NICROS - Training Center

Rate of improvement is based almost entirely on your willing to fail.

-Todd Skinner

While much of the joy in climbing comes from steady improvement and confidence-building onsights and flashes, it takes an increasing amount of time and sacrifice to gain each new level of ability. As you ascend the grading scale, your progress will slow until improvement becomes immeasurably small.

At this point you must contemplate one of the greatest success paradoxes: failure is a precursor to great successes and, therefore, if you want to improve you must push the boundaries into the zone where failure is certain.

To this end, the most efficient way to ensure continued improvement is regularly working routes that are too difficult for your current skill level. The failure that ensues will reveal the secrets to elevating your performance, so carefully analyze the feedback the climb provides.

Identify the exact reason(s) why you fell off the climb. Avoid the simple conclusion of "I wasn't strong enough."

Remind yourself that most climbers are already strong enough to climb at the next higher grade--they are held back by mental blocks, poor technique and tactics, bad sequencing or climbing too slow, lack of creativity, or even a disbelief that they are capable of the next grade. Identifying your true constraints is tantamount to holding the keys to success in your hand!

Starting today, view failure as a necessary step in taking your game to the next level. Test yourself on (safe) routes up to a full letter grade above your ability-analyze why you fail and develop a game plan for training these weaknesses.

Exposing yourself to such difficult routes can be demoralizing, so approach these climbs from the perspective of desiring to learn, experiment, and discover, while holding no expectations about performance. Though you may not recognize it at the time, this strategy of "climbing over your head" will stretch mental boundaries, expand technical skills, and increase physical strength. In a few weeks, you'll be on a route at your "old limit" and find that the holds suddenly look and feel bigger, the reaches and moves don't seem as radical, and the climb isn't as strenuous.

One caveat to this powerful training-at-the-crags strategy is that not every climb you attempt should be at or beyond your limit. Pushing too hard, too often can get you hurt; it's also important to "win" frequently, so that you experience that joy and flow of successful redpoint or onsight ascents. Thus, I suggest investing about two-thirds of your time climbing routes at or below your top grade. Spend the remaining time--one of every three climbs or one out of three climbing days--stretching your limits on routes that you have absolutely no business being on!

Cindy Mai on Faint's Roof (5.10a), Annapolis Rock, MD. Horst Photo