Jorge Loredo placed third in Mexico’s national climbing competition last year and this month he’ll be competing in the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup in Salt Lake City. He’s always dreamed of being a world class athlete. Jorge’s pursuing his PhD in Computer Science, and between school and rigorous training Era was lucky to get a chance to talk with him about his aspirations. 

Who are you?

“First of all, I’m from Mexico. I define myself as an athlete even though I went to school and got my degree. The thing I liked the most was always sports. I loved competing and challenging my body and my mind. It was something I could do with my parents and brothers. I would define myself as an athlete in my heart and physically.”

How did you get started?

“My father is a really good cyclist so since I was a kid he would take me and my siblings biking. Even as toddlers when we couldn’t walk he would attach us to the back of his bike. It was so fun.” 

“I did kickboxing and karate and bowling with my brothers. When I got to college at Morningside University in Iowa I got a scholarship for bowling, but I got bored with that. There weren’t scholarships for all the other sports I could play so I felt like I needed to do something else. Along the way I played soccer and I even played a year of football.” 

“I was always really good at throwing a football so I went to the head coach and told him I wanted to play. He thought I was crazy but he gave me a chance. In training camp he got to know me. I ended up playing cornerback on defense. It was fun times.”

“I knew I couldn’t continue playing football because it takes a lot of time. Let’s be real, in college 90 percent of football players have been playing their entire lives. I was trying to study computer science and it would take so much time to train and go to team meetings. I knew I needed to find something else where I could still use my scholarship.”

“I discovered there were E-sports that qualified for scholarships and I was really good at playing Fortnite, better than anyone at my school by a mile. I was able to keep it through that.”

“The first time I climbed was with my brother in a gym in Mexico. Right away I was obsessed and I fell in love with it.”

“It’s athletic as f*** and you need to use all your muscles. It’s so addictive to me, learning the movements. A lot of people start climbing when they think they are fit enough. I was so excited to learn the sport and train my body.” 

“In the beginning I wanted to be good and to me being good meant climbing every day. My fingers would feel like shit. I made the decision in my first month to rest at least once a week. Fast forward to present day, I still rest just once a week. It works. I go super hard.”

“I found a shitty climbing gym near my college. Imagine like Chuck E Cheese. It was for kids. The bouldering area was tiny and horrible. How was I going to get good if the gym sucked?”

“I started researching and watched hours and hours of videos and read a book about training. I was a student of the game and digested it to find the optimal solution for success. That was when it became my life. I always wanted to be on a national team but I was never good enough at any of the sports. When I went to college I felt like I had to put that dream aside, but all of a sudden the dream came back.” 

“I was watching Adam Ondra and Jakob Schubert climb and realized if I put in the work and succeeded I would still be younger than them. I started making these crazy goals for myself when I could barely climb v3 (see glossary). I was certain this was the sport for me.”

“I realized how important finger strength was, that’s why it takes so many people years to improve. They don’t centralize their attention on finger strength or fitness or body tension.”

“If you’re new to climbing they say you should practice on slab, but I looked into it and I knew it wasn’t right for me. I learned you can practice with a hangboard.”

Before we continue, a note to our readers. Jorge starts laying down the climbing lingo here. Those of you who have ever been to a climbing gym will know the lingo can get pretty advanced. Here is a brief glossary of rock climbing terms:

Hangboard-- a board made of wood or plastic which contains numerous holes or grooves you can grip, using a varying number of fingers.

Problems-- a sequence of technical climbing moves.

Roof– when the climbable surface becomes parallel to the  ground. That means your back is parallel to the ground as you climb and you have to cling to the surface for dear life. 

Sport climbing– a form of technical free climbing which involves the use of ropes and fixed anchor points on the climbable surface, as opposed to:

Bouldering– a form of technical climbing which uses no ropes or harnesses to keep the climber fixed to the rock or surface.

Lead climbing– sport climbing is typically accomplished in pairs. One person will “lead” the climb by threading their rope through fixed anchor points on the climbable surface while one person (the “belayer”) remains on the ground, tightening the rope through the anchor points so that the lead climber’s fall won’t be too far.

Bouldering route difficulty scale– officially ranges from v0 to v10. Depending on which badass climbers you’re talking to, the scale can go up to v12 

Sending it– making it to the top of a climb. “Send it, brah.”

Slopers– A climbing hold that has a smooth surface and sloping shape, making it difficult to hold. 

“I started using the hangboard with weights and doing one arm pull-ups and then I started setting the board up for certain problems. Since the boards available at the gym were so small I could only set like two-move problems. Two-move problems are tough. I would force myself to do overhang moves to train my body tension. It was funny, I would just hang from this tiny little roof.”

“I began doing lead climbing to get endurance and then went back to strength training. When I wanted to move outside I found, to my surprise, that there were no rocks in Iowa. When I went back home, my first time outside I was able to climb v8. I realized all of my work was paying off and my goals seemed more and more realistic.” 

“Double digit bouldering was a big goal. There’s a mega classic v10 in Mexico called Nazgul and I wanted to test myself. I wanted to climb something everyone thought was great. It was so cool. Most of the day I was up there with my dog, I had a super cute little chihuahua at the time. I was up there in the rock and it was just me, my dog, nature and horrendously hard moves. And I was just little by little convincing myself, “Okay, this move is possible. Now this one. And this one.” It was the first time I was going through that process for real with something that hard.”

“Somewhere on like my seventh attempt I finally mastered a series of moves called the Holbrook sequence. I was super psyched, sending that shit. I thought I’d mastered it at that point but there was more work to be done. On my tenth session I warmed up with a v5 close by, and it was insane. On my first try I climbed it with no problem. That day I was just in the zone. You have to have small victories along the way and that was a big one for me.” 

“When I went back to Iowa I was thinking I could take a year and half to get better and by the time I was 26 I’d be climbing the really hard shit. I started training stupid hard. This was last summer. I was super psyched. I started sending v10 climbs all the time. In the back of my head I was already thinking about competing in Mexico. I wanted to show up prepared, I didn’t want to just passively take part. Then the next summer when I went home I climbed a v11. I spent 22 days on that one.”

Geez.

“Yeah it was lucky it was a 15 minute drive from my house and it was accessible from the road. ‘Backyard Bouldering.’ Just hanging out with my dog and my girlfriend. She would come time to time.”

“So I was in a really good spot. I realized the climbing skill level in Mexico is not like it is in the U.S. Making the national team wasn’t as hard. It’s not like I had to be better than Sean Bailey (U.S. olympic climber). I knew I could make it.”  

“I had this mentality that if I got injured then it wasn’t for me, because I didn’t have the time to recover and I didn’t have the time to wait. If my body holds, it holds.”

“I moved to New Mexico to start my PhD at UNM and I discovered Stone Age Gym. I started meeting better climbers. Being around people who were stronger and better than me gave me anxiety and it was good. I had to try way harder. I started getting really good really fast.” 

“Right now I’m super close to climbing v12. It’s happening sooner than I thought. I train and I don’t get easily excited. I’m always grinding and working on a weakness. I focus on something specific. If I’m exhausted, I try slopers.” 

“People say I’m never having fun. But no, I’m having fun. This is how I have fun.” 

“An opportunity presented itself to me to compete for Mexico , and if I didn’t move quickly I would miss a big two-year window because they start building the national team years in advance. I’d never competed and I didn’t have experience, but I read about it and watched every video possible.”

“I showed up to Mexico’s regionals and I did great. I didn’t do as well as I could have but I got fourth place and I qualified for nationals. I was like, ‘Man, I’m so much better than these guys.’ I climbed the worst day of my life and I still could have beat them.”

“Nationals was nice. I beat everyone I didn’t beat in regionals and beat everyone I didn’t know except for two guys. One was the best in Mexico. I realized I was almost there. He doesn’t have long to be better than me. He’s been climbing like this for five years and I have for only three months. I ended up placing third in all three national competitions.” 

“Even then I wasn't on my game mentally and I felt like I could have won. My climbing was mediocre and I still got third. Of all of the goals I set in Iowa, making the national team was the first big one. It felt great and I was so thankful for the opportunity.”

“Little Jorge would be so proud. My family, girlfriend and friends never had any doubts. I always had their support.” 

“I’m not even close to being done or satisfied. That was just a warm up. I’m super excited for what’s to come. I can keep doing what I’m doing as long as I don’t get injured. If someone told me to take more rest days I wouldn’t. My mentality is to push it and if I don’t get injured I’ll do some crazy shit. If I do then that’s okay. We’ll see how long I can keep it up.”

What would you want to remind yourself in ten years?

“I want to remind myself of a day I was talking with my girlfriend. I looked her dead in the eye and told her, ‘You know what, I‘m going to make the Olympics.’ She saw how serious I was and she believed me. I knew she believed me.” 

Edited by Sonya Burke