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

runs itself, whereas happy, productive people are skilled at using their mind and body to produce positive emotions. So if you make it habit to carry your body in a positive way (good posture, head up, smiling) and think in a positive way (grateful for what you have, reliving only good memories, focusing on future goals), you will feel positive and, in fact, be a generally happy and successful person. This is one of the most powerful distinctions in this book—live it!
    You should now have a good sense of the things you can do to shift into a more positive state. Physiologically, you can take on a more extended posture and crack a smile, you can jump up and down or do anything physical, you can pump your fist in the air and exclaim “Yeah!” All these physical things will effect a rapid change in your emotions—try it now! Mentally, you can replay great events or climbs from the past, think about all you’ve accomplished in your life, ponder your good health or your fortune to have been born in a first-world country (where you can actually engage in a luxury activity like climbing), or visualize the medium- and long-term goals that excite you.
    Tips for Optimizing Your Emotions
     
    1. Regularly tune into your thoughts and self-talk. Evaluate what you are hearing. What quadrant are you in?
    2. Supplant negative thinking with positive, productive thoughts. Direct solution-oriented thinking and dwell on your goals.
    3. Use your body to change your state. Roll your shoulders back, take a few deep belly breaths, crack a big smile and laugh.
    4. Leverage your emotional resources by reviewing past successes. In your mind’s eye, vividly relive past great climbs and other amazing life events—feel the positive emotions charge you up in the present moment.
     
     
    Hopefully you now recognize that either your emotions are controlling you or you are in control of your emotions. Happy people and peak performers (in sports and life) are those who are able to control their emotions and adjust their arousal level on demand. In our frantic society, and when participating in a potentially high-stress sport such as climbing, these emotion-modulating skills are invaluable. Strive to monitor your position in the matrix throughout the day and optimize your state when needed, and you’ll discover a new quality of climbing and living!

Dealing with Fear
     
    As I stated in How to Climb 5.12, “the ‘no fear’ mentality is for buffoons, beer-guzzling frat boys, and couch potatoes.” In climbing, reasonable fears keep you alive long enough to realize your potential and to send a long lifetime’s worth of stellar routes. For example, fear of taking a ground fall compels you to seek good protection on the lead and to drag a rope in the first place.
    It’s unreasonable fears that derail performance. Things such as fear of falling on a well-protected route, fear of physical discomfort, fear of failure, and fear of embarrassment must all be eliminated if you are to climb your best. There are also preclimb fears such as I might be too tall, or too short, or too weak to do the climb, which—left unchecked—give birth to reality.
    Finally, there are subconscious, preprogrammed fears that are the root of many of the “dumb things” that seem to just happen. Have you ever fallen after the crux when the route is in the bag? Or have you slipped off a large hold or botched a wired sequence even though you felt in control? It may be that such mistakes are the result of unchallenged inner fears, not lack of ability. The key is to deal with your fears head-on (and not to run from them). Use the following exercise to identify and analyze your common fears. As the fears reveal themselves, use logic and reason to specifically counter each. If no logical counter is evident, however, the fear may be reasonable and worth heeding.

     

Identify and Analyze Your Common Climbing Fears
     
    Start by writing down recurrent fears that regularly hurt your performance. If you can’t think of any on the spot, go for a climb and pay special attention to every preclimb thought and while-you-climb concern. List your fears down the left column, and then write an assessment of each fear in the space to the right. Use logic and reason to counter each fear. Your fraudulent fears should be easy to counter. If you identify that a fear is real and useful (for saving your neck), however, then you want to write down what action you can take to mitigate the