With climbing, we are constantly working with and against our ego to maximize our performance. Confidence is an essential component of success – but our ego can often work against us, by putting us into situations that reinforce bad habits.
Forcing yourself to push through fear isn’t a great way to expand your comfort zone and in fact might do the opposite. On the other hand, acknowledging your fear, stepping back, and looking for challenges that might be just slightly outside of your comfort zone might be a good way to slowly build up that mental resilience. Especially when the challenge is attached to a grade, it’s easy to let your ego get sucked into negative thinking, like “I can’t do the runout on this route, even though it’s ‘only’ such-and-such a grade.”
From now on, when you’re confronting a mentally challenging route or section, rate it using your own scale, personal to you, from 1-10. You can make this evaluation from the ground at first. Try to rely on your own perception. A very trusted partner is OK, but be careful of letting strangers influence your fear grade. You might want to keep this process to yourself.
Maybe you can only tolerate a 3 or a 4 on your scale right now, or maybe it’s a 6 or 7. When you’re working on your confidence while climbing on what you perceive as scary terrain, try not to go more than a point or two above that when you go climbing. Going into that +2 or more territory is where you start to neglect your technique and build negative feedback loops about scary climbing. If you know that you can handle around a 4 today, and you look up at a route and decide it’s a 7, it’s probably best to just let that route go for the day.
It’s important to recognize that this fear scale is totally separate from climbing grades. A project-grade climb with really close bolts might only be a 2 for you. But some of the easiest routes at Smith Rock might be 8s for you! Figure out your own internal scale and let it be unique and special to you. Spend some non-performance days exploring the area +1 or +2 fear points above your comfort level. And don’t forget to spend some of those non-performance days inside your comfort zone, too.
You won’t always be able to make a good fear rating from the ground. It’s a good idea to practice making fear ratings as you climb on easier / less scary terrain, too, for this reason.
If you climb up high on a route and realize that it has a big scary section that you didn’t see before, that’s fine. Try to take a moment, compose yourself, and make a rating on the fly. Same as before – if it’s too high on your rating for today, that’s OK. While it might be punishing to your ego to avoid this traumatizing scenario, it’ll be better in the long run for your confidence. So if you can safely retreat, you should. There’s nothing wrong with this.
On the other hand, if you compose yourself and find that it might only be one point above your comfort zone, great! That’s an opportunity for you to practice.
Over a long time, with consistent practice, exploring this +1 fear rating zone will slowly increase the amount of terrain that you’re comfortable with.
Key takeaways:
- The perceived risk of a route is totally different from its climbing grade
- Learn to make your own assessments of how scary something is
- Your fear rating may be different from someone else’s
- Avoid situations that are above your tolerance for fear
- Explore the area right outside your comfort zone to slowly expand that zone