I was recently working with a talented young climber who I set a challenge, this climb was what I would class as particularly anti-style but well within climbing grade and ability if the time was taken to working it out.

Half a dozen attempts later and progress towards holds had been made but holds had not been held, the words “I can’t”, “Holds are shit” and a list of all the other problems in the gym that they wanted to try had been rattled off, an attempt at negotiating to get out of putting more effort into this climb had been made and finally sitting down trying to ignore the climb. You know how it goes, the frustration had well and truely set in.

For me this is always a tough position as a coach but I have to hold my ground, the emotion that this climb was invoking was in its essence the true reason for the current lack of progress for this athlete. “Why are you letting this climb affect you mentally? Its just a climb”. Emotion is a natural part of the human existence and Im not saying it should be bottled up or ignored, but when it is directly affecting the outcome that you wish to achieve I believe that this is definitely something we should get curious about. We should start asking ourselves questions.

To be honest, when I googled “curiosity killed the cat” I didn’t know it had a second part to the saying! But how fitting is that!

To get curious is where FAILURE starts to become LEARNING which opens the door to SUCCESS.

I read a book a few years back called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, to sum this book up in my own words.

“Everything that happens in your life, every response, reaction or action you have or take is a result of you. If you choose to you can take ownership of all these aspects of your life and when you do, you will be the one in control of your life.

You cannot change external circumstances but you can change how you Act, React or Respond.”

Seems very wishy washy writing it like that but I think it begins to paint the picture and I hope it inspires you to read the book to get the full picture.

The challenge for this athlete was their approach to the lessons that were being offered, they could see not sticking the move as failure, boring, frustration, shit, crap, make me want to cry kinda stuff or they can accept the challenge infront of them, become grateful for the opportunity to learn something and keep trying hard. Its hard as a coach to let someone fail, fail repetitively but in the course of learning the bigger the effort put into a challenge the greater the “AH HA!” moment of realisation and the greater the retention of the lesson.

#lightbulbmoments.

Some action that I took as a coach during the course of this 30 minute series of events was to explain the purpose of my actions and the lessons that I was offering to the athlete.

“Know the why, know the nature of the questions to ask”

I have given you this challenge because at the moment you struggle with working on begin able to move between fluidity and tension of the wall, you can climb a climb fluid or you can climb it with tension but to chop and change and apply what is necessary to each individual move is something that one of your lowest hanging fruit as I see it right now.

Now they have context, they know why they are doing it, suddenly the change of mental state from Anger and Frustration with me as a coach and the climb as a stupid climb they couldn’t do, to one of curiosity. over the next 15 minutes they slowly ticked off move by individual move, sure by the end of the session they still had moves to work out but they had done 4 or 5 moves that they were originally saying they couldn’t do.

It takes a strong individual to be able to work on their true challenges, maybe it’s not a lack strength, maybe it’s not that move, maybe it’s not that your coach is being a dick. Maybe its focusing on the wrong lesson infront of you, maybe its the blame game rather than owning your shit.

Be grateful for these lessons, be grateful for the challenges you face, they are all here to teach you something they are all your opportunities for growth and improvement.