Since you’ve started to realize that your time is finite, are you starting to feel like a 26 year old?
Yeah, I get sorer than I used. I have to warm up better than I used to, but honestly I still feel like I’m improving.  I’m not sure how much stronger I am than eight years ago. Maybe I was stronger, but I didn’t have the same experience. A lot of it’s physical, but for me it’s really mental. Motivation is the most important part. Or at least equally important as the endurance or power. To be able to focus, to say that’s what I want to do, and then make it happen. It’d be easy to float around and try a bunch of routes that have already been done and just kind of have fun and not hone in and focus. 

Are you becoming the crafty veteran?
I don’t know, but for sure at the competition at the trade show, those kids are probably a lot better than me at a lot of things, but for example the fourth boulder problem that I finished and they didn’t was more technical — it was a little more technical, strange, outdoor climbing style that I’m good at. I still have a long ways to go before I’m the wily veteran. I have more to learn.  

Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, or Kelley Slater. They’re all people who changed their sports, who redefined what was possible. You’ve been that same kind of incredible force inside your sport. All of them have this killer instinct. This indomitable will. When you tie into a rope, it’s clear that the same thing happens. Typically, you’re really laid back, but when you put that harness on you become this possessed Alpha male. What changes?
I don’t know. It’s just climbing. I like it. When I’m motivated, it’s just like… I don’t. I can’t really explain. I definitely get pretty agro, certainly more intense than personality. 

When you do hard routes, you have to try hard. They’re not easy routes. You have to give everything you have. You have to get totally animalistic. When you’re super pumped, I have to yell to bear down. I remember seeing Boone Speed yelling his way up routes. That had an affect on me. It’s like martial arts. When Bruce lee threw a punch, he had to mean it.  Haahhh! (simulating karate grunt). Like that. When you’re doing a hard move, there is this excess energy you have to let out. Air explodes out of you.