Climbing Routes Without Numbers

On Wednesday I climbed up an ungraded route. The indoor climbing centre where I go once or twice a week has been updating and renewing the different holds they bolt to the wall. We arrived before they had printed out the little square reference signs that run along the bottom of the wall.

In the place of my longtime-favourite warm-up route, a nice yellow-coloured 5A, was a new route populated with deep black jugs. It looked easy from the bottom, but there was no confirmation of this from the grading at the bottom.

Even routes in mountains — particularly in areas where lots of climbers visit — will often have been graded, but I found that I enjoyed climbing up the route without the grade. It returned me to that feeling — one I’ve been struggling to recreate — early on in my time climbing when it wasn’t always about doing the next level or the higher difficulty progression: it was just about enjoying the climbing, enjoying moving my body and whatever thoughts come up when you’re ten or fifteen metres above the ground.

I’ll be trying to pay less attention to the numbers in future sessions and more to the felt and sensed experience of climbing.

The Inner Game: How a Perspective Shift Can Radically Improve Your Performance

I’ve recently become interested in mental models, or different types of lenses you can bring to view a particular situation or reality. We all have an immense flexibility in how we can view the world; sometimes changing our approach in this way can change how we experience our reality.

I found the process of realising and accepting this reality — that how we choose to respond to things changes how we experience them — incredibly empowering and liberating. It gives you options and choices in situations that may have seemed oppressive or challenging in the past. It opens you up to new approaches, new possibilities. I’ve written about my struggles with various parts of climbing, but one of the places I often return to is this idea that I can choose how I respond to that difficult. Similarly, I can reframe how I decide to view that reality: I can see it through the lens of fear, or I can view it through the lens of opportunity and growth. I can see it through my default hesitant-cum-reluctant perspective or I can try to imagine how someone else sees it (a friend, perhaps, who doesn’t struggle with the same mental blocks, or even someone much further along in the sport).

I recently read a fantastic book that introduces some of these ideas as they relate to the sport of tennis. The book, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance, was written by W. Timothy Gallwey and was originally published in 1972. Back then, it made quite a splash (selling over a million copies to date) and the book is rightly well-read as a classic of sports psychology literature. Gallwey has since published a number of spin-off books applying his principles to other domains (work, stress, music, golf, skiing) but you needn’t be a tennis player at all to get a lot from the original version.

The core idea that Gallwey introduces is that the mind has “two selves”, Self 1 and Self 2. I’m not entirely sure about the full extent to which these overlap with Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2, but there is some common ground.

Self 1 (also known as the ‘teller’) is the voice in your head which tries to actively manage how you do certain things. It is responsible for efforts to ‘try hard’, and is often quite critical. Self 2, in contrast, is the ‘doer’, the part of you that (in the end) ends up doing things but that is sensitive to the attitude and comments made by Self 1. The book is about the relationship between these two voices, since Self 1 doesn’t trust Self 2 to be able to deliver. Gallwey argues that in order to be effective and do our best work (or play our best match of tennis), we need a better way of translating our knowledge into effective action, and thus a better way for the two selves to communicate and interact.

Some of the details of the book are specific to movement-based skills. I think that anyone doing any kind of sport would benefit from reading this book. Gallwey outlines four key skills that go into effective movement: - letting go of judgement — once you stop allowing self 1 to dictate the terms of the conversation, you can rely much more on the instinctual learning capacity of self 2. This also hooks into the idea of ’seeing clearly’, which pretty much immediately improves your ability to respond and react to the reality of the present moment. - creating images — visualising movement, really noticing what’s going on (when viewing others do it) and working from imitation and from feeling your way into the movements. - ‘letting it happen’ — getting out of the way. This has a lot to do with the first skill. You have to trust Self 2’s ability to deliver, and you just need to let it happen, or let whatever happens happen. The important thing here is the nonjudgemental observation of change and the results. - concentration — this is the final stage, since just ‘letting go’ is not quite enough. The relaxed, nonjudgemental mind needs focusing. For movement, this means focusing your observation and sensitivity to sensations in the body (for example) or an increased consciousness of the senses. (“Focus intensifies the light of consciousness”).

He ends the book by addressing the idea of games — games that people play, the meaning of competition, and the broader implications of the way we approach this ‘inner game’ (balancing self 1 and self 2) in our life. (I was really impressed how so many of the ideas presented presage current trends and predilections: the importance of mindfulness, the value of play, and so on).

If the first part of the book was less applicable to things outside the domain of movement skills and practical learning, the second half is much more relevant to the problems I think most of us face. There’s a certain amount of pop psychology that probably hasn’t lasted the test of time, but mostly it is really solid perspectives on: - finding games where the score doesn’t matter - the debate in Western society as to the value of competition as compared with cooperation. - issues that result when ‘success’ is equated to value and self-worth (which can in turn lead to various compulsions to succeed, or, paradoxically, to rebel)

Gallwey ends the book with the paradox that is at the core of the ‘inner game’, that in order to allow Self 2 the freedom to learn and act naturally, this requires a level of abandonment. So it is a matter of “caring, yet not caring […] effort, but effortless.” He ties it in to all sorts of other areas outside tennis that really convinced me as to the applicability beyond purely motor / movement skills.

There was a lot to unpack about this book, and I may return to some of the specific points in the future. For anyone working on their movement skills or finding ways to enjoy that part of their life, I’d put this on the list of essential books. For anyone else, maybe give the first few chapters a read; I think you’ll be surprised what Gallwey brings to the table.

Different Kinds of Climbing

This past week I went with my niece to a climbing hall (and trampolining centre) in Kuwait. You can see photos of the walls here and here. The whole experience was designed to encourage play and fun, naturally, rather than for some kind of skill-building. There weren’t any other adults climbing; just children with a throw-yourself-at-it mentality that was infectious.

The routes themselves weren’t particularly difficult, but it was harder trying to ascend without climbing shoes and hindered by the world’s most uncomfortable harness. The walls weren’t that high, and this seemed to reward a sprint-like style of climbing. Speed was more important than technique or form. This was climbing as challenge, as a way to enjoy scrambling up and leaping off the top, rather than anything else. (The centre uses auto-belay devices that stop you from falling all the way down to the bottom).

The experience — mine, and watching that of the children 10–20 years younger than me — reinforced the conclusion that has been steadily growing in my mind over time. Climbing is not really about strength; fear and the mental battles are the biggest things holding the beginner climbing back.

I’ll have to still bash my head against the wall for a while longer before I fully absorb and believe this lesson, but the sooner I do, the sooner I’ll be able to advance onwards to the next level of challenge.

Climbing Fuheis: Two and a Half Ascents

This is a video from a recent climbing trip to Fuheis. (Filming courtesy of Felix Kuehn). The weather is starting to turn cold so I feel like maybe this is the last time I’ll get to go climbing outdoors in Jordan until spring comes.

I climbed three times yesterday. I don’t really have a strong sense of what the ratings were on the routes, but I think they were all in the 5s (i.e.5a–5c). You can see the ratings for the route at the wall here.

As I wrote a short while back, I’ve been dealing with things that I thought I’d sorted out weeks ago. My sense of trust of the rope and the comfort up at heights is still pretty good and I’m not too worried about how that is progressing, but yesterday I was unable to complete a route that I had ascended the last time I was there.

I had energy to spare, so it wasn’t a question of not being able to summon the strength to get up; it was more a mental block. I was unable to trust in my feet, in the grip of the shoes on the wall. As one more experienced climber said to me after I had descended, “you need to feel more stable and confident in how you place your feet on the wall”.

I can see the wisdom in what he’s saying, but I think it’s something that comes with time and experience rather than just a mental shift or a technical correction that you can make immediately.

I was also reminded yesterday of the non-linear path that learning often takes, where progression in one area can often be followed by regression a short while later. Over the long run, you’re getting better, but it’s hard to retain that sense of overall perspective.

Last time I went to Fuheis, I had a really good two or three weeks afterwards, spurred by my sense of regret and failure that I experienced while climbing outdoors. I’m more willing to seize the opportunity, to go the extra mile (or inch), so I’m looking forward to the coming few weeks to see what I get up to. I’m feeling confident in where I am and in my general strength and skill progression.

Letting Go

Over the past week, I have felt the progress I’ve been making on the climbing wall is in jeopardy somehow. My energy levels have fluctuated quite a bit. I can never be sure how much I’ll be able to climb when I get to the wall, and old fears have started to raise their heads again.

I thought I was over my fear of falling. But it has returned in a new guise. Part of the improvement in skill and strength that I’ve made has allowed me to try new walls and new routes. Some of these are on an inclined wall. The wall leans over you rather than just going straight up, which places more strain on your arms.

It also, I have discovered, is somehow a trigger straight to the core of my fear of falling. Gravity pulls straight down, so when you let go on an inclined wall (either in a fall or while taking a rest break) you’re pulled away from the wall into free space behind you. There’s nothing different about the experience. Either way, the rope, your harness and the knots you tied will hold you. But the experience is visceral. I’ll be fine all the way up the wall, but when I let go and pull out into open space behind me, I feel like falling is inevitable.

It’s a hard feeling to describe, and there must be something (at least on some level) hard-wired about it. The feeling comes about so instantly and with such force.

Today I did some exercises to try to become more comfortable with the feeling. I did some intentional falls (basically just leaping backwards and trying to stay mindful of the experience of having the rope catch me). I climbed up the inclined wall, every so often turning round and allowing myself to rest on the rope while I turned my body backwards, looking out into the main hall of the centre. 

I won’t claim to have had any breakthroughs. If anything, I feel like I’m back where I started. But I’ll keep going back, and I’ll keep climbing those walls. After all, feelings are just that: feelings. I no more have to follow the beat of their drum than I have to buy a can of Coca Cola every time I see their advertisement on a wall. But I do have to acknowledge they exist, and, maybe, to get comfortable with their taking up space in my head from time to time.

Every day is different. Progress isn’t necessarily linear. The things I thought I’d dealt with come back to confront me. But as long as the process — doing the climbing — is still of interest to me, then this isn’t a problem. I just have to keep showing up, keep climbing those walls.

Keep Moving

There was a moment, three-quarters of the way up the wall yesterday, where I started to think. I was starting to slip off the wall, and the holds were starting to become slippy with sweat from my palms. My arms were both tense, holding the weight of my body in a way that was tiring them out. I was doing everything wrong -- holding myself onto the wall instead of finding a way to keep my arms long and straight, the rest position that climbers are encouraged to take.

At this point, my mind moves in different directions simultaneously. I think about the next move -- something I've tried to reach for or figure out just beforehand -- and come up with nothing. I think about quitting, "because you've come so far" (!). I try to ignore that voice, though sometimes when your arms are screaming at you it's a fairly seductive call. Then I think about how I'm starting to slip off. I feel the initial tentacles of panic. Panic is an exponentially increasing phenomenon, I've found. You start with just letting a little in, and before you know it (in less than a second) you're sharing the wall with this monster who seeks to throw you off the wall. I shut the door on panic just in time, though it's only a matter of minutes before he shows up again.

And then I think to myself that maybe it's better I just keep climbing. Keep moving. One of the reasons why my arms are tired is because I'm on the wall for so long. The route is tougher than what I'm used to and it's designed to make it harder to take moments of rest, so I'm less worried about needing to use my arms so much. Sometimes that's just what the route calls for.

Also, the less time I spend on a particular step or move, the less likely my sweaty hands are to find a chance to slip off a hold.

I try to keep that in mind and find a rhythm of movement that aligns with my breath. Breathe, move hand, move foot, step up, move hand, move foot. Repeat. It doesn't last forever; at some point I'll be stymied by some tricky part of the climb, and then I'll have to go through the whole learning cycle again.

But this seemed to me one of those lessons that the wall teaches you in climbing that are applicable to life outside: sometimes it's better just to keep moving. Focus and reflection on your route or your goals is useful, but perhaps not best done while you're mid-route. There are usually inflection points at staggered intervals (when you finish a shorter project, when you do a weekly or monthly review of your activities and so on) when it's good to stop and reflect. But when you're mid-flow, exerting the effort and starting to slip off the wall, this isn't the time for reflection. In fact, reflection will sap your ability to keep moving forward. You just need to keep pushing on, keep delivering, keep pushing out the words, or whatever it is that you're doing.

Learning Without Seams

We’re often told to learn from others, to take (role) models and to emulate either the path they took, or some of the key lessons they learnt along the way. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to figure out how someone reached a particular goal, or they actively work to prevent you from seeing the struggle that took them there.

This is as much the case for sedentary pursuits like fiction writing as it is for active things like climbing. You can watch a video of someone like Alex Honnold, someone known for his lack of self-aggrandisement and who always seems to downplay the stakes of what he’s just done, and find it hard to see the work, the sweat, or the basic realities of what he did to reach this point. (In his case, years of practice/experience possibly combined with a disposition towards risk-taking.) His book was frustrating for exactly that reason: you had only a minimal sense of the stakes of what he did.

For fiction or many other kinds of rewriting, the whole work of editing, rewriting is more or less deliberately geared towards removing the friction, removing the sense that someone toiled to put this story together. As readers or consumers of stories, we don’t want to sense the seams, don’t want to be aware of how something was constructed. But as practitioners or artists, we need to see those seams to be able to learn our own craft.

So there’s a tension, and that tension instructive in helping you find good models. I’ve been trying to write more about my own failures on this blog so as to balance things out. Whenever I’m learning a new skill, I try to find different types of models. Firstly, people who have reached the heavens, who are trailblazers and who break new ground in their particular skill / discipline. Secondly, those who are a few steps behind, and who really have had to work to get there. It’s this second kind of model where you’re more likely to see the seams of their journey, and you’ll most likely be able to learn from them.

Sustainable Climbing: Three Book Reviews

Today, three quick and dirty reviews. I read these books back-to-back. They reinforce each other, despite their authors being unconnected in any practical sense.

The first, ‘Espresso Lessons’ is a short version of Arno Ilgner's classic ‘The Rock Warrior’s Way’:

“Things you don't think about when you're climbing. Arno Ilgner has been working and writing about fear, technique and falling in climbing for years. This book is a distillation of some key insights he's had. I imagine this is a book I'll be returning to as I progress in the sport, but for a beginner there were some really useful parts. The key section for me was the one on falling, and on different ways of approaching this reality that confronts everyone, no matter what variety of climbing you're doing.”

I really liked how this book was more geared towards the mental work / challenge of climbing rather than purely the physical side (which many others have covered).

Next, Alex Honnold’s ‘Alone on the Wall’. If you don’t know Honnold, you should check out this video:

I never get tired of watching that. It’s an astounding feat. The book itself is a summary of the first thirty years of his life, mainly focusing on his big-ticket climbing activities:

“Alex Honnold's reputation precedes him. If you don't know who he is, go visit youtube and have your mind blown. This book is obviously not going to do the same thing as his climbing experiences, and it's written in a weird format. He gets a chance to explain himself on a bunch of things, returning continually to this question of risk and reward (that others often challenge him on). I could probably have done without the co-author's contextualisation and extrapolations on top of what Alex himself wrote. Also, the publisher made a really weird choice (at least for the Kindle version) in having all of Alex's sections in italic, which is a little annoying since his words are the core of the book and you have to read them all in italic throughout.
“Those quibbles aside, Alex Honnold is clearly at the top of his game in the climbing world and he has some really interesting rationalisations and thoughts on risk and competence. He tends to downplay everything, so it's hard to judge some statements since he'll just say "that was ok" or "that was easy" when to others it was probably much more difficult etc.
“He also has a really interesting and thought-provoking position on being 'minimal', as well as his commitment to donate 1/3 or so of his earnings to charity and a eco-foundation that he set up.
“Fans of his climbing will find lots to enjoy in this book. Others, perhaps not so much; for you, check out Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination or Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster.”

The final book was Yvon Chouinard’s ‘Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman’. Chouinard is the founder of the Patagonia outdoor clothing and equipment company. This was a surprisingly thought-provoking read:

“ An incredibly inspiring and thought-provoking account of the intersection of business practices, sustainable environmental activism and wilderness exploration.
“I hadn’t heard of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, prior to reading this book, though I now see that he’s been recently profiled in the New Yorker and many other places over the years.
“The first third of the book is an autobiographical account of how the company, Patagonia, was started along with some of the key inflection points along the way. Alongside this is a longer attempt to explain the principles and philosophies that guide how the company does its business. This includes everything from design principles (aiming for a quality minimal design over something that is perhaps cheaper but will last less long, for example) to their management philosophy and environmental activism work.
“It is this latter part of the book that gives a lot of food for thought for anyone running a business. More and more is being written on the issues surrounding growth — and I’m probably revealing my ignorance of a huge literature going back decades, if not longer — and Patagonia and the practices and philosophies here offer a challenge of sorts to anyone doing business in the twenty-first century. I will be chewing on the things in this book for a long while.”

It has been days since I finished this book, yet I’m still mulling it over. That’s as good a testament to the power of ideas as any.

Existential Battles: Climbing in Amman

Me, climbing at Fuheis last week

Over the past few months, since submitting my PhD (and then successfully defending it) I've been engaged in a number of activities that push me outside my comfort zone. From swing dancing to starting a new small business (the 99 Names Challenge) to learning how to code, I've tried to push the envelope of what I know. Like many of us, I'm a creature of habit and routine. I like my routine and my habits. But I also know that those habits and routines -- the same ones that delivered results and even a PhD in the past -- can grow stale. If I'm to grow -- professionally or personally -- I have to get more comfortable with change and with discomfort. The best way to start figuring this out, I have found, is to expose myself to newness and that discomfort as often as possible.

One of the things I've chosen to pursue is climbing. I'd done some bouldering in Holland (at the Delftsebleu centre) a few months back, and a good friend of mine here in Amman mentioned that she does top-rope climbing. The centre here happens to be the biggest climbing facility in the whole Middle East (take that, Dubai!) and there are knowledgeable staff and challenging walls etc so I started going twice a week.

I used to be a runner, but some bone/muscle issues in my foot meant that I haven't actually been running for a year or so. I know and have a strong appreciation for the way exercise and moving my body in general makes me feel better and work better, so I've been looking for a sport or activity to replace running in the meanwhile. (The running was probably a reason why I've neglected any kind of muscular strength training of my upper body. Runners like to be as lean as possible.)

Now is probably also a good time to mention that I have a fairly intense fear of heights. I'm not exactly sure when or where it started, but some key experiences in my mid-childhood certainly contributed to it becoming what it is now. I went to a boarding school in the north of England, near York, so there were lots of outside activities. During the summer, and at 'holiday camp'-type experiences, we were taken to do various adventure challenges on the weekends.

My 'adventures' included abseiling off high bridges, potholing in claustrophobia-inducing narrow passageways (and having my foot get stuck half-way), as well as various obstacle courses positioned in trees and so on. I resented the fact that we had no choice in the matter and I resented the fact that it was less about training or learning a skill than simply having an experience. I remember being pushed off the bridge by the instructor, clipped into a harness but unsure whether I'd survive the descent.

Since that time, I've avoided activities or experiences that necessitated me visiting high-up places. Confession: I even never made it all the way up Kandahar's Forty Steps (chilzina) for this reason. Halfway was my limit.

Amman's ClimbAt centre

Cut to the present day: I'm 10 or 15 metres up a wall at Amman's Climbat centre. This seems to be the point where things shift. My existential battle begins. I use those words only partially in jest.

The first time I tried rope climbing, I only made it to that half-way point, not knowing to trust the rope, not knowing to trust the knot I'd tied or the harness or a million other things.

Now, I can make it half-way up without too much angst, but then it begins. Rivers of sweat open up all over my body. The most distracting ones are the unceasing flow on my hands. Climbers use magnesium chalk to deal with this problem, though mostly it's just everyday sweaty palms. I dip my hands into the bag, holding on to the wall with my other hand, feeling my grip slip as the waterworks go to town. I see that my palm is sufficiently white with chalk. I swap hands, repeating the process with the other, only to find that in the meanwhile my first hand has sweated through the first application of chalk.

My inner dialogue kicks up. I wonder why I'm here, on the wall, trying to climb up. I look at the rope and the knot, wondering if I would even be able to tell if there was something wrong with it, I look around me at the other climbers, each breezing up their respective paths on the wall with seeming ease. Sometimes I look below me.

I try to talk myself down. It's a different kind of anxiety from that I've experienced before public speaking, that social anxiety that makes your heart race, your stomach churn and the adrenaline pump. Up on the wall, it isn't that adrenaline rush I feel. In fact, aside from the sweating, it's more symptomatically benign, expressing itself in the form of a puzzle or a predicament that I can sometimes remain detached from.

Usually the thing that works best is to try to focus on the physical experience of the moment, on my breath and what that feels like in my body, on the sensations of my fingers on the wall, on the feeling of gravity pulling me back down towards the earth. That sometimes manages to carve enough space that I can then try to think about the problem more analytically -- the problem of which step to take next. If I'm stuck in my existential loop it's hard to make those decisions and I end up wasting energy trying and retrying the same holds and foot movements, to no avail. This tires me out on a muscular level and the problem is compounded.

A week ago, I set my mental discomfort to one side and went outdoor climbing with some friends to a wall or crag near the city of Fuheis (see the photo at the top of this post). Climbing outside felt like even more of a proposition than the indoor wall. More possibility of failure, perhaps. I'm not precisely sure. It's sometimes hard to put my finger on the precise configuration of my fear. But it ended up going well. I ascended the wall, nothing went wrong and I even enjoyed the experience. It took me an age and a half to get up, but the getting up there was all me. I'm less likely to do regular outdoor climbing, since it's more of a hassle to arrange, but it's not going to be something I say no to in the future.

Needless to say, my ongoing climbing practice is exactly that: a work in progress. I'm working on both the physical and the mental blocks simultaneously and while I'm fairly confident that I'll be in a more confident and stronger place in a month or two from now, I'm also frustrated by the slow pace of progress.

To cherry-pick signs of improvement, I'm no longer quitting half-way up the wall. Most times -- as long as the route isn't too difficult -- I generally reach the top, even if it sometimes means multiple iterations of sweaty-hand-mind and multiple recommitments to completing the route. Even though climbing isn't necessarily a sport where you use your arms much -- it's much more about your legs and how you balance and position your body -- you do need at least *some* upper body strength and this is starting to come. I get a pleasurable sense of satisfaction when I return home after half a day spent at the climbing wall, and I'm wearing my muscle soreness as a badge of achievement.

I'm pretty sure that the solution to my mid-wall fears rests in being more conscious of what's going on and what I'm feeling earlier in the climb, and there are a bunch of mental exercises and training that seem to work for many climbers. I'm keen to put some of those into practice.

When it comes down to it, everything is in your mind, especially with rope climbing where the dangers associated with falling or losing your grip on the wall are pretty minimal. Worst case, you bash up against the wall and get a bruise or two. (I have a bunch of those on my knees already.) But the rest, that's all something I can work on and improve at (I hope). Watch this space for an update in a few weeks once I've been doing battle for a bit longer.