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

route. Vivid, associated visualization has been shown to cause low-level neuromuscular activity that helps enhance motor learning (Feltz 1983) and maintain the feel of performing some skill.
    You can also use this effect to your advantage next time you pump out while working a route. Instead of thrashing around on the climb for the umpteenth time (and risking injury), call it a day and spend the time pumping a few more “mental laps” on the route. This will help solidify your knowledge of the sequence without the extra physical strain and risk of injury.
    Tips for Enhancing Performance with Visualization
     
    1. Use disassociated visualization (observer’s perspective) for route finding, imagining possible sequences, risk management, and to review failed attempts.
    2. Use associated visualization to mentally climb the route (climber’s perspective). Feel the ascent evolve, including all physical movements and thought processes. The goal is to mentally practice—virtual experience!—all aspects of doing the climb.
    3. Make associated visualization as bright and detailed as possible. Avoid any negative visualization.
    4. To get best results, engage in visualization in a quiet area. Relax and don’t rush through it—your goal is to visualize the complete ascent from bottom to top with no interruptions.
     
     

Creating Laserlike Focus
     
    The ability to narrow and maintain focus is a crucial sports skill, especially in an activity like climbing where elements of danger exert a constant pull diverting the focus from the move at hand. Widely used, but often misunderstood in the context of a climber’s lexicon, focus is a laserlike concentration of mental energy aimed at the most important task at any particular instant. Since every movement in climbing possesses a different most-important task, it’s vital to be able to redirect your focus, in an instant, to the finger or foot placement most critical at that moment.
    Think of focus as a narrowing of your concentration, much like a zoom lens on a camera. At any given moment you must zoom in on the single task most critical to your performance—toeing down on a small pocket, pulling on a manky finger jam, or shifting your center of gravity to just the right balance point. Think about anything else and you may fail at this critical task and fall.
    The most difficult part of focusing is learning to zoom in and out quickly from a pinpoint focus to a more wide-angle perspective. For example, a quarterback starts a pass play with a broad focus (when in search for an open receiver), but he instantly zooms in on a single player as he delivers the pass. In climbing, you have to do much the same thing—use a broad focus when hanging out looking for the next hold, then zoom in tight as you reach toward the hold and latch on to it. Similarly, you must zoom in tight when high-stepping on a dime edge, locking off and making a long reach, or floating a deadpoint. If you focus on anything else—your gear, your belayer, your pain, or spectators on the ground—you may as well add a ten-pound weight to your back. Poor focus makes hard moves harder, maybe even impossible.

Practicing Focus
     
    Detailed below is a practice drill for developing focus and a preclimbing strategy for gathering focus in preparation to climb. The Singular Focus Drill is best used when you are climbing on toprope and well below your maximum grade. The Pinpointing Your Focus for a Climb exercise can be used before attempting any climb, though it’s especially effective when preparing to start up a difficult route.

     

Singular Focus Drill
     
    The best time to work on your focus is when climbing a route a couple of grades below your maximum ability. Whether you’re at a gym or the crag, on toprope or lead, attempt to climb a whole route by focusing solely on one aspect of movement.
    For instance, try to do a route with your complete focus on just hand placements. Find the best way to grab each hold, use the minimum amount of grip strength necessary to hang on, and feel how your purchase changes as you pull on the hold. Place as little focus as is safely possible on other areas such as your feet, balance, belayer, and the like. For now, let these areas take care of themselves—allow your intuitive sense to determine where your feet go and how your balance should shift.
    Chances are, you’ll find this exercise quite difficult. Your thoughts will naturally wander to other tasks or even be directed