From impossible to easy

[alexandra]

I was climbing in Berkeley the last couple of days and noticed something pretty strange, which has never happened (to that extend) in my local crag, and I was wondering if anyone else had a similar experience/ whether it is something that happens a bunch in general. 

 I was trying a couple of problems, both rated V5, very different form each other. One (Girl's problem sit start) was technical, with balance and finger strength the main components and the other (Sunshine) was powerful, with big slaps on slopers off of heel hooks and big throws to almost every hold.
Both of them felt absolutely impossible to do the first couple of times I tried them. On sunshine I got some useful beta and after that I made good progress and eventually got to the top (surprisingly) but couldn't top it out cause I was pumped and had to let go:( then had no skin left to repeat it (Mortar Rock cheese grater holds). However, even with all the beta and spending a few hours trying to pull on the holds on Girl's problem (spread over two sessions), I really felt my fingers are just too weak to do it. And then at the end of my session the second day, just like that, I started climbing it and nothing felt hard at all. In fact, I was so surprised that I sent it so I climbed it 3 times back to back, just to see if it still felt easy or if it was one of those tries where you get "lucky" and send. And every time it felt easy, while even though i could do the moves on Sunshine, the moves still felt hard. Happy that I finished the climb, but very confused about what just happened. 

[jessebruni]

This is pretty normal. In fact, in my opinion, this is what makes sport climbing work. When I get on a sport climb at my limit I usually have trouble doing the moves of the crux, and possibly even a few non-crux moves. If I didn't have the knowledge that those moves will eventually feel a lot easier, attempting to climb through all those moves plus an additional 50 or so more moves would be a really silly proposition.

I think this happens because our brains make a lot of optimizations you'd never really notice if you didn't look for them. Tiny microbeta like shifting your weight ever so slightly from one side to another, digging in a little deeper on that crystal in the crimp with your middle finger, moving just a bit faster between the moves. Combine that with your body actually learning the moves and adapting, learning how to use enough strength to hold on and not any more than that, all that efficiency combined over several moves has a compounding effect and makes things eventually feel easy.

This is the foundation of projecting, and why you shouldn't just walk away immediately because something feels impossible when you first try it.

[jonfrisby]

I have a really hard time reminding myself this, Jesse. But you're totally right, and you can really see it on sub-limit climbs. I flashed this 11b a few weeks back and have been going back to it as my last warmup 3-4 times now. Well, this last weekend I absolutely walked it. Not that it was too hard in the past but this time it felt like 5.10