Climbing can be broken down into 3 main areas: Technical, Physical and Mental. Most climbers understand that in order to climb at their maximum, they have to train all 3 of these areas. Many climbers place an over importance on the technical and physical training, leaving the mental aspect to its own devices.
By not training the mental aspect of climbing, we are leaving ourselves open to the possibility of continually underachieving. By tackling this facet of climbing with the same determination and time we spend on training to get stronger, for example, we will see a very quick enhancement in our performance. It also allows us to make the most of the technical and physical abilities which we have. Hopefully the rest of this post will give a little insight into how we can start to improve our mental performance and ultimately improve our climbing.
10 Strategies for Improving Performance
As I've mentioned previously, many of these ideas discussed in this blog are not special to climbing. The following 10 strategies are a prime example of this. By using these not only in our climbing, but also in every day life we can start to become more successful.
1. Separation of Performance and Self Image
If a person perceives themselves with a certain self image (e.g. I'm a climber) and they place great importance on that role, then it can begin to have a negative impact on performance. By having this strong tie to a single role or belief, we can start to feel an overwhelming sense that we must perform perfectly every time in order to prove we are worth being in that role and ultimately our own self worth as a person.
An increase in a person’s performance is seen for processes orientated environment as opposed to outcome oriented. By separating self image and climbing performance we can begin to enjoy climbing irrelevant of the outcome. It also reduces the mental pressure and anxiety associated with climbing. This reduces the mental load, giving us more mental capacity to try new ideas or ways of climbing. This is an advantage as it can give us that small edge we may need to work out a crux sequence while climbing for example.
2. A Positive Environment
Each person has the ability to influence their surroundings. The type of influence we have on those surroundings is based upon our personality, mental attitude towards life and our previous life experiences. Those around you are affected by your thoughts and actions and vice versa. The fallout for climbing is that we should try to surround ourselves with buoyant and positive people, as opposed to those with a cynical and negative attitude, or climb alone. Climbing with people who have a downbeat attitude will have negative implications for our climbing, even if we realise it or not. If pushing the envelope of your climbing success is your main goal, take maximum advantage of the collaboration which can be gained by having creative, motivated and positive people around you.
3. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
In order to improve, our goals must exceed our current ability. We must also be willing to push ourselves to new heights of achievement to meet our goals. With-in the climbing framework, this requires us to push past the physical and mental pain we might be in; we must continually confront our fears and continue attempting what may seem impossible given the current situation or set of circumstances. This will cause our perceptions to continually evolve and the impossible will become possibly.
4. Take a Proactive Role in Risk Management
Climbing is inherently risky, this one of the reasons many of us climb. In order to push our grade it will require us to take on more risk. These risks can come from the obvious physical danger, taking a ground fall for example, or the less obvious mental risks such as failure, criticism or embarrassment.
To overcome these risks we must objectively assess the level of risk associated with a certain climb. By doing this with time on our side, we can have strategies in place to lower or cope with the risk (taking more gear for a route to reduce the likelihood of injury). To lower the mental risks we can use separation of performance and self image as mentioned above.
5. Increase Your Level of Self-Confidence
Our level of self-confidence is determined by our self-image and the thoughts which are continually running through our minds. Thoughts relating back to a previous poor performance or negatively loaded self talk such as I can’t, don’t, impossible and try lower our self-confidence and are the offspring of failure. By focussing on previous positive outcomes and successes we can increase our level of self confidence. Actually try visualizing the success - how did it feel to succeed and the empowerment of positive action. By reliving successes, both climbing and non-climbing, on a day to day basis we can start to reshape and reinforce our own self-confidence.
6. Get into ‘The Zone’
The Zone is the mental state whereby everything comes together and everything feels effortless. The skill comes in being able to achieve this state of mind like the flick of a switch. Again the way to achieve this is to use a previous experience where you were in the zone. This experience can be anything; it doesn’t need to be climbing related. For me there are certain songs which I have mentally anchored to specific events. On hearing the song, it transports be back to that event and I can be there again. If you have been climbing for a number of years, there will no doubt be at least 1 day where you had this feeling of being in zone. Visualize this moment and make a short mental movie of the stand out points from that day; ensure the movie is crisp and clear. To enter the zone replay that movie with those highlights, allowing the feelings of total calm to wash over you as you felt that day. You are now in ‘The Zone’. Experiment with different mental images and anchors until you find one which suits you best.
7. Ritulise Your Climbing
The rituals we go through before a climbing can greatly effect the outcome of a climb. If we have poor foundations we can expect a poor performance. The type of foundation you lay (soft or hard) is a result of your pre-climb rituals. These include all the things which we do to prepare for a climb such as warming up, scoping the route out, visulizing the sequence, the order we tie in and put our shoes on. Every little detial can effect the outcome. Again by thinking back to prvious events and the rituals we performed on that day, we can repeat these and increase our chance of sucess. By performing these rituals everytime we climb, they will be come engrained and we will be in a positive mental state, ready to succeed at the climb.
8. Stress and Tensions - Take back Control
This is a key strategy as tensions leads to failure. Tension and stress bore away from the inside and are shown in the emotions and actions which we display. Everyone has seen a tense and stressed out climber, with their high levels of emotion being clearly displayed. Trying to use negative emotion as a fuel for success is highly likely to lead to failure. Taking a step back and few deep breaths, along with a positive mental mantra will greatly improve your chance of success.
In order to reduce tension and stress, we must continually listen to our bodies. By feeling the small increases in stress and tension levels, we can stop them becoming a limiting factor in our climbing and in our lives - this is a 24/7 battle and we can win. Here are 6 Easy steps to help in this continual fight against stress and tension
1. Attempt to have an awareness of small rises in the level of rising tension, controlling them before they gambol out of control.
2. Take a few deep breaths to calm your breathing, and then allow your subconscious to take control.
3. Be observant of any areas of muscular tension, on feeling this relax and allow the tension to escape like air from a balloon.
4. Allow a wave of relaxation to wash over you from head to toe.
5. Remove all thoughts of the past or future; these thoughts will sabotage your mental and physical excellence. Now refocus on the present and climbing.
6. Adjust your posture, smile and crush your route like the Zen Master you are!
9. Make Use of Positive Self-Talk
An individuals self-talk can greatly affect the outcome of a certain situation. We can think about having two voices inside our heads, critical and proactive, which are in constant chatter to one another. Certain situations require that we listen to the critical voice (evaluation of performance and weaknesses), but the proactive voice is the voice of change. It keeps us moving forward in a positive manner and as a result will allow us to produce our best performance. By having control over this self talk, we can control our attitude and ultimately our climbing.
The question is which train of thought do you follow? It may be difficult to know this, as the level of self talk may be so intense that it may not be easily discernible. Despite this difficulty, by listening to yourself for a few days you will soon come to realise which voice is leading your mind - especially while your climbing.
Your current style of self-talk will be based upon your upbringing and those around you. Those who grew up with complaining parents will most likely be complainers themselves and as such, will gravitate towards complainers. By becoming aware of your self-talk, you can start to control it and use it to turn the negative into the positive. When the critical voice steps forward with 'this route is impossible', adjust it to something positive 'this route is really challenging'. Change 'this is scary' to this is 'exciting'. By having a handle on your self-talk, both while climbing and not, you will become one step closer to being a master achiever.
10. The Independence of Happiness.
Being happy should not be based upon situations or outcomes. True winners have great levels of fortitude with respect to bad results and criticism. They truly believe that they will attain success provided with enough time, effort and patience. By having fun (the reason we first started to climb), we can overcome the barriers which face us, such as poor technique or a lack of strength. By removing the conditional aspect we place on climbing (I'm only happy if I'm winning) we can start to have fun no matter the outcome, we will then find the outcome we desire comes much quicker.
The above ideas are covered in Eric Horst's Book Training for Climbing. They are also talked about in various other books and articles online. If your looking for a more general approach to these ideas about mental training, I find the framework of NLP very good. Joseph O'Conner's book, Coaching with NLP: How to be a Master Coach gives a great account of using NLP techniques to start achieving those things you always thought impossible.
Don't forget, we need to train our minds just as much we do our fingers!
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