The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

self-talk can waste vast amounts of attention and power. If you speak in self-limiting ways, your actions will be limited. If you speak in empowering ways, however, your actions will be empowered. There are four specific methods you can use when speaking to influence your actions. These methods create deliberate speech.

    Warrior posture: hips in, weight over the feet, face relaxed, mind focused on actions to take, not the difficulties faced. Photo: Andrew Kornylak
    To speak deliberately:
    • Express a possibility attitude.
    • Use power words that are active, not passive.
    • Direct your words in an efficient direction.
    • Speak in questions.
    First, express a possibility attitude. The self-talk that occurs in your head will contain clues about the attitude you have unconsciously adopted. Talking to yourself consciously can also create a different attitude. If you say, for example, “My arms are too short for that reach,” you’ve essentially declared the move impossible. Without a doubt, this attitude will result in you feeling the move to be impossible. However, if your attitude is, “This is possible,” your bodymind orients itself positively to the situation, seeing it as a challenge to be mastered. If you consciously say, “What could I do to make that reach?” you’ve implied the move is possible and have given yourself options. Make sure your self-talk embodies an attitude of possibility. By expressing an attitude of possibility, you retain your power to act in the situation.
    Second, use power words. Use words that retain power and keep you active.
    Here’s one example of how a performance question and the resulting answers can be greatly influenced by the words you use in framing it. Listed below are a student’s answers from a written exercise involving the words problem, challenge , and opportunity .
    Question 1: “What is your biggest problem in improving your performance?” Answer: “My biggest problem is being afraid of falling.”
    Here, the student’s fear of falling is not related to any action. The answer orients the student passively, stuck in an unconscious attitude of avoidance of falling.
    Question 2: “What is your biggest challenge in improving your performance?” Answer: “My biggest challenge is figuring out how to deal with falling.”
    This is more helpful. Figuring out how to deal with falling is more action-oriented and has an element of seeking to engage the fear and to work through it.
    Question 3: “What is your biggest opportunity in improving your performance?” Answer: “My biggest opportunity is to practice falling so I won’t be afraid of it and can enjoy climbing more.”
    Now the student has a plan. She has indicated a specific action she can take, and she also stated a strong motivating reason to engage her fear—to enjoy climbing more.
    Third, speak actively, in a direction where positive results can occur. Passive or reversed self-talk is common. A simple example is, “Don’t forget your keys.” Here, you tell yourself not to do something that you don’t want to do in the first place. Subconsciously, this is confusing and inefficient. It saps attention. You introduce the idea of forgetting your keys, and then direct yourself to prevent this from happening. It’s more direct to say, “Remember your keys.” The word “remember” moves you directly toward what you want to happen. “Don’t fall” is similar in structure to “Don’t forget your keys.” It is better to say to yourself, “Stay in balance,” or “Keep moving.” If you’re focused on moving and staying in balance, there is little mental space for worrying about falling or actually falling. Your attention is on doing something empowering, not on avoiding something limiting.
    Fourth, when facing an obstacle, speak to yourself in questions rather than statements. Statements leave you no options. They are either true or false. If you are in the midst of a climbing challenge, you don’t know if your statement is true or false. Stating, “This fall is too dangerous,” leaves you passive. You’re not assessing how dangerous the fall really is, and what you might do to mitigate the danger. Questions, on the other hand, offer new information to consider and sends a demand to your subconscious to supply options. An alternative way might be to ask, “How dangerous is a fall?” and “How can I make a fall safer?” These questions keep you involved in the problem-solving