Free Inquiry 5: Stressful Dynamics.

As we get closer to the day of our lead climbing course, I get more and more nervous. This lead course doesn’t even include the testing – it’s just the learning portion. I guess the fact that I know I will be falling makes it 1000% more nerve wracking.

When I went to Crag X this past week, I noticed something that I do subconsciously that’s evident in my climbing. If I don’t think that I can make a move, I won’t even try, and this limits the amount of routes I am able to finish. You can attempt to move two ways in climbing: dynamically and statically, and it just depends on how much momentum and explosiveness you carry to get to the next hold. Sometimes, dynamically moving works better for one section of the route, and then statically climbing works better for another part of the route. Dynamic movements are quicker and takes less effort to reach over to the hold, but gripping the target becomes harder, and a lot more energy is used up in this move. A static movement is much more controlled, slow moving, and less acceleration energy is required. It’s best to know how to do both in order to not be limited in what routes you can climb. Personally, I’m a much more static climber, meaning I like routes that allow me to move slowly and controlled. The biggest reason why I have such a fear of dynamic movements is because they’re less controlled, and therefore you have a bigger chance of falling.

In climbing, a flash route is one that you successfully climbed in one try. I wonder how many routes I would’ve been able to finish in one go had I just tried to go for certain moves. So, for the next week, I hope to really be conscious of what decisions I make as I climb. If I get to a really hard section of a route, I want to just try. Getting over this fear of falling is tough, especially because there’s no easing into the falling factor of climbing. I’ve definitely mentioned in many of my posts that climbing can be extremely mentally challenging. Falling on your own terms is absolutely terrifying, and it takes a while to get used to it, because even after a year of climbing, I’m still not comfortable with it.

I went to Boulderhouse this week and got to do some bouldering for the first time in a while. Bouldering is another form of climbing – it’s on a shorter wall, but theres no rope. It’s often more about technique and strength, and less about endurance. When I first started climbing, this was the way I climbed, because it’s much more accessible for beginners as the only equipment you need are shoes and some chalk. Top roping and lead climbing can also be extremely intimidating for beginners because of the height factor, so beginners are often seen mingling in the bouldering world. I found that at Boulderhouse, there are many climbs that rely on strategy and technique to get to the top, whereas at Crag X, endurance and strength is a bigger part of whether you get to the top or not. I found that climbing at Boulderhouse was more challenging for me, and that I was climbing one or two levels down from what I used to be able to climb at Boulderhouse. That being said, I can climb higher grades at Crag X than I used to be able to do. One of the reasons why I think that this is the case is because when bouldering, falling means that you actually fall and theres nothing that’s going to catch you – you land on the mat. Again, I found that because of my fear of falling off the wall, I wasn’t able to even try some of the routes.

I’ve also been watching the most recent IFSC (International Federation of Sport Climbing) competition that was held in Morioka, Japan this weekend (Oct 20-22 in Japan time). Athletes had to do a combination of bouldering and lead climbing to work towards being on the podium. These competitions are quite intense for the athletes as they must get through qualifications, semi-finals, and finals, doing both bouldering and lead climbing, and I can’t even imagine the level of training they all do to get into these types of competitions. Here’s some highlights of the men’s boulder and lead finals (because the one that I watched is over two hours long…):

To tie this altogether, no, this is not me hinting that I want to be in the IFSC’s one day… but, I did take away something by watching the competition. If you watch both the bouldering and lead climbing portions of the video, you’ll notice that many of the moves do require you to just go for it. Many of the moves that you have to do have to be done dynamically, and therefore, makes the chance of falling much higher, but it’s the only way through. Trying different kinds of climbing, and reflecting on how I climb and the different decisions I make truly affect what I am able to send, and what I’m not able to. I think the key is to just try. Maybe I’ll fall, maybe I won’t, but I wouldn’t know unless I tried.