The learning process in Climbing
If you have ever had to take a language class in school that is not immersive you may have found it hard to have the information you learn “stick”. If you really want it to stick long term, it may be better to be in a fully immersive environment where you are exposed to different dialects, speed, conversation styles, education levels, subject matter, etcetera. The information you will be exposed to in an immersive style will be far more dense, and may feel like at first it is too much to pick anything up. But in the long run you should find that you develop a long lasting skill that is likely to stick with you despite periods of disuse or absence. When we climb we may find something similar, where the more time we spend learning the different climbing styles and dive into the variety of movement, the faster and more deeply we are likely to learn.
I’d like to break down some methods I use to expose an athlete to high levels of variety on and off the wall to accelerate learning the skill of climbing. This can include climbing techniques on the wall as well as using off the wall exercises to bring a new sense of availability to action that should translate to better performance. My goal as a coach is to have an athlete feel like the outcome of climbing a specific problem is not limited to only one set of movement solutions but to be able to draw from a diverse set of skills so an optimal pattern can rise to the surface organically as a byproduct of being a more globally nuanced and skilled climber.
When I first work with a climber I watch them move on the wall and ask myself what are their strengths; what do they bring to the table that they do very well naturally. Once I see what they like to do in different situations I ask myself, do they use these skills or attributes at the appropriate times or do they try to force movement by using something they are comfortable with rather than something more optimal? For instance, if I find they are very comfortable full crimping and struggle when forced to go open hand, that tells me something about their physical profile. Immediately I make a note to check out their wrist and compression strength as these attributes may be lagging behind their other skills. I would go through a whole list of these types of choices they make while climbing and during subsequent conversations I would ask their opinion on a variety of assumptions I would make. Together we find out what their goals are in relation to what I saw in the screening process and we make a specific plan for the athletes to help develop their physical and/or technical skills to reach their goals.
Let’s run with the idea of overusing the full crimp position- PIP joints bent to 90*, wrist cocked back into extension, maybe even a thumb wrap. They are using this position because it allows them to feel strong enough to make a move at an intensity that allows them to climb a certain grade. This is a tough loop to break, this climber thinks of themselves as climbing at a certain grade and ego may stunt the learning process if unchecked. “I climb V7, but V8 is way hard… my fingers are starting to get really stressed at my limit, maybe I just need to learn how to crimp harder!”
This idea of what got you to V7 is what will get you V9 is probably not accurate and can possibly be dangerous. The subtlety of grabbing a climbing hold is not just about fingers (though they are very important), but the system as a whole. Your entire body can change joint angles in numerous places to take load off one area and help spread it to others if only you spoke the language well enough. Enter high variety movement training. Adding small changes like asking a climber to only use open hand or practicing 3 finger drags or changing the angle or hold size can go a long way to force the athlete into finding new solutions to the puzzle of climbing.
Here are a few ideas you can implement to help bring this idea into focus-
Find a climb just above your flash level. Then go about finding how many different ways you can do this problem and still make it to the top. Feel free to get silly too, having fun can be a wonderful way to promote learning. Try messing with these ideas to get the hang of it-
-Changing speed between attempts or between moves
-Skipping holds or down climbing between moves
-Facing your body one direction for the whole climb
-Keeping your arms straight the whole time
-Trying to emulate a different animal while climbing each time
-Literally anything different than the first way you tried this climb
If this doesn’t sound like training to you, go watch a kid climb. They are all over the place, reading the moves, trying new things out, letting old idea go. They are simply exploring with the unabashed joy of moving their little bodies. Sometimes as an adult we are conditioned to think being explorative is indicative that we don’t know the answers we should already know. Again, ego jumps in and kills progress. This reminds me of the saying “fear not the man who practices 10,000 kicks 1 time, fear the man who practices 1 kick 10,000 times.” This idea is likely true, yet how we practice the kick matters.
For instance- the skill of heel hooking. If a heel hook can be equated to a kick, the idea of practicing a heel hook 10,000 times will undoubtedly make you better at doing a heel hook. But if the scenario in which you practice is uniform every time, will that make you better at climbing? Like someone who learned a language in an un-immersive environment, being able to say one sentence correctly out of context is not the same as learning why they are using that sentence in the first place. If every one of those 10,000 heel hooks had different variables- different depth, angle, height, closeness to hands, essentially learning why and how they are using a heel hook in a specific position, then we will see some next level learning taking place. The alternative is to take a single move where we use a heel hook and repeat it in the same scenario using the same way every time. Clearly, this will result in less robust learning compared to the first idea. Maybe the saying should be “fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 different kicks once, fear the man who has practiced 1 kick in 10,000 different ways.”
The other aspect of movement is physical capability. Maybe someone is using a specific technique because they are simply not strong enough to try anything else during that move! This is very common as someone is trying to push their boundaries. What can be hard about it is to identify what muscles or movement qualities are missing in their profile. Perhaps the full crimp is being overused due to a lack of prowess in wrist/shoulder coupling. This begs the question, are they not strong enough in their wrists/shoulders or they just don’t know how to use the strength they posses in a timely manner. If it is the former, its time to build a better canvas. Giving this athlete dedicated wrist and shoulder exercises to shore up their strength deficits can go a long way to giving them more options in a natural way without prescribing changes of joint angles specifically. In the latter athlete who test really well in wrist flexion and shoulder mobility but will still choose not to use it, we take a different approach, one that forces them to engage with the holds in a way that forces a change in technique. Put that athlete on some slopers and watch them try to full crimp their way out of that. Admittedly some will be able to do this, so a coach might ask them to not use that technique during the problem.
Besides strength, they may be missing Range of Motion somewhere. This can look like over tight muscles, or movement patterns that have learned to freeze somewhere to gain control elsewhere. This is a great place to add ROM movement before climbing to see if they can feel more comfortable opening up their box once they feel like they have more options. Ultimately the degrees of freedom problem is a all about spreading the load fluidly so no joint or muscle gets habitually over burdened. If we have 10,000 ways to do a single move, we are likely to find the subtlety and nuance that will allow efficiency and freedom to persist in the face of great intensity.
Again, treating climbing movement like an art form can yield a curiosity to learn that can help keep an athletes perceptual system open to picking up the reality of the situation rather than a representation of what you think it should be like. When we have practiced high variety training through many seasons we start to find differences in repetition and can act accordingly. If we can create an immersive environment in our training process we are likely to find more joy and more connection with our training. Just as a young child learns to move by picking up on environmental cues and making educated guesses, we as adults should throw ourselves into the process of organically and joyfully exploring movement with our fully developed frontal cortex and use wisdom and play to guide our search. Immerse yourself in the language of climbing and build a long lasting relationship with movement that will serve you long after you hang up your climbing shoes.
