Free Inquiry 9: Practice makes…

This week was definitely a milestone. Steph and I went to Crag X on Wednesday and absolutely crushed the practice lead test! This felt amazing, and we even got a conditional pass to lead climb at the gym for the day. We got some awesome feedback from Sarah, who taught the lead course as well as watched our practice lead test, and now I’m feeling so much more confident and ready to do the final lead test. The word that I would use to describe how I’m feeling is proud. Proud of myself, proud of @ApreciatingtheAscent, and proud of our efforts and teamwork that we have developed.

If you imagine an image of a wavelength, I would say that that has been the shape of our lead climbing journey so far. I want to come back to my original question that I asked at the beginning of the semester: “can I get past my fear of falling and successfully learn how to lead climb?”. Reflecting on this question, I realize that this is almost two questions that are connected together, and I have an answer for each part of my question that make a final answer (as of this moment) of my free inquiry. I think that if I continued to ask this question, my answers would continuously be changing as time went on depending on many factors, such as practice, the people and environment around me, and my motivation.

So to answer my question thus far; ultimately, no. I have not gotten past my fear of falling, as every time I let go of the holds and lead fall, I feel like I’m on my way out to my next life. Buuuuuut… yes! I successfully learnt how to lead climb! How cool is that? I guess that what I’ve really learnt is that you don’t need to get past your fears to try things out, because that limits you from doing such cool things that you actually are capable of doing. I’m grateful for this free inquiry project because it pushed me to do something that I’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t done because my fears stopped me from progressing forward. In my general climbing journey, I’ve felt “stuck” for a little bit as many beginner climbers may feel. At the beginning, you’re so stoked to have found this incredible sport so you go four times a week and get incredibly strong and progress fast. But, as you get better and better, you eventually will hit an unwanted plateau where it feels like you just can’t get better – you’ve maxed out. Obviously, one way to get past this plateau is to train and to commit more time and days into climbing, but I personally just don’t have the time or energy to do more than I already do. So, now that we’ve started lead climbing, it feels like I’ve just bumped up a grade in the scale of beginner to pro climber 🙂

In the end, rounding up what I’ve just typed out, the only way to get “good” at anything, or to get “past” fears is to practice. Practice, practice, practice. And practice some more! I put “good” and “past” in quotes because I think being good at something such as climbing is very subjective, and getting past a fear can look different for everyone. Practice makes as much as perfect can get! So get yo’ self on the walls, or whatever you’re doing for your project, and practice awaaay!