Valley of anxiety

[tedwelser]

I tend to stifle the quality of my climbing in the challenging range near my onsight max, although at my max I tend to go for it more easily.  I suppose I feel there is less to lose.

Last week I got on a route that was 2 grades below my onsight max, and I did not climb to the best of my ability.  Although I onsighted the route, I was uptight and anxious for most of the time.  I did not really enjoy the route.  This was largely due to my fear of failure.   That night while talking with my climbing partner I came to understand part of what I am writing here and decided to climb the next day with the explicit goal of enjoying the process of climbing well.  I wanted to climb to the best of my ability first, and not really worry about the difficulty as "an accomplishment".  

I dropped down a letter grade or 2 and focused on climbing well.   I climbed much better and enjoyed the experience more, but I wonder if anyone has especially good advice for carrying your best quality climbing all the way through the valley of anxiety. 

Do you have any helpful habits or frames of mind that help you achieve your highest quality of effort across the full difficulty range?

[Chris W]

Ted, if you haven't already, check out The Rock Warrior's Way. I found it to be EXTREMELY helpful for things like this.

[jessebruni]

I think "not thinking" about performance isn't necessarily a good goal or even a good way to get rid of anxiety. For myself, I usually know when I can do something. I like to challenge, not only my body but my mind by saying "I'll do this on the next go" and then executing. This doesn't make me anxious about the result though because I don't see it as a matter of luck. It's a matter of proper execution. And my training has been all about preparing myself and teaching myself to execute properly. When I tell myself that I'll send on the next go, I put my mind into a higher state of awareness of my actions. I have added internal pressure not to come off on hard moves because I have a "goal" and this allows me to put in 100% on the moves that really require a little extra oomph.

Anyway, I use this tactic any time I know a route or boulder problem is within my ability and when I know the only thing stopping me from sending is lack of try hard and mental fortitude/focus. I'd say it has around an 80% success rate, and I think knowledge of how well it works gives me confidence that when I decide I'll do something I'll get it done. This allows me to not worry about the outcome as I view it as "in the bag" so long as I focus on doing what needs to be done.

[jorgemendoza]

May 14, 2015 1:57:01 GMT -7 Chris W said:

Ted, if you haven't already, check out The Rock Warrior's Way. I found it to be EXTREMELY helpful for things like this.

What Chris said ^^^

Also, think about reading Espresso Lessons after reading The Rock Warrior's Way.

[tedwelser]

Thanks Chris, Jorge, and Jesse- 

I will take a look at both of Ilgner's books.  I have benefited from "The Rock Warrior's Way" somewhat, but I have not read it in recent years and would do well to reflect again on his advice.  A friend has a copy of the Espresso Lessons, and I will look to borrow it. 

Jesse--  I totally hear you about committing to your best effort in redpointing, and I think redpointing solves a lot my issues because the uncertainty is reduced.  I run into my biggest anxiety when I am trying to onsight and I become too worried about messing it up, since there is only the one chance for the onsight.  When I confront a difficult section on an easier route I use my confidence that I can solve the situation in order to develop a good sequence, on something at my limit I tend to accept that I just have to go full bore, regardless of whether it is perfect because I know I need to use my full effort.  A couple levels below that and I tend to second guess myself more.  

With all of that, the new lesson I need to master is how to keep the mentality that I have on the easier routes, which is that I know that I can produce an efficient and elegant solution, and raise up that belief through the grades to my onsight level.  My eventual goal is to be climbing with full focus on climbing everything in the best possible way through the full range of difficulty.  Right now, I tend to climb my worst in my penultimate difficulty range when it comes to onsights.