The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

you’re going to take, and now you want to take it in the most powerful way possible. On a runout trad climb, that risk may be a very small part of the total climbing challenge, perhaps only a single move up to a hold or possible gear placement. To climb through a single runout, you might make several separate risk decisions. Even a sport redpoint will often break down into smaller risk events and decision points. For each decision point, however, no matter what type of climb, there are only two possible outcomes: you climb through the risk or you fall. In order to take the risk most effectively you must absolutely accept either outcome. If you can’t do that you need to redefine the risk or back off.
    After exploring and experimenting, decide upon a specific opening sequence for the first moves that separate you from the unknown. That’s your initial focus, just those moves, and you’ll go for them 100-percent. Beyond those few moves, your information is incomplete. Your plan must be more flexible, but you don’t want to confuse flexibility with vagueness. Your plan needs to be as clear as possible so you will be able to commit 100-percent. Above your opening gambit you may have in mind several specific possibilities you’ve worked out in advance, or you may simply decide to see what holds appear and climb the moves on intuition. Your mindset is flexible yet firm; you will climb through to the end of the risk or fall off in the process of that effort. The end of the risk may be the top of a climb, the next bolt, or a point you’ve worked out in advance where you can reassess the climbing possibilities and falling consequences. The key is to decide ahead of time, eliminating the temptation to second-guess. This mindset will send you into the unknown with an optimized combination of intuition, decisiveness, physical effort, and mental relaxation in an open and full-hearted engagement of the difficulties.
    A risk need not involve physical danger. The mind can feel threatened by many different things, potential bodily injury being only one of them. When facing a difficult redpoint, you engage a different kind of risk, and the unknown you’re setting off into is of a more abstract type. You know exactly what you want to do physically—the moves, the rests, etc. So why are you feeling anxious? The key to completing the climb may not be figuring out a hard move or mastering the fear of a scary fall. It may be finding that elusive combination of will, strength, precision, motivation, and relaxation that must come together to see you to the anchors. The way you begin the climb, and your commitment mindset, play a large role in determining how easily you’re able to keep the conscious mind from leaking attention into distractions, such as your desire to make the redpoint or anxiety about blowing a low-percentage crux move.
    The best performances involve maximum, efficient effort with the body and no effort with the conscious mind—a state of relaxed concentration. Your conscious mind should feel satisfied that it has prepared you for the risk. Feeling confident of what is ahead, the conscious mind can back off and allow intuitive processes to take over. This allows information to flow easily from your subconscious into the performance. We’ll talk more about how to stay “in the flow” during the risk in later chapters. For now, let’s return to the moment of truth.
    Entering the Risk Zone
    Andrew Jackson said it well: “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” Preparation is over. It’s time to be decisive.
    We often hesitate to fully face a risk, and this is quite apparent as we approach those moments of truth. Instead of embracing the excitement of the moment, we often engage in inept ploys to blot it out. Some climbers have a habit of edging into a risk without consciously committing to it, and suddenly find themselves in over their heads. This is their trick for pushing themselves to do something they’re too fearful to do with full awareness. They then have to “sink or swim,” and in essence, have avoided the choice-making act altogether. Another trick is to rush into a risk before the reality has had time to register. Doing this avoids the anxiety produced by the decision-making process instead of confronting it directly.
    Neither of these approaches is an effective strategy for creative risk-taking. Attention is distracted, minimizing the