The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

convince you that you can’t continue climbing. These thoughts are pure deception. The conscious mind is a liar when it is engaged in thinking while in the risk zone. A trusting mindset keeps the conscious mind disengaged from thinking.
    Observe your thoughts from the Witness position. Don’t be drawn in by them. When comfort thoughts arise, let the thoughts go and stay with your intention. You’ll accomplish this not by arguing or reasoning with the conscious mind, which takes you even further off task, but rather by doing something with your body. Breathe, consciously and continuously. Shifting your focus from the intruding thoughts to your breathing makes a bridge back to the body, to the flow of action and movement. Keep moving. Don’t wait for perfection. Use the holds you grab. Listen to Saint Nike: “Just do it.” Climbing continuously makes it difficult for the conscious mind to keep up, to reassess the situation, or create fear. Continuous climbing creates momentum that overwhelms thoughts. The conscious mind gives up and disengages from trying to control the action. By disengaging the conscious mind and positioning it as the passive observer, you allow intuitive information to flow from your subconscious into your climbing experience.
    In my old home area of Fremont Canyon I had two experiences that exemplified the conscious mind sabotaging my climbing efforts. In the early 1980s I was working on a new route called Sword of Damocles . The route is 300 feet long with the crux on the third pitch, a six-foot roof split by a thin-hand crack. The wall above the roof opened up to hand size and then wider. After several efforts, my partner, Steve Petro, led the pitch free. Then it was my turn to climb. I gave several efforts that resulted in falling. Each time I’d go back down to rest and give it another go. The thin crack in the roof was very strenuous and the crack above was a little too wide for solid hand jams.
    Each time I gained the crack above the roof, I’d think I was too pumped to trust my jams and would fall. Instead of staying focused and giving my best effort, I would rebel against the discomfort and insecurity of the climbing. My conscious mind stepped in and told me I could not do the moves. While I was sitting on the ledge between efforts, I couldn’t think of any alternate way to do the moves. When I reached the insecure section I’d stall out, struggle, and give up.
    Steve was becoming pretty bored by now at the belay, and I was becoming exhausted. On my last effort, I decided I would do whatever was necessary to make it work. I was as pumped as ever as I began climbing the crack above the roof as I’d done earlier, with widely cupped, straight-in hand jams. The insecure jams began to slip out, but I kept climbing. Intuitively, I leaned my body into a position where I was laybacking slightly off the jams. My hands still felt insecure in the wide jams but the change of position was enough to keep them from slipping out of the crack. That was enough to keep me from falling and I finished the pitch free. Once I shut off the “quitting” thoughts generated by my conscious mind, continuous climbing and intuition provided a way to climb the crux.
    Not long after Sword of Damocles , I was working on a short crack climb called Superman . My brother, Mark, and I had worked on freeing it several times and continually were shut down at a section of overhanging crack with wide finger jams. At the time I had little experience on this size crack, and each time I got to the crux, the jams felt too tenuous. My conscious mind, confronted with this unknown type of jam, was sure my fingers wouldn’t hold. In essence, my conscious mind lied to me by telling me the jams weren’t secure enough to pull up on. In fact, my conscious mind did not know whether the jams were secure enough or not. All it knew was pulling on those jams was outside its comfort zone.
    On the day I redpointed the route, I climbed up to the crux and, for no apparent reason, pulled on the tenuous finger jams and was able to make a move up, then another, and another. After three or four moves, I was through the crux and continued to the top.
    I didn’t know the mechanics of why the jams held, but they did. I gained new knowledge of what kind of jam could hold and used this knowledge on many later climbs. I only gained this knowledge, however, by continuing to climb when my conscious mind told me I couldn’t.
    Once you commit, your