Gripped – August 2019

...British E9 trad and you have freed several routes on

El Cap in Yosemite. Is there something you can share

withthose who may feel like their height, gender or lack

of strength may be holding them back?

I would say that some of the biggest limitations to performance

are your psych. It’s about efficient movement and f lexibility.

Some climbers may boast that they can do five one-arm chin-ups

with their middle finger, but I would say yes but when you climb,

your hip is a metre out of the wall because you never stretch.

Of course, then your fingers have to be 10 times stronger. How

much stronger could you be if you could get your hips into the

wall. I feel like that there are a lot of puzzle pieces that constitute

to what makes a good climber and we focus on the ones that are

easy for us to focus on instead of the ones that are maybe actually

more important.

You have an impressive climbing résumé. Is it because

you’re climbing year-round or because you focus on

one project for a long time?

I think for somebody who climbs as much as I do, I think I spend

a lot time going around just climbing and not actually doing

anything that is actually that hard for me. I am notoriously bad at

goal-setting. I tend to get motivated by a place or climbing with a

certain person and sometimes that leads to doing something I am

really proud of.

What is the longest you have invested in a climb?

The only kind of goal I’ve had and specifically trained for was

Mind Control 5. 14 c at Oliana. I first tried the route before my

shoulder operation when my shoulder was already bad and I loved

the route. I knew that to get to that level I would have to train

pretty hard and I would have to really look after my shoulder. It

gave me this direction of focus for quite a while. After my shoulder

operation I was in Spain for a few months trying it on and off and

I was training for it. The cool thing about the process was that at

the start of it (coming back from shoulder operation) I was a 5. 13

climber, still struggling with my shoulder and at the end of it I was

a 5. 14 c climber who had nothing wrong with my shoulder.

Right: Findlay and

Ben O’Connor

Croft racking up

and approaching

in the Alps

Pho

tos

Jo

n^ G

riff

ith

feature