UKC

A post borne out of curiosity....

I was watching Hard Grit last night for the first time, and realised that all of the soundbites from the featured biggies - Seb Grieve, John Dunne, Jerry Moffatt etc, - mentioned either

1 - confidence
2 - self-belief
3 - visualisation

None of them mentioned campus boards or finger strengthening or technique. And that got me thinking; what do you actually train? Your mind or your body? Or both but in what ratio? Of course, self-belief and confidence is a natural by-product of getting physically better and stronger, but stuff like visualisation and mental rehearsal - does any of that feature in your training? If so, do you think it's helped and if not, why not?

In reply to omerta:

i dont think you can really train your mind,some people will never make mentally good climbers.
you will et more confident as you get better though

In reply to omerta:

I don't specifically train for it, but lots and lots of mileage on exposed routes obviously really helps.
I also had a days coaching specifically on my head game which worked wonders.
I get my biggest satisfaction In climbing when everything falls into place, my focus feels electric and I know that the route is going to go easily.
No amount of pull-ups or campussing will give me that feeling.

In reply to mark s:

Mark, you've come back to climbing after a bit of a lay off. Does it feel like your strength or your head game is the biggest challenge.

In reply to deacondeacon:


Looking at your most recent logbook entries Mr deacondeacon you appear to be the "king of vdiff"

In reply to the power:

Nowt wrong with vdiffs Philip.

In reply to deacondeacon:

Lots of v diffs can be quite scary indeed!
Thrutchy slimey chimneys, loose, overgrown, festering chossy thingamajigs, The Culm...

In reply to omerta:

But these guys are already at the top of their game - you'll notice that Ben Moon bucks that trend and puts it down to pulling harder.

I find I can either physically do it or I can't. I'm fairly good with boldness but I can either do the move or not.

In reply to omerta:

I find visualisation and mental rehearsal useful for redpoint projects (also a really good use of time in boring work events when I'm at risk of death by powerpoint). Partly as an opportunity to run through the moves and memorise sequences but also pre-redpoint for confidence (visualising success to try to stop my body from getting stuck on the feeling of failure).

I've never done much mental training before but I'm on a sport trip at the moment and have actually managed to get my head around falling off. As a result I'm climbing miles better, much more fluidly and relaxed, having never realised how tense I was before! So it's definitely worth training.

In reply to omerta:

My guess is that the chaps that you mention were well aware that they were physically up to tackling their routes. They just had to address their heads... Then again, I know nothing.

P.S. What's your favourite owl?

In reply to deacondeacon:

For my money, the head game seems to involve a certain amount of conquering irrational fear (being happy to fall off when you're above a bolt at the wall, or having a punt on an obviously protectable trad route, or committing to a short sequence with good gear and good rests at both ends or whatever) and a certain amount of dealing well with entirely rational fear (like actually doing moves were there's a realistic possibility that you're going to get seriously hurt). I'm a total bumbly, so I'm still mostly working on the first sort, and a lot of it does seem to be stuff you can get better at. The second sort I'm not sure about...

In reply to omerta:

Physical. Mental follows as night follows day (oooooo poetic.)

In reply to omerta: Not for most people it doesn't. How often are people falling off steep, safe trad routes simply because they don't like falling.

Surely the mental aspect is important to climbing performance -- as for most other kinds of health and performance - (read summaries of clever new research on the "placebo effect" in the last ten years or so).

Eric Horst recently wrote a book about mental performance in climbing -- surveyed every conceivable approach to improving it. I think he's a very smart climber and the book is full of worthwhile suggestions -- but I found it largely lacking in convincing _evidence_ for which ones really work for climbing.

Some problems with _training_ the mental:

a) I think what matters most is _unconscious_ mental. Just having conscious "positive thoughts" does not necessarily help much. Sometimes I've quickly succeeded on hard new moves while I had definite negative conscious thoughts about my performance outcome.

Modifying the unconscious mind is tricky. See Dave Macleod's careful program in "9 out of 10" for how to get better with "fear of falling" -- not much about using conscious thoughts or images.

b) I'll guess that most people drawn to serious climbing are _already_ pretty good at the mental stuff which is helpful. (and people who are not good at it are not likely to find the challenges of climbing to be "interesting" or desirable).

c) Likely what works to achieve some incremental gain in "general climbing" mental performance (as opposed to specific "fear of falling", or visualization of redpoint sequences) is going to be different for different climbers.

Ken

In reply to omerta:

I'm not certain that for the kind of climbing I'm into that mental "training" is really possible. I like big scary trad routes, and sometimes smaller but still scary bold routes. I like commitment and a touch of seriousness.

Sometimes I just know I can do a certain route close to my limit, and I get on the route, cruise it and love it. Other days I'm just not in the zone, and I'll get someone else to lead the hard stuff (or do something less serious and probably fail). It has quite a lot to do with getting lots of mileage, quite a lot to do with good conditions - nothing can kill my confidence like a shitty shower-dodging day or sweating profusely while the sun incinerates my neck - but mainly it's 'voodoo'. Sometimes I feel great and climb well, other days I feel shit and climb like a bag of shit. I don't think it's as easy as training.

In reply to deacondeacon:


strength wise i am massively stronger than i ever was as a climber,but the side effect of that is i am between 98-100 kg. so my fingers cant take it.
my biggest mental problem at the moment is needing boots rope etc to do routes i used to solo in trainers.
its a fair dent to the ego.
i know i can climb and its getting everything to start working again.
i guess its brushing up on my technique a bit. i know i will never do the routes i used to again but thats not a problem.i just enjoy going out and doing nice moves and feeling like i have done something

In reply to the power:

Onsighting obscure extremes across Stanage on a damp day in the challenge I set for the BMC this summer didnt give me that impression. Plenty of extreme leaders were reduced to VDiffs that day.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Doing big scary trad routes is probably the best training for other big scary trad routes.

In reply to omerta:







Those guys of course train both; I imagine the reason why the mental stuff is mentioned more in the film is because it's more interesting.

Visualisation and mental rehearsal I'd say are very useful for some types of climbing but not others. When you've been on the route before (headpointing, redpointing, bouldering) it's very important to remember the sequences. Visualising yourself getting through the crux is a great way of summoning the necessary will power.
I'd say they're of very limited use in onsighting which benefits more from route reading and a go for it 'suck it and see' type attitude.

In reply to Jon Stewart: It's interesting that you mention that some days you are in the zone, other days not. I think you would find that the point of very high level sports psychology is that you should be able to control when you're in the zone rather than leave it to chance, and if you're not in it, then you put yourself in, do the climbing and take yourself out again. To get to that level of performance is not something many people will want to do though.

'Doing big scary trad routes is probably the best training for other big scary trad routes' - not if it's a consistently unpleasant experience

In reply to wbo:

definitely. Good climbers are those that can do this. I wasn't working for the last 3 years and did loads of committing trad, but there were still days when i didn't have it. As for bold grit, that's totally uncontrollable, it's just an occasional (irrepressible?) urge.