6 minute read
LEARNING TO FALL: A CLIMBER’S 25-YEAR JOURNEY WITH FEAR
by Juan Rodriguez
Climbing has given me so many adventures, deep friendships, life lessons, and strong connections with my community. Among the most important is the ability to manage fear and anxiety, a lesson that continues to serve me well beyond the climbing world.
As an instructor and private coach, I spend a great deal of time with climbers, observing how fear inhibits their performance and helping them to understand their responses so they can calibrate their minds better to cope. Everyone is different, and while there are some fundamentals that we can all use to improve the way we cope with fear and anxiety, we are each unique in our experience, and therefore require a patient, if not custom, approach to the training.
I was a very shy teenager when I first started climbing. I was nervous to make friends and didn’t trust easily, so it took a bit of time before I was ready to ask questions and receive help. My early days in climbing consisted of trying things on my own until my fingertips were raw and my arms refused to pull. Then I would sit back and watch. I would watch others try boulders and routes I’d been working on and commit their movement to memory so I could try them again later. Copying movement wasn’t always easy, but with persistence and consistency, I eventually racked up enough skills to really get going. However, there was no way to copy mental fortitude. I just assumed that the stronger you got, the less scared you were.
For about 10 years, nearly half of my climbing career, I kept focusing on getting stronger and perfecting my technique. I saw my grades continue to climb, sending route after route at home and abroad, but the fear persisted. I would complete hard routes all white knuckled, shaking, and gasping: absolutely terrified. I approached runouts with so much anxiety that I was sometimes near tears. I often wished I could just get to the next draw to clip and feel safe, only to have to move past it and get scared all over again. would practice falls that got progressively longer until I was satisfied that I could deal with a long fall if it happened. If the moves on a crux were between bolts and I was nervous to commit, I would try to recreate the positioning and take a similar fall to get used to the reaction. Once I came to the realization that I could practice anything that made me nervous until I was more comfortable, my climbing career became a collection of adventures filled with a deep appreciation that can only be experienced when you have clear emotional control despite being pushed to your mental and physical limits.
At that time, my ego was deeply tied to those harder climbs. I was misguided by the thought that strength and power would reach a point that would turn the tide, but it never did. It left me wondering how other climbers dealt with these issues so calmly. I would see my local heroes, and the pros, of course, just float up these insanely difficult routes with the calmness of a Buddhist monk, and I couldn’t figure out the secret. Naturally, I was too insecure to ask.
I remember circa 2013–2014, I was working on a project at Smith Rock. I’d put all the pieces together, but there was a sequence near the top of the first half that had me gripped. I was barely strong enough to pull the moves, and the exposure, the slight diagonal trajectory of the line, and the space between bolts were giving me the worst anxiety. I had trouble committing to the moves for fear of a cheese-grating, pendulum fall if I didn’t make it. The rest of it still wasn’t easy, and there were a couple of other nauseating sections, but for me, that sequence was the greatest of all the evils.
Around that time a new book called The Rock Warrior’s Way by Arno Ilgner hit the shelves, and the author was doing workshops across the country. I signed up for the workshop in Vancouver, and that was the start of my journey to master my fears and anxiety related to climbing. The week after the workshop, I drove to Smith, walked right up to the route–no warmup–and sent it. Not completely fear-free, but I was a new climber. From then on, I realized that strength and power were not the answer to managing fear. I needed dedicated, strategic practice that addressed the things that scared me. If I was scared of pendulums, I would take falls just offcenter from the bolt line to be comfortable with swings. If I was scared of a runout, I would practice falls that got progressively longer until I was satisfied that I could deal with a long fall if it happened. If the moves on a crux were between bolts and I was nervous to commit, I would try to recreate the positioning and take a similar fall to get used to the reaction. Once I came to the realization that I could practice anything that made me nervous until I was more comfortable, my climbing career became a collection of adventures filled with a deep appreciation that can only be experienced when you have clear emotional control despite being pushed to your mental and physical limits.
Falls are probably the number one cause of fear and anxiety in most climbers I work with. Here are my top three tips for managing these feelings better:
Practicing falls will help you feel more comfortable over time. Being scared to fall is natural. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you. If you don’t give it positive scenarios to draw information from, its default will be to conjure up anything it can to keep you from continuing, because it assumes the worst.
Have a consistent partner. Trust is huge when it comes to climbing at your limit. Having a consistent climbing partner, experienced in catching falls, can help you stay focused on the climbing and not worry about whether or not you’re safe on the other end of the rope.
Be nice to yourself. Unless you’re in a hurry to become a professional, you’ve got time on your side. Be patient in your practice when it comes to managing fear. Climb with people who are going to be patient with you. The “sink or swim” approach is not for everyone, so don’t rush to go out there and start taking huge whippers in an effort to quickly manage your fears. It takes as long as it takes.
