The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

a single, interrelated unit. The body has characteristics that we normally think of as belonging to the mind. Your body has “memories,” which sports physiologists call schemas. (Schemas are referred to as engrams in Europe, but schema is the accepted term for American physiologists.) Schemas allow you to “remember” the complex combination of muscle activity and balance involved in riding a bicycle. Schemas exist partly in your brain and partly in the nerves and fibers of your muscles. Steve Petro developed specific schemas for the two halves of his roof climb, but he didn’t develop an efficient body memory for the mental gap between the halves. We could say that Steve’s hips sagged down through that mental gap. Just as there is no clear separation between brain and nerves, there is none between body and mind. The whole thing works as a unit, the bodymind .

    Steve Petro on his route Fiddler on the Roof Fremont Canyon, Wyoming. Photo: John Barstow
    Poise
    A key element of creating a supportive, high-performance bodymind is poise. Poise can be broken down into three components: body, including your posture and facial expression; breathing, which serves to integrate the bodymind; and mind, which includes internal behavior such as, how you speak to yourself.
    Physical Posture—the Body
    Dan Millman, in his audiotape program Everyday Enlightenment , says proper posture is a way of “blending with gravity.” You want to position your body so you’re in harmony with your environment. Poor posture wastes power. It takes extra energy and attention to hold the body when it’s out of balance. If the body isn’t balanced perfectly along the spine, then muscles are using energy to hold it. Proper posture uses minimal energy to hold the body upright. Posture has mental effects, too. When you stand with proper posture, you appear more confident. This is no mere appearance. The more you explore the workings of the bodymind, the more you realize that appearances count. Proper posture actually gives you a sense of confidence. Body language sends messages not just outward to others, but inward, to you.
    Proper posture says you own the space you occupy, no more and no less. You aren’t cowering and apologizing for the space you’re using, nor are you jutting out aggressively into space you don’t need. You own your space not because you’re better than others, but because you see yourself on equal footing with others. You say, “Right now I occupy this space and it is mine. I have a right to be here, in this space.” This kind of mindset keeps the Ego in check, and it’s just the kind of mindset you want when entering into a climbing challenge.
    Proper posture, incidentally, opens your chest cavity and enhances the quality of your breathing. It places you in a position of alertness and readiness for action. Use proper posture and poise while standing and climbing. Stand in balance, straighten the back, bring the hips in and shoulders back, open the chest. Do you feel it? This body positioning brings with it a sense of confidence. Stop using poor climbing posture, such as body positions that have a cowering or cocky feel to them. Find a balance. The subtleties of posture will determine what kind of body you take into the risk process.
    Your face is another important component of poise. Your face is both a passive indicator of how you feel about the state of affairs in the body-mind and an active control center for the bodymind. If you have facial expressions of doubt, then the bodymind is doubting. Adopt a look of confidence, and a sense of confidence builds in the bodymind.
    Many climbers grimace during strenuous parts of a climb. Grimacing is a stereotypical response to pain or discomfort, and it is more than just a response. It can magnify or create these feelings. Climbers often grimace during exertion, but exertion need not be painful or uncomfortable. If you grimace during exertion, you cast a mood over your effort that triggers specific reactions in the bodymind. Grimacing is defensive, a form of recoil. When you grimace you contract the skin around your eyes, reducing your peripheral vision. Grimacing also sends an analogous message to the mind; it creates tunnel vision, limiting what you can mentally “see,” such as creative new possibilities. A grimacing face creates a mindset that is ready to tough it out in the trenches or to escape, not one ready to openly and creatively embrace the