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

difficulty of the skill, this process may be slow, awkward, and frustrating. Therefore, discipline and an intense belief that you will become excellent in the skill (with effort) are fundamental to the process. You must not try to get around having to learn it by relying on your strengths in other areas.
    Unfortunately, many climbers do exactly this when they lunge, swing, or scum wildly through a sequence that could be done more efficiently by learning a new move, technique, or body position. Another example plays out when a competent gym or face climber first attempts to learn crack climbing. The common tendency is to avoid the awkward—and possibly painful—jams and pawl up the face on either side of the crack. In this case the climber will rapidly fatigue and likely exclaim that the route felt way harder than its grade (of course it did, since she wasn’t using the proper technique for ascending the route).
    The moral of the story is that you must convince yourself that no matter how hard a new move feels at first, it will become easier to execute—and perhaps even intuitive—as the result of intelligent practice. Toward this end, keep in mind that you will become most competent at a skill by practicing it on as many different rock varieties, angles, and settings as possible.
    Another important principle states that learning new skills is difficult in states of fatigue, stress, fear, and urgency, whereas a fresh, relaxed, and confident approach yields rapid acquisition of new skills. Consequently, it’s best to practice new skills early in your training sessions and to employ liberal hangdogging for blocked practice of crux moves. Interestingly, you can solidify skills you already possess by practicing them in a fatigued state! If all this motor learning theory is beginning to overwhelm you, worry not—following are five powerful practice strategies that distill and apply this information to produce optimal skill-learning results.
MODELING ADVANCED CLIMBERS
     
    Modeling is a powerful technique for learning basic skills and climbing strategy. It’s best used in a climbing gym where you can observe the movements, positions, techniques, and tactics of a more advanced climber, and then immediately give them a try on your own. Make a mental picture of what you want to attempt and use that vision as a starting point. Experiment, modify, and make the move your own. In practicing the new move, progress through the following four practice strategies: blocked practice, variable practice, fatigued practice, and random skill practice (described below).
    You can also model what you observe at the crags. In addition to actual moves, take special note of the tactics and strategy used by high-end climbers. For example, how do they work crux sequences? Where do they find rests? At what pace do they climb? How do they go about equipping routes? Again, it’s best to first experiment with your observations in the gym before testing them outdoors.
    Although modeling technical skills is a powerful weapon for your arsenal, copying an elite climber’s fitness training program is usually a big mistake. Remember that elite climbers have spent years conditioning their muscles and tendons to withstand extreme levels of stress. To train as they do without this long-term preparation could be disastrous.
BLOCKED PRACTICE
     
    Blocked practice—identical repetitions of a specific move—is the most popular method of practicing a hard climbing move because it produces rapid learning of the skill in that specific situation. In learning the undercling move, for example, you would repeat the same undercling move over and over in order to refine your body position and the application of force needed to optimally perform the move.
    Upon development of “feel” and early success at a new skill, however, a radical change is needed. Further blocked practice will have little value and may even result in a false sense of confidence and poor use of the skill in novel settings. Returning to our example, suppose you only practiced the one basic undercling move you first learned at the gym. Despite your expertise at that specific undercling move, you will struggle and likely fail on undercling moves on different wall angles and on the infinite playing field of outdoor climbing. The same phenomenon is seen in other sports, like a golfer who hits great wedge shots from the perfect lie of a practice range mat (blocked practice), yet on the golf