Training for Climbing, 2nd: The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Performance (How To Climb Series)

Unfortunately, in many partnerships one person makes all the calls and gets most of the benefits of the time spent training or climbing.
    In summary, strive for hour-to-hour, day-to-day awareness of the “whats” and “whys” of the actions you are taking. By formulating short-term goals, as discussed earlier, you can best maintain your focus on the things you need to do to improve short term and advance toward your meaningful medium- and long-term goals. Finally, foster an acute awareness of the results you are getting from your actions. Peak performers are those who most rapidly recognize when they are off course, and respond with a reassessment of the situation and an appropriate course correction toward the desired goal.
    Tips for Achieving Your Goals
     
    1. Know yourself. Live your passion. What worthy goals will drive you to excellence?
    2. Regularly assess your strengths and weaknesses. What’s holding you back in terms of action (or inaction) and self-defeating thoughts and habits?
    3. Take the self-assessment in this chapter at least once per year, and consider getting the objective evaluation of a climbing coach.
    4. Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your actions—are you obtaining the intended results? If not, make course corrections that will yield more effective actions.
    5. Don’t be afraid to step away from the crowd and pursue your own mega goals. Ally with like-minded individuals, and avoid people with bad attitudes and unproductive behavior.
    6. Set mega goals that will inspire and energize you from sunrise to sunset, and make your life an amazing journey.
     
     
    If it’s beginning to sound like becoming a better climber is a very mental thing, you are right! So let’s dive into chapter 3, “Mental Training.”

 
    Phil Hoffman deep-water soloing at Summersville Lake, West Virginia. DAN BRAYACK
     

    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Mental Training
     
    The wise man will be the master of his mind. A fool will be its slave.
    —Publilius Syrus
     
     
    The quickest way to enhance your performance in almost anything is to improve the quality of your thinking. This is definitely true in climbing, whether you’re working a highball boulder problem, sport route, multipitch traditional line, or alpine route. All performance operates from the inside out—your beliefs, focus, fears, confidence, preparation, and problem-solving abilities form the foundation from which you will either succeed or fail.
    Great performances begin with bulletproof confidence, singular focus, positive emotions, and a tough yet agile mind-set. Conversely, setbacks and failures result from the worry, doubts, tension, and uncertainties that are born from a poorly harnessed brain running wild with fearful thoughts. It’s my belief that whether you (or I) will succeed or fail on a climb is often predetermined in your subconscious (or even conscious) before you ever step off the ground.
    While off-season strength training and year-round technique training are paramount for progressing into the higher grades, during the climbing season your biggest breakthroughs will come from toning and flexing your mental muscle. Toward this end, this chapter details two dozen powerful mental strategies and skills that will help elevate your performance and enjoyment.
    Practice these skills with the same dedication and resolve as you would a new strength-training program, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results. Obtain the greatest payoff by applying these skills 24/7, not just when you feel like it. For some, an almost instant breakthrough will follow on the rock, while others will need to persist and let these mental skills build to a critical value before they will produce a noticeable impact on climbing. (This depends upon the current degree of tone or atrophy of your mental muscle.)
    Recognize that all these mental-training skills are interlaced and can produce a powerful synergy when all are in practice. In aggregate they may produce an effect similar to unloading a ten-pound weight (or more!) from your back that you have unknowingly been hauling up climbs. I call this using your Mental Wings.

Mental Wings for Improving Performance
     
    The late, great Wolfgang Güllich was fond of saying that “the brain is the most important muscle for climbing.” What makes this statement even more provocative is the fact that Güllich was one of the strongest people to ever pull down on stone. From the mid-1980s until his death in a