The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

the conscious mind through body-oriented methods: continuous breathing, continuous climbing, and soft-eyes focus. You can reflect on this process as you read about it here, but during the action your focus will be to disengage the conscious mind from thinking.
    You have committed to action with unbending intent, yet climbing allows many chances to hesitate and rethink. You’re in the process of smoothly on-sighting a difficult sport climb and you reach a big handhold. Suddenly you want to cling to the sense of control you have at your stance. You linger on your island of comfort and a brief, helpful rest drags out into hesitation. You find yourself trying to control the situation rather than trusting in the process. Your intent begins to bend.
    Experimenting with moves and planning out a sequence gives you control over a climbing situation. That’s helpful. Allowing controlling behavior to take over when it’s not contributing to knowledge is not helpful. I experienced this in 1978 while climbing Hollywood and Vine on Devils Tower, Wyoming. The route follows a thin 5.10 crack on the southeast face. The grade of the climb was very challenging for me at the time. News that a climber named Henry Barber had recently soloed the route seemed to interfere with my ability to open up to the route. Maybe I was vaguely imagining myself up there unroped as Henry had been, and I was half afraid of falling to the ground. Maybe I felt inept because I was finding the climbing difficult while someone else had been so comfortable he didn’t even need a rope. In any case, I was holding on harder than necessary as I climbed to where the crack thinned to a seam. I continued up a few feet on delicate face moves but felt out of balance and tense. I didn’t want to go for it without knowing what holds were there, even though the fall was safe. I made a half-hearted effort on the next move and fell.
    Even though I hadn’t given a strong effort, I told myself that I wasn’t able to do the climb. The fall relaxed me a bit and I liked the feeling of being supported by the rope and equipment, so I began aiding the crack. As I aided up I saw some edges—which I would have discovered had I made a strong effort the first time—and realized I could do the moves. I decided to go back down. Next time up I climbed the thin seam section free without taking another fall.

    Devils Tower, Wyoming. Photo: Jeff Achey
    First time up I was intent on controlling the situation instead of trusting in the process. I was resisting falling, overgripping, and hesitating. These behaviors held me back from giving myself fully to the effort and paying attention to the possibilities of the route. The second time up, with some new information, I trusted in the process. By falling once I accepted the fall that had bothered me earlier. By relaxing my grip, staying in balance, and climbing continuously, I stayed receptive throughout the process and made it through.
    Why couldn’t I simply have trusted in the process the first time? Somehow I developed a weak and distracted frame of mind early on the climb. Climbing through a challenging section of rock can resemble conversation. In conversation many people stop listening to what’s being said. Their attention becomes focused on why they agree or disagree with some early remark. They plan ahead to what they’ll say next, even though their remark will probably be out of context at that time. They end up channeling their energy into defending their old set of beliefs instead of being open to the possibility of learning something new from the speaker.
    The same thing can happen in climbing. Suppose you happen to climb a section inefficiently, such as I did on the lower part of Hollywood and Vine . You tend to hold on to the sensation of that action. You expand it into more climbing inefficiency by dragging it from the past into the present, compromising your attention on the task at hand and eroding your confidence. Or, you might encounter a troublesome move and decide that a higher move, too, will give you trouble. Instead of facing the challenge openly and optimistically, you form an expectation of trouble.
    You may not realize it, but these distractions are heads of the insidious Ego dragon. We immediately recognize the Ego’s role in our conversation example: the person is preoccupied with his own ideas and isn’t listening to others. He is self-centered and out of tune with the flow of conversation. He tries