Everything in climbing performance comes down to opportunity cost.
Genetically speaking, we all have different starting points, and different rates of improvement, so our potential is always specific to us.
But given enough time, almost anyone can achieve a very high level relative to their own potential.
Whether or not you can climb a certain grade or a certain route is irrelevant. It’s about what you give up in order to climb that grade or route.
You spend your whole season projecting one thing you want to do, and you miss out on a dozen easier things.
You go to Kalymnos this fall, so you don’t go to Font next spring.
You spend the whole season on your 13c project, so you don’t get to do the classic 13as you told yourself you’d get to.
You meet up with the friends that fled to Hueco for winter, instead of the friends that fled to Bishop.
You focus on your deadlift, and you lose a little weight on your squat.
Every choice to do one thing is a choice not to do a different thing.
As we become more advanced, it gets harder and harder to squeeze blood from the stone of progression. We become more reliant on very specific challenges and experiences to eke out little steps towards our own perceived potential.
The trick is not jumping to this stage too early. There are good reasons to choose very specific projects and goals. By far the best reason is because it’s something that you’re motivated to do.
In that case, spending a great deal of time and energy on something is valuable because that’s where you want to be.
As we get older, the opportunity cost of life – family and other responsibilities – also plays a role in our climbing. Other than genetics, there is a huge reason that the strongest and most prolific climbers in the world are in their early to mid 20s: they have fewer responsibilities, and thus more time.
Yes, there are many outliers in their 30s and even 40s still performing at a high level. For them, time and patience are necessities to overcome the genetic advantage they’ve lost in the intervening decades.
The best performances of my life have always been a matter of two things:
1) Investing the necessary amount of time in something
2) Putting myself in the right place at the right time to take the opportunity when it arises
At age 38, 18 years in, I find opportunity cost to be the most vexing part of climbing progression.
My time is besieged by responsibilities; my recovery is besieged by age.
The most useful tools for me in dealing with it have been from Stoicism: equanimity, negative visualization, and the dichotomy of control.
I can’t and won’t do everything.
Moving forward from there, I can choose what things I will do.