On Monday night this week I was working with some youth athletes on a skillset of better understanding the relationship between momentum and tension. We were doing a mixture of Sloth Climbing and Deadstops. Looking across the group I could see everybody practicing the skills with varying levels of focus, intent and ability but there was one of the crew that was failing on a move then repeating and failing and repeating and failing.
As I was watching this person climb one of the adults I have done some online work with came over to say hello and to watch this person fail on the same move of a climb below their max grade for a few minutes, during this time we got to discussing a couple of the reasons for this young athlete failing at the move and their ability to get back on after a minutes rest and try the same move again with a level of focus rarely seen around the gym. The adult athlete perfectly summed up why the youth athlete was failing “Willing to fail for the principle”, that statement inspired this blog.
What is the point of a drill? I believe that drills are there to focus on a skillset that isn’t as strong as it could be or to create awareness around a movement or type of movement that is lower on someones awareness scale. To find something to learn that you didn’t already know.
The most common reason that people don’t get the biggest benefit out of these, is that they prioritise the success of completing the move or getting to the top over the pure difficulty of attempting to complete the move with the focus being solely on the drill. In a nutshell their practice vs performance dial is a little bit too turned up to performance rather than set to practice, sometimes this is an ego thing, Ive climbed this climb before and Im sure as hell not going to fail on it now, sometimes its a fear of failure, if I just grab this next hold then I can go back to really focusing on the skill to get to the next hold.
Sometimes the skill set being practiced is not appropriate for the movement being completed but this is far less common than the need to just try that little bit harder to make the skillset happen during the move, this is where the growth happens. A perfect example of this is 3 second lock offs, most people will pause for 3 seconds while they are feeling fresh and the moves feel easy but when it comes to feeling more tired and trying hard moves suddenly it becomes 2 second or 1 second lock offs. Yes, there will be moves that are too hard for 3 second lock offs at someones current level of ability but these moves have a good argument for somewhere where you should be considering falling off the wall from only being able to hold the position for 2.75seconds rather than lunging and grabbing the hold.
Its hard to find a balance with some of these climbs, I think about it in a similar sense of projecting or limit bouldering all be it on v3 or4 if you climb v6. For this kind of skill work you may not want to do the climb in a shot or 2 with the drill, then it may be too easy for you, you want to find something that you can fall off of, while focusing on a certain drill its a good idea to of already done the climb, this way you know what the move feels like with your confident style of movement and now you can practice it with a way you feel less confident in. If you are a powerful climber maybe next time you want to try climbing the climb like a sloth or with lock off’s, Or maybe you are a well rounded climber who is looking for the smaller percentage gains then maybe you will find a climb a bit closer to your limit that is set in a certain style and you will repeat it 6 times, each time with a different focus drill to really expand your understanding and strengths on this style of climb.
Decide time for both practice and performance, if you are practicing then how will you know where the limit for you really is unless you fail, that voice inside your head will often talk you out of doing it as well as you can because its always searching for things it already knows, the purpose of skills work is to find something you didn’t already know.
Are you willing to fail for the principle?
