By Published On: February 22nd, 2014Categories: 4 Comments on TBP001: A Talk with Carlo Traversi

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In this episode of The TrainingBeta Podcast, I chat with pro climber Carlo Traversi about his successes, failures, training, the pressures of being a sponsored climber, and confidence.

We also talk about…

  • The interesting circumstances that really got him started climbing
  • What goes through his head at comps
  • Does the pressure of being a sponsored climber get to him?
  • How he deals with fear in climbing
  • The fine line between confidence and arrogance, and how that plays into his climbing
  • Whether or not he’s ever had a coach
  • His advice for how to get better at climbing without a coach
  • How he trains to compensate for being a shorter climber
  • A typical week of climbing for him
  • His answer to hangovers
  • His favorite drink 🙂

Show Links

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** Photo by Mary Mecklenburg

Transcript

Neely Quinn: Welcome to the TrainingBeta podcast where I talk with rock climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m Neely Quinn, your host, and I have to say that I am so excited for this first episode. I’ve been interviewing super strong climbers and climbing coaches for the past eight months or so, trying to figure out how they do what they do, and I’m psyched to finally share those interviews with you on this podcast.

I’ll be putting out a new interview about once a week, maybe once every other week, from here on out. Most of the time I’ll interview climbers I look up to and I’ll pick their brains about how we mortals can get stronger and send harder climbs just like they do. Sometimes I’ll interview coaches and trainers, too, so if you ever have anyone you want me to interview please let me know in the comments section of this podcast on www.trainingbeta.com/podcast.

I’ve been climbing since 1999 when I was 19 years old. Since then, climbing has been a major part of my life as it probably is for you, too. My social scene, my lifestyle choices, and even the man I married are all a product of climbing. In fact, right now we’ve been living out of our van for seven months, traveling all over the country to – guess what – rock climb. It’s awesome. I love it. We’ll do it for a long time to come and I highly recommend it if you can make it happen.

Even having access to all these amazing climbing areas I still am sometimes at a loss for how to get stronger, braver, more confident, have better technique – all those things that make a really good overall climber. That’s why I started my website, www.trainingbeta.com, so I could collate a bunch of wisdom from all different climbers and trainers about their mindsets, their training schedules, what they eat, and basically all of their secrets to climbing hard.

On the site you can find articles by climbers like my very good friend, Paige Claassen, Jamie Emerson, Angie Payne, Emily Harrington, and others. You should check it out.

You will also find downloadable training programs on the site under the ‘Training Programs’ tab. The first one is out now which I’m very excited about. It’s a power endurance program by Kris Peters. He’s trained a lot of pro climbers including Daniel Woods and Sasha DiGiulian, but he also has a lot of experience training people who aren’t genetic mutants, like me, so he knows what works and what doesn’t. Check out his program if you’re interested in a really clear guide to gaining power endurance.

There will be more training programs to come, too, and again if you want to see a training program on the site by a particular climber or trainer please let me know and I’ll try to make it happen. My job here is just to get the talent to tell us their secrets.

Okay, speaking of which, today’s first interview is with Carlo Traversi. Carlo is an incredibly talented climber, as we all know. He’s bouldered V15, route climbed 5.14c, and he’s a major player in the competition scene having been on many podiums.

He lives the dream as a pro, sponsored climber and a climbing filmmaker. You can find out all about him at his website www.carlotraversi.com.

I lived with Johnny Hork, a good friend of ours and a good friend of Carlo’s, for a long time so I’ve gotten to know Carlo over the years. At first all I knew about him was that he was super strong, really good at setting boulder problems at The Spot that were way too hard for me, and he was very confident. He’s also a really good, generous, fun guy who genuinely cares about people and just wants to rock climb and be outside.

I talked to him about how he trains, how he stays strong on the road – which is very important to me right now – the differences between being confident and being arrogant, and how confidence plays into his climbing. We talked a little bit about his diet which, as a nutritionist, is very important to me. I’ll actually always talk to my guests about nutrition. We talked about how much he parties and whether that affects his climbing. He tells us what his favorite drink is at the end, too.

With that, here’s the interview. Oh – and the sound quality isn’t the greatest in this interview so I’m sorry about that. I promise as I get the hang of this it will get better.

Carlo Traversi: My name’s Carlo Traversi. I am originally from northern California. I’ve been living in Boulder for about six years now but I travel extensively, especially over the last year where I’ve pretty much barely been here.

I’ve been climbing for about 11 years now and I weigh 140 pounds. I’m 5’7” and I have a positive three (+3) ape index which is nice.

Neely Quinn: So you’re primarily a boulderer right now, right?

Carlo Traversi: I am primarily a boulderer but I started out trad climbing and did a lot of sport climbing when I was younger. I competed in the youth comps for sport climbing when I was younger, did all the USAC comps, basically, and I still sport climb a lot nowadays but it’s definitely not something that I train or necessarily go out and just gun for.

Neely Quinn: Right, and I know that you can go out and do sport climbing comps and almost win without any training.

Carlo Traversi: I’ve won a few National championships before without any training, which is kind of funny. 2009 and 2011 and this last year I took second without sport climbing at all, so I have some endurance in my arms without trying, which is cool.

Neely Quinn: Is that the way you’ve always been or is that something that you’ve trained and it’s just stuck with you?

Carlo Traversi: I’ve always been more of an endurance athlete in general. When I was in elementary school I used to go running with my dad and he would run like 12 or 15 miles, just randomly here and there. I ran a bunch of 10k’s when I was in third or fourth grade and was always winning for my age category for 10k’s and stuff, so I ran a ton, I played a ton of soccer, and because I could run so much and so consistently they always put me in the middle of the field. I ran basically the whole field for like 10 years of soccer.

Yeah, I’ve always considered myself more of an endurance athlete. In climbing I always thought that I would do more sport climbing but when I moved to Boulder, just the people that I climbed with ended up being boulderers and I think when you end up going bouldering all the time, your strengths start to develop in those ways so that’s kind of how it happened for me.

Neely Quinn: So do you like one or the other better?

Carlo Traversi: I really enjoy both. People are like, ‘You must enjoy bouldering way more if you do it all the time,’ but I would sport climb just as much as I boulder if I had a consistent partner to sport climb with or to go trad climbing with or try big walls and stuff.

That’s the biggest issue I find is that I can’t find anybody consistently to go do that stuff with, that’s on my schedule, you know? I do it randomly here and there and it’s fun but I generally go bouldering by myself most of the time because it’s on my own schedule and I can…

Neely Quinn: You go by yourself most of the time?

Carlo Traversi: Most of the time, yeah. I’d say 80% of the time I go bouldering by myself. I don’t go out with people but you can’t do that with sport climbing, so it doesn’t work.

Neely Quinn: Can you tell me about your biggest achievements with sport climbing?

Carlo Traversi: I climbed a few hard routes in Rifle in – I don’t even remember what year it was – 2009, maybe? 2008? I did Girl Talk which was at the time considered 14c and I did it in five tries. I’d only been sport climbing – I hadn’t sport climbed for a whole year and I went four days in Rifle. It was my first time climbing in Rifle and I spent two days to do Simply Read, and that was my first 13d, and the next day I did Benign Intervention and then – first try, actually.

Neely Quinn: What’s Benign Intervention?

Carlo Traversi: It’s this link-up of Huge and the top of Girl Talk, basically. I did that first try even though I had tried the midsection of Girl Talk before, so the one crux section in the middle. I guess according to 8a standards nowadays I onsighted it, but it was 14a or something. That was my first 14a and then the next day I did Girl Talk. [laughs] I was like, ‘Oh cool, I can sport climb.’

I think when I did Girl Talk I was on the wall for 45 minutes or something like that, which was really cool. I enjoyed the experience and I wish I could do more of that stuff.

Neely Quinn: And it seems like Mary, your girlfriend, is trying to learn how to sport climb more so that you guys can do that together more?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, she’s pretty new to climbing and she’s kind of had a crash course on bouldering and I think she kind of injured her finger a little bit so she’s psyched to do stuff that’s a little less powerful. She’s starting to sport climb again and we’ve talked about going to Spain this fall and into the winter and just sport climbing for the later half of this year, which would be really cool.

Neely Quinn: Cool. And can you tell me about some of your biggest bouldering achievements?

Carlo Traversi: I’ve been in the bouldering scene for five or six years now, pretty consistently. This last year I’ve repeated four V15s and put up a V15 of my own, and put up first ascents in South Africa and in Europe and kind of all over the place.

I competed really well bouldering. I’ve always been in finals in ABS Nationals and done well at those so yeah, I’ve just been consistently doing kind of a lot of things all over the place.

Neely Quinn: Do you have goals for this summer and this fall for bouldering?

Carlo Traversi: Trying to heal my lung right now [laughs] but other than that, I’ve been working on Hypnotized Minds in the Park because I think it presents kind of a unique challenge in bouldering that I haven’t found yet before, or at least before this.

Neely Quinn: Why is that?

Carlo Traversi: I just think it’s the hardest thing out there, period. I don’t think there’s any other rock climb that’s harder than that in the world.

Neely Quinn: Do you know how hard it is?

Carlo Traversi: Daniel gave it V15 but I think consensus at this point, even though no one has repeated it, seems to put it probably in the V16 range which could make it the first V16 in the world, basically. Legitimately.

I know that’s what claimed for The Game and I repeated The Game and didn’t think it was that difficult. Not not-difficult, just not V16 difficult. Hypnotized could easily be in that realm which is cool for the progression of bouldering and it’s cool for the progression of my climbing, to be able to test myself on something that I consider to be that hard.

Neely Quinn: What do you think is your strongest style of climbing, in bouldering?

Carlo Traversi: I like big open-hand holds and slopers.

Neely Quinn: Which we can all tell by your setting at The Spot.

Carlo Traversi: Exactly. That kind of came – it evolved that way for me. I’m not super skinny. I don’t watch my eating necessarily and I’m not a tiny climber, per se, even though I’m short and I don’t weigh that much because I am short. I’m not a small climber. I have muscle and crimping, for me – I got injured a lot when I started bouldering harder stuff. It forced me to just climb on pinches and slopers during that time.

Neely Quinn: You got finger injuries?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, I’ve had finger injuries. Like, a lot of them. I’ve had years of just straight finger injuries and I just started setting only pinches and slopers because it was the only thing I could climb on. I think I just evolved that way over the years just because I couldn’t climb on crimps, really. Now I can crimp and I’ve done crimpy problems but I try to avoid them just to not get injured.

I like open-hands, big moves, really thuggy bouldering like overhanging and pinches. I love pinches. Just holds that you can really grab onto that aren’t like razors. That’s my style for sure.

Neely Quinn: So your anti-style is razor crimpers.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, it’s weird to call it my anti-style when people are like, ‘Well, you’ve done Jade so you can’t be that anti of a style.’ I guess I can perform well on anything, but yeah, that’s what I don’t like to climb on.

Neely Quinn: Now let’s talk a little about your failures in climbing. Is there something that sticks out in your mind as your biggest failure as a rock climber?

Carlo Traversi: Biggest failure – I mean, there’s just so many failures in climbing, you know? I try not to dwell on them I guess. I mean, I’ve failed on so many problems that I wanted to do or should have done.

Luckily, this last year was kind of a clean-up year for me in Europe and whatnot. There were some things that I had been failing on for years that I finally put together so nothing sticks out as I have this thing that I’m just totally failing on.

I think sticking to a rigid training schedule has been difficult for me to do. I have a hard time motivating to stay on strict training programs. I kind of go with my motivation everywhere because if I don’t I feel like I get burned out. If I stick to one/I feel like I plateau when I stick to one type of regimen for too long. I like to kind of just read my body and see what I’m feeling like doing that day and what I feel is necessary and just kind of switch it up as consistently as possible. That’s been kind of my training but that’s definitely one of my weaknesses I think, though. I can’t stick to one thing to get as much out of it I feel like a lot of the times.

Neely Quinn: Do you feel like you get bored? Or…

Carlo Traversi: I get bored, yeah.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

Carlo Traversi: I feel like I have ADD climbing, for sure. I just want to do all sorts of different things all the time and I climb because it’s fun. I don’t climb because I feel like it’s a job or whatever. The minute it starts to feel like a job I just don’t try, really.

Neely Quinn: That’s another question for you. It is your job, technically. Who are your sponsors?

Carlo Traversi: I’m sponsored by Adidas Outdoor and FiveTen and Revolution and Skratch Labs, and Petzl supports me here and there.

Neely Quinn: So you make your living with these sponsors and the videos you create and that allows you to travel and climb as your life, right?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, and if I was getting paid to just train in the gym like those World Cup climbers do, I would absolutely hate it. My enjoyment is traveling and seeing new places and developing boulders and developing climbing and seeing new communities and different parts of the world. Just seeing new things all the time. I think I wouldn’t be a professional climber if that aspect of it didn’t exist.

Neely Quinn: Basically I want to know if the pressure of being a pro rock climber ever does get to you and if you ever feel like you’re not achieving enough or anything like that.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. It definitely does. If you’re not doing something for a period of time I definitely start to get really anxious and I’m like, ‘Okay, I really need to do something now or do something newsworthy or help push the sport in some way or push myself in some way. Do something.’ It’s a good thing, too. The pressure’s really good sometimes. I like it.

The times it sucks is when you feel forced to go to comps and perform really well at comps even though you haven’t trained at all. Luckily I haven’t really had an issue performing, even when I hadn’t trained, but I have to take the time to relieve myself of the pressure and just relax about it.

I went to Switzerland this last year for just a month of bouldering and it rained a lot and we didn’t really get to climb that much. I come back and I have one day of rest before I compete in a National Championship for sport climbing here. That’s like you show up and people know who you are, they know what you do and they know you get paid for what you do, and they expect stuff of you no matter what. That is difficult sometimes and it’s not necessarily fun to deal with, but I try and lighten it up and at least just have fun with it and be like, ‘Well, the pressure’s there so enjoy it and use it to your advantage,’ I guess.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Carlo Traversi: I think that pressure can suck and it can be really bad but I think that you can also use it to your advantage and that’s important.

Neely Quinn: So let’s talk about you during comps. What I see, and I love watching comps and I honestly love watching you in comps…

Carlo Traversi: Thank you

Neely Quinn: Because you’re confident and you’re precise and you’re always strong. I mean, there’s a lot of pressure that goes along with comps. What goes through your head when it’s your turn to climb?

Carlo Traversi: Hopefully nothing. [laughs] I try and make sure there is absolutely nothing going through my head, right before I get on the wall, at least. Definitely in preparation my mind is racing. In isolation it’s constant analysis of: how your arms are feeling that day? Did I warm up my pinch strength enough? Have I done enough crimp/have I crimped enough? Am I going to/do I know the beta properly? Am I going to read the beta properly? How am I going to be efficient on this route? Keeping all these things in mind but I think that that’s the point.

Beforehand you think about all these things and you rationalize your way through them and you analyze all these little things that could happen throughout the whole comp and by the time you get out there, you’ve gone through everything and you’ve thought about everything and at that point there’s nothing else for you to think about and you just get on the wall and you rock climb.

I do try to climb as efficiently and as confidently as possible. Even if I mess up the beta or something slips, if I climb as confidently as possible, that’s the best I can do.

Neely Quinn: So like when you make a mistake you just let it slide off your back?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, you can’t focus on mistakes, especially with bouldering comps. If you make a mistake you get another try and you can kind of analyze that mistake a little bit. With route climbing, if you make a mistake and you’re still on the wall you have to be optimistic. You can’t let it get you down. If you start thinking, ‘Oh my god, I made a mistake,’ you start over-gripping and then all of a sudden you’re pumped and you’re making more mistakes and it’s this terrible cycle. It’s different depending on the comp.

Neely Quinn: So, also with comps, this is interesting for me because I’m a pretty scared climber. When you’re doing these boulder problems that they set, a lot of times there’s potential for some awkward falls. Outside, too. How do you deal with fear or do you ever even feel fear when you’re bouldering?

Carlo Traversi: I used to be a little afraid when I was younger. I think I kind of knocked all the fear out of me in climbing. I don’t get scared at all, at any point in comps. Outside sometimes but rarely. It’s really weird.

When I was younger I used to get scared sport climbing when I was first climbing, just because it’s very unfamiliar. I think I kept pushing myself to the point where I was really freaking myself out on El Cap with not enough gear and my shoes are melting because it’s too hot, just totally freaking myself out. Once you’ve had those experiences, everything else doesn’t really seem that bad. You’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a bolt under me. At least I’m not going to fall onto the anchor,’ or something, ‘and I’m probably not going to hit the ground, even though it might be a shitty fall. It’s going to be okay, basically.’

Neely Quinn: So you haven’t had any experiences where you fall off a boulder and you sprain your ankle or you break your…?

Carlo Traversi: I’ve sprained my ankle a ton. I’ve never broken anything.

Neely Quinn: And that’s okay with you? That’s just part of the deal.

Carlo Traversi: That’s just part of it. I’ve gone out bouldering with one pad and fallen just in the dirt off the top of things. Sometimes you don’t have enough pads and you just go for it anyways. I sprained my ankle and that lasted for two months or something when I went to Switzerland this last fall. I basically just took a 15-foot fall onto a rock and just sprained my ankle. When I landed I was like, ‘I’m not going to walk out of here.’ Then I just sat there and chilled and put some snow on it and then I just started climbing again and it kind of went away. Nothing bad. I try and just not be fearful of that that type of stuff.

Neely Quinn: That lack of fear also takes a lot of confidence. You know that you’re going to grab the next hold and keep it. Do you think there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, it’s huge. I mean, throughout my life some people have said that I have an arrogant personality but other people that know me are just like, ‘No, you’re just really confident and sometimes it comes across as arrogance.’ I think that that discrepancy is visible in climbing, too. I think that confidence is calculated and arrogance is a little crazy, you know? I never consider myself crazy. I think there’s a lot of people in climbing that are totally crazy, but I’m always thinking. Like, I set up a pad and I know that if I land over here I’m going to hit this or hit that and that’s always in the back of my head so it’s kind of planned out. I feel like I calculate those things ahead of time. It’s not that I don’t think about them.

I see myself as more confident than arrogant, especially in my climbing. I think everything I do is very calculated. It might seem like it’s arrogant in certain ways, I guess, but I think that’s the difference of confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is kind of crazy, like it’s not really thought out very well, at least in terms of movement and how you are active. Confidence is a little more calculated, even though they kind of look the same if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

Neely Quinn: I would like to talk about your training in a little more detail.

Carlo Traversi: Okay.

Neely Quinn: So, when did you start climbing? How old were you?

Carlo Traversi: I was 14 when I started climbing.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so you’ve been climbing for 10 years now.

Carlo Traversi: Almost, yeah. I turn 25 so it will be 11 years. I basically started right when I turned 14.

Neely Quinn: And when you were 14 did you join a team or something? Or did you start training right away?

Carlo Traversi: My parents got divorced when I was 14 and my dad, who hadn’t really been around very much when we were kids because he was in different cities working, basically had to come back and take care of us for the summer when my parents got divorced. He didn’t know what to do with us because he worked all the time. My brother and I had tried climbing before and we liked it, so he took us to the gym, got us a year membership, and then every day for the entire summer when we were 14 and my brother was 12 he would – basically we would wake up in the morning and get to the gym at 9:00 or 10:00, whenever the gym opened. He would drop us off, he’d go to work, we’d sit at the gym for eight hours/nine hours, and then he’d come pick us up.

That was my entire summer when I was 14. My brother and I would just walk and go get food and then we’d climb for basically nine hours a day, which is kind of absurd when I think about it now. That’s all we did. We loved it. We didn’t really have any sort of program. We weren’t really being taught by anybody. We were kind of these rogue kids that nobody knew what the hell was going on at our gym in Santa Rosa. People were like, ‘Who are these kids that just showed up out of nowhere? They’re just here, like staples of the gym now.’ It was kind of funny. That was how we started.

Neely Quinn: Did you ever take on a trainer or a coach?

Carlo Traversi: I have never had a coach.

Neely Quinn: Really?

Carlo Traversi: No, never. I mean, I grew up climbing with Kevin Jorgeson. We climbed at the same gym, went to high school together, stuff like that. Kevin had been climbing for a long time before I did. He was climbing like V10 I think when I started climbing, basically, so he was always someone to look up to when we started climbing in terms of technique and how to move and stuff like that. He’s always had good technique and he had been coached and he knew how to do things.

Neely Quinn: So he kind of coached you a little bit, or was a mentor?

Carlo Traversi: He didn’t really coach us or tell us, “This is what you do,” but it was kind of more like we climbed with him and you just watch and you see things and just observe.

I think that’s the biggest thing I tell a lot of people, to just find someone that’s good at climbing or you respect their style of climbing and observe what they do and learn from that. That’s a really simple way, without coaching, to get better.

Neely Quinn: So then when you were talking earlier about you not being on a rigid schedule of training but you do follow training schedules sometimes, where do those come from and what do they look like?

Carlo Traversi: It comes from my weaknesses, a lot of my training. Being a shorter climber I felt like I was always lacking core strength. Maybe not lacking. I think shorter climbers have better core strength than taller climbers just because it’s easier to core-up and you do have to core-up a lot more than when you’re tall because your feet cut more. I wanted that extra level of core strength to basically keep my feet on no matter how extended I was, so I started doing a core regimen to try like front levers and different sit-up exercises and stuff like that, just to try and strengthen my core even more so that I could keep my feet on better.

Then, I noticed that a lot of the climbing I was doing as a shorter climber was not here, which is what a normal pull-up is, but out here and it is all in the lats for me so I started doing heavy duty lat pulldown exercises.

Those are just examples of things that I saw in my own climbing or weaknesses that I thought that I had or things I thought would help me improve as a shorter climber. Then, I just kind of structured some exercises around that.

Neely Quinn: Do you continue to do those things today?

Carlo Traversi: I do. Not nearly as much. I’d say in 2010 when I was basically homeless in Boulder for that whole summer, I was training my ass off. I’d only climbed a few V13s and then that summer I did like double the amount of V13s that I did and did my first V14s. I did Jade and it was a huge jump in ability for me. I felt like I could go to any problem and just do it. It was really cool and that was kind of the product of this newfound training that I started doing.

Neely Quinn: So can you take me through a week of that training?

Carlo Traversi: It was a lot of climbing. I had just recovered from a finger injury that I had in Hueco in February and then it took two months or so for it to go away with a ton of icing and whatnot. Once that finger injury was over I just started basically going to the gym and I would project a variety. I would warm up and then I would project whatever I was working on that was really, really hard climbs in the gym, and then once I was a little too tired to be doing those climbs, then I would do circuits where I would pick – in The Spot it’s the ‘five spots’ so – V7 and harder. I’d pick 30 or 40 of them and try and do them in a time limit, like under 40 minutes or something.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] That’s really hard.

Carlo Traversi: It hurts because you’re just basically absolutely wrecked and you’re still trying to do it, but these were problems that I had dialed. Because I could do everything in there easily I had to find a way to make them more difficult. If I just went in there for three or four hours and just tried to do a bunch of hard climbs I would just do them all and I wouldn’t really be tired, so I had to start limiting myself with timing. Like, ‘I don’t care how tired you are, when you get off this thing go and try and do this thing and try as hard as you can.’

Then once I would be done with that I would go upstairs and do 500-1,000 sit-ups on a Bosu Ball with a 10-pound weight on the chest, and then I was trying to push my max pulldown on the lateral pulldown machine for a year. I got up to about 260-pound lat pulldowns, out here, wide. I noticed a huge change in strength for bouldering.

Neely Quinn: So you were doing just a few reps of that at a time.

Carlo Traversi: Two reps. That’s it, because I was working on max power. If I’m going to be at that weight or that strength, I’m only going to be doing that once in a boulder problem, maybe twice. I don’t need to do it/I don’t need like five of those.

Neely Quinn: So how many days a week would you do that?

Carlo Traversi: That summer I was doing it four days a week/five days a week.

Neely Quinn: And then you were performing as well.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, I was going out – when I did Jade I think I came back down after I did Jade and went through basically a workout like that. I would go up to the Park and session in the Park all day because I wasn’t doing anything but climbing. I would just go climb on whatever I was working on in the Park all day and then I would come back at 9:00 – I was working at The Spot so I had access to the gym whenever I wanted to. It is open till 11 so I would stay till midnight sometimes, just training extra.

But yeah, I was just psyched on rock climbing and psyched to get stronger and I just went with the motivation. I was really motivated to improve and it wasn’t hard to do that stuff. It wasn’t hard for me to go in there and do it because I just wanted to. I was like, ‘I want to go in and just do this stuff now,’ whereas nowadays I don’t do that nearly as much because I’m not as motivated to do it. I enjoy being outside. I’m a little bit more relaxed now, I think. I’m not as hungry as I was before.

Neely Quinn: And you’re more accomplished.

Carlo Traversi: Thanks. I go through cycles of it, though. I go through these weird cycles of being super hungry, just wanting it really bad, and then not really going after it as hard. I think your body kind of knows, too, when it’s time to chill for a little while. I’m not very good at chilling. I don’t really relax a lot of the time. I want to do something that tires me out before the end of the day.

Neely Quinn: It sounds like a lot of your training has just come from you understanding what your weaknesses are by perceiving them on your own, not necessarily having somebody else tell you, and being really honest with yourself. Then, just doing things that you know intuitively will train those weaknesses.

Carlo Traversi: Yep, that’s essentially it. I’ve never pretended to be strong in any way. I’m probably my biggest critic of my own climbing, you know? Even when I put up a V15 in Switzerland this last year. I never ever expected myself to put up a V15 boulder. If you asked me even six years ago, “Are you going to put up an 8C?” or something like that, I’d be like, ‘You’re fucking joking me. No way in hell.’ I never expected to be on a level like that but I’ve come to accept it but in a weird way, I guess. I still don’t feel very strong. I still don’t feel that strong but everything around me seems to have gotten easier in a lot of ways so I guess I do have to accept it in some sense. It’s really odd to me.

Neely Quinn: It must be, especially because it seems like you improved over a really short amount of time.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, it’s weird. It’s weird for me to mentally accept and I try not to accept it fully because I think when you’ve accepted that you’ve reached a certain point, then you’re not as hungry to keep going. I try and think like, ‘I’m not climbing hard, I’m not doing that well, I need to go in and get better. I’m not doing well.’ That’s basically what I tell myself all the time, that I’m failing and I’m not strong enough.

Neely Quinn: So it’s really an internal battle with you, it’s not, ‘I want to be better than this guy.’

Carlo Traversi: No, I’m not competitive externally towards other people at all. It might seem like that in certain ways with people telling me when I downgrade stuff that it’s towards anybody else, but I think when I’ve downgraded stuff in the past it’s more been my inability to accept what other people have said about something in terms of what I think it is for me.

When Jade was V15 and I did it, I was like, ‘There is no way in hell.’ I hadn’t even climbed V14 before. I can’t accept that personally so why would I put that out there as something that I’ve done? It had nothing to do with anybody else, it was just I can’t accept this grade for myself so why should I tell people that that’s what I’ve done?

Neely Quinn: It’s interesting. It’s kind of ironic and I hadn’t thought of it that way, where you’re downgrading out of humility, in a way. Like, ‘No, I can’t climb V15 so it must be V14.’

Carlo Traversi: That’s how I had always thought about downgrading stuff. I’d never considered it as: this just isn’t as hard as I can do or something like that. It’s never been like that. It’s like: I can’t climb that hard so this can’t be that hard. That’s always been what it feels like for me. Or, if I do it too fast or if it doesn’t feel that bad then it’s kind of like well, maybe it isn’t that bad, you know?

I always feel like I’m on the weaker end of everything so it’s easier to downgrade. They seem to make sense when it does feel easy. I know sometimes that might not be correct and I might have a certain style that fits things and whatnot but you kind of just weigh it the best you can.

Neely Quinn: Okay, I know that you’re injured right now in a way. You have this lung thing going on that’s making you cough like an old man. It’s not funny at all.

Carlo Traversi: It’s funny. I try and keep it light. It sucks.

Neely Quinn: Before you had this lung thing happen, how much were you climbing? What is a typical week for you now? How many days a week do you climb and how long do you climb?

Carlo Traversi: Since I’ve been in Europe and climbing outside basically for the last year, I’ve been working on a film. I’ve been working on other things and I haven’t been climbing as much. I’ve been climbing like four days a week. I’ve been kind of using this time to rest. This is my rest period. I go climbing when it sounds fun and when I climb in the gym I push it as hard as is fun for me. When I go outside I do the same thing. That’s not to say I’m not going to ramp it up when I do feel better or even if I didn’t have this happen, I would probably be ramping it up.

Normally I would be ramping it up right now. I was supposed to have a comp this weekend, supposed to be going to a World Cup in Toronto, and I would be psyched to be motivated going into those things and climbing a lot more. Normally I would be climbing almost every day, varying amounts, mixing in treadwall training or route training and some weights and stuff like that. A mix of stuff.

Neely Quinn: So climbing basically six or seven days a week?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, I try and climb every day, mainly because I like to.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

Carlo Traversi: Even if I climb outside, a lot of times I’ll climb inside as well afterwards, or warm-up inside and then go outside. Just mixing it.

Neely Quinn: So that’s kind of a superhuman thing to do.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, a lot of people do it but a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to do it, too.

Neely Quinn: But even if given the opportunity I couldn’t do that. I would be crying in pain.

Carlo Traversi: There is definitely a pain tolerance.

Neely Quinn: It’s interesting talking to people like you and Daniel and whoever climbs seven days a week and just compare. I think part of it is just a mental toughness and then maybe a genetic toughness. I don’t really know. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Carlo Traversi: I think a lot of it is practice. It’s practicing that pain. It is a lot of pain. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt to go in and climb that much and pushing past that pain level. It’s also a really useful mental tool when you go outside or you’re working on your project somewhere or you’re in a place with a time constraint and you need to get something done but you don’t have time to rest and you have to go do it now.

I dealt with that last fall when I was working on The Story of Two Worlds in Switzerland. I was four days on and I was bleeding out of three fingers and I had basically a day and a half left and it was supposed to rain the later part of that next half-day or whatever. I was like, ‘This needs to go now.’ You’re basically just pushing as hard as you can even when your body just feels like a nightmare. Like a complete nightmare. I could barely pick stuff up but…

Neely Quinn: So then when you can barely pick stuff up, what goes through your head when you’re saying to yourself, ‘Is it worth it?’

Carlo Traversi: I guess it’s worth it when you get it done because then you don’t have to come back to do it. It’s like $3,000 for a month in Switzerland. It’d be nice to do it now and not do it later so you have to pull that motivation from somewhere to do it now. Just one more try. It’s going to hurt like hell. Just do it now. That’s the motivation.

Neely Quinn: And that’s really the difference between people like you and people like me. It’s notable. It really is.

Carlo Traversi: I appreciate that. It’s interesting. It doesn’t get captured well in the climbing media. That’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to try and capture in climbing videos was that process and that struggle, but so much of it is internal and you can’t see it. I can’t show people how badly my body is hurting at this point, you know? All they see is me pulling on the wall and doing pretty okay and like, ‘He can’t be feeling that bad.’ I’d wake up some mornings and I’d be like, ‘Mary,’ my girlfriend, ‘I literally feel like someone took a baseball bat to my back. I swear to God.’ It takes a good half-day to just get stretched out and loosened up and then you go climbing again. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: It’s just crazy to me. I’d rather just sit and…

Carlo Traversi: Hang out?

Neely Quinn: The last thing I want to talk to you about is diet. Just in general, can you tell me how diet affects your climbing and what role it plays in your life?

Carlo Traversi: Diet is huge. Not that I diet. I don’t watch what I eat necessarily. I guess I do watch what I eat. I watch what I eat, for sure, but I’m not counting calories or making sure that I have to get these certain things in my body every day or counting what I eat or anything like that. I like to eat good, whole foods that are quality foods. I don’t buy crap. I don’t buy fast food and I don’t buy crappy foods. I like good food, really good food, and that means good quality natural.

I like a variety of foods, too. I like a lot of proteins. I feel better when I eat a lot more proteins. Not a lot of carbs just because I feel like it weighs me down and I get more tired if I eat more carbs. Not that I’m gluten intolerant or anything like that. I don’t have any issues. I don’t have any allergies. I don’t have anything like that.

Neely Quinn: But you’re just not eating cookies all day or something like that?

Carlo Traversi: Yeah. It depends. Sometimes I will take a bag of cookies and brownies out climbing but if I’m up in the alpine just destroying calories, sometimes you just need that sugar boost to keep yourself going. I try and listen to cravings as long as they’re not for total garbage all of the time. I just listen to what sounds good for my body and for the most part that’s worked pretty well for me. I never feel like – I have good energy levels and I never feel not nourished enough or anything like that.

Neely Quinn: Obviously there is the idea that the strength-to-weight ratio helps your climbing. Being smaller makes you stronger. What are your thoughts on that and what are your experiences with it?

Carlo Traversi: It’s huge but not in sacrifice of energy levels. I’ve definitely tried to cut down on the amount of food that I eat and while I do feel lighter, like, ‘Hey, I can do more one-arm pull-ups because I feel lighter,’ I’m not going to last a long session because I’m going to be super hungry and I’m going to feel super tired.

Neely Quinn: So you’ve gone through periods of that…

Carlo Traversi: I’ve tried it. I’ve tried everything for small windows of time, not for a long period, but I’ve been like: let’s try and eat a little less and drop five pounds and see what that feels like, see how my body reacts to that. For the most part it hasn’t really affected me. It hasn’t done as much as I thought it would.

For a while I would climb in the gym and weigh myself after every session or before every session and see where I’m at. Generally after every session so I wouldn’t let the weight affect my mentality going into the climbing. For that one summer that I was training a lot and progressed a lot, I was at almost 150 pounds at that point which is the heaviest I’ve ever been and I felt like I was just so light, like climbing on air all the time.

Neely Quinn: That’s super interesting.

Carlo Traversi: It was weird, yeah. At that point I was like, ‘Weight doesn’t mean shit because I feel better than I’ve ever felt right now and I’m heavier than I’ve ever been.’ Then other times I’ve been like, ‘Damn, I’m feeling super heavy today.’ I go weigh myself and I’m seven pounds lighter. I give up. Why even look at this anymore? It just depends day to day, energy levels, how your muscles are feeling.

Neely Quinn: So for you it’s more, again, just the intuitive listening to your cravings, eating as much as you need to stay satiated, whether or not that’s, like you said, destroying calories.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah. I would say the important thing is to never be full. I never eat till I’m just completely stuffed. My full level is just under full I would say. I don’t think people need to eat until they’re stuffed to the brim.

Neely Quinn: Were you taught that somewhere along the line?

Carlo Traversi: When I was younger I used to eat so much that I would just feel sick but I think I just realized it then that if I eat that much I just feel terrible afterwards. Why even do that? Now it’s like: I don’t want to feel terrible. Food is good but I don’t want to feel like shit so I just eat a little bit less than what you normally would.

It’s odd with portion sizes in America. In Europe and other places in the world that I’ve traveled you order out a meal and you can eat pretty much the whole thing and you’re satisfied but you’re not full, whereas in America the portion sizes tend to be very all over the place. It’s really difficult, I find. I eat out a lot. I like to cook but I do eat out a lot, especially when I’m in Boulder because there’s a lot of good food to eat out. It’s always hard to manage the portion sizes because you have to think about how much you’re actually eating and how much you want to leave behind, basically, because you get too much most of the time.

Neely Quinn: Do you take any supplements?

Carlo Traversi:  I don’t. I did for awhile. I was taking Omega-3s. I felt like I was lacking B-vitamins just because certain foods I was eating I felt like didn’t have enough of it. When I did take them I felt a little more normal. I had a more balanced energy level and stuff like that. I was taking B-vitamins for awhile, for like a year. A B-complex supplement or something like that. That’s pretty much it.

Neely Quinn: You’ve never taken Creatine?

Carlo Traversi: Never taken Creatine. I used to make protein shakes here and there or add whey protein to stuff but I kind of started consuming enough meat to the point where I didn’t really think it was necessary to even add anymore. Your body can only take in so much protein.

Neely Quinn: Can you take me through what you ate yesterday for instance?

Carlo Traversi: What I ate yesterday?

Neely Quinn: That was a non-climbing day because of this lung day.

Carlo Traversi: It was a non-climbing day. I woke up and I had two eggs with pork sausage and then I had a kombucha midday, and then I had Indian food so a tikka masala with naan and rice and stuff like that and chicken in it and meat. I ate about half of that and saved the rest or whatever.

Neely Quinn: So you didn’t even have lunch, you just had the kombucha? Is that typical?

Carlo Traversi: It depends. If I wake up pretty early I’ll eat pretty early and then I’ll have to do something in between but lately I’ve been waking up later, just because I’ve been working late at night until 3 or 4 in the morning a lot of times so I wake up at 10 rather than 8. If I was going to bed at like midnight I would wake up at 8:00 but I’m going to bed at 4 and then that pushes that back a little bit.

I’m kind of an insomniac, too. I definitely have trouble sleeping, especially if I’m not active. I think that’s a lot of the reason why I try and beat myself down as much as possible. I have really high energy levels throughout the day, especially at night. If I don’t destroy myself during the day and just be totally wrecked at night then I have trouble sleeping. It’s like a dog. I try and just go and knock myself out or else I can’t sleep.

Neely Quinn: One last question about partying and drinking and stuff like that.

Carlo Traversi: Uh oh.

Neely Quinn: How does that fit into your health? How much would you say you go out and how does that affect your climbing, if at all?

Carlo Traversi: It’s a really difficult question. I would say right now I go out a lot more than I would care to admit, or drink a lot more than I would care to admit. [laughs] I like to go out and be social and party, not that I’m a hard core partier. I think I’ve gone through phases of more hard core partying but that was years ago. More these days it’s just more going out and getting a drink and hanging out with friends for a few hours or something like that, nothing crazy. I do generally have alcohol either every night, like a drink every night, or once every other night or something like that. That’s while I’m in Boulder.

It’s hard – when I’m in Switzerland or out climbing, or like when I’m in Africa I wasn’t really drinking very much. I’d have a glass of wine maybe a couple nights a week here and there but to be honest, I haven’t really noticed a difference in performance. I do notice that if you train really hard and have more than a glass or two or a drink or two and you don’t drink enough water to compensate, you’re going to be way more sore the next day. I have noticed that. If I drink and don’t hydrate enough after training or working out then I will be absolutely wrecked.

The other thing I do is I make sure that before any comp I don’t drink for like a week, anything, any alcohol for a week or two in advance. For Nationals I quit drinking a week and a half in advance and then made sure I was super hydrated for that whole week, just flushing everything. Getting your body and your muscles as hydrated as possible.

Neely Quinn: Were you doing the gallon a day thing or something?

Carlo Traversi: Not anything like that, just making sure that I was drinking more water than I normally would. Not any amount or not setting a goal but just thinking about it and being like, ‘I’m going to drink a little extra today.’ I think that’s important.

I think the hydration aspect of it is the most important part. I don’t think that having a few drinks every night is going to severely affect your training unless you’re not hydrated enough to compensate for what alcohol is doing to you.

Neely Quinn: That’s a good philosophy if you’re drinking. Just make sure you’re drinking water.

Carlo Traversi: Yeah, I feel great in the morning if I drink enough water before I go to sleep. Normally, if I have a few drinks at night or whatever I’ll drink a glass of water and then a glass of Skratch right before I go to sleep because it has electrolytes and stuff in it. Two glasses of that and you wake up the next morning you don’t feel anything or any different. You don’t feel sore or anything like that, so I think that’ll change maybe as I get older. I don’t think your body reacts as well to alcohol as you get older. I’m still 25 so it’s not the end of the world.

Neely Quinn: What’s your favorite drink?

Carlo Traversi: Gin and tonics, probably. I like beer. I like wine a lot.

Neely Quinn: Any last words? Anything you want people to know about you or advice or anything?

Carlo Traversi: Not really. I guess just do what feels good. Do what you’re psyched on. Have fun with it. That’s kind of my best philosophy for things. Enjoy what you’re doing and don’t get too serious but also being serious about what you’re having fun with is good, too. [laughs] If that makes sense.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it does.

Carlo Traversi: I’m a serious fun-haver.

Neely Quinn: Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of the TrainingBeta podcast. I hope you liked my talk with Carlo and learned a few things, as I did.

You can always find this interview at www.trainingbeta.com/podcast. I’d love it if you checked out the site and if you could leave an honest review on iTunes about the podcast that would be awesome.

Again, if there’s anyone that you want me to interview please let me know in the comments section and I will try to make it happen. Okay, until next week, happy climbing.

[music]

4 Comments

  1. Steve April 21, 2017 at 5:05 pm - Reply
  2. Marissa Mason July 20, 2016 at 7:17 am - Reply

    Hey! Love your podcasts! Just wanted to let you know the link to Carlo’s website is broken.

  3. kurtiss R December 11, 2015 at 5:54 pm - Reply

    Very cool podcast! Carlo you da man!

  4. Tom March 19, 2014 at 4:06 am - Reply

    This is his solution to coping with pain (4 ibuprofen):

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