Fear, Fitness and Motivation.
My fingers wiggle around in the wide finger crack. A solid lock alludes me. Over the last many weeks, I’ve been thinking about gear, safety, risk. I want to be bold. I want to place a cam and climb away without fear. But that’s not me. I shake and my feet search for purchase. I downclimb a move and let go. My last cam was below my feet, but the fall is clean. I’m disappointed. I couldn’t push through. I still had energy in my arms but not enough in my head. I gave up.
Luke about fall off Pit Bull Terror
For me, fear is proportional to the tiredness in my arms and my perception of the difficulty ahead. Do I have enough juice to make it to the next rest? How far am I above my last piece? I’ve been trying to move away from the need for constant security. I can climb on bad holds and place a cam from a poor or strenuous stance. Put in gear before the crux and go! Even after many years of climbing I am still learning tidbits of knowledge on each trip.
This post was inspired by a similar topic on on RockClimberGirl.com. I know the gripping, debilitating fear that locks up my body. For many people, like me, it may be impossible to fully eliminate fear from our climbing lives. However, we can try to learn to differentiate between unfounded fear (bad) and realistic fear (good). Unsafe falls and risky situations should trigger our brains to say “stop” – this is a good fear. Without some sense of danger, climbers can push too hard. However, there are many situations where we should relax, push past our fear, and go for it.
For me, fear or doubt comes out when I reach a cruxy point on a climb – perhaps leaving a rest or starting a steep section. I’ve been at this tipping point many times. In A Rock Warrior’s Way, Arno Ilgner gives good advice for these tough situations: “Try one more move”. If a fall is acceptable, then I just have to try one move at a time. In a “good fall” zone there should be nothing to worry about, but it is not always easy to make myself believe that failure (falling) is acceptable. As always, dealing with fear is a work in progress.
Here are a few more thoughts/tips on lead climbing and dealing with fear.
- Before starting a route, think about your past experience. How many similar routes have you succeeded on? While climbing, use positive self talk to enforce the idea that you can do it! Once you start leading fairly frequently, build a route pyramid to further quantify your successes. If you have done a certain number routes at 5.X then you should have more confidence climbing at that level.
- Technique will carry you further outdoors than strength. If you want to climb a 5.8 granite slab with tiny footholds a steep V4 at the gym might not be good preparation. Your training indoors should mimic the type of climbing you want to do outside. This allows you to focus on and develop a strong focused set of skills.
- When climbing becomes difficult, evaluate the fall. Most of the time falling is safe. Falling does not mean you have failed (since this can mean you have overcome your fear). If the fall is clean go for it! If you feel that you are too far above your gear, place a piece and re-evaluate.
- Lead as much as possible. Mileage both indoors and outdoors will help you become comfortable on the sharp end. Clipping and placing gear should be second nature. The more comfortable you are on lead, the more you can focus on the moves of a climb.
- Mix up your climbing partnerships. It is just as valuable to be the capable leader of the group as the competent follower. A stronger partner will allow you to tackle more complex and difficult routes, while being the leader will force you take control of the situation and deal with more logistics.
Thoughts? Tips? Suggestions?
- Luke
I think one thing that’s important is getting experience with what to do when things don’t go perfectly. New leaders start out with routes well below their limit, so get a lot of experience with no-stress leading on easy routes. I think once you’ve got the basics down it’s useful to learn what happens when you do get over your head — which starts with falling but might include downclimbing, french freeing, backcleaning, etc. None of this is difficult but it’s good to know that even if you actually “can’t do it”, it’s not a disaster.
Or maybe I’m just trying to justify my frequent bailing habits
I agree. Having to cam-jug to the top of a couple projects on my first Indian Creek trip once I ran out of skin, energy, and motivation was a very useful learning experience
This is totally true. Things do not always go as planned and you want to be able to figure out the best way to stay safe and get down. Aid climbing really helped me with trad leading. Knowing what placements hold and that I could aid through if I couldn’t do the moves.
Similar story with sport climbing. Maybe you can’t onsight the pitch but you can go bolt to bolt. In a worst case you could use a stick clip to get to the top.
I agree that mileage helps. I don’t lead nearly enough and face some of the same factors when I finally get to it. But once I start, a lot of that trepidation (I’m a manly man, I have no fear.
) falls away to the task at hand. Being able to concentrate on one thing at a time and force your mind to be methodical also helps. For some this is easier than others, but that type of mental training off the rocks can really help when you’re mind starts shouting, “Oh crap! What if I fall? What if the pro pops? Will I swing? Can my belayer hear me?” When what you should be doing is ignoring all that and simply plotting, “Find crack, put in pro.”
Fear is all mental and can be worked on off the rocks just like doing pull ups or crunches.
Thanks for the post!
I think faith has a ton to do with it – faith in something, whatever that may be. Although its dangerous, because faith can bring you past your fear. When I was paddling out in big surf in Chile, one of my friends said “you don’t have enough faith” and I really think in some ways that was the essence of it. Its almost like faith vs fear, and you have to choose where you want to be on that scale. If you tip too far toward fear, you don’t get to accomplish what you are capable of, but you stay safe. If you go too far toward faith, well, you pay the consequences of the risks you are taking, but you get to experience the freedom of moving past fear. At least that is how I see it.
If you feel like you are too far on the fear side, maybe its worth trying to have a little more faith.
Agreed. I wanted to write more on this but didn’t want to be too wordy. Motivation and self-belief (faith) can allow one to do amazing things. I find that the more you want to climb a route or stick a move the harder you can push.
Mileage has gone a long way with battling my sport climbing fears over the last 5-6 weeks. I had an awful time dealing with the mental game of failing on a climbing trip over Labor Day weekend and was determined to do something about it. I focused on a lot of things you mentioned above (weighing experiences, evaluating falls, etc.) and most importantly, doing nothing but leading in the gym.
I’m happy to say that it went a long way, and over the course of about 4 weeks I went back to feeling confident about leading 5.11s outside – even when I hop on a 5.11d and have to go bolt-to-bolt just to finish the route (of course, not losing gear was a big motivator in that situation, haha).
Great post – I have a few friends who need to read this as well!
Thanks. I had read your labor day blog before I wrote mine. Good to hear that you are making progress!
Conrad Anker just finished giving a talk/slideshow/film showing the 27 day duration alpine/rock/big wall climbing effort he made to climb a route that has rejected some of the biggest names in climbing over the last 30 years. During that effort, he was caught by a once-in-50-years winter storm that triggered avalanches for 3 days, and tossed his team of 3 around in their (shared) portaledge like maraca beans, they ran out of food, and the final 1/3 of the route involve days of A4 aid at 20,000 feet on a never-before-touched big wall in the Himalayas. Okay.
So, during the Q&A session, somebody asked him, “What are you not afraid of?”. My immediate thought was, “That person asking is definitely not a climber.”.
Fear cannot be eliminated in climbing; it is integral to it. The only fearless climbing involves stairs and handrails. Fear should be expected every time, and welcomed into the climbing experience as a partner, with a voice that only you decide whether to ignore, or to consider.
Fear will speak to your body involuntarily: It will increase your breathing, overgrip your hands, sewing-machine your legs, and tunnel vision your eyes. You must train yourself to ALWAYS ignore these aspects of fear. You do not want fear calling the shots without your agreement. You must train yourself to breath evenly, grip casually, step calmly, and scan habitually. Training yourself repeatedly on these 4 things will remove those involuntary reactions to fear. It will cause you to climb efficiently even when stressed, even when fearful, even when on new ground. The best climbers seem to fall unexpectedly, even when it looks as if they are not in trouble….this is why; they’ve trained themselves to always climb at their most efficient, knowing that this is the best they can do, and so they do it.
Habituate the good foot placement and falling habits, and you won’t have to worry about flipping during falls, which is the biggest normal lead-falling danger. These habits will go a long, long, long, way towards keeping you safe NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Believing in that will keep you relaxes which will optimize your climbing. Repetition will reinforce that.
The opposite is true though: If you worry about falling, and you worry about fear, then you are focused on what happens in the bad case. Essentially, it focuses you on the fall, which is the opposite of focusing you on the climb. It target-fixates you on the fall……and so you will. Same thing happens to hang glider pilots who become afraid of hitting a particular tree in the Landing Zone….they fixate on that tree…and so they hit it, as they involuntarily steer towards where their eyes are looking.
Climbing works just like that: What you focus on is where you’ll go.
Practice habits that keep you efficient and safe, whether you do OR DON’T make that next move, and you’ll find that fear always makes you better and stronger. Your climbing will improve. You will still fall sometimes, but it will be much less frequently than you would as a fearful climber, and you will be much less likely to be injured.
That said; nothing guarantees that you’ll never get injured while climbing…but nothing guarantees that you’ll never be hit by a car either. Climbing is not a sport about being safe. Climbing is a sport about having an experience that real risk entails, and learning to manage real risk in a real way, and digging it.
That’s the deal. Climbing cannot (THANK GOD) be made “safe”.
As Hemingway once said, ““Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.”
All you can do is practice the approaches that let you play the sport of climbing as well as you can play it. That is the difficulty, and the reward.
Cheers, Climbingguy123
Great post man. I can relate, totally. I often find I have the strength to pull I move, but just not the mental game. I do find that my mental game is better the more I climb. Especially the more I lead. When I go weeks without leading, or longer I just lose it all and it takes weeks to build back up. I think frequent climbing is the best mental builder. I know a guy who is 50 years old that climbs WAY better than I do just because of his mental game is spot on. He can climb 7 feet above a piece of sketchy gear and place a micro cam while crimping on a dead vertical wall without any fear. I’ve never seen this guy panic on a route.
For some reason falling is just a huge fear of mine. Not the fall itself, but fear my gear will blow. The fear is worse when I’m run out from the previous piece. But I think it all comes back to how much you climb. The more, the better.
One should climb to have fun — not for being terrorized by fear, or tortured by disappointment.
Why stubbornly stick to something if it hurts? To impress others?
There are so many other fascinating things to do in life.
I agree. Like triathlons
and, without challenging what is comfortable, there will be no growth.
e.g. “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go”
T. S. Eliot
very big and interesting topic…