SGPT Interviews Arno Ilgner Warriors Way

SGPT: Tell us about yourself?

AI: Thanks for this interview Brad. And for letting me know a bit about your audience. I’d like to speak directly to their needs so they can integrate this into what you’re helping them with. So, to that end, it’s helpful for your clients to know some info about me to ground what I’m sharing so they know it’s coming from a credible source.

Like you, Brad, I’m a veteran. I served in the Army many years ago. I’ve always believed that it’s important to do elite training in whatever discipline I engage in. So I attended the Army Ranger School to be the best infantry soldier I could be.
After an overseas tour to Korean in the late 1970s, I got out of the Army and pursued my civilian education, which was Geology. The Wyoming oil field economy busted, so I lost my job and began working in my father’s industrial tool business.

But none of these professions aligned with what I really wanted to do. I’d been a rock climber since age 18. That’s what I loved. So at age 40 I decided to create a mental training program—

The Warrior’s Way®—to help climbers deal with fear and risk. I’ve been doing that for over 30 years.

One thing important for your clients to know is that the mental training I teach is not just for
climbers. I’ve developed it in ways that help everyone deal with challenges we all face in life.

I’ve published The Rock Warrior’s Way book that can be a useful introduction for your clients to this material.

What I like about this material is how it looks at life challenges through the lens of a warrior. That includes being courageous to face your challenges and with specific tools for doing it well.

SGPT: Did you have an athletic background growing up?

AI: Yes I did. I grew up in the country so I had plenty of space to apply myself physically to country life. This is an important point for your clients. First, you can’t change the past. So if you didn’t
have an athletic background growing up, don’t fret. Just do something now. I can’t overemphasize
the importance of being physically engaged in some activity. Even mental training is useless if you
don’t include the body in your practice. I like to say that the external stressful environment (like a
physical activity) is the raw material for doing your internal mental training work. They are both
essential for making anything you do successful.

SGPT: How did you get interested in the military and join the Army Rangers?

AI: Being engaged in outdoor activities allowed me to play “cowboys and Indians” with my
brothers. We’d sneak around in the woods practicing orienteering, setting up ambushes, and attack
strategies.
The whole process intrigued me. So I decided to attend ROTC in college. They had a Ranger Club,
which would do FTXs (Field Training Exercises) in the nearby forests. I loved being a foot soldier
patrolling toward an objective, executing it, and working our way back to friendly front lines.
A natural progression was attending the Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. That was
super challenging, but I felt in my element, learning leadership skills through the medium of a foot
soldier.

I had the opportunity to continue to apply these skills when I was in Korea. We patrolled on the
DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North and South Korea, making sure no North Koreans
infiltrated to the south. It was scary and fun all at the same time. I learned a ton.

SGPT: Tell us about that experience and how did it shape your life?

AI: The biggest learning from my military experience was leadership. I learned how to lead a
platoon as a cohesive unit. Leadership is critically important for each of us. Especially self
leadership. It’s so easy to fall victim to following the crowds. You have to be aware of this tendency
and redirect your efforts towards what’s truly important to you.
Leaders set inspiring goals for themselves and then enjoy the work they do to achieve them. Both
are important. Goals are essential for giving inspiration and direction. But if you don’t enjoy the
work that leads to the goal, then you won’t draw the most learning (or joy) from the experiences.

SGPT: How did you find climbing? Who were your early mentors?

AI: You find something when you pay attention. Especially when you feel lost. I found climbing at
age 18. I felt lost about where to go to college, what to study, etc. Then a fellow student introduced
me to climbing. I loved it immediately. It’s so important to find an activity that you just love doing.
Such activities are self motivating. You don’t have to force yourself to engage the stressful aspects
of them. You want to be engaged in them because there’s no place else you’d rather be.
My early mentors weren’t well known climbers. But they were super inspiring and influential in my
progression as a climber. They were companions on a similar journey. Beyond that my mentors
were the climbers in far away places. I read books by European alpinists like Chris Bonnington,
Water Bonatti, and Reinhold Messner. These guys had epic adventures in the European Alps and
Himalayas of Nepal and Pakistan. They piqued my imagination for what I also wanted to do.

SGPT: What can we learn from climbing that can help our mental game? Why is that important in
day to day life?

AI: Great question. The main thing that any activity, like climbing, teaches you is confronting your
own fears and limitations. They offer you stressful experiences within a defined structure. They
invite you to learn and grow through them.
Climbing specifically gives you a specific structure for drawing out learning lessons. For example,
climbing is a cycle of stopping and moving. To apply yourself well requires cycling in a timely
manner between the two. You won’t be effective if you stay in one or the other too long.
Stop too long and you lose your momentum. Move to long and you run out of energy and fall.
“Timely cycling” is important. And in order to do that, you need to know yourself. So here you can
see how climbing provides a great lens for self discovery.

SGPT: Tell us about your book The Rock Warrior’s Way and how did it come about?

AI: I started teaching The Warrior’s Way® in the mid 1990s. After about 8 years I felt ready to
publish the material in book form. Two things are critical here.
First, it was important for me to teach for a lot of years so I could experience what worked and what
didn’t for students. We have a saying in our training: You know something when you experience it,

not before. Experience is critical. If you just think about mental training, then you don’t own that
knowledge. You must apply it in the crucible of life.
Second, writing down the material in a book forced me to consolidate ideas floating in my mind into
cohesive and coherent content. Writing is a great way to engage the intellectual part to put structure
and meaning to what you experience. So both experience and intellect are important to develop.

SGPT: You talk a lot about attention and awareness—how can someone develop that kind of mental
control in the chaos of a physical challenge?

AI: There’s a ton to cover to even begin to understand attention and awareness. And they are
foundational to physical and mental training. Here are some details:
Awareness: If you’re not aware of a problem, a limiting behavior, or limiting habit, then you can’t
solve it. Developing awareness is the foundation. You can do this by noticing more. Especially
noticing your thoughts. And this is a critical point. What’s important here is just noticing, not
immediately trying to change thoughts. Noticing creates a gap between “your awareness of
thoughts” and “the thoughts themselves.” That gap give you space to change your mind about what
actions you’ll take. This is super critical for working with ingrained behaviors and habits.
Attention: I define attention as “the intentional directing of awareness.” Intention is what is
important here. For example, doing an exercise with intention is 10x to 100x more beneficial than
doing it haphazardly. Most people probably think they are intentional in how the exercise. But they
aren’t.
All you need to do is go to a YMCA or Gold’s Gym and you’ll see people working out while
watching TV or distracting themselves by listening to music. They think they can just put the body
through stressful lifting or walking a treadmill and they’ll improve. They do, but at a very minimal
pace. They aren’t serious about what they’re doing. Training must combine the body AND mind,
not only the body. By distracting the mind with TV or music eliminates the mind from the equation.
Attention is what’s important here. If you’re attention isn’t in the body while doing the physical
training you’ll end up doing it with poor form and limit its effectiveness. And likely injure yourself.
All this distracted training ingrain poor habits in your brain that become super difficult to reverse.
And, you must train the mind so it can deal with higher levels of stress. If you distract it from the
physical stress, then you miss this opportunity. You must focus on the stressful exertion so you can
see what comes up in the mind that tries to get you to quit. And, redirect your attention to the
exercise. That strengthens the mind.
Paying attention to your breathing, how you use your eyes to focus, and how you engage your body
help you process the stress of exercise effectively and efficiently. And they create quality neural
networks in your brain for how to move your body through any challenge. They give you control in
the chaos of a physical challenge.

SGPT: What’s one failure or tough climb that taught you a major lesson—and how did it shape
you?

AI: I’ve climbed plenty of tough climbs. And had plenty of failures on them also. But what I learned
the most from wasn’t climbs. I learned the most from failures developing the mental training
program. Case in point. I’ve doubted myself all my life. Doubt is a double-edged sword. Doubt is
essential for learning. So doubting myself kept me from latching onto concepts about mental

training that I as learning. That kept me open to new information instead of discounting it. Here,
“doubting myself” really means doubting that I had final answers on the material.
But if I doubt myself as being capable of rising to challenges, then doubt isn’t helpful. I’ve
experienced a lot of this also. I would get into a negative spiral about my capability of dealing with
a challenge. That caused me to lose motivation when I failed.
So what’s going on here? If I tie how I feel about myself to success and failure, then I’ll be
motivated when I succeed, but I’ll lose motivation when I fail. This prevents me from seeking the
learning lesson in failures.
In short, it’s helpful to doubt that you have final answers and continually seek to learn more. This
points to focusing on your effort. You can always improve your effort, so doubt what you think you
know.
But don’t doubt yourself as a human being. Don’t tie your identity to successes and failures. You
aren’t a better or worse human being by succeeding or failing. Tying your identity to outcomes like
this creates an existential crisis. Don’t do that to yourself. Separate how you feel about yourself
from outcomes you create. When you do this, then you can see failures as essential for learning and
growing. Get excited about that.

SGPT: If someone only had five minutes a day to train their mind, what would you suggest they
do?

AI: First, the key point you’re emphasizing here, that I really like, is daily practice. You must do the
training every day. It needs to be a decision about how you will live your life differently.
Second, the most important mental training skill to develop is what I call the Warrior Master Skill.
And that is noticing and redirecting your attention to the chosen task. So, you can develop that skill
through meditation. Even 5 minutes of doing it daily is super helpful.
And here’s how to do it:
1. Set an intention: Choose what “object” you’ll focus on. Intention is attention focused in the
direction of a choice. In other words, setting an intention means you choose to focus your
attention in the direction of the object. And you do it in a specific way. One of the best objects is
the breath. But you need to be very specific about what how you’ll do this. You are NOT focusing
on thinking about the breath. You ARE focusing on the physical sensations and the sensory
aspects of it. That means, feeling and hearing the body breathe. That’s sensory, not intellectual
thinking.
2. Notice: Notice when you become lost in thinking. This means attention has become distracted
from your intention. In other words, attention is not in thinking instead of focused on the sensory
nature of breathing. This noticing is the foundation of developing awareness. Without awareness,
you can’t do effective mental training.
3. Redirect your attention to your intention: Attention naturally becomes distracted toward thinking.
Don’t fight it. Accept it as natural. Then, simply refocus it on what you intended to focus on.
Here, that means focusing on the sensory nature of breathing.

SGPT: What good book are you reading now?

AI: I’m reading The Fourth Turning is Here and The Case Against Reality.
The first book is incredibly important for anyone who wants to understand on a broader scale why
we’re going through the current chaos in the world. We’re in a crisis and you better be prepared for
it. You’ll be in severe pain if you’re not.
The second book is intriguing to me because I’m intensely interested in how we perceive and work
with the reality of the world. I firmly believe that we can only act effectively if we work with reality
as it is. This book addresses false hunches we have about perception and helps put you on a more
solid foundation.

SGPT: Tell our readers more about your training courses that you put on around the US and the
world. How can people get plugged into your training?

AI: I’ve been working almost exclusively with rock climbers for 30 years. I’ve done some for non-
climbers and am single-mindedly moving in that direction now. My trainer team will continue to

teach the climbing courses.
The easiest place to begin is reading my book The Rock Warrior’s Way. It’s available as a
paperback, audio book or ebook.
Another easy place to start is subscribing to our email list and youtube channel. I write weekly
blogs and make video of them. I’m currently writing for the non-climbing public about living as an

impeccable warrior. These lessons access the material through the lens of warriors. It’s a double-
arrowed application of applying the warrior philosophy to external physical challenges and internal

mental explorations.
The in-person climbing courses give participants the experience of applying the material in stressful
climbing situations while being guided by our trainers.
We also have an online course that is for climbers but can also be used by non-climbers who want to
understand how our training can be bridged to regular life challenges.
Finally, I’ll be teaching 3-day retreats for non-climbers that doesn’t involve climbing. We do
everything in a simply yoga studio. This retreat will include lectures, discussions, and experiential
exercises. These experiential exercises are crucial for understanding the lectures and discussions. I
have an assortment of exercises from yoga, Tai Chi, and other movement disciplines that really
bring home the material. Students will leave with a tangible structure and mental training tools for
their lives. I have a retreat coming up next year at the Drala Mountain Center in Colorado. And I’m
in the process of scheduling additional ones this year in North Carolina.

SGPT: Thanks for the interview Arno, we greatly appreciate your knowledge and experience.

AI: You’re welcome Brad. It’s been a pleasure knowing you all these years. Let’s go climb
sometime.