What Once Was

A picture of me on the iconic arête test piece Latest Rage(5.12b) in Smith Rock.  A bitter memory for me and one of my latest from Smith.  The onsight went horrible, and then on the second go I was all pumped up and ready to crush and blew it at the second clip after completely sketching out on a deep mono pocket.  The memory alone brings a bad taste to my mouth even though the route itself is actually quite good.  I’ve alluded to this sentiment in previous posts but I still have a long way to go before I earn my Smith stripes.  One of my top priorities for the early 2016 climbing season is to spend a chunk of time (hopefully a week) in Smith trying to decipher its secrets and finally earn a spot in the 5.13 club there.  I’m sure it will be frustrating and awesome all at the same time. 

Looks like my blog will be in the winding down phase in the next few months.  I don’t see any climbing trips on the horizon. I did have some grand plans to finally make my first climbing trip to a new continent but the plans were chaotic and unstable and in the end I didn’t feel comfortable committing to a $1,100 plane ticket and not knowing if anyone else would be going so I scrapped the idea in favor of waiting for a better opportunity with a more stable outcome.

In the meantime it continues to rain incessantly here in the NW.  The only thing I have to look forward to these days is a newly set wall at Stone Gardens and re-tooling my outlook and approach to training for a new climbing season.  The thing I’ve struggled with the most lately, besides the utter lack of sun and real rock, is getting out of my comfort zone.  I’ve made some good steps towards working on power and finger strength but I find my motivation lacking.  It’s hard to plan for something so seemingly far into the future.  So I’m thinking of ways to generate muses for my climbing.  I won’t need them all the time, my love for climbing and the movement therein is enough to keep me going for a long while, but pushing past my limitations takes something special.  I’m not sure what my muse will end up being, but lately I’ve been really amused with the idea of getting better at climbing inside, specifically hard boulder problems.  For the entire year of 2015 I’ve only completed four new boulder problems and I can see a huge difference in where I was  a year ago (in terms of climbing inside) and where I am now.  I find dynamic movements slightly more taxing and low percentage, my lock off strength has withered considerably, and my staying power (my ability to do several moves at my threshold) is almost entirely gone.  It all comes down to the fact that I just don’t have the same kind of power I used to.  And I’m blaming finger injuries and my devout adherence to training strictly for endurance for my weak little arms and lack of compression strength.  Just the other day I spent nearly four hours in the gym, and the majority of my time was spent bouldering.  It was kind of horrific how little I accomplished in this time.  I remember coming into the gym after a new set and being able to tick nearly the entire wall (that is to say V.6 and below) with mostly flashes and now the tables have turned so dramatically it’s either sad or funny. 

But I’m a hard one to sway, especially when it comes to climbing.  I’m using this ‘weak’ period as a time to understand humility, to learn from others, and to gain confidence.  I’ve climbed with so many different types of climbers over the years; some who can turn off their brains at the drop of a hat and just crush something first try, some who need to calculate each movement slowly and devise a plan, some who just jump in head first with their eyes closed and thrash away, some who get emotional and take every defeat personally, some who are afraid, some who don’t know they are afraid, and some so weathered that experience shines through and sending is like a second skin.  I get frustrated when I don’t feel as if I’ve progressed, and even more frustrated when I have to work harder than I’m used to just to keep the tools that I’ve acquired over the past year.  I think there is a general fallacy that exists within us or maybe even within certain aspects of our culture that we happen to exude from time to time and ultimately leads to stress and frustration, and that fallacy is: “One day I will be done.”  And it is partially true, one day we will all be ‘done’ (death), but in another meaning I feel like we have an attitude towards work, physical fitness, academia, writing, art, climbing, whatever it is…that one day I will have accomplished ‘enough’.  As if there is a limit to what one can achieve.

I’ve definitely felt this way lately (like I'm done); pulling onto a V.5 in the gym with big moves to good pinches and incut crimps and getting to the top feeling shaky and unsure and being confused as to why.  I never used to feel that way on a problem that catered to what I thought was my style, but in that moment I have to remind myself that you lose what you don’t practice.  It’s been difficult to say the least to realize that I’ve taken a step back from where I used to be.  You start to grow so accustomed to climbing a certain style or a certain grade that when it doesn’t come so easily you almost feel insulted.  I think the most humbling moment in my entire climbing career happened this past week when I was bouldering in the gym amidst the SG climbing team.  I’ve seen the kids on this team climb for the past 16 months so I feel like I have a pretty good gauge on where they all are and what they are capable of.  I’ve paid attention to their progress and some of them have made leaps and bounds in their abilities which was made very clear to me when I saw one of the younger guys, maybe 15 years old, do a V.6 in maybe 7 or 8 tries.  This particular kid, approximately a year ago, was barely making his way up V.3’s consistently and projecting V.4’s.  The kicker, was that I spent the next hour working the same problem and never sent it.  Boom, totally humbled.  As the climbing team floats up and down the campus board behind me I realize now that I don’t know everything about climbing, training, or progression.  Every time I feel as if I have made progress, broken out of a plateau, or broken down some mental barrier I sink back into my comfort zone and all of the work I’ve done to get out of it evaporates.   This cycle has been so prevalent in my life I’m wondering if I will ever snap out of it?  Yet at the same time it’s these humbling moments that I need in order to shed light on (apparently over and over again) what it is I need to keep working on.  Perpetual motivation.  I’ve talked about this before, possibly lamented the fact, and even though I’m tired of re-visiting this topic I do think it’s important to keep re-learning this lesson until I actually get it. 

If I’m to write honestly about climbing it seems to me that I for the most part got into it because of a competitive mind state.  Not sure if this kind of mind state is sustainable, in fact, I’m quite sure it’s not.  So in order to transcend this unhealthy approach to climbing and progress within climbing and within myself I need to change my overall approach to why it is I climb and why it is I want to get better at climbing.  The frustrating part is that I know why I want to get better and why it is I love climbing, it’s indescribable but not impossible to write about, and yet it’s deeper than just changing a routine, it goes to the very core of why I do anything in my life and that takes time to change.  It takes a different approach in the gym, outside, with climbing partners, and stopping yourself when you start to fall back into old patterns or habits in order to harness what has worked and reject what hasn’t.