Sometimes you may be strong enough to finish your projects but can’t quite make it. If you have good projecting principles in place and you get to the point of doing all the moves then what is the issue?
Habits
More often than not we see people climbing well until they get to a hard move or almost at the finish then the bad habits they have been working to eliminate creep back in, or they come back raging. This is often caused by practicing quality climbing when you are fresh but neglecting to do it under conditions of fatigue, fear or those mentally exhausted days when the level of mental fortitude has been used up by work or life. It can be helpful at the end of a session to finish with cool down climbing at easy grades where you can practice climbing perfectly. Be honest with your performance here, you don’t want to drill in any bad habits whilst tired.
Recovery
Depending on how fit or conditioned you are you may need to work harder to recover. Rest for 3, 5, 10 or maybe 20 minutes between attempts - you need to find what works for you, don’t just keep throwing yourself at the wall.
Something we come across on a regular occasion is that people are wanting to do more to get better, but what is actually holding them back is the level of recovery they are getting outside of training time. We have developed a system that takes 2 minutes before training to gauge how well you are recovering, you can find it here: https://www.axis-coaching.com.au/recovery-and-training. If you want to train hard you must recover hard too. Remember, we get stronger when we recover, not when we train!
Not trying hard enough
People come to our classes on regular occasions and say they need help with a project. after a good brush and watching them try a move, they do the move that they were stuck on. So what has changed?
Usually brushing is the first thing that changes.
Second is chatting to them about the climb which forces them to rest adequately.
Third - and probably most important - is that having a coach watching you makes you try that little bit harder. Whether it's the bit of nerves of having someone watching you try, or the immediate feedback you get through the conversation after an attempt the proof is there.
What does it take to make you try harder? Climbing with friends? Having a coach assess you? Remembering climbing goals?
