Markus Bock Interview

In 1996, Markus Bock did his first 8c and won the Youth World Champion being 17. Later he skipped the comps and today he is the king of Frankenjura having established 48 out of the 50 hardest routes. At the boulder scene he has put up two 8C's and several 8B+'s and he was one of the first boulderer who identified the deflated grades inn Switzerland.  

How is your climbing life nowadays?
I would say it is pretty much the same like in the years before. The only thing is that life beside of climbing is changing when you get older. I have a family with a four months old son which I am really happy about. We try to handle it like my parents have done it when I was a kid, meaning always taking him with us and hopefully he will enjoy the nature like we do. We are just back from a week family-holiday in spain – that was great and good to see that it works well with him, also away from home.

What are the biggest changes you have seen the last 15 years?
The most impressive thing is how many strong climbers are around, specially really young ones. But if you see the progress compared to my generation and the generation of climbers before I would say its not so much different. When I was climbing 8c with age of 17 (this is now 16 years ago) everybody was impressed of this cause it was a new level. Now the next generation is climbing 9a or harder with 17 and we are impressed. But wait for the gerneration after – then they will be impressed as well. And so on and on.

How do you train today? Do you hope to continue to progress to 9b?
To be honest I have never really trained that much. Does not motivate me to train on plastic hours and hours. For me it all came with motivation and climbing outside. So if I have a project which motivates me, success comes with time.

Why do we so seldom see repeats of the 9a's in Frankenjura?
Cause it’s the style of the routes I think. Short powerful climbing on pockets. You need to have strong tendons which only get the power from climbing here for long time.

There are always the same climbers repeating hard routes here: Climbers you are very flexible in the style andon the other side good bouderers as well.

Can you please explain how the down climbing ethics work?
Here in Frankenjura it is a rule and ethic thing that I have learnt from the beginning of climbing. Everybody here agrees with this.

You have to climb it down only ones. Before the climb. It's also allowed to jump down. The rule is you have to climb up and clip all the bolts, and then climb it down back to the ground. Or jump it down - no crashpads are allowed, no spotter, slack on the rope.