[laughs]

Neely Quinn: Yeah, sure – what you look like.

David Mason: Really handsome, massive muscles – no. I’m a 30-year old man, obviously. I live in Sheffield, in England, and I’ve been climbing for about 11 years. I coach climbing to kind of make a living, and I do little bits of writing for magazines and websites, and make kind of small, very simple videos, and take pictures as well. So, I have lots of fingers in different pies to earn money from climbing and I get small amounts of money from sponsors. I also run a company with a friend of mine called Independent Sheffield, which is about promoting independent businesses in Sheffield.

I’m a boulderer mainly. I do a little bit of trad climbing on the Gritstone, which is just glorified bouldering in the sky, anyway. I spend a lot of time in a dingy cellar hanging off little pieces of wood and a lot of time on climbing walls, because the weather tends to be bad in the U.K. I then try to visit as many cool places around the world to go rock climbing and tick off various lifetime achievements that I want to do.

I’m also the British team senior manager for the bouldering team.

Neely Quinn: What does that mean?

David Mason: I basically run the British bouldering team along with Mark Glennie. I’m the manager and he’s kind of the assistant manager and coach, so we kind of do all the organization of team training for the athletes and we do all of the admin to get them into comps and the selection of who’s going to what comps and the day-to-day running of that.

Neely Quinn: Were you on the bouldering team?

David Mason: Yeah, I was for three years, maybe? I competed at maybe four or five, six, World Cup events. I never did very well, to be honest, probably because, a) I probably wasn’t strong enough at the time, but I’m not good at competing in terms of my mental side/my mental approach. Especially when I was competing, it was very poor. I’m a little bit more mature now but still would struggle in that environment, I think. In fact, my best ever comp result was when I had left the team but I was in Vail and there was no males competing for the GB team so I just said, “Oh, can I do it?” and it wasn’t a very good result, but it was my best one. It was kind of when I didn’t have any pressure on me because I wasn’t in the team and I managed to get my best result.

I think it was also because the head setter was Percy Bishton, who basically set two really horrible slabs that nobody else knew how to do, but Brits know how to climb slabs and, especially because Percy sets at and owns the Climbing Works, which is kind of the wall where I work, mainly…

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I remember that year. My husband set a couple of the routes for that comp.

David Mason: Okay. I think, actually, Percy’s been a couple of times to Vail. They seem to like him there. He has a good Brit sense of humor as well.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, all of you do. [laughs]

So, let’s back up a little bit. You said that your mental game wasn’t there. Do you feel like it’s different now? Do you feel like you’re better mentally now?

David Mason: I’m definitely better. I wouldn’t say – I’m definitely not a finished product yet, mentally. I’m not sure that I ever will be. It doesn’t naturally come to me. I’ve played sports all my life. I’ve played lots of county-level sports, so I played badminton, squash, basketball, I played national-level racquetball, and I played for school teams for everything. I’ve always been very sporty and felt my mental attitude has always let me down. I was a really bad loser when I was younger. I’d break squash rackets, throw tantrums on the court, and I found it really hard to lose, I suppose.

When I first came into climbing, I brought that/I couldn’t differentiate between a team sport and a more competitive sport in climbing. I kind of brought that with me into climbing and it meant when I first started, I was a bad loser in comps and it just wasn’t fun for me or the people I was with, to be honest. It definitely took me a long time to learn to get over that. I still get angry and frustrated, as I suppose everyone does, but I’m learning to deal with it more but it’s really hard.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it seems like it’s hard to get your stuff together after you’ve gotten angry about something, like, to try to get your cool back.

David Mason: Yeah, I think it’s really difficult but I think sometimes not venting can be as much of a sabotage as venting, so that vent of frustration can then kind of – say, go and spend five minutes kind of away from the situation and that can really help. I think it depends on the kind of person you are. My girlfriend, for example, if she gets frustrated or disappointed with a performance or on a climb, she’ll take that intrinsically and she’ll not, kind of, show anything until maybe we get home and we talk about it and stuff and maybe she’s upset. With me, I tend to show it extrinsically and I would get angry or I might kick a chalk bag or something like that, but that kind of venting, I think if it can be controlled, I think it can be quite a good thing. I’m sure lots of people would argue otherwise, but…

Neely Quinn: I don’t know, it seems like for every person, they have their way, and if you can channel it like you’re saying then it’s probably a good thing.

David Mason: Yeah, yeah. I think my worst thing is not my anger. I can learn to channel that, although I get frustrated. My worst thing, and probably my biggest thing that affects my climbing, is disappointment in myself. That’s something that I really struggle with and have inner turmoil with, so that’s quite hard to deal with, but you get used to it. Basically, climbing is 99.9% failure with – yeah, it’s a great sport. I suppose all sports are like that, in a way. You have to fail to get better and stuff, so…

Neely Quinn: Yeah. So, you’ve been climbing for 11 years, only. I mean, that’s kind of a short time in terms of/relative to strong climbers, and you seem to have done a lot in that time. I mean, you’ve been on national teams and boulder kind of hard. Can you tell me about the evolution of your climbing? Like, when did you start? How did you start? How did you get into it?

David Mason: I probably, initially, did do a bit of climbing in school when I was maybe 16. We used to have, or schools used to have, Wednesday afternoon sports in England when you get to a certain age. I used to climb a little bit with a graphics teacher called Graham Parks. He’s a bit of a Peak District legend. That was only once a week but then I kind of stopped in my gap year and didn’t do as much. Then, when I went to university in Leeds my sports science building – so, I did sports science at university – the building that I was based in had the first ever indoor climbing wall in the U.K., which is basically bricks slightly removed or slightly sticking out to create edges. A lot of history there and a lot of really strong climbers, British climbers like Al Manson and stuff, used to train there and so there’s a lot of history. I kind of saw that and remembered how much I liked climbing, and started going there and then just met people and it kind of went from there. I’d basically only ever really bouldered because the guys I met at Leeds were boulderers so that’s just what I did.

Probably for the first year I just mainly climbed indoors and for the second year being at the university I mainly only climbed outdoors. I climbed, mainly, only with a guy called Tom Peckitt, who’s a really strong English guy. He’s actually in Bishop at the moment. He’s got really strong fingers, very much a bit of a dark horse, but he’s done lots of hard stuff on the Gritstone. I climbed a lot with him and a guy called Don Warren. At Leeds, at the time, there was quite a good scene. Ben Meeks and Stu Watson and an Austrian girl called Sabine Bacher, who was Stu’s longterm girlfriend. They were at university together. There was a really good scene of us and then, in my third year, I would probably say I started to train.

So, first year I just climbed indoors, second year mainly outdoors, and then third year I kind of got this idea of having this mixture of climbing outdoors and training a little bit, so having some structure to what I was doing when I went to the wall, doing some fingerboarding stuff. By now, by the amount that I train now, it was very little but that was when I first started to get that.

Then, I finished university and planned to go on a three-month road trip to the states. The first stop was Hueco, then I was going to go to Bishop, and then Yosemite. I had three and a half weeks in Hueco, which was great, and I dislocated my shoulder on a boulder problem and I had to put it back in myself. I had a bit of an epic and stuff. I then went home and just started working and stuff because I couldn’t climb. I had about/probably about five months off of climbing and just working and then started to climb again and just start to build it back up again, really.

Neely Quinn: So you didn’t have surgery on it. You just let it heal?

David Mason: No, I didn’t need surgery. I don’t really know why I didn’t need surgery. It was probably out of the socket for about 10 minutes. It took me quite a few attempts to put it back in.

Neely Quinn: Oh my god.

David Mason: I even tried – this is actually a good learning point for people. If you don’t take anything else from this talk, take this one thing: Mel Gibson, in Lethal Weapon, running into a wall does not put a shoulder back in place. So, I tried that. It hurt a lot and it didn’t work, so thank you, Mel.

Neely Quinn: That is terrible. I can’t believe you did that. [laughs] How did you get it back in?

David Mason: So, it was a really strange dislocation. My shoulder/most shoulder dislocations come because your shoulder kind of collapses down and forwards, whereas actually my shoulder basically came out of the top of my socket. My ball, on the top of my bone, was level with my ear so it was pretty far out. I basically, eventually, grabbed my arm and I did a really big windmill with it, slowly. I supported it with the other arm and when I got to the apex of the windmill, so my arm just pretty much straight above it, it just went ‘boom,’ straight back in.

Neely Quinn: Gross.

David Mason: It was hilarious, though, because I was out on tour with a girl named Melissa Strong, who kind of runs a guiding agency, Wagon Wheel Co-op, in Hueco. It was just me and her and she just did not have a clue what to do and she was panicking. She was so scared, and I was just running around trying to put my shoulder back in. It was kind of hysterical. Then, since then actually, she’s done a first aid in the wilderness so now she knows how to put shoulders back in and stuff, which is good.

Neely Quinn: Wow. You inspired her. Good job.

David Mason: I think it was the nightmares that she had, actually, that inspired her.

So yeah, I had about five or six months off and then I started climbing again. I’d probably say it took me about two years to become fully confident again on my shoulder. I did lots of rehab work on it, obviously, and strengthening work. I guess that’s why, maybe today, I really love shouldery moves and shouldery climbing. Maybe, it’s subconsciously proving to myself that my shoulder can take it and stuff.

Neely Quinn: So, you’re all good. You don’t have any issues with your shoulder?

David Mason: No. I did sublux it. I did it in January and I started climbing again May/June -time and I did sublux it the August after that, but it just kind of popped out and it went back in again. Since that, I obviously have shoulder niggles every now and then and stuff but nothing bad at all, really. I definitely had a really good physio at the time, which is lucky, because I didn’t really know anything about injuries or who to see or that sort of thing. I stumbled across a really good physio and it worked out really well. I put lots of hard work into the rehab of it so, yeah.

Neely Quinn: That’s good. That’s inspirational to hear, because I’m still afraid of shouldery moves because I had shoulder surgery. It’s good to hear that even though you do something traumatic to your shoulder you can love shouldery moves again, so…

David Mason: Yeah, it’s just about putting the time in and getting over that – I think a lot of it’s that you put the time in to get rehabbed and stuff and then it’s kind of building up the confidence to be able to do it, allowing yourself to do it, almost, so…

Neely Quinn: Alright, let’s talk about training. Actually, let’s talk about climbing. I want to know, in your words, what are your highlights of your climbing career so far? What are some of the hardest things you’ve done and the most memorable?

David Mason: Most memorable, hardest things I’ve done. They probably don’t always line up.

Neely Quinn: And/or.

David Mason: Yeah, yeah. A mixture of things, I suppose. So, no particular order, because I’ll remember one and then be like, ‘Ooh, ooh, it’s this one.’ I think the one that springs out first of all was this problem called Superman in the Peak District, which is an 8B, so V13. It’s an eliminate climb up a piece of limestone that doesn’t top out. It’s awful, but it’s got a lot of history behind it. It’s a crag called Cressbrook in the Peak District, which is about 45 minutes from here. It’s where Jerry and Ben and John Welford and Malcolm Smith and all those guys used to train there. When they didn’t really have walls as much to train in, that’s where they would go. There’s lots of history there and I remember the first time I ever went there, being shown this climb – and it has actually slightly changed since the original holds broke – and you do it in a slightly different way and that’s obviously the quality of it, as you can tell.

I remember going there the first time and being shown this line, like, ‘This is Superman. This is the hardest climb here.’ The left-hand crimp that you do the crux off, I just couldn’t fathom how anyone could pull on that hold, it’s so small. Then, yeah – I suppose eventually, building up to going down to Cressbrook and doing every other climb there, and I could do them all. Like, it went down to where I could circuit them. I really liked the climbing there and it’s a very peaceful place. Not many people go there and it’s kind of in the trees. It’s very secluded and it’s really nice. Basically, building up to do that, which was really nice. It came completely out of the blue.

I’d been in Fontainebleau for 10 days and it had rained for nine of those days, so I had basically climbed one day in two weeks. I went out climbing on a Monday morning and wanted to get on some Gritstone but I was driving to the Gritstone and realized it was kind of too warm and then I was like, ‘Oh, well I’ll just go and see if Cressbrook’s dry,’ and this was in March, when it normally wouldn’t be dry. I got there and it happened to be dry and I was like, ‘Oh, well I’ll just climb,’ so I went through and did all the circuit problems I normally do, just to go climbing there and refamiliarize myself, and brush off all the winter’s dust and muck that had accumulated on the holds.

Then, I was like, ‘Oh – I’ll just have a go at Superman and see how it feels and stuff.’ I kind of started having a go at it and this crimp, this left-hand crimp is so small, I maybe only ever got four or five goes. The crimp is so small I never did the move in isolation because the only time I pulled on there in isolation I would split my tip, so I just practiced the moves and stuff. First, it was nowhere near and I thought, ‘This is rubbish. Let’s just go home.’ About half an hour later I was like, ‘Oh, this is the best I’ve ever done on it. Great, maybe I’ll do it this year.’ Then I went for a walk. I was with Mina and a friend called Emma. We went for a bit of a walk and we came back and I had a go and for some reason, I managed to do it, like, completely unexpected. It’s a four-move boulder and two of the moves I had never done before, so the first time I stuck the first move I managed to do the second move and then I managed to do the third move and I had never managed to do them before.

Neely Quinn: Hmm. So, were you training at the time? Like, why do you think that happened?

David Mason: Good luck? I think. [laughs] I think I was really lucky. I don’t know. I don’t have a clue. I would have been training at the time. I was going into Fontainebleau so I would have been training for that but limestone and Fontainebleau are a million miles apart. I honestly don’t know why I did it. That’s kind of nice, as well. I don’t really know how it happened but that’s cool.

Neely Quinn: And then what about King of Limbs?

David Mason: Yeah, so that’s a completely different/I suppose that’s at the opposite end of the spectrum. I was, in 2011, my friend Mickey Page did the first ascent of that. Mickey’s like/probably, well – he doesn’t climb that much anymore but he’s bouldered 8C, like V15, and he’s a real dark horse. Not many people have heard of him. Anyway, he found it and put it up when we were in Rocklands in 2011. It’s not that inspirational of a climb, really. It’s in a bit of a grotty cave, it’s not that high, it’s not an amazing line, but for some reason it’s very shouldery – so again, it’s very short and powerful. That really appeals to me about boulder problems. The holds are very unique. There’s no other holds like it in Rocklands so it’s very different in a Rocklands style. It’s nice, as well. You go up there and you’re in this kind of cave with this really nice lookout with the whole of De Pakhuys Pass and no one’s ever there. I’ve never seen anyone else there so it’s nice, lots of solitude.

So anyway, Mick did it in 2011. I then went back to Rocklands in 2013 and had one session on it in the wet, because it stays dry since it’s in a cave but it was really humid. I thought I was climbing really well. I did a bunch of other 8B’s in Rocklands that year like Sky, Mooiste Meisie, a bunch – Armed Response, Vice – and I couldn’t touch King of Limbs. Like, nowhere near. Then, I went back the year after and I had four problems I wanted to do. Two of them I managed to do and two of them I didn’t, and King of Limbs was one of the ones I didn’t manage to do. I probably had three or four sessions on it and I did all the moves on it and only just, and I couldn’t do them regularly. Then, I hurt my shoulder on El Corazon, which is a really shouldery problem, and I just couldn’t try it anymore.

It had always been there and I just always wanted to do it and so I booked tickets to go back in 2015, basically, and I went on my own because Mina wasn’t bouldering very much at the time. I just knew I wanted to do it so I went back and trained really hard for it before I went and did it, basically. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: Well, good job.

David Mason: Yeah, no, it was cool. It was probably the most I’ve ever seen the benefits of my training work. It was so specific that I really saw the kind of progression from the year before to that year. It was like 10 months and the difference was incredible.

Neely Quinn: So, alright – do you feel like that was the hardest boulder that you’ve ever done?

David Mason: No, probably not. Boulders have taken me – well, yeah, actually/maybe it took me eight or nine sessions altogether, something like that. Definitely less than 10 and actually, I’ve never spent more than 10 sessions on a boulder. I’ve probably spent the most sessions on it so yeah, it probably is my hardest boulder. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain because other things seem, at the time, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is definitely the hardest boulder I’ve ever done,’ or, ‘This is,’ or ‘This is,’ and that changes and different things seem to make it hard. I just climbed an 8A, a V11, in the Peak District a couple of weeks ago and it took me longer than any other Gritstone climb I’ve ever done. It was like a V11. It’s not, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that ridiculously hard for me and yet it took me five sessions.

Neely Quinn: It’s funny how that happens.

David Mason: Yeah, I think it’s to do with styles and the way you climb, and maybe conditions, and the mental aspects of it all. I mean for me, what matters – although I love climbing hard, it’s great – the one thing I’ve always wanted to do and love doing is being able to go to any area in the world and climb the best boulder problems in that area. My pyramid of boulder problems is really, really flat so I have a massive depth. I don’t just climb one of each grade and work my way up, because that really doesn’t bring me much fulfillment.

If you told me I could climb one 8B+ or 10, 8B’s, I would go for the 10, 8B’s or 20, 8A’s over one 8B+ because, to me, it brings me more enjoyment.

Neely Quinn: Do you think that it makes you stronger overall?

David Mason: Yeah, it probably does. I mean, I think trying really hard boulders or routes does make you stronger and stuff but it might be, again, the mental head game. I would struggle with that, I think, which I suppose coming back to King of Limbs. That was the most proud thing. I flew 9,000 miles. I went on my own for five weeks to Rocklands to climb one bit of rock. It cost me, probably, 1,500 pounds, the whole trip overall. Maybe more than that, maybe 2,000 pounds, to climb one bit of rock and for me, that amount of pressure could easily have made me buckle and yet it didn’t. That, for me, was almost more/I was more proud about that than I was about actually climbing it.

Neely Quinn: Do you think it was worth it? All the money?

David Mason: Yeah, of course it was. I mean, it was good, as well, in that I met people that I hadn’t spent much time with before. I spent more time with those people and got to know them. I had a great time. I did other climbs as well and it was a really good trip, but even with that I went to Rocklands being like, ‘Even if I only climb King of Limbs and nothing else, this will be worth it.’ I actually climbed it in my first week. I had three sessions on it and did it. I actually did it after – so I was like, ‘Right. I’m not going to eat cake,’ because the Hen House makes amazing cake and so does Traveler’s Rest. Charity, she makes this amazing malva pudding, which I love.

I was like, ‘I’m not going to eat cake, I’m not going to drink beer, I’m not going to do any of that. I’m not going to go to De Kelder’s for a burger until I’ve done King of Limbs, and then all this stuff will taste so good.’ I had a couple of sessions on it and knew I was going to do it but I was resting for my skin and it looked like a really cold day, so I was going to have two days of rest and then there was a really cold day. All of the Americans were going to De Kelder’s for burgers on Monday night, because it’s, like, buy-one-get-one-free so I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll come.’ So, we had some burgers.

The next day was a rest day so I had some beers, and then we had shots, because you guys seem to drink more than I do. I mean, I wasn’t drunk but I was in shots and beers and burgers and basically, I woke up the next morning and the weather had completely changed and it was going to – this was a Tuesday morning, and it was going to rain on the Wednesday and the Thursday and I was like, ‘That means I’m going to have four rest days. I can’t do that.’ My skin was really thin, so I basically walked up on the Tuesday, on the hottest day, and said that I’d have five goes, basically. I warmed up on a fingerboard at my caravan, where I was staying, and then I walked up and had five goes. On my fifth go that day I did it, so I did it on my last go that day but after having shots and beer the night before. [laughs]

Neely Quinn: What does that teach you?

David Mason: That teaches me that Courtney Sanders is a bad influence.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] What? I won’t even ask

David Mason: She was buying group shots for everyone. In fact, those guys I was with, like Daniel and Jimmy and <unclear> and stuff, and a big crew of those guys, they’re just all bad influences. I think they’re used to drinking more beer than I am.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well maybe it means also that shots and beer help your sending?

David Mason: Maybe, yeah. I actually remember once having a small bottle of Jagermeister after doing a boulder problem in Fontainebleau, actually. Having a small bottle of Jagermeister afterwards.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. That sounds…

David Mason: Don’t do that, kids.

Neely Quinn: That sounds kind of gross. Okay, so going backwards a little bit, tell me how you trained specifically for this climb, because you said that you really noticed that it made a difference and you trained really specifically, so tell me about that.

David Mason: I mean, you could train more specifically, so I didn’t go as far as setting a replica. I suppose a lot of people, when they’re training very specifically for something, will set a replica for that boulder. I didn’t do that and the reason that I didn’t do that is that I almost didn’t want to put this pressure on myself of not being able to do my replica and then leaving, but also it’s really hard to set something exactly, to get the angles just right and the holds just right. Basically, I just knew that you needed really strong fingers, strong shoulders, and you needed good tension to maintain tension on this very positive but very small, slippy foot hold.

I had a finger injury from the year before in Rocklands, and that probably plagued me until Christmastime and then I started training after Christmas, first building up very basic strength stuff, so lots of TRX work for my shoulders and then campusing and fingerboarding, just to recruit back my finger strength that I had had before my injury, and my arm strength. At the same time I was going out climbing on the Gritstone a lot. We had a really good winter last year in terms of it was quite cold and stuff, and quite dry, so I managed to get out quite a lot. I was going out in the day and go home and train on wood because it was nicer than training on resin or the plastic kind of holds. It’s better for your skin.

I did that until about March and then in March – so, I was going in June, so I would have March, April, May – so I would have three months, which really, actually, in the grand scheme of things isn’t that much time but it’s a good amount of time to maintain training. I just did a lot of fingerboard work, climbing on a steep board at first, lots of weighted pull-ups and dips, kind of super-setting my pull-ups, and lots of ring work/gymnastics ring work and core, basically. I’d break my training down into small, bite-sized chunks and just try and do lots of those sessions. Rather than any one session being very long, I’d do quite short, sharp sessions but maybe two or three within a day.

I probably/mainly/basically climbed indoors for six weeks, and trained indoors and because springtime is normally quite a good time to climb outside in the UK – you can go to Wales or the Lake District, so – I started climbing outside more and then coming home and then training afterwards. Again, because I struggle mentally so much. If I go away on a trip having climbed lots of boulder problems, whether they are at my limit or not, I feel confident. I feel like I’m moving well. Climbing outside is really, actually, key for me so I’d climb outside a lot and make sure that I trained either outside of it or trained after it.

Neely Quinn: I’m going to interrupt here for just a moment and let you guys know a little bit about FrictionLabs, which is our favorite chalk company and also our loyal sponsor. I’m happy to talk about them every week because I use their chalk all the time, every week, and I truly think it makes a difference in my climbing. You guys can try it out yourself, if you haven’t already, for pretty cheap if you go over to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta. They have their sample back there for $10.00 instead of $17.50. You can try all three of their formulas. Well, it’s actually all the same formula but they have it in different consistencies. They have their Unicorn Dust, which is their softest and dustiest – and that’s my favorite – and they have their Gorilla Grip and Bam Bam, which are both a little chunkier.

So, the reason that FrictionLabs chalk is so much different from other chalk companies is that it’s got more magnesium carbonate in it. They say themselves that when you run the tests, the truth is that all chalk companies have significant amounts of impurities, drying agents, heavy metals, and other fillers. They say that they are the first to admit that their chalk isn’t 100% pure, because that would be super expensive and impractical to make, but their chalk is, by far, the purest out there, meaning it will last longer, it’ll dry your hands better, and keep your lungs and skin healthier than anything else. That’s something that I’ve been looking around in the climbing gym at, like, how much dust we actually breathe. If they can make their chalk as clean as possible then that’s something that I’m all for.

Again, if you want to try it out go to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta and see for yourself. Alright, back to the interview now.

Neely Quinn: What’s your schedule like, that you can handle two or three sessions in a day? Like, how much do you work? If you were to have a normal, 9-to-5 job do you think that you would be able to do the same thing?

David Mason: I wouldn’t have been able to climb outside and it would take/I suppose it would take more motivation because you would be more tired from working 9-to-5 but I don’t struggle with that kind of motivation, really, so I would be able to do it. I’d just get up before work to train. I mean, I get up early anyway. Normally, I’m training because I don’t have to go to work early. I’m normally training by 9:00 but I can easily – I’ve fingerboarded at 7:00 in the morning before. I normally train in the morning and then would come back and do some work, answer emails, work like that, have some lunch, and then I’d go and do another training session and then again, more emails and more computer-based stuff, and then I tend to work in the evenings or I’d work just after lunch, afternoon as well. It really depends on when clients are free. It’s based on a lot of clients’ work.

Neely Quinn: So you just kind of fit it in wherever it fits in.

David Mason: Yeah, exactly. I don’t plan what I’m going to do each day. I have a week’s worth of sessions that I want to do and I make sure I do them.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so you have, whatever, 15 sessions in a week that you want to do?

David Mason: Yeah, and I have to do them, basically, so I have to fit them in. There will be days where I can only do one session because I’m really busy or I normally try to have one full rest day a week but then some days I will do two or three sessions, but they’re different sessions. It might be a fingerboard session or a hard board session in the morning, so very strength-oriented like short, kind of bursts of strength followed by longer rests and then I might do a more endurance-based climbing thing or just do lots of boulders for movement and technique, then followed by more physical training which might be gymnastic rings or pull-ups or TRX, stuff that doesn’t require me being on the wall so much and is more big muscle building. That seems to work quite well.

Neely Quinn: Do you do any cardio?

David Mason: I ride my bike around Sheffield. Sheffield is pretty hilly so that’s quite hard work. I think, basically, I did so much sport when I was a kid I have a pretty naturally good level of fitness in that way. I can get on my bike and go and ride my bike and I can go for a run, I just don’t really enjoy it so I don’t do it. I think I just did so much that I have – like, my friends did so much climbing when they were younger they have this underlying fitness level with their climbing. When I get tired, they can just keep climbing because they have this underlying level, whereas I never did that. I did it in other sports so I have that in a different way, I think. I can just go for a run and it’s fine, basically.

Neely Quinn: So, would you be willing to go through an example week and get into some real detail about what you would do during each of your workouts?

David Mason: Yeah, I can do.

Neely Quinn: I don’t know if you have a schedule in front of you or anything or you can just wing it.

David Mason: I’m just looking. I happen to have one nearby so I’m just trying to get a schedule out. This would be like, at the beginning of my training cycle for King of Limbs – sorry. Yeah, this is the beginning of my training cycle.

Neely Quinn: And before we get into it, how long was your cycle?

David Mason: So, I did all of March, all of April, all of May, so it was basically a 12-week cycle. Depending on what I’m doing, I normally do four-week cycles, so kind of three weeks to one week of rest or six-week cycles, so five weeks to one week of rest.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and what are you training in those different cycles, and in what order for this particular boulder?

David Mason: Well, to be honest, for this particular boulder I was just working on strength, really. It was very little fitness-based climbing.

Neely Quinn: And no power?

David Mason: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there were bits of power. In January and February I did quite a lot of campusing and fingerboarding. I’d built up/I’d recruited back my level of power which was, to me, good enough. I could do 1-5-8.5 on small rungs on a campus board and I felt strong and stuff, so basically I worked on strength-based stuff.

Neely Quinn: How many moves is King of Limbs?

David Mason: It’s basically three hard moves in a row, straight off as soon as you pull on, and then it’s like another four or five moves which – there’s one really big move in it, which is definitely droppable but you would hope you’d done it enough where you got through to that move you wouldn’t drop it. I didn’t drop it and I don’t know anyone – obviously, I don’t know everyone who’s done King of Limbs, but I don’t know/I’ve never heard of anyone ever actually dropping that move once they’ve done the first few moves.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so it’s maybe 10 moves. Wait – did you say three moves and then 5 – 8? So it’s maybe 12?

David Mason: Yeah, there’s three really hard moves and then five, so like nine or 10 moves, but really the meat is three moves. If you can do those three moves in a row, you’ll do the boulder problem.

Neely Quinn: So, some power endurance or strength endurance was required to make it to the top but I see why you were just training a lot of strength.

David Mason: Yeah, I also have to say, until recently, I’ve never really trained that much strength endurance. That’s maybe why I struggle with longer boulders but I tend to gain that fitness while I’m on them. At the moment I’m trying to work it a lot more and I’ve been trying to work my fitness in general since I got back from Rocklands. I had, again, two weeks off when I got back from Rocklands this year and after two and a half weeks off I had two finger injuries I didn’t have before.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I want to talk to you about that. I read what you said about that, about you thinking it was scar tissue built up.

David Mason: Yeah, do you want me to do that now? Or do you want me to…

Neely Quinn: No, I’ll come back to it. I’d rather…

David Mason: Okay. So, I mean, basically, a bit of an average week would probably involve two lots of fingerboarding, and at the time I was working on one-armed hangs and then two-armed, three-finger, half crimp hangs as well. The one-armed hangs I would do – I started off, to build my strength back up, I started off doing seven seconds hanging with assistance, three seconds off. I’d do four reps on one arm and four reps on my other arm.

Neely Quinn: And then how much rest?

David Mason: Then I’d do three minutes rest and then repeat that, and I’d do four sets of that. That was to build up that kind of strength again after not having done any fingerboarding for about six months. Then, once I did that for 6 – 8 weeks, once I’d done that I started doing more maximum hangs on one arm, but with more rest. I’d basically do three hangs at full lock on one arm, so I’d do a hang for 12 seconds…

Neely Quinn: Locked off?

David Mason: Yeah, so fully locked off for 12 seconds and then I’d do it on the other arm, and then I’d have three minutes off and I’d repeat.

Neely Quinn: In a half crimp?

David Mason: Yeah, in a half crimp. I basically do all my training at half crimp. I’d do that three times at full lock, three times at 90°, and then three times at straight arm but with my shoulder initiated.

Neely Quinn: For 12 seconds on and a couple of minutes off?

David Mason: Twelve seconds on, then do my other arm, then three minutes off. I mean, that was always with assistance. I mean, I can’t hang an edge with one arm. I find it really hard. My fingers are, I think, my weak part in climbing still.

Neely Quinn: So what would you use for assistance?

David Mason: Just a pulley with weight on, because it’s pretty measurable. I’ve gone a few times with not using a pulley, using a Theraband or just pushing against something but I quite like the measurability of the weight, to be honest.

Neely Quinn: So how much weight do you take off?

David Mason: It depends on what I’m doing. At the moment, for example, I’m doing it at the moment and I have five kilos off but, at the the moment, I’m kind of just playing with this idea of – so, when we do one-armed hangs, we nearly always hold the assistance with our arm. Does that make sense, yeah? Have you seen that?

Neely Quinn: You hold the assistance with your arm?

David Mason: Yeah, so most people would hold their edge with one arm and hold the assistance, so their weight, with the other hand, yeah?

Neely Quinn: Yeah, but with the pulley.

David Mason: Yeah, with the pulley. Exactly. They hold the pulley with their hand, but what that does is it creates stability throughout your entire body by having both your hands on. You’re creating stability so actually, although you’re working that strength on one arm, you’re making the whole thing easier by having assistance in your hand. The moment, what I’m doing and I’m sure that other people have done it before me, I’m basically using my pulley system but I’m having my assistance on my foot. My foot goes in a sling and I do opposite hand to opposite foot, so as I’m doing my one-arm hangs I have to create stability in a) my shoulder, but also it works through like a line of kinetic through your whole body.

Neely Quinn: Yeah. It’s like a core workout, too.

David Mason: Yeah. I’ve noticed – so, when I initially started doing this, the difference of my assistance from if I was doing it holding it with the hand was 4.5 kilos. So it’s 4.5 kilos harder than holding the assistance with your hand. I’ve just started doing that and I think that’s really good, actually.

Neely Quinn: By the way, for people who don’t know what a kilo is, 5 kilos is about 11 pounds.

David Mason: Yeah, a kilo is 2.2 pounds.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so backing up for a second, you said that you would do your fingerboard workouts twice a week?

David Mason: Yeah, normally twice a week, normally I would either do it in the morning or if I’d been outdoor climbing, I would warm-up on my fingerboard at home, go outdoor climbing, and then I’d come back and do a proper fingerboard session afterwards.

Neely Quinn: And how long are your sessions, usually?

David Mason: Not very long. Warm-up, probably, as I’m getting older takes longer but I’d say warming up well takes me about half an hour on my fingerboard and then my actual session is no longer than, like, 40 minutes. It’s basically somewhere between an hour and at the very maximum, an hour and a half, but hardly ever that long.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, that’s not too long.

David Mason: Well, I don’t think it’s – for me, because I give people training to do – for me to say to someone, “I want you to do an hour and a half fingerboarding,” I think they’re much less likely to do it whereas if I say, “Okay, you warm-up and then you’ve got a 40-minute session.”

Neely Quinn: Do you warm-up on your fingerboard?

David Mason: I do, because I warm-up at home in the cellar, so I just warm-up on my fingerboard.

Neely Quinn: Just grabbing jugs or doing less time on and more time off? Or how do you do it?

David Mason: Yeah, I have a very specific – so I have goals that I have to achieve within my warm-up and once I’ve done those I know I’m warm, so for example I go down and I do some arm windmilling, I might do some yoga beforehand as well, some arm windmilling, a bit of Theraband work, and then I do five or six warm-ups on good holds/on a jug, and then I do five or six pull-ups on the slot on the Beastmaker 1000 or five or six pull-ups on it. Basically, different amounts of pull-ups on different styles of holds and then I do hangs on different styles of holds, kind of some one-arm locks. I have some goals and if I achieve those goals I know I’m a little bit closer to being ready. Then I would do some of the – basically, whatever I’m doing within my session, I build up to doing the same intensity within my warm-up. If I was doing some one-arm hangs with five kilos assistance, I would do some one-arm hangs with five kilos assistance in my warm-up and that means my actual sets and reps that I’m actually doing within my warm-up aren’t used to finish off warming up.

Neely Quinn: Are you ever adding weight during your two-arm or one-arm reps?

David Mason: I don’t add weight during my one-arm ones because I’m just not strong enough. I have at times but not at the moment. My two-arm ones, yeah – I add weight and just slowly build it up. Once I can complete the hang that I’m doing, whether that’s on a repeater basis or whether it’s a max, kind of 10 – 12 second hang, I’ll just add more weight. I kind of experiment/I normally kind of go, roughly, I’ll kind of go 2-5-8-10-12. That’s how I go up.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

David Mason: I try and add weight quite frequently. I don’t just go, ‘Right, I’m going to do it for a whole week with just this weight.’ If I feel good, I add some weight but if I don’t feel good I’ll take some weight off. I change it from set to set.

Neely Quinn: Okay, just depending on how you’re feeling.

David Mason: Yeah, exactly.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so these are your fingerboard sessions. Can you describe the rest of your week?

David Mason: At the time, as well, I wasn’t campusing so much but I would probably do one campus session a week, just to keep the strength I had recruited. At the time, what I was doing was 1-5-8-11 and, basically, I would add weight. I would do them with one arm leading, have two and a half minutes rest, do it with my other arm leading, and do that three times on each arm. I’d add weight, again, this time in kilos, so I’d do 2-3-4-5-6, up to six kilos.

Neely Quinn: Wow. How tall are you?

David Mason: About 6’1” so I’m pretty tall.

Neely Quinn: And do you have a positive ape?

David Mason: Negative 2.

Neely Quinn: Ah. Well at least you’re 6’1”.

David Mason: Exactly. I wouldn’t be doing very well if I was short.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so for your campus sessions, how long would those be, typically?

David Mason: Again, I’d warm-up – obviously I’d do these at the wall, so I’d warm-up at the wall and I reckon my campus session is about an hour and a half. I’d do the 1-5-8-11’s and then I was doing 1-4-7-10 afterwards, again, with weight on, but as soon as I’d drop down from the 10 I’d pull on the one and I’d do an all out, explosive, the biggest move I could do. That would be 1-touch-6 or something like that. Then after that, I would go campus on a 45° board for 20 minutes or 25 minutes, depending on how I felt, just making up boulder problems, trying to use a variety of grips, so quite fun. If there were good boulders for campusing that were set on the competition wall, I would go on them instead.

Neely Quinn: Those are obviously lower – I mean, they must be sort of juggy.

David Mason: Well, on the 45° board it’s not juggy. I’m climbing juggy, like, maybe pad edges.

Neely Quinn: And you’re campusing on that?

David Mason: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

David Mason: It’s really good. I think campus boards are really good in terms of they’re a reference that everyone can use and everyone knows what they are, but they’re very linear. You go and your hands are really no further than a foot apart and you go straight up. It’s not like climbing, really, whereas campusing boulders or on a board, you go sideways, you have to create a lot of shoulder stability, you use momentum at times, so it’s much more like actual climbing, just without your feet on.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I bet. So, you’re doing that at the gym, where people are probably/you’re probably pissing some people off, I would assume. They’re probably like, ‘Why is that guy campusing my project? Why doesn’t he just put his feet on?’

David Mason: I always do my campus sessions in the morning so the wall isn’t open. I can go there and the wall is empty, which is nice.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, okay.

David Mason: But also, I think people know that I work at the wall, people know that I’m a reasonable climber, and so they kind of – like, I obviously don’t go get on a problem in front of them when they’re doing it. So, I think people understand.

Neely Quinn: So that would be within one session.

David Mason: Yeah, I was just doing one session of that a week and then I was probably doing two sessions of rings a week. This was actually – the session I was doing at the time, I had done with Ty Landman when he was over for the CWIF, the Climbing Works International Festival, which is in March. He came over for it from the states and busted his knee in a session beforehand and so we were just training together for the week he was over.

He was doing this ring session at the time and I really, really like rings. I just enjoy doing them, even if they have no benefit. I would just like doing them for whatever, so I just did that with him. I hadn’t done rings for quite a while but I knew I wanted to start doing them again for King of Limbs. I just did that with him and that was based around six exercises and just doing – we were doing either, depending on whether the exercise moved both arms at the same time or one arm, you would do either/I was doing either/we were doing either 16 reps, if both arms were going at the same time, you’d just do eight reps, and if it was one arm you’d do 16. That was six exercises and we would have two minutes off in between each exercise.

Neely Quinn: Do you mind saying what the exercises were?

David Mason: No, no, not at all. I’ll try to explain them. So, I suppose the first one would be kind of a press-up but it’s like a press-up fly, so when you lower down into your press-up, one arm is the standard press-up position and one arm goes out straight at your shoulder height.

Then we’d do normal flyes, so both arms going out straight into the iron cross position but, obviously, you’re on your feet facing the floor in that press-up position and out into that, so flyes.

Then rollouts, so in a press-up position but both rings go above your head, so you’re in, like, a straight line with your hands above your head, which I find really hard.

Then we’d do one which I actually added in – it wasn’t an exercise he was doing but it was an exercise that I had been shown and thought was really good. That’s basically like, again, from a press-up position, you take one hand out 45° above your head and one hand down to 45° level with your waist, so you end up with your arms kind of diagonally. We’d do those.

We’d do one where you roll out into the ‘I’ shape and one where just one hand would go to your waist and then come back and you’d alternate between your hands, and one where both hands would come as close to your waist as you could get, sort of like doing big circles.

Those were the exercises and we would do that two or three times.

Neely Quinn: So, that’s a lot of shoulder stability work.

David Mason: Yeah.

Neely Quinn: And that, I am assuming, is part of the purpose of that.

David Mason: Yeah, yeah. I basically would do that and then a lot of very easy stuff on the TRX, so working kind of the opposites, so reverse flyes. I’d just basically do the opposites of what I was doing on the rings but kind of standing more upright. It’s not really very hard, but it fatigues your muscles and it works your smaller, supporting muscles, whereas rings, because they tend to be hard, you use your bigger muscles.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, whereas with the TRX – so, with the TRX, you were standing more?

David Mason: Yeah, I stood upright or slightly off-upright but facing upwards.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

David Mason: And just doing exercises. I mean, you can do all the same exercises on rings or TRX, I just think rings work better for some exercises and TRX works better for some exercises. Just depends.

I do a couple of sessions of rings a week and then I’d do a couple of sessions of weighted pull-ups, so for these I was doing/I’d basically do 8-10 dips on the dips bar and I’d go and put weight on and I was doing six weighted pull-ups with my arms kind of/about one and a half shoulder width apart.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

David Mason: I can’t remember what weight I got up to. Maybe 35 kilos or something? I’d do five sets of this with five minutes rest in between each set.

Neely Quinn: How many reps?

David Mason: Six. I’d do 10 of the dips, 8-10 of the dips, and then six reps of the pull-ups, although I wouldn’t always complete. I’d do, probably, six reps for one and two, maybe I’d do five on set three, and then probably four on set four and three or four on set five, so I was failing. I’d do that twice a week and then I’d normally do core sessions on a bar twice a week, which is just kind of a variety of leg raises and stuff like that. I tended to do core exercises on the floor to tire my core out and then I’d go straight on the bar and do more kind of core.

Neely Quinn: So, would you ever combine any of these, like do fingerboard and then core or something?

David Mason: Yeah, so I’ll give you an average weekly structure from a Monday to a Sunday.

So, Monday morning a board session, so hard climbing, trying hard moves, basically, and then Monday afternoon weighted pull-ups, TRX, and yoga.

Tuesday morning, fingerboarding. Tuesday afternoon, a climbing session, so normally kind of 12-15 boulders that were probably 70-80% of my maximum, so still quite hard for me but I was doing them after fingerboarding so I’d be quite tired.

Wednesday, a campus board session followed by rings and core in the afternoon. Then, what I was doing at the time, which was – actually/a friend told me about this. Normally, throughout this period of time when I was training, I would normally do two days on to one day off and I’d do double sessions on those two days, but what I did on week one and week four was I’d do three days of double sessions and I’d have two days off, <unclear> and then I’d go back into normal. It’s basically like a hyper-compensation, so week one and week four I’d really push my body a little bit further and then I’d go back into my normal for week two and week three.

So, in this week that I was just telling you about, I’ve done six sessions. Two sessions Monday, two sessions Tuesday, two sessions Wednesday, I rested Thursday and Friday, and then on Saturday I did a board session in the morning followed by weighted pull-ups and TRX in the afternoon.

On Sunday I did fingerboard followed by core and yoga.

Neely Quinn: Okay.

David Mason: So, I try to always – to be honest, there’s not many days when I’m training when I only do one training session. Unless I feel really tired, I always do a double session. If I’m going to train, I always do that.

Neely Quinn: Man. You train a lot.

David Mason: I like training. That’s the thing.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, you must.

David Mason: Some people may be saying maybe I overtrain too much or I don’t rest enough and maybe that’s true, but I really do enjoy going and training, so…

Neely Quinn: Okay, I have questions. I think I’ll ask you a couple and then I’ll stop taking your time.

David Mason: It’s okay. I’m kind of enjoying it, actually.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so first of all, are you living on caffeine? Do you propel yourself a lot with caffeine or is this a normal amount of energy that you have?

David Mason: No, I don’t drink very much caffeine. I go through periods of drinking coffee but I don’t drink coffee at the moment. I haven’t drunk coffee for a while and I try not to have any more than three cups of tea a day, so I have one in the morning, normally one somewhere either around lunch or mid afternoon, and maybe one in the evening.

Neely Quinn: Okay, so you must be fueling yourself pretty regularly with food.

David Mason: Yeah, I eat a lot, yes.

Neely Quinn: Okay, and I actually would love to get into that with you but I want to ask you some more questions about this, about the training aspect of it, because I think that a lot of people who listen to the podcast are V3-V8 climbers and obviously, they’re not going to be doing exactly what you’re doing, because this is very high level. I think that you’ve been doing this for so many years that your body is pretty adapted to it and you’ve worked up to this point so I don’t want to give the impression that normal, everyday climbers should be doing what you’re doing.

David Mason: Yeah, exactly.

Neely Quinn: So, you said that you’re a coach. You work with people one-on-one regularly?

David Mason: Yeah, yeah.

Neely Quinn: In general, if a V5 climber came to you and they were like, ‘I want to climb V6 by the next three months,’ or something, would you tell them to do something similar to this but just less intensity? Or what would you say to them?

David Mason: Well first, it obviously depends on what their life is like, how much they work, what their family is, what their time commitments are, so I basically sit down with them and try and get an idea of exactly how much time they have to give to their training and try and get a background on their history, what they’ve done training-wise before. I have a variety.

Some people come to me and they just go climbing a couple of times a week on the wall and have never done any training and then some people come to me and have been climbing lots of years and have been training and want help with their training, to make it better and more specific and get better gains from it, so it’s about understanding, I think, what your client wants, really.

I try and do, and this is something that I’ve learned from doing this about five or six years, what I try and do that is similar to my training is that I try and make most of the sessions that I give people relatively short. They have training blocks and they can fit them around their lifestyle and I think, by doing that, it makes it much less intimidating than by just saying, “Here’s a three-hour session I want you to do on the wall tonight,” because if I just say, “I want you to do 50 minutes of training, 40 minutes of training, and then you can go climbing,” it’s much less intimidating and therefore they’re much more likely to do it. That’s the most important thing. I think it’s much better to train three or four times a week for 40 minutes than it is to train once or twice a week for three hours, because you can get much more.

I try and do short blocks and I also try and give them different sessions where they can do a couple of different sessions within a day. That might be a couple of sessions back to back, because they can’t do one in the morning, so it’s giving them ideas of what sessions go together well rather than them trying to do so many things within a three-hour block that it just means that they’re not getting any gains from those sessions.

Then, I always try and, especially with climbers in the Peak District, we always climb on Gritstone in the winter. Gritstone is amazing rock to climb on but it tends to be very technical and it’s not that/it doesn’t require a ridiculous amount of strength. It’s about movement more and technique, and it trashes your skin, so I try and basically give a lot of people that come to me – they want to climb outdoors, so I say, “Okay, if you’re going to climbing outdoors, you have to do a training session after, okay? It might only take 20 minutes but you have to do something,” so climbing outdoors doesn’t count as a session.

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Okay.

David Mason: That seems to work quite well when people get their head around it and they get gains from it. They’ll go climbing outdoors and they’ll do what they wanted to do outdoors and have a great day and stuff but then they come home and they might just do some training for 20 minutes or half an hour, but it means they get some kind of further gains.

Neely Quinn: Like, you might put them on the fingerboard or you might have them do core or something for 20 minutes?

David Mason: Exactly, yeah. It might not be a long session but it’s just to do something that they might not have worked already that day.

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and 20 minutes is nothing.

David Mason: Yeah, exactly. In the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing. It’s like stretching. People, even people who don’t watch much TV, probably watch TV for 10 minutes a day or something, so in those 10 minutes they could do some stretching or self-massage with a tennis ball or something. Rather than just watching TV, you can do something with those 10 minutes, as well as watching TV if that’s what you want to do. It’s kind of/that’s what I try and get people to understand, is they can do a lot more with their time than they actually think they can as long as they’re organized and have that kind of structure.

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

David Mason: I think that’s, basically, half the battle with training, to be honest.

Neely Quinn: Well it seems your’s is a really unique approach, with having a certain number of sessions you want to get in in a week and making yourself get them in wherever. I think a lot of people could do that.

David Mason: Yeah, I think so, but even something as simple as – some people will come and they’ll say, “Oh, I want to get better and I want to start training,” and I’ve seen people do some campusing and fingerboarding and stuff, and then I’ll watch them climb and I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re probably not ready to do that kind of stuff, but what we can do is make what you can do at the wall much more useful.’ So, “What do you do at the wall, normally?” “Well, I go climbing three times a week and I come down and I have three hour sessions and I do what I want to do.” That’s not really that useful. It might be fun, but it’s not that useful, whereas if you have one session where you look to try six hard boulder problems or eight hard boulder problems and you spend time working the moves and trying to do some links, and then having a good rest and then moving on to the next one, and then you have a session where you come down the wall and you do a mass amount of volume, so you do 18 climbs or 16 climbs, or whatever, and you really do lots of movement. They’re only climbs you can flash, so they’re easy. They’re not hard for you but you do them quickly, climbing in a purposeful way so you’re practicing good movement and you do them quite fast, and therefore you’re actually getting a cardio workout as well from it. Then they might have a session a week which is a free session and they do what they want with their mates.

Even though they might not be quite ready for training, by adding a bit of structure to their climbing sessions – and you might get them to do a little bit of core or some press-ups or pull-ups at the end of their session, just for 10 minutes or something. That, basically, brings the idea of training into their head but it brings it in slowly and then maybe I’d see them six weeks later and then they might be a bit more ready to do something a bit more specific.

Neely Quinn: Right. So, if somebody – do you do training with people only in person or do you do it online?

David Mason: I don’t do it online. I’ve tried it before. I trialed it with two girls in America and a girl in Germany who wanted to – some friends, basically, who wanted to do some training and I think it worked for them but I called it off because I wasn’t comfortable doing it. So, I basically like the more hands-on approach. I like to see what people are doing, the way they’re moving, the way they climb, how they’re doing exercises, and not that I don’t agree with just prescribing stuff and people doing it, it’s just that I don’t feel comfortable working that way.

Neely Quinn: Well, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. I know that it’s late there.

David Mason: It’s alright. It’s only half past 10 so it’s not too bad.

Neely Quinn: Alright, well thanks. I appreciate it.

David Mason: Thank you very much.

Neely Quinn: Alright, that was David Mason. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did.

Moving along, next week I have Matt Helliker on the show. I actually just finished that interview with him about 20 minutes ago and he is another Brit, like I said. He’s from England but he lives in Chamonix now. He’s an alpinist and he’s also a strong sport climber, but he kind of does it all and that’s why I had him on. I’ve been told by you guys that I need to diversify with my interviewees because not everybody is a sport climber or a boulderer.

We talked about his climbing and training and, honestly, I’ve never heard anything like it. He’s a crazy person, and I mean that in the nicest way possible, so stay tuned for that. His training is insane and he’ll tell you all about it.

Other than that, I want to remind you that we always have training programs for you guys, or training resources. If you go to www.trainingbeta.com you’ll find that we have two trainers on staff who will do personal training with you guys, from anywhere in the world. Dan Mirsky and Kris Peters will make plans for you. Kris Peters is doing five-week plans just for you, so you’ll Skype and you’ll email and you’ll talk about your time constraints, your goals, and where you’re at with your abilities and he’ll make you a plan so that you can follow it every week and reach your goals. Dan Mirsky will do the same thing. You can find that at the top of the page at www.trainingbeta.com.

We also always have a little bit more affordable options for anybody, any level of climber. We had PDFs of training programs or we have subscription programs where you have a dashboard on our website and you get three workouts every week and those are created by Kris Peters, also. We have a bouldering program, a route program, a power endurance program that’s a six-week PDF, we have an endurance program that’s an eight-week PDF by Kris Hampton, and then we also have e-Books on nutrition, injury prevention, and strength training. Definitely check those out. Whenever you guys purchase those you are supporting the site, the podcasts, me, my life, so we always appreciate it.

I think that’s it for today so thanks for listening, as always, and if you want to give me an honest review on iTunes I would love that. Have a great week. I’ll talk to you soon.

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