I came across a video on the interwebs asking people why they rock climb. The answers differed from adrenaline rush to freedom. Everyone had a different answer. The thing about climbing that makes it different from any other sport is that its not just physical exertion like running, biking or swimming. Climbing is as much physical as it is mental. Maybe even more so mental. I’ve done all the usual sports, track, biking, and swimming but none compare to the feeling I get when I’m Rock Climbing.
Picture being 300 feet up a shear granite rock face. You are connected to a single rope and clipped into a steel bolt not even a centimeter thick. Remember, you are hanging 300 feet off the ground, your feet dangling below you and the ground seems miles away. As you hang there you listen and to your amazement the sound of silence meets your ears and know I’m not talking about the hit song by Simon & Garfunkel. Just pure, unaltered, beautiful silence. Not once as you hang there does it occur to you that you are very far off the ground or possibly in danger. Ok, maybe once it flashes through your mind but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re not on the ground but you’re also not in the air; you’re in between. And rarely do humans get to experience in between. Here on this cliff face you find peace, solitude and comfort. You are both safe and not safe at the same time. In that moment your only worry is to reach that next hold and to clip that next bolt.
If I’m angry or frustrate I’ve found that a lonesome crag and a trusting friend are all you need to feel better. It doesn’t even have to be outside either. Just the other day I was feeling out of sorts but was at work. Luckily for me I just so happen to work at a indoor rock climbing gym. I know that climbing has helped me relax in the past so I hop on the wall and start to climb. For some reason though, I couldn’t get my mind to calm down and focus on the task at hand, later realizing that it was because I wasn’t pushing my climbing limit. A woman walks in wanting to climb so I harness her up and give here the safety procedures rundown. She had clearly climbed before so it was pretty straightforward. She proceeds to climb a route on each rope one by one then comes over to where I’m siting (my gym uses auto-belays which works as a pulley system for the climber, eliminating the belayer need) I then find out that she has flown in to visit her sick grandmother in the hospital. She had a small break from the hospital and had come to climb to relieve some stress. She explained how she use to do this when she was younger and was frustrated or stressed and that even though she was only climbing for thirty minutes this really helped her forget for a little bit all the bad stuff that was happening in her life. After she had left I thought, wow she has a lot more stress in her life than me so why am I having so many issues climbing today. Finally, I returned to the right mind set thinking, OK I can do this and proceeded to walk over to the wall. I choose a 5.10B route (a 5.10B is a moderate to hard climb) I designed named Iron Man as a challenge that I had yet to completely climb. I was struggling on the last two moves, a dyno (A dyno is when you jump upwards from one hold to the other and as you jump your body completely leaves the wall) to a left hand crimp with an awkward balance finish. Determination and some Daft Punk finally allowed me to finish. Though some grunting, weird looks from passerby’s and light swearing got me here the ultimate reason was that woman’s story and her words that she had come here to climb so that just for thirty minutes she could let go of her worries, stop stressing and focus on what was in front of her.
Climbing isn’t just about the release you get though. Climbing is unique because it uses a lot of willpower and mental focus to complete a climb. To climb efficiently one must allow their body and mind to find sync and work in tandem. If you can’t find this then you are going to have issues as you climb. I think this is the reason that I meet so many climbers who have troubled past’s, but once they found rock climbing as an outlet they got their lives under control. Why is climbing mental? Well it’s different for everyone. My take on it is this; I have to focus on a very specific challenge; I have to exert a certain amount of energy; oh, and I’m 60 feet off the ground so if I fuck this up I’m going to fall a very far ways before my rope takes the slack, and trust me falling 30 feet and slamming into a rock with a good deal of force is never fun. So, as you’re up there focusing on your next move you have to calm down your mind and you have to forget that you are very high up. It’s a human instinct to be afraid of heights, so for a person to be able focus at a high height takes a lot of mental focus and training. I just recently got over my fear of heights and still sometimes I get nervous. Once you are able to sync your mind you can do anything.
Once you have your synch and focus you can climb like a god. A rock climb route is like a puzzle you have to put your hand in the correct place and your foot in the right spot or you’re screwed. So before you even begin the climb you have to plan where you are going to move once on the rock. Then when your on the rock you have to focus move by move and not overthink the climb but not under think it either. Under thinking results in fear and fear while climbing will cause you to hesitate, forget what your were focusing on and then eventually tire out before the end of the climb or fall. This is why the mental- physical sync is so important.
But climbing isn’t just about stress relief, and the mental focus its so much more and honestly as I sit here typing this I’m struggling at how to explain what rock climbing really means to me. It’s so hard to explain because it is so many different things for me. And these things are for me only, because someone else is climbing for a completely different reason. If you were to climb with me you might get it but then again you would be doing it for a completely different reason. But climbing for me in a list of words is this: stress relief, the mental focus, physical workout, challenge, adrenaline, the people you meet, the judge free zone (the people and the rock won’t judge you because its all you and know one else), being amongst nature, and lastly the freedom I get when I climb.
