Savour the raisin, relish the route!

The quote above came courtesy of my weekend clients who came for some private coaching in movement and psychological skills.  Unfortunately the weather wasnt great and so we were indoors on Saturday, but we made the most of the day by covering quite a few different skills. Firstly we talked through some of the difficulties they had around movement and anxiety, trying to work out what might be causing them.  Some stuff about balance came up for John, and after watching him climb we worked out his heel often lowered (this is more common in men, perhaps due to less foot strength from less heels-wearing!) so his foot slipped off, and he often dropped his head to look at his feet, pushing himself off the wall.  Erica had struggled on steeper routes, but quickly picked up the idea of bringing the hips right in close and proved to herself she was able to hang on for far longer than when she first felt pumped!

We spent a lot of time working on visualising, climbing clip-to-clip or rest-to-rest, moving decisively between clips for John and taking time to pause and breathe at the clip for Erica.  Later on we worked on what is often people's least favourite training activity, falling off.  The important thing with this practice is to make it gradual, breathe out as you go, if you are a checker, try not to check your belayer first, and most importantly, to keep doing it FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES until the anxiety fades!  Many people take one or two falls and then find its all too much and stop while their anxiety is high - this is just reinforcing the anxiety unfortunately and will make it worse for next time.

John and Erica will be trying out their new skills over the next few weeks before coming back for an outdoor session. Good luck to them!  Oh, and the raisin comment - mindful raisin eating as an analogy for mindful climbing, where we stay rooted in our bodies, experiencing all the nuances of the moment to both enhance the climbing experience but also to get us out of our unhelpful self talk.  Happy climbing:)