The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

can’t see what’s up there”), or on impossibilities (“I can’t do this move”). Let me describe an experience I had a few years ago where shifting my focus from impossibility to possibility made all the difference. It was on a climb called Steepopolis at a sandstone cliff called the Tennessee Wall near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Steepopolis is a trad route, rated 5.12a, a bit runout, and takes thin wires and small TCUs for protection. It’s not a straightforward climb because it doesn’t have the typical, obvious T-Wall horizontal handholds. I climbed up about forty feet to where the crux began, continued into the crux, and fell.
    The piece I had below the crux was bomber, so I wasn’t in danger. The crux wasn’t obvious, however, and the next protection placements were difficult to see. I looked up and said to myself, “I don’t see where I can get any pro,” and, “I don’t see how to climb this crux.” I gave a few halfhearted efforts, but each time I ended up hanging on the piece below the crux. I was stuck for thirty minutes in my passive, impossibility mindset.
    Finally I woke up and realized what I was doing. I said, “Arno, you teach this stuff. How about focusing on possibilities?” I looked up and said, “If there is a possibility for pro, where would it be?” I saw a small seam which looked like I could possibly get something in it. Then I asked, “What sequence could work, if anything could work to climb this crux?” I noticed some side pulls, so I decided these could possibly work to climb through the crux. I began working with the side pulls and climbed to the seam. I found a rest, placed a small wired chock, and continued up the route.

    The author on steep terrain at the Tennessee Wall. Photo: Jeff Achey
    My initial focus had been on what I didn’t see and what I couldn’t do. As soon as I shifted to a position of power where I focused on possibilities, I was able to climb the section that had stumped me. When I was stalled out, I had been talking to myself in statements. After I made the power shift, I began talking to myself in questions. These questions helped me to retrieve my attention from being tied up in passivity and use it actively to figure out what I could see and what I could do. After that, the doing fell quickly into place.
    In Accepting Responsibility, you focused on objectively describing the route’s holds and the climber’s skills. In Giving, you use this objective knowledge to create a plan of action. There is something about the route that will challenge you. Identify it and focus on what skills you’ll use to rise to the challenge. Those skills include ones you have now and the improvements you might make on them, as well as new skills. Rising to the challenge also includes maintaining a possibility mindset, which creates possible solutions to the challenge. You don’t see a foothold that’s “too slanted to stand on.” You see a foothold that could work well with a sidepull handhold.
    This possibility-focused thinking, applied to your effort and abilities, creates the giving attitude. You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t give your lack of perfect jamming technique. You can only give the technique you have, plus your effort to improve. Giving helps you tap into the familiar skills and abilities you typically climb with, and new possibilities you discover.
    Room to Believe
    The Giving mindset is focused on the how, the process: how to protect, how to jam, how to pace yourself. It isn’t about climbing cracks smoothly. It’s about learning to climb cracks smoothly. It’s not about being powerful. It’s about learning to become powerful. If you keep your focus on giving effort and learning, then you’ll continue to improve skills like climbing cracks, placing pro, and becoming powerful. These skills aren’t end results. They are in a constant process of improving.
    Remember, the warrior’s goal is power. Simply having the skills doesn’t increase personal power. Power increases through the process of enriching those skills, which you do by throwing yourself into situations where you dip into the treasure chest of the unknown.
    Radical Thinking
    A sport like climbing progresses through possibility thinkers. Generally, standards are inched up by adding small developments to what already has been achieved. We stand on the shoulders of what others have shown to be possible. Once in a while, however, a John Gill or Reinhold Messner