UKC

Jasmin Honegger, PhD explores whether enjoying climbing footage from the comfort of our sofa in lockdown could actually help improve our climbing...

With the COVID-19 pandemic ever-present and many countries enforcing more severe restrictions and lockdowns, it remains a challenge for many of us to get out and climb. Many indoor climbing gyms across the globe are closed and going out to the crag is either restricted or highly discouraged. Some people have fingerboards and some are even lucky to have home walls, but what about the others, the ones stuck at home watching climbing videos? Could it be possible that watching videos can not only entertain us, but even benefit our climbing while we're waiting to get back on the wall?

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Alas, there is another variable any future study will also have to consider - that watching climbing videos during lockdowns makes me depressed as hell, and the demotivating effect of that may well offset any gains acquired from firing mirror neurons!

Absolutely! Just watching random climbing vids and hearing "Allez" being shouted  repeatedly and in varying accents won't do it, though.

Visualization has long been a big part in other sports, in judo we did this back in the 1980s with VHS videos: Watch a specific opponent you a re preparing for being thrown, and get the reflexes honed to do it yourself as well!

While I am not yet allowed to be back on the mat as a fat, ageing, amateur judo player, I did study videos from the ongoing tournaments, and tried some new techniques I saw there purely mentally, lying in bed with my eyes closed.

These videos included both plain coverage of the fights, and also videos training videos analyzing specific techniques, in particular throws.

Last weekend I could finally try out  a few of these throws with my son, and they indeed worked first time round. I am therefore sure I will have a head start when the mats will open again.

There is no reason why the same would not work for climbing as long as a) the videos are specific enough, and b) you have the body awareness and training to effectively "translate" what you see into motor sequences that you can then practise without actually executing the movements.

CB