Ideas to improve your Climbing
While there is abundant information about physical preparation for climbing, there is very little concerning the mental and technical aspects and almost nothing regarding skill acquisition in climbing. Ideas to improve your climbing is a three part video series that sheds some light!
Let’s be clear — if you believe that climbing performance is only dependent on your physical fitness and can be therefore improved with only physical training — these videos are not for you!
While the first video deals extensively with aspects like mobility and shoulder health, I quickly expand to climbing biomechanics and new developments in climbing technique to prepare you for the demands of modern bouldering and climbing. Even all that means nothing, if you neglect the perceptive, cognitive and psychological side of things, after all — If you don’t feel, hear or see anything, how can you activate those muscles?
So, if you see potential for improving your climbing by caring about aspects like motor learning, practice design and Perception-Action coupling, please read on and consider my Ideas to improve your climbing!
The first installment has five chapters:
- Readiness for climbing
- Ways to analyze climbing movement
- Pathways to unconscious competence in climbing
- Methodical exercise series showcase for using momentum
- Ways to stress proof your climbing.
I won’t explicitly explaining isolated climbing skills here. The reason is that even a gentle twist of a hold can entirely change the ideal climbing solution. Instead I’ll lay out the Principles of quadrupedal vertical locomotion, so that you can than apply that knowledge in a variety of climbing situations, not just one.
Readiness
Performance is tied to diverse elements such as muscle fibers, neural control, elastic properties, distribution of loads over many joints and much more. No single element works on its own and depending on the context even the smallest factors may have a major impact.
Instead of traditional, repetitive resistance training, try to encounter as much variety in the surfaces and angles you practice on as possible. Train your locomotor system by a wide variety of vectors in angle, tempo and load to prepare your body to deal with forces in unpredictable ranges.
Instead of treating your physical training like a workout, treat your training like a practice.
Instead of hoping to grow your muscles bigger and stronger, try to become stronger through more efficient neurological means.
Suspensory (Hanging) Competence
Modern humans retain many physical attributes that suggest a brachiating ancestor. Our fingers are well-suited for grasping and most humans still have somehow flexible shoulder joints — so healthy modern humans should have some suspensory competence!
If this hasn’t been a part of your movement diet recently though, you want to built up control in your shoulder girdle before you can swing like the climbers in this video!
The simple grip sequence above tells you a lot about the condition your shoulder girdle is in, when hanging overhead on fully extended arms.
Observe if
- Your arms are extended through the full range of motion.
- Check if you are in control in every split-second during the full range of motion (being fully „In-control“ means that you can stay in any position for one inhale-exhale cycle).
- Don’t allow yourself to use any momentum
- And last but definitely not least, You should be 100% pain free through the full range of motion.
Spend a couple of days, separated by rest days, with this sequence. Try before and after climbing. Observe when there are changes. Proceed to more advanced exercises only if you are totally happy with your shoulder girdle.
Be like Oobleck
Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid that does not follow Newton’s law of viscosity. It has no constant viscosity independent of stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force to either more liquid or more solid.
When I smash the Oobleck to the ground and it thickens and acts like a solid. After the smash, the Oobleck will go back to its liquid like state.
This behaviour is very much required in modern climbing.
To be rigid, stiff and strong when needed and to be compliant to absorb the impact and to flow into ideal alignment with the contact points.
You want to be Oobleck for Pre-tensioning, for the ability to switch ‘off’ and on’, to relax and contract and to accelerate and decelerate.
How to analyze climbing movement
Movements possess spatio-temporal characteristics, they happen in space and evolve in time. A movement is made as a whole with apparently invisible blends of spatio-temporal characteristics, depending on the demands of the particular task.
Even small glitches during the time when muscles are activated and deactivated deteriorate the energy transfer and thus performance.
Control your Hip, and you control your body
By mastering Hip Control in all planes and around all axises, climbers can control whatever kind of movement they want to create. You can be as static or dynamic as the Hip allows. Consider that the Hip moves around and plays in 3-dimensional space. Front to Back, Side to Side, Twist and Turn and everywhere in between.
If you combine the impulse and the timing too, the sensation feels like riding a magic carpet!
If you raise the Center of Gravity for as long as it’s needed to do the necessary hand- and foot moves, this plateau of the Center of Gravity (COG) is your magic carpet that, while you are riding it, allows you to do whatever you want!
Spatial Aspects
- Line of Action? (borrowed from drawing)
- Free Body Diagrams
- Lines of tension — Directions of Loading
- Forces
- The Center of Gravity (CoG)
- Distance and Displacement
In most cases, regardless of what beta the individual climber chooses, the attempts with CoG closer to the target hold are more successful.
The four stages of competence
also known as the four stages of learning, is a model based on the premise that before a learning experience begins, learners are unaware of what or how much they know, and as they learn, they move through four psychological states until they reach a stage of unconscious competence. Everybody is on different levels even in skills that might seem to be related.
The model helps you to understand your emotional state when learning. If you don’t know there’s a problem, you are less likely to engage in the solution. On the other hand, if you are already in conscious competence, you might just need additional practice rather than training in this skill. In the video, I’ll show you 3 basic pathways towards unconscious competence.
Beginner’s Mind
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
Shoshin (初心) is a word from Zen Buddhism meaning beginner’s mind. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when dealing with an unfamiliar situation, even when being at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.
Deliberate practice
is purposeful, systematic and maximizes learning.
Deliberate Practice starts with an environment or task that has a clear intention. Intention is an aim or plan, so when we set intent we give a clearly formulated plan to act. Increasing intention directs attention; so clearly indicating the goals of the activity will direct attention to specific information, thus also specifying the feedback. Create an environment that maximizes feedback to allow for implicit learning.
“Movement and action is NOT controlled by the brain, but by information”
— JJ Gibson
Trust the Process
This for me is the highlight of the video, so I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just a little hint below:
Introdusing Momentum — a Methodical Exercise Series
to make you more comfortable in your use of momentum. It starts rather simple and then gradually exposes you to more and more complexity and constrains.
For this methodical exercise series we look at different body segments as having distinct centers of gravity. They are vessels for energy that you can use to transfer angular momentum to different body parts and different axes and planes of movement and or rotation.
Climbers can initiate angular momentum of some body part from a state of having no whole body angular momentum Ifthis angular momentum is counterbalanced by some other body part in the opposite direction.
Often we observe conservation of angular momentum, the so called the whip effect.
Our joints are arranged in opposing directions of motion, allowing the body to “fold” and “unfold.” This concept of opposing joint torque is the principle of posterior chain tensegrity that allows for big time utilization of elastic energy in climbing.
You might be surprised of how basic some of the tasks at the beginning of this chapter are. The purpose of a Methodical Exercise Series is, that all tasks can be easily regressed and progressed to be challenging for even the very best climbers!
I want to encourage you to explore and be creative to find multiple, authentic movement solutions within this methodical exercise series.
This exploration and creativity helps you to gain functional variability rather than limit you to some specific movement you deem necessary.
Strive to vary constraints — you can manipulate (einblenden)
- the Task,
- the Environment,
- the Time
- the Difficulty
You’ll be most creative when you are under various constraints that change constantly.
Stress proof your climbing
“Under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training.”
For learning you need to practice with a fresh mind. Once you own a skill under safe conditions though, you need to stress-proof it.
When stress, anxiety, and fatigue are high, the decision-making process changes, and if you never practice that, you will crumble during competition.
“Rising” to the occasion under pressure is simply preserving your normal level instead of faltering under the pressure and stress.
Thanks for readings! You can watch the whole video here!
Thanks for reading, you can watch the video here!
