showing, like, hey, fuck your numbers. | ||
| I was like, that is great. | ||
| It sounds so crazy to say, especially as a man, that it's brave of her to show her weight. | ||
| Because men don't give a fuck. | ||
| If a man's 180 or 170 or 190, unless you're trying to get big, you don't care. | ||
| Or unless you're trying to lose weight. | ||
| No guy says, oh, no woman's going to like me. | ||
| I'm... | ||
| You know, 195 instead of 170. Like, that's nonsense. | ||
| No guy thinks like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, a number. | ||
| Like, you have to... | ||
| Like, no one wants... | ||
| I don't want anybody to know my number. | ||
| But for a woman, that's a big issue. | ||
| It's a big issue, for sure. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| I mean, I don't weigh myself anymore. | ||
| Because I'm just like... | ||
| Right. | ||
| I don't need to deal with that. | ||
| It's common for women that have had those issues that just decide, you know what? | ||
| I'm just going to be healthy and look good and not think about it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And that's one of the things that's been... | ||
| There's a lot of things that I actually don't like about social media, but that's one thing that I've really appreciated is women, like you're talking about, sharing those things and being like, yeah, this is who I am. | ||
| I think she gets enough likes. | ||
| Yeah, that it's okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's hot. | ||
| She knows what she's doing. | ||
| She's kind of being brave, but also... | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| She gets enough compliments. | ||
| But, you know, she's like six foot one or something like that. | ||
| But she's a tank. | ||
| But I just admired that she put that number out there. | ||
| She showed it and she was like, look, this is who I am. | ||
| And for a lot of people, that's important because there's probably people that are struggling with their own weight and they see her and they go, oh... | ||
| Okay, I'm going to take a little of that. | ||
| I'm going to adopt a little bit of that attitude. | ||
| Just don't worry about the number. | ||
| People can obsess with stuff like that. | ||
| It's so interesting because it's so sad when you see people that are anorexic. | ||
| There was a woman that was anorexic in my yoga class. | ||
| I vividly remember being in class, laying down the mat, looking over and just go... | ||
| Like, oh, no. | ||
| Like, looking at this girl who was like a skeleton, like, what do you say to her? | ||
| She was young, right? | ||
| She's probably in her 20s. | ||
| And I'm looking at her, and I'm thinking, shit. | ||
| And then I asked the yoga instructor, who was my friend, I said, do you know her? | ||
| Like, what is her deal? | ||
| She's like, yeah, she's struggling, and she doesn't think she is, and it's a real issue, and I don't know what to do. | ||
| And I'm like, you can't even say anything. | ||
| Like, what do you say? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's hard to talk about because it's not really talked about. | ||
| And it's not my place. | ||
| I don't know her. | ||
| It's so personal. | ||
| It's super personal. | ||
| And I think it's a tricky subject for sure. | ||
| I've had people come to me and be like, what do I do? | ||
| I have a friend who it seems like they're struggling. | ||
| And it's hard because going through it myself, whenever people brought it up, you get very defensive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's really easy to be like, well, I don't have a problem. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| I'm doing this for my sport. | ||
| This is what I need to do. | ||
| This is how it needs to be. | ||
| And so I think it's a struggle sort of like navigating how to deal with that, especially with friends and family or something like that. | ||
| But I think just overall shifting the culture behind it is maybe a possible solution. | ||
| When you're training for something big like this, do you alter your diet? | ||
| Do you have specific foods that you eat when you train? | ||
| Or do you just always maintain a healthy diet? | ||
| I'm pretty healthy. | ||
| I also, because of my past obsessiveness about food, I try to not worry about it too much. | ||
| Also because I travel so much and I love food and I love sharing food and cooking food and eating food. | ||
| It's just, I don't necessarily worry too much about what I eat. | ||
| I'm a very healthy eater. | ||
| I like everything. | ||
| I try not to worry about it too much. | ||
| If I want to eat ice cream, I eat ice cream. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good for you. | |
| Now, when you go on a long climb like that, do you carb load before you do it? | ||
| Do you carry a lot of food with you? | ||
| Yeah, I carry a lot of food with me. | ||
| It's hard for me to eat on the wall. | ||
| It's hard for me to, like... | ||
| Because I get nervous. | ||
| When I get nervous, you lose your appetite and all those things. | ||
| And so I try to bring, like, simple foods with me on the wall. | ||
| And, like, a mix of fat. | ||
| Just, you know, well-balanced foods. | ||
| And easy. | ||
| I don't usually bring like meals. | ||
| Like I actually brought a burrito on the wall the day that I was going to climb and I didn't eat any of it. | ||
| So you didn't eat it all while you were on the wall or you just didn't eat the burrito? | ||
| I didn't eat the burrito. | ||
| I ate like cereal and nuts and beef jerky and candy because I love candy. | ||
| But it's probably good too to get some extra sugar, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's exactly why. | ||
| Yeah, and replace the glycogen in your muscles. | ||
| So what is your diet like normally? | ||
| Like what kind of foods do you eat? | ||
| When you say you eat healthy, do you... | ||
| Yeah, I eat super healthy. | ||
| I love pancakes in the morning, but with protein and avocado toast and eggs, whatever. | ||
| Salad, vegetables. | ||
| I imagine you're burning off an insane amount of calories doing that too. | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| It depends on what you're doing. | ||
| If you're free climbing all cap in a day, then yes. | ||
| But if you're just going to the gym for an hour and a half, or if you're just hanging... | ||
| On the hanging board. | ||
| I see you have some sort of a fitness watch on. | ||
| What are you wearing? | ||
| Oh, I have this. | ||
| It's new, actually. | ||
| Adrian got it for me. | ||
| It's a Garmin. | ||
| It's like a Phoenix Sapphire. | ||
| Oh, cool. | ||
| Sweet looking. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Does that measure output, calories, heart rate? | ||
| It's meant to, yeah. | ||
| It measures your heart rate. | ||
| I use it for my running and stuff. | ||
| I'd be so curious to see how many calories you burn on a 21 hour trip up the side of a mountain. | ||
| I'd imagine thousands. | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| But that's the thing, I don't wear it when I climb because you put your hands in the cracks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| And they get all stuck. | ||
| Right, that's right. | ||
| I should have thought of that. | ||
| Yeah, but the amount, like, it's also like a mental thing too, right? | ||
| Your mind must be burning a shit ton of calories too. | ||
| Yeah, I think there's a lot of mental fatigue that goes on. | ||
| We were talking the other day about chess masters and that when chess masters play in these tournaments, they burn 6,000 calories a day. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, they found out that these guys were losing incredible amounts of weight over a weekend. | ||
| Because of stress. | ||
| Just thinking. | ||
| Just thinking. | ||
| I could see that. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense, but your brain, when you're calculating all these different maneuvers and different places that your opponent can move his pieces, you're just constantly... | ||
| You've got all these RPMs going. | ||
| Even though you're sitting there, your body's just burning off fuel. | ||
| Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. | ||
| So I'd imagine some of that's going on, too, with you. | ||
| Because you're physically climbing, but you're also thinking, you're calculating, you're trying to stay calm. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| There's a lot going on, yeah. | ||
| Do you meditate? | ||
| Do you have any... | ||
| Mental exercises that you participate in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I visualize. | |
| So I'm one of those people like I can I can almost remember every move of like the Golden Gate. | ||
| Then I'll like go, I'll like lay in bed at night and like go through all the moves over and over and over again, almost to a fault, you know, like, I can remember things really well. | ||
| And I'll go over sequences and I'll, I'll lay down and I'll think about myself climbing, like executing these sequences really perfectly. | ||
| So, you know where all the handholds are, where the footholds are? | ||
| You know what freaks me out about that stuff? | ||
| It's like, don't those break off sometimes? | ||
| Yeah, it happens occasionally, yep. | ||
| It depends on the type of rock. | ||
| Like, some rock is more prone to breaking than others. | ||
| The way you said that was way too casual. | ||
| But it doesn't happen. | ||
| Yeah, it happens occasionally. | ||
| Occasionally. | ||
| Not very often. | ||
| Yeah, and especially like the well-traveled routes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, they don't have as much. | ||
| What if some giant person was on it before you and they put their heavy ass on that handhold? | ||
| Yeah, sometimes I worry about that. | ||
| I would imagine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you go to grab it. | ||
| I'm like breaking my, yeah. | ||
| Snap. | ||
| So I was looking at some of the things that Alex was holding onto when he was free soloing, and I'm like, what are you doing? | ||
| That's not holding your body weight, man. | ||
| Yeah, that rock is pretty solid, though, and a lot of people climb that route, and it's been there for, you know, forever. | ||
| And when you're imagining it in your head, do you sit yourself down and go through the whole path? | ||
| Because the path takes 21 hours to do, so you can't really go through the whole thing. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I skip over some of the easy parts, but the hard parts I have really ingrained in my brain. | ||
| To the point where I think it kind of hinders me sometimes because I'll go through the moves and then I'll go through all the things that can go wrong. | ||
| And then that kind of messes with me a little bit. | ||
| Do you write it down? | ||
| I've written it down too, yeah. | ||
| You draw the path? | ||
| I draw it out. | ||
| Only I can understand it, but I draw it out. | ||
| Is it sort of an Emily code? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I just try to draw the holds and then I write where my feet go and where my hands go. | ||
| Do you think of this career that you are currently involved in as a life journey? | ||
| Is this going to be something that you do your whole life? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you are a climber. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you have any other ideas of things that you would like to do in this life? | ||
| Or you just... | ||
| This is your career, no matter what? | ||
| I mean, I think at this point, this is my career. | ||
| I'm pretty well established as a professional rock climber, and I feel... | ||
| Yeah, I'm not bored. | ||
| This is what I want. | ||
| I'm super excited for future opportunities, for future objectives and goals and things like that. | ||
| And Adrian and I have sort of like built this life together. | ||
| Did you meet him climbing? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I met him on Mount Everest. | ||
| Aww. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Both up there risking our lives. | ||
| Yeah, and he has a guiding business alongside his professional athlete career. | ||
| And so, yeah, I feel like we've just built this life together and we're both super passionate and supportive of each other. | ||
| And I think we want to have a family someday. | ||
| It's really cool that you're involved with someone who has the same passion too. | ||
| They'll understand you. | ||
| Yeah, it's super important and it's important because both of us go away on separate trips sometimes and instead of the other person just sitting at home kind of worrying and stressing out, we kind of understand what the other person is going through. | ||
| It feels like we have a really symbiotic relationship in that way because we really do understand what the other person does. | ||
| Beyond. | ||
| I mean, no other person is ever... | ||
| A person who doesn't climb at all? | ||
| I would imagine... | ||
| It'd be hard, I think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not impossible, but... | ||
| My female friends that are comedians have the sort of same attitude about normies, what they call normies, like some normal person who doesn't do comedy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They're never going to understand them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like, just that... | ||
| I have some female friends, like my friend Eliza Schlesinger, she has a husband who's a chef, and it works out great. | ||
| But a lot of them, they'll try regular people, and they wind up dating comedians, because no one's going to understand them. | ||
| We have the same joke in climbing, I think. | ||
| People always say, oh, I'd really like to not date a climber, but then it's like, well then... | ||
| You gotta, like, go do other things besides climbing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| What are you gonna do? | ||
| Where are you gonna meet those people? | ||
| And then when you meet them, what are you gonna do with them? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| Like, where are you gonna go? | ||
| You're gonna go out to eat, I guess. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Hey, I'm gonna go climb for 20 hours. | ||
| What are you doing today, Bob? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, I thought we could hang out. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Okay, well, come climb with me, bitch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The Mount Everest thing is an odd one, right? | ||
| Because it seems to be sort of a weird sort of bucket list thing that's also attached to a social... | ||
| This is like a social medal to, oh, I climbed Everest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have a very intense love-hate relationship with Mount Everest. | ||
| It is like, I was very fortunate to be able to go on an expedition to climb Mount Everest, and that's where I met Adrian, and My life sort of changed directions after that. | ||
| But that said, he goes back to Everest every single year to guide or for his own personal projects or whatever that may be because he guides Everest every year. | ||
| And so for me, it's like Everest just became a part of my everyday life. | ||
| You're always planning for the next expedition or on the next expedition or thinking about the expedition. | ||
| And so it just kind of took over in a way for a few years there and I got really, really tired of it. | ||
| How many times have you climbed Everest? | ||
| I've only climbed it once. | ||
| Adrian's climbed it eight times. | ||
| How many bodies did you see? | ||
| That's a common question I get. | ||
| There are bodies on Everest. | ||
| I... Maybe saw like two or three. | ||
| That is one of the most wild things about Everest. | ||
| It is wild. | ||
| It's something that I think people in that world are pretty accustomed to. | ||
| That's a crazy thing to be accustomed to. | ||
| If your buddy leaves, you're like, we lost him. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| He's right there! | ||
| He's right there. | ||
| No, no, it's over. | ||
| Leave him. | ||
| You gotta go. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He's right there. | ||
| I can touch him. | ||
| I'm gonna reach down. | ||
| I'm touching his head. | ||
| He's gone, man. | ||
| We gotta let him go. | ||
| He's breathing. | ||
| And he's right there. | ||
| He's dead. | ||
| You gotta let him go. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| There's more than 100 bodies laying on Mount Everest. | ||
| But there's an open debate whether to remove them or leave them be. | ||
| Fucking leave them. | ||
| Yeah, that's kind of what, yeah. | ||
| It's actually super dangerous, is the thing, to remove bodies from Mount Everest. | ||
| Like, you're putting other people in danger to get them down. | ||
| And what's the point? | ||
| And also, I think there's something about, like, the first guy to ever climb Everest is still up there, right? | ||
| What's that guy's name? | ||
| Potentially. | ||
| It's kind of like a great mystery. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he vanished? | ||
| No, there's a... | ||
| So, the mystery of whether or not Mallory and Irvine summited Mount Everest is still like... | ||
| It's still out there, basically. | ||
| Oh, they might not have ever actually made it to the top? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| So, okay. | ||
| So, the first... | ||
| I don't want to mess this up. | ||
| The first ascent of Mount Everest happened in like the 50s, I think. | ||
| But there's this argument that maybe it happened way back in like the 1920s because there was an expedition to Everest. | ||
| George Mallory and Sandy Irvine like went out to go climb Mount Everest and they essentially disappeared. | ||
| And it's still a question as to whether or not they summited. | ||
| So this is someone who has to... | ||
| Is this people that have actually done it, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a list of people who are supposedly died climbing. | |
| George Mallory and Sandy Irvine set out to climb Mount Everest in 1924. And they essentially disappeared. | ||
| But nobody's sure if they summited and died on the way down or if they died on the way up. | ||
| Because if they summited and died on the way down, then they're the first people to summit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so people are still looking. | ||
| They actually found George Mallory's body in the 90s. | ||
| And as the story goes, he was meant to leave a photo of his wife on the summit, so he carried a photo in his jacket. | ||
| Possible ice axe injury following a fall, body found in 1999. Yikes! | ||
| So people are still looking for Irvine, because apparently he had a camera. | ||
| Oh, wow! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So if you find the camera, do you think the footage would be fucked? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's another question. | ||
| See, there's a photo of Mallory's body, Jamie. | ||
| It's kind of dark because you see his porcelain white frozen skin exposed by the sun and he's face down, I believe. | ||
| I think that's the photo I'm thinking of. | ||
| And he's got these old-timey clothes on, too. | ||
| So it's like, that's it. | ||
| That's the photo right there. | ||
| That is rough, man. | ||
| That photo freaks me the fuck out every time I look at it. | ||
| Because that guy is rock solid frozen there. | ||
| Like a piece of stone. | ||
| And he will be there unless climate change melts his ass. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean that is fucking crazy. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| Look at his shoes have rotted off. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| You can see the bones of his foot and everything. | ||
| That is hardcore. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was a long time ago. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, the equipment they had back then was like Nothing. | ||
| I know. | ||
| What kind of clothes were they wearing? | ||
| Probably wool. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I think there's a tradition to leaving the bodies there. | ||
| There's something about people that are doing it that know they're risking their life. | ||
| That's an affirmation. | ||
| Like, hey, there's a guy that didn't make it. | ||
| What you're doing is crazy. | ||
| It's really hard. | ||
| So I think... | ||
| It's one of the rare moments in life where I think there's some beauty to leaving a dead body on the spot. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And also it just makes sense. | ||
| It seems fitting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's also... | ||
| Everybody's doing that. | ||
| Other than the few douchebags that are just doing it for social cred, there's a lot of people that are just... | ||
| What they're doing is they've decided to test themselves in one of the most extreme ways possible. | ||
| You're literally risking your life to reach the highest spot. | ||
| Well, not the highest, but one of the highest spots on Earth. | ||
| It's not the highest, right? | ||
| No, it's the highest. | ||
| Is Everest the highest? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But is K2 the highest in terms of its relation to the ocean or sea level? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, that's something different. | ||
| It's different? | ||
| K2 is the second highest, but K2 is considered significantly more technical and dangerous than Everest. | ||
| Actually, there's a lot of mountains that are considered more difficult and dangerous than Mount Everest. | ||
| And when a guy decides, like, hey, you know, I want to show off and be the man who climbs Mount Everest in my neighborhood, do they have a requirement, like how much they have to train for something like that? | ||
| Because I know of rich people that are not really climbers that have climbed Everest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, so Everest is a really interesting one because Everest has become very commercialized, so there's a lot of companies that guide Mount Everest, including Adrian's company. | ||
| What's Adrian's company's name? | ||
| His company is called Alpenglow Expeditions. | ||
| Alpenglow? | ||
| Alpenglow Expeditions. | ||
| They have a website? | ||
| Yes, they do. | ||
| What is the website? | ||
| Alpenglow Expeditions.com. | ||
| You can sign up. | ||
| You can go anywhere in the world, basically, and go climb. | ||
| Go climb with Adrian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So there's a bunch of companies that guide Mount Everest from both sides. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| There's the website. | ||
| Are you backcountry ready? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're getting ready for backcountry ski season. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| And the guiding on Mount Everest has become pretty lucrative. | ||
| And there's guiding from the Chinese side and from the Nepal side. | ||
| And both of those governments obviously benefit from that. | ||
| And so from the Nepal side, it's a little bit... | ||
| Essentially, it's just up to the companies who they take and who they don't take. | ||
| So for Alpenglow, for instance, you do need previous requirements in order to climb Mount Everest. | ||
| You have to have climbed another 8,000 meter peak and have gone through some rock climbing skills schools. | ||
| But then other companies will just take anyone if you have the money and if you pay for it. | ||
| And that's where a lot of the issues on Mount Everest arise is because you have a lot of inexperienced people up there. | ||
| And you have a lot of inexperienced guiding going on. | ||
| And it's not regulated by the government or anything like that. | ||
| Like a lot of mountains in the world are regulated by the country that they're in. | ||
| Like Denali, for example. | ||
| And so the companies have to abide by a certain set of regulations. | ||
| But in Mount Everest, it's not really like that. | ||
| So it's a little bit of a free-for-all. | ||
| So that's why you hear about like the crowds and the lines and the dead bodies and the people dying. | ||
| A lot of that is due to inexperience. | ||
| Yeah, I can only imagine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But experienced people die too, right? | ||
| Experienced people do die, but less so. | ||
| For example, when Adrian goes to Everest, I do not worry about it. | ||
| What? | ||
| No. | ||
| Not at all? | ||
| Not even a little bit. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Because he uses oxygen. | ||
| That's another thing. | ||
| Using oxygen versus not using oxygen. | ||
| The one time I did worry about him, he climbed Everest without oxygen, which is infinitely more difficult and more dangerous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Experienced people do die up there, but less so. | ||
| Wim Hof climbed Mount Everest with sandals on and shorts. | ||
| It's the guy that goes in the breathing guy. | ||
| Yeah, I met him. | ||
| We did a little clinic with him. | ||
| He said, it's too easy! | ||
| Yeah, he's a character. | ||
| Oh, he's a freak. | ||
| He's a real freak. | ||
| Like a legitimate freak of nature. | ||
| And Will. | ||
| Does he have the world record for swimming under ice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| He's got some crazy record for swimming under ice and there he is, climbing Everest. | ||
| Fucking sandals on, with an ice pick, no oxygen, and shorts. | ||
| Wait, is that really? | ||
| Wow, that's crazy. | ||
| I've never seen that photo. | ||
| Dude, he's a freak. | ||
| Like, he's a legit freak. | ||
| Yeah, he's another one that's got some sort of different wavelength of mental strength. | ||
| Well, it is mental strength, but it's also breathing. | ||
| Yeah, the breathing thing. | ||
| Breathing exercises. | ||
| Breathing exercises are so strange because you think, well, I breathe. | ||
| Everybody breathes. | ||
| But you don't realize, here it is, Hoff has set the world record for the longest time in direct full-body contact with ice a total of 16 times, including 1 hour, 42 minutes, and 22 seconds on the 23rd of January, 1 hour, 44 minutes. | ||
| But this is a different record. | ||
| He did something where he swam under ice. | ||
| He swam in the ocean. | ||
| They cut a hole in the ice and he swam under it to another place. | ||
| Yeah, 57.5 meters. | ||
| He set the Guinness World Record for the farthest swim under ice. | ||
| 57 fucking meters under ice. | ||
| Jesus, that's long. | ||
| Yeah, have you ever done like those ice bath things? | ||
| No. | ||
| I've done cryotherapy, but it's easy. | ||
| It's three minutes. | ||
| But those ice bath things. | ||
| It takes your breath away. | ||
| It's really hard. | ||
| I don't even like cold showers. | ||
| No. | ||
| When I lived in Boston, there was a guy at my taekwondo gym. | ||
| His name was Bob Caffarella. | ||
| Everybody was scared of him because he was like an advanced black belt. | ||
| And he would shower in the winter in Boston in cold water. | ||
| So he'd get done training. | ||
| Yeah, it's really good for you. | ||
| But I didn't think it was good for you. | ||
| I thought it was just a... | ||
| For him, it was just like a mental strength thing. | ||
| He would just get in the water. | ||
| He lived in the gym, like literally lived in the gym and taught out of the gym. | ||
| Like he was super dedicated. | ||
| But he would turn the cold water on and just get in that cold. | ||
| Everybody was like, what are you doing? | ||
| We're all scared of him. | ||
| His mind was so strong. | ||
| Because Boston is cold as shit. | ||
| That water is barely not frozen. | ||
| And so he's in there with like 33 degree water just having it pour all over his body after training. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's pretty cool. | ||
| I mean, I think there is something to learn there. | ||
| Like the mind over matter thing. | ||
| Yeah, and also learning that it's actually beneficial for you and that you really do get something out of it. | ||
| Norepinephrine gets jacked through the roof. | ||
| When you get out of there, you feel amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, cryotherapy. | ||
| Like, I had Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and I took her to a cryotherapy place in Woodland Hills back when we were in L.A. And she had never done it before, but she was aware of the hormetic effects. | ||
| And so, as a doctor, she was really interested in, as a clinical researcher, interested in, like, what it felt like for her body. | ||
| And she got out of there. | ||
| She was like, this is amazing! | ||
| She starts rattling off all the things that are actually happening to your body. | ||
| I'm like, wow. | ||
| What a good person to bring to a cryotherapy place. | ||
| Like someone who actually understands the physiological benefits and is experiencing them and then relaying them to you as she's experiencing them. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty intense. | ||
| Have you done those cryotherapy places? | ||
| I've never been to one of those. | ||
| The real good ones, I mean, they're all good for you. | ||
| We have one here. | ||
| We actually have a tank here. | ||
| But it's one of these below the neck. | ||
| The really good ones is the whole body. | ||
| Your whole, like even your head? | ||
| Yes, everything. | ||
| Because the ones below, what they're using is liquid nitrogen. | ||
| You can't breathe it in. | ||
| If you breathe it in, you'll black out and people have actually died doing that. | ||
| Like where they've had no supervision and then set it up themselves. | ||
| The ones that they do at Cryo Healthcare in Woodland Hills and in LA, those are all freezing the air. | ||
| So they're using the liquid nitrogen to freeze the air and get the air down to 250 degrees below zero. | ||
| And then they pump this freezing cold air in the room and you can breathe it in. | ||
| So you wear a mask, a surgical mask you would wear with COVID. You wear earmuffs. | ||
| You wear mittens on your hands. | ||
| And you have to wear underwear. | ||
| And you wear socks and rubber Crocs. | ||
| That's actually a big one. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Oh, that's interesting. | ||
| I've never seen one that big. | ||
| Is that out here? | ||
| It may be. | ||
| There's apparently one out here like that that does full body. | ||
| Does it feel like unbearably cold? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You've done it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What does it feel? | ||
| It's fucking cold. | ||
| How many times have you done it? | ||
| Three times, maybe? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can't wait for the song to end because you know you get the fuck out of there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have certain songs that I listen to that I know I'm going to be freezing my ass off. | ||
| And you just do three minutes? | ||
| Three minutes, yeah. | ||
| But I did... | ||
| There's a guy who was working there that he was always trying to see how much I can endure because he's like, I think you can do more. | ||
| I'm like, let's see. | ||
| Just a glutton for punishment sort of thing. | ||
| So I got to three minutes and 40 seconds. | ||
| That's the most I've ever done. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's not enjoyable. | ||
| And I do it twice too. | ||
| I do it and then I take like 10 minutes off for my body to recharge and then I go back in again. | ||
| And supposedly there's a significant benefit in doing it two times. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you do it before training or after training? | ||
| I do it after training, but you really should put a large buffer. | ||
| No. | ||
| There's a great benefit in your body being heated up and your body's natural healing and recovering. | ||
| There's a lot of debate as to how much time you should spend post-workout before you get in an ice bath. | ||
| And that same applies, that same thought process applies to cryotherapy. | ||
| Sauna, on the other hand, they think you should do right after training. | ||
| So if you go, like, I'll train and then I'll get in a 185 degree sauna like right away. | ||
| So I'll turn the sauna on before I work out and then when I'm done with working out, I go right into the sauna. | ||
| And they think that that... | ||
| It conveys an additional benefit that's similar to continuing a workout. | ||
| So increase in red blood cells and increase that almost mimics a low level of blood doping. | ||
| So you get an increased benefit in your cardiovascular capability and then you also get the heat shock proteins that reduce inflammation so you feel really good. | ||
| So you can do that right after training, but they don't recommend ice baths or cryo. | ||
| They used to think you should do it right afterwards, but now they don't think so. | ||
| They think you should wait a couple hours, especially strength training. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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But it's cold as fuck when you're 250 degrees below zero. | |
| You can't believe how cold it is. | ||
| You're like, what is this? | ||
| So it's colder than like an ice bath then. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| But not... | ||
| I don't know if it's as uncomfortable. | ||
| Yeah, because the ice bath thing was really cold with Wim Hof. | ||
| We had to get in it and like sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or something. | ||
| And then we were like allowed to get out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Did you do a seminar with him or something? | ||
| Yeah, it was like... | ||
| The North Face has these... | ||
| They call them athlete summits. | ||
| And so we all get together for a few days and do activities and team building stuff. | ||
| And Wim Hof came to one of them and he did the whole... | ||
| This whole seminar. | ||
| And we had these kiddie pools with ice in them, and we all had to get in and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. | ||
| Well, there's a thing that you can get now that we're going to get here for the studio that is an ice bath, but you don't have to add ice to it. | ||
| It's a machine, and the machine chills the water right to the point where it would freeze. | ||
| And so you get to right about 33, 34 degrees, and then you climb in this ridiculously cold water. | ||
| And everybody says that that's a better option, because then you don't have to go to a gas station and buy a bunch of bags of ice every time you do it. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| Because my friends that have, like, just a tub, and they just throw it... | ||
| Like, every time you do that, you've got to go to the gas station or wherever you get your ice from. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Buy a ton of ice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you do any kind of, like... | ||
| Do you wear, like, Normatec boots or anything like that? | ||
| Do you have any... | ||
| Norma Tech boots. | ||
| What are those? | ||
| Those are those things that like a lot of runners put on. | ||
| Oh, the things you put on that compression? | ||
| Jamie, you just did it, right? | ||
| It's pretty dope, right? | ||
| No, I've seen that. | ||
| I don't do that, no. | ||
| Yeah, I have them. | ||
| I need to use them. | ||
| They sent them to me. | ||
| I got to put them on. | ||
| But Jamie, you really liked it, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How long did you wear it for? | ||
| It recommends to do, what is it, like 20 to 60 minutes. | ||
| I think I just did 30 just to try it. | ||
| And then I did another 45-minute session the next day. | ||
| Did you feel better when you got out of them? | ||
| What does it feel like? | ||
| I love the feeling of it. | ||
| Like, a leg massage? | ||
| If someone could massage my leg all day long, I'd pay an ungodly amount of money probably for it. | ||
| All day long? | ||
| I think I have restless leg syndrome, which may or may not be accurate, or I've looked up how I have it or why. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, I've heard of it, but I don't think I have it. | ||
| It's funny, I just said reckless leg syndrome, which is even more ridiculous. | ||
| The feeling of it bothers the shit. | ||
| It's really hard to explain. | ||
| That's why I think people don't think it's real. | ||
| I just can't sit still. | ||
| I can't keep my legs still. | ||
| I feel like I have to kick them or move them. | ||
| They're still right now. | ||
| Right now it's not bothering me, but sometimes at night if I'll be sitting and try to watch TV, I can't keep my leg comfortable. | ||
| Is that why you like running? | ||
| I thought running helped it, which the most recent time I did, I ran and it bothered me at night. | ||
| I was like, well, it doesn't fix it, but that's what it seems like it is. | ||
| It's like you're not moving enough during the day. | ||
| You have some buildup and that's what it is. | ||
| But I don't think that's what it is. | ||
| And there's got to be studies that people have looked into that, but either way. | ||
| Have you ever tried bodyweight squats? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It doesn't do it? | ||
| There is not a thing I've found to fix this. | ||
| And I've had it since I was like 12. And I told my dad, he's like, shut up, you don't have that. | ||
| It was like commercials that would pop up on TV for some pills for it or something. | ||
| And I'm like, dad, can we try the thing? | ||
| And he's like, no, you're fine. | ||
| You're a kid. | ||
| Don't be an idiot. | ||
| These things, the Norma Tech boots... | ||
| I've seen them like, that's going to be the most amazing fix for that feeling. | ||
| It was. | ||
| I mean, I'm not saying I'm a doctor, everyone should get them, but I love it. | ||
| So after you did it, did it alleviate that feeling? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And every time I'm going to have it for now on, I was like, time to put the boots on and lay down, whatever, and I'll be probably fine. | ||
| And what's dope is you can put the boots on and just watch TV, right? | ||
| It's not that loud. | ||
| The machine's not loud. | ||
| It's battery-powered things. | ||
| I thought I had to leave it in the wall. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| You can take it anywhere. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Pretty cool. | ||
| So you never mess with any of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No. | ||
| We'll get something sent to you. | ||
| I mean, maybe I should. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alright, we'll get something sent to you. | ||
| But you use a lacrosse ball. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| I use a lacrosse ball. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's so easy. | |
| Those are phenomenal. | ||
| Just travel with it. | ||
| Love them. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| And you can really dig in with those suckers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Especially if you've got a good hardwood floor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can really lay on your back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The one that gets me is like the hip flexor. | ||
| Can you lay on that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's super painful. | ||
| Flexibility has got to be very important. | ||
| You said you were really flexible because you were a gymnast, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you don't have a routine? | ||
| Were you like a daily stretch routine? | ||
| No. | ||
| I do stretch. | ||
| I have like one of those Yoga Glow membership things and I'll... | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| What's Yoga Glow? | ||
| Yoga Glow is like a website that you go to and it's like... | ||
| You can watch a video of, like, a yoga class, basically. | ||
| And I'm really bad at going to yoga classes. | ||
| I actually don't, like... | ||
| I go to the climbing gym, but I don't like going to any other type of gym. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I just like to do it alone. | ||
| Yeah, I'm, like, very much into doing it alone. | ||
| Like, I don't like to go lift weights in front of people. | ||
| I'm just, like, a little bit, I guess, shy about stuff like that. | ||
| So I just do it in my home. | ||
| I have, like, weights and I have... | ||
| I do yoga by myself in front of the screen. | ||
| But I also don't like going to classes because they're just too long and I don't think I have the attention span sometimes for a full class. | ||
| So in order to get myself to do it, I'll log into this website and I'll be like, I'm going to do 15 minutes of hip stretches and I'll just do that. | ||
| And that's how I get myself to do it because otherwise I just, I'm just not good at sticking with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's not so crazy for a person who went all the way up a mountain in a day. | ||
| Well, I can stick with certain things. | ||
| Well, you seem very self-motivated, obviously, if you're doing all your training yourself and making your routines yourself. | ||
| So is that like a thing where you don't want other people motivating you or other people like guiding the exercise? | ||
| Because then you're not relying on intuition. | ||
| You're relying on someone to tell you what to do. | ||
| No, I actually love training with other people and climbing with other people, especially other women. | ||
| It just so happens that they don't live in the same hometown as me. | ||
| But there's a difference between training with other people and being led in a class. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you're weightlifting when you do it, you just decide. | ||
| I mean, I don't weightlift that much. | ||
| I do, like, opposition stuff. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| You know, like, as a climber, you're, like, constantly pulling all the time. | ||
| And so I'll do, like, light weightlifting for, like, my shoulders to, like, opposition stuff. | ||
| I don't actually weightlift that much. | ||
| What does that mean, though? | ||
| Like, you know, like I lift up a dumbbell and just, like, lift them up like this. | ||
| I's, Y's, and T's. | ||
| Oh, yeah, I do those. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I do I's, Y's, and T's. | ||
| And I do them on the TRX, too. | ||
| Would I's, Y's, and T's explain to people what you mean? | ||
| It's when you basically make an I, a Y, or a T with your arms. | ||
| Yeah, so straight up. | ||
| Straight up. | ||
| And then the Y, and then the T. And it's supposed to help with, like... | ||
| Strengthen your shoulders and the little stabilizer muscles. | ||
| Because I just get nagging. | ||
| My shoulder constantly feels like it's on the verge of getting injured, and it never has. | ||
| Well, it's kind of amazing. | ||
| You think about what you're doing. | ||
| It's so much shoulder. | ||
| You're always putting them in really compromising positions. | ||
| A common injury for climbers is a shoulder injury. | ||
| What does a climber do to strengthen their shoulders? | ||
| Is there a lot of band work? | ||
| Band work. | ||
| I was just going to say. | ||
| So I travel with... | ||
| In my climbing pack, before I climb, I pull out the band and do a bunch of band exercises. | ||
| Have you ever seen... | ||
| There's these bands that are called... | ||
| It's crossover symmetry. | ||
| That's what it's called. | ||
| And it comes with a workout, a chart that shows all the different various shoulder workouts. | ||
| But you do them so if it's on a door or a wall, you would put one on one side of the doorway and one on the other side so they cross this way. | ||
| And so you do your I's, Y's, and T's with that. | ||
| I do these where I pull back and then lift up. | ||
| There's all these, but it's really cool because it has a chart that comes with it that shows all the various exercises and what it targets. | ||
| And if you just make your way down, it's specifically designed to strengthen shoulders. | ||
| That sounds cool. | ||
| There it is right there. | ||
| I bought it from Rogue. | ||
| But it's really cool, too, because it has a bunch of different tension bands. | ||
| I mostly use a 25-pound one, but they go up high, like 40, 50, and they're ridiculously stiff to move. | ||
| But if you can force yourself, that's how I have it set up. | ||
| I have it set up on a Sorenx rack. | ||
| But if you can force yourself to go through those routines that you'll see on the chart, just make your way down the whole... | ||
| It's a phenomenal shoulder workout. | ||
| That's pretty cool, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I guess that's the hook for a doorway. | ||
| Yeah, so you can travel with it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's really dope. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| And it's simple. | ||
| They have it all set up, so you just follow... | ||
| These routines and it shows you what part of your back and shoulders that it's targeting. | ||
| And I've noticed a pretty significant alleviation of shoulder instability and weakness from it. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I need. | ||
| Yeah, because I've got to imagine like that would, when I was asking you what it's like being 30 day shoulder fix. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| What I was asking about being a professional athlete, I mean, obviously, I know a lot of professional athletes from working in the UFC, but the instability of... | ||
| It's not instability, but the... | ||
| Uncertainty of making a living with your own tissue and bone. | ||
| I mean, this is your career is reliant upon you not being injured in a sport that's incredibly injury prone, right? | ||
| Yeah, I think it is. | ||
| And I think as I get older, like... | ||
| I'm going to have to be a lot smarter about how I train. | ||
| And there is a lot of uncertainty. | ||
| Like, I remember when I was younger, in my head, that's why I was going to go be a lawyer, you know? | ||
| And then also, I was like, oh, well, once I decide to have a kid, then I'll just be... | ||
| I might just be done, you know? | ||
| But I think that... | ||
| The way that the job of a professional athlete has sort of morphed into so much more than just performing at your sport, if that makes sense. | ||
| If you're really actively engaged in social media, and if you're a good storyteller, and if you're a good speaker, there's a lot of other avenues you can take. | ||
| For instance, if you do get injured, it's also temporary, right? | ||
| And then with climbing, it doesn't just stop at the Olympics, for example. | ||
| I can do what I'm doing now. | ||
| I can go climb big mountains. | ||
| There's a lot of other ways to be a climber. | ||
| And so I think it elongates that career in some way, in addition to the fact that we can essentially become our own brand. | ||
| That makes sense, right? | ||
| So you can do all kinds of things with that, right? | ||
| Do you have any aspirations to expand your brand? | ||
| I hate that term. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's like kind of... | ||
| I love what you've done with your brand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like such an LA thing to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| You're right. | ||
| It totally is. | ||
| But I don't know how else to say it. | ||
| No, it's the best way to say it. | ||
| I just have like a glorified marketing job is what I have. | ||
| Well, in a way. | ||
| That's what I do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it's also... | |
| Sort of, yeah, but you've earned that position. | ||
| It's not marketing. | ||
| It's like you've done things that are pretty extraordinary. | ||
| It's not as simple as just a glorified marketing job. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| But I guess that's the imposter syndrome speaking. | ||
| I have aspirations to tell my story, I think, in an authentic way that people are inspired by and that people can relate to. | ||
| So are you thinking about writing a book or a documentary? | ||
| I mean, I'd love to write a book someday. | ||
| There is going to be a movie coming out about my whole process on El Cap and sort of like my journey as a climber, I guess, in the spring. | ||
| Who's putting that together? | ||
| My friend John Glassberg, who owns a company called Louder Than Eleven. | ||
| He's the one who's been with me the whole time. | ||
| He's been filming me ever since I started climbing in Yosemite. | ||
| And he was there the day that I did this. | ||
| And he was also the day you fell and got a concussion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Oh, so you have all that? | ||
| He has all of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah, he's got everything from the beginning. | ||
| God, that's an editing job, huh? | ||
| Yeah, we actually... | ||
| Adrian and I, he came to our house a few weeks ago and showed us just the storyline. | ||
| And it's just four hours of my life leading up to that moment. | ||
| So they're definitely... | ||
| Is that weird to you to see? | ||
| Yeah, it was pretty weird. | ||
| Because he got all this footage. | ||
| He went to my parents' house and got all this... | ||
| Old footage from my dad, you know, like from the cassette tapes and just, I don't know what they call when they like digitize it all. | ||
| And yeah, so I was watching like all this stuff from when I was a baby to like when I, my dad built a climbing wall in my garage and surprised me with it, which I completely forgot that even happened. | ||
| And he just like showed it to me and I was like, oh my gosh, this is, it was trippy for sure. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So is he going to do that and try to sell it to Netflix or something along those lines? | ||
| I mean, yeah, I think that's like an idea. | ||
| At this point, it's like his first documentary. | ||
| It's kind of like his baby at this point. | ||
| He's like pretty involved, pretty invested in it. | ||
| So we'll see where it goes. | ||
| You have to see Dirtbag then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| You have to watch that. | ||
| I can't believe you haven't watched it. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Now that I've seen the cover of the film, I've totally heard of it. | ||
| I know what you're talking about. | ||
| It's a sad story in a way. | ||
| In a lot of ways. | ||
| Because the guys... | ||
| The people that were around him sort of admired him at the same time pitied him. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| Because he... | ||
| You know, he would eat, like, old food and, you know, he never had any money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's always just laying around and... | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It's a weird... | ||
| But also, again, this dedication to this one singular obsession. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and that's kind of like a... | ||
| That's... | ||
| Kind of how the history of climbing in Yosemite began is with like the dirtbags, the people who went there and all they did was, that's all they wanted to do was climb. | ||
| And so they would just like go scrounge for food at the cafeteria and like sleep out in the forest and just go climbing and do whatever they could to climb. | ||
| That's such a weird thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For the average person that wants stability in their life and wants security and wants a 401k plan and wants a mortgage and all the things, the trappings of modern culture to see someone who's so completely rebellious that they literally want to sleep in the forest and climb mountains. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In a way, you know, that's what made them happy. | ||
| They, like, figured out what made them happy. | ||
| But you just got a big smile thinking about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, because that's romantic to you, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I'm thinking about it in terms of, like, how far climbing has come as well, you know? | ||
| And I think a lot of those people from back in the day, they were just, like, they saw themselves as, like, outcasts of society in a way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think just as with everything, everything changes, right? | ||
| And like with the evolution of climbing, like you now have people like me who are like making a living climbing. | ||
| And, you know, I do have a mortgage and I'm just like making it work, you know? | ||
| And in a way, I often wonder if those people like look at me and sort of like... | ||
| I feel like I've sold out or I'm not core, if that makes sense. | ||
| Oh, because you have sponsors? | ||
| Yeah, because I've made it work and I've worked the system, again, imposter syndrome, but I've worked the system to get to a point where I'm actually making a living and managing. | ||
| And it's just an interesting thought. | ||
| There's a little bit of, I don't know, I feel a little bit sensitive to it. | ||
| I'm like, oh no, am I not... | ||
| Just stay offline. | ||
| I didn't sleep in the forest enough days. | ||
| I didn't struggle eating fucking wood chips. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I would imagine, like any industry, it's filled with people who try to sort of malign and misrepresent who other people are and they get jealous and they get petty. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think it's mostly, like, social media. | ||
| Like, the one thing I learned through all of this the last few weeks were a little bit of a whirlwind. | ||
| Just because this whole thing went a little bit bigger than I thought it would. | ||
| So, yeah, I learned to, like, not ever log into Twitter. | ||
| Twitter's like the worst one for some reason. | ||
| Yeah, because it's all just opinions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At least with Instagram, it's, you know, photographs and then people comment on the photographs. | ||
| But it just seems to be the tone of Instagram seems to be markedly more positive. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I've realized. | ||
| And that's mainly... | ||
| That's the one I use the most is Instagram. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| But I logged into Twitter for the first time in like three years or something. | ||
| And I was just like, oh no. | ||
| I gotta get out. | ||
| Yeah, you can't read it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just... | |
| There's so many people there that are just filled with hate. | ||
| Yeah, but at the same time, I mean, I guess it's a good way to get news, I suppose. | ||
| Yes, it's a good way to get news. | ||
| It's not a good way to read anything about you, though. | ||
| No. | ||
| The mentions, you gotta stay out of that. | ||
| Don't click on that one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I learned that one. | ||
| This should be a way to make that invisible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Make that little thing invisible. | ||
| So you don't have to look at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a little like a haunted house. | ||
| Open the door. | ||
| All these crazy people that are just angry. | ||
| And there's a thing also where it's almost like having a box of rocks next to a bunch of windows. | ||
| It's like people just want to throw a rock. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, fuck Emily, that bitch. | ||
| You know, like, there's people that just are like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's some people that, and they're at work, and they're bored, or they're angry. | ||
| Yeah, people just want to be heard, I think, in a lot of ways. | ||
| Well, yeah, there's a lot of that. | ||
| That's, I mean, it's what we all want in a way, I guess. | ||
| Yeah, sorta. | ||
| Be seen and heard. | ||
| Until you are. | ||
| Yeah, until you are, and then you're like, okay. | ||
| And then you're like, this is not what I wanted. | ||
| I'm going to go hide. | ||
| Well, that is the peril of trying to be in the public eye. | ||
| You're making an attempt at garnering an enormous and unusual amount of attention. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's scary, honestly. | ||
| Like, it's almost scarier than, like, doing what I did. | ||
| Or climbing, in a way. | ||
| Because it's... | ||
| I mean, I'm just... | ||
| I'm, like, a sensitive person, I think. | ||
| And so throughout all of this, I've had to just learn to be, like, well, a little bit tougher. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| As long as it doesn't change you, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the danger, that you'd be more averse to risk, or you would be somehow or another, you would change. | ||
| You know, we were talking before the show about Hollywood. | ||
| Moving out here has made me realize how tainted the entire city is by the desire that people have to be chosen to be on things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| The problem with any kind of interaction with people on social media is that you can kind of change how you behave so that you, like, mitigate the amount of hate you get or you mitigate the amount of jealousy or mitigate the amount of pettiness. | ||
| And you can... | ||
| It can sort of... | ||
| It can fuck up your own journey. | ||
| It's pros and cons. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| There's definitely some pros in reading criticism because you can apply it to yourself and learn whether it's accurate and also realize, oh, this is a person that's really sad and they're trying to hurt all these other people. | ||
| So you can sort of take pity on them and it gives you a better understanding of just human psychology in general. | ||
| But it can also change the way you express yourself. | ||
| You could be more guarded. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And that can be a problem, too, because then you're not as free. | ||
| And ultimately, we all want to be free to express ourselves. | ||
| We all want to be free to show who we really are. | ||
| And I think the more you... | ||
| You intertwine who you are with other people's ideas and other people's expectations and sort of try to be everything for every person. | ||
| You kind of water who you are down. | ||
| Yeah, I would agree with that. | ||
| I mean, I think... | ||
| Yeah, and the more people... | ||
| The more people have eyes on you, the more they're going to have their opinions about who you are or who you might be. | ||
| Well, there was also people misrepresenting what you did, too. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Which was... | ||
| Which was hard for me because... | ||
| Let's explain. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Explain that. | ||
| So essentially, one news article... | ||
| I think it was like... | ||
| I don't know how it happened, but essentially the domino effect of someone changed the wording of what I did and said that I was the first woman to free climb El Cap in a day, which is a gross misunderstanding because the first person to free climb El Cap in a day was a woman, and her name is Lynn Hill, and she did it in 1994. And in climbing, that is like... | ||
| One of the most historic, groundbreaking achievements in climbing's history. | ||
| Like, Lynn Hill is an absolute legend that everyone knows who she is. | ||
| And so, you know, in a way, like, I got accused of, like, erasing history by, like, claiming to be the first woman. | ||
| Do no fault of your own. | ||
| No. | ||
| You did nothing. | ||
| I didn't do anything. | ||
| But I did. | ||
| I tried really hard to correct it. | ||
| But for me, it was a little bit mortifying because I... I grew up in the same town as Lynn. | ||
| I knew her growing up and she was an absolute hero of mine. | ||
| And I knew of her achievement as like, there's not that many sporting achievements that are that groundbreaking and that pioneering that are owned by a woman. | ||
| She did this before any human thought it was possible. | ||
| And for me, coming into climbing as a 10-year-old, I recognized that immediately and saw climbing as a space for women and a space where women could really excel. | ||
| And so, you know, managing to free climb El Cap in a day, for me, was personally very important, but also I just felt so much pride because I got to kind of do something that Lynn did 26 years ago. | ||
| That's so rad. | ||
| And then all of these stories came out saying that I was the first woman, so it was just kind of me being like, oh no, I didn't do that. | ||
| I don't want it to be this way. | ||
| And thankfully, I like... | ||
| I know her and I got to call her and be like, I'm so sorry. | ||
| And she didn't really care at all, obviously. | ||
| Well, we should be really clear. | ||
| It's nothing you said. | ||
| No, I didn't say it. | ||
| It's the way the editors decided to phrase it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think it's just like, yeah, it's just the way that media works sometimes. | ||
| Like they basically changed the heading of like that I was the first woman to free climb Golden Gate. | ||
| They just did a shitty job of researching it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so you were the first woman to free climb Golden Gate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| In a day. | ||
| In a day, which is a really difficult path. | ||
| Yeah, it's a difficult path. | ||
| Lynn free climbed to the nose, which is a different route. | ||
| And then free climbing El Cap in a day is just, in a day, is the important part because it's an achievement that, like, I think only maybe like 25 people have done in history and only four women. | ||
| And it's something, it's like the epitome of, like, big wall free climbing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So the hate that you got was unfortunate and misguided. | ||
| But people do that when someone achieves something remarkable. | ||
| And if there's any flaw in the way it's being represented, they're like, Oh, this girl, she's a racing history. | ||
| She's a fraud. | ||
| She's a this, she's a that. | ||
| But you didn't do anything. | ||
| All you did is just do what you did. | ||
| You climbed the mountains. | ||
| Yeah, and to be clear, I wasn't that bummed about it, but I was sort of like, oh, okay, this is how it goes. | ||
| I'm getting a lot of attention, and I'm going to have to deal with a little bit of negativity, because that's just how the world works, essentially. | ||
| Has that been cleared up of people kind of understanding that this wasn't you? | ||
| I think people have cleared that up, for sure. | ||
| I mean, there's definitely a little bit of like, oh, you should have been more on top of things, but... | ||
| You know, that's just people not understanding how this stuff works. | ||
| You don't even know how many articles are being written about you. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| There were so many articles. | ||
| Viral. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I put it up on my Instagram and when I did, I saw at least 10 different articles about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was trying to see like what was right and what was wrong. | ||
| And it's just one of those things where someone does something extraordinary and it becomes clickbait. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that was the big lesson about social media and hate for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think, you know, I don't think it's really changed much. | ||
| It's definitely made me feel... | ||
| I honestly, like, I feel like a little bit of responsibility in a way. | ||
| Like, I feel like I represent climbing to a broader audience right now, especially right now. | ||
| And so, like, I want to do a good job of that and I want to present it in, like, an authentic and honest way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But at the same time, I'm pretty aware that there's always going to be haters and that's just life. | ||
| That's how it goes. | ||
| Just don't engage. | ||
| Don't read the comments. | ||
| Don't read the comments and definitely don't respond to them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Does North Face or any of these other companies that you work with, do they have social media coaching or anything? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, we do some social media coaching. | ||
| Like at those athlete summits I was referring to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, now it's, but that was back in the day, like a few years ago. | ||
| Now I just feel like everyone is so accustomed to social media. | ||
| Everyone knows how to, like, how to work it. | ||
| The one thing that they're starting to get into that I'm still not quite there yet, I feel like I'm a little old for it, is TikTok. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| My 12-year-old, you met her. | ||
| She's a TikTokin' fool. | ||
| Stay away from that. | ||
| They can't help themselves. | ||
| They're like waiting in line at Starbucks TikTokin'. | ||
| I still don't. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| It's just one too many things, I think. | ||
| You don't need it. | ||
| It's odd. | ||
| But it's interesting. | ||
| I think it's interesting when things become viral. | ||
| I'm always fascinated by When something becomes... | ||
| Like, some things are just so boring to me, yet they become viral. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| And some things are just, like, the guy on the skateboard drinking cranberry juice, singing along to Fleetwood Mac. | ||
| Like, so simple. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So simple. | |
| But yet, resonates with people, and the guy becomes huge! | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think that was... | ||
| I feel like that was just, like, a moment... | ||
| He was... | ||
| It was a moment in time that, like, people were really looking for something positive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was, like, so lighthearted. | ||
| People love that song. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It just went over really well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Weird, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that, to me, is so fascinating. | ||
| That of all the things that people are doing online all over the world, that this guy just chilling on a skateboard with a bottle of cranberry juice... | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I thought it was great. | ||
| I did too. | ||
| I was like, oh, it just made me smile. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, so you send it to your friend. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It makes them smile. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how many millions of people saw it, though. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's fascinating to me. | ||
| Like, what pops? | ||
| What catches people's attention? | ||
| What goes viral? | ||
| I think it's just, like, a combination of, like, where we are as a society, like, what we're kind of, like, craving, and if someone, like, provides that with or without knowing it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Of course, because it was, like, right at the elections, and everyone was like, ah, the sky's falling! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I feel like that happened a little bit with my story, too. | ||
| Like, I had climbed the day after the election, and everyone was like, that's so crazy! | ||
| You climbed the day after the election? | ||
| Like, what was that like? | ||
| And I was like, well, I just didn't have to doom scroll all day. | ||
| Like, I didn't want to look at my phone. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| That's what everyone should have done. | ||
| That is the way to do it. | ||
| Yeah, everyone should have gone hiking. | ||
| Just do something. | ||
| Get out of the house. | ||
| Get out of there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do people ask your opinions on politics and do you sort of like avoid answering those questions? | ||
| Because there's no winner. | ||
| No. | ||
| You're going to piss somebody off. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, they do. | ||
| And I do share my opinions about politics. | ||
| And I do try to do it in a very diplomatic way. | ||
| I have a political stand on things. | ||
| I care about the environment. | ||
| I care about climate change. | ||
| I'm a part of an organization called Protect Our Winters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's one of my causes that I care about. | ||
| And so I'm pretty vocal about that. | ||
| Especially because you're really into skiing. | ||
| Yeah, I love skiing. | ||
| There's no skiing if everything gets warm. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that's sort of our avenue for talking to people. | ||
| If you love the outdoors, you should care about the environment. | ||
| And so people do... | ||
| But I'm also... | ||
| I'm one of those people that I really... | ||
| And Adrian and I talk about this all the time. | ||
| We try to listen to all the different sides. | ||
| And we try to have... | ||
| I think that one of our problems is being so divided. | ||
| And not being able to understand one another. | ||
| And that's the part that worries me the most. | ||
| Is the hatred that we all have for the other side. | ||
| And that us versus them type of thing. | ||
| And the inability to... | ||
| Understand each other is hard. | ||
| Or even want to understand each other. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, to just label each other the other side as the enemy no matter what. | ||
| And the weird thing to me is I know people personally that used to be like heavy-duty left-wing and they would argue like vehemently and passionately against the right-wing. | ||
| And then they switched over. | ||
| And then they're arguing passionately against the left. | ||
| And I'm like, you just might be a fucking complainer. | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| There's good and bad in all people, in all ideas, and in all ideologies, and in all political bends. | ||
| But what gets me is that What you talked about, that the climate and the environment could in any way be political. | ||
| That is so bizarre to me that we would have a division, left or right, that wouldn't or would appreciate the environment. | ||
| God, isn't that part of being a fucking human living on a planet? | ||
| Don't you want the rivers to be clean? | ||
| How is that political? | ||
| How is it political to not want the oceans to be filled with plastic? | ||
| How is it political to not be concerned about the death of animals because of oil spills? | ||
| Like, what is political about that? | ||
| That seems so nuts. | ||
| That seems like something like, universally, as a human, we should say, hey, first, take care of the earth. | ||
| This is the only one we have. | ||
| This is where we live. | ||
| Let's abandon left and right and all this nonsense. | ||
| Independent, libertarian... | ||
| Stop! | ||
| Earth! | ||
| Take care of Earth! | ||
| Yeah, and I mean, I think a lot of it... | ||
| Obviously, a lot of it has to do with money. | ||
| A lot of it has to do with where we get our energy from and who's in charge there. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| I think one of the biggest things... | ||
| I think a lot of people don't appreciate the Earth, is what I'm saying. | ||
| I think a lot of people don't have the opportunity to go outside and go on a hike. | ||
| They definitely don't like you do. | ||
| And to appreciate the world in the same way that I've been able to do so, or you have. | ||
| So I think one of the important things is to... | ||
| Is to show people what, like, nature has to offer. | ||
| Like, what being outside has to offer. | ||
| Like, the outdoors. | ||
| How much it can contribute to and benefit your life. | ||
| And then, once you show people that, then they'll start to care about it. | ||
| Because if they don't get to experience it, then they don't care about it. | ||
| And I think there are a lot of people out there that are pretty... | ||
| Isolated from the outdoor experience. | ||
| You know, they live in inner cities. | ||
| They don't have access to the outdoors in the same way that we do. | ||
| They choose to just play video games in their spare time. | ||
| Whatever that may be. | ||
| I think, and that's one of my, like, goals in climbing, I guess, is to make it more accessible to people. | ||
| Let them experience it. | ||
| Experience what it does. | ||
| And then they'll start to care about the places that are outdoors. | ||
| And they'll want to protect them. | ||
| That's a great desire to educate people. | ||
| I think it's titanically bizarre that we have a term that we call outdoors. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| It's strange that we have a thing like outdoors. | ||
| It's outdoors. | ||
| Indoors is normal. | ||
| Outdoors. | ||
| It's the earth. | ||
| It's nature. | ||
| But in our mind, we're like, oh, outdoors. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like, what do you mean? | ||
| No, it's nature, the earth. | ||
| Like, we're so accustomed to being inside a building that we think of everything outside of buildings as outdoors. | ||
| Like, it's a weird term. | ||
| Like, indoors should be what's bizarre. | ||
| Yeah, agreed. | ||
| And outdoors is seen as, like, this really extreme... | ||
| I think we need to kind of, like... | ||
| Get away from the idea that outdoors is so extreme and it's for people who do what I do. | ||
| Going outside is something that's super normal and we should all be doing it more. | ||
| It should be. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You do do it a lot and it's amazing and it's great. | ||
| The expression outdoors is a weird expression. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| It's just like, it's assuming that everyone is constantly protected by a house and a shelter. | ||
| And when you go outside of the shelter, like, oh my goodness, you're outdoors. | ||
| You're out there. | ||
| No, that is the real life. | ||
| That is the real earth. | ||
| That's the real nature. | ||
| This is where everything else lives except us. | ||
| And we're like, going outdoors. | ||
| Oh, I love the outdoors. | ||
| You mean you love nature? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No, the outdoors. | ||
| Nature. | ||
| You mean woods and wilderness? | ||
| That's what you mean. | ||
| Well, I like to call it outdoors. | ||
| It's a strange, right? | ||
| It's a very strange expression. | ||
| Yeah, now that you mention it, it is weird. | ||
| It's one of those strange things you just get accustomed to and you forget how bizarre it is until someone brings it up. | ||
| It's like one of those things, if you got high, you'd think about it and you're like, what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What a weird expression. | ||
| It's a strange expression that's commonplace. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I could see that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's actually nature. | ||
| That's what everything's supposed to be living in. | ||
| Everything's supposed to be in the woods and the mountains and the wilderness and the lakes and streams and the ocean. | ||
| And we call it outdoors. | ||
| I mean, because I think a lot of people do just spend their time inside. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, they go from their home to their work. | ||
| Maybe not even go to their work anymore. | ||
| They're just at home. | ||
| Yeah, well, and I think that's one of the reasons why people are so depressed. | ||
| I don't think it's a natural environment for any biological creature, and not for us. | ||
| Even though we've created these environments, and we've made them really cool, and made some nice houses, and great big TVs, and cool shit to do inside the house... | ||
| I don't think it resonates with our actual biology. | ||
| I think our bodies have evolved over millions of years to be experiencing all sorts of things that are a part of the wilderness and nature. | ||
| The sun and the wind and trees and these visual cues, seeing mountains. | ||
| There's something about... | ||
| beautiful landscapes in nature that make you feel really good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| If you're on a trail and you crest a hill and you see mountains and a lake, like in the sun, the rays of the sun are hitting the trees and it's all green and lush and you see birds flying around, you're like, wow. | ||
| It's like a drug. | ||
| It hits you. | ||
| Because your body evolved. | ||
| Human beings evolved to experience these things. | ||
| And when you see these beautiful, gorgeous, lush environments, generally speaking, it means like habitat where animals live and where you can find food and where there's going to be fresh, clean water. | ||
| That's that lake. | ||
| And all those things, there's like these cues that are biologically embedded in our DNA. Yeah, agreed. | ||
| That's why we should care about that stuff. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| But the fact that that's political is... | ||
| We're nuts. | ||
| We're a crazy animal. | ||
| That's odd. | ||
| To go there to those places is rare. | ||
| But that's how we evolved. | ||
| We're supposed to be in those places. | ||
| I really firmly believe it's one of the reasons why people are so detached and they feel so disconnected and so unhappy. | ||
| is get if you're in a fucking subway and you take the subway to a building and you sit in front of a cubicle staring at a screen and then you get in the subway and you head home and you're in another building you're never around trees you're never around a river you're never around eagles and you never see a deer walking by you never see those things like i just think your body's deprived of it the same way you would get scurvy if you don't get vitamin c yeah | ||
| But so what do you think the solution is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get the fuck outside! | |
| But what if you just live in an inner city? | ||
| Get to a park. | ||
| Yeah, a park. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And we need more spaces like that. | ||
| Wim Hof says we should literally hug trees. | ||
| He's like, you should hug a fucking tree, man! | ||
| That's what he's saying about it. | ||
| He's like, it's good for you. | ||
| You need it. | ||
| People that go to Central Park, if you go to New York City, when you see them in Central Park, they're fucking relaxed. | ||
| They're like, oh. | ||
| You just sit there and there's trees and there's grass. | ||
| There's at least some life, some actual natural life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And also, I think that's one of the things that's come out of COVID a little bit. | ||
| I think people are actually going outdoors more. | ||
| Not in LA. Not in LA. They won't even let you go to the fucking park. | ||
| They're crazy. | ||
| I mean, I've noticed the climbing areas and the trails and everything. | ||
| Where I live in Tahoe, it's so busy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because people have gotten out of the city. | ||
| And they're coming up and they're getting outside and they're going hiking. | ||
| and like just even friends who own like gear shops they say that they're actually doing really well because people are buying bikes and buying hiking shoes and getting outside because they're not in school they're not in work they're not working there's nothing else to do so that's maybe like one tiny little silver lining to everything yeah people are discovering it well it's like you were saying that people do adapt like you're saying about people sleeping on the side of cliffs and People are very malleable. | ||
| They do adapt. | ||
| And it sucks that people are going through all this. | ||
| But the good thing about it is that there are people that are becoming more active. | ||
| There are people... | ||
| I mean, it's not everybody. | ||
| And unfortunately, some people can't do this. | ||
| But a lot of people are getting in shape. | ||
| A lot of people are... | ||
| Even though they can't go to a gym, they've... | ||
| Gone on YouTube and looked up bodyweight exercises and started a routine and lost weight and got fitter and started... | ||
| You mean there's a ton of yoga videos you can just get off YouTube. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they're free and you don't need any money. | ||
| You just need a phone or an internet connection and you've got something to do. | ||
| You know, bike shops. | ||
| I know a bike shop that's near me that was saying that they literally have a hard time keeping bikes in stock now. | ||
| Yeah, that's what we're hearing in our town as well. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
| Yeah, it's really cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's awesome. | ||
| Yeah, more people out there doing stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's great. | ||
| I hope that people also realize that they've been, for a lot of people, they've been dedicated themselves to something that can be taken away from them. | ||
| And to just recognize that this whole experience that we have... | ||
| On this planet is very temporary and so many people are chasing material things and chasing a position in the company and then the company goes away and then you realize like oh well this is all fragile and I thought it was permanent and it gives you an opportunity even though it sucks It does give you an opportunity to sort of readdress how you interface with life and change what's important to you and change where your priorities are and change just maybe your path forward and recognize | ||
| that, hey, this can happen again. | ||
| And maybe I should be more prepared, but also maybe I should reassess what I'm doing with my life. | ||
| Yeah, what's important to you, where your priorities are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you anticipate doing this until you're like the dirtbag guy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Until you can't climb anymore? | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to climb forever, I think. | ||
| I'm going to climb forever. | ||
| I'm going to ski forever. | ||
| I'm going to... | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Listen, keep kicking ass. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| And let everybody know what your social media is so they can say nice things. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Do I just say it right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Just tell everybody. | ||
| I am Emily A. Harrington. | ||
| At Emily A. Harrington. | ||
| And that's on Instagram. | ||
| It's on Instagram, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There you are. | |
| But if you just searched it, you'd find it on all the other ones, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, thank you, Emily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much. | |
| I really enjoyed talking to you. | ||
| It was a lot of fun. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
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