We’ve been investigating the pain points in mental training for climbing. You may think you should avoid pain. Pain is inevitable and even necessary for learning. The question is: what tools can you use to process that pain rather than avoid it?
Something that’s particularly painful is lacking confidence. You feel like you’re giving half-hearted efforts, which feels dissatisfying. You want to give 100%. But how?
Is climbing a sport?
There’s a bunch of buzz about whether climbing is a sport. So let’s answer that here. Yes, it is. Knowing that climbing is a sport means something. It means that you need to approach it as athletes approach other sports. So what does that look like?
Being confident in any sport requires a strength training program. Here, we need a strength training program for climbing. Such a program should give us a simple, specific structure for building strength.
Strength training for climbing
We’re talking about mental training here. So we need a mental strength training program. More specifically, we need a climbing training program that emphasizes mental strength. So let’s build such a program. Let’s see how it can help us develop confidence for lead climbing.
Confidence comes from believing in your ability to act with power. Power increases (or decreases) based on how you choose to focus your attention. You can choose to focus on what you want to achieve. Or, you can choose to focus on the present moment. The former will distract you and diminish your power. The latter empowers you and moves you up the rock.
Confidence increases as your belief in your abilities increases. You need to develop your abilities; your beliefs will follow. Build a foundation of stress resilience. Stress isn’t bad. It’s needed to sculpt your mind. But how can you use stress in positive ways toward these ends?
What makes up a climbing training program for mental strength?
Lead climbing confidence comes from building resilience. You can get some insight by examining what distracts attention. Distracted attention occurs in two directions. Down and up.
What’s so cool about climbing is the reality of gravity. You climb against gravity. On lead, risk increases as you climb to the next protection point. Make mistakes or run out of energy and gravity will pull you down. That’s called falling. So, you need to practice falling.
But mental training isn’t just about falling. You also experience fears of exerting effort. Exerting 100% effort can feel painful. It pushes you into stress. The flood of blood into your muscles creates a pump that can actually be painful. Get more pumped and your commitment can diminish.
Diminish fear and strengthen commitment
So the basic mental strength training program for climbing includes falling and commitment. That’s why we use the same terms in our training. The Falling & Commitment training we teach is our strength training program for climbing. It builds mental strength. Fortunately, now, it’s available as an Online Course. That puts this valuable training at your fingertips…exactly when you need it.
As outlined above, power comes from increased attention in the moment. We teach you to focus on 5 processes that occur while climbing. Doing this keeps your attention in the moment where mental power can build.
So…let’s summarize
Simple.
And of course, simple doesn’t mean easy. But wouldn’t it be empowering to have a resource that guides you? Of course it would.
But check it out yourself.
Lead climbing confidence won’t be a mystery anymore. You now have a simple concrete plan. You have a resource. That resource won’t remove the pain of climbing on lead. But, it will process you through that pain. You won’t commit half-heartedly anymore. You’ll commit more completely and love the feeling that gives you.
The Falling & Commitment Online Course