How to Practice Climbing Like a Natural

Open your logbook for the last month. Count the routes and problems that were new to you. Now count how many of them were harder than anything you had done before.

For most climbers the first number is large and the second is zero or one. And the grade they can send has not changed in a year, even though they climb three times a week and the logbook is full.

That gap is the most common way climbers stall, and it has a name in my system.

Sideways or up

Every skill can grow in two directions. Horizontally, by adding more of what you can already do in slightly different forms. Or vertically, by taking on something that exceeds what you can do at all.

Climbing makes horizontal growth unusually easy and unusually pleasant. There is always another route at your grade. A different wall, a different style, a different gym, a new set. Each one is genuinely new, each one feels like an accomplishment, and each one leaves your ceiling exactly where it was. I call it widening a skill instead of heightening it, and it is a form of productive procrastination: you are busy, you are learning, and you are not advancing.

The two kinds of route are different in kind, not just degree. A route at your grade asks for your current ability in a new arrangement. It demands little adaptation from your nervous system, and getting it does not improve any other route you climb. The equation is 1+1=2. A route beyond you demands adaptation, feels uncomfortable, and when you finally do it, everything beneath it improves without being practiced, because the control it took carries down to every easier move. That equation is closer to 1+1=11.

Naturals are almost impatient with sideways growth. They collect variety too, but they collect it after the level has risen, when it comes almost for free. The climbers with the widest range of styles are, almost always, the ones who built the height first.

Why sideways wins by default

Nobody chooses the horizontal session. It wins for two reasons that have nothing to do with laziness.

The first is that time and energy are finite, and every route you climb costs the one you did not. Fill a session with variety and the vertical attempt gets whatever is left, usually the last twenty minutes on forearms that have nothing to give. Difficulty needs your best energy. Variety only needs your presence.

The second is a bias. Humans are roughly twice as motivated to avoid a loss as to pursue a gain. A climber with a grade to protect will, without ever deciding to, choose the session that proves the grade over the session that risks it. Laps on sent routes are proof. The project is risk. And so the project waits.

The right amount of hard

This is where climbers who do push often go wrong in the other direction, and I did it myself for years: pick something absurdly beyond you, fail at it for months, and burn out.

Being challenged and being frustrated are two different things. Csíkszentmihályi described the state of flow, full immersion where time disappears, and climbers know it better than most: you are on the wall and there is nothing else. That state happens at a specific place, where the challenge slightly exceeds your skill but you still believe you can do it. Too easy and you are bored, on autopilot, and, strangely, drained faster than by a hard route that excites you. Too hard and you are frustrated, and you learn little. In between, a route that fully demands your best while you can still see the path to sending it, and you come off the wall with more energy than you took onto it.

The right next step always exists. It is rarely the hardest thing at the gym and never the route you already own. Finding it is a skill Naturals have, and it is one of the principles the book teaches in full, including how far beyond your level to aim and how to tell within a few attempts whether a project is the right one.

The magnifying glass

There is a second habit that keeps a project from moving, and it looks like commitment: three projects in rotation, a few goes on each per session, switching whenever one feels stuck.

When I was a child I had a magnifying glass, and like every child I held it over a sheet of paper until smoke came, and then a flame. Now hold it over three sheets, a few seconds on each, moving on whenever nothing seems to be happening. Do that for an hour and you can burn nothing at all, even though each sheet had its twenty minutes. Compounding works the same way. Every time you come back to a project you left for a few sessions, you are, in the ways that matter, starting again. Naturals pick the step and stay on it until it combusts. Bruce Lee said he did not fear the man who had practiced ten thousand kicks once, but the man who had practiced one kick ten thousand times. He was describing this.

Your sent routes are safe

The objection is that if the laps go, the base goes with them. It does not.

A harder climb of a similar style engages everything beneath it at full capacity. Every foot placement, every lock-off, every rest you own is used harder on the project than on any lap. I call this the Skill Preservation Paradox. Naturals can spend most of their time above their level and the base stays solid, because the base is never off duty. Keep the laps. Stop paying for them with your best energy.

What I cannot tell you

I am a juggler, not a climber, and I cannot tell you why your foot cuts on that move. A stronger partner or a coach can. What I can tell you is why a full logbook has not moved your grade, why the project has been getting the worst part of every session, and how the people who improve fastest choose what to try next.

What to look for

Go back to the two numbers from your logbook. Write them at the top of this month’s page.

Then, each session, note where in the session the vertical attempt happened, if it happened, and how your forearms felt when it did. After a month you will have a picture of your practice that almost no climber ever sees, and it will explain the year better than any excuse about strength.

The story of how I found these patterns, in a discipline where dropping a prop in front of a hall full of artists is the price of every attempt, is Part One of the book. It is free.