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I sat down with Jamie Emerson last summer and had a really interesting chat with him. Jamie is an important voice in the climbing community. As an accomplished and ambitious climber himself, having sent up to V14, he has his finger on the pulse of the climbing community’s players and their ascents.

He has a deep appreciation for not only trying hard and sending hard, but also doing it all in style. I’ve always thought that Jamie would be the best person for the job of MC-ing big competitions because he knows a lot about everyone, and he truly cares about their accomplishments, failures, and their characters.

As the writer at www.B3Bouldering.com (link no longer available), he not only keeps us all up to date on the most current sends, he also asks the hard questions and calls people out on ethical issues that no one else would dare to. This has earned him his nickname, “The Sheriff”, which we discuss in this podcast interview. We talk candidly about a couple of his most controversial moments with other climbers, and whether or not he’d do it all over again if he could.

In a sport where people regularly use shady tactics for cleaning boulders, terrorize the land surrounding those boulders, manufacture holds, trespass on private property, make up their own start holds, and “send” things without anyone witnessing said send (I mean, it didn’t happen unless it’s on video, right?), somebody needs to be the one to say, “You didn’t follow the rules. Hey everyone, what do you think the rules are here so we can tell this person the rules?”

That’s Jamie, and I for one appreciate his honest, forthright style, and his willingness to fight for some semblance of order and respect in the sport, even if some think he might take it a little too far sometimes.

In this interview we talk about all that, and also this:

• His biggest achievements in climbing
• His biggest failures
• His climbing aspirations
• His um.. interesting ascent of Gang Bang
• How he trains and the differences between the methods of all his different trainers
• What he eats
• What he thinks about his body weight as it relates to climbing
• How he likes being called the sheriff, and where that nickname came from
• What he wants to do in his professional life
• Why he loves finding and developing new boulders
• Why he started writing his blog
• The surprising ways his climbing has changed as he’s gotten older
• What climbing means to him now compared with 10 years ago
• And more!

Show Links

• Jamie’s blog at www.b3bouldering.com (link no longer available)
• Dave Wahl training here
• Training with Kris Peters and Justen Sjong (Team of 2) here.
• Looking for more training advice? Check out our training programs here.

Listen on iTunes

• Link to the TrainingBeta Podcast on iTunes is HERE.
• Please give the podcast an honest review on iTunes here to help the show reach more curious climbers around the world 😉

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk to climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. Today is the third episode of the podcast and so far the response to the interviews has been awesome.

I’m so glad you’re liking what we’re doing here. I know I’ve had a ton of fun interviewing everyone so far. I want to thank you so much for your support in the beginning phases of this site and the podcast.

Today’s interview is with prolific boulderer, developer, blogger, guidebook writer, and no-nonsense talker, Jamie Emerson. He’s a good friend of mine and I really appreciated him taking the time to sit down with me to do this interview. We actually recorded this last year when I thought the site would be up and running in no time. Turns out, TrainingBeta took a lot more time than I thought it would to get off the ground, but even though we talked a while ago, what we talked about is still totally relevant today.

Apart from being one of the strongest boulderers I know and a developer of beautiful new boulders all over Colorado, New Mexico, Australia, and a lot of other places, Jamie is also a writer and a philosopher. If you’ve ever had a conversation with Jamie you know that he’s not one for chitchat. He likes talking about things that mean something to him and he started his blog, www.b3bouldering.com, so he could have an outlet for some of his thoughts.

On B3, Jamie discusses some pretty controversial things. For that, he’s been nicknamed ‘The Sheriff.’ He asks the tough questions about climbing ethics and sometimes he calls people out for things he thinks are questionable or just plain wrong.

We talk a lot about his role in the climbing community as sort of a referee and how he feels about people sometimes not exactly loving him for his opinions. We also talk about his climbing, training, diet, and what role climbing plays in his life now.

I remember climbing with Jamie a decade ago when he was struggling up V8s so I wanted to know how he got to be a V14 climber. We talked about how he’s trained in the past, what’s worked for him and what hasn’t, and we talk about how he thinks diet and body weight affect his climbing, but you can listen for yourself in just a sec.

Before we get to the interview I want to let you know that this podcast is made possible by the training programs you can find on www.trainingbeta.com under the ‘training programs’ tab. They’re downloadable training plans and the first one is a six-week power endurance program by Kris Peters.

I’m very excited to announce that we just released our second training program by Kris Hampton, a well known Red River Gorge crusher. It’s an eight-week endurance program that will build your forearm stamina and will teach you how to rest on routes better. Again, you can check out the programs at www.trainingbeta.com under the ‘training programs’ tab.

Okay, without further adieu, here’s Jamie. Our conversation actually ended up being about two hours long, maybe longer, so I had to cut it down just a little bit for you. When the interview starts he’s responding to my question about what he thinks about the criticism he gets from people on his website. Here goes.

Jamie Emerson: People are really critical of what I say and that’s totally fine. I mean, I read it and think, ‘Oh gosh, they’re really coming after me,’ but that’s fine. That’s what I want. I want to be challenged.

In the end I think I want the best argument to arise and I think if I present a strong argument for one way then I’ll get a strong response and we’ll really get to hash it out. Sometimes it’s not productive but I think for the most part I’ve worked really hard to keep it productive and it has been productive.

For so much, people say, “The internet is just this awful place for these trolls and they’re just saying negative things.” I think I’ve done a good job with getting a lot of positive, productive commentary.

Neely Quinn: Was that your goal?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah. I did inspire people to share what I’m doing and produce constructive and intelligent and thoughtful conversation about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and to basically show all the facets in which I care about climbing or think about climbing. Climbing is super complicated to me and here’s 500 individual posts about how I feel, and that comprises my entire viewpoint of climbing.

Neely Quinn: Anything else on your blog that you want to talk about? You’re pretty controversial on there sometimes. I know that you don’t think of it as controversial, you more take – I feel like in conversations, too, you take the devil’s advocate viewpoint. You’re trying to get people to see how they’re wrong sometimes by going to one extreme of the argument. Do you feel like you do that in your blog?

Jamie Emerson: Oh yeah. I mean, I think that I don’t feel like I’m afraid to point out where people are, where I see inconsistencies in people’s arguments, or where I see hypocrisy, or where I see – that doesn’t mean that I’m not hypocritical. I’ve certainly done things and I think that every person is hypocritical in some stance. I’m not trying to say that I’m holier than thou by any means. I like when people are like, ‘Oh, you didn’t do this,’ or, ’You did this,’ or, ‘What’s up with this?’ They really challenge me because I feel like I can make myself a better person and my arguments become better that way.

I don’t think they will ever become better if I don’t do that, so yeah, it’s really important to me to have a lot of people giving feedback and to be challenged. I want to be challenged. That’s interesting to me and I think maybe it turns some people off that I won’t end things that challenge other people. Some people are going to get hurt or whatever, but I’m interested in the truth and interested in objective facts and reality.

Neely Quinn: Which is why some people call you The Sheriff.

Jamie Emerson: Right. That nickname was given to me by Jimmy Webb. He gave me that nickname and it was totally endearing. He thought it was great and he loves the fact that I call people out and he loves the fact that I serve as this kind of fact-checker because, like I said, on the Internet you have free rein to do whatever you want and say literally anything you want, which I think is great. I like the freedom but it I also think that I should be as free to question that, you know, equally. That’s the most fair playing ground you can have.

It’s like: fine, go on the Internet and say whatever you want and pump yourself up as much as possible, but I will…

Neely Quinn: Jamie Emerson is going to bring you down.

Jamie Emerson: It’s just a reality check or I’ll say, “Hey, I don’t think that’s exactly,” whatever. I’m not interested in necessarily – people feel threatened by it like I’m going to try to take them down or something.

Neely Quinn: Yes.

Jamie Emerson: I think a lot of the time, something happens, like, maybe somebody is accused of chipping a boulder. They’re emotionally attached to it and if I’m like, ‘What’s up with chipping?’ and then they get riled up and they’re all, ‘Oh, I’m so upset about this.’ I’m like: well, in the scientific world, if someone wrote a research paper it would just be brutally attacked because people are trying to find the truth.

Neely Quinn: Right.

Jamie Emerson: They want to find out: where is the hole in the argument? Where is it wrong? What can we do to get the right answer? That’s how science progresses and because of all that, we have airplanes and tv’s and all these amazing things that science has given us – medicine – because someone else was going, ‘No, that’s wrong.’

I’m sure people’s feelings get hurt when they have these research papers that get torn apart but that’s how things get better.

Neely Quinn: So do you feel like you’ve changed anybody’s viewpoint or thoughts on themselves, on their own climbing, because of what you’ve said to them?

Jamie Emerson: What I hope for is that I can generate discussion around a campfire or the dinner table, and I know that I’ve done that because people have told me, ‘Oh, you wrote a post about where does the boulder problem start and we went back and had a three-hour discussion about it.’ That is really my goal, to generate thoughtful discussion about what people are doing. That people are just more thoughtful, they’ll think about what they’re doing, that they’re aware that they’re part of something bigger, those are kind of my goals.

It didn’t start off that way, that it was my goal when I started B3. I just wanted to do a blog and it got boring really fast. I did this, I did that, I went and got dinner at this cool place. That’s all fine and dandy but I had bigger ideas about what I could do with this so the idea that we could generate thoughtful discussion about what was going on, and that I had a national platform, or a world platform, really, to do that was awesome.

Neely Quinn: Okay, let’s talk about your climbing. When did you start climbing?

Jamie Emerson: I started climbing in 1998. Oh – I’m 35 years old.

Neely Quinn: So when did you start climbing?

Jamie Emerson: 1998.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so you’ve been climbing for how many years? 15 years? And you started climbing in Michigan and then you came out here after college and you started climbing and you lived in Fort Collins, right?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, I moved to Colorado to be a climber, to pursue climbing, pursue bouldering, on a bigger scale than Michigan. Michigan is really small and there’s not much going on and this is the place to be, so I moved to Fort Collins originally because I thought that was the best bouldering.

Neely Quinn: Like in Poudre?

Jamie Emerson: Poudre, Red Feather, all those areas, and then I kind of realized that Boulder was a little bit better so I moved down to Boulder a few months later and I’ve been in Boulder since 2002.

Neely Quinn: You had the opportunity to develop a lot of the Poudre, or help develop a lot of Poudre and Red Feather and…

Jamie Emerson: The Poudre not so much but Red Feather for sure. Mount Evans – I was at Mount Evans and saw the first ascent of The Dali, which is the classic V8 at Mount Evans. It was one of the first problems that got done there.

Neely Quinn: I was there.

Jamie Emerson: You were there for the first ascent of The Dali?

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Jamie Emerson: I was there, too.

Neely Quinn: I know. We went together.

Jamie Emerson: I don’t remember that.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, when I was with Jeremy.

Jamie Emerson: Really?

Neely Quinn: You don’t remember me. [laughs]

Jamie Emerson: I was there very early on and that’s why I moved out here, to be a part of that.

Neely Quinn: And then you moved to Boulder in what year?

Jamie Emerson: 2002.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and since then you’ve developed. It seems like yes, you enjoy climbing and yes, you enjoy climbing hard boulders, but you also very much enjoy being off on your own in really isolated areas developing boulders.

Jamie Emerson: Right. I think, like so many things in my life, I have a really complicated vision and I want to express it in a really complicated way so it is partially just wanting to push myself. That’s one big component of it, to try to climb really hard. I definitely have spent a lot of time projecting hard boulder problems that I’ve established, just trying to repeat the hardest thing I could.

It’s also a huge facet of when you go off in these out of the way places because a lot of times I’ve found that the rock is amazing and people just haven’t looked. They don’t think outside the box, they just go to the same places they’ve always been. I’m like: wow, there’s incredible other climbing out there, you just have to look and dig a little. That’s what I’ve found and so that’s been a huge part of my life, going to these kind of obscure places that are incredible, beautiful places and doing first ascents.

I have this really artistic need to produce things and so for me, going to an area where no one has been and finding a new boulder and cleaning it off and climbing it is one of the highest artistic things I could do. And, I get to name it and that’s really special for me.

For me, I do view climbing as an art and it feels like I’m painting. I can paint in the color of New Mexico which is all of the different sunsets you can have and all the colors and all the trees and the flora and the fauna and all that stuff. It then becomes part of the art in a way, and that would be one, like a watercolor. Then, you could do an oil painting in Wyoming which would be a totally different set of colors. It’s not just the colors, it’s the rock and the trees and the people. It’s all a part of the picture which gets expressed somehow in a boulder problem. That’s really a huge part of my climbing.

Neely Quinn: I want to talk about where you’re going this summer but first, I want to talk about your climbing accomplishments. What is your most favorite boulder problem that you’ve ever done? Not necessarily the hardest, but…

Jamie Emerson: That’s like choosing a favorite kid.

Neely Quinn: Okay, then how about your hardest send? Not necessarily the hardest grade but…

Jamie Emerson: I worked on a problem in Colorado called Nuthin’ but Sunshine, which is V13, and I spent 90 days at least. At least 90 days, and that’s a really conservative estimate. 90 days to climb it over three years. When I first came to Colorado that was the first really hard problem I saw. It was V14 at the time and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ It represented something that was totally unattainable. It was that: ‘Wow, someone actually climbed that?’ kind of feeling and to go from this impossible to possible, where I climbed it, and having that take three years to make that happen, that was really special for me.

Neely Quinn: But you’ve done harder climbs even than that.

Jamie Emerson: I did a V14. I worked on it for a long time but it wasn’t – it really fit me and I worked on it for a long time and it was an awesome problem.

Neely Quinn: How long is a long time?

Jamie Emerson: Twelve or 15 days? Sometimes I hear people say, “Oh, I spent five days on it,” and I think that’s nothing. I spend five days on a boulder problem all of the time. Fifteen days is like: okay, now we’re getting into something, and then 90 days felt like a real effort. That’s like: okay, I devoted 90 days of my life to try to climb this one route. That felt like I had put an appropriate amount of time to say that I pushed my limit. When someone’s like, ‘Oh, I spent six days on it,’ I’m like, ‘Who cares? That’s easy.’

Neely Quinn: What was the V14?

Jamie Emerson: It’s called Evil Backwards. It’s at Lincoln Lake.

Neely Quinn: What about your worst climbing failure? It doesn’t necessarily need to be a route, but something in your climbing life that felt like a failure.

Jamie Emerson: There are a few problems that I’ve tried – there’s a problem in Joe’s Valley called Black Lung and I’ve tried it probably 10 days and it’s eight hours away.

Neely Quinn: How hard is that?

Jamie Emerson: V13. It has a reputation for being hard and it has a lot of history. It’s the only problem that I’ve really put a concerted effort into and just didn’t do it. That was a little frustrating but I don’t ever really give up. I don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s done.’

Neely Quinn: You just take a break?

Jamie Emerson: I think I got psyched to develop so I did some developing but it’s always kind of in the back of my mind. I think that is one thing. I will hold onto these things for a long time, a lot longer than I see some people that are like, ‘Oh, I just gave up on that route.’

I don’t think anything is ever given up on. I could go back or I want to go back. There’s too much and I want to do it all and I’m willing to maintain hope that maybe someday I could go back and do it. Maybe things will change and there will be a new supplement that you take or something or maybe diet will change or training will change and I could get stronger and do it. I don’t know the future so I’d like to remain hopeful to the possibility that I could climb it someday.

Neely Quinn: So this brings up the topic of age. You’re 35 and so am I so I understand.

Jamie Emerson: Right.

Neely Quinn: Most of our friends are younger.

Jamie Emerson: Right.

Neely Quinn: They think of us sometimes as old, which is kind of depressing but how do you think age has played any role in your climbing ability, or has it?

Jamie Emerson: As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I can get a lot from thinking about what I’m doing. When I was younger I was really impulsive and I would just go climbing because I was psyched. I would just throw myself at stuff and it seemed really inefficient. As I get older, things get a lot more efficient and I think about how I could make it better and more efficient and that has changed my climbing a lot, for the better I think. I’m not maybe quite as strong and I also don’t devote quite as much time to it as I did because of school and doing other things, but I think that has helped my climbing.

I also think that I am more…

Neely Quinn: What has helped it? Not climbing quite as much?

Jamie Emerson: Just thinking real analytical thoughts about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. I think I can never emphasize to people enough that I engage in the thought process, asking questions and finding answers to those questions: why am I doing this? What am I doing? How can I do it better? And not just why am I here, because I like the mountains or something? But really specifically why am I here? What do I enjoy about rock climbing? Is climbing the best thing I could do? Or, with beta specifically, what can I do to make that move better? Is there anything I can do? For every single move I might ask that and finding the answers to those questions, I think, is not only engaging but it also helps you really achieve your goals which, for me, are climbing hard boulder problems.

Neely Quinn: So what are your upcoming goals? What are your goals in general with boulders? Which ones do you want to go back to? Which ones do you want to go to do?

Jamie Emerson: Mostly I just want to develop. I still think about repeating a few things and like with Black Lung, I’ll consider, ‘Oh, maybe I should go spend a week and try to do Black Lung,’ but mostly it’s developing. I can feel bored with repeating things because I’ve done it. I need newness and that kind of new stimulation and finding new boulders provides that. I have a number of areas that I’ve either been to and I want to go back to, or I haven’t even touched, or there’s just so much out there. It’s crazy that people go to the same areas because there is so much ridiculous, amazing rock that people haven’t touched at all. It’s awesome.

Neely Quinn: Last summer you spent a lot of time in Wyoming. Are you developing?

Jamie Emerson: The bouldering potential in Wyoming is outrageous and no one goes because they don’t have a name, they don’t have a grade. It’s hard for people to get outside of the box of, ‘Well I just want to go do that V7. It has a name. I just want to go do Tommy’s Arete.’ That’s really easy, to go pick an objective that they’ve heard about.

Neely Quinn: It’s kind of an interesting thing because when they do something that’s known, there’s a little bit more acknowledgement for it because other people know how hard that boulder is.

Jamie Emerson: Sure.

Neely Quinn: For you it can’t be that much about acknowledgement because you’re going and doing things that people have no idea what they are, sometimes alone.

Jamie Emerson: Well, I get to say what’s cool. I understand that these other things are cool and they are amazing, like Dreamtime is amazing and the boulders in the Park are amazing, but I get to go find my own amazing things and that, for me, is a much more enriching experience. I like to spend my time doing that. It’s really motivating for me.

Neely Quinn: Other things that you have in mind? I know that you’re really secretive about where you go.

Jamie Emerson: New Mexico has amazing potential. Wyoming has amazing potential. I just drove across Kansas and found an amazing project that I’m going to go back to.

Neely Quinn: Really?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah. I was blown away. I was like, ‘I have to come back to do this thing.’ I always keep an open mind to not think that Kansas – it would be easy to be like, ‘Oh Kansas, there’s nothing there,’ but I was like, ‘Well, maybe.’

Neely Quinn: Were you just on the road or something?

Jamie Emerson: I drove to a place that I thought would be good and it was.

Neely Quinn: Did you think it would be good because you looked at Google Earth or something?

Jamie Emerson: I’ve just done a lot of research on the Internet. I look. I mean, there’s so much information on the Internet and it’s such a valuable resource that I use it all the time to find out where I’m going to try to go climbing next.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so we have special questions for you about – they’re called ‘gang bangs?’

Jamie Emerson: Yeah. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Tell me about a gang bang. What is gang banging?

Jamie Emerson: Gang Bang arete is a V8 that Dave Graham did the first ascent of in Rocky Mountain National Park. I went up there with Mike Feinberg thinking that I was going to go to Upper Chaos. Mike bailed on Upper Chaos so I was stuck in Lower Chaos, which I’ve spent way too many days hanging out there.

We got to talking and kind of as a challenge I decided to climb the problem with a crash pad on my back. I did this V8 that has a reputation for being hard, too, with a crash pad on my back.

Neely Quinn: How was that?

Jamie Emerson: Just silly.

Neely Quinn: In Rifle, a lot of people will do things with watermelons tied to their harness or something.

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, it’s just a silly thing. I was bored but it seemed to have gotten a lot of attention from people.

Neely Quinn: A large crash pad or a small one?

Jamie Emerson: A small Organic crash pad. It wasn’t the small one, it was just a normal sized Organic crash pad.

Neely Quinn: I feel like that would make it safer if you would fall on your back.

Jamie Emerson: I did put a crash pad on the ground, to be honest.

Neely Quinn: I’d really like to talk about your training and how you train for particular projects. I know that it’s different for you now that you’re in school and you work and you’re much busier than you were when you were a little bit younger. Let’s talk first about how you used to train and then maybe how you train now.

Jamie Emerson: I have often sought out a personal trainer or someone to give me some guidance. For awhile I did animal strength at The Spot with Darren Flagg and that was really focused on core and big muscle groups, which I thought did a great job of really engaging my big muscles and engaging my nervous system, but you should really recognize the importance of finger strength.

Finger strength is probably the most important component to being a strong boulderer and we weren’t really getting any of that. Training is always a supplement to climbing. If you want to be a good climber, you need to spend time climbing. People get into this mindset of training and I totally appreciate why people just train all the time. I think you would get really strong. I like climbing on the campus board, I like how systematic it is, but I think if you want to be good at standing on bad feet and toe-hooking and climbing kind of up these features of rock, then you need to go and seek those out and practice. Try to get as many hours as you can of practice on as many different kinds of styles as you can.

When you focus on one style outside, even, that’s really limiting, too. Even though I’m not very good at compression or I’m not very good at standing on my feet, I think I seek those problems out because I want to work on my weaknesses.

That’s a huge part of my climbing, too, is attacking weaknesses. Not just that I want to be good at what I’m good at, but it’s much more challenging and interesting to go to what you’re bad at.

Neely Quinn: That’s funny. Did you just mean to say that you think one of your weaknesses is standing on your feet?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: That’s really funny because I think that’s one of your biggest strengths.

Jamie Emerson: Oh really? I’ve worked hard at it. For a long time I think I was really bad and I worked really hard at it.

Neely Quinn: I’ve seen you stand on some really terrible feet. When you say that you would go train two days a week would it just be on the campus board or would you have been bouldering, also?

Jamie Emerson: That was just campus board and system board. We did video analysis of what we were doing, which is super helpful. It was not only watching. It’s so important to watch yourself climb. I can’t emphasize that enough.

Neely Quinn: You would watch it with Dave Wahl?

Jamie Emerson: Yes. He also has this technology where he would overlay images so you would have two consecutive burns of yourself and if you did the move one time and didn’t do the move the second time, you would see why. Maybe your hips were low. It would be really obvious as to why you failed, or if you would take someone with a similar body type, like Chuck Fryberger and I would train together and he would overlay our bodies. Chuck would do the move and I wouldn’t and you would see that Chuck’s hips were higher, Chuck would really push harder with his foot, or…

Neely Quinn: That’s awesome.

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Neely Quinn: It probably gave you a lot more body awareness to do something like that, in general.

Jamie Emerson: You can do a move and think, ‘Oh, I didn’t do the move. Why didn’t I do the move? Because I didn’t push or I didn’t do this,’ but when you see it, it’s just like when you watch other people climb and you think about why they failed or succeeded. You can see right away, like, ‘Oh, he wasn’t pushing with his foot,’ or something. It’s so obvious watching someone else but it’s not as obvious when you’re doing it yourself. When you see it, then you’re like, ‘Oh wow. Yeah.’

Neely Quinn: How long were these sessions?

Jamie Emerson: They were two hours.

Neely Quinn: Oh wow. That’s a lot.

Jamie Emerson: We would do a warm-up and we would do campus board and we would do systems board and then we would do some big muscle or core stuff, like we would do one-arm pull-ups with assistance or weighted pull-ups, in addition to and after the finger stuff.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and having trained that way, how was your performance on the weekends?

Jamie Emerson: That’s when I climbed V14. It was noticeable.

Neely Quinn: Is that when you felt the strongest?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: And then now, I know that you’ve climbed with Kris and Justen in the past, right?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: What did that do to your climbing, if anything?

Jamie Emerson: At the time, I was training with them in three-hour sessions.

Neely Quinn: How many days a week?

Jamie Emerson: Two or three. They were brutal and it was way too much. That was something that I had to learn. I thought, ‘Well I’m just going to huck it more and I’ll do three, 3-hour sessions and climb on the weekend and I’ll just motivate as much as I can and deal with it all.’

Neely Quinn: Were you doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: And then climbing Saturday and Sunday.

Jamie Emerson: It was just ridiculous. At one point, I actually just fell down and slept during training. I basically collapsed on the ground and I just was actually sleeping in the middle of the training session.

Neely Quinn: Is that when you knew?

Jamie Emerson: That’s when I knew that it was way too much, but it’s good because then you establish a threshold and I’m someone who will push, push, push, push, push until they’re in this type of situation.

Neely Quinn: And then there are some people out there who can do that and they can climb almost everyday and train almost everyday, like Daniel, for instance. So I’ve heard, at least. And then there’s people like you and others who just can’t handle quite as much.

Jamie Emerson: I think if that’s all that I was doing then I would have a better chance handling it, but when I would do that and then go to school, or I’d finish that session and then study for three hours for my calc final, I think it’s easy to underestimate when you’re taxed mentally, how much that affects your body physically. I would feel that big time. If I had an exam I would be stressed and my performance would drop.

Neely Quinn: The same thing might be said for a mom or a dad who is not sleeping well.

Jamie Emerson: It is really important to take care of your body mentally and I think that when you’re sound mentally, it’s easier to be sound physically. I realize that I just took on too much and I was like, ‘I have to back off.’ I told Kris and Justen, “I can’t. This is too much. I have to back off.”

Neely Quinn: And then you backed off.

Jamie Emerson: I stopped totally and just basically let my body heal and let my mind recover and took care of school, which is really important, and then I actually approached them about training again for this trip but I ran out of time because of work and I had to go home.

I’m interested in training again and I think it can be really beneficial, I just think I need to figure out how to maintain balance.

Neely Quinn: I think that it’s hard when you’re also trying to send things on the weekend because when you’re training you’re supposed to just be breaking yourself down so that you can send later. It was probably…

Jamie Emerson: Or, I would go to Wyoming for three days and develop. Development, for me, is a lot of hard work. I go and I run around like crazy and I get on a rope and I might be rappelling and cleaning off stuff and working moves. I think that doing the first ascent is harder anyway because you don’t know so you try harder. I do, anyways. I don’t know how hard it’s going to be. It could be a V14 so I had to try really hard. I would try really hard and it’s really taxing, three days of that, and then I would come home and train Monday morning. It was just way too much.

Neely Quinn: That’s crazy.

Jamie Emerson: It was way too much.

Neely Quinn: I want to talk a little about your nutrition and food and how that affects you and everything but I also want to know what your plans are for the summer. Are you doing anything exciting?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, I actually leave today for Alaska for two weeks to develop some boulders. It’s a place I’ve been to before and I’m super psyched. It’s going to be awesome. Then, I fly back from Alaska and the same day I jump on a plane to go to Australia.

Neely Quinn: How long will you be in Australia for?

Jamie Emerson: Three weeks of developing boulders. In fact, we’re going to an established climbing area that has potential for new stuff and I’m pretty skeptical that I’m even going to try one established boulder problem, which is good. I’m going to develop. That’s what I want to do. I don’t want to – it can get kind of boring to be like, ‘Oh, I need to do this V11.’ Maybe that sounds pretentious but I’ve done a lot of those and I know I can do that so I want to do something different and unique.

Neely Quinn: Are you allowed to say what the areas are that you’re going to?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, it’s the Grampians National Park.

Neely Quinn: Woah. That’s crazy that there’s so much more rock there.

Jamie Emerson: There’s so much more. It’s ridiculous. They’ve developed a lot in the northern part but the southern part is pretty much untouched and the rock is incredible.

Neely Quinn: Then, when you come back, it’ll be August-ish. Will you start back up work and school?

Jamie Emerson: I’ll start back August 12. I have a job as a school bus driver that’s part time which works really well for climbing and for going to school. I’ll take one class, I think, this fall, Differential Equations, and I’m pursuing work towards a math degree.

Neely Quinn: Is there anything you’re leaning towards [unclear]?

Jamie Emerson: I’m leaning towards being some kind of financial/actuarial – maybe actuary. That’s kind of what I’m leaning towards right now.

Neely Quinn: So let’s talk a little bit about food. How has food affected your climbing, and another question I want to know about is how has weight affected your climbing?

Jamie Emerson: When I was younger, and being from Michigan, no one cares about diet at all there. It seems like when I was growing up, no one cared. In fact, when I think of Boulder, people would make fun of me for saying, “This is a free range Oreo. You wanna eat it?” Like, it was a big joke. They just don’t take it seriously. There are people in Michigan who do take it seriously, but a lot of the culture that I grew up in was just pizza and soda and cookies and eat as much as you want. There was not a lot of thought into it.

If you grow up in that environment it’s hard to break out of it and to realize: wait a second. I am an analytical person and I do think about what I’m eating and why am I eating this, but those questions came about slowly. When I first moved to Colorado I remember the day I did my first V10. I ate a double cheeseburger from Wendy’s. I mean, I was 22 years old or something but I would never ever do that now. I would never go to Wendy’s before a big climbing day and eat a double cheeseburger with a huge Coke or something, which is what I had.

Neely Quinn: Right. [laughs]

Jamie Emerson: Maybe that’s because as I’ve gotten older you become more aware of your body and more aware of what you’re putting into it and how that affects what you’re doing – and that’s kind of a funny anecdote about climbing my first hard boulder problem – but I started to think about it more and I started to think, ‘Well, you know, what if I lost five pounds? What if I trimmed up a little bit?’ Then, I did lose a little weight and it did help my climbing. There was a time I was climbing V11 or V12 – I think I had done a couple V12s – and then I just jumped a grade or two, basically, by cutting 10 pounds.

Neely Quinn: How did you cut 10 pounds?

Jamie Emerson: I didn’t eat as much and I cut out a lot of carbs, but I basically just didn’t eat as much.

Neely Quinn: How did you feel?

Jamie Emerson: I didn’t feel that strong. I felt pretty miserable. At first, it was fine. It is in my nature. I’ll just take on something big and I just think, ‘Oh, I’ll just deal with it. I can handle whatever is thrown at me.’ That’s how I kind of felt about it. I was like, ‘This is kind of hard but I’ll just handle it. I can handle it fine,’ and I did handle it for a long time but as it went on, it seemed to be less and less sustainable. I feel like it started to affect the way that I thought about things or my mood. It certainly affected my mood.

Neely Quinn: Because you weren’t getting enough food?

Jamie Emerson: I wasn’t getting enough nutrients, yeah, and I was working my body super hard trying to climb these really difficult boulder problems.

Neely Quinn: And hiking to them.

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, hiking two miles to go bouldering at 10,000 feet to try a V13. It requires a lot of energy and that energy – I have a lot of energy that my body generates for some reason. I don’t know why, but it also requires an input of food. When you’re not inputting that fuel or the fuel you are inputting isn’t super nutrient-rich, then I started seeing a decline.

Neely Quinn: You did? How long did that take?

Jamie Emerson: It took, I would say a year and a half.

Neely Quinn: Oh wow. That long? So you maintained that for a year and a half? You maintained the 10-pound weight loss?

Jamie Emerson: After a year and a half I started to really notice that I wasn’t happy, I was struggling to keep muscle on, and my fingers were really strong but I just lost strength. It’s so taxing hiking up to the Park or just trying to climb hard boulder problems. It was a real negative progression, not only in my physical ability to climb but in mental. I was really struggling with it.

Neely Quinn: It’s hard to keep confidence when you’re not eating well, I think. It’s hard to keep a positive attitude.

Jamie Emerson: Right, and it just kind of snowballed. I would feel bad and feel more negative and lose confidence.

Neely Quinn: And not climb well.

Jamie Emerson: And not climb well. It took me a long time to kind of pull myself out of that. That was really challenging.

Neely Quinn: So now you weigh at least 10 pounds more than you did then and do you feel healthier now?

Jamie Emerson: When I decided, ‘I really need to eat more,’ I just decided to eat until I’m not hungry. I’m just going to eat and eat and eat. Whatever my weight goes to, that’s what it goes to, and I just let it go. I went up to, like 155 or something just not caring and eating whatever. If I wanted Wendy’s I would go get Wendy’s because I was like, ‘I just need to eat. I need calories.’

I did use that really as an example because I had to focus a lot more on eating at Whole Foods or eating better food and thinking, ‘I need nutrients. That’s what I need.’ Like I said, there was a time when, if I wanted to splurge, I would splurge and I would just go and do it.

Neely Quinn: Whereas when you were really restrictive about what you were eating…

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, very restrictive. There was a very positive short term benefit but the long term benefit was that it was not sustainable whatsoever and it left me pretty miserable. I realized that I needed to focus on my own happiness and part of that was taking care of myself and eating really good food. I’m super happy with climbing. It’s awesome now. It’s so much better. I have so much more fun.

I’m a competitive person and I’m going to want to make things better and I’m going to want to beat people. That’s just how I am. I don’t really hide that, I don’t think, from anyone. It’s not that I want to see other people fail, I just like the competition.

I played sports when I was younger and actually, when I think about this – because I went home – I played baseball when I was younger and I’m shocked at the lack of competition in climbing. Baseball is so competitive. I mean, I like competitions but I also like to be friends with people and I think that the two can go hand in hand just fine. I like friendly competition. In baseball there’s a lot of unfriendly competition. People are really…

Neely Quinn: Cutthroat.

Jamie Emerson: Cutthroat. I remember I was playing first base and I went down to tag a guy and he stepped – I still have the scar – he stepped on my arm with a metal spike. He caught my arm just to be a jerk, basically. ‘I got you. I one-upped you. I just stepped on your arm.’ If that went on in climbing, people would freak out.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Jamie Emerson: That was normal. I mean, I was like, ‘That’s not that cool that he did that,’ but it was to be expected.

Neely Quinn: So you think the level of competition could even increase in climbing?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah. When I see someone like Robyn Erbesfield, who is very outwardly competitive, I think that’s more normal for sports like baseball, where people are like, ‘I’m going to beat you,’ kind of thing.

I understand that climbing is a lifestyle sport and there are a lot of people who are attracted to it because it’s not a competitive thing and they want to hang out in the woods and that’s totally fine, but I’m a competitive person and I’m going to try to look for advantages in my own climbing that I could be better at. I want to be the best climber that I can be.

Neely Quinn: So now, can you just take us through a day of eating for you at this point?

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, a lot of times for breakfast I’ll cook eggs or eggs and an avocado or something, which – I tried to cut out refined sugar although I still do eat some of it, but I tried to cut down on that a lot, so that would be a good breakfast. I do drink caffeine, either coffee or energy drinks, and I try to drink – there’s an energy drink that Whole Foods sells that’s just carbonated water and caffeine.

Neely Quinn: Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Jamie Emerson: That’s what I will try to drink, and then for lunch I eat meat so I eat chicken. Ideally it would be at Whole Foods, like a salad or a chicken wrap or something and an apple or maybe a Powerbar, and then dessert would be something similar.

Neely Quinn: And then dinner?

Jamie Emerson: Dinner would be similar, like I would go to Whole Foods.

Neely Quinn: I thought you said dessert would be similar.

Jamie Emerson: Oh no, I meant dinner would be something similar.

Neely Quinn: So you don’t cook very much?

Jamie Emerson: I cook a little bit. If I cooked it would be that I would go and get chicken, like free range chicken or something, and cook that or make turkey and make a burrito or something with avocado and meat and lettuce or something.

Neely Quinn: Just egg, meat, tortillas…

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, I like to eat broccoli, like, I will eat a head of broccoli which people think is weird, or I’ll eat green peppers like I eat an apple. I eat a lot of apples, too. That’s kind of my fruits and vegetables, and carrots, I’ll eat carrots, too, and nuts. I like walnuts although they’re expensive. It’s sad that they’re expensive because I like almonds and cashews, too, with walnuts.

Neely Quinn: This sounds very reasonable and I’m wondering if it changes if you’re going out bushwhacking and developing on a big day of climbing.

Jamie Emerson: I do need – I discovered that when I study and when I have these big days, I feel like I need some carbohydrates. I need some sugar. I think my body is more accepting of carbohydrates. I seem to deal with it fine and I would eat Nutella or something in a tortilla or cookies or something, just to give me a little boost, because it does take a huge amount of energy to load up a crash pad with, like, 40 pounds and go bushwhacking. Ridiculous bushwhacking, really difficult bushwhacking, and cut a trail. I would cut a trail through the bushes or I would just bushwhack and look for this stuff and then find a boulder, rappel down it, clean it, climb it, and that takes a huge amount of energy.

Neely Quinn: You don’t have to explain that to me. I think that a lot of climbers, if they go low-carb or any athlete, they’re doing themselves a disservice. When you’re doing that much work you do need that many carbs.

Jamie Emerson: It’s interesting, too, since I’ve been in school it demands a lot of me mentally. I would study for three hours and I was like, ‘I need to eat something with carbs in it. My brain is like/I can actually feel my brain craving carbs.’ I would just try to not eat cookies or try to eat something that was a little…

Neely Quinn: Like fruit or something.

Jamie Emerson: Yeah, like some apples or just something that was a little bit better than just Oreos.

Neely Quinn: I mean, you can get the more natural Oreos that don’t have the food coloring and preservatives in them.

Jamie Emerson: Right. I do eat bread. I would eat a bagel. I do eat bagels. When I was route setting that was nice. I felt like it supplied that energy that I needed. If I just ate eggs and I route set, I’d feel a little blah so if I had eggs and a bagel I would feel that I would have a little more energy. That is a huge physical demand, too, to route set.

Neely Quinn: So you really honed in on the carb aspect of what your body needs.

Jamie Emerson: At this point, I notice that if I eat poor quality food, I feel poor.

Neely Quinn: What do you mean? How do you feel?

Jamie Emerson: I feel like when I’m eating the food, right in the moment, it can taste good. I know these foods are engineered to taste a certain way and I feel that and it feels great, but then 20 minutes later I’ll be like, ‘Bleh.’ I feel run down, tired, I don’t have energy. I feel like it was a big high to eat the food and it’ll drop. I felt great when it was going in my mouth and it tasted awesome but then when it gets in my stomach and I start to process it, I feel like I don’t have energy. I just feel sluggish.

When I eat quality food I feel actually better after I eat the food. It doesn’t taste quite as good, and I think it doesn’t have that, ‘Bam! Wow!’ like if you just eat french fries or something. It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so good.’ That’s a really superficial taste and feeling and being raised on food like that, it’s hard to not want to crave that. Eating a chicken salad doesn’t have that, ‘Bam!’ like fatty french fries and salty french fries do, but in the end I’ll feel like 100 times better. I’ll want to go exercise. I feel great instead of [sighs], ‘I have 10 pounds of french fries in my stomach.’

Neely Quinn: That’s good.

Jamie Emerson: I would try to eat, if I’m hungry, until I don’t feel hungry anymore.

Neely Quinn: Okay, I was going to ask about that.

Jamie Emerson: If I eat a meal and I’m still hungry then I would eat maybe an apple. Let’s say I had maybe a couple of chicken wraps and a Clif Bar or something and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m still hungry,’ maybe I’d go get a couple of apples and drink a lot of water. I try to drink a lot of water, too.

Neely Quinn: So you’re checking in with yourself while you’re eating. You’re kind of seeing, ‘Am I full? Am I hungry?’

Jamie Emerson: Right. How do I feel? Again, asking questions as to what’s going on and trying to find answers. How do I feel? Do I feel good? Did it feel good when I ate that hamburger last night? No, not really. It tasted good for a second but then I didn’t feel good afterwards. I didn’t climb well.

Neely Quinn: Okay, well I think those are all the questions that I had about food. Is there anything else that you want people to know about you or your climbing or your philosophies? Any controversies you want to clear up or anything? [laughs]

Jamie Emerson: I think one thing that’s lost a lot of times, I approach B3 – it is my blog but I also want to present arguments. There is part of my brain that is the scientific brain and just wants to care about argument but I’m not, personally – if someone wants to annihilate the argument and their logic and their reasoning is sound, then I will appreciate that and I think that’s awesome. I think that’s different from a lot of people that would feel upset or bent out of shape.

I’m looking for the truth. I want the best argument. What is the best argument we can make about this subject? The only way I can really do that is to just question people and I think the bluntness with which I question people comes off as standoffish or kind of a jerk or something. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it comes off as maybe a little cold, too. I think there’s maybe a disconnect between how it comes off and my person because then when they see me, like I said, they see this ridiculous arguing person or I’m willing to listen to people and I think my real person comes off differently than my online persona. I’m aware of that and I don’t think it’s going to change. I think it’s a part of – if you’ve read someone’s research paper, that would be very different than hanging out in a room with them. It would be the same here but it’s just that climbing is this lifestyle thing.

I just don’t feel the need to try to manage people’s emotions or try to manage my own emotions, like, ‘Okay, I’m going to say something really controversial and I hope I don’t offend anyone.’ I don’t care about that. That’s all extraneous to me. I just want to cut to the chase and present the argument and then listen to what people have to say. There have been a number of instances online where people have said, “I think there’s an inconsistency here,” or “I think you’re wrong about this.” If I disagree with them I will argue my point, vehemently, but if I have agreed with them I’ll go, ‘Ooh, you’re right. That is inconsistent.’ I will say that. “You’re right, this is wrong, and I think you’ve presented a better argument.” I think my willingness to acknowledge that is evident on my site in any number of places. It is also evident in the fact that I’m interested in finding the best argument, not just that I’m here to tell everyone what to think about everything.

Neely Quinn: I think what you’re trying to say is that it may come off as if you’re kind of an asshole online because you keep emotions kind of out of the situation.

Jamie Emerson: And because climbing is kind of this emotional sport. People get psyched. That is an emotion. No one is like, ‘I’m super psyched so I went in and did research,’ or something. That emotional aspect is already taken out of scientific stuff but it’s not in climbing. It’s a huge part of it. It’s not that it’s taken out of my life. I want to present a more logical and reasonable forum to discuss these topics instead of just, ‘Oh, everything is cool and we’re all hanging out,’ because that gets nowhere. That’s like, ‘Fine. We can all pat each other on the back and then nothing gets done.’

I think that when I am more direct and more poignant about the points I’m trying to make, I think more gets accomplished so that’s my goal. One of my goals.

Developing new boulders is the best thing I could ever have for climbing and it is the only thing really in climbing, at this point, that I’ve found that I can really let my brain go nuts with because I can have an area in New Mexico, I can have an area in Colorado, I can have an area in Wyoming. It’s all the trails, the plants, the animals, the beta, the rock, where I’m going to find new rock, all of those things can go on in my mind and it’s the only thing that’s really given – like, I have this thing now where I can have a million different things to think about and let that just basically play out as some gigantic thing I can think about. If I just thought about, ‘Oh, I’d just go to Rocky Mountain National Park to try to do Tommy’s Arete,’ that’s one thing and it’s really boring. I need a million things to think about and it has provided that.

I am so happy and thankful to have that in my life, to be able to think, ‘I’m going to Wyoming, this totally new place, and there’s going to be a thousand new boulders, and I’m going to do this one and this one and this one and this is going to be all the beta on all of these things and I’m going to give them all crazy names,’ and all that. That’s really important that I have that mentally and that’s what climbing and all this new development in climbing has given me and I’m ever thankful for it. I’m really happy to have it.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it’s really fulfilling to you.

Jamie Emerson: It is, it really is, and it makes me feel like my life is too short. I will never do all the things I want to do. There is so much, even though – yeah, it just makes me really excited about all the possibilities of things I can do and places I can go. It’s really important to me that I can assert myself in life, that I have a life and I can engage myself in it.

If I see someone that just sits around and watches tv and eats junky food and doesn’t do much, I’m like: they’ve been given a life from somewhere, wherever you want to say it’s from. They have a life and they do nothing with it. All I want to do is engage myself in my life and that is traveling, climbing, writing, reading, taking photographs. I mean, I write poetry. I love it. That’s just another way that I can engage myself in what I’m doing, so…

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well thank you very much for talking with me.

Jamie Emerson: You’re welcome.

Neely Quinn: I really appreciate it.

Jamie Emerson: Cool.

Neely Quinn: Thank you so much for listening to the third episode of the TrainingBeta podcast. I hope you liked my talk with Jamie and maybe got to know a little more about who he really is. I know I did.

You can find Jamie at www.b3bouldering.com and you can always find this interview on www.trainingbeta.com under the ‘podcasts’ tab. I’d love it if you checked out TrainingBeta and if you could leave an honest review on iTunes of the podcast, that’d be great, too.

One last thing: if there’s anyone you would like me to interview, please let me know in the comments section and I will try to make it happen. Alright, until next week, happy climbing.

 

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